Jeremiah 28

Jeremiah 28:1-17

THE RIGHT TOWARD Jeremiah 28:1 to Jeremiah 29:32THE profession of the ministry involves the consideration and treatment of most important subjects. There are occasions, however, when he feels the weight of his profession and knows that the crisis hour is on and yearns to so deliver his soul as to stir, inspire and instruct those who hear him. Three such occasions have influenced pulpit-custom throughout the length and breadth of Christendom: Christmas Sunday, Easter Sunday, and Thanksgiving Thursday make heavy drafts upon the minister’s mind and spirit; yea, even upon his body. The Virgin Birth of Christ and His Resurrection from the grave are the focii of His Deity. To fix positively these points is to make certain the circle of Christian truth.But there are other occasions when the call of the Master demands not only one’s best thought, one highest endeavor, but also the selection and treatment of such Scriptures as shall stir and profit the people who have elected to wait upon that particular pulpit.Thanksgiving is such an hour as this, because it brings an opportunity to realize the goodness of God, and an obligation to put that realization into the form of praise.The members of this congregation will doubtless admit that the pastor has attempted to make those first Sundays in March, that mark the accumulating anniversaries of our relation as Pastor and people, the occasion of deeply felt and far-reaching influence.The Sunday also that inaugurates the New Year is not to be meanly thought of, nor superficially employed! A year is a considerable section of a human life. If we successfully run the gauntlet of youthful diseases and dangers, we are still supposed to have assurance of only about seventy of them, and are the subjects of congratulation and of increasing pride if we pass far beyond eighty.It is little wonder, therefore, that Moses should have prayed, “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom”; for the man or woman who numbers the days will value the year.I speak, therefore, this morning not with a view to mere immediate results, but with an eye upon the year 1932; and I bring a subject that is particularly opportune.There have been few periods in American history when the consideration of this theme,“The Right Attitude Toward Adversity” was more pertinent than now.We are not only passing through what men call a time of financial depression, but the world itself is being chilled to its marrow by the cold waters of adversity that come not alone in shortage of cash receipts, but also appear in those far more dangerous features of social confusion, increasing crime, general lawlessness, and moral atrophy.The consequence is that the biggest and most burning question of the day is this, “What does the future hold for us?” And yet, while that question looms, it is in no sense new; it is as old as the ages, and was the exact question that gave rise to the inspired history found in these two chapters, Jeremiah 28, 29.With some painstaking, therefore, let us look diligently into them to discover, if possible, the way through the darkness, the way into light.In seeking to extract the secrets of these two chapters I shall employ three key phrases: The Speech of the Uninspired; The Response of the Inspired; and The Uses of Adversity.THE SPEECH OF THE Bible study demands that those who engage in it be broad awake. The sleepy student may easily mistake its meaning.

For instance, we are told here that “It came to pass the same year, in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah” that Hananiah, the son of Azur the Prophet, spake, saying, “Thus speaketh the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, saying”, etc.Immediately the intelligent student senses a deception. Hananiah is not a prophet of God; he is a false prophet instead. All the features of the false prophet are found in him.First of all, he professes to speak as from God.“Thus speaketh the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, saying”. You will search in vain to find any Divine commission for this man, or any Divine communication to him.On more than one occasion Jesus warned against “the false prophet”; and He gave us criterions by which to measure them. The false prophet has characterized every century. He lived in Moses’ day, and to some degree duplicated, in appearance at least, the marvelous works that God wrought at Moses’ hand.He lived in Daniel’s day and performed the function of a spirit medium, professing especially to be expert in interpreting dreams and fortune telling. He lived in Jeremiah’s day. The Lord said to Jeremiah, “The prophets * * prophesy falsely in My Name; I have not sent them”.The twentieth century has its full quota of the same; men who are in the ministry, but admit that they entered it at the option of their own judgment; men who deny the great essentials of the Christian faith,—repudiating the Virgin Birth, the Miracle Working, the voluntary and sacrificial Death of Christ, His Conquest against the grave, and His Ascension to the right hand of the Father. And yet, like Hananiah, they claim to know and declare the will and Word of God.

It is a wretched affrontery; it is a bold defiance of God to His face; it is only a flaunting of a personal opinion, and the attempt to add weight to the same by attributing their words to the Divine One.In the next place he presents a very pleasing prospect. “I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon”. If there is one mark of the false prophet that is more unmistakable than another, it is his eternal custom of telling people palatable things.What good news—the yoke of Babylon broken!

What pleasing prospect—two years and every Israelite back in his own land! That was indeed a winsome proclamation! We can imagine the huzzahs of the croud! We can readily understand that Hananiah would be in uniform demand as an after-dinner speaker. Every commercial club in town would invite him, and the leading politicians would send him word to come and sit in, and counsel with them, and the throngs would seek the place of his public appearances.We have had a man in Minneapolis who, in recent years, has been telling the people who attend upon his ministry that humanity was God, and multitudes of them accepted the announcement with joy, pleased with the oratory with which the deception was phrased. It is one evidence of our fall that we so delight in flattery, one proof of our degradation that we hail, with pleasure, the ideas that cater to the flesh.A few years ago a popular pastor in a supposedly evangelical pulpit, concluding the same for a professorship in a Chicago Theological Seminary, gave as his parting counsel to the congregation that had already too long followed his pulpit advices this:“I have not pled with you to believe in God; I have not asked you to bring your sins to be forgiven, primarily.

I have not asked you to believe in the reality of the spiritual world; I have asked you to believe in yourselves, in the divinity of man, in the greatness of the human soul. Those who can see the infinite reach of themselves can see God; can assure themselves that the spiritual world is open to them.

Men are what they are because of the fatal disbelief in their own divinity!”What a subtle appeal to human pride!And yet one would search every true Prophet of the Old Testament in vain for such a sentiment; but the moment he quit the true Prophets, and gave audience to those of the Hananiah sort, he would detect a kindred note. In fact, he would be listening to the same satanic lullaby intended by the prophet himself to please the people, and employed by the adversary to induce in them sound sleep.But still further, This prophet voiced a most politic appeal.“I will bring again to this place, Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah” (Jeremiah 28:4). Jeconiah had been a popular king, but had gone as a captive into Babylonian slavery. It would be difficult to imagine any announcement that would be hailed with more pleasure. The Jewish people would prize the lips that uttered it and suppose that, in the man who promised it, they had found the benefactor of their race.But what is more cruel than to excite expectations that can never be realized, and to build up hopes that hard history must dash to the ground?THE OF THE “Then the Prophet Jeremiah said”. This is God’s man; we will do well to hear now! Mark you, he is speaking, first of all, to the self-appointed prophet Hananiah, and doing it “in the presence of the priests”, and “in the presence of ah the people that stood in the House of the Lord”. And this is what he said,“Amen: the Lord do so: the Lord perform thy words which thou hast prophesied, to bring again the vessels of the Lord’s House, and all that is carried away captive, from Babylon into this place. “Nevertheless hear thou now this Word that I speak in thine ears, and in the ears of all the people; “The Prophets that have been before me and before thee of old prophesied both against many countries, and against great kingdoms, of war, and of evil, and of pestilence”. That is the province of the true Prophet! How glad he would be if the pleasing thing could come to pass; how glad he would be for God’s people if they were to be immediately recipients of the Divine favor; how glad he would be if God’s man would, within a few weeks, come back to the throne.At this point the true Prophet is often misunderstood! God’s man has to affirm evil whether he desires it or not; if it be God’s Word, even though it be to make himself unpopular with the people.No man ever lived who loved as Christ loved; no man ever lived who loathed disease as Christ loathed it. He saw in it the very devil’s work and declared of its every feature that it was the product of demonism. No man ever lived who desired for the people good as Christ desired it for them. When He saw them hungry He created fish and bread.

