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THE TKIUWHS sf the CHURCH
By C. A. Ridley.
(CONCL UD £ D )
N broken rafts, it crossed the waters
and has become the brightest star in
'Columbia’s crown. It is now’ scatter
ing pearls over Darkest Africa and
lighting with joy the islands which
gem the western seas. It is the com
forter of our race. It is the staff of
the pilgrim, star of the sailor and light
house of the lost. It is sorrows’ only solace, the
pillow of the dying and the death night’s only dawn.
The unfailing friend of the friendless, the undeceiv
ing hope of the hopeless, and the unending life of a
lifeless world. Oh, mighty Evangel, sweep on over
the earth and its islands till thou hast carried the
glad message to every home and every heart; till
the tides of this stormy life shall have ebbed forever
more and thou shalt bear back the olive branch,
symbol of salvation, to the hand of the great Master.
Immortality and Eternal Life.
The church is the world’s archive for these great
and glorious doctrines, and but for her we would
still be looking through blinding mists without even
a compass bearing. . . . Shall our lives burn out
like some taper that has served to light a festal
board, and before the day dawn, end in utter dark
ness? What mean these high desires that burn con
tinually upon the main altar of our hearts? We
throw ourselves at the feet of science and beg for
an answer, but proud science that measures the uni
verse and weighs the distant stars, breaks her cru
cible, blows out her lamp and answers nothing. But
inspiration through the church of God comes to our
aid, declaring that these yearnings shall be satisfied;
that they are fixed stars that shall only fade before
the brightness of an eternal Sun. It declared that
we are the children of a King, and that the broad
earth is our inheritance to set in order for the com
ing of the Master. That the march of every cen
tury, the rise and fall of. every state, is but the
building of an imperial highway over which He shall
■come.
In nature God has made ample provisions for ev
ery demand of our physical beings, and through in
spiration and the church He has made provisions for
every demand of our physical beings. The beau
ties of sunrise, the thousand attractions of the day,
the glowing sunset with all its gorgeous splendors
of light and shadows commingled, falling athwart the
emerald landscape, satisfies every demand of the
eye; and when the ear makes its demands, from the
hills and valleys and mountains come the sweet mel
odies of birds and beasts and bending boughs and
breathing winds, until the stillness of night brings
the music of the spheres.
Now, since God has been so careful to supply the
demands of our mortal bodies, He will certainly be
no less careful to supply the demands of our im
mortal spirits. If He will so lovingly answer the
cry of the mortal, He will still more lovingly answer
the cry of the immortal. Job, the poet of patience,
broke the silence and uttered the cry of every soul
since Adam when he asked, “If a man die, shall he
live again?” Heaven, earth and hell, the Bible,
• the church and human consciousness all answer yes.
If this question has never come home to you, it
will soon. I have gone into a home from whence
the low voice of love and laughter had long since de
parted, and I have seen there a piano from whose
ivory keys the spirit of music had been evoked by
fingers now stilled and stiffened beneath the grave,
and in the solemn stillness as I waited, I thought
it sounded without a touch. And even so there is a
voice in every human soul, drowned sometimes it
may be in mirth and madness, but sounding in the
solemn stillness of life’s pauses, a yearning cry for
the hand that made it.
And so it is the church that stands for this im
mortality, and holds out to us the hope of eternal
life. It is the church that tells us that when our
work is ended here that what we call death will be
but an open doorway into a broader, grander life.
The Golden Age for March 8, 1906.
It is the church that tells us that the glories of earth
are not to be compared with the glory that is to be
revealed in us. Here we know in part, but there
we shall know as we are known. Men deserve things
in this world without ever getting them, but up there
every man will be rewarded according to his works,
and no mistakes will be made or partiality shown.
In this world, where there is sin and death and
doubt, men walk with feeble, tottering steps, wi-th
tattered and torn garments, with forms bent under
the burdens of life, with heads whitened by the cold,
frosty neglect of a world, with hands cramped by
their struggles for bread; but it will not be so after
the church has made her last triumph, conquered
her last enemy and landed her last passenger in the
haven of rest. Then her children shall have been
transformed. The bowed and bent form shall then
stand erect with the strength of immortlity, the
torn and tattered garb shall be exchanged for a
robe of spotless righteousness, the frosty locks shall
be crowned with a diadem of glory, the eyes shall
receive new sight because God shall wipe all tears
from them, the feeble, tottering steps will have the
elasticity of eternal youth find the once cramped and
bony fingers will sweep with such matchless grace
across some golden harp that the swelling chorus
shall make the dead who will be caught up with their
Lord in the air to dwell with Him forever.
The Church Rests Upon the Bible.
Since the church rests upon the Word of the eter
nal God these triumphs must continue. After pro
longed research the master minds of every age have
admitted the Bible is divine. And though the oldest
Book in the world, still its pages are fresh as the
dews of morning. Its leaves never wither and its
beauty never fades. Though covering hundreds of
years and written by different men, still it is the
perfect realization of one mind. When figuring in
human history it gives details that throw light upon
other books of the past. The dark gulf of futurity
over which poetry and philosophy hang with weary
wing is lighted up by its rays. Through its pages
the most gifted intellect may roam with pleasure
and profit, and before its revelations human reason
stands rebuked, unable it may be to believe, and yet
afraid to doubt. But if any man will believe “he
shall know of the doctrine.”
