The Penn's Grove record., 1910-04-08

the house, and new ways Of doing,
and a new world around her. What
is the secret of it all? She has been
holding on and abiding in the things
remained. They have been moving
on in the larger life. We think We
would like to go back to the old vii
lage, to the old times, and the old
ways, but in our reason we know how
absolutely unsatisfying such an exper-
fence would be. We sing:
Backward, roll backward, oh time in
thy flight,
Make me a child again just for to-
night"
But if we went back and If we
met those whom we knew in the years
gone by, o wquickly conversation and
communion would be exhausted, and
especially If we have been moving on
and they have been standing still. It
would not be good to be a child again.
Our march is onward and "the grave
is not its goal" With all this wide
universe of things we are sweeping
away from the past every hour, every
moment, and Paul expressed the right
philosophy of human life and recog-
nized the wide reach of this law of
lAO DC "ACA LIZ SoOAfS0 W -
get the things that are behind and
press toward the things which are be-
fore. Certainly, disaster must befall
the man who stops. There is freedom
and there is life only in moving on.
If you were to climb to the apex of
the Metropolitan tower, and there
should succeed in stopping, some
thing fearful would befall you. The
atmosphere of the earth, rushing on
nineteen miles in a second, striking
against you would instantly reduce
you to a little patch of flame, and you
would disappear. Something like
that begins to happen when a man
halts on a journey, refuses to hear
the call of God, ceases to feel the ire
mendous mobility of the universe
moving around him, and thinks he
will sit down content in his place and
be quiet. God will not have it so;
God will not let you keep still. You
must move or die. With all of the
wide sweep of this moving universe
| around you, the only safety for man
from absolute destruction of soul and
life is to cast himself into the moving
currents of God and trust himself to
them to bear him on.
If now we have found this mobil-
ity of the world to be a great fact
| of experience, and if it has seemed to
us to indicate that this is really a
| universal law of life and of the world,
ought we not to think again? Surely
these meanings of things reach higher
| than our little lives and deeper than
the mere flood and fux of phenome-
non before u eyes,. Does not this
| great spectacle of a moving cosmos,
this great consciousness of on-moving
| life tell us something as to what is
the nature of God Himself? Have
we fixed Him sometimes in our theol-
ogies upon a static throne in the
midst of angels and a~rchangels? Not
SO was the picture of Him that Jesus
drew. So solicitous was He-our
Father in Heaven-that the hairs or
our heads were numbered, that not
one sparrow could fall without His
notice; and we may not find God at
all unless somehow We find Him in
his moving universe. Who paints
the superb coIors of the sunrise in the
morning east, different each pa sing
morning and beyond the painters
skill to initiate? Who IS the vast
weaver that threads the fabric OF the
petals of the flowers and weaves greer
carpets over the fields? Who is the
spirit of the mist that lifts itself from
the meadow-way under the touch or
the morning sun? We should be tired
by this time of that wooden fetish OF
law under which men have bound this
frail and mobile universe, and which
men have ~worshiped in the place OF
God, No, God is not law; God Is
life, and life is motion, and God Him
self is forever moving on. The maj
exclamation of this mobile universe
must be sought in the infinite mobil-
ity of God. God is not a static SOW
ereign seated on His throne; He is the
life of all life, the light behind the
light. the glory that shines with the
glory. If the heavens n the eartn
are passing away, it is because moth
ing that has Gods life in it can re-
main stationary.
If. then, We would harmonic our
selves and quiet our restless hearts,
in a sense that Augustine perhaps
did not mean, it shall not be by rest
ing in some snug haven OF Gods
preparation. 1t shall be by coming 10
that triumphant faith of the soul that
is willing to cast itself into the NOV
ing providence of God, and go on
where God is going. And shall that
be forever? Certainly I hope so:
This shall be the t-ranscendant Joy OF
the life that is to come, that we are
forever to pas on into the new and
the wonderful and the unexpected re-
gions and the ~unexplored glorles OF
an infinite universe. Fear not, on,
soul. to launch thy bark and cast
away; cut thy moorings behind thee;
let the old dead past go, and IN the
vast tomorrow look upward through
the vistas of that path Of the just
Singing more and more unto the per-
feet day, on which no darkness ever
shuts down, where no night ever fails,
which no barriers ever cut on, and
whose goal has not been fixed for us,
because it is the endless path OF the
onward moving God.