River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1905-04-20
GOD IN HIS WORLD.
BY LYMAN ABBOTT.
CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK.

For the message of the Gospel il
not merely that Jesus Christ lived
and died eighteen hundred year:
ago, living here for three short years
and then disappearing, to be an alb
sentee Christ; it is that God is al.
ways pouring out his life upon men
and into their hearts, lifting them ur
out Of their sins, succoring them
from their remorse, and making
them live again. Long before
Christ lived the Psalmist wrote
"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all
that is within me, bless his holy
name; who healeth all thy diseases:
who forgiveth all thine iniquities
who redeemeth thy life from de-
struction, who crowneth thee with
loving kindness and tender mercies. :
Men said, "What does that means?
and God said, ~ will tell YOU
And he came, and for little while
he lived among men; he forgave the
woman that was sinner, and babe
her go in peace, and sin no more
This, he said, is what | mean by
forgiving iniquity. He succored
doubling Thomas from the skepti-
cism in which he was emtangled, OF
the unstable Peter he made rock,
and of the ambitious John the be-
loved disciple and the prophet of a
spiritual life. This, he said, is what
l mean by the healing of diseases.
He surrounded the traitor Judas
Iscariot with love, and recovered the
denying Peter and sent him back,
reconsecrated, to his ministry. This,
he said, is what | mean by saving
men from their own destruction.
Did he cease then? He has been
doing this work of love ever since.
The history of the world has been
simply this: man shining, God for
giving; man diseased, God healing;
man destroying himself, God re-
deeming him from his self-destruc-
ton; man sordid and selling himself
into slavery, and God recovering
him from slavery and browning him
with loving kindness and tender
mercies. And the message of the
Christian minister to-day to this sor-
rowing, sinful, troubled humanity is,
"The God that was in the world
then is in the world now" 1t is
not Browning's message: Goods
in his heaven; ALPS right with the
world" If God were in his heaven,
all would not be right with the
world. He is in his world making
it right.
| suppose there are some of you
here tonight who will feel that this
frank recognition of the overthrow
of old forms Of faith is injurious. I
wish you who hold still to the sac
redness of the Roman theology
would consider this question one
moment. You remember how Gid
con, beating out the grapes in the
wine-press, was told by God to de-
stroy the idol of Baal and cut down
the groves, and how, when the peo-
pie came out the next morning and
found their idol and their sacred
grove gone, they rose in wrath
against him, because he had destroy
ed their religion. But he had not
destroyed their religion; he had
simply given it wider scope and a
purer life. You remember how,
when Jesus Christ told the people
at Jerusalem that the temple would
be destroyed, they identified religion
with that temple and with those
sacrifices and that priesthood, and
counted as an enemy of religion any
man who said that all those things
were to be destroyed. But he was
not the enemy Of religion; and the
destruction of that Jerusalem and of
that priesthood and the overthrow
of those sacrifices were only the
opening out of a larger life. You
remember how, when Luther said,
Pope, you are nc vicar of God /;
Church, YOU are no infallible repre-