This Book deals not in cold abstractions, but in
the virtues of human life. It appeals in tender
tones to the heart of every man. By the excellency
of its laws, and the conclusions of its testimony it
commends itself to every conscience, so that even
human depravity when walking amid its precepts is
compelled, like devils among the tombs, to acknowl
edge the purity of its morals and the holiness of its
presence. It is as much the Book for the twentieth
as it was for the third century. It contains all the
principles that underly human action. The faith
that justified righteous Able and whereby Enoch
walked with God, the faith by which Abraham kept
the covenant and by which Moses prevailed, the
faith that raised Daniel’s window toward Jerusa
lem and bore away his petition to the throne of God,
the faith that sustained the Hebrew children and
rings out still in the sighs and songs of David, is
the same faith that still attracts the attention of
heaven and brings down its richest blessings.
It is the sin of the nation and the calamity of the
church that we ever thought to doubt one page of
this Book. When we view it soberly it commends
itself to the pulpit and the pew ,to the mean and
the mighty, to the rich and the ragged, to the lordly
and the low, to the outcast and the king. It can
not be read soberly without imparting life to its
reader. As well might the flowers try to sleep after
Spring had blown its mellow horn. As well might
the mist try to linger upon the bosom of the lake
after the sun had risen in his resplendent glory.
It builds for us a world beyond this tiny speck
upon which we have camped for a fortnight, stretch
es our conception of the Infinite beyond the further-
most orb of astronomy, pacifies the moral discord of
the earth, recognizes the dust of the sepulchre and
tells us that our heme is heaven and that our life
time is eternity. And so the church rests its all
upon the teachings of this Book. . . . Centuries
before the Grecian troops had driven their hostile
prows upon the Trojan shores, or ever the fallen
Hector had been dragged by the swift steeds of
Achilles around the walls of Priam, Moses, the first
great word painter, had told creation’s story in
words that still survive. Long before the harp of
Homer had been fashioned Job, the poet of patience
had melted his sweet soul into measures of music
that are the wonders of the modern world.
And so we have a perfect picture gallery. First
we come upon Moses as his bold pencil sketches the
morning dawn of the universe. A Background of
awful darkness, then a Spirit moves upon its cha
otic bosom, the earth rises slowly into view and the
seas cradle themselves into their channels; from out
the womb of darkness the great sun leaps in all his
glory, the host of stars light their myriad lamps and
man walks forth pure and immortal as the Infinite
could make him. . . .We turn another page, and
10, we stand upon a battlefield. We hear the clash
of cymbal, sword and saber, the burst of a pealing
horn, the mad rush of frenzied men, then the de
spairing wail of defeat and death. . . . The scene
has shifted again and this time we stand upon
Gilboa’s historic hill and watch the soldiery figure
of Saul, sore wounded in battle and worsted, as he
falls upon his own sword and dies. . . . Still again
we listen to the sweetest music, as the peerless poet
and sweet singer, David of Israel, sings of the In
finite and immortality.
We turn its pages again and we hear the swing of
the cycle and the reaper’s song. We are in the
midst of a vast field of barley, and as the dying day
throws athwart its shadows we catch the picture of
two lovers, Boaz the prince and Ruth the beggar
maid. And thus the blessed story goes on. His
torians unroll the past and prophets disclose the
future. Harpers sing, men declaim and sages coun
sel. But, while the strains of poesy and prophecy
still linger we hear another and a new’ song sung
beneath Judean stars to the willing and waiting
ears of the shepherd lads as they kept their flocks.
It is the song of a new-born King—Christ of Cal
vary, the Hero of this Book and the guarantee of
the Church.
_ I - ■!■■■■ . ■» '
The Lure of Old Songs.
By W. D. NESBIT.
You were playing, sweet and low,
The old songs of long ago;
And the high lamp’s crimson shade
Poured a softened light that made
Mystic shadows in your hair—•
Shadows which were laughing there
As the shadows of the dawn
Leaped and laughed in the days agone.
So you played—and so I dreamed
While the pranking firelight gleamed
In its race along the wall;
And I heard the boy days call
In the songs that thrilled my heart
With their subtly simple art —
As when practiced hands are swept
O’er a harp that long has slept.
Winding paths through meadowlands,
Brooks that sang on silver sands,
Bending branches on the trees,
Noon-time chants of honey bees,
Drifting Indian summer haze,
Peiting snows of wintry days,
Wondrous stars that blazed above —
All this you knew nothing of.
And you played, and, playing, wrought
All the glories unforgot;
And the high lamp’s ruddy glow
Where the glints swayed to and fro
Seemed some way to blend and blur
Into these fair days that were—*
Led me backward, mile on mile,
Te each golden olden while. ; ;