The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1909-10-08
PEOPLES
Sermon by
CHARLES T.
RUSSELL,
Pastor Brooklyn
Tabernacle.

A~OOhAhS uOOuI 10 III Tic WOIlu We
find abundant confederation for the
Scriptural declaration that instead of
the Divine blessing resting upon the
earth there is curse or a blight
upon it. Accordingly ST.. Paul wrote,
THE whole creation groaneth and
travaileth in pain together" In the
context he declares the relief from
this grooming condition-out of the
bondage of corruption into the liberty,
favor and blessing to follow He in
dicates that this blessed change will
come through the manifestation of
the sons Of God" and intimates also
that these sons of God are new being
called and will shortly be "glorifed"
and thus be empowered to do the work
of blessing for the groaning creation,
relieving them of the burden of sin and
death.
Still the question arises, Why should
humanity be so differently circum-
stanced from the angels? Why should
not holiness and purity and freedom
from sorrows and pain and death pre-
vail on earth as we'll as in heaven?
Why should the great Creator so diff
ferently condition one branch of his
creation from the other? True, the
Lords prayer tells us that we may
expect ultimately that Divine power
will intervene and succor humanity.
The declaration, Thy Kingdom come;
thy will be done on earth as it is done
in heaven" is more than a prayer;
because uttered by our Lord it is also
a prophecy of what will ultimately OBJ
tain. But the question is, Why should
it be necessary for us to pray and to
wait to subdue sin and to lift man
kind out of evil conditions? Why
should not Gods will have been done
on earth all along, as it is done in
heaven? Why have sin and death
been permitted to "reign," as the
Scriptures declare?
Thy Word Is Truth.
The Bible alone answers our query
1t explains that originally our race
hsi (lC1lco lcllcIl, III Tic lllldSc VI
God, sinless, holy, pure, happy. Mans
Eden home was Paradise, the Garden
of God. But all that bliss was lost
through disobedience to the Divine
command. When the death sentence
came upon father Adam he lost fef
lowship with his Creator, his Eden
home, his perpetual life and, instead
Of no niv-inn rrnuicinn
to earn his bread by the sweat of his
face, battling with thorns, thistles and
insects. The Bible does not pretend
to say that the conditions as we have
them today are perfect nor that they
are satisfactory to God, nor that they
should be satisfactory to us. The eX-
IRENE opposite Of the home in Eden,
the drouth, cyclone, tempest and flood,
belong to the unfit condition of the
earth and are intended by the Lord to
serve as part of mans condemnation.
Through sickness, disease, sorrow,
pain, dying, the race will be brought
eventually to death-to destruction.
Thank God he has overruled that fea-
ture of the sentence so that death to
us need not mean destruction Thus
it is written, Thou turnest man to
destruction; and sayest, Return, We
children of men" psalm &c, 81.
The turning of man to destruction
was six thousand years ago and, al
though the blessing of restitution was
declared from the very first by all the
holy prophets. nevertheless the return
NOT r1aa6n Actually nnccihln until
the Redeemer came and laid down his
life as the ransom price for the sins
of the whole world. A long while did
God wait before sending the Redeemer.
More than four thousand years passed,
and for long period he has waited
since then before effecting a deliver
ance Of humanity from sin and death
nearly nineteen centuries. This de-
liberate slowness on the part Of the
Almighty in looking after the human
family and its rescue from sin and
death can be understood from only one
standpoint-the Bible standpoint. The
Bible, contrary to our creeds formu-
lated in the dark ages, teaches that
the penalty for sin is not a future
torment but present experience with
sin and death under the sentence,
dying thou shalt die" In other
words our present accursed or con-
demned, unfavorable condition as a
race is Gods just penalty against us
as sinners.
We are race Of convicts, and the
conditions Of nature are Divinely ar
ranged with a view to speeding us on
ward to the tomb-to the fulfillment of
our curse" or sentence-death. In
other words all the mental unbalance
and distress, including insanity, i'm
becility and cross temper, are elements
of death-the results of death working
in us as race; likewise our moral de-
Election. We were ''born in sin and
shapen in iniquity; in sin did our moth
ers conceive u.s." Phrenology, as well
as physiology, shows clearly these facts.
The misShapen heads indicate the un-
balance in which we were born, and
the Scriptures declare that we are
prone to sin disposed to sin,] as
the sparks to fly upward" In view of
these things how distinctly Gods /
Word is corroborated. In comparison
with this just manifestation of indig-
nation of God against sin how unrea