Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 January 1916 — HARMONY WITH GOD [ARTICLE]

HARMONY WITH GOD

i Retribution, Education and a Loving Lifjt Turn Men and Nations Right Way. What will bring us into complete harmony with God? Retribution. One hates to think that the world will not learn to keep step with the Infinite except from terrible experience. Though one should rise from the dead and tell the world its true interest, it would not believe him; it would have to plunge its head into the furnace of fire before it would learn. We see this in Europe as we have never seen and realized it before. The great war had to come in order to lead the world to a great peace, writes Rev. Henry R. Rose, D. D., In the Unlversahst Leader. It is the same with the individual man. He discovers, sooner or later, that he cannot have his own way; he must go as God goes or go under In the wrestle. What a parable the story of the prodigal son Is! To how many men and situations its lessons can be applied! The man who sows wild oats will reap wild oats. The man who wastes Ms money will reap poverty. The man who yields hip purity will suffer remorse. It Is the certainty of retribution and. the experience of retribution that turn men and nations the other way; they come to themselves, at length, and return to their God. It looks to me as if God bad planned this world so that every sin is a path that leads to a stone wall, and there is nothing else to do but turn about and start in anomer direction, albeit with bleeding feet.- Uncover the breast at many a - man and woman today who are living the better life and you will find the letters “I. H. S.” written there in scarlet: “I have suffered.” They know, and, thanks be to God, they have learned their lesson. Education will also bring mankind into unity of life and activity with God. It is playing a larger and larger part in this direction. Education is slowly opening the eyes of the masses to the great truth that they live in a universe of laws, that there are no accidents or miracles, that for everything that happens a cause can be discovered. So that if they want to live and live long end prosper they must learn the laws of life and heed them from the cradle to the grave. The school systems of our land are teaching our children and our youth the physical laws of the world, and driving home the fact that the laws of electricity, of gravitation, of digestion, and all the rest, are universal laws and make no allowance for ignorance or rank. Obey them and prosper; disobey, and suffer. Education is also leading the people to perceive and believe that there are spiritual laws which are just as real, just as binding and just as Inexorable as the physical laws. We cannot break the Ten Commandments, and laugh over it very long. Let the merchant fall to give -sixteen ounces to the pound or thirty-six inches to the yard and his customers will soon begin to patronize another merchant. Let the politician declare that the decalogue in politics is "an iridescent dream” and we send him up Salt river. Let the artist or dramatist or author claim exemption for his art from the teachings and principles of morality and he is soon execrated by the world, as he deserves to be. You and I cannot refuse our ear to the still small voice within us called conscience, and go very far without finding that instead of being a still, small voice it has become a tone of thunder which rocks and rocks our very soul! The third facto? is a loving life. We come to love God, not only because he first loved us, but because we begin to love our ■'fellow men. The age in which we live is a loving age, more than any other in the history of mankind. I say this in spite of the temporary Insanity of Europe and the awful hatred that has sprung up between some of the nations in this frightful war. I mean that more appeals are being made to us to do for others, and more opportunities are given to us to do for others than were ever known, and more of us are therefore putting our morality and our religion into practice than used to be the.case. We have passed the time when we could go to church and then shut ourselves away from the needs ot our fellow men the rest of the. week, or when we could really have any standing in society if we were known to take no generous and personal interest in some organized charity or philanthropic movement We are living In a time when we must show our faith by our works, when our lives must square with our religious professions or whatever other professions we make to being decent citizens. My argument is this: that as the loving life grows within our souls we will feel and find ourselves being drawn more and more into harmony with the loving life that fills the soul of our God. We will discover that as we love, love will meet us, and return us such blessings in joy' and satisfaction, in deep, rich friendships, in high communlngs and in lofty aspirations, that we would no more think of ever getting out Of harmony with God again than we would think of turning away from a pleasant experience that went time we came into contact with it Retribution, education and a loving life are the three agencies that are allthe time bringing men into greater and, greater harmony- with the will oC, God.