Watauga Democrat. [volume] (Boone, Watauga County, N.C.) 1888-current, 1928-12-20

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whole worlds life is the heaven as
cribed contract which named Jesus
when He came, and consumed Him
as He lived, and died, and arose, to
save His people from their sins.
What do we mean by our boast of
the practical? We mean matters
pertaining to mortality. Houses and
lands, roads and rails, money and
stocks, bridge parties and host of
other things that we do. What do
we mean when we strut about in the
practical? God is in the asking
now. The soul is in the balance.
Sin is involved. Eternity is at the
door. What is practical, anyhow,
Jesus Christ is supremely practical
in the estimation of God. When you
sit down with ultimates, and seek
the meaning of the practical, it is
God, and not our boast of the mere
things that we poor deluded humans
strive for, cling to and fight for.
Houses and lands, money and stocks
or mastery at bridge or popularity
amid our little selected social set.
Not to make us rich. Not to heal
our mortal diseases. Not to strength
en- our tiny hands, not to keep up
, our mortality. All these things and
the many other things we find ordi-
| nary emphasis in, we do ourselves,
and they are all good, | suppose, but
We must keep them in their own re-
spective places. For when we take
our stand where the great waves Of
eternity begin to lift about US, and
where the shrinking horizon Of for
ever begins to fall back, and the
arching heavens of our destiny begin
to loom in the escaping illimitable-
ness of Immortality, and everything
else but the soul actually falls away;
houses crumble, gold furnishes,
mountains stagger, oceans recede,
and the soul-the great naked soul
stands alone; then we begin to
recognize what it was that so COM
pletely absorbed the purpose of God
the Father, and so utterly consumd
the passion of His Son, and wrote
''practicaP' with stencil of destiny
as its only meaning. Saving his peo-
! pie from their sins is the eternal
practicabitity Of God in Jesus. --'-
The Genuine Fundamental
In these days when fundamental
seems word of much concern, let
me note here-this is fundamental.
This is the one fundamental hope of
our troubled world, so important
that God would with it name His
Son. The terrible possibility of
man becoming Herod, or Nero, or De
Midici, or Tamerlane, makes pecu-
liarly meaningful tn ecrisis of the
soul, which also makes possible Paul,
Luther, Wesley or Shaftesbury You
cannot read your way into the
worlds story, even scant way,
without being convinced that it has
been set for tragedy. Such tragedy
goes trampling there that has not
been satiated by drawing of human
blood, but has actually reached out
'mean hands to draw also the very
blood of God and stain Calvary di-
vine red. There is hell in human
sin. There must be heaven in hu-
man righteousness.
The way of sin-struck man all
across the ages has still carried the
glow of His greatness. He is no
ordinary creature as He goes there
about his little earth, sin-stained but
still preeminently great. That great,
haunting fact threw shadow across
His whole story. We always have
had to write in the final path of all
human triumphs a pathetic verdict.
Dizzy with victories, intoxicated with
success, frenzied with his gathered
riches! Man! Man. Man! But he is
a sinner. That verdict has come on.
We can't build it out. We can't
dress it out. We can't paint it out.
We can't sing it out. We can't
dance it out. We can't buy it out.
The fault is fatal. 1t stands in
validatingly by to make clear to ev
eryone of US, and everywhere, that
humanity there is helplessness ahead.
| But God has never taken His hand
off this world, nor left His children
alone. Little matters it what else
we may gain or not gain. The very
same story of the soul is written in
jungle and mansion. The crude altar
in the dark forests of Africa, the
huge circle of ponderous stones set
in mute meaning on the hill at
Stonehenge. The pitiful stumbling
way of the darkened multitude on
the banks of the Ganges; the high
altar in st. Peters at Rome, the al
tar of our humblest churches every
where and always mankind knew
and knows that they must have help
in this matter of sin. 1t cannot be
evaded. No conduct will satisfy it.
Deep down in the human soul abides
the conscious need of a Saviour. Into
that sacred place none but God in
Christ can come. And at that
sacredly guarded post of the soul