Norwich bulletin., 1912-10-12
SUNDAY MORNING TALK
THE FIRST TEST.

There is something remorseless about the heaviest and most constant losses on man. Listening to no argument or entreaty it will sweep through dozen city blocks licking up everything in it's path that will burn and leaving behind only brick walls and skeletons of steel beams. It leaves the bricks and the metal only from necessity. It would burn them too if it could.
 have sometimes reflected with 8 shudder on the verse of Scripture re- garding the judgment day. "The fire shall try every mans work of what sort it is." Of course the words are to be understood fguratively. It is of no literal blaze that the apostle speaks. He means that mems works are finally to be surveyed by the scrut- inizing Judicial eye of God. And of that testing experience he can think of no material likeness better than the test of fire.
 How many of the structures that men build must prove only fuel for the fiamesl They cannot stand for a min ute any searching moral analysis. MuItitudes of imposing structures would become but piles of ashes should the fire of God toch them.
 Fraud, deceit, cruelty, injustice are terribly combustible materials. So far as they are the foundation of any mans success they are bound to let the whole building fall toppling into ruin. Worked into the superstructure | they melt away like wooden blanks in l a burning sky scraper.
 We live in a world where good and bad are so mixed, where evil is so oft
 en crowned and dishonesty rewarded | that men sometimes lose faith in the moral order of the universe. They forget that righteousness is as truly a jaw of the world as is gravitation They forget that truth is the only 1 thing fitted to endure.
 I It is recorded that during a period oi great financial depression in SpaiT Philip II, desired an expedient fol debasing the coin of the realm. | chemist named Malen succeeded 1T producing in his laboratory "a certain | powder of which one ounce, mixed
 with six ounces of quicksilver, would make six ounces of silver" The ex- pertinent looked like a success until i came to the ultimate testing for tht composition, as the historian informs us, was able 10 StduQ the leSl OI InS hammer but not of the fire"
 I Our cheap expedients and ready counterfeits must at last share fat, like that when the fire shall try ever. mans work of what sort it is." Wha will there be left then, do you suppose
 of all our false seemings, our lying ap pearances Jour apparent pieties, ou
 falsehcods of all shades of color?
 Some of the most valuable things il
 nature are proof against the ravages O
 fire. Diamonds among gems ,granit
 metals can withstand its ravages. Fir
 may burn away the dross from a piec
 of ore but it does not burn the gold The crucibles at the mint may boil an'
 bubble like the clothes boiler on wasl : day but 1t is only the impurities tha
 are being removed. A gold coin tha
 passes out into currency bearing tn
 government stamp has had an almos continuous experience of the fire be fore 1t comes forth purified. Nor is otherwise with the moral fires o . trouble or temptation or prosperity i : which many a man is tried till th dross is purged away and only tn pure gold of character left.
 :, THE PARSON.