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

truth and justice where law grounds. This truth is manifest in Jesus who said, T am the truth and if you are to be saved, you must be saved by be- ing at one with Him who came to do His Fathers will, and who said, T always do those things that please Him. This matter, after all is sim pie; it Is the giving of a mans heart and life into the keeping of Jesus. so that His ways become the mans ways, and His will becomes the mans will. This requires for it's understanding no book on ethics or morals, but is ap- prehended with marvellous olearness by little children. When we do His will, we understand the doctrine: 1t is the teaching of scripture, and there Is no oth CT, way of understanding the doc urine. The testimony of the sages, in all the ages, in their failure to un- derstand 1t otherwise is confirmation of 1t. Heaven is sufficiently defined when it Is described as the habitation of those who neither desire nor will anything contrary to the mind of God. and there is no child of His that would ever lift his hand against any law that is in heaven. Right is right there. and no one will desire to make 1t wrong.
 In the few moments that remain, let LIS make a summary of the teaching and make 1t bear on things close at hand. What this country needs above all else is a reverence for law, and it's people need to be taught that when- ever the law is made to conform to those of bad inclinations who hate the institutions in this nation and the principles upon which it is founded. that in the end the principle of right will make for the destruction of all wrong doers The nations that are dead have left their lines written plain ", and the cause of their destruction stands out boldly. Men cannot, with impunity, despise the principles of government, and neither can they, with safety, violate the laws of commerce. and trade. nor can they ignore those principles that hold our social fabric.
 The man who advocates any measure to the hurt of his country is unworthy TO be protected as a citizen, and if unrestrained. will, in the end, work that which means the undoing of the people among whom he lives. The ma on these streets, and in our homes. and in our places of business who does not desire to keep, at the very best, the laws of this place is not a worthy citizen nor the highest type of man. man who exercises power simply because it is in his hands, without any reference to the good of his fellow man, is too dangerous for power to be committed to him, but the man who exercises power in order to keep his community clean and his fellow men strong, Is the man who will have about him the reverential awe that always is associated with justice, and the more it Is exercised in this spirit, the less occasion there will be for it's exercise. The more you impress men with the fact that they must do right the more men there will be who will do right. The more men you let do wrong, the more men there will be who are going to do wrong. If you who made the law do not show respect for it, you need not expect those who live under 1t to have respect for 1t, and if those in auth ority do not enforce the law, you need not expect those over whom you have rule to have reverential re- gard for the law.
 This principle swings out in the great moral universe, and Jesus, under the power of love, having gathered upon Himself all the penalty of the law, seeks to draw men into such ac- cord with Himself that the laws of God shall be kept in all the associa tions of life and men themselves shall be so absolutely changed as that Gods law becomes their meat and their drink.
 The World Is PolIced.
 This world is policed, which to my mind is the strongest argument for the badness of man. What Jesus is trying to do is to make it unnecessary eventually to police 1t, and in order to do it, He has announced his pro- gramme to be the changing of men into the lik eness of God. If you do not think this undertaking is stupendous let me take an illustration which l hope will not be offensive. Suppose this congregation, just as we are here now, preacher and all should be ush er- ed into the presence of God and every law of restraint should be removed, and each one be under the awful neces- sity of standing the test of absolute liberty, do you not see that 1t would be necessary for change to be made in you, since it is a fact that we do not get along any too well with one another here? After all that is said, we are human with good deal of hu- man nature in us, and when we make a summary of all of our littleness and peculiar types of meanness, to say the least, we look ugly
 It must be apparent to any that if beaven is not in accord with what we have discovered in ourselves here, the changing power of Jesus is necessity in the bringing about the concord de- manded in heaven. In the theological book we call it regeneration; in the Bible tongue we call it the new birth born of the spirit. It matters not what you call 1t. The fact is the thing that is apparent. and all the ages of human experience when the highest type man is taken as an Illustration put down by the side of what the Bible describes the will of God to be, and the future home of man in heaven to be, drives with force into our under standing the Bibles demand for the heart of man to be changed, and sets out in glorious relief the scheme of grace, wherein the Father sends the Son, and the Son bears the iniquities of the world, and the Holy Spirit takes the things of Jesus and shows them unto the lost