USA > Delaware > New Castle County > Wilmington > Centennial services of Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church, Wilmington, Delaware, October 13-20, 1889 > Part 10
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28
The idea in this passage seems to be that we are living in a world of change-that all things in nature are moving like a panorama before us and are passing away. This truth, within the narrow circle of observation and experience, is one with which we are all familiar. From our childhood we have seen the bursting buds of springtime aisappear to make room for the flowers of Summer; and the flowers in turn vanish to give place to the purple fruitage of Autumn; and the fruit pass away to leave the bare branches a sobbing harpsichord for the bleak winds of Winter.
We do not pass far along life's pathway before we become aware that this law of change is broader than the circle of the seasons. Let a young man leave his home and be absent twenty years and then return. He remembers all things as they were when he left, but he never finds them thus again. The trees have grown larger, the ivy has spread farther over the walls of the old home and the mnoss is much thicker upon its roof. Father and mother are either in their graves or are gray-haired and wrinkled old people now. Brothers and sisters with whom he romped in childhood are staid, middle aged persons now with homes and families of their own. He looks around for his play- mates of former years, but they have all either passed away or moved away. He seeks his old time haunts, but scarcely recognizes them. The school is not the same. The scholars are all different and another
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master is behind the desk. There is a new miller at the mill and the- old blacksmith is no longer at the anvil. Slowly and sadly the truth dawns upon him that the past has moved forever out of sight-that life means moving forward ever and that there is no return to former scenes.
Beyond the circle of our observation and experience history teaches on a broader scale the same solemn lesson. Take up any account of our own country a hundred years old and you will be startled to find how antiquated it is. It will describe log cabins, bridle paths and Indian trails where now we find the great cities and steel railways of the West. Where now the steamship on the ocean and the steamboat on our rivers churn the waters into foam, then vessels with sails or oars crept slowly and lazily along. Where now the lightning flashes thought along the wires across a continent in a second of time, then the old post-chaise came lumbering along with the news at the rate of seventy-five miles in a day. 4 Then people carried tin lanterns along the streets at night and went to bed. by the light of a tallow candle, where now our cities blaze with electric light and our homes are radiant with saffron jets of gas. Then the farmer whetted his scythe, and swung his cradle, and plied his flail for weeks, where now the mowing, and the reaping, and the threshing machine cut down and thresh out a harvest in a day.
Take a wider range of vision and go back to the splendid civiliza- tions of ancient times. Read how Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Greece and Rome in turn dominated the earth with their armies, and how their literature and art made their capitals centres of wisdom and beauty that dazzled the world; and then go search for their greatness to-day. Where are Thebes and Babylon and Ninevah now? A heap of ruins on the banks of the Nile or a mound of earth on the Euphrates or the Tigris is all that is left of them. A few rolls of papyri, a few monu- ments covered with hieroglyphics and a few cuniform inscriptions engraved upon the rocks are all that remains of their literature. The people themselves have vanished, leaving nothing behind them but their mummies which are being utilized to-day as fuel to run locomotive engines. Even Athens and Rome, of more modern date, are rapidly moving out of sight. Pericles and Cæsar, could they rise from their graves, would not recognize these modern cities as their ancient capitals. The marble of the Parthenon is black with age and its inimitable sculptures are gnawed away by the tooth of time. The Colliseum, gutted of its magnificence, is only a colossal, naked wall, and the palace of the Cæsars is now but a subterranean labyrinth. Greek and Roman literature, though still alive, is fading slowly away
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and now shines only in the libraries of the learned. The nations of the past are gone or are going, and soon only the owl hooting from some moss-covered tower or the bittern screaming among the wild grass and reeds will tell where they once stood.
