Norwich bulletin., 1909-08-02

Genesis liza and Galatians 6:14-"Go
20, let us build us a. city and a tower,
whose top may reach unto heaven
and But God forbid that / should
glory. save In the cross Of our Lord
Jesus Christ" These two texts, he
said, belong together although sep
arated by many years of time and by
many intervening words, They are
both parts of a great and common
truth and neither time nor printer s
ink can snap their relationship apart.
The first tells the story of the con-
fusion of tongues which resulted from
the building of this towering city OF
Babel There was no sin in the SIM
pie building Of the city nor in it's
high towers. There is no wrong In
desiring heaven. This desire is an up
lifting and cleansing ambition shared
alike by the numblest laborer and by
the most refined and cultured with
equal propri 4.y. Aspiration is only
good The sin of these ancient peo-
pleas lay in the animas and the spirit
of the desire. They were trying, as
has been done ever since and as men
are trying to do today to reach heaven
OF their own accord without any help
from God. 1t is Gods chosen task to
bring his children back into the faith
he would have them follow. He began
this task and established his first
church at the gete of Eden when he
placed his cherubim there to keep the
way to the trae of life. Most of us
read the word "out'' into the text, but
1t is not in it. The angel kept the way
back to the tree, which was shut to
the unrepentant but open to believers.
And this is the task of the church
since then-to keep the way of life
open. God adopted another p an when
he established the tabernacle and his
ark of the covenant, and still another
plan, which capped the climax of; them
all, wieh the one which allowed any
sinner to pass into para Use. This
group of men on Shinar's plain said:
LET US do Gods WORK Babel means
confusion. Babel MEANS .;oi'S gate.
If this was the original word they were
truly blasphemers and no wonder that
God himself went down to look at
their city and to stop them. But their
hammers have kept on knocking
through all the centuries. Men have
been continually trying to build towers
which would gain them heaven without
Gods aid. Two phrases give the
names of the best attempts man has
made in this way. These a. political
organization or governmental strength
and civilization. art and culture. Po-
litical organizations alone cannot save
men. Nimrod, the first mighty ruler,
whose city was on the site of the
older Babel is a proof of this. The
ruin and decay of men themselves can
not be stopped by any political or
gariZation--clean morals cannot be
legislated, but must come from with
in The grandest tower of govern
mental strength that the word has
ever seen was that Of Rome. Power
like that is uplifting; but when one
reaches its heights and looks around
upon the scenes enacted under it. the
best Roman governor and emperor
killed by jealous countrymen at the
foot of Pompey's statue, the luri1
flames of burning Christians in the
Coliseum and others martyred for the
sport Of a mad emperor-one says:
THE benches of the Roman senate are
not the highway to heaven"
EneIand's Political Organization.
Next to the Roman the finest tower.
and the one representing modern
times, is the political organization of
England. But here, too, the pictures
of darkest England, Of spurned oppor-
tunities and heart broken heroes in
Africa left to die there. of the labor
questions agitating and demanding the
supercilious attention of parliament
makes us exclaim: mot by the parlia-
ment benches is the way to htaven."
Our own country is no better, with
the back dooor shut tight to an ORR
entail race Our state towers at Har-
Albany or Boston look down
upon such an enormous and colossal
sea of graft and steal that not by
any of these can be found highway, to
heaven. Nor can it be found in city
instance New York in the
control of criminals or Philadelphia
with its thousands of dollars stolen
and its statehouse 40 years in building,
where the cracked Liberty Bell would
be ashamed to hang. The men of
tried all this long ago and
failed.
Civilization and Culture.
Is civilization and culture a better
tower? the line of Cain, the first
murderer, is traced only down TO
Lamech. And Lamech was the father
of art and civilization. Culture may
be a detriment instead of a salvation.
These two are the best that man can
do towards gaining heaven-and have
a record of failure written in the three
w 1rds, Babil, Babel. Sodom. If civil
ization, art and culture had been the
way to heaven and enough to gain an
entrance there we should not behold,
as now, the ruins of the fair and flour
ishing civilizations of Egypt, Babylon,
Persia, Greece. Even Harvard, the
flower of New England culture. seems
in their footsteps. No tower
without a plan, creedless, Christless,
is of any use. But there is
a tower to heaven builded by God of
the best at his command. Samuel
called it the twer of aviation and in
the psalms it is called the. strong
tower. Enoch was the foundation who
first called upon the name of God and
each succeeding stone has been bound
TO the others by this sense OF the
need of God. There are Noah who
talked with God; Abraham, His friend;
Isaac, the prototype of sacrifice; Jacob
who yielded to His will; John the
Baptist, who would do nothing with
out Him, aand Christ, the starry top
with the cross surmounting all. Here
Is the way to heaven and in contrast
to Babel we find men of all nations
and languages bound together by the
cross. Over it is the seemingly re-
mote legent king Of the Jews" But
even in this PLATE did better than he
knew, for It is written in Latin, Greek
and Hebrew. The Latin may stand
for governmental strength, the Greek
for civilization. art and culture and
The Hebrew for religion. God has in
into His plan the best that
man can do. Governments cannot
grow without the cross; art and cul-
ture degenerate without it into him
frances rather than helps. Without it
men degenerate into tyrants or nom
entities. But when the three are
bound together and feel their need
Of God when they live in the atmos-
Dhere of the cr9ss-then tho fair days
come for men. 1t is the cross which
brings peace and harmony, the contrast
20 the confusion of Babel. That is the
way to heaven, the towering city which
God has built I'm the cross of Christ
glory, towering DER the wrecks of
lime"