SUNDAY COLUMN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 45, 17 February 1912, Page 2

SUNDAY COLUMN.

FACING FACTS. (From an address by the You. Archdeacon Madden.) I want to talk to you about facing facts. They are hard things to face, as some of you know from past experience. We do not like to face some facts; but I want you to face one or two with me now because they pertain to our well-being in this life, and our eternal well-being in the life that is to come. Now have we all honestly,- fearlessly, courageously faced • .< • i The Terrible Fact of Sin—sin in our o\yn hearts, 'sin ( in its denting and in 'its dominating power Y i believe that at the bottom of most of the error of-the day,- -and the iireligion of the day, and the Sabbathbreaking of the day,, and' the craze for amusements, behind all.,this question of extension of divorce laws, is this fact —that men are thinking too lightly of sin, and are not recognising the exceeding sinfulness of sin. They look upon sin as something to be pitied rather than punished; and no man will seek God until, he has a deep sense of his need of God, and he can only have a deep sense of his need of God when he has, a deep sense of his own sinful character and nature.

We ■ may be -members, of various Christian Associations;; but I tell you that what the world wants to see today is not' merely ; thronged meetings of Chrisian men and ; w,omen; but of Christian, men and. women; but the world wants to see how they live at home, and how they live amongst their neighbours. The critics of Christ are not going, , some of them, to read the Bible, but they are going to read you; and very often you are not a Bible of God, but a libel upon it. That is the difficulty., Now, I am speaking to myself as well 1 as to you. God forbid that I should put myself on any sanctimonious pedestal and speak as if I were holier than you, hut I say it to myself as to you—“lf the world is to be converted to God, it is going to be converted by the lives of Christians, by the practices of Christians, and by the preaching of their lives among their fellows.” And so I say this: I want to face this fact of sin in all its,terrible ramifications in the human heart, in the home, in the cities,'bid in this England of ours. Until we learn the j. terrible damning nature of sin, we shall never realise what God has done jfor us in Christ Jesus. ■ This is the first. jAct,..and, I will tell j you a story in connection with it. il Tassing thrqughi thq(streets. qi| .Livfeiipool one day I was just crossing by ha igrpat (lamp in the-ceiytre of;the road when I saw one of-our constables ijsmile, dt me—and ydui know a policeman’s 'smile ha’s something-attractive about it; you cannot pass it by in a hurry. Whether it is the shade •of the helmet or not I do not know* but something gives an unusual attractiveness to the smile. My friend smiled at:one,- andilrsaidyJ'Douyou knowmo P”. “Oh yes,” he said, “I attended a mission you spoke at in St. Saviour’s Church,. E.yerton, - and /from that!«,Moning,” he, said,,,“l, been .-.-addiffercnt ~njan.;jfW ell,” <nil isaidy; ; ‘‘.ted mei about..it,i because, itafiiay help isomeone else.” “I cannot tell.<yoil»;much about your. sermon,’lchei said, “it was the,text that stuck.to, me.” “Well,” I said, “that is the, best part of the sermon. If the preacher is a wise man lie drives In the text, latidtjall he has, to do is just to keep on, driving ■it deeper. What was the .text?” “Your text was: ‘Thou God iseest me,’ ” he replied. ‘‘l thought I i very good fellow; I thought I was, a very respectable mend>er of the church, but that night 1 went home feeling very miserable, and I thought, ‘lf God sees me, what does Ho see ?’ I was on duty that night. It seemed the most lonely and weird kind of night there ever was in Liverpool.” (Of course the lonliness was in his own heart.) I said, “What happened?” He said, “As I went up and down my beat I was not thinking of the, sergeant, I was thinking of this text; and I felt miserable, and guilty. God had ■ looked into my heart and looked into my life—the Holy Godr-gand what a miserable, wretched, sinful being He saw. Sir, as I thought of my sin, as I thought how God saw me, I began to cry for mercy, and then I remembered that we had been singing a hymn at : that mission s

‘The dying thief rejoiced to see That fountain 1 in'>.his day, And there raayil, though vile as lie, Wash all my sins away.’ ■I just cried to God, and the Lord showed mo Himself as my Saviour to save mo from sin’s guilt and from sin’s power, and I thought I would just like to tell you. Good afternoon, Aichdeacon, you must be about your business and I will be about mine.” Well, he was on his beat and I was on mine. But you see I believe that this is really the foundation work of God’s Spirit, to realise what sin is in the sight of this Holy God, and then when you know'sin is not only something, as wo say," to be pitied, but something that deserves punishment—and that our sins were laid upon Jesus, theh’‘we find—thank God for it I—that He 'was there as One “Who loved us and gave Himself for ns.”

, 1 fmd th; it in the city of Belfast theie is a new temperance movement called “Gatch-my-Pal” • it is spreading like wild-fire. But you need not wait for a now organisation. There is the organisation of the Lord Jesus 1 Christ. You are your brother’s keeper. You are accountable to God to some extent for every person you come in contact with.