The text under consideration, however, carries us farther than history can go, and declares that this same chorus of continual change was sounding through the prehistoric ages to the same solemn measure as now, and that its last note has not yet been heard. Modern science, groping around among the laws of nature with its dark lantern, lias just thrown the light upon the face of this truth of revelation and waked it up from its slumber of ages. Science teaches that our globe was not always what it now is. In the beginning (whenever that was) we are told that the matter of which our earth is composed was so in- tensely heated and expanded that it floated in space as a vapor, 1.ghter than hydrogen gas. As the ages rolled away this glowing star dust radiated its heat and slowly cooled. As it cooled it contracted its bulk and becanie more dense until at length the vapor became a liquid. For ages more our earth swept its fiery course around the sun as a red hot ball of molten matter. In course of time the surface had sufficiently cooled for a crust of rock to form, like the shell of an egg, around the liquid core. Still cycles rolled away, the earth's crust growing thicker all the time, while its outer surface, swept by fierce storms, scathed by wild lightnings and corroded by an acid atmosphere, was being pulverized into soil. The vapors in the atmosphere at last con- densed into water and formed rivers and lakes and oceans while the dry land grew green with the lowest forms of vegetable life. By-and- by a temperature was reached which made animal life possible, and at once the coral insect began to build his strange masonry in the deep, and fishes splashed their finny oars as they started to explore the ocean. Age after age new fornis of life appeared and old ones disap- peared on land and sea, until finally man steps upon the stage of action and calls himself lord of creation. During all these periods the sur- face of our globe has been rising and falling like the waves of the sea. Vast ranges of mountains have been upheaved and continents have sunk beneath the ocean. Our earth at times has poured out floods of lava to relieve her internal fever and at others has shuddered in earth- quakes front a sudden chill. We talk of the solid earth and think of the ground beneath our feet as something fixed and stable. But the earth's crust is now not more than a hundred miles thick-the merest shell around a molten core, seething and heaving with internal fire. In consequence, this crust is never at rest, but is constantly slowly ris- ing in one place and falling in another, while at times an island sud-
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denly rises in the sea and then as suddenly disappears; and occasionally, as we have reason to remember, an earthquake jars a continent and shakes a city into ruins. There is nothing permanent and stable here. Eternal change has kept creation's cradle rocking until now and will continue to shake the earth for ages yet to come. The final catastrophe, foretold in Scripture, when our globe shall be wrapped in a winding sheet of fire is rendered very probable by the discoveries of physical science. A time must come in the future from the process of cooling and contraction when another gigantic crushing in of the earth's crust will take place. Whenever that occurs it were easy for the continents to be submerged beneath seas of boiling lava, whose fiery waves will burn up every green thing and leave our globe a blackened, smoking slag.
I do not claim that the teaching of science and the Bible are identical. But while they differ widely in details there is a marked general agreement. Both teach that through evolutions and revolu- tions the earth and man have reached their present state, and that the process is not yet complete. Science digs out of the rocks the evidence that our globe has been shaken and shattered in the past and that it will be again, and Revelation looks up to God and cries; "Whose voice then shook the earth, but now He hath promised, saying yet once more I shake not the earthi only but also heaven."
Again the passage implies that this change is a real progress from lower to higher forms and is in obedience to God's great law of crea- tion. Just as a scaffolding is erected and within it the edifice is reared, and then, when the building is complete, the scaffolding is torn down and removed, so in the plan of unfolding creation as any form has served its purpose and become useless it is shaken down and dis- appears. Evolution is no discovery of science. It was taught in Scripture long before science dreamed of it. It was an inspired pen that wrote "First the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear." This regular progression from lower towards higher forms marks all the works of God. If we go back to the Mosaic account of crea- tion we shall find that in general the scientific order obtains. Creation did not spring into being all at once at the fiat of God. First God created the heavens and the earth. But they were without form, and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. It was simply a creation of the elements in a chaotic state. Next God said "Let there be light," and the darkness disappeared. Then came the gather- ing together of the waters and the division of the earth into land and ocean. Next came the creation of vegetable life-grass, herbs and trees. Then in due time came the creation of fishes in the sea and
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fowis in the air. Next in order came cattle and wild beasts and creep- ing things, and finally to crown the series God created man in His own image.
The record of the rocks and that of the Book are in strict harmony thus far. Dig down into the mountains and you shall find that the oldest fossils are vegetables, then comes marine animals, next birds, then beasts and then man.
Moreover the rocks will show that the unfolding of each type of being has pursued the same order. In the beginning God commanded eacli species to multiply, i. e., unfold into all the varities and forms of which the species was capable. Just as to-day the oak is enfolded in the acorn, so originally God locked up the species with its endless varities in a single pair. From that primal pair the species was to be evolved, not haphazzard, but by a law of regular progression. Go ask the geologist if the oldest forms of life were not the lowest, and whether each in turn has not been succeeded by a higher and better form. The first plants upon our globe were flowerless ferns and rushes, and from these step by step the flora has unfolded until the earth to- day is covered with a robe of blossoms and the air is burdened with their perfume. The oldest animals were fishes with cartilaginous skeletons and without eyes, as much inferior to a salmon or trout of to-day as Noah's ark was to an ocean steamer of the White Star Line. The rocks are paved with animal and vegetable forms which are now extinct, but in every case the form that has vanished was succeeded byanother of a higher order. The fossils in the mountains are the garments which nature has outgrown and has laid aside and they serve to show the humility of her origin and the progress of her growth.
