THE SUBSTANTIAL by Joseph Parker, D. D.

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 4, 1889

THE SUBSTANTIAL.

By Joseph Parker, D. D.

"Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee." Deut. 32:18.

How is it that men soon forget the solid, the real, the substantial? What is it that delights men in spluttering rockets, in colored fountains, in lamps swinging upon trees that are offended by their presence? See the great seething crowd waiting for the colored fountains to spring up, and for all the little electric lamps confined in tinted globes to shine among the swaying branches! What exclamations of idiotic delight! How stunned is modern intelligence at the marvelous display of color! Who heeds the quiet moon that looks on with unutterable amazement, and that in her motherly heart is saying, Oh, that they were wise, that they were less given to toy worship and to playfulness of that kind! Here I have been shining ages upon ages—who heeds me? Which of all the sweltering, overfed throng turns a bleared eye to my course, to watch me in my gentle sovereignty? And the stars, too, look down upon the colored fountains without being moved to envy by their momentary blush and by their unheard splash! We forget the Rock so soon; we prefer the toy; we want something light, something that can be spoken trippingly on the tongue—an easy, fluent nothing. We do not care to bow down the head to study, to criticism, to the examination and estimation of evidence, and commit ourselves to the acceptance of sound conclusions. Can we go anywhere to see a colored fountain? Men who do not travel half a mile to the greatest pulpit in the world, or the greatest altar ever built to the God of Heaven, would put themselves and their families to any amount of inconvenience and expense to gaze with the admiration of idiocy upon a colored fountain! Blessed are they who love the permanent stars, the lamps of heaven, and who set their feet broadly and squarely on God's everlasting Rock. Let us turn to the real, to the substantial, to the very revelation of God's truth, and abide there; the colored fountain can only come now and again, but the eternal heavens are always full of light or rich with beauty.—Joseph Parker, D. D.