The Pontypridd District Herald and Rhondda Valley, Llantrisant, Caerphilly, and Mountain Ash News. — 1879-07-26 (Pontypridd, Mid Glamorgan, Wales)

DEAN VAUGHAN ON THE EZIAGION OP DAMP LIFE.  On Sunday morning the Very Rev. Dean Vaughan preached, in Llandaff Cathedral, from the Liith verse of the 12th chapter of St. Luke, "When thou guest with thine adversary to the magistrate, as thou art in the way are diligence that thou merest be delivered from him." During the coarse of his remarks hi said that they had two texts before them, alike, yet different. St. Luke pressed upon them the urgency of believing, the adversary in his application of the figure being the longunffering God, who had sent a Saviour to them,of patience tried beyond measure, but still for one moment more enduring. And was that urgency of believing only for the men of one generation? Had it no voice for them—the now thing? Had they never played with the evidences—the outward and Inward—which attested to them the Saviour Jesus? Had they Dever waited for that sign from Heaven which should condone without trouble, and convert without effort? Had they never mid, "Go thy way, and when I have • more convenient season I will call for thee " ? St. Mathew folded upon them the urgency of acting—" Agree with thine adversary whilst thou are in the way." The adversary here was the brother who bad alight against them, or the brother towards whom they cherished an angry, contemptuous feeling, ft was in reference to hid that our Lord said: "First be reconciled, then' offer thy gift." The thought then wee, that all their acts, all their words, all their feelings had judgment in front of them; they were all running on to a reckoning ; they were all, in other words shaping the great future. Nothing stopped with fined. Everything, for good or evil, ma productive, was fruit bearing; the eventual self, And, therefore, the eternal condition, was making and forming itself day by day. This inverted their common estimntee of gain and loos. They would count as an adversary the man who had oppressed or defrauded— the man who stood in their my to power, the man who had disturbed or beaten them in the competition of life; but Christ said no, their adversary WU the man whom they had injured, the man whose efforts they had disdained, whom they threw back into indolence, the man whom struggle, they smiled at till they caused him to despair, the man who trusted them and whom they had misled, the man who would have followed them any whither. and whom they had made to offend—sgeinet whom they had broken Christ's statute of murder. In this ease the adversary was still living—he was in the way with them—each atop they took was • step toward, the judgment, and they took it side by side. When they reached the tribunal there would be no returning, therefore Christ said "Agree with thine adversary quickly," speaking primarily of injuries which could be redressed. There were frauds which conscience money could compensate, there were quarrels which apology might menage, and there were misunderstandings which esplanstion Might annihilate. There were eneh ; bat in this !ease the "agree quickly" me • cull to self. victory, to that conquest of the spirit which ma better than the rapture of a city. Life did not end because souls hid been saved— the murdered and the murderer were still pressing onwards to the same goal, towards the same judgment. Very terrible when they thought of it :was that ghostly companionship, in whieli the infered and the injurer, the accused and the adversary might still coesist for long years, jonmeging side by side in God's sight towards that bar where they adult implied each other. " Agree quickly" was the oatmeal ot wisdom, lest they molted =reconciled the prison haw of the =pad debt. Whilst they were In tbe way there was mercy. Let them risk not the immutable _peradrentares of • world out of sight. Who kid them there was any opportunity there of giving end receiving? Who told there that for stioh as would not lava it in this life there would be them a mooed Gospel, • second Smorilloe? Who emboldened them to draw in. ferenoes, which were certainly Lot written, of a region of which no men could come back to tell?