The Camden chronicle. (Camden, Tenn.) 1890-current, 1904-04-29

touched by the sacred associations of the
Holy City. Beautiful for elevation, the
Joy of the whole earth, the city of the
great king, whittier the tribes OF the Lord
go up year by year for worship" How
precious were its sights: "As the noun
tains lie around about Jerusalem, so en-
campeth the Lord about them that love
Him" eff | forget thee, 0, Jcrusa-
lem. let my right hand forget its cunning"
If for a devout Jew there was q spot on
earth which warranted the most unconhi-
toned trust, it was the temple Of JehO-
yah in the first religious capital of the
world Here it was, while His soul was
vibrating with triumphant sense of trust
won by overcoming the first temptation,
that the insidious attack is made whose
effort was to betray Him into .presump-
ton. All the wonderful past dealing of
God with His covenant people would stand
out in memory; all the wealth of tender
ness over hopes and promises sorely and
long deferred, and now on the eve of full
fillment-a tenderness which afterward
came out in words wet with tears, when
He cried: "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how
often would l have gathered thy children
together as a hen gathereth her brood
under her wings, but We would not" 1t
was in the heart of His own Jerusalem,
and rom the summit of His Fathers house
that He was tempted by His cunning and
willy adversary to commit the plausible
sin. Beside the influence of the sacred
place and associations, the voice of the
tempter appealed to something not less
sacred-to the written word of God-as
the guarantee of truth and action. The
devil, too, can quote Scripture to his pur-
pose. eff Thou be the Son of God, cast
Thyself down; for it is written, He shall
give His angels charge concerning Thee,
etc.
First, we must nave recourse to the prin-
ciples of sanity and common sense; find
out if what we are tempted to do is in
sincere accord with what God has taught
us generally in His word and in common
sense, and, then decide. For Christ to
temple into the abyss that yawned below
would have been to tempt God. eve do
not make experiments with those whom
we absolutely trust" When a man be-
gins by prayer test. or any like thing, to
make experiments with God, he shows
that he lacks the subtle, spiritual quality
called faith which is the only means by
which he can reach God. Therefore, it is
the habit of trust to calmly abide in God
not tritie with or put Him to the test.
AS long as Jesus remained within the
sphere of the revealed will of His Father,
He could trust Him. IF He should break
or contravene that will, then He should
no longer feel He had a right to Gods
care. In other words, Jesus Christ, in
His second temptation, flushed with a
victory which must have given an impulse
to faith in the Fathers power and suf-
ficiency, declares to us that it is necessary
to have care for ourselves as we'll as
commit ourselves into the keeping of Cod
Because we are Gods children we may not
break the laws of the world to which we
belong and expect Him to miraculously
interfere to prevent the consequences.
Contempt for nature and practical reason
Is wretched policy to begin a religious
lie with. We live under physical law,
under moral law, under spiritual law. To
fancy that because we have come to feel
the power OF the spiritual and even the
supernatural, we are at liberty to fly in
the face of known physical laws, or sane
and widely received moral laws, is fatal
error, and for it men are always punished
IN the end. God is the source of all these
laws and we tempt the Lord our God
when we break them. We are not to rely,
either, "too exclusively or presumptuous-
ly" upon the care of God AS far as our
practical reason serves. us, we must also
take counsel Of that, recognizing that faith
and self help, action and patience "meet
in equilibrium" and complete each other.
If Jesus, the exceptional and pre-emi-
nent object of divine care, had yielded to
this Cast Thyself down" He would first
have broken away from us, His brethren,
who live under moral and physical law,
and second, He would have Substituted
for a life environed by nature, guarded,
guided, fed by it, participant in its forces,
because subject to its laws, life divorced
from nature, hostile to it, refusing to
tempt God or to break away from our hui
man lot and world, showed us the sanity
and strength of genuine trust in God.
1t is not nervous, fanatical or presump-
tuous. ct neither courts nor shuns
DEATH" 1t is prudent, wary, will not
overstep the limits of a sober faith, and
yet, when the will of God clearly demands
it in the path of duty, it bravely faces
death and dares all hell!
My friends, the modern sin of presump-
ton turns up under many forms. Now it
appears in the guise of religious pride,
IN the purblind assumption of some &C.
cleslastical charlatan uttering with great
swelling words of vanity some oracular
opinion which he claims to be of equal au-
thority with the teachings of the Son of
God. You have it in the Vaccinations of
the mother of Christian Science with
the systems slavish liberalism and prepos-
ferrous overclaims. The contempt for the
physical that the system breathes and
breeds, the refusal to give medicines out
OF those stores which God has laid UP for
us in leaf and plant and flower and min
eeral, and which millions of educated men
have given their lives to make available. |
the Willingness to cast themselves or
child over the precipice, claiming the sane
ton of certain Scriptures as their warrant
for escaping destruction is, in the eyes of |
most men and women to-day, sin of pre-
sumption. The system is against the cor
porate common sense of the race, against
the proportion of faith; it discards doc
trines like the blessed truths of Christ's
deity and atonement, which have been
held by the overwhelming majority of the |
members of the Christian church in every
age from the beginning. at is written"