The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-06-18

to Damascus revolving plans TO crush the
new and mutinous sect when a strange
voice speaks and opens up new and UNI
dreamed vistas around him. Saul, Saul.
why persecutest thou me? The sudden en-
largement OF view staggered Saul. 1t was
as If a man strolling along lone path
found the mist rise on his right hand and
on his left and stretched out before him
panorama of illimitable landscapes. and
yet nothing is more agreeable TO reason
than the breadth and farreach OF life. our
actions touch the farthest eternities. Paul
persecutes not alone himself when he per-
secutes the young church, he persecutes the
unseen Christ.
Our world is as a sensitized plate. An
sunspots thrill our northern sky with sub
tie magnetic currents. Mountain SUBMITS
dominate the dingiest canyons and equator
bows it's acknowledgements to the arctic
LAS reason and refinement bind the world
into one vivid whole an event in one CLINE
casts a shadow over all. In a city great
strike occurs. Hundreds or men IN ope1l-
ence TO a superior command lay down the
tools of industry and at first orderly soon
find themselves carried onward TO scenes
OF tulmut and inexcusable cowardice; at
first afiame against tyranny they soon
become tyrants themselves. But St. Louis
only happens to be the locality OF an out
break which touches every chord or our
modern civilization and a million minds
watch the course of the riot. Whether IN
sympathy or not. the event itself reaches
out and chains the intelligent world. Across
the broader sea an empire seems IN the
throes of vest intestine conflict An army
of half patriotic and half anarchistic war
riors are avowing vengeance on foreigners
in China. An earthquake may frighten one
corner OF that enormous empire ana never
cause the faintest trembie in another cor
ner, but this movement volcanic and
violent and understood to be nursed Dy the
tacit approval of the Empress is an earth- :
quake that skaters every part OF ina.
hoary empire. What will be the upshot?
VIII II result in unitiZing those heathen
millions into fiery nationalism? Or Will
1T act as disintegrating force? Is IL really
the death knell Of her unity? VIII IL Iaclii-
tate the carving process for the powers OF
Europe to take a share and compel the
sluggish immobile Mongolians to adopt
modern methods and no longer block the
| path of a worlds progress. How easy 70
sit at home and sketch possible policies.
AS easy financing with other people S
money or legislating for other people $
| children. But of this we are sure tnat
whatever the fate of Asia mob in PekinS
| Is followed by the intenest sympathetic
interest of London and st. Petersburg AT
cur breakfast tables the farwlnglng press
| sets us down in Ladysmith or Calcutta
1.-The hundred interlinking lines of COM
munication are blotting out superficial dis
| tinctions and the forerunners of common
problems are welding the races into one.
| We are developing in the direction OF a
| high nervous constituencies. This is a
| browning glory Of our time. and now II we
| allow reason to ripen still more and TO
| sweep many worlds into one view ana
place an infinite, sensitive, highly organized
| intelligence on the throne. then we have a
| philosophic basis for religion. This is a
| sacrament to-day, but sacrament carries
us all afar. A sacrament affirms an in
| carnation and Calvary. and Calvary in
/ wolves the fact Of sin against an unseen
| God. We cannot deny these remote rela-
tons without breathing blight on our
| service. Why speak of submarine cables
/ to another continent IL you are agnostic
| upon that continents real existence? Our
| gospel rolls up the blinds and throws open
the shutters of our worlds present home,
| force on glorious marble statue of cold
| Indifference, but vital life-giving God,
who feels ; Wound every te cSd sin se a
| His offered love. Hence our Calvary!
| Given a universe shot through with love
| as the final clew to its meaning, then our
| Calvary becomes one of the love forms. If
/ 1 walk in pine forests / expect cones to
| fall, or If walk through groaning orchards
| In mellow autumn / expect the rosy fruit
| to fall. This is normal. But if apples fell
/ in pine woods or out OF a clear sky, or
| cones fell in freighted orchards, it would
| be abnormal. If love is not the pervading
| temperament of the worlds background.
| then Calvary is more than supernatural,
| it is abnormal. II is grand exception.
| 1t is but tremendous spasm. But if love
/ infinite, unfathomable and far-ranging be
the very secret of the universe. and love.
| too, of a type strong that it stoops to
| the low and weak and weeping, II l say
love of that holy type be the ultimate
| philosophy, then Calvary is just natural
| as the visit of a mother to the crying era
die at midnight. 1 preach no mushroom
| benevolence on high. Love insists on holi-
| ness and repentance and manhood: but /
| affirm that infinite love, with all its i'm
| pulses toward purity, cannot see a soul
| drift away from home without going forth
| to win 1t back. 1 want no Bible to coddie
us In our errors or caress us in our crimes,
| but one cannot believe in a strong, re-
| sourceful God, unable to persuade His chill
| dren back TO righteousness, without which
| soul must ever dread the face of God A
| lost soul is possibility only on the suppo-
| stion that it has the power to hold out
| forever against the infinite persuasion OF
| infinite love, and a coercion of our free
dom would only make mongrel heaven
| If God is bound by every force of His low
ing nature to come to men, men are bound
by every force Of their nature to come to
| God When and where both meet, YOU
find heaven. When and where they part
you find hell"