The Penn's Grove record., 1900-09-21

Lincoln, died, all America svmpathized
with the sorrow in the White House. He
used to rush into the room where the
Cabinet was in session and while the most
eminent men Of the land were discussing
the questions of national existence. <dt
the child had no care about those G3esn
| tions. No. God the Father and CO.
| Son and God the Holy Ghost arr
petua1 session in regard t.
and kindred worlds. Shall you
rush in to ~criticise or arraign1
the divine government? mol
met Of the eternal three can
viii govern in the wisest and
and there never will be a m
like razor skillfully swung. sha
which ought to be avoided. 2
the very hairbreadth. Ear
pieces may 60 out of order
wrong, saying it is / o'clock wi
or 2 when it is 3, Gods clock
right, and when it is ! it stri
when it is II it strikes u. and
hand is as accurate as the minu
Further, my text tells US
sometimes shaves nations: I'm
day shall the Lord shave Wi
that is hired" With one sh
He went across Judea, and dow
pride and its power. In 1861 9
the American nation. We had
grow Sabbath Dissertation and
and ~blasphemy and fraud 40
and all sorts of turpitude. 7
it's sins and the North had
the East its sins and the
We had been warned again
we did not heed. At length
war cut from the st. Lawre
and from Atlantic seal oard
board. The pride of tn
towards, but the heroes
went down. And that VI
the sword Of war was til
1862 again it went acr
1853 again: in 1854 againy Els
instrument was incased and put
Never in the history Of the
any land more thoroughly shj
during those four years Of civ
and my brethren, if we do no
of our individual and nation
Lord will again take us in han
other razors within reach b
Epidemics, droughts, delugel
grasshopper and locust-or oul
ing success may SO far excite
Of other lands that under sol
the great nations may combine
down. Our nation, so easily
on north and south and from bd
might nave on hand at once M
tilities than were ever arrayed agaiiSy
one power. | hope no such combinatlYn
against us shall ever be formed, butt I
want to show that as Assyria was the
hired razor against Judea and Cyrus the
hired razor against Babylon and the Huns
the hired razor against the Goths there
are now many razors that the Lord could
hire if because of our national sins He
should undertake to shave us. In 1870
Germany was the razor with which the
zor with which He shaved China, and
American the razor with which He shaved
Spain. But nations are ~ I'd i
day. May a speedy and worldwide coming
to God hinder on both sides the sea all
national calamity. But do not let us as a
nation either by unrighteous law at Wash
ington or bad lives among ourselves defy
the Almighty. !.
One would think that our national sym
Dol of the eagle might sometimes suggest
another eagle, that which ancient Rome
carried. In the talons of that eagle were
clutched at one time Britain, France,
Spain, Italy, Dalmatia, Rhaetia, Noricum,
Pannonia, Moesia, Dacia, Thrace, Mace
cia, Palestine, Egypt and all northern
Africa and all the islands Of the Mediter-
ranean-indeed all the world that was
worth having; l20,00O,000 of people under
the wings of that one eagle! Where is
she now? Ask Gibbon, the historian, in
his prose poem, the decline and Fall Of
the Roman Empire Ask her gigantic
LII UCllOd1llk tIlCl4 ulC
the ages, the screech owl at windows out
of which worldwide conquerers looked.
Ask the day of judgment, when her
crowned debauchees, COmmodus and Per-
tinax and Caligula and sDiocletian, shall
answer for their infamy. As man and as
nations let us repent and have our trust
in a pardoning God rather than depend
of thirteen of the greatest battles of the
world Napoleon had lost but one before
Waterloo. Pride and destruction often
rode in the same saddle.
But notice once more and more than
all in my text that God is SO kind and
loving that when it is necessary for Him
to cut He has to go to others for the
shall the Lord shave with a razor that is
hired" God is love. God is pity. God
is help. God is shelter. God is rescue.
There are no sharp edges about Him, no
thrusting points, no instruments of lacera-
ton. If you want balm for wounds, He
has that. If you want divine salve for
eyesight, He has that. But if there is
| quires a razor, that He hires. God has
nothing about Him that hurts save when
| dire necessity demands, and then He has
to 90 clear off to some one else to get the
instrument. This divine clemency will be
no novelty to those who have pondered
the Calvarean massacre, where God sub
merged Himself in human tears and Grim
| soned Himself from ~punctured arteries
and let the terrestrial and internal worlds
maui Him until the chandeliers Of the
sky had to be turned out because the uni
verse could not endure the outrage. Illus
trious for love He must nave been to take
all that as our substitute, paying out of
His W heart the price of our admission
at the gates of heaven.
K;rr Hopr, TT of Eu0lapd oroupod b;c
son as king, and on the day Of coronation
put on a servants garb and waited, he,
the king, at the sons table, to the aston
ishment of all the princes. But we know
of a more wondrous scene, the King of
heaven and earth offering to put on you,
His child, the. crown Of life and IN the
form of a servant waiting on you with
blessing. Extol that love, all painting, all
sculpture, all music, all architecture, all
worship! In Dresdenian gallery let Ra-
phael hold Him up as a child, and in Ant
werp cathedral let Rubens hand Him
down from the cross as a martyr and Han
del make all his oratorio vibrate around
that one chord-"He was wounded for our
transgressions, bruised for our ~iniquities."
But not mil ali the redeemed get home
and from the countenances in all the gal
leries OF the ransomed shall be revealed
the wonders of redemption shall either
man or seraph or archangel know the
height and depth and breadth of the love
of God.
At our national capital a monument in
honor of him who did more than any one
to achieve our American i~ndependence
was for scores of years in building, and
most of US were discouraged and said it
never would be completed. And how glad
we all were when in the presence Of the
was done! But will the monument to Him
who died for the eternal iAAration of the