When He saw them cold He begged His own brethren not to keep two coats, but to pass on one to their needy fellows.And yet Christ was the very Man who, because He was God’s Prophet and could not lie, had to say to His own beloved people, “Ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: * * nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.

Then shall they deliver you up to he afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for thy Name’s sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold”.How pathetic! Every word of it burned His lips; every thought of it bled His heart, and He, as God’s Prophet, and in the interest of the men that He loved and the women for whom He was ready to lay down His life, He must tell the truth and speak no lie.What Hananiah had said, Jeremiah desired more than Hananiah a thousandfold, and that is why Jeremiah responded, “Amen: the Lord do so”.But, knowing as Jeremiah did know, that the false prophet had made a political appeal, he dared a very sensible suggestion, namely this,Time will distinguish the false from the true. Wait and see, was his counsel; if the word of the prophet shall come to pass, then shall the prophet be known, that the Lord has truly sent him.Time is necessarily a Divine test of prophecy; and time is also the eternal saviour of truth and the victorious enemy of falsehood.We are told that Michael Angelo was passing around one day through the studio criticizing the work of his young artists and seeking thereby to correct their faults and perfect their technique.

He came upon a work that one of them had just finished and that had been created for a committee who proposed to place the same in the public square. Upon inspection Angelo found it had grave defects.

He pointed them out to his young friend, but the exultant artist resented the criticism, and even charged his master with envy, imagining the perfection of his art had excited jealousy in the great soul.Angelo, listening until he had finished, quietly remarked, “Very well; the light of the public square will test it.”How true! “The light of the public square”—every prophet’s word is to be tested by that Light, and as time moves on if it be true, it will be found that prophecy was the mould of history and the people will accept him as true; but if it be discovered that he cried “Peace, peace; when there is no peace” that he promised prosperity when adversity was at hand, and declared God well-pleased with the people when their sins demanded His righteous wrath, time will tell. Time will show who has stood for and with the truth; time will vindicate truth’s advocates; time will uncover the falsehood; time will establish the truth.People have a custom of saying that error can run the world around while truth is getting on her boots. But it is a certainty that when truth gets them on, she will take the straight path and finally arrive.The true Prophet declared the coming of darker days. Hananiah spake saying, “I break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon from the neck of all nations within the space of two full years”.The Lord put it into Jeremiah’s lips to respond: “Go and tell Hananiah, saying, Thus saith the Lord: Thou hast broken the yokes of wood; but thou shalt make for them yokes of iron. “For thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel; I have put a yoke of iron upon the neck of all these nations, that they may serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; and they shall serve him” (Jeremiah 28:13-14). The Prophet who plainly declares the Divine procedure is not necessarily a Prophet of evil. There are conditions under which people are better for an iron yoke upon their necks than with no yoke at all, even as the tamed ox, accustomed to bear the yoke daily, becomes thereby a far better servant of his owner than is the unbroken steer who ranges the forests at will, or feeds on pastures green.The truth is that the dark days are commonly the best days. A few years ago many men multiplied fortunes. They forgot their ill-favored fellows; they despised the principle of fraternal obligation; they passed by the sick, wounded and impoverished, with averted face. Their eyes were upon one thing only, and that was the ever-rising heap of gold. They builded them mansions; they hired them servants; they invested thousands in magnificent cars and beautiful yachts, in summer cabins and winter havens.

And in it all they forgot God and when the crash is on, it comes about as in a letter of yesterday, saying of a personal friend, wife of one of these, “She is leaving her mansion for a humble home. Through the systematic robbery of a banker, her husband has lost three millions of dollars, and it looks as though the family would be reduced to poverty.”Doubtless to them that seems like the very sentence of doom. But who knows but it may be the beginning of the best days of their human history; and if it bring him to regard God, to sympathize with his fellows, and to serve his Lord, it will be. Christ once said, “What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter”.“Some day all doubt and mystery will be made clear: The threatening clouds which now we see will disappear, Some day what seems a punishment, or loss, or pain, Will prove to be God’s blessing sent for very gain— Some day our weary feet will rest in sweet content, And we will know how we are blest by what was sent, And looking back with clearer eyes o’er life’s short span, Will see with wondering, glad surprise God’s perfect plan, And knowing that the way we went was God’s own way, Will understand His wise intent.” This leads up, then, to the climax of this study:THE USES OF We doubt if a sounder philosophy has ever been spoken by the lips of man than Jeremiah here uttered.His speech involves three suggestions:Make the most of a bad matter!“Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, unto all that are carried away captives, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem unto Babylon; “Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them; “Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not diminished” (Jeremiah 29:4-6). Mark you, God is here speaking to His own people! He does not tell them to create a rebellion, to kill the king of Babylon, to crush Babylonish sovereignty, and to strike for freedom. On the other hand, He says, “You are in for it; your sins necessitate your condition; now make the most of it!”The best way in the world for a slave to be free is to make himself so useful that his master will appreciate him and show him constant favors.Build; plan; make the most of the present situation. It is sound counsel. My contention is that you cannot enslave a serviceable man; you cannot crush a creator; you cannot bemean the man of God.You can sell Joseph into Egypt; you can send Joseph into prison; you can temporarily discredit his good name; but you cannot keep Joseph down; his very honor will vindicate itself; his ability will be in demand, and his slavery will eventuate in sovereignty.When people, therefore, come to me with their complaints that they have never had an opportunity; they have never been appreciated; their abilities have never been recognized, I know full well where the evil lies. It is not with Babylon, bad as its slave-making and slave-holding principle is; it is with sinful Israel instead.

It is not with society; it is with the indigent or incompetent individual.We are told that water will rise to its level; and we know that if there be any considerable pressure of it, it will even tear its way through mountains in order to illustrate that principle of its existence. It is largely so with men.

Give me a man who can make the most of a bad matter, and I will show you one who, when opportunities of good come, will amaze his fellows and amass a fortune.Oliver Cromwell said, “I bless God I have been enured to difficulties, and I never found God failing when I trusted in Him.”Newspapers are full of predictions of business improvement. They blaze with the promises of brighter days. In the language of Jeremiah we say “Amen: the Lord do so”. But whether Hananiah’s predictions prove true, or the Jeremiah announcement of yet darker days to come should be demonstrated by time, this principle certainly is of the Lord, “make the most of the situation!”To me at least, one of the greatest poems ever penned is James Russell Lowell’s, “The Present Crisis”. There is not a verse of it but, at sometime, fits the human situation, and Lowell said:“Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, And the choice goes by forever ‘twixt that darkness and that light. “Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and ’tis prosperous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.” Be assured you build with and for your brethren.“Seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the Lord for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace”. There are some men who always want to change location. If they are in Minneapolis they would like to get into Chicago; if, in Chicago, they want to go to New York; if in New York, Seattle looks attractive; when once there, Los Angeles excites their longing.Such men have an idea that by searching they will finally find a satisfactory town. In my judgment, this text tells us exactly how to discover such. Help to create it, accept the city of which you are a resident, and seek its peace, and pray to the Lord for it, for in its prosperity and in its peace you shall find your own.Many years ago when New York was a miserable burg on Manhattan Island, a few Episcopalian men got together and organized Trinity Church. They selected for it a central and extensive site. They were doubtless regarded as benefactors of the village, and even, when their first modest buildings arose, as contributors to the possible future town.

