Man's Bad Break

Ephesians 1:11

       Then come the climax and the crisis. A climax is the climbing to the top rung of the ladder. A crisis is the meeting place of possible victory and possible disaster. A single step divides between the two — the precipice-height, and the canon's yawning gulf.

       It was a climax of opportunity; and a crisis of action. God's climax of opportunity to man. Man's crisis of action. God made man sovereign in his power of choice. Now He would go the last step and give him the opportunity of using that power and so reaching the topmost levels. God led man to the hill of choice. The man must climb the hill if he would reach its top.

       Only the use of power gives actual possession of the power. What we do not use we lose. The pressure of the foot is always necessary to a clear title. To him that hath possible power shall be given actual power through use.

       This opportunity was the last love-touch of God in opening up the way into the fullness of His image. With His ideal for man God went to His limit in giving the power. He could give the power of choice. Man must use the power given. Only so could he own what had been given. God could open the door. Man must step over the door-sill. Action realizes power.

       The tree of knowledge of good and evil was the tree of choice. Obedience to God was the one thing involved. That simply meant, as it always means, keeping in warm touch with God. All good absolutely is bound up in this — obeying God, keeping in warm touch. To obey Him is the very heart of good. All evil is included in disobeying Him. To disobey, to fail to obey is the seeded core of all evil.

        Whichever way he chose he would exercise his God-like power of choice. Whichever way he chose, the knowledge would come. If he chose to obey he would know good by choosing it, and evil by rejecting it. He knew neither good nor evil, for he had not yet had the contact of choice. Knowledge comes only through experience. In choosing not to obey, choosing to disobey, he would know evil with a bitter intimacy by choosing it. He would become acquainted with the good which he had shoved ruthlessly away.

       With the opportunity came the temptation: God's opportunity; Satan's temptation. Satan is ever on the heels of God. Two inclined planes lead out of every man's path. Two doors open into them side by side. God's door up, the tempter's door down, and only a door- jamb between. Here the split hoof can be seen sticking from under the cloak's edge at the very start. Satan hates the truth. He is afraid of it. Yet he sneaks around the sheltering corner of what he fears and hates. The sugar coating of his gall pills he steals from God. The devil bare-faced, standing only on his own feet, would be instantly booted out at first approach. And right well he knows it.

       A cunning half- lie opens the way to a full -fledged lie, but still coupled with a half-truth. The suggestion that God was harshly prohibiting something that was needful leads to the further suggestion that He was arbitrarily, selfishly holding back the highest thing, the very thing He was supposed to be giving, that is, likeness to Himself. Eve was getting a course in suggestion. This was the first lesson. The school seems to be in session still. The whole purpose is to slander God, to misrepresent Him. That has been Satan's favorite method ever since. God is not good. He makes cruel prohibitions. He keeps from us what we should have. It is passing strange how every one of us has had that dust in his eyes. Some of us might leave the ''had "'out of that sentence.

        See how cunningly the truth and the lie are interwoven by this old past-master in the sooty art of lying. "Your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God knowing good and evil." It was true because by the use of this highest power of choice he would become like God, and through choosing he would know. It is cunningly implied with a sticky, shameful cunning that, by not eating, that likeness and knowledge would not come. That was the He. The choice either way would bring both this element of likeness to God in the sovereign power of choice, and the knowledge.

       Then came the choice. The step up was a step down: up into the use of his highest power; down by the use of that power. In that wherein he was most like God in power, man became most unlike God in character. First the woman chose: then the man. Satan subtly begins his attack upon the woman. Because she was the weaker? Certainly not. Because she was the stronger. Not the leader in action, but the stronger in influence. He is the leader in action: she in influence. The greater includes the less. Satan is a master strategist, bold in his cunning. If the citadel can be gotten, all is won. If he could get the woman he would get the man. She includes him. She who was included in him now includes him. The last has become first.

       She was deceived. He was not deceived. The woman chose unwarily for the supposed good. The man chose with open eyes for the woman's sake. Could the word gallantry be used? Was it supposed friendship? He would not abandon her? Yet he proved not her friend that day, in stepping down to this new low level. Man's habit of giving smoothly spoken words to woman, while shying sharp-edged stones at her, should in all honesty be stopped. Man can throw no stones at woman. If the woman failed God that day, the man failed both God and the woman. If it be true that through her came the beginning of the world's sin, through her, too, be it gratefully and reverently remembered, came that which was far greater — the world's Savior.

       The choice was made. The act was done. Tremendous act! Bring your microscope and peer with awe into that single act. No fathoming line can sound its depth. No measuring rod its height nor breadth. No thought can pierce its intensity. That reaching arm went around a world. Millenniums in a moment. A million miles in a step. An ocean in a drop. Volumes in a word. A race in a woman. A hell of suffering in an act. The depths of woe in a glance. The first chapter of Romans in Genesis three, six. Sharpest pain in softest touch. God mistrusted — distrusted. Satan embraced. Sin's door open. Eden's gate shut.

       Mark keenly the immediate result that came with that intense rapidity possible only to mental powers. At once they were both conscious of something that had not entered their thoughts before. To the pure all things are pure. To the imagination hurt by breaking away from God, the purest things can bring up suggestions directly opposite. Through the open door of disobedience came with lightning swiftness the suggestion of using a pure, holy function of the body in a way and for a purpose not intended. Making an end of that which was meant to be only a means to a highest end. Degrading to an animal pleasure that which held in its pure hallowed power the whole future of the race. There is absolutely no change save in the inner thought. But what a horrid heredity in that one flash of the imagination! Every sin lives first in the imagination. The imagination is sin's brooding and birth-place. An inner picture, a lingering glance, a wrong desire, an act — that is the story of every sin. The first step was disobedience. That opened the door. The first suggestion of wrong-doing that followed hot on the heels of that first step, through that open door, struck at the very \itals of the race — both its existence and its character. That first suggested unnatural action, with its whole brood, has become the commonest and slimiest sin of the race.

