216 THE KING’S BUSINESS and His thoughts than our thoughts, and some day we shall praise Him for the very things which we now least understand. God’s Call to Repentance and Man’s Heedlessness of the Call T HE past few weeks have been full of such widespread disasters through cyclones and floods and storms as this country has seldom experienced before. Thousands of lives and millions of dollars have been lost. The papers have been full of the accounts of misery and death, and yet in no account have we seen the slightest suggestion that we should hear the voice of God speaking to us in these terrible disasters. When, in our Lord’s day, the tower fell in Siloam and killed 18 persons, our Lord interpreted it* as a -call to repentance to others, not because those upon whom the tower fell were sinners above others, but just because they were not. God is speaking to us in every calamity that overtakes men; He is telling us of the transitory character of earthly wealth and the uncertainty of our own lives, and the need that we be always prepared to meet Him; but the average man has no ear for the voice of God. Men instead of heeding God’s warning, simply inquire what they can do to make property more secure. Earthly possessions cannot be made secure. They are not intended to be secure; they are simply a trust committed to us to use for God while we have them. We live in an age in which men are boasting great things and are forgetting God; and when God lets His winds blow or His rains fall, we are utterly helpless, but we are never ready to confess our helplessness. There is no lesson that men need more to learn than that of their utter helplessness before God, and absolute dependence upon God; but there is no lesson that they are so unwilling to learn. Our age is one of increasing godlessness, not immorality, but godlessness. God is not in all our thoughts. In our prevailing ethical teaching man’s whole duty is represented as being just and loving in our dealings with our fellowman. That we have any duty to perform toward the infinite God we have quite forgotten. Yet when one stops to remember that God is infinite and man is finite, and that no number of finites equals infinity, then it becomes clear that if we should do our whole duty toward every member of the human race and fail in our duty toward the one infinite God, that where we had done our duty would be as nothing to where we had neglected to do our duty. God’s rights are superior to the rights of the whole human race, and the one who fails in his duty toward God has failed utterly even though he should do his duty toward every human being. I N 1807 Robert Morrison, first Protestant missionary to China, landed at Canton. The New York merchant through whom he engaged his passage, said, “with a sardonic grin,” “And so, Mr. Morrison, you really expect to make an impression on the idolatry of the great Chinese empire?” •“No, sir,” replied the man of God, “I expect God to do it.” And God has. China has turned from joss to Jesus. The glorious news has just gone out that China’s government begs China’s church to pray for wisdom for the civil councils. “It is marvellous in our eyes.” Not a century since Tsae-Ako, the first convert, confessed Christ,—and now 300,000,000 of his countrymen, through their official representatives, ask Him to “teach their senators wisdom.” The new republic appeals to Pleaven for recognition, and it shall not be disappointed. Morrison was right,—God has done it.
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