And such they were indeed!But, all unintentionally, while they were building for the burg, they were building for themselves, and their successors an unthinkable fortune; for in New York’s prosperity Trinity prospered until it became the wealthiest corporation in the world.Those of us who belong to this generation have made sacrifices to create, at the center of this city, one of the most sightly and capacious of sanctuaries and educational plants known to America. Our task has not been a light one. In fact, it has lain, for lo nigh twenty years since first we began to acquire property in its interest, heavily upon the hearts and purses of those who have been most profoundly interested.When we come up to such a day as is this; when $15,000 more is demanded to meet our contract with money-lenders, we may wince under the weight of it, and even in the language of the martyrs of Revelation, cry, “How long, O Lord”! but the enheartening thought remains, and should ever be our adequate inspiration, that in building for this city such a center of Gospel preaching, and such schools for training the youth, we are contributing not alone to beautiful Minneapolis, and there our contribution is great; but we are also honoring and blessing ourselves, and providing for the future of our children and our successors in church-membership and educational work, benedictions beyond all the silver that her citizens carry in bags, and all the gold that her few dominating banks hold in their vaults.There are some of us whose hair has silvered while we wrought that these great buildings might be realized; some, whose shoulders have bent under the load; but I am sure that such are not complaining, and I am assured that certain of them feel concerning this whole enterprise as the unknown author expressed:“An old man going a lonely way, Came at the evening, cold and gray, To a chasm, vast and deep and wide. The old man crossed in the twilight dim; The sullen stream held no fears for him; But when he was safe on the other side, He builded a bridge to span the tide. “‘Old man, said a fellow-pilgrim near, ‘You are wasting your time while building here. You never again will pass this way: Your journey is done at the close of day. You have safely crossed to the other side; Why build you a bridge at eventide. “The builder lifted his old gray head; ‘Good friend, in the way I’ve come,’ he said, ‘There followeth after me today A youth whose feet must pass this way. This stream, which has been as nought to me, To the fair-haired youth might a pitfall be, He, too, must cross in the twilight dim; And so I am building the bridge for him.’” The last thing that Jeremiah sets before us is this thought: Trust God for the coming days!“For thus saith the Lord, That after seventy years he accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform My good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place. “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. “Then shall ye call upon Me, and ye shall go and pray unto Me, and I will hearken unto you. “And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall Search for Me with all your heart. “And I will be found of you, saith the Lord: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the Lord; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive” (Jeremiah 29:10-14). In looking back over the years I have a comfortable certainty of mind, that not one leading man of those who have made up the burden-bearers in the First Baptist Church ever undertook the task of these great buildings without a proper appreciation of its weight. You knew that we were putting our shoulders under no light load; you expected from the first that many of us would stagger before the task was finished, and you perfectly knew that some would fall, not to rise again; and others would desert their places, releasing their own shoulders at the expense of the bruised and bleeding ones of their brethren. But with all of that, full before us, we dared to undertake, and at the end of two decades of endeavor and seven years of the heaviest lifting, we are not tempted, even, to give up the task, and only the ignoble regret the endeavor.With our eyes lifted aloft we still trust and toil on, knowing full well that in our Heavenly Father we have a never-failing source of strength.W. Robertson Nichol, in one of his dissertations, tells us that the truest men work, not for reward, and scarcely straighten their backs from toil to admire the products of their endeavor; but press on, motived only by the will and desire of serving God; and then he says, “Such lives must draw, not from the shallow streams of life, but from the deep fountains that flow out of the throne.”Some of my brethren have said that we would not meet the $15,000 due against these buildings the coming week. If we do not, somebody will be to blame! How appropriate now the question, “Lord, is it I?”Instead of thinking so much upon our inability, and attempting to excuse our failure on that ground, would it not be better to get the view that the canny Scotch servant finally secured?For this story Campbell Morgan is my authority: “Some years ago, in Scotland, a Scotch lord gave to his old servant Donald, a little farm. He called him in one day and said:“‘Donald, I am going to give you that farm, that you may work it for yourself, and spend the rest of your days there upon your own property.” “Donald, with all the canniness that characterises a Scotchman, looked up into the face of his lord, and said to him:“It is nae gude to gie me the farm; I have nae capital to stock it.”“His lordship looked at him, and said: ‘Oh, Donald, I think I can manage to stock it also.”“And Donald said: ‘Oh, well; if it is you and me for it, I think we will manage!’”God with us all things are possible.

Jeremiah 28:15

—A FALSE Jeremiah 28:15(This sermon was one in a series on the subject.) IN speaking to you this evening on the subject of “Evolution and False Philosophy,” 1 propose the objective of justifying my theme, and the method of making the friends of the theory of evolution confirm all that I say. It is quite the custom nowadays for those pseudoscientists who teach this philosophy to tell the new, uninstructed student that “all scientists are agreed” on the subject, and that its last great opponent is long since dead. Unfortunately, the average freshman, and for that matter the average post-graduate, who has never heard from the opponents of the philosophy or read a single book in opposition to the same, swallows this statement as thoughtlessly as young fledglings take into their stomachs whatever the mother drops into the mouth.An editorial in the Minnesota Daily of February 10th, 1932 headed, “Do Contemporary Scientists Fear Religion?”, while justly criticizing the scientific lecturers for not fully accepting the anti-Christian results of their philosophy, falls into the dual mistake, first that of supposing that those of us who represent Christianity have any quarrel whatever with science. We have not! Christianity has been the forerunner of science in every country to which it has gone. It has cleared the path for scientific investigation, and heartily approved of all its true products; but Christianity, like all truth, is not tolerant of error, and it will not harmonize with this pseudo-science,—this utterly false philosophy.The second mistake into which the Editorial fell was that of imagining that science was steadily undermining religion, leaving it less and less room upon which to stand. On the contrary, in the 1900 years since Christ quit the world, there is not a single essential of the Christian Faith that has been evilly affected by any scientific discovery. Instead, true science is more and more confirming our Faith at every point.The Science of Archeology has effectually answered the critics of the Old Testament, while the Clinics in Regeneration, running through the entire period of the church, suffice to confirm the claims of the New.To this hour no man has improved upon the decalogue of the Old Testament, and to this minute no mortal has attained to the high ideals of New Testament teaching.I have selected the text of this evening in order to show you three things, namely,The prophets of evolution are false prophets; Their claims are false pretences; Their judgment is fore-ordained. THE ARE FALSEHananiah was a false prophet, and Jeremiah dared to face him and charge him with that fact. “Hear now, Hananiah; The Lord hath not sent thee”.That is the exact charge that I make against the prophets of evolution.They are false prophets, every one! They seek to substitute a pure speculation for science. In that procedure they contort their profession. They are set by their employers to teach the truth; they are salaried with that intent. The public has a right to expect from them the output of truth.On the contrary, they themselves, having been “turned to believe a lie,” propagate the same, and, in order to get it accepted, dare to label—“scientific,”—a theory confessedly without verification.The whole doctrine of transmutation which Spencer himself affirmed was the essential, the sine-quanon of the hypothesis, is unknown to nature’s ways. This fact was admitted by Darwin himself.