Scientific evolution and Scriptural evolution are wide apart in de- tails but in their general trend there is substantial agreement. Science starts with dead matter and supposes that it organized itself into some lowest form of life, and that from this first form were developed by natural law, without any creative act, in regular gradation, one formi out of another until at last man was reached. It teaches that a plant pro- duced a polyp, and a polyp a fish, and a fish a reptile, and a reptile a bird, and a bird a beast, and a beast a monkey, and a monkey a man. Scripture, on the other hand, starts with a separate creation for each class of creatures and then leaves the class to unfold under natural law into many branches, and perfect itself by passing through many forms. God created plants, fishes, fowls, creeping things, cattle, beasts and man, and endowed them with capacities to multiply varieties and im- prove their condition until the multitudinous species and endless varities of flora and fauna should be reached which people the earth to-day.
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I submit that until the missing links between widely different species. are found, the Scriptural theory is more scientific and rational than the Darwinian.
But while the two theories clash in regard to their teaching respecting the orign of living forms, they agree perfectly in teaching that from the beginning until now there has been a constant evolution and steady progress and improvement. Science expresses its faith in this truth by the phrases, "The struggle for existence" and "The sur- vival of the fittest." Scripture epitomizes its teaching upon this subject by the declaration, "And this word, yet once more, signifieth the removal of those things which are shaken as of things which are made that. those things which cannot be shaken may remain."
But the one great and all important teaching of this passage is. that this system of change is not only a progression from lower to higher and better forms, but that it is steadily working towards a final result which shall be changeless and eternal.
Thus far science and revelation have marched side by side, but just here they part company, Science sees no purpose in nature but only a process. It recognizes no directing intelligence and knows nothing of a final end. Nature is only a system of endless mutation, evolution and revolution, with no God at the beginning and no out- come at the end. Science starts with a cloud of star dust floating in space and traces it until it becomes the solid ball which we call our earth. It follows matter then through countless transformations, each rising higher in order of being than its predecessor. It sees stic- cessively rising above the ground ferns, and flowers, and polyps, and fish and reptiles, and birds, and beasts, and at last man, highest and grandest of all. But then it sees man die and beholds his body decompose into its original elements. He who was the outcome of all the progressive changes of all the ages and to whose production all lower fornis of life have contributed, science sees go back to dust to- fatten the soil and nourish grass and grain and thus in turn himself become food for fish, and fowl, and reptile, and beast. It is as if nature should labor through millions of ages to give birth to a child and then turn round and devour it as soon as it was born.
Human reason revolts at such teaching and demands that for all this plowing and planting, and reaping, and threshing, there shall be some harvest garnered. It will consent to change through countless ages if at last something permanent shall be the result. It will agree that life shall pass through a thousand deaths and have as many resurrections if at last an immortal being shall emerge from the grave-
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to die no more. But it utters an unmistakable and uncompromising protest against endless change to no purpose, and against living only for the sake of dying. If materialism can discover nothing which survives the death of man, t .. en the deepest and strongest instincts of human intelligence minst turn away from it disappointed and dis- gusted.
What science cannot discover, but what human nature craves and human reason demands, revelation comes to supply. It tells that "the earth [at first] was without form and void, and that darkness was upon the face of the great deep;" it tells of a delige and of God's voice shaking the earth in the past, and that other convulsions await her in the future. There is a fiery baptism coming in which "the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also and the things which are therein shall be burned up." But it does not stop there. There is a method in nature's madness. She has some worthy end in view. The transitory is to be succeeded by the permanent-the temporary by the eternal. Listen to the bugle notes of revelation as they ring out over a world on fire. "Nevertheless according to His word, we look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." Paul from the sunmit of inspiration lets his eagle vision sweep over the ages of the past and down the centuries to come, and then shouts in the ear of a bewildered world God's ultimate design: "Whose voice the. shook the earth, but now he hath promised, saying, yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven, and this word once more signifieth the removing of those things which are shaken as of things which are made that those things which cannot be shaken may remain." When the lightning and thunder are past we are to expect a purer atmosphere. When the blossoms fall we are to look for the fruitage. When the scaffolding is taken down we are to behold the edifice. When the chrysalis bursts its cerements we are to look for the butterfly rising on golden wings above its tomb.
The microscope and the telescope will make discoveries much farther than the unaided human eye can see, but science with all her instruments can behold only the physical. Beyond the power of the microscope and the telescope, beyond the power of the crucible and the subtle agents of the laboratory, inspiration discovers the spiritual rising like a Phoenix from the ashes of the physical. Man is the out- come of all natures working. He is the summit of the long and ascending plane of life. But the human body is not the man, and when it falls in death the man does not die. The body was only the ·crutches with which the immature spirit supported itself ; but when the spirit can stand and walk alone you may bury the crutches out of
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sight. Don't look in the grave to find your departed loved ones. The disciples made that mistake more than eighteen hundred years ago; and an angel sent by God whispered to them loud enough for all succeeding ages to hear "Why seek ye the living among the dead ? He is not here, he is risen." No human eye ever saw a man nor ever can. We see his features and his form, but these are only the house in which he resides. That something within which thinks and feels and loves and wills, is the real man, and him no microscope can dis- cover, and over him death has no power. When the body falls in ruin he does not go down into the grave, but rises into a new and higher state of being. The physical is temporary and transitory, the spiritual is permanent and eternal; God has not wrought through all the ages for naught. "The mills of the Gods grind slowly, but they grind very fine." The material chaff and successive hulls which enclosed the precious kernel, one after another have been separated and removed, until at last the grinding is complete-this last covering of flesh and blood is stripped off-and there comes forth the fine flower of a spiritual existence as invisible as ether and as imperishable as God.
