The citizen. (Honesdale, Pa.) 1908-1914, 1909-06-18
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SUNDAY Dalf-Dour
Theme:
THE ROCK OF AGES
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By Rev. John White Chadwick

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By Rev. John White Chadwick
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Text: "And the rain descended, and
the floods came, and the winds blew,
and beat upon that house; and II fell
not: for II was founded upon rock"
Matthew viii, 25.
Because all men are much wiser
than the individual, because our great
social generalizations concerning
property and marriage, concerning
duty, Immortality and God, are part
and parcel of the Rock Of Ages, are
the deposits of unnumbered genera
tions of cooperating thought, of
countless individual minds working in
a social medium, 1t behooves the
modern thinker to hasten slowly when
he would wipe out all these generaliza-
tons, as If they were a milkman's
score, and make brand new start:
Here Is no plea for slavish acquies-
cence In traditional belief, but here
is solemn warning to respect and
not too rashly set aside those institu-
tions and opinions which are the nat.
urally selected products of a course
OF evolution which began five hundred
thousand years ago, and has perhaps
as long time to continue. Nay, but
why suggest a limit to the process.
either way? Let us follow the Old
Testament Rock. The craving for the
supernatural resents the naturalizing,
humanizing processes of evolutionary
thought, as If they were atheistic, as
II they eliminated God. But what they
do in sober fact is to recognize him
and declare him in all times and
things and places, and not merely here
or there in an irrational and arbitrary
isolation. More surely than the rock
ribbed earth came from the suns per-
fervid, nebulous mass, so surely as
the earths alluvial mantle is woven
from the crystalline stuff Of the prime
val hills and studded with their gems,
the process of mans social evolution
is a thing of God. the product Of his
mighty heart, close-woven of the stuff
wherewith he covers himself as with
garment. Nor is the story told when
we have carried back the process by
as many vast removes from the man
to the ascidian, from the ascidian to
the lifeless earth condensing it's
steaming vapors into floods and riv-
ers whereunto the Mississippi and the
Amazon are purling streams. No; but
every instant of the process carries
with it the life and spirit. purpose, en-
ergy, and inspiration of the ever-pres-
ent, all surrounding, and upholding
God in whom we live and move and
have our being. Surely, our house OF
life is builded on the Everlasting
Rock; and the rain may fall, and the
floods come, and the winds beat upon
this house. and it will not fall because
it's foundations are imbedded in the
impregnable reality of things.
What is more wonderful than the
atomic structure of the earth and
stars, so many millions of atoms in
the smallest space on which the most
powerful microscope can seize, nor
one of them Gf we may trust some of
the loftier recent speculations) with
out it's individual life? I will tell you
this. 1t is the atomic structure of that
Rock of Ages, that social accumula-
tion capitalized for the JOY and peace
and blessing Of the generations ever
surging up from the great central
deep. If we could see what that Is
made of, it would be a sight as much
more wonderful than the dance of
atoms, as the dance of atoms is more
wonderful than that of midgets in the
summers quiet air. What countless
struggles, failures, and successes
failures that look like successes often,
and successes that look like failures!
What duties done, though hard, what
sorrows sweetly borne, what search
ing for the truth, what loyalty to 1t
as far as known, what grand dissatis-
factions with things as they are, what
resolute endeavors for the things that
ought to be, what tears and laughter,
and what peaceful joy Of faithful we'd
ded hearts-nay, but the catalogue SO
lengthens out as to defy our speech!
And here l bring my sermon home to
every private heart. This surely must
go unsaid, that the Rock of Ages con-
sidered as the social fund of human
experience, massed in the present So
cial order, is much more the product
of innumerable, infinitesimal fideli
ties than of isolated genius making
here and there it's splendid contribu-
ton to the good of life. Innumerable
the increments by whose strength we
live and in whose virtue we rejoice.
And who is there of us that cannot
think some thought, or do some work,
or ease some burdened heart, and so
make the Rock of Ages such a foun-
dation that men may build upon 1t
with a sweeter confidence than here
tofore, and find its ragged crevices
abloom with tenderer and more love-
ly flowers, their beauty breathing
balm for spirits wounded grievously
in life's hard tray?
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