THE AWFUL TRAGEDY OF SIN—ITS REMEDY.
THERE is beauty, much beauty, great beauty in nature. Her soft, blue sky; the splendor of sunlight; the glories of sunset clouds, the heavens, blazing with myriad stars—the garnishing of God; the mellow radiance of the moon; the lovely flowers; the waving grasses; the majestic trees; the ever-moving, rolling sea; the steadfast, mighty mountains; the gleaming lake, mirroring the fleecy clouds overhead; the purling brook, the hum of bee; the sweet bird songs,—all are dear and beautiful. And yet nature is marred, fearfully marred with sin's awful tragedy. The sky is not always softly blue, but sometimes terribly angry. At times the splendid sunlight scorches and burns and withers to decay and death. The very stars blaze up and die, and the myriad meteors tell of some cosmic tragedy in sidereal space. The mellow light of the moon, science tells us, is the reflection from a dead and frozen face. And on tree and grass and mountain and brook and bird has sin left its blasting, blighting, damning mark of disease, decay, and death. But upon no part of nature has the tragedy fallen as upon the human family, that part of God's earth-creation which in his own normal conditions was given dominion over all things earthly. "How have the mighty fallen!" How low and base is the king! How he is marked with disease and decay and death! His bent form and palsied limbs and bleared eyes greet us everywhere. One drops to decay and death every second; 3,600 in an hour, 86,400 in a day, 31,536,000 in a year. The great majority of these have died without hope. They have lived for self, have sought selfish gain and selfish pleasure, and died in their selfishness. And all, all, all have died in consequence of sin. They are sin's victims, part of sin's awful tragedy of wo. What makes the tragedy more awful is that it might all have been prevented. "In the way of righteousness is life, and in the pathway thereof there is no death." But man sinned, and behold the consequences of unfathomable wo and misery! But even tho sin came, still there is a remedy, the Remedy, which reaches to the very depth of human wo, and lifts to God's normal plane of everlasting righteousness and life eternal. The eternal Son of God, by whom the worlds were created, left His throne of infinite splendor with the Father, and came down to save men from the awful, hopeless tragedy of sin. God the Father so loved the unlovely, suffering ones that He gave His only-begotten Son, that all might have eternal life, with all that eternal life comprehends of gladness and joy and happiness. Down, down from the highest heaven He came, the Creator,—a servant with the angels, Himself the Archangel only because of chiefest service; "made in the likeness of men;" "born of a woman, born under the law;" "in all things" "made like unto His brethren;" beaten, mocked, insulted, maltreated, rejected by those for whom His great heart of love broke; yielding Himself at last to death, the ignominious death of the cross! O, what love! What treatment of such love! He met the awful tragedy in His own soul, sinner, for you that you might not meet it. But if you are saved from it, you must become one with Him. He asks only that you shall surrender your rebellious, selfish, sinful will and purposes and accept His will. That is what saving belief means. That is what faith means. To give up all to Him, to accept all from Him that He purchased with His own blood. How reasonable it is that man should do it, isn't it? How ungracious, ungrateful, it is that we should slight His love, His mercy, His goodness. This is the saddest part of the great tragedy of sin to see so many thousands, millions, of souls rushing on in the mad dance of death to utter destruction, ignoring their hopeless condition, the leprosy of sin, and brushing, pushing, smiting aside the pitiful hands of Infinite Love reached out to save them; which because of love can not save them against their will. O, this is the saddest part of the awful tragedy! In His own words we plead with you: "Come now, and let us reason together, saith Jehovah; tho your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; tho they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." "As I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?"