       Here, in the beginning, the very thought shocked them. In that lay their safety. Shame is the recoil of God's image from the touch of sin. Shame is sin's first checkmate. It is man's vantage for a fresh pull up. There are only two places where there is no shame: where there is no sin; where sin is steeped deepest in. The extremes are always jostling elbows. Instantly the sense of shame suggested a help. A simple bit of clothing was provided. It was so adjusted as to help most. Clothing is man's badge of shame. The first clothing was not for the body, but for the mind. Not for protection, but for concealment, that so the mind might be helped to forget its end suggestions. It is one of sin's odd perversions that draws attention by color and cut to the race's badge of shame. It would seem strongly suggestive of moral degeneracy, or of bad taste, or, let us say in charity, of a lapse of historical memory.

       Mark the sad soliloquy of God: "Behold the man has become as one of us: He has exercised his power of choice." He tenderly refrains from saying, "and has chosen wrong! so pitiably wrong!" That was plain enough. He would not rub in the acid truth. He would not make the scar more hideous by pointing it out. "And now lest he put forth his hand and take of the tree of life." ''Lest!'' There is a further danger threatening. In his present condition he needs guarding for his own sake in the future. "Lest" — wrong choice limits future action. Sin narrows.

       With man's act of sin came God's act of saving. Satan is ever on the heels of God to hurt man. But God is ever on the heels of Satan to cushion the hurt and save the man. It is a nip-and-tuck race with God a head and a heart in the lead. Something had to be done. Man had started sin in himself by his choice. The taint of disobedience, rebellion, had been breathed out into the air. He had gotten out of sorts with his surroundings. His presence would spoil his own heaven. The stain of his sin would have been upon his eternal life. The zero of selfishness would have been the atmosphere of his home. The touch of his unhallowed hand must be taken away for his own sake. That unhallowed touch has been upon every function and relationship of life outside those gates. Nothing has escaped the slimy contact.

       Sin could not be allowed to stay there. Its presence stole heaven away from heaven. Yet sin had become a part of the man. The man and the wrong were interwoven. They were inseparable. Sin has such a tenacious, gluey, sticky touch! Each included the other it could not be put out without his being put out. So man had to be driven out for his own sake to rid his home-spot of sin. The man was driven out that he might come back — changed. Love drove him out that later it might let him in. The tree of life was kept from him for a time that it might be kept for him for an eternity.

       When he had changed his spirit, and changed sides in the fight with it started that day, and gotten victory over the spirit now dominant within himself, those gates would swing again. When the stain of his choice would be taken out of his fiber it would be his right eagerly to retrace these forced steps, and the coming back would find more than had been left. Love has been busy planning the homecoming. The tree of life has been grown in his absence to a grove of trees. The life has become life more abundant.

"Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed" a Good Friday Hymn

The Present, Past and Future

       It is noble faculty of our nature which enables us to connect to our thoughts, our sympathies, and our happiness, with what is distant in place or time; and, looking before and after, to hold communion at once with our ancestors and our posterity. Human and mortal although we are, we are nevertheless not mere insulated beings, without relation to the past or the future. Neither the point of time, nor the spot of earth, in which we physically live, bounds our rational and intellectual enjoyments. We live in the past by a knowledge of its history; and in the future by hope and anticipation.
      As it is not a vain and false, but an exalted and religious imagination, which leads us to raise our thoughts from the orb, which, amid this universe of worlds, the Creator has given us to inhabit, and to send them with something of the feeling which nature prompts, and teaches to be proper among children of the same Eternal Parent, to the contemplation of the myrids of fellow-beings, with which His goodness has peopled the infinite space--so neither is it false or vain to consider ourselves as interested and connected with our forefathers, through all time; allied to our ancestors; allied to our posterity; closely compacted on all sides with others; ourselves being but links in the great chain of being, which begins with the origin of our humanity, runs onward through its successive generations, binding together the past, the present and the future, and terminating at last with the consummation of all things earthly, at the throne of God.  Daniel Webster

The Blessings of A Short Life

       We  all  spend  much  time  in  panegyric  of  longevity.     We  consider it  a  great  thing  to  live  to  be  an  octogenarian.     If  any one  dies  in  youth  we  say,  ""What  a  pity!"  Dr.  Muhlenbergh in    old    age,  said  that   the   hymn  written  by  him  in  early  life  by  his  own  hand,  no  more expressed  his  sentiment  when it  said:

" I  would  not  live  alway."

"I Am the resurrection and the life. He who
believes in Me, though he may die, he shall
live.'' John 11:25

       If  one  be  pleasantly  circumstanced  he  never  wants  to  go.  William Cullen  Bryant,  the  great  poet,  at  eighty-two  years  of  age  standing  in my  house  in  a  festal  group,  reading  "Thanatopsis"  without  spectacles, was  just  as  anxious  to  live  as  when  at  eighteen  years  of  age  he  wrote that  immortal  threnody.  Cato  feared  at  eighty  years  of  age  that  he would  not  live  to  learn  Greek.  Monaldesco  at  a  hundred  and  fifteen years,  writing  the  history  of  his  time,  feared  a  collapse.  Theophrastus writing  a  book  at  ninety  years  of  age  was  anxious  to  live  to  complete it.  Thurlow  Weed  at  about  eighty-six  years  of  age  found  life  as great  a  desirability  as  when  he  snuffed  out  his  first  politician.  Albert Barnes  so  well  prepared  for  the  next  world  at  seventy  said  he  would rather  stay  here.  So  it  is  all  the  way  down.  I  suppose  that  the  last time  that  Methuseleh  was out  of  doors  in  a  storm  he  was  afraid  of getting  his  feet  wet  lest  it  shorten  his  days.