Here is Darwin’s language from “The Descent of Man” the 1874 edition—“It is asking a great deal of intelligent people to believe the theory which is not supported by evidence, just where evidence is most needed. Now these missing links, if there are any, should be more highly developed than the forms lower down in the scale from which they evolved, and therefore more able to continue.

Then why not continue, if they ever evolved, while their weaker progenitors, less able to live, continue to this day!”Now listen to Darwin’s answer to his own question:—“But this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution.”This is the sad thing of the whole evolutionary propaganda. The lack of evidence in no wise phases its friends and advocates, a circumstance that proves that they have no kinship to true scientists.Their plan for success is the imposition of the philosophy upon immature minds. The greatest outrage against childhood in America is not being perpetrated by sweat factories, nor even by unfit and oppressive parents; the greatest outrage to American childhood, at this moment, is a mental outrage.To take little children, in the third grade, and teach them “The early history of man,” and bring them to believe that the manufactured and imaginary creations of such a book ever had a historic basis, is to wilfully perpetrate a mental derangement.To adopt as text books in the Public Schools, “The Tree Boys,” “The Tree Men,” and “The Cave Men,” is to turn blank time into a Tarzan travesty; and to accomplish all of this with little undefended children, or even with college freshmen, under the pretense of a new interpretation of Christianity, is a hypocritical and conscienceless procedure.Some years ago Dr. A. W. Slaten was the Head of Religion in a Baptist College.

It had been founded and fostered by Fundamentalists; its very Constitution demanded, on the part of every teacher in the school, loyalty to the great essentials of Christianity. Slaten was an evolutionist.

He believed the school presented an opportunity to influence the future for his philosophy. He persuaded himself that the end of bringing his boys and girls to believe the same, justified the hypocritical and surreptitious method of putting it over; and in that endeavor he was successful, until, by and by, he foolishly wrote a book that brought to the Board of Control exhibits of his true belief, whereupon he was forced from his professorship.Inside of a week he was a Unitarian pastor, and inside of three months he was denying the existence of God. In other words, when a monthly salary was removed, he voiced his true views for the first time.Unfortunately for the youth of America, the State University now justifies itself in a course such as has been charged, with pretty good reason, against the University of Chicago, viz., the “Academic Department convinces the student that he has no mind; and the Theological course that there is no God.”The only difference is, that, in our State Universities, the departments of Animal Biology, Philosophy, and the study of the English Bible, unite to do the same work that the University of Chicago Theological Department accomplishes, namely, destroy faith in God.Now there are people who imagine that a minister of the Gospel, under such circumstances, should take one of two courses:—shut his eyes to the facts and close his ears to the philosophies of modern teaching: or, if he see and hear, seal his lips in the interests of quiet and peace.Old Martin Luther said, “I was born to fight devils. Pardon the boisterousness of my books. It is my business to remove obstruction, to cut down thorns, to fill up the quagmires, and to open and make straight the paths; but if I must have some failing, let me rather speak the truth with too great severity than act the hypocrite and conceal the same.”To that deliverance the pulpit of the First Baptist Church, Minneapolis, says “Amen.”I turn then from these false prophets to theirFALSE The claim for evolution that it is a science is a false pretense.Among the old advocates of this theory that was never made, except by Haeckel. He was the most atheistic man, and, in order to provide a basis for his atheism, he asserted that evolution was a science.Darwin never made such a claim; Huxley never made it; Wallace never made it.

The greater scientists do not now make it.The declaration that evolution is a demonstrated science, marks its maker as a diminutive man; and the smaller he is the more loudly he proclaims.Professor Neuman, zoologist of the University of Chicago, a man who falsified the facts concerning the Tennessee author of the anti-evolution law, then refused, upon proofs to the contrary, to apologize, is one of those American midget professors, who dare to say that “Evolution is a guess only in the same sense that the law of gravity is a guess,” and yet, in the same conjunction, has to admit in all frankness, “The evolutionists volunteer the admission that evolution is not absolutely proven.” It is a joke to put in the word “absolutely,” in view of the utter poverty of evidence. It is not proven at any point.Wm.

Bateson, the most eminent biologist of the age, himself an evolutionist, frankly admitted in his Toronto speech, “The assumed appearance of variability is largely illusory. Of the occurrence of genetic change which might be likely to lead to the production of new species no indication has been found. The immediate consequence has been that the development of the evolutionary theory has been tacitly suspended.”In a letter received this week from a student of the State University, I am asked, “Did it ever occur to you that in the process of evolution, these changes we know about, do not happen in an instant?” to which my answer is, “The whole question is begged by its presentation. No one knows of such changes!”I have already shown you that Darwin himself admitted that we do not know about them.Now I come to tell you that Bateson, who, doubtless, was quite as well up on this subject as is the student who wrote the question, says concerning the time question in this imaginary process, “Even time cannot complete that which is not yet commenced.”These false prophets substitute for fact fictional imagination. Think of the following statement, and ask yourself if there is one known fact involved in it, and yet it is in practical accord with Van Loon’s mental meandering:—“Way back in the dawn of life a bit of naked protoplasm rose in the warm seas of the earth; let us say God created it out of the substances in the water, and endowed it with life. Now this bit of living matter was neither plant nor animal, but from it arose two lines of development,—one to become the future plants, the other the animals.”That is quite a statement.

What scientific basis has it? The Standard Dictionary definition of science is, “Knowledge gained and verified by exact observation and correct thinking.”I do not know the age of the young lady who writes me this statement.

