The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-21

things that inlS natiOn says are wrong, then it Is right to get rid of them one way or the other. You must keep true to this idea that you cannot get. rid of law. You may think you can, but you cannot
 Resistance Against Law.
 Take that old man who is all scared and beaten in the years of life. and you young men here this morning, fresh and clean and with warm blood in your veins. go to him and ask him about his experience. If he will talk to you truth fully he will tell you that he has been beating against law all his life; that first this self, this thing that is separate and distinct from all else in the universe, said, You are pulling against a principle that is too strong for you," and then next the physician came and looked at him and said, You gre pulling against law" There are laws of health as well as laws of government, and you are pulling against law. and you cannot set it aside. No man ever did set it aside. It won t get out of the way for any earthly po- tentate or humble human creature. It stands and looks in the face first friendly, and then if you persist in acting against it, 1t looks at you with destruction in it's mein.
 Now what is the problem? That prob lem of every government on earth is to make every citizen in that government at one with the laws of that government. The problem of Jesus Christ Is to make every man in the world at one with the laws that must obtain in the kingdom of grace. And when you have that, all fric- tion is out. Then you have this fulfilled So speak and so do as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty"
 Scheme of Grace.
 The scheme of grace, as I have insisted over and over from this pulpit, is more than the telling of a story that affects 8 child; it is more than to describe boy from the town of Nazareth, a Jewish youth, a splendid manhood, and a sacri- flee upon the cross. It is the long reach of the Omnpotent God; it Is the opening of the mind of an infinite being and ex- pressing that mind in such terms that a child can understand it. It is an effort on the part of God to teach the world that law cannot be set aside; that unless He can succeed in making man to be perfectly at one with the law that gov erns in heaven, it is absolutely impos- sible to save any creature on the earth. That is what Jesus is doing in this world. That is why it is worth while to consider the claims of Christ. That is why, my friend, when the preacher insists upon a man being born again, that he lays great stress upon 1t. for this, nature of yours much De brought into accord with the nature of the law under which you must live n eternity. If not, the law will destroy you. that is all there is about it.
 Now of course. the Bible is written m such language, and tells its stories from human experience in such fashion that oftentimcs as we read it, we gather the impression that God might have done otherwise than He did; that after all, God mas acted very much after the fashion of a man who had become outraged. and justly so and that the Bible presents pie lures of hal shness, and describes the tor lures of the lost in such language as to almost i'll the heart with ablorrence.
 The mnn whom John Fiske describes as the "only king of American thought" Jonathan Edwards, is also described by so learned a man as MT. Leckey. in his History of European Morals, as utter ing some of the most inhuman sentiments that ever fell from human lips while he did nothing more than take the Bible language, which describes the final undo ing of those who persist in keeping their natures apart from the law which is per- feet
 Let us apply the principle. Suppose every man to be living under this large definition which we have given of "lib- erty'' this morning, and suppose this ex- istenoe at an end, and we are compelled to take our place in the presence of the Great Judge. The last trumpet has sound- ed the dead have come up and the world stands before God and He reaches over and lifts every law of restrainst. (You know why you are in this church this morning. Some of you are here because public opinion drove you here You know why some of you are decent this morning. You are decent because an outside force props you up. But, if you want to under stand severity of judgment, then let every law that restraints you be lifted and you be compelled to take your place and be what you are) When God lifts every law of restraint, men must act according to their natures; that is heaven and hell. You can make anything else out of it you want to, but under this judgment some men go up into the presence of God and others do not.
 Manifestation of Ones Nature.
 Under the operation of law your nature