       Indeed,  I  sometime  ago  preached  a  sermon  on  the  blessings  of longevity,  but  in  this,  the  last  day  of  1882,  and  when  many  are  filled with  sadness  at  the  thought  that  another  chapter  of  their  life  is  closing, and  that  they  have  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days  less  to  live,  I propose  to  preach  to  you  about  the blessings  of  an  abbreviated  earthly existence.

       If  I  were  an  agnostic  I  would  say  a  man  is  blessed  in  proportion to  the  number  of  years  he  can  stay  on  terra  firma,  because  after  that he  falls  off  the  docks,  and  if  he  is  ever  picked  out  of  the  depths  it  is only  to  be  set  up  in  some  morgue  of  the  universe  to  see  if  any  body will  claim  him.  If  I  thought  God  made  man  only  to  last  forty  or fifty  or  a  hundred  years,  and  then  he  was  to  go  into  annihilation,  I would  say  his  chief  business  ought  to  be  to  keep  alive  and  even  in good  weather  to  be  very  cautious,  and  to  carry  an  umbrella  and  take overshoes,  and  life  preservers,  and  bronze  armor,  and  weapons  of defense  lest  he  fall  off  into  nothingness  and  obliteration.

       But,  my  friends,  you  are  not  agnostics.  You  believe  in  immortality and  the  eternal  residence  of  the  righteous  in  heaven,  and  therefore  I remark  that  an  abbreviated  earthly existence  is  to  be  desired,  and  is  a blessing  because  it  makes  ones  life-work  very  compact. Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.

Life Is Passing

       This  world  is  turning  on  its  axis  once  in  four  and  twenty  hours; and,  besides  that,  it  is  moving  round  the  sun  in  the  three hundred  and  sixty-five  days  of  the  year.  So  that  we  are  all moving;  we  are  flitting  along  through  space.  And  as  we  are traveling  through  space,  so  we  are  moving  through  time  at  an incalculable  rate.  Oh!  what  an  idea  it  is  could  we  grasp  it!  We are  all  being  carried  along  as  if  by  a  giant  angel,  with  broad  out-stretched wings;  which  he  flaps  to  the  blast,  and,  flying  before  the lightning,  makes  us  ride  on  the  wind.  The  whole  multitude  of  us are  hurrying  along, - whither,  remains  to  be  decided  by  the  test  of our  faith  and  the  grace  of  God;  but  certain  it  is,  we  are  all  traveling. Your  pulses  each  moment  beat  the  funeral  marches  to  the  tomb. You  are  chained  to  the  chariot  of  rolling  time.  There  is  no  bridling the  steeds,  or  leaping  from  the  chariot;  you  must  be  constantly  in motion. Spurgeon.

"Life is passing quickly as a vapor" 

Life - New and Old

Do unto others...

        There  have  been  human  hearts,  constituted  just  like  ours,  for six  thousand  years.  The  same  stars  rise  and  set  upon  this globe  that  rose  upon  the  plains  of  Shinar  or  along  the Egyptian  Nile;  and  the  same  sorrows  rise  and  set  in  every  age. All  that  sickness  can  do,  all  that  disappointment  can  effect,  all that  blighted  love,  disappointed  ambition,  thwarted  hope,  ever did,  they  do  still.  Not  a  tear  is  wrung  from  eyes  now,  that,  for  the same  reason,  has  not  been  wept  over  and  over again  in  long  succession since  the  hour  that  the  fated  pair  stepped  from  paradise,  and  gave their posterity  to  a  world  of  sorrow  and  suffering.  The  head  learns  new things;  but  the  heart forevermore  practices  old  experiences.  Therefore our  life  is  but  a  new  form  of  the  way  men  have  lived  from  the beginning. H.  W.  Beecher.

Building Up Life

        Tiniest  insects  build  up  loftiest  mountains.  Broad  bands of  solid  rock,  which  undergird  the  earth,  have  been  welded  by  the  patient,  constant  toil  of  invisible  creatures,  working  on  through  the  ages,  unhasting,  unresting,  fulfilling  their  Maker's will.  On  the  shores  of  primeval  oceans,  watched  only  by  the patient  stars,  these  silent  workmen  have  been  building  for  us  the structure  of  the  world.  And  thus  the  obscure  work  of  unknown nameless  ages  appears  at  last  in  the  sunlight,  the  adorned  and  noble theater  of  that  life  of  man,  which,  of  all  that  is  done  in  this  universe, is  fullest  before  God  of  interest  and  hope.  It  is  thus,  too,  in  life. The  quiet  moments  build  the  years.  The  labors  of  the  obscure  and unremembered  hours  edify  that  palace  of  the  soul,  in  which  it  is  to abide,  and  fabricate  the  organ  whereby  it  is  to  work  and  express itself  through  eternity. J.  B.  Brown.

Pat Barrett sings "Build My Life''