I have heard of a spinster who prided herself on having read every book that came from the press. Finally, one day, a friend asked her, “Have you read ‘Ӕ ?sop’s Fables’?” to which she replied, “Yes, I read them when they first came out.” Ӕ ?sop died 564 B. C. But that spinster’s age was infancy in comparison. In fact she was still in foetal form as compared with sister Fern, if she made “exact observation” upon “the rise of the protoplasm.”Professor Lewis T. More, Head of the chair of Physics of the University of Cincinnati in his “Dogma on Evolution,” wisely remarks,“Some day men of science will learn that hypotheses cannot always be avoided, but that they are to be used only as a confession of ignorance.”The proponents of evolution are specialists in imagination. Because they want the theory to be true, (that God may be shorn of His creative ability and man may be accepted as the supreme creature of the universe), they will adopt the lamest arguments, and seek, with the crutches of imagination, to provide them standing.It is not my purpose in the lecture of this night to repeat any considerable portion of what I have said on the previous occasions, but in illustration, let me remind you again that there is not anything like the kin-ship in physical form, appearance, comparison of part with part, between the EoHippus and the modern horse than there is between a jackass and a jack rabbit; and yet, because geology marks indefinite space of time between the former, and brings the latter under man’s observation, the first is accepted as a fact, and the second is laughed at as a fancy.Again, take the two most outstanding of the imaginary links between the monkey and the man, namely, Pithecanthropus Erectus and Piltdown, and consider their history, and tell me if any man, whose mind has a scintilla of the scientific about it, could bring from these, impressive evidence even, for this philosophy.Since Pithecanthropus has been most paraded, consider the following thoughtful objections to his place in the Hall of the Age of Man.—Professor Dubois found four small bits of bones; the cap of a skull, two teeth, and a femur. Two of these were found in 1891, brought from an old river-bed, and the other two, the left thigh bone and a molar tooth, were found months afterwards in the same vicinity. The teeth were five feet apart from the skull, and the femur fifty feet away. Does “observation” or “correct thinking” demand, or even approve, the idea that these parts all originally belonged to one person, or one animal? “Science,” Aug. 17th, 1923, Suppl. VIII, says:—“Dubois himself now believes that his much-prized fossils are bones of a large ape, rather than a form of ape-man.” His second Pithecanthropus Erectus skull, (on the discovery of which he declared a race of such missing links), was finally proven to be the knee-cap of an elephant, as he himself admitted in an embarrassed confession before the Old World Scientists in their Convention at Amsterdam in 1924. Now take Piltdown! The pieces from which this “Dawn man” was imaginatively created were not found together; not even the parts of the skull, but separated by a distance of several yards.The pieces were not found at one time, some months intervening between the discovery of the parts.The skull and the jaw were apparently mis-fits. According to Keith, the skull is that of a woman; the jaw, according to Hrdlicka, is that of an ape. Professor Keith admits that Woodward had difficulty in securing “an approach to symmetry and a correct adjustment of parts.” We should think he would!Professor J. H. McGregor said that he did not believe the jaw and the skull belonged to the same individual, and Professor W.

Waterston agreed to that opinion.But let Lull, the ardent evolutionist of Yale University, famed also as a Paleontologist state the objections to this exhibit:—“First of all it was in a shallow stratum of gravel, less than four feet in thickness at the point of discovery.”Secondly,—Lull admits that Smith, Woodward, Keith, and McGregor could not agree upon what it represented, or in their estimation of its cranial capacity.Thirdly,—Lull says, “The jaw proved to be a veritable bone of contention. G.

S. Miller, Jr., declared that the jaw and skull could not belong to the same individual, or even the same genus.”According to Prof. Lull in “Evolution of Man” the question of time to which these belonged, is in dispute. Whether the jaw and skull belonged to the same individual is in dispute. Whether the teeth were upper or lower was in dispute. The cubic contents of the skull are in dispute.In fact, the whole thing is a question mark, and yet it is used in text books as a scientific (?) demonstration of the infidel philosophy of evolution.Men who can accept such evidences in a science realm are hard pressed for proofs.There is not a step in the entire philosophy, but is in dispute.

I do not mean in dispute as between the opponents of Darwinism and its advocates, but I mean in earnest and hot debate among advocates themselves.Let me illustrate.—In my attack the other night upon the theory of recapitulation, some student from the University put to me the question, “Do you profess to be a better embryologist than Prof. Scammon?”, to which I replied, as you will remember,“Certainly not.

Professor Scammon has an excellent reputation as an embryologist, so I understand; but a good reputation as an embryologist does not justify calling the arches that are found in the throat region of a human foetus, gill-slits, when there is neither a gill nor a slit there at any time!”Now I return to that subject, and will bring you the opinions and exact words of men whose names are not only well known in Universities to which they belong, but who have world-wide reputation as Scientists.Professor T. H. Morgan of Columbia University in “Evolution and Adaptation”, p. 83, says of the Recapitulation Theory, “This idea is in principle false.”Professor W. B. Scott of Princeton in “Readings in Evolution”, p. 173, says, “This fundamental law is nowadays very seriously questioned, and by some authorities, is altogether denied.”Professor Karl Vogt, Geneva, says,—“This law which I long held as well founded, is absolutely and radically false.”Professor Adam Sedgwick, the eminent English embryologist, in “Darwin and Modern Science”, p. 174, says,“But as Huxley has pointed out and as the whole course of paleontological investigation has demonstrated, the extinct forms of life are very similar to those now existing, and there is nothing specially embryonic about them. So that, the facts, as we know them, lend no force to the theory of recapitulation.”Professor Percy E.

Davidson, in his volume “The Recapitulation Theory”, printed in 1914, says,— “From these authoritative statements it appears that the facts of embryonic resemblances fail to support recapitulation in all three of its main implications.”Professor A. Weber, Geneva University, in the “Scientific American”, Feb. 1921, p. 121, says,—“The critical comments of such embryologists as O.

Hertwig, Keibel, and Vialleton, indeed, have practically torn to shreds the aforementioned fundamental biogenetic law. Its almost unanimous abandonment has left considerably at a loss those investigators who sought, in the structure of organisms, the key to their remote origin, or to their relationships.”One further illustration to show you, at another most important point, how the teachings of the present small professor are at variance with the great authorities.I speak of vestigial remains. A few years ago we were somewhat astounded to be told that we had in our human bodies 180 vestigial remains, each and every one of which pointed back to our animal origin.These vestigial parts were supposed to have functioned in some former animal ancestor, but to have failed in that function in human life for the simple reason that man’s more highly developed frame no longer required their function.I will not attempt to mention all these vestigial remains; to even name the 180 would require the time allotted to this address, but I shall deal with one or two of the most commonly mentioned, and some others of the most important significance.For instance, the Appendix!This was supposed to be a vestigial remain; of no value now, but a mortal menace instead, and so everybody who had a pain in the side or could dig up the price, had the pesky thing removed.Now the word comes to us that Dr. Howard A. Kelly, of Johns Hopkins University, says of the appendix, “It increases the extent of the intestinal mucus surface for secretion and absorption.” This is also the position of Sir Arthur Keith.Take the Thyroid Glands!They were supposed to be useless vestigial organs. They are located on either side of the windpipe, just below the larynx.

Now we learn that if they are removed from a cat or dog it means death, and if they have been defective in a human mother it will produce “cretinism.” Dr. C.

W. Saleeby says of the thyroid that “it produces a unique substance, mostly consisting of iodine. Without it, none can live.”Take the Pituitary Body!It was called another vestigial remain. Vincent says, “It was established by Paulesco in 1906, that the organ is essential for life. When removed from animals the operation is fatal.” It helps to regulate secretions from various glands of the body, and its failure to function properly will produce giantism,—or it may result in the opposite,—infantilism.Take the Pineal Body!Some years ago on a train riding west, I read a whole page from the pen of Professor Lull of Yale, in which he declared that this body was nothing but a vestigial eye. He asserted that our mud-loving ancestors used to immerse their huge bodies in pools of slime, and left this one eye above the same to look about for enemies, dangers, as well as friends and food.

