The Moral World

SERMÓN BY EEV. IUVID SWING, OP CHICA0O. ' C(Kl B Invoel UlO world that He gave Hia Sou. 1 John m, lli. In tliat large composition ealled tho ( moral world what ideas, as the pointers I wonld say, lic herc and thcre ! ] ing before the landscape of a great irnst yon find a largo assemblage of i tliought. There is the expansc of blue '. sky, there is a band of white cloud, therc is tho charm of great distance in i the mountain, therc is the charm of j tiearness in the foregronnd; the i ground reminds us of eternity, the erróund of time, the mountain awakes ' the sense of the sublime, the grass and i violets in the foreground a-naken the ( beautiful, the crumbling house or ] church appcals to oúr natural sadness, i the vines on the wall recall us to hope ; 1 the immenseness of the scène proclaims ] God, the hunter or fishennan just i ble proclaims man. Into this moral 1 composition you may see tho Greek and 1 Roman carrying art and thought and I language, and the Hobrcws carrying the i best truths of religión. The Hebrcws i foTttowed faithfully thoir mission, and 1 stood by tho roligious sido of man until thoir sced-lessons boro the fruit of tho i Christian era. There were other c streams mcanwhile flowing down and i emptying into a common doop, but, as ■ in spcaking in general tering of i nents wc alludo to its giant streams, the Mississippi or Hudson, or Amazon or i Danube as draining the immense vales, i and make no note of tho hundrods of tributarios which, with mucli noise or : profound silonoe, add their waters, so ; in analyzing the past the mind must i mention only such Niles as Palestine and Greoco and Italy, and must not hope even to perceive the i tributarios of those long and deep' : floods. In the classic languages alone we may lind a wholo day in this moral i croation. The modern speech whioh : can oxpress sucli millions of ideas, and i whieh furnishos such a gateway for the ; soul ; the modern speech whieh íinds in the score of modern languages only so many dialects of itself, all comes from that Eastern land - a magnificent bequest from the dying yestcrday to tho youtliful to-day and to-morrow. In this great composition beforc us, aftor a mighty language was limncd, then came education and liborty. The oducation which bogan to turn the mind away irom sensuality and toward such intcliectual riclies as law, philosoi)hy, science, art, poetry, and ethies, must bo declarcd one of the mighty works of ' creation and providence." When by dogroes the growth of liberty came inviting the common poople up to higher seats, then, too, the Creator pourcd anothcr clement into the moral cosmos, and made it assume a new shapc. Tho common man beeame ambitious, and energetic, aud hopeful. It threw open the gatos of property, of office, of profession, of every form of distinctiim. and filled with enthusiasm races which had once been slavcs. In tho modern great nations men of all forras of talent, philosophic, mochanical, mathematical, poetic, moral, philanthropic or inventive iro invited and urged along their favorite path by the sense of perfect freedom. One long dreadful epoch persecuted Jows or burnt Catholics or Protestants, but now each class moves freoly aniid its ideas, and the onco-despiscd Hobrew becomes the musician of Germany, or the bankor of Europe, or the statcsman of England. When Disracli was young he perceived the result of liberty among the Jews, for he enumerates in " Ooningsby" the groat ones who are leading Europo in thought, in finance, in statesmanship, and in song. Wn have now marked the proe(!ss by which one moral world is boing fivniod. Borrowing our figure from the Bible, we see tho successivc days opening and closing, and in eacli evoning the egeátion larger and better than in tho morning hour. From the few large elements we may pass to a general law, and conclude that tho minor evonts in history are all component parts in the vast life of to-day. Long after we havo bccome unable to trace tho result of a f act or a line of facts, it will remain truc that that fact or line of facts is blendcd into the great whole, forming human nature. Our oyes are made to see the largo, and then reason comes in to infer the small. Our sensos do not measure tho world, they only set going an induction. We perceive that the large animáis ent and breathc and rost and die, and henee, when animal organisms bccome too .small for our sight, we cover them all over with our induction, and by reason see them cat and breatho and rost and die. When the heavy quadruped runs over the Western plains the ground trembles ; and when man walks his stop is often heard War, in the still night. When the ear fails, induction becomes the soul's ear, and it tells us that when the butterfly's foot touches a flowerlcaf the air vibrates witli the sudden contact. We must enter the moral world with this plan of the universe in our mind, and must confess that our civilization is made up of subtlo forces joiuing and blouding in it liko the many vibrations which form a tone in music. Wc must follow the flight of induction until we dn not see the human race to bo shapod only by such groat things as language and education and liberty, but also by what seem humbler elements, such as the addro.sses of a Savonarola, the conversión of an Augustine, the piety of a Calvin, the solitude of an u'Keriipis. It is wholly impossible for you and me to discover the meaniug of a crusade or a Napoleonic wai', or of the plague in London or in Memphis ; we eannot go to the cemeteries, where half a million American soldiers sleep, and learn the whole justification of their dust, but, where sense and reason both fail, we can whisper to our heart that God is creating a moral world, and tho) are the ïnortiingS and evcnings in its suceossive days. As tlio pliysical universo is full of blending lighb and shadow, and as, indeed, it ereates beauty by mingling, and thus makes :i morning or cvcning sky sweeter tlian the deeidcd nicKin, so our moral world comes to uk as a eontinuanee of the sanie blending, and in some stninge maimer the songs of Homer and Dante and Milton and Ene harp oí David and Sapplio and Beethoven combine wrcn the eloquence of Luther and Boseuet, and the swords if (harige, and Washington in weaving the one fabric of a final humanity. So vast is the fact and future of the moral world that it is safe to say that the material world is only a great shadow of this moral beauty. The naturalists reverse the thought. They sometimos find the explanations of f 1 ■ universo to lie in material forms, and that man is only one of its many forms of dust. Man and rock and stream are all one. But I shonld prefer to assumc the moral world is the explanation of all being, and to declare that the physical world is only the mirror in which the spirit turning iiround constantly, perceivea itself. Thus on all sides the great mass of material things lies as a mirror or language of the rational soul. It is the reflectcd light of the spirit. Sueh, then, is the moral world. It is rising up immense from the hand of a never-resting Creator, and is increasing in volume the further the living stream flows. And now it is such a view of it which makes us the more ready to believo that this benovolent Creator sent such a being as Christ to live and teach and die here. It secms easy to believe that He camc an angel to disturb the waters of this pool that higher life and health might be given out to all us sick ones helpless on the bank.s. At times atheists will come, and to all our hcarts do'ubts will come, but the momentum bound up in the family of man and issuing forth from the One Being whom wc cali Christ will press back the formal and informal unbelief and will carry us all onward. It is not to bc won'aéred at that Christ camc and offered to this moral world His hand and His heart, for it was a wonderfnl world and was moving off toward a great destiny. Whèn we remomber how God loved this world, and when wc look into it and seo what elementa are blcnding together to form its powerful life, let us feel thal it will sweop onward, and can, if we wil] permit it to do so, banish from our souls all chilling doubt, and fill vis with its own imperishable power and hope. II will fill our boKoms with its own perpctuity, and make us feel that the deathof man is only his removal to a place whenco he can look down upon nations and ages in their grandeur, as now wc moasnre a little space with our cyc, and exul t in the morning and evening of a fleeting day. Herc we sec the honra and days pass, and so few are they thal we can count them, and soon they are all gonc. The spiritual world is so immense, and its Creator so good and sublime, that dcath may not be an extinguishment of the soul, but a calling away to whcre the hcart enters npon a ncw reckoning of time, and marks the great centurics pass by on earth with al their struggles and triumphs.