Nature And Man

       Come  with  me  to  the  Yosemite   Valley;  yonder  stands  El  Capitan - the   atmosphere  so  clear,  it  seems   as   though  you  might  strike it  with  a  stone.     Approach  nearer;  how  it   looms   up;  how  it  grows and  widens;  how  grand!     See  yonder   those  shrubs  in  the  crevice - shrubs?     They  are  trees,  a  hundred  feet  in  height,  three  feet  and more  in  diameter.     Do   you   see  that   bend  in  the  face  of  the  rock? That  is  a  fissure,  75  feet  wide.     Nearer  yet,  still  nearer.     It  seems  as if  you  might  touch  it  now  with  your  finger.      Stand  still  under  the shadow  of  El  Capitan.     A   plumb   line  from   the  summit  falls  fifty feet  from  the  base.     Now  look  up,  up,  up,  3,600  feet - two-thirds  of a  mile ‚Äî right  up.     How  grand  and  sublime!    Your  lips  quiver,  your nerves  thrill,  your  eyes  fill  with  tears,  and  you  understand   in  some degree  your  own  littleness.     "The  inhabitants  of  the  earth  are  but as  grasshoppers."     How  small  I  am!     I  could  not  climb  up  fifty  feet on  the  face  of  that  rock,  and  there  it   towers  above  me.      Yonder  is the  great  South  Dome,  rising  sheer  up  6,000  feet - more  than  a  mile, seamed  and  seared  by  the  storms  of  ages,  but  anchored  in  the  valley beneath.     There  are  the  Three  Brothers,   there   the   Cathedral  rocks and  spires,  there  the  Sentinel  Dome   and   the  Sentinel  Rock.     How magnificent!      See   yonder   the   wonderful   Yosemite  Falls  leaping through  a  gorge  eighteen  feet  before  it  strikes,  coming  down  like  sky-rockets, exploding  as  they  fall;  striking,  it  leaps  400  feet,  and  again it  leaps  600  feet.   More  than  half  a  mile the  water  pours  over.   What a  dash,  what  a  magnificent  anthem  ascending  to  the  great  Creator! Now  look  around  you  in  every  direction,  and  you  feel  the  littleness  of man.  Oh!  I  am  but  as  the  dust  in  the  balance,  but  as  the  small  dust in  the  balance;  but  God  created  man  in  His  own  image,  and  breathed into  his  nostrils  the  breath  of  life,  and  made  him - not  gave  him - but  made  him  a  living  soul;  therefore  I  am  a  man,  a  living  man,  but  that is  a  dead  rock.  I  am  a  living  man.  The  elements  shall  melt  with fervent  heat,  the  world  be  removed  like  a  cottage,  the  milky  way  shall shut  its  two  awful  arms  and  hush  its  dumb  prayer  forever,  but  I  shall live,  for  I  am  a  man  with  the  fire  of  God  in  me  and  a  spark  of  immortality that  will  never  go  out.  The  universe,  grand  and  magnificent and  sublime  as  it  is,  is  but  the  nursery  to  man's  infant  soul,  and  the child  is  worth  more  than  the  nursery;  therefore,  I,  a  living,  breathing, thinking,  hoping  man,  with  a  reason  capable  of  understanding,  in some  degree,  the  greatness  of  the  Almighty,  a  mind  capable  of  eternal development,  and  a  heart  capable  of  loving  Him,  am  worth  more than  all  God's  material  universe,  for  I  am  a man  with  a  destiny  before me  as  high  as  heaven  and  as  vast  as  eternity. John B. Gough.

(Yosemite National Park and Hymn by RadiantTV)

With  other  ministrations  thou,  O  Nature!
Healest  thy  wandering  and  distempered  child:
Thou  pourest  on  him  thy  soft  influences,
Thy  sunny  hues,  fair  forms,  and  breathing  sweets, -
Thy  melodies  of  woods,  and  winds,  and  waters
Till  he  relent,  and  can  no  more  endure
To  be  a  jarring  and  a  dissonant  thing
Amid  this  general  dance  and  minstrelsy;
But,  bursting  into  tears,  wins  back  his  way,
His  angry  spirit  healed  and  harmonized
By  the  benignant  touch  of  love  and  beauty.

by Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge.

Life A Journey

Life a race from start to finish!

        Life  is  a  journey,  the  end  is  nearing.  It  is  a  race,  the  goal  will soon  be  reached.  It  is  a  voyage,  the  port  will  soon  be  in  sight.  Time is  but  a  narrow  isthmus  between  two  eternities.  You  are  going  surely How  many  things  you  have  already  left  behind! - the  old  home, friends,  parents,  scenes  of  childhood  and  early  years.  How  much  of the  way  you  have  passed  over!  You  will never  return  to  the  place from  which  you  started.  You  are  going  on,  and  on,  and  away  from all  your  early  years.  It  is  a  startling  thought,  that  our  business  will soon  be left  behind;  that  our work  will  be  done,  and  that  we  shall leave  this  stage  of  being - leave  it  forever - our  homes  and  cares,  and all  the  interests  that  engage  us  here,  and  never  more  come  back.  It is  an  amazing thought  that  we,  if  we  are  Christians,  shall  soon  be  in heaven.  Think  of  it!  Time  and  all  its  opportunities  passed  forever! The  suns  and  moons  and  stars  all  behind  us;  springs  and  summers and  autumns  all  gone;  the  sights  and  sounds  of  earth  all  passed away !  Soon - very  soon - shall  we  be  in  heaven.  "We  shall  see  God, we  shall  behold  Christ  in  His  glory,  we  shall  look  upon  the  angels. Mothers  will  be  searching  for  their  children,  and  husbands  and  wives will  find  each  other;  and  all  hands,  parted  in  Christ,  will  be  clasped again.  It  is  like  coming  into  port  after  an  ocean  voyage.  The  shining shore-line,  how  it  grows  on  the  waiting  eye!  The  joy  will  be  like that  with  which  the  Crusaders  first  saw  Jerusalem. Rev.  C.  L  Goodell,  D.  D.

The Figure of Christ

Monsignor Bonomelli, in a letter read at the World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh, June, 1910, said:

       Jesus has, in reality, not vanished either from history, or from the life of Christianity. He lives at all times in millions of souls. He is enthroned as King in all hearts. The figure of Christ has not the cold splendor of a distant star, but the warmth of a heart which is near us, a flame burning in the soul of believers and keeping alive their con- sciences. Putting aside certain opinions, which, honored at the moment, may possibly be abandoned to-morrow, criticism had hoped to effect a complete demolition of the conception of Christ, but what criticism really demolished was merely irrelevant matter. The figure of Christ, after all the onslaughts of criticism, now stands forth more pure and divine than ever and compels our adoration. 

