The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-09-17

has been the supreme architect of the uni- verse, who has established and guides all nature on her course, is also the dis penser of those divine gifts and graces by means of which man may attain that destiny eternally preordained for him. we may obviously expect still more per- feet harmony in this supernatural world, which Is more closely united to the Creator, and in a more especial manner His own. A world, moreover, in which being whom He has fashioned with His own hands to His own image and likeness, and upon whom He has law ished all His love is the beginning and terminus. And such we shall see is the fact.
 Nature, left to follow the order marked out for her by her omnipotent Creator, treads a perfect and universally harmoni- ous course down to the most minute and intricate details. But the hands of the despoiler may dishgure the fairest scene, and by means of so called modern civli- zation blot out forever what even untu- tored eyes had loved to look upon. Sim ilarly, If man, as he came from the hand of God. had never yielded to the sugges- ton of the evil one he would have en- joyed terrestrial bliss to the utmost ex- tent of which human nature was cap able, untrammeled by the ills of sick ness, and without the fear of death hang ing, like the sword of Damocles, con tinually over him. But alas! man re- tained but short possession of his earth ly paradise, and the evening of that first day of unalloyed happiness beheld him at the mercy of an implacable foe The results of that deplorabie fall are too obvious and are felt too keenly by each of us to need recapitulation.
 We are prone, however, to forget that the visible creation was also burdened with the malediction of the Creator when He said to Adam: Cursed is the earth in they work. Such control indeed did God give the spirit of evil because of mans transgression that the Redeemer speaks of him as 'the prince of this world" and so apparent Is his malign influence upon the face of creation that even pagan philosophers and the sages of all nations and times have regarded the earth as more or less place of punishment of the human race
 But though banished forever from the paradise of pleasure Its remembrance and the memory of the short but intimate inter course which then existed between him and his Creator never faded from Adams mind, and survived the varying vicissi- tudes of the human race in the minds of his descendants. Crude and imperfect no doubt were the means adopted by differ ent peoples to manifest their concept of the supernatural being but all manifested 1t in some fashion. The cultured Greek
 
 the Egyptian in his lofty pyramids, the Celtic druid has discovered 1t in the depth and solitude of the forest, and the Cen tral African places it in the stick or the stone. Coming to the human race in its cradle, no man can completely rid him self of the influence of this universal be- lief The infidel as well as pagan as of Christian times was not without his approximations, his lucky and unlucky days, his propitious and unpropitious omens. The Christian alone can lay just claim to a logical position for he main- tans, (a) that 1t would violate our moral sense to believe that the supreme being has created uss capable of knowing and loving Him-capable of happiness and of misery, of good and of evil, and that He has never given to us the means of knowing Him, never spoken, never broken the eternal silence by sign of His love to us, on which depend both our perfec- ton and our happiness; (b) that, If there be a revelation of God to man, 1t is cer- tain with a certainty which Is higher than any other in the order of moral convic- reason of this Is that we find in Chris tanity the highest and purest truth on the highest and purest matter of which the human intelligence Is capable. No other pretended revelation, no other re- ligion, so much as approximates to the truth and purity of the Christian faith. They are true and pure only in so far as they contain germs of the Christian revelation.
 Near the Orphanage, East Lake.