But in the process of time something evolved two eyes on opposite sides of the head, and so this little one, not being needful, went its way.It is a small organ located in the roof of the third ventricle of the brain. Now Swale Vincent, professor of physiology of the University of London, says that “this gland is one of the most important organs in the entire human body, and that it seems to control the inflow and outflow of the cerebrospinal fluid of the third ventricle.”Is it any wonder that a leading Scientist Dr.

P. C. Mitchell, in Encyc. Britt, vol. 20, p. 33 recently said,“It is almost impossible to prove that any structure, however rudimentary, is useless, and, if it is, in the slightest degree useful, there is no reason why, on the hypothesis of direct creation, it should not have been created.”Sir Arthur Keith, in spite of his skepticism admits in the British Medical Journal of 1926,—“As our knowledge increases, the vestigial organs are decreasing.”Do you know, the profound pity expressed by immature students for those of us who are such backwoodsmen as to have reached identical conclusions with the most clever investigators, is small beside the deep sympathy we feel for that student who is taken advantage of in his third grade immaturity and is falsely instructed until he has secured his Ph. D., and sent out to be a propagandist of a philosophical lie that has to live by calling itself “scientific.”However, ignorance, or even educated infidelity, is not a preventative of justice, and for all such teachersJUDGMENT IS FORE-This philosophy, like its predecessors, will perish. One hundred fifty years ago Deism was as popular in our schools as Darwinism is today.

It had its marvelous exponents—Paine, Hume, Voltaire, Tyndall, Bolingbroke and Hobbs, but it now lies buried with their disintegrated bodies, and is not even so well known as are the names of its opponents, several of whom are familiar to the careful students of history only.One thing certain, and, in consequence, cheering, is that a false philosophy must eventually fall. You can create an imitation of a man, and you can put inside of him a machine and wind it up and make him walk, but he cannot walk far, and he will not walk long!

His fall, when it occurs, will be a crash.The greatest Scientists of Germany never accepted this philosophy.Rudolph Virchow was in Germany what Saul was in Israel, head and shoulders above his fellow-scientists, and he never accepted the philosophy.Bateson, who, until his recent death, was England’s most outstanding man, gave an address in Toronto, that was a practical admission of all for which its opponents contend.More of Cincinnati holds to scorn the idea that “the lowly Algae evolved into a choir of angels.”Within a year Austin Clark has not hesitated to confess the weaknesses of the philosophy.The loud noise now being made in certain Universities, by the smaller Scientists, is only the increasing rattle of machinery that is running down.To be sure, these men have the almost immeasurable advantage of compulsory attendance upon what they have to say, and they take the additional advantage of creating, in the Universities, a rabid and egotistical atmosphere such as brow-beats the student who does not accept it, if not into acquiescence, at least into silence.I have had it told me this week by students who do not accept the philosophy, that they feared to back its opponents lest they themselves be made the butt of further scorn and heckling.However, the so-called science that has to live after such a manner is certainly short-lived. You can coerce youth, but graduates become free men.In my first debate on this subject in the State College of North Carolina, I was backed up by four Alumni of the College, two of whom were attorneys, and all of whom, in their maturity, had flung away the tattered and decaying philosophy.Speaking down-town here before one of the Commercial Clubs one day, there were four graduates of the State University of Minnesota who told me, at the conclusion of the address, that it was their first time to listen to an argument against it, and that it was so conclusive that they were absolutely convinced.In St. Louis two young women graduates of Eastern Universities, both of whom were ardent advocates of the philosophy, and who declined when the Board invited me to speak in the Y. W. C. A. to make their appearance on the platform of the Y.

W. C.

A., of which they were secretaries. They were converted by a single address, and in tears voiced their grief that they had ever been called so far away from God. The philosophy will perish.Its prophets will finally sleep beneath the sod. “This year thou shalt die” was said to Hananiah, the false prophet. That is the sentence God has already passed upon a number of the present-day false prophets. They will perish this year.Hume, Paine, and Voltaire, each prophesied the demise of Christianity; but they died without seeing it. They sleep in infidel graves, while the cause of Christ sweeps on!The conflict in the church is not at all a battle between Christians.

It is a battle between the true believers in Christ and the followers of Chas. Darwin, who still cloak under the name—Christian.The Christian Century is one of the most radical of liberalistic journals, and yet, a few years ago, it frankly said this,“Christianity according to Fundamentalism is one religion; Christianity according to Modernism is another religion; There is a clash here as profound and as grim as that between Christianity and Confucianism.

Amiable words cannot hide the differences. The God of the fundamentalist is one God; the God of the Modernist is another. The Christ of the Fundamentalist is one Christ; the Christ of the Modernist is another. The Bible of the Fundamentalist is one Bible; the Bible of the Modernist is another.”Certainly! Fortunately for Fundamentalists, our Christ has stood the test of 20 centuries, and our Bible of thousands of years, while Modernism was born but yesterday, and is destined to breathe its last tomorrow.Time is God’s agency for establishing the Truth, and it is equally His agency for bringing falsehood to its grave.Christianity has this eternal advantage—It gives to its converts the noblest ideas of living, and provides them with a bright expectation of life beyond. These basal facts are constitutional with Christianity, holding, as it does, that God created all, and is over all, and that by His Spirit He is guiding in all.

It expects of man made in the Divine image, that he will, by Divine help, reach Divine ideals.It is easy enough to make fun of Moses, and it is supposed to be very scholarly to deny his existence, but up to the present no evolutionist has improved upon the decalogue. All those who repudiate these moral teachings bear in their bodies the mark of the beast.It is easy enough to talk of Jesus of Nazareth, and in seasoned and careful speech surreptitiously deny the Virgin Birth of the Christ, His Miracle working, His Atonement on Calvary’s Cross, His Victory over the grave, His Ascension to the right hand of God, and His promised Second Coming!

But, up to the present, Christ is the only Person who has proved an antidote to the moral leprosy of the world; Christ is the only Person who has so imparted His Spirit to the hearts of men as to affect clinics in regeneration; Christ is the only Person who has been able to convert the harlot into a saint, to sober the drunkard; and even change the murderer into a man of the tenderest mercies and the most considerate care of his fellows.When the Science League of America was formed, Professor Ritter, president of Science Service, speaking in defense of evolution, said,“We must have a confidence in the natural that will not leave room for one jot or tittle of faith in the supernatural,” attempting by one blow to wipe out the Bible, to dispense with the claims of the Christ, and to ridicule from existence the hope of Heaven.It is an ambitious program, I grant you; but it is a program that would blacken the world, reduce man to the level of the beast, and take even from the Christian himself that Blessed Hope of a personal fellowship with the saved, and an eternal residence in the Heaven which Christ declared He had gone to prepare for His own.

Jeremiah 28:16

THE CRISIS YEAR Jeremiah 28:16THIS is a solemn text with which to begin the year 1932, and yet, that it is true of millions of people no man can question; and, that it is true of some of those who give audience to me tonight, there can be little doubt. Among the obligations of the minister there is none greater than to declare the truth. In fact, the test of a minister is at that point. To occupy a pulpit is not necessarily to be a prophet of God. Multitudinous pulpits are occupied by men, who like that Hananiah of this chapter, profess to have a word from the Lord, but their speech belies their claim. They are not out to tell the truth—they are out to please; out to receive the popular applause! They have sensed the itching ears of the public, and propose to “cash in” on the same.Consequently, “sin”, “death”, and “judgment” are subjects with which they have little to do.