Not only does God through successive stages of perishing creations at last reach a stable and everlasting result, but human labor also, doomed to disappointment all through life, has the promise of imperishable guerdon at last. Our life work is not to travel round a tread mill and end just where we begun, though to the eye of sense this seems to be the only result of living. "We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out." So far as material possessions and worldly honors are concerned, we leave the world just as naked as we entered it. But be not deceived by appear- ances. While much of our life work can be shaken, and will be removed by death, something that cannot be shaken will survive and remain. If we acquire wealth in houses or land, flocks and herds, gold and silver, it will take to itself wings and fly away. If we win honor and fame, office and influence, power and place, they will slip through our fingers and soon all be gone. We may subdue and governs nations and build up splendid civilizations, but they, too, will pass away as a dream fades from memory. We may spend our lives in founding vast charities and cover the land with hospitals, asylums and colleges, and these also will crumble to dust as well as the people who are benefited by them. We may dig deep in science and litera- ture and amass the treasures of mind. We shall thus secure some- thing which death cannot destroy; but we shall find it a useless possession in the land to which we are going. The wisdom of men
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is foolishness with God, and future discoveries will render our present knowledge foolishness with man also. Hence it is written, "Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. " But all does not perislı. The grave is greedy and devours much of human achievement, but there are somethings which even death cannot swallow.
Send a boy to school, and after he has mastered all the studies of the course, the institution may be burned down, the books may all be destroyed, even the knowledge acquired may be of no practical use to him whatever in his life work, but the thought power and mind discipline acquired are indestructible and will be his invaluable posses- sion forever. So man's untiring search after truth all his life and throughout all ages, may or may not be rewarded with clear discovery. All his efforts and sacrifices to establish truth and right on the earth may be defeated, and over his failure error and wrong flaunt their black flag in triumph. But in his search after, and his labors for the true, there has been developed in him a love of truth which the crash of the universe cannot eclipse or destroy.
So also a life of righteouness may seem to be overwhelmed by injustice and hyprocrisy, but above the dark waves of fraud will float like a white albatross the love of justice which is indestructible. Carlisle, the most rugged thinker of the nineteenth century, has said, "The great soul of this world is just. With a voice soft as the harmony of spheres, yet stronger, sterner than all thunders, the message does now and then reach us through the hollow jargon of things. This great fact we live in and were made by." Our life work is to get ourselves in harmony with the spirit of the universe. By lives of strict justice we create a hungering and thirsting after righteousness, so that it becomes our meat and our drink to do our Master's will. This love of justice once born can never die; it is one of the eternal verities in the life of the mind.
A man may spend his life in seeking after the pure and the good and never find them in the world nor realize them in himself. Holi- ness is a flower of rarer bloom than the century plant. Our best motives are seldom perfectly pure, but are almost always mixed with some dross. But though we struggle after holiness till death, and never reach it in its fullness, the effort has not been in vain. We have caught glimpses of the beauty of holiness and have fallen in love with it. That passion once kindled in the soul neither time nor death can extinguish. The love of holiness is the bed rock in all right think- ing minds, so that to shake it would be to wreck the moral universe. And so of every other moral principle; right living begets in us a love for it which is stronger than death, and which remains untouched by
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the dissolution of the body and must be as eternal as mind. These several loves make up what we call moral character, and this is what remains unharmed of our life work when everything else is shaken to pieces. Not what we do, but what we become in the doing, is stamped with inimortality. All that we have wrought out will crumble, perish and vanish, but what has been wrought in us is an "inheritance that is incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away."
Just as the loves in us of the true, the just, the right, the pure and the good make up moral character, so the ensemble of the objects of these loves constitutes our God. All that we know of God is that he is the embodiment of all that is just and true and good and holy. He is to us the focal point in which all moral principles meet, and the fountain head whence all virtues flow. And the loves which make up moral character are therefore none other than the love of God.
Let death with vandal hand strew all the universe with wreck and ruin, but let God and man and the love of God survive, and heaven is eternally secure. No matter where heaven is, God is everywhere; and wherever moral character can feast its love upon truth and justice, goodness and holiness, there is heaven as unshakable as the throne of the Eternal.
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