The citizen. (Honesdale, Pa.) 1908-1914, 1909-12-17
9bort 9ern'ons
For
SUNDAY Dalf-Dour
Theme:
"THE TWO VOICES" "
r r +
BY Rev. Howard Arnold Walter.

|
This is a sermon without a specific
text, for the theme is Temptation"
and the texts are innumerable, rang
ing all the way from the Garden of
Eden to the isle called Patmos, from
Alpha to Omega of human history and
experience. From the dawn of the
first conscious sin in childhood to the
sundown of life two voices are sound
ing necessarily in the ear of every In
dividual, the voice of Satan summon
ing men upward to righteousness. The
better we become the firmer grow
our temptations, for the higher we
are lifted the stronger does the force
of moral gravitRtion become. 1t is
no temptation for the drunkard to
take another drink as 1t is for the
man who is fighting free of his pas
sion for alcohol. When we think of
the white purity of Jesus life making
its way through the dark and crooked
avenues Of earth, unstooping and un-
stained, we are aghast at the force of
the temptations that must have beset
Him, f1ercest-as we learn from the
account of His early temptations in
| our gospel-in the spiritual range Of
His absolute trust in God, His con-
i sciousness of Messiahship.
Generally speaking, there are three
ranges Of mans life when he is
continually engaged in this relentless
battle for his soul between the forces
Of sin and of salvation, namely, the
| physical, the social and the spiritual.
1t is curiously suggestive that the
earliest temptation mentioned in the
Bible, which wrought the downfall of
our first parents, should have been
concerned with the appetite, which
mans chief battle grounds. The SEN
sual and the spiritual are forever an
| tagonistic, and only as the former is
disciplined and denied, only as we
strive, with Paul, to keep the body
under, will our bodies be fit temples
for the Holy Ghost to inhabit. Many
of the characters in the Bible nara
| tive we know were immersed in this
conflict-Noah, David, Daniel, st.
Paul and our Lord Himself, hearing
on the one hand the voice crying
"gratify" and on the other a voice
that said "forbear." 1t was when He
was physically exhausted, His bodily
strength at lowest ebb, that the devil
tempted Jesus to turn stone into
bread and crafty His desire for crea-
ture comfort at the expense of His
obedience of God. To indulge when
we ought to deny our bodily cravings,
to overindulge in any sphere, is to in
fringe the laws Of Nature, and that is
tantamount to breaking the law of
| God.
No desire is stronger in the breast
of the average man than the yearning
| for popularity, for the favorable opin-
| ions of other men; and hence no sum.
mons of God is harder to obey than
the command to brave and to con-
denim the popular will when it is an
| tagonistic to Gods will. Trace through
history the pathways of the great re-
| formers and you will find them as
| lonely voices of God crying out for
| Him in the wilderness of the many
| voices of men. The multitude which
| at first shout for the crowning Of the
| prophet, who they hope has come as
| a deliverers from this worlds tyranny,
are. unit in shouting for his cruci-
fixion when they discern at last the
spiritual import of his message.
What is the message for us who are
not prophets or reformers on the
mountain peaks of history? 1t is.
''having done all to stand" We, too,
are reformers in our lesser spheres of
life, down in the valley of the com.
monplace, where we dwell. In our
school, in our business, in our club,
in our home, we must stand for God
and resist the tendency to build loose
ly on the old and sure foundations.
In the physical realm we must obey
the voice that bids "forbear," in the
| social realm the voice Withstand"
in the spiritual realm we must obey
the voice that bids believe" The
skeptics have always been divided
into two schools, represented in
| Greece by the Epicureans and the
Stoics. The former hold that life is
short and death its end, hence life
must be enjoyed to the full with the
jug of wine, the loaf of bread and the
woman's song. The latter hold that
life is short and death It's end, for
augbt we know, hence we must make
the most of the brief time we have
for progress, never wincing or crying
aloud in "the fell clutch OF circum.
stance" Mathew Arnold, the modern
poet of this school, saw men fighting
on confused plain, where ignorant
armies clash by night"
But for us Christ has arisen. Paul,
His prophet, tells Of another warfare,
Of light with darkness, of knowledge
with ignorance; he saw death "swal-
lowed up in victory" for them who
know through faith in Jesus that
death is but an incident of the
life eternal. Many man has lost his
faith by listening only to the persuar
sive voice OF doubt, not needing or
aaainR tho full aiOuiAoauca ~ that