If they talk of the future at all, they paint the same in rosy colors. If they discuss the New Year it is to declare it bright with prospect, big with waiting blessings, and destined to bring to the lap of both the industrious and indigent, abundance.Paul was not a preacher after that manner.

He spoke to Felix of “temperance”, “righteousness”, and “judgment”. Christ was not a prophet of that order. He said to the smug, honorable and upright Nicodemus, “Ye must be born again”, and to the self-inflated Pharisees, “Publicans and harlots go into the Kingdom of God before you”!There are times when pleasing subjects are appropriate. There are occasions when even serious subjects may be treated in light vein; but there are other occasions when serious subjects should be seriously treated.If I sense the meaning of this first Sunday of 1932, this night is one of them. On Thursday evening last, some 500 people or more were bowed before God in the dining room of this church when 1931 died. They came from their devotions into the streets to hear the blowing of whistles, ringing of bells, blowing of horns, and many other even more frivolous methods of greeting the New Year. But the great throngs out there took little or no account of the fact that twelve long months had passed; fifty-two weeks; 365 days, or as my co-pastor said in the sermon of New Year’s Eve, “7,760 hours, all fraught with destiny, had been flung to the winds while the great majority forgot both the existence of God, and the momentary peril of their own unsaved souls.It is, therefore, to arrest that thoughtlessness; it is to compel a moment of seriousness, and if possible, to secure that unspeakable blessing, the righteous settlement of the soul’s destiny that I speak tonight.I want you to see these facts; Dying is a fair certainty; The time of Death is indefinite; The manner of Death is all important.DYING IS A FAIR “It is appointed unto man once to die” (Hebrews 9:27). Since time began there have been but two exceptions—Enoch and Elijah. Even God’s Son, when He took upon Him the form of men, when He indwelt human flesh, incurred the risk and finally endured the experience of death. Let no man, therefore, induce the conceit in you that you will probably escape the same, for while, as we shall see at a later point in this discourse, that is a possibility, it is extremely improbable; and, there is more than one, sitting in this audience tonight, listening now to what I have to say, concerning whom the text is entirely true, “This year thou shalt die”.One night Jesus sat or reclined near the festal board. His twelve disciples were with Him and He said, This night “one of you shall betray Me”. Instantly eleven of them revealed alarm, and they began to question Him, “Master, is it I”? Apparently Judas Iscariot did not ask that question.

The man to whom the prophecy referred was silent before it.When the Lord says, “This year thou shalt die” serious minded men, and intelligent and sincere women will ask the question, “Lord, is it I”? But in all probability, the man to whom it refers will not at all concern himself about the matter, and when death comes, it will take him by surprise.Death has reigned since Adam’s day. Paul writing to the Romans said, “Death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression” (Romans 5:14), and we know that since Moses’ day, death has continued to reign and has finally conquered against every man, Enoch and Elijah excepted.Father Ryan, in his poem “To-Morrows”, writing of the poet’s prophecy says, “Ask him, and he will see What your to-morrows are; He’ll sing ‘What is to be’ Beneath each sun and star.

“To-morrows! Dread unknown! What fates may they not bring! What is the chord! the tone! The key in which they sing!

“I see a thousand throngs, To-morrows for them wait; I hear a thousand songs Intoning each one’s fate.

“And yours! What will it be! Hush! song, and let me pray! Ood sees it all—I see A long, lone, winding way.” And we know that for time at least, that way ends at the grave.The only exception is the redeemed, at Christ’s Return. Paul does write to the Corinthians saying, “We shall not all sleep” (1 Corinthians 15:51), and the plain reference is to death—“We shall not all die.”In his Epistle to the Thessalonians, Paul further explains,“The Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17). It is a truth, therefore, that one whole generation of believers shall never die, namely, that generation who shall be alive at His Coming.Some years ago the associated press carried an article from Maidsville, West Virginia, concerning a Mr. and Mrs. Lorenzo D. Everly who had just celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary with a family reunion. This fact was remarked upon, namely, that though four generations were present on that happy occasion, including eight children, twenty-two grand-children, and some great-grand-children, not one death had yet occurred in the Everly family in fifty years; but it still remained, the firm expectation that, in the course of time, death would claim the last one of them; for such is the destiny of the flesh.In God’s family only is any exception found, and that as we have seen, obtains with reference to a single generation. That’s why it is that devout souls like Spurgeon, and consecrated spirits like A. J.

Gordon, and Biblically instructed minds after the manner of Arthur Pierson’s, and aged saints like W. E.

Blackstone, have entertained the hope that they might never die; and yet, of the four mentioned, three are gone!Truth obtains therefore, for some, and it may be for any one of us “Thou shalt die”.THE TIME OF DEATH IS The text for Hananiah fixed it only within limits, namely, “this year”. The month was not mentioned; the week was not named, the hour was not called, the minute was not suggested.“Of that day and hour knoweth no man”. Death is a black angel who moving in mist almost always surprises his victims. It is a rare thing that a man knows that he is to die at a definite moment, or even within the limitations of an hour.Victor Hugo in his Les Miserables, speaking of the old conventionist, brings him to the doorway of death and then puts into his lips this speech to the good priest Myriel,“I am something of a physician; I know the steps by which death approaches; yesterday my feet only were cold; today the cold has crept to my knees, now it has reached the waist; when it touches the heart, all will be over. The sunset is lovely, is it not? I had myself wheeled out to get a final look at nature.

You can speak to me; that will not tire me. You do well to come to see a man who is dying.

It is good that these moments should have witnesses. Every one has his fancy; I should like to live until the dawn, but I know I have scarcely life for three hours. It will be night; but what matters it: to finish is a very simple thing. One does not need morning for that. Be it so: I shall die in the starlight.”That is about as near as even the clearest minded man can make out the time, and then he only knows it because death has actually begun.Some years ago the United News cabled to the press of America from Belgium the following statement: “The well known Belgian composer, Van Hove De Saint Pol, suddenly halted a concert of light operatic music under his direction at the city of Stekene tonight, and directed the musicians to play the funeral march. The composer directed the musicians perfectly until the last note ended, when his baton dropped from his hand and he fell dead.

Apparently he had felt the approach of death in the midst of the concert and only by sheer will power conducted the final piece.”These are remarkable exceptions. The rule is that death takes men unexpectedly, and the fact remains that no man knows his hour until the black enemy has arrived.God keeps that secret with Himself!

Like the return of His Son in power and glory to take His throne, He has not revealed the time.There are people who are ill content because all secrets are not open to their eyes. So anxious are they to know the day of Christ’s Coming that they spend months and years in trying to work it out and give to the world the product of their wisdom. To this hour, all such endeavors have come to nought, even as Scripture has prophesied they would; and there are people who would like to know the time of their death. They would like to understand how long a time they have on earth so that they could undertake tasks with a view to completion, and they could even employ the last hours in preparation for the change. All such reasoners strangely forget that such a revelation of the future would inevitably detract from every plan conceived and every enterprise undertaken, and that for the majority of the race it would instantly destroy all human interest and leave them to sit with folded hands and morbid spirit to meet the black angel who would blight them while yet in youth.God in His infinite wisdom knew as perfectly what things He should retain as secrets as He understood what ones He should put into the form of revelation.How grateful we ought to be for knowledge withheld! If I am to die this year I am glad I do not know it.

