The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-05-09
BREACHES
 ABOUT THE DEITY Rev. MT. Ewing Has Inevitable
 God" for Theme HIDING FROM OUR MAKER Face to Face With the Living God Every Moment In the Spiritual Realm-His Judgments
 Arc unacceptable.
HIDING FROM OUR MAKER

At the Church of the Advent yesterday morning the Rev. Quincy Ewing took his text from the Book of Exodus, third chapter. sixth verse: And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God" Ills theme was Inevitable God" He said in part
 ''The trouble is not that VIC were born with imperfect eonscienoes, that we were created incapable of pitching some of our thoughts, sentiments. deeds, higher than we do; but rather Is 1t. that we have forgotten the great God. while our consciences were being educated in &C., cordance with the moral ideals in good repute around us; that we have ad- justed our eonsciences to a moral stand ard concerning which we have inwardly asked, not what does God think Of it9-is that what He would approve of2-but, what do the people with whom I want to associate think of it7 Is 1t agreeable to them? VIII it help to win me their approval. and assure me of partnership in their respectabilityf
 What We Do.
 "So 1t has come about, that we think, and feel. and do things. from day to day, without any protest of conscience. that we should tremble to confess before the face of God We simply left Him out of our reckoning. while we were shaping l for ourselves the answers to certain ques- tons of right and wrong. We left Him out of our reclining; and. now. being morally what we are. we should want to | hide our faces and our selves. if He called to us in our human language as to Moses at the mount.
 And hide our faces and our selves from what2 mere countenance. a mere form, mere physical appearance.-a radiancy of glory. a dazzling burst of light? Nay, from none of these things should we be moved to hide awayi We should shrink. and tremble, and cover before the embodiment of all righteous ness and knowledge. We should be afraid to look upon not the physical. but the moral Deity. We should be afraid to have Him look upon usi
 And yet we say and think that we be- lieve in God all-righteous and all-know ing; absent from us never by so great a space as the bush from the shepherd prophet; closer to us than our breathing nearer than hands and feet;' who never slumbers or sleeps, and never, for the millionth part of any moment, leaveg us out of His infallible reckoning We> say we believe in such a God, and our saying so Is we'll But His existence. and what He is, and what He demands, Is not dependent upon anything we say. or upon the depth or shailowness of our belief. There Is such a God-if any at all-our companion, every moment; stand ing with us wherever we stand moving with us in every pathway of our feet; numbering the beats of our pulses and the atoms of our rains,--looking us all full in the faces of our moral souls, and forgetting not what each reveals!
 The Living God.
 Tt may be that none of us shall ever behold in visible form this living God of all righteousness and all knowledge, save as we behold Him today. His garments sweep across the infinite heavens. the | shadow of Himself over all leagues of land and sea- It may be just an old su- perstition, thkt we shall gather about His throne on any day or any grand asslze.' and hear Him syllable our beni- sons of reward or sentences of condem- nation. But surely are we face to face with this living God every moment. in the realm of invisible spirit; and. surely. in that realm His judgments keep pace with the feet of time and are inescapabei They are seen by the blind; they are heard by the deaf. In that realm are no miscarriages or mistakes of justice; no bought off indictments; no appeals to a higher tribunal-and no forgetting Day 1 by day it must be. that prison bars are frowning huger and blacker about our souls; or crumbling and falling to give them exit to ampler freedoml DO we think that we, today. are man. aging to be blind and deaf to the divine Judgments? We shall know that we hear and see them clearly enough tomorrow : if tomorrow be twenty-four hours or twenty-four billion hours hence We are face to face with the living God, and we must adjust ourselves to Him, os live our lives through time and eternity in a vain and tragic conflict with the uni verse that His spirit fills-lmmortal free men and masters in heaven-home. wide and clear, of our choosing or, dismal rebels to truth and right. self-accused, 1 self-indicted self-confessed, se1f-sentenc- cd. dungeoned and straight-jacketed with- in walls buided about us by our own souls"