• Christ Lives In Me by George Toews
• Christ Lives In Me
• What Is Love?

 Rend Collective - Christ Lives In Me (Audio)

The Poverty Which Maketh Many Rich

       We sometimes come across passages in the Bible with statements that are antithetical and which seem really to contradict one another. One of these is found in 2 Cor. 6, 10: “As poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.” “How shall we explain this?” How can such a thing be possible?” you ask. Well, let us look into the matter a little. Let us take our dear Savior as an illustration. Surely, He could be said to be poor during His state of humiliation here on earth! His first days on earth were spent in a manger, for there was not room for Him — as it seemed, on account of His poverty — in the inn. Even after having taken up His Messianic calling, this poverty pursued Him. When, for instance, the representatives of the government asked of Him the tribute-money, the common treasury of Jesus and the little group of disciples was found to be empty, so that Peter must needs be sent to procure the necessary coin through a miracle that Jesus wrought. At another instance, Jesus Himself said: “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no where to lay His head.”
      Yes, He was poor, and yet, did He not make many rich? Could we have asked the hungering multitude in the wilderness after they had filled, and the twelve basketfuls had been gathered of pieces left over from five loaves and two fishes; or the frightened disciples on the Sea of Galilee, whose lives had been saved by the stilling of the tempest; the widow of Nain, whose only son, having been dead, was returned to her living; Lazarus and his sisters after the former had been called forth out of the tomb, — their answer would surely have been in the affirmative. Again, the woman taken in sin to whom Jesus said: “Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more;” the malefactor on the cross receiving the forgiveness of his sins and the assurance of a place with Christ and Paradise– in short, the multitude of weary and with sin heavy-laden souls, to each of whom Jesus spoke words of hope, of peace, of joy, saying: “Be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee,” — could we have asked all these, they would surely have answered that Jesus had, in truth, made them “rich;” that there are no riches to be compared with those that we receive from Him, “who, though immeasurably rich, was made poor for our sakes.”

       But how shall we, who are poor, make many rich? By becoming truly “poor in spirit,” by realizing that we have, indeed, nothing in ourselves. When we have come to that point, realizing that we are poor and helpless, yea, destitute in ourselves, then the Lord can fill our hearts with “riches” that know no measure, with treasures that fade not away, “that neither moth nor rust can corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.” From such a storehouse of real treasures we are then enabled, through the grace of God, to “make many rich.” Sermon by Rev. Carl J. Segerhammer.

"I Surrender All''

        "I Surrender All" is a Christian hymn, with words written by American art teacher and musician Judson W. Van DeVenter (1855–1939), who subsequently became a music minister and evangelist. It was put to music by Winfield S. Weeden (1847–1908), and published in 1896.

Van DeVenter said of the inspiration for the text:

"For some time, I had struggled between developing my talents in the field of art and going into full-time evangelistic work. At last the pivotal hour of my life came, and I surrendered all. A new day was ushered into my life. I became an evangelist and discovered down deep in my soul a talent hitherto unknown to me. God had hidden a song in my heart, and touching a tender chord, He caused me to sing.^"

       Judson Van DeVenter was born on a farm in Michigan in 1855. Following graduation from Hillsdale College, he became an art teacher and supervisor of art in the public schools of Sharon, Pennsylvania. He was, in addition, an accomplished musician, singer, and composer. Van DeVenter was also an active layman in his Methodist Episcopal Church, involved in the church's evangelistic meetings. Recognizing his talent for the ministry, friends urged him to give up teaching and become an evangelist. Van DeVenter wavered for five years between becoming a recognized artist or devoting himself to ministry. Finally, he surrendered his life to Christian service, and wrote the text of the hymn while conducting a meeting at the Ohio home of noted evangelist George Sebring.

       Following his decision to surrender his life to the Divine, Van DeVenter traveled throughout the United States, England, and Scotland, doing evangelistic work. Winfield S. Weeden, his associate and singer, assisted him for many years. Toward the end of his life, Van DeVenter moved to Florida, and was professor of hymnology at the Florida Bible Institute for four years in the 1920s. After his retirement, he remained involved in speaking and in religious gatherings. Van DeVenter published more than 60 hymns in his lifetime, but "I Surrender All" is his most famous.

       "I Surrender All" was put to music by Weeden, and first published in 1896 in Gospel Songs of Grace and Glory, a collection of old and new hymns by various hymnists, compiled by Weeden, Van DeVenter, and Leonard Weaver, and published by Sebring Publishing Co. The following year, Van DeVenter and Weeden also published their jointly written gospel hymn "Sunlight". Weeden, born in Ohio in 1847, taught in singing schools prior to becoming an evangelist, and was a noted song leader and vocalist. Weeden published many hymns in several volumes, including The Peacemaker (1894), Songs of the Peacemaker (1895), and Songs of Sovereign Grace (1897). His tombstone is inscribed with the title of this hymn, "I Surrender All". Read more . . .

• The Story Behind The Song - "I Surrender All"

       "Music video by Bill & Gloria Gaither performing I Surrender All (feat. The Isaacs) [Live]. (P) (C) 2012 Spring House Music Group. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is a violation of applicable laws. Manufactured by EMI Christian Music Group."

Falling Face Forward

 It is better to keep one's face forward, even tho we can not see all that is before us. Tho we grope blindly, if we still steadily climb upward and onward, seeking to do God's will, we may be sure he will bring us to our desired goal. There are times when the greatest souls pass through experiences like those about which Tennyson writes:

I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope through darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.

