What atheists call him—a designing knave,
A mere church juggler, hypocrite, and slave.
The sacred function in his hands is made,
Sad sacrilege! no function but a trade.”
—When the standard-bearer falls, who will fight? When the Cross is torn down by those who should point to it, who will believe?
THE UNCHANGING WORD.
And such is the process by which God, in his providence, often makes it plain that his own revealed truth alone can either reclaim man from guilt, or keep him steadfast in the path to glory. We, indeed, are prone to suppose that there is nothing fixed in that Word, that, like the chameleon, it takes on the hue of every mind that studies it. THE
UNCHANGING
WORD. But the Holy One, on the other hand, demonstrates that his Word is the only fixed thing which our world knows. Like himself it is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; it either makes man right and keeps him so, or it detects and unmasks him as hopelessly incorrigible and clean gone in guilt. It tells of the anchor for the soul both sure and steadfast;[T-14] and when man drifts away from that mooring, whatever be his position, he is rushing fast to ruin.
MONUMENTS OF GRACE.
MONUMENTS
OF GRACE. Every view of truth, then, calls upon man, whatever be his sphere, to make sure that it is planted in his heart by the power of the Spirit of God. Without that, the physician may degenerate into an atheist or a materialist, whose hopes terminate at the edge of the grave. Without the presiding power of truth in the soul, the lawyer, nay, the very judge, may become a corrupter of public morals, as multitudes have done—a patron of the false and the degrading. Without truth enthroned in the heart, and a thorough transition from darkness to light, even ministers of religion are only blind leaders of the blind; they are clouds without water, carried about of winds; they are tree whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots. And all these things press upon men the necessity of enthroning truth. Time asks it: eternity asks it: patriotism asks it: pure religion asks it; and he is willing to throw poison into our wells who resists such multiform appeals.