My plans would all be thereby disturbed; my labors would lack inspiration, and even the subjects of my love would lose an interest. Thank God for His own secrets!With Him, however, the very second is settled.To Hananiah the revelation was only partial.

The true Prophet, Jeremiah, brought from the Lord a statement, “This year thou shalt die”, but He did not tell him that he would die in the seventh month even,—much less did he mention the day or the hour.Just about the time I came to this pastorate three of God’s most marvelous ministers passed from the earth,—Charles Spurgeon of London, Dwight Moody of Northfield, and A. J. Gordon of Boston. They were each in their fifty-seventh year, in comparative youth, and enjoying the widest possible ministry, and exercising the most beautiful and beneficent influence. Doubtless their plans, like those of others of us, anticipated the four-score, and they were working with all the might and main of men who were at the acme of physical and mental accomplishments. Had you consulted any one of them, he would have said, “If I go this year, life’s labors will be incomplete.

I have plans that reach for more than a score of years beyond this time.”Ernest Gordon, in the life of his father, tells us of his passing,—how for some days before the end came, he was in a delirium of fever and apparent agony of both body and mind. He declares that, though the air outside was as still as an Indian summer, “the great soul complained of the ceaseless storm and of incessant noise as of great drops on a window-pane.” Blackness of darkness seemed round about him, in the midst of which he cried out in his Gethsemane,“Jesus, Jesus, visit me; How my soul longs after Thee! When, my best, my dearest Friend, Shall our separation end?” But, when the final hour came and some one bending over him said, “Dr. Gordon, have you a good word for us,” with clear voice he answered, “Victory!”Among the spokesmen at his funeral were those four mighty giants, Joseph Cook, Henry C. Mabie, President Andrews of Brown University and Dr. Arthur Pierson, and one of them said truthfully,“There is something beautiful to me in God’s taking Gordon right in his prime, in the fullness of his beauty; for we remember men as they make their last impress upon us. We shall always remember Adoniram Judson Gordon as the full-grown man, in his prime of intellect, in his prime of Christian achievement, in the midst of the glory of the work that has grown to this point and now never could decline under his hand, for his hand is no more upon it. Is not that better than for him to have grown old, to have decayed in intellectual power, to have declined in social influence, to have dimmed the majesty of his imperial scepter?”Even so, let God settle the hour.

Let God fix the minute for such a change. He alone is sufficient.Finally,THE MANNER OF DEATH IS ALL-Hananiah’s death was far from ideal.

He had lived the life of a false prophet, a deceiver of his fellows, a destroyer of the true faith.God pity such when the day of death comes. There is little wonder that reports reach us from the death-bed of Darwin that he voiced to Lady Hope his grief at what he had given to the world.There is little wonder that Wm. R. Harper is reported to have confessed to Gunsaulus that he had missed the Way. There is little wonder that Sir Henry Drummond should have, on his deathbed, declared that in Christ and in Him alone, was there the least hope. And it is a matter of gratitude to those who admired the intellectual ability of these men that they were given the opportunity to see their error and grieve the same before they were gone.There are three ways of dying.

There is the way of the impenitent; there is the way of the penitent, and there is the way of the confident.The first of these was illustrated by one of the thieves who died with Christ on the Cross. To his last word he reviled Him.The second was illustrated by the other thief who rebuked the first, saying, “Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this Man hath done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom” (Luke 23:40-42). The third is shown by Stephen whom they stoned to death, but who, at the moment of dying prayed to God to pardon his murderers and calmly committed his own spirit to the ascended Lord.The contrasts in these ways are not strange, but they are strong. Some one has called attention to this truth as it relates to the passing of Paul, when compared with the death of impenitent unbelievers.For instance, Goethe was a Master-mind. While he lived, he was both godly and gay; but when the end came he said, “I have scarcely tasted one hour of happiness during my long life; and at the very last begged the people to open the shutters to let in the light, crying, “It is growing dark; so dark!”Mirabeau, the French infidel, is said to have pled for opium with which to deaden his conscience and drive away the terrible phantoms that haunted the visions of his approaching doom.Paul, on the contrary, approached the end after another manner. “I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of (rejoicing) righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love His Appearing” (2 Timothy 4:8).The way of the impenitent is the wretched way. I have somewhere in my scrap-book the last words of infidels and atheists. Without exception they are sad, morose, and voice fear of the future.

The souls of such enter eternity revealing all the alarm of men who are beside themselves, falling into the hands of demons that drag them away to darkness and despair.I will not harrow your feelings by the multiplied quotations that are reputed to have passed their lips. Let those from Goethe and Mirabeau suffice; but I do want to speak to you ofThe passing of the penitent!

This will include many who have named Christ’s Name, but who have not lived to His glory;—many whose names have been upon the church book, but whose daily lives have not greatly honored their Lord; many who have waited upon the ministry of the sanctuary, but whose indifferent audience to the truth has left the seeds thereof to perish on stony ground.Dr. Holden of London tells the striking story of a young man who was dying—a young man whom he had pointed to the “Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”, He had lived a very mediocre Christian life—not riotous, but careless! The world had claimed much of his thought and way, but now the end was on. Only a day or two at most remained, and the young man knew it. Holden went to him and said, “My friend, you are quite certain that Christ has saved you, are you not?” to which he answered, “Yes, Dr. Holden, I think He has.

I believe my soul is saved, but my life is lost. I am not afraid to die, but I confess frankly I am ashamed to die.”In conclusion, contrast these two methods with the better way.There is the going of the godly!

Dr. David Burrell, one time pastor of the Westminster Presbyterian Church of this city, gathered together the last words of some of the saintly men and women who have passed into the great beyond, and we give a few:Richard Baxter: “I have pain; but I have peace.”Edward Payson: “The battle is fought, the victory won.”John Wesley: “The best of all is, Immanuel— God with us.” Charles Wesley: “I shall be satisfied when I awake in Thy likeness.” The Mother of the Wesleys: “Children, I am going; lift a song of praise.”John Fletcher: “I am like a bird escaping from its cage.”Prince Albert: “Rock of ages, cleft for me.” Dr. Cookman: “Halleluia! I am sweeping through the gates!”Mrs. Hemans: “I hear the music of His voice.” Lady Huntington: “I am going to my Father tonight.”Philip Melancthon: “Nothing now, but Heaven.” Edward Perronet: “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name.”Dwight Moody: “Heaven is opening, earth is receding, God is calling, I am going.”Hudson Taylor, the great missionary, tells us concerning the departure of his dear wife, that when the hour came, he said to her, “Darling, do you know that you are dying?” She answered with surprise, “Can it be so? I feel no pain, only very weary.” “Yes,” he answered, “you are dying.You will soon be with Jesus.” “I am so sorry.” she said; and then pausing as if fearing she might be misunderstood, she added, “not because I am to be with Him; only because I have to leave you!”