The Bryan eagle. [volume] (Bryan, Tex.) 1880-1913, 1911-03-23
A H1DINg PLACE
FROM THE WIND"
"The Shadow of a Great Rock in a
Weary land"-Everybody Can
Be a Rock to Somebody.

Inc EdSie mas HeTelOiOre puDllSneu,
the Pastors Association has request.
ed that a complete sermon be pub
lished each Monday, the selection to
be made by the pastors. In pursuance
of this plan the following sermon by
Rev. j. 7. Caughley, pastor of the
Presbyterian church, is published as
the first o. the s~eries.1
And a man shall be as a hiding
place from the wind " " . and as
the shadow OF a great rock in a wea
land Isaiah 1922.
This is a picture from the desert.
There are two terrors for the desert
wanderer; one is thirst, and the other
is the sand drift, and the second is
more serious than the first. He learns
to know where water can be found at
different parts OF the year; he can not
tell when the sandstone will come.
Here Is a small oasis where he has
pitched his camp; but the steady wind
sets in and soon the drifting sand
cover every blade of grass, chokes
every young shrub, and in time kills
every living thing.
1oA sSu IA OAN hhc lOAA anu CN
erything is changed. To the lee side
of it the grass grows, and you find
there in time a garden in the midst
of the wilderness. All that the rock
has done has been to stop the drift,
but that has been everything.
And that, says. Isaiah, is what one
man can do. He ear stop the drift
and make it easier for others to live
after him.
The verses which follow show us
that the words were written in an age
when moral issues were sadly con-
fused, when men called light darkness
and darkness light. Public morality
was at a low ebb. If a man was rich
and prosperous everybody fawned
on him, however vile his life might
be; and the obscure person, however
stainless his life. was treated with
contempt. Justice was only a name.
There was one law for the rich and
another for the poor.
Conventional morality took the place
VI true morality, and distinctions of
mans making were substituted for the
eternal difference which God has set
between right and wrong.
Human progress consists, according
to Isaiah, in getting rid Of these con-
ventions and calling things by their
proper names; and in this history
bears him out. Yet every age is more
or less prone to this same false con
ventionalism. There is always a ten
dency to become morally blind and
deaf where self-interest, or social adj
vantage or fashionable convention
holds a rnpnunnrf p1opn. ond Orr Ou~n
age is no exception. In my own coun-
try there are transactions which take
place every day which no strict code
of morals could justify, but which are
condoned because they are the Gus
tom of the trade and the means to
which its members look for profits.
We have not como within sight yet
of the time when there shall be one
standard Of moral purity for both
sexes. Things are smiled at in high
society which would stamp the Ia
borer's son as a BLACKBOARD and the
peasants daughter as an outcast.
| want you this morning to observe
Isaiah's remedy for these and all
other social and moral evils. He af-
firms that the need of his age land
the need Of ours. too. insofar as it re-
sembles his) is a strong man; a man
with a conscience, a man with a head
and a heart and a soul; a man of such
noble and commanding goodness that
his personality shall tower up like a
great rock in the desert and stop the
drift. About this there will be no
manner Of dispute. We are all ready
TO accept Carlyle's dictum that the
history Ct what man has accomplished
in this world is, at bottom, the his
tory Of the great men who have
worked here The names that he
mentions stand cut before US as great {
sheltering rocks -Mahomet, Dante,
Luther. Knox, Cromwell. We feel how !
much richer and better and nobler the
world is because these men lived and
thought and toiled. I!
The difficulty is to persuade our .
selves OF the universally of Isaiah's {
principle. Everybody can be a rock 7
10 somebody else. Wherever you find
one good, pure, holy fife you win find
sheltering behind it. You will .
End that life has become a richer and /
aweeter thing for others because Of {
that influence. There is an oasis in t
.i'es desert, there is help for weary
souls. {
Are you part Of the splnCrift, driven
by the winds of circumstance. yielding {
easily 10 the pressure Of the age, care {
.essi J0ing with the crowd? Or are {
You lie OF Gods r0ck-mea standing S
last for truth and right. a Peter upon
when Christ can build His church. a G
converted Simon who strengthens his G
brethren? {
This, after all, is the great dividing d
Inc between man and man; not a
question Of creed, but of life; not what i
you hold, but what sort of Z
character you display. V
Let there be no mistake about it
/ man is saved just in so far as he Is :
others; he is Christ's Just in so
ar as his life is part of the great re- S
iemption energy of the world; he is g
in so far as he is drifting with the a
ide and putting forth no effort to t
item the food of evil; a rock or a S
wreck; a bulwark or a piece of useless s
"A man shall be as the hiding 5
from the wind. and a covert a
rom the tempest; as rivers of waters
n a dry place; as the shadow of a e
reat rock in a weary land. The mes Q
age OF Isaiah is as true today as t.
,hen il was first uttered.
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