CHAPTER XX.

Character-Building.

PLUMB-LINE RELIGION.

And the Lord said unto me, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, a plumb-line."-AMOS 7:8

I WANT you to notice this fact, that when a man gives up the straight up-and-down religion in the Bible for any newfangled religion, it is generally to suit his sins. You first hear of his change of religion, and then you hear of some swindle he has practised in Colorado mining stock, telling some one if he will put in ten thousand dollars he can take out a hundred thousand, or he has sacrificed his chastity, or plunged into irremediable worldliness. His sins are so broad he has to broaden his religion, and he becomes as broad as temptation, as broad as the soul's darkness, as broad as hell. They want a religion that will allow them to keep their sins, and then at death say to them: "Well done, good and faithful servant," and that tells them: "All is well, for there is no hell." What a glorious heaven they hold before us! Come, let us go in and see it. There is Herod and all the babes he massacred. There is Charles Guiteau, and Jim Fiske, and Robespierre, the friend of the French guillotine, and all the liars, thieves, houseburners, garroters, pick pockets and libertines of all the centuries. They have all got crowns, and thrones, and harps, and sceptres, and when they chant they sing: "Thanksgiving, and honor, and glory, and power to the Broad Religion that lets us all into heaven without repentance, and faith in those disgraceful dogmas of ecclesiastical old-fogyism." All sorts of religions are putting forth their preten

sions. Some have a spiritualistic religion, and their chief work is with ghosts, and others a religion of political economy, proposing to put an end to human misery by a new style of taxation, and there is a humanitarian religion that looks after the body of men and lets the soul look after itself, and there is a legislative religion that proposes to rectify all wrongs by enactment of better laws, and there is an æsthetic religion that by rules of exquisite taste would lift the heart out of its deformities, and religions of all sorts, religions by the peck, religions by the square foot, and religions by the ton-all of them devices of the devil that would take the heart away from the only religion that will ever effect anything for the human race, and that is the straight up-and-down religion written in the book, which begins with Genesis and ends with Revelation, the religion of the skies, the old religion, the God-given religion, the everlasting religion, which says, "Love God above all and your neighbor as yourself." All religions but one begin at the wrong end, and in the wrong place. Bible religion demands that we first get right with God. It begins at the top and measures down, while the other religions begin at the bottom and try to measure up. They stand at the foot of the wall, up to their knees in the mud of human theory and speculation, and have a plummet and a string tied fast to it. And they throw the plummet this way, and break a head there, and throw the plummet another way and break a head there, and then they throw it up, and it comes down upon their own pate. Fools! Why will you stand at the foot of the wall measuring up when you ought to stand at the top measuring down?

PLUMB-LINE RECTITUDE.

The solid masonry of the world has to me a fascination. Walk about some of the triumphal arches and the cathedrals, four or six hundred years old, and see them stand as erect as when they were builded, walls of great height, for centuries not bending a quarter of an inch this way or that.

So greatly honored were the masons who builded these walls that they were free from taxation and called "free" masons. The trowel gets most of the credit for these buildings, and its clear ringing on stone and brick has sounded across the ages. But there is another implement of just as much importance as the trowel, and my text recognizes it. Bricklayers and stone-masons, and carpenters, in the building of walls, use an instrument made of a cord, at the end of which a lump of lead is fastened. They drop it over the side of the wall, and, as the plummet naturally seeks the centre of gravity in the earth, the workman discovers where the wall recedes, and where it bulges out, and just what is the perpendicular. Our text represents God as standing on the wall of character, which the Israelites had built, and, in that way, testing it. "And the Lord said unto me, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A plumb-line." What the world wants is a straight up-and-down religion. Much of the so-called piety of the day bends this way and that, to suit the times. It is horizontal, with a low state of sentiment and morals. We have all been building a wall of character, and it is glaringly imperfect, and needs reconstruction. How shall it be brought into perpendicular? Only by the divine measurement. "And the Lord said unto me, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A plumb-line."

The whole tendency of the times is to make us act by the standard of what others do. If they play cards, we play cards. If they dance, we dance. If they read certain styles of book, we read them. We throw over the wall of our character the tangled plumb line of other lives and reject the infallible test which Amos saw.

PLUMB-LINE TRAFFIC.

The divine plumb-line needs to be thrown over all merchandise. Nothing would make times so good, and the earning of a livelihood so easy, as the universal adoption of the law of right. Suspicion strikes through all bargainmaking. Men who sell know not whether they will ever get

the money. Purchasers know not whether the goods shipped will be according to the sample. And what with the large number of clerks who are making false entries and then absconding to Canada, and the explosion of firms that fail for millions of dollars, honest men are at their wits' end to make a living. He who stands up amid all the pressure and does right is accomplishing something toward the establishment of a high commercial prosperity. I have deep sympathy for the laboring classes who toil with hand and foot. But we must not forget the business men, who, without any complaint or bannered processions through the street, are enduring a stress of circumstances terrific.

To feel right and to do right under all this pressure requires martyr grace, requires divine support, requires celes tial reinforcement. But you will be wise to preserve your equilibrium and your honesty and your faith, and throw over all the counters and shelves and casks, the measuring line of divine light. "And the Lord said unto me, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A plumb-line."

LEANING TOWER OF PISA.

The question for me should not be what I think is right, but what God thinks is right. This perpetual reference to the behavior of others, as though it decided anything but human fallibility, is a mistake as wide as the world. There are ten thousand plumb-lines in use, but only one is true and exact, and that is the line of God's eternal right. There is a mighty attempt being made to reconstruct and fix up the Ten Commandments. To many they seem too rigid. The tower of Pisa leans over about thirteen feet from the perpendicular, and people go thousands of miles to see its graceful inclination, and, by extra braces and various architectural contrivances, it is kept leaning from century to century. Why not have the ten granite blocks of Sinai set a little aslant? Why not have the pillar of truth a leaning tower? Why is not an ellipse as good as a square? Why is not an

oblique as good as straight up and down? My friends, we must have a standard; shall it be God's or man's?

This subject gives me a grand opportunity of saying a useful word to all young men who are now forming habits for a lifetime. Of what use to a stone-mason or a bricklayer is a plumb-line? Why not build the wall by the unaided eye and hand? Because they are insufficient, because if there be a deflection in the wall it cannot further on be corrected. Because by the law of gravitation, a wall must be straight in order to be symmetrical and safe. A young man is in danger of getting a defect in his wall of character that may never be corrected. One of the best friends I ever had died of delirium tremens at sixty years of age, though he had not since twenty-one years of age-before which he had been dissipated-touched intoxicating liquor until that particular carousal that took him off. Not feeling well in the street on a hot summer day, he stepped into a drug store, just as you and I would have done, and asked for a dose of something to make him feel better. And there was alcohol in the dose, and that one drop aroused the old appetite, and he entered the first liquor store, and stayed there until thoroughly under the power of rum. He entered his home a raving maniac, his wife and daughters fleeing from his presence, until he was taken to the city hospital to die. The combustible material of early habit had lain quiet nearly forty years, and that one spark ignited it.

Remember that the wall may be one hundred feet high, and yet a deflection one foot from the foundation affects the entire structure. And if you live a hundred years and do right the last eighty years, you may nevertheless do something at twenty years of age that will damage all your earthly existence. All you who have built houses for yourselves, or for others, am I not right in saying to these young men, you cannot build a wall so high as to be independent of the character of its foundation? A man before thirty years of age may commit enough sin to last him a lifetime. Now, John, or George, or Henry, or whatever be your Christian name or surname, say here and now: "No wild oats for me, no cigars