The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1901-06-03

lands in IA taiism. And when we hear this
dreary chant long for a glimpse Of the
rainbow that speaks hope.
Other men swing over TO the other ex-
treme and harp on hope. To them life is
an idyll. airy realm of spontaneity and
sweetness and tonic. They are not balanced
quite and are apt TO gush. They glide along
with the delicious dream that earnestness
Is nysterical. that the zeal o: devoted men
and women in expelling crime is waste,
because a God of hope sits on the throne
and at the cone Of the worlds life there
lies tendency TO cure itself. And Wnen We
are drenched with this soft. mushy creed
we long for a glimpse OF a throne that rep
resents responsibility, law and power III
our puipits had little more spinal column
IN their preachers there would be less
crookedness i'm our municipal control. Low
er God and you lower morals
And so the passions or men oscillate
Defween extravagances. And so the ages
swing and surge 10 and fro like the floods
in the gorge below Niagara roll and reel
from bank TO bank. The Puritans en-
throned rigor, austerity and uncompromis-
ing religion. We, their successors, overdo
the opposite and chant love long enough
and loud enough to cheaper God and over
rate man.
who stagger along and cross and recross
the sidewalk. We scorn 10 be moderate.
ana Americans abominate equilibrium. we
are extremists. Because one cock crows
toward the east rival cock thinks he must
crow toward the west.
The first excellence of the Bible is its
spasms and fushes of fever
1T unveils God so rotund of girth, so
many sided and so opalescent that we Won
der at His mountain vastness. He gathers
up the splintered and scattered powers of
men in one glorious aggregate. lie is
sum total; men are fractions, too often
vulgar fractions.
THUNDER OF WRATH.
"He has the thunder OF wrath. He has the
heart beat of love lie is judge holding in
HE Df
He is the father unerring as an arrow in
His insight into human sorrows. And as is
God, so is His world. AS the pianner so
the plan. The severe side of life is as un-
desirable as the gentle and healing side.
To kid glove your creed is to unnerve your
action.
Human opinions are irrelevant before
the appalling authorities of God, our Pres
byterian General Assemblies are too often
demogagic pyrotechncal, and speakers are
set ND 10 disclaim and partisans shout
themselves hoarse in the pews The glory
of the colossal assembly that framed our
creed nearly three centuries ago was their
habit OF prayer, their enforcement of God
and the excursion of crowds with their APP
plauses. No speeches. God spoke. Our age
requires more silent search for infinite prin-
ciples of holy love. no matter how the
crowd swings.
'In Jesus. God blends law and love. He
taught that what a man sows he must
reap. The price of sin is pain and
more sin. The cost of gOdliness is struggle.
The gospel of grace does not gloze over the
gospel of works and responsibility If 1t
did 1t would play us false. Who would
trust himself to cross a bridge that had
but one bank of the gulf to support 1t?
Who would believe I'm Calvary that tried
to glorify God by minimizing sin? To praise
sweetness at the expense of rectitude? To
revei in heaven and muffle hell?
Our age so prone to onesidedness as a
cOncOmitant of its very eagerneSS and out
reach, requires the twofold statement of the
worlds life. The path of holiness leads up
ward TO God. The path of wrong and will
full blindness slopes down to darkness. No
amount of spurious culture can veto the
constitutional law of eternity. Our noisy
opinions rising up against the affirmations
of God are like pebbles the shore OPP
posing the bowlder crashing down from the
cliffs of granite.
But we must not push law so far as to
eclipse hope. The world is framed by a
kindly hand that aimed at keeping men in
the right path. | cannot but think Of the
wheel track. 1t is framed with view to
keeping racers from tipping over: here the
track is "A dead level, there it is a swift
slant. and both places reveal the humane
purpose of keeping the wheemen balanced,
no matter what their velocity and eagers
ness. God organized the world with all it's
arrangements to keep men level: the ten
dency of men is TO tip over on one side and
in such a speedy, eager world ours a
leaning TO one side means death. Hence
laws to hedge us in; hence pains TO warn us
when we are lured to the side Hence
kindness in the background of nature 5
seventies.
''In Jesus law and love chime In His
sacrifice and agony, in His death to drive
out sin we find the union of these two
truths that make a perfect God or perfect
man. BY that incarnate love may our lives
be drawn back to God the only home of the
SOUL