The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1900-07-20
MIGHTY ANTISEPTIC
CHRISTIAN RELIGION AS A PREVEk-
TIVE OF THE WORLDS ILLS.
Its an Active Principle, Says DIR. Tai
mage, Which Constantly Works for
the Welfare of the Body, Mind and
Soul.

way where he has been deeply inter-
ested in the natural phenomena and
the quaint social life Of that n
full land. In his discourse this week he
argues. contrary to the opinion OF
many. that religion is an active prin-
ciple which works constantly for the
welfare of the body, mind and soul.
His text is Luke xiv, "a, Salt is Good"
The Bible is a dictionary of the finest
SMILES. It employs, among living crea-
lures, storks and eagles and doves and
uniforms and sheep n cattle; among
trees, sycamores and terebinths and
pomegranates and almonds and apples;
among jewels, pearls and amethysts
and jacinths and chrysoprases. Christ
uses no stale illustrations. The lilies
that he plucks for his ermon are
dewy fresh; the ravens in his discourses
are not stuffed specimens of birds, but
warm with life from wing tip to wing
tip; the fish he points to are not dull
about the gills, as though long cap-
tured, but a-squirm in the wet net just
brought up on the beach of Tiberias.
In my text, which is the peroration of
IA III LIS AC RAOhS NP "
tai and holds it before his cOngrega-
ton as an Illustration of divine grace
in the heart, when he says, what We
all know by experiment, Salt is good"
I shall try to carry out the Saviour's
idea in this text and in the first place
say to you that grace is like salt in its
beauty. In Galicia there are mines OF
salt, with excavations and underground
passages reaching, l am told, $50 miles.
Far under ground there are chapels
and halls of reception, the columns,
the affairs and the pulpits of salt. When
the king and princes come to visit these
mines, the whole place is Illuminated,
and the glory of crystal walls and
crystal ceilings n crystal floors and
crystal columns, under the glare of
the torches and the lamps, needs words
of crystal to describe it. But you need
not go so far as that to find the beauty
of salt. You live in a land which pro-
duces millions of bushel of it every
year., and you can take the mOrning
rail train and in a few hours get to
the salt mines and salt springs. And
you have this article morning noon
n night or your table. Salt has all
the beauty of the snowflake and water
foam with durability added. 1t is beau-
tiful to the naked eye, but under the
glass you can see the stars and the
diamonds and the white tree branches
and the splinters and the bridges of
fire as the sun glints them. There is
more architectural skill in one of these
crystals of salt than human ingenuity
has ever demonstrated in an Alhambra
or st. Peters.
GODS MERCIES INNUMERABLE.
1t would take all time, with an in
fringement upon eternity, for an angel
of God to tell one-half of the glories in
a salt crystal. SO with the grace of
God. 1t is perfectly beautiful. I have
seen it smooth out wrinkles of care
from the brow. 1 have seen it max an
aged man feel almost young again. 1
have seen it lift the STOPPING shoulders
and put sparkle into the dull eye. Sol
ONION discovered its therapeutic quail
tiles when he said, 1T IS marrow ito
the bones" 1t helps to digest the o
and to purify the blood and to calm
the pulses and quiet the spleen, and
instead of TynGal's prayer test of 20
years ago. putting a man in a philo-
sOphical hospital to be experimental
upon by prayer, it keeps him so we'll
that he does not need to be prayed for
as an invalid. 1 am speaking now of
a healthy religiOn-not of that morbid
religion that sits for three hours on a
gravestone reading Harvey's "Medita-
tons Among the TOmbs"-a religion
that prospers best in a bad state of the
liver, l speak of the religion that Christ
preached. 1 suppose when that religion
has conquered the world that disease
will be banished and that a man a hun
dred years of age will come in from
business and say: II feel tired. I think
kt must be time for me to CO." n
without one physical pang heaven will
have him..
But the chief beauty of grace is in
the soul. 1t takes that which was hard
and cold and repulsive n makes it
all over again. 1t pours upon ones ma
r1ra u-hor nnx-iI calls safha haaIrfu Of
holiness" 1t extirpates everything that
is hateful and unclean. If jealousy and
pride and lust and worldlineSs lurk
about, they are chained n have a
very small sweep. Jesus throws upon
the soul the fragrance of a summer
garden as he m in, saying, I am
the rose of Sharon" n he submerges
it with the glory of a spring morning
when he avs, Il am the light" Oh.
how much that grace did for three
JohnsI 1t look John Bunyan, the foul
mouthed, and made him John Bunyan,
the immortal dreamer. 1t o John
Newton, the infdel sailor, and in the
midst of the hurricane made him cry
out, My mothers God, have mercy
upon mel" 1t took John Summerfield
from a life of sin and, by the hand of
a Christian maker of edge tools. led
him into the pulpit that burns still
with the light of that Christian elo-
loCL4SC ~
the Jesus whom he nee despised. All,
you may search all the earth over for
anything so beautiful or beautify1ng
as the grace of God. Go all through
the deep mine passages of Wiellczka
and amid the underground kingdoms
of salt in H~allstadt, n show me any
thing SO exquisite, so transcendently
beautiful as the grace of God fashion,
ed and hung in eternal crystals
THE NECESSITY OF LIFE.
Again. grace is like salt in the fact
that it is a necessity Of life. n are
those paths across the western pral-
ries? Why, they were made there by
deer and buffalo going to and coming
away from the salt ticks" Chemists
and physicians all the world over tell
us that salt is a necessity of life. And
so with the grace of God: you u
have il or die. 1 know a treat many
sneak of it as a mere adornment, a
sort of shoulder strap adjoining a SOL
der. or a light. frothing dessert
brought in after the greatest part OF
- hounuet of life is over. or a medi-