Life A River

      Pliny compares life to a river. The river, small and clear in its origin, gushes forth from rocks, falls into deep glens, and wantons and meanders through a wild and picturesque country; nourishing only the uncultivated tree or flower by its dew or spray. In this, in its state of infancy and youth, it may be compared to the human mind, in which fancy, and strength of imagination, are predominant: it is more beautiful than usual. When the different rills or torrents join, and descend into the plain, it becomes slow and stately in its motions, and able to bear upon its bosom the stately barge. In this mature state, it is deep, strong, and useful. As it flows on towards the sea, it loses its force and its motion, and at last, as it were becomes lost and mingled with the mighty abyss if waters. -Sir Humphery Davy

"I've got a river of life flowing within me" hymn

Springtime

pansy boarder.

       Springtime has come, and as we go out into nature, we receive on every hand evidences of a new life: the flowers and the trees with their sweet fragrance and fresh, exuberant verdure: the balmy breezes about you; the rippling brooklet at your feet; the music of the feathered concert overhead. All bear testimony, in a language without words, yet none the less forceful, that spring, the happiest season of the year, has come, and with it new life and new hopes.

      But there is one thing we must not overlook in these our observations of nature, and that is the thankfulness for this new life that goes up from all these creatures of nature, animate and inanimate, to God, their Maker. We can read it in the sweet, blushing petals of the flower, the merry rippling of the brook, the early morning hymn of praise from the birds in the thicket. Again, when the hungry throat of the little nestling is filled by the mouthful of food the mother-bird brings, and the excited chirping at once ceases, and quite satisfaction takes its place, can we not again see a thanksgiving to Him who clothes the lilies of the field, and without whose will no sparrow falls to the earth?

       Now, dear reader, there is a lesson to draw from this. You may be a young man or a young woman, and consequently in the springtime of your life. And as you have enjoyed to the fullest extent, during these balmy days, the beauties of nature, you have found your own being throbbing with new life, and you have been thrilled at the thought of that life’s possibilities. But have you stopped to ask yourself whether or not you, like all these creatures of nature, have returned thanks to your Maker for the new life, hopes and possibilities that are yours? says David. May that be the lesson that springtime brings us! Sermon by Rev. Carl J. Segerhammer.

More Sermons by Segerhammer:

• Perseverance Conquers or "perseverado vincit!"
• Behold, We Go Up To Jerusalem!
• The Poverty Which Maketh Many Rich

The Early Eden Picture

"Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame." Genesis 2: 25. (NIV)

 

"I think that if ever a mortal
heard the voice of God
it would be in a garden at
the cool of the day."
Moore.

