The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1924-01-31
THE CLIMB TO GOD

THE CLIMB TO GOD
Geography often makes history and
always explains it. New York's su-
premacy rests not alone upon its har-
Dor but upon the almost level reach
into the heart of the West that gives
an ungraded freight haul to its docks.
To reach Baltimore, a car must be
lifted over 5000 feet of mountain
wall which means two engines instead
of one in crossing the Alleghenies.
The geography of France decreed the
rape of Belgium which made defense
into a crusade and raised a moral
rampant impossible for Germany to
breach. Israel cannot be understood
aside from the path she followed in
that wilderness journey. Coming from
the cloudless sky and the dead level
of Goshen where no man ever had
seen hill, they crossed into the ST.
matte peninsula and began to climb
to even higher levels and into ever
increasingly rugged territory. Wind
ing through defiles, reaching outlooks
of great stretches of broken noun
tains, ever upward they pressed until
they were surrounded by the utterly
new and tremendously magnificent
scenery of gorge and precipice. Camp
ing upon a great level stretch of pla-
teau there lowered above them the
mountain heights more than mile
and a third, cleft by canyons and
scanned by the ravines that formed
great trumpets thru which the winds
swept with an uncanny and hitherto
unheard voice. Cloud capped sum-
mits lowered into their new sky
across whose narrow limits clouds
scurried under the constant move
ments of air and the whole landscape
quivered under the impact of the ap-
palling thunders and glowed under
the flash OF the racing lightnings that
tipped many a pinnacle with lambent
flame. AWed and amazed in the pres
ence of such grandeur it is small Won
der that these simple slaves found
their souls stirred by the conscious
ness of the presence Of a God greater
far than anything of their thinking
previously. For their souls climbed
faster and farther than their feet and
Sinai overtops all mountains in the
Book save Calvary. One cannot I'M
derstand Israel without knowing how
greatly her history has been moulded
by her geography.
THE SPEAKING GOD
What would be the good Of a God
that never broke thru into human
speech? Ours is no silent Deity, but
we do not trouble to master His Ian
guage These Israelites had climbed
high enough to hear bit of heavens
tongue and translate it into earthly
idioms. Would science call it "thun-
der" (John 1929? They said, "a
voice" and the whole vehicle that car
ries its tone is Indifferent. They in
terpreted the "ten words" in terms
of law and this is in accord with the
advance of any race. There must come
the putting into the rule of the road
the things that the best ideals of the
group have shaped in the attempt to
solve the problem of living together
and the loftier the expression the far
ther has been the advance. For ma
ton or a race the best law expresses
its understanding of Gods require
ment for it and it's writing becomes
a contract with the Almighty that
gives a moral sanction to obedience.
1t is for this reason that John says,
"sin is lawlessness," and it is this that
makes it true that lawlessness and
Christianity are everlastingly oppos-
ed.
The content of that old Siniaic COW
enant marks Moses as comrade of the
worlds greatest minds, for in con-
cisest terms it includes the essential
moralities toward which the race still
struggles. When we remember that
there are more than 100000 laws up
on the statute books of the United
States, the marvel of their brevity
and comprehensiveness lifts the man
who could so frame them to new
level in our appreciation. But God
gave them to him! Moderns make a
very poor showing then in COMPARE
son with his ability to listen to Gods
language In a unique way he dis
covered the mind of Jehovah and
having charted it allows US to follow
the direction indicated. He started
the untried experiment of building
state upon dynamic and spiritual laws
and determined the whole high move
ment of the race toward the dream of
the Kingdom of God. And like that
later Law Giver committing it's des-
tiny to eleven very human men Moses
dared to trust this stupendous adven-
ture to a moral code to slaves still
groveling from the effect of the lash.
His faith in men was as colossal as
it was in God.