The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1900-12-28

L nave OILY OHc anu budU OlCD
while the next door neighbor has seven
children, and they are all spared. The
unfortunates buy at a time when the
market is rising and the day after the
market falls. At a time when they need
to feel the best for the discharge of
some duty they are seized with physical
collapse. Trying to do good and hon
est and useful thing, they are misrep-
resented and belied as if they had
practiced villainy. These are people
who all their lives have suffered injus-
tees. Others of less talent, with less
conservation, go on and up, while they
go on and down. There are in many
| vesriddles that have never been solved,
mysteries that have never been eX-
planned, heartbreaks that have never
been healed. Go to that man or that
and you will make matters worse in
stead of making them better. But let
the oceanic tide of the text roll in that
soul, and all its worriments and losses
and disasters will be submerged with
blessing and the sufferer will say: Il
| cannot understand the reason for my
troubles, but / will some day under
stand. And they do not come by acct
dent. God allows them to come, and
God is love-"
But for this divine feeling I think
our world would long ago have been
demolished. Just think of the organ
lied wickedness of the nations! See
fha al IN tinantoIf Rahn16
the false religions that hoist Moham-
med and Buddha and Confucius! Look
at the Koran and the Shastra and the
Zend-Avesta that would crowd out OF
the world the Holy Scriptures! Look
at war, digging its trenches for the
dead across the hemispheres! See the
great cities, with their holocaust of
destroyed manhood and womanhood!
What blasphemies assail the heavens!
What butcheries sicken the centuries!
What professions of crime and atrocity
and woe encircle the globe! If justice
had spoken, it would have said: The
world deserves humiliation, and let
humiliation come" If immutability
had spoken, it would have said: Il have
always been opposed to wickedness and
always will be opposed to it. The world
is to me an affront infinite, and away
with it," If omniscience had spoken,
it would have said: 81 have watched
that planet with minute and compre-
hensive inspection, and l cannot have
the offense longer continued" If truth
had spoken, it would have said: II de-
clare that they who offend the law
must go down under the law" But d.
vine love took a different view of the
worlds obduracy and pollution. 1t
said II pity all those woes of the
earth. | cannot stand here and see
no assuagement of those sufferings.
will go down and reform the world.
will medicate its wounds. ] will calm
its frenzy. l will wash off it's pollu-
ton. l will become incarnated. | will
take on my shoulders and upon my
brow and into my heart the conse-
quences of the worlds misbehavior. |
start now, and between my arrival at
Bethlehem and my ascent from Olivet
L, will weep their tears and suffer their
griefs and die their death. Farewell
my throne, my crown, my scepter, my
angelic environment, my Heaven, till
| have finished the work and come
back" God was never conquered but
once, and that was when He was con
quered by His own love. God is love"
In this day, when the creeds of
churches are being revised, let more
emphasis be put upon the thought of
tpXt OF II OF hah a in
of every creed and at the close. The
ancients used to tell of a great mill
tary chieftain who, about to go to bat
tie, was clad in armor helmet on head |
and sword at side, and who put out |
his arms to give farewell embrace to |
his child, and the child, affrighted at |
his appearance, ran, shrieking, away. |
Then the father put off the armor that |
caused the alarm, and the child saw |
who he was and ran into his arms and |
against his heart Creeds |
must not have too much iron in their |
make up, terrorizing rather than at
tracing. They must not hide the smil-
ing face and the warm heart of our
Father, God. Let nothing imply that
there is sheriff at every door ready to |
make arrest, but over us all and around |
us all mercy that wants to save, and
save now.
If one paragraph of the creed seems
to take you, like a child, out of the
arms of father, let the next paragraph
put you in the arms of mother. "As
one whom his mother comforteth, so
will | comfort you" Oh, what a
mother we have in God! And my text
is the lullaby song to us when we are
i'll, or when we are maltreated, or when
we are weary, or whenswe are trying
to do better, or when we are bereft.
or when we ourselves lie down to the
last sleep. We feel the warm cheek
of the mother against our cheek, and
there sounds in it the hush of many
mothers: God is Lowell"
This was the reason the Bible was
written. The world needs no inspired
page to tell it that God will chastise
sin, for that is proved in the life of
many an offender. You can look
through the wicket of any prison and
see the fact which the world under
stood thousands of years before Solo
mon wrote it: "The way of the trans
gressor is hard" The world needed