Newport weekly independent., 1902-07-11

as if all the imps of darkness were let loose in their fury. Their voices cast in mad glee in our teeth the warning we had heard during the fair and promising weather: "Go to now. For ye know not what shall be on the mor- row" Alas! it is too late now! The relentless storm of our own selfseek ing and human wisdom is about us, the rocks are just ahead. The next mighty wave catches our helpless ship of human plans and, dashing it upon the rock, grinds it to pieces. The roll ing waters cover the wreckage of shat tered purposes, and perhaps we learn the lesson James would teach us, but more often we don't, but continue to seek our own way and gratify our own desires. And yet God, in patience and love, continues to cry: "Go to now!"
 Men-Made Plans.-What! Shall not man make plans then? Would you misapply to your own destruction the Scriptural" admonition to "take no thought for the morrow" Would you responsibility in thought or deed to- wards the future? Never! Nothing is farther from Gods thoughts or more contrary to the spirit of Gods Word. God wants us to plan, but not apart from Him but with Him. "For that ye ought to say: If the Lord will we shall live, and do this, or that" Here are the teeming millions of the earth, the multitude of nations,. the h,1c of ind, nd ivSt which stud the earth like the stars of heaven, weaving the uncertain and perishable pattern of human plan and endeavor, while God looks on and mourns at the confusion and discord and destruction wrought. As one mind in the great silk mill must de- sign the pattern and direct the forces which are appointed to work it out in it's perfect beauty, so God in His in- finite wisdom has planned for man and would help him in working out the | perfect pattern. But man in his blind willfulness sweats, and groans, | and struggles under the burden of life and soils and mars the pattern, and when disappointment and failure come. bitterness of heart settles down upon the life, if not self-inf1icted death which is the full fruition of the sorrow of the world.
 Lot made plans which led him right into the heart of the life and activity of Sodom. He came to be great man in the city and succeeded in piling up much of it's wealth about his own fire side, but, while he in self-sa tisfaction was seemingly successfully working out his own plans, the fire of Gods wrath fell and licked up the city and it's iniquity. and Lot barely escaped with his life. And Abraham, away back there on the hillside, as he gazed towards the burning city, realized as never before that to follow God anc plan with Him meant security and safety and certain success.
 ''In the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking marrying and giving in marriage, un til the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away" that man made plans would fall like a house O. cards before the on-moving plans o1 God. For 100 years Noah preached or one text, and while he warned the peo pie of the coming flood they made their plans, they built their houses had their family reunions and gay weddings. and perhaps when they ha6 nothing else to occupy their time, they went around to see how Noah was get ting along with his fool ark" as they called it, and joked him about his old fogy notions of Gods wrath and tn, certain punishment of sin, just as to- day the world is outgrowing the good old fashion ed Gospel of hell-fire ant salvation alone through the blood O. Jesus Christ, and turning to a man made gospel of the Fatherhood O. God and the brotherhood of man which robs God of His righteousness and man of true fellowship. But to day Noah is with the redeemed il Heaven because He planned with God while those who would not hear Hi voice but planned after the devices of their own hearts suffered the judg ment of God and perished.
 Friend, are you planning apart iron God? Are you saying: ''To-day or to morrow I will go into such city, ant continue there for a season, and bu, and sell, and get gain?"
 From the days when the waters O the mighty flood rolled themselve over the inhabited world, dow1 through the ages to the present o Mont Pelee's thunderings, we read thi message to the world: The uncertain ty of life. As the world reads th
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