        But one will never get to understand this Jesus until he gets a good look at man as he was once, and as he is now. The key to understanding Jesus is man, even as Jesus is the key to God. One must use both keys to get into the inner heart of God. To get hold of that first key one must go back to the start of things. The old Book of God opens with a picture that is fascinating in its simplicity and strength. There is an unfallen man. He is fresh from the hand of God, free of scar and stain and shrivelling influence. He is in a garden. He is walking hand in hand with God, and working side by side with God: friendship and partnership. Friends in spirit: partners in service.
       The distinctive thing about the man is that he is like God. He and God are alike. In this he differs from all creation. He is God's link between Himself and His Creation. Particular pains is taken by repetition and change of phrase to make clear and emphatic that it was in the very image of God that man was made. Just what does it mean that we men were made in God's likeness? Well, the thing has been discussed back and forth a good bit. Probably we will not know fully till we know as we are known. In the morning when we see Him we shall be like Him fully again. Then we'll know. That morning's sun will clear up a lot of fog. But a few things can be said about it now with a positiveness that may clear the air a bit, and help us recognize the dignity of our being, and behave accordingly.
       Man came into being by the breath of God. God breathed Himself into man. The breath that God breathed out came into man as life. The very life of man is a bit of God. Man is of the essence of God. Every man is the presence-chamber of God. 
       God is a Spirit. Man is a Spirit. He lives in a body. He thinks through a mind. He is a spirit, using the body as a dwelling-place, and the mind as his keenest instrument. All the immeasurable possibilities and capacities of spirit being are in man.
      God is an infinite spirit. That is, we cannot understand Him fully. He is very close to us. The relationship is most intimate, and tender, yet His fullness is ever beyond our grasp and our ken, Man is infinite in that he knows that God is infinite. Only like can appreciate like. He can appreciate that he cannot appreciate God, except in part. He understands that he does not understand God save in smaller part. He knows enough to love passionately. And through loving as well as through knowing he knows that there is infinitely more that he does not know. Only man of all earth's creation knows this. In this he is like God. The difference between God and man here is in the degree of infinity. That degree of difference is an infinite degree. Yet this is the truth. But more yet: man has this same quality wayward. He is infinite in that he cannot be fully understood in his mental processes and motives. He is beyond grasp fully by his fellow. Even one's most intimate friend who knows most and best must leave unknown more than is known. 
       God is an eternal spirit. He has always lived. He will live always. He knows no end, at either end. All time before there was time, and after the time-book is shut, is to Him a passing present. Man is an eternal spirit, because of God. He will know no end. He will live always because the breath of God is his very being.
       God is love. He yearns for love. He loves. And more, He is love. Man is like God in his yearning for love, in his capacity for love, and in his lovableness. Man must love. He lives only as he loves. True love, and only that, is the real life. He will give up everything for love. He is satisfied only as he loves and finds love. To love is greater than to be loved. One cannot always have both. God does not. But every one may love. Every one does love. And only as there is love, pure and true — however overlaid with what is not so — only so is there life.
       God is holy. That word seems to include purity and righteousness. There is utter absence of all that should not be. There is in Him all that should be, and that in fullness beyond our thinking. Man was made holy. There is in the Genesis picture of Eden a touch that for simplicity and yet for revealing the whole swing of moral action is most vivid. In the presence of conditions where man commonly, universally, the world around, and time through, has been and is most sensitive to suggestion of evil there is with this first man the utter absence of any thought of evil. In the light of after history there could be no subtler, stronger statement than this of his holiness, his purity, at this stage.
       And in his capacity for holiness, in that intensest longing for purity, and loathing of all else, that comes as the Spirit of God is allowed sway, is revealed again the capacity for God-likeness. It is the prophetic dawn within of that coming Eden when again we shall see His face, and have the original likeness fully restored.
       God is wise, all-wise. Among the finest passages of the Christian's classic are those that represent God as personified wisdom. And here wisdom includes all knowledge and justice. That the Spirit of God breathed into man His own mental life is stated most keenly by the man who proverbially embodied in himself this quality of wisdom. "The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord searching out the innermost parts." The allusion is clearly to intellectual powers. There is in man the same quality of mental keenness that searches into things as is in God. It is often dulled, gripped by a sort of stupor, so overlaid you would hardly guess it was there. But, too, as we all know, it often shines out with a startling brilliance. It is less in degree than with God, but it is the same thing, a bit of God in man. This explains man's marvelous achievements in literature, in invention, in science, and in organization.
       Two light master-strokes of the etching point in the Eden picture reveal the whole mental equipment of the man. The only sayings of Adam's preserved for us are when God brought to him the woman. She is the occasion for sayings that reveal the mental powers of this first man. Fittingly it is so. Woman, when true to herself,  has ever been the occasion for bringing out the best in man. "And the man said, this time it is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; this shall be called woman, because out of man was this one taken. Therefore doth a man leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife, and they become one flesh." . . . "And the man called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living." Here is revealed at a glance the keen mental powers at work. Here is the simplicity of statement that marks the speech of strong men. The whole forest is in a single acorn. The whole of a human life is in the primal cell. The chemist knows the whole body by looking into one drop of blood. Here is revealed in one glance the whole man. Mark the keen sense of fitness in the naming of woman — the last and highest creation. Adam was a philologist. His mind was analytical. Inferentially the same keen sense of fitness guided in all the names he had chosen. Here is recognition of the plan for the whole race, a simple unlabored foresight into its growth. A man's relation to his wife, his God-chosen friend, as being the closest of life, and above all others is recognized, together with the consequent obligation upon him. She comes first of all. She becomes the first of all his relationships. The man and the woman — one man and one woman — united, make the true unit of society. Any disturbance of that strikes at the very vitals of society.
       And God is a Sovereign — the sovereign of the vast swing of worlds. Man likewise is a sovereign in the realm of nature, and over all the lower creation. He was given dominion, kingship, over all the earth-creation. Man is a king. He is of the blood royal. He was made to command, to administrate, to reign. He is the judge of last appeals on the bench of earth.
       But there is more here. The chief characteristic of an absolute sovereign is the imperial power to choose, to decide. Man was made an absolute sovereign in his own will. God is the absolute sovereign. He has made man an absolute sovereign in one realm, that of his will, his power of choice. There is one place where man reigns alone, an absolute autocrat, where not even God can come save as the autocrat desires it, that is in his will. And if that "can" bother you, remember that it was God's sovereign act that made it so. So that God remains sovereign in making man a sovereign in the realm of his will. There every man sits in imperial solitude.
       Here then is the picture of man fresh from the hand of God. A spirit, in a body, with an unending life, partly infinite, like God in his capacity for love, for holiness, and wisdom, with the gift of sovereignty over the lower creation, and in his own will. Like Him too in his capacity for fellowship with God. For only like can have fellowship with like. It is only in that in which we are alike that we can have fellowship. These two, God and man, walking side by side, working together, friendship in spirit; partnership in service.
       This man is in a garden of trees and bushes, with fruit and flowers and singing birds, roses with no pricking thorns, soft green with no weeds, and no poison ivy, for there is no hate. And he is walking with God, talking familiarly as chosen friend with choicest friend. Together they work in the completion of creation. God brings His created beings one by one to man to be catalogued and named, and accepts his decisions. What a winsome picture. These two, God and a man in His likeness, walking and working side by side; likeness in being; friendship, fellowship in spirit; partnership, comradeship in service. And this is God's thought for man! Gordon.

Spiritural Flood-Tide

      "I stood on the coast of England, and looked out over a stretch of oozy slime and ill-smelling mud. There were the barges high and dry, lying on their side–no matter what cargo they carried or how skillful the captain, they were on the mud. It would have availed them nothing to heave the anchor or hoist the sail. And I thought, What is the remedy? Were it any use for the corporation to pass a by-law that every citizen should bring kettles filled with water, and pour it out upon the stretch of mud? 

      But as I watched I saw the remedy. God turned the tide. In swept the waters of the sea, and buried the mud, and then came the breath of sweetness and life. And it flowed in about the barges, and instantly all was activity. Then heave-ho with the anchor, then hoist the sails, then forth upon some errand of good. So it is that we stand looking out upon many a dreadful evil which fills us with dismay–drunkenness, gambling, sexual impurity. Is there any remedy? And the churches, so very respectable, but, alas, high and dry on the muddy beach–for these too, what is the remedy? We want the flood-tide–the gracious outpouring of the Spirit; then must come the roused and quickened churches, the Christians transformed into Christ-like men and women who shall demand righteousness."  Mark Guy Pearce. 

Jesus is God following us up...

"We sinned for no reason but an incomprehensible lack of love, and He saved
us for no reason but an incomprehensible excess of love." Peter Kreeft

        You see, the heart of God had been breaking - is breaking over the ways things have been going  down on this planet. Folk fail to understand  Him. Worse yet, they misunderstand Him, and  feel free to criticize Him. Nobody has been so much slandered as God. Many are utterly ignorant of Him. Many others who are not ignorant yet ignore Him. They turn their faces and backs. Some give Him the cut direct. The great crowd in every part of the world is yearning after Him: piteously, pathetically, most often speechlessly yearning, blindly groping along, with an intense inner tug after Him. They know the yearning. They feel the inner, upward tug. They don't understand what it is for which they yearn, nor what will satisfy.

