The Yakima herald. [volume] (North Yakima, W.T. [Wash.]) 1889-1914, 1903-01-21
Satan's Kingdom Divided.

odldH NlHRuoHi DlNiuSu'
Rev. H. NJ. Bartlett of the Episcopal
church preached a very forceful ,ermon
last Sunday evening, taking for his text,
St. Luke, Kills: eff satan also be
divided against himself, how shall his
kingdom stand" Below is an extract:
"a hundred times it has been thought
Geology, it was thought, had under
mined it; philosophy had undermined
its foundations; evolution had under
mined it; biblical criticism had under
mined it from within; but time has
gone on, and from each contest chris
tianity has emerged secure, to take on
higher forms and command a wider
acceptance. A hundred times it has
been thought that it's advocates had
destroyed it by espousing some wrong
cause or by adopting some evil means
of propagation; but it has been strong
enough to withstand the mistakes and
follies of it's friends The reason is that
it had always so much good in it. The
source of its power is its goodness. 1t
is because of this that Jesus could say
with confidence: "The gates of hell
shall not prevail against it" The gates
of hell cannot in any human society
prevail against what is fundamentally
good.
Again the fact that good is stronger
than evil is proved by the steady moral
advance of the race. The further we
look back in human history the worse
things look In the biblical narrative
the first son born killed his brother, and
we read there little later story of
violence, cunning, fraud, pillage, slavery,
concubinage, incest, and every known
vice. The lately deciphered hieroglvphics
in Assyrian and Egyptian temples tell
the same bloody story everywhere of
wars of determination, captivity of ma
tons, despotism, pitiless disregard of
human suffering, such as does not exist
anywhere now. The sultan of Turkey
is branded as "Abdul, the damned" for
allowing hundredth part of what every
despot once sanctioned. There never
can be another Alexander, the Great,
weeping for other worlds to devastate
with blood never another Caesar, who
is thought to have slain million men
during his campaign in Gaul; never,
probably, another Napoleon, basing his
,N;ra ~, commemorate loural Tho
evil of that kind If despotism has
worked itself out in disaster, and even
despots, like the emperor of Germany
and the car of Russia see that more is
to be gained in peace than by war. So
in every direction good tends to perpet-
uate itself and grow stronger, while evil
correspondingly tends to destroy itself.
The trend of society is towards goodness,
and the distance we have already trav-
eled shows conclusively that we shall
reach the goal of perfect goodness, the
kingdom of God on earth, which Jesus
foretold, at last. Wrong seems to tri-
umph, yet we have to take account of
the future to get the balance, and the
good sways the future, as Lowell says;
"Truth forever GU the scaflold Wrong forever
on the throne,
yet that scaifold sways the future and, behind
the dim unknown,
"sisndeth God within the shadow, keeping
watch above His own"
Jesus points out that this must be so
because of the inherent self-destructive-
ness. We can see that this is so by our
own observation. 1t is true all around
us that "the wicked do not live out half
their days" Many of them Idle with
their boots on" the evil liver slain by
his evil-living companion. Our own
observation confirms the solemn warn
ing of the Psalmist, repeated over and
over again: "The end of the ungodly
is that they shall be rooted out the last. -