The Grit-advocate., 1900-08-10

the following discourse, in which he
shows that the world can never be ben
ef1ted by a religion Of human manu-
facture, which easily yields to ones
surroundings, but must have religion
let down from heaven; text, Amos vii,
8: And the Lord said unto me,
Amos, what seest thou? And l said,
A plumb line"
The solid masonry Of the world has
for me fascination. Walk about
some of the triumphal arches and the
cathedrals 400 or 800 years old, and see
them stand as erect as when they were
built, walls Of great height, for CEN
turies not bending a quarter of An
inch this way or that SO greatly
honored were the masons who builded
these walls that they were free from
taxation and called free" masons.
The trowel gets most of the credit for
these buildings, and its clear ringing
on stone and brick has sounded across
the ages But there is another imple-
ment Of just as much Importance as
the trowel. and my text recognizes 1t.
Bricklayers and stonemasons and
carpenters, in the building Of walls,
use an instrument made of a cord, at
the end of which lump Of lead is
fastened. They drop it over the side
OF the wall. and, as the plummet nat
urally seeks the center of gravity in
the earth, the workman discovers
where the wall recedes and where it
bulges out and just what is the per-
pendicular. Our text represents God
as standing On the wall of character
which the Israelites had built and in
that way testing it. "And the Lord
said unto me, Amos, what seest thou?
And said. A plumb line"
What the world wants is straight up
and down religion. Much of the 80
called piety of the day bends this way
and that to suit the times 1t is
obliQue, with low state Of sentiment
and morals. We have all been build
ing wall of character, and it is glar-
ingly imperfect and needs reconstruc-
ton. How shall it be brought into
perpendicular? Only by the divine
measurement. "And the Lord said
unto me, Amos, what seest thou? And
l said, A plumb line"
The whole tendency of the times is
to make us act by the standard of
what others do. We throw over the
wall Of our character the tangled
plumb line of other lives and reject
the infallible test which Amos saw.
The question for me should not be
what you think is right, but what God
thinks Is right. This perpetual refer
ence to the behavior Of others. as
though it decided anything but human
fallibility, is mistake wide as the
world. There are 10000 plumb lines
In use, but only one is true and exact,
and that is the line of Gods eternal
right. There is mighty attempt be-
ing made to reconstruct and fix up the
Ten Commandments. To many they
seem too rigid. The tower of Pisa
leans over about 10 feet from the per-
pendicular, and people go thousands
Of miles to see its graceful inclination
and to learn how, by extra braces and
various architectural contrivances, It
is kept leaning from century to CEN
tury. Why not have the ten granite
blocks Of Sinai set little aslant? Why
not have the pillar Of truth a leaning
tower? Why is not an ellipse as good
as square? Why is not an oblique
as good as straight up and down? My
friends, we must have a standard.
Shall 1t be Gods or mans?
society Utterly Askew.
,Thn 1;vjpo v,J,,poI lipo ,aod, H..