       For man was made to live in closest touch with God. That is his native air. Out of that air his lungs are badly affected. This other air is too heavy. It's malarial, and full of gases and germy dust. In it he chokes and gasps. Yet he knows not why. He gropes about in the night made by his own shut eyes. He doesn't seem to know enough to open them. And sometimes he will not open them. For the hinge of the eye-lid is in the will. And having shut the light out, he gets tangled up in his ideas as to what is light. He puts darkness for light, and light for darkness.
       Once man knew God well; close up. And that means loved, gladly, freely. For here to know is to love. But one day a bad choice was made. And the choice made an ugly kink in his will. The whole trouble began there. A man sees through his will. That is his medium for the transmission of light. If it be twisted, his seeing, his understanding, is twisted. The twist in the will regulates the twist in the eye. Both ways, too, for a good change in the will in turn changes the eyes back to seeing straight. He that is willing to do the right shall clearly see the light.
       But that first kink seems to have been getting worse kinked ever since. And so man does not see God as He is. Man is cross-eyed Godward, but doesn't know it. Man is color-blind toward God. The blue of God's truth is to him an arousing, angering red. The soft, soothing green of His love becomes a noisy, irritating yellow. Nobody has been so much misunderstood as God. He has suffered misrepresentation from two quarters: His enemies and His friends. More from - which? Hard to tell. Jesus is God trying to tell men plainly what He is really like.
       The world turned down the wrong lane, and has been going that way pell-mell ever since. Yet so close is the wrong lane to the right that a single step will change lanes. Though many results of being in the wrong lane will not be changed by the change of lanes. It takes time to rest up the feet made sore by the roughness of the wrong lane. And some of the scars, where men have measured their length, seem to stay.
       The result of that wrong turning has been pitiable. Separation from God, so far as man could make separation. There is no separation on God's part. He has never changed. He remains in the world, but because of man's turning his face away, He remains as a stranger, unrecognized. He remains just where man left Him. And any one going back to that point in the road will find Him standing waiting with an eager light glistening in His eyes. No! That's not accurate. He is a hit nearer than ever He was. He is following us up. He is only a step off. Jesus is God eagerly following us up. S. D. Gordon

Faith Taught by Nature

       Faith bids us be of good cheer. Long ago, that old Greek studied the mental operations of a bee, with brain not as large as a pin-head. Here is a little bee, that organizes a city, that builds ten thousand cells for honey, twelve thousand cells for larvae, a holy of holies for the mother queen; a little bee that observes the increasing heat and when the wax may melt and the honey be lost, organizes the swarm into squads, puts sentinels at the entrances, glues the feet down, and then with flying wings, creates a system of ventilation to cool the honey, that makes an electric fan seem tawdry– a little honey-bee that will include twenty square miles in the field over whose flowers it has oversight. But if a tiny brain in a bee performs such wonders providential, who are you, that you should question the guidance of God? Lift up your eyes, and behold the hand that supports these stars, without pillars, the God who guides the planets without collision. Away with fear! -N. D. Hillis.

Life A Stream

       Life bears us on like the stream of a mighty river. Our boat at first glides down the narrow channel, through the playful murmuring of the little brook and the winding of its grassy boarders. The trees shed their blossoms over young heads: the flowers on the brink seem to offer themselves to the young hands. We are happy in hope, and we grasp eagerly at the beauties around us; but the stream hurries on, and still our hands are empty. Our course in youth and manhood is along a wider and deeper flood, amid objects more striking and magnificent. We are animated at the moving pictures, and enjoyments and industry passing us; we are excited at some short-lived disappointment. The stream bears us on; and our joys and griefs are alike left behind us. We may be shipwrecked; but we cannot be delayed. Whether rough or smooth, the river hastens to its home, till the roar of the ocean is in our ears, and the tossing of the waves is beneath our feet, and the land lessens from our eyes, and the floods are lifted up around us; and we take our leave of earth and its inhabitants until, of our future voyage, there is no witness save the Infinite and Eternal. Bishop Herber

"For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him." Colossians 1:16 (New International Version)

 "Lord Reign In Me" by Brenton Brown

Heaven A Locality

Outer space

       I am at a loss to understand why there should be difficulty in receiving the idea of heaven a locality - a fact of materiality, within the domain of physics, equally positive with the existence of Jupiter or Saturn, Venus or Uranus. The telescope, it is most true, has given wondrous revelations of the magnitude and the magnificence of God's glorious universe; but even that has not been able to reveal the secrets of the milky way, nor to calculate the distances of the nearest of the fixed stars, as the astronomer will tell you. But when we come to think, as is most probably true in fact, that with all the wonders thus laid open to our view - and they are most stupendous - we stand as yet but within the vestibule of God's great temple. Like Newton, we saunter along picking up here and there a pebble from the shore, the great ocean of truth meanwhile lying all unexplored beyond us. I doubt not that, could we but see them, as in prophetic vision, we should behold myriads upon myriads of shining orbs peopling the infinitudes of space, and of which the most accurate of all the sciences has not conceived the most remote idea. Inasmuch, then, as we as yet know nothing in comparison of what yet remains to be revealed to the eye of science, how dare we presume to say that the idea of heaven as a locality is a Utopian figment of the imagination - a mere poetic creation? We have picked up a sand or two from the beach, and say these are all there is of them! We have become slightly acquainted with the wonders of this, our own solar universe, and from that premise attempt the impossible feat of proving a negative, predicating the non-existence of any other!

       Most assuredly, since God has found place for the worlds we do see, He is of might sufficient to the finding of room in the vast depths of space for the heaven or heavens which at present we do not see? Rev. W. H. Cooper, D. D.

"The Only Scars In Heaven" sung by Casting Crowns.