SATURDAY, August 1.  Go to Orkney Springs.

SUNDAY, August 2.  Have preaching at the hotel.  My subject is “Righteousness, Temperance, and a Judgment to Come.”  My audience was composed of hearers from far and near; and almost all classes, as to intelligence and social standing, were represented.  A man like myself, who only occasionally strikes such a crowd, hardly knows how to adapt himself to the situation.  If he lets himself down to the comprehension of the illiterate, the highbred city folks may say:  “He is beneath his calling.”  And if he lifts himself up to their standard of appreciation, the unlearned go away without being able to say amen to what they have heard.  I decided, however, to follow the example of Paul before Felix and Drusilla.  He reasoned of righteousness, etc.

In the forty-fifth Psalm David says:  “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever:  the scepter of thy kingdom is a scepter of righteousness.  Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness.”  A scepter is a kind of staff borne by kings as an emblem of their authority.  It is a comfort to know that the scepter of Jehovah, as King of the universe, is a scepter of righteousness.  We could never know that God is righteous, and that he loves righteousness, except by being told in his Word of Truth.  This world does not give unequivocal testimony to the righteousness of God.  The wicked bear rule, and the nations tremble.  Evil often overcomes good, and wrong triumphs over right.  Disease or accident lays the good man low in death; while the wicked near by is left to exult in the strength of his arm.  I say it is comforting to know, in the midst of these apparent contradictory evidences of the just government of the world, that God is nevertheless righteous:  and although iniquity largely bears rule and carries the day, God still hates wickedness.  God does not acquiesce in the injustice and wrong that is being perpetrated in the world.  He merely permits it; and he permits it for the reason that he can not arrest and put an end to it without destroying man’s freedom.  Man is free as to his will and understanding—­free to believe what is false and to do what is wrong.  But he is just as free to believe what is true and to will what is good.  This freedom is what makes him capable of being reformed and saved.

It is self-evident that righteousness, which is right doing from right willing, is the basis of all true order and happiness in earth and heaven.  “God is love,” and he therefore loves righteousness because it is good, and hates wickedness because it is evil.  But man has fallen from his primeval state of righteousness, and therefore he is not in a condition of mind and heart fit for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, nor capable of enjoying the divine presence in the society of the pure and good.  Righteousness and holiness are related to each other very much as the fruit is related to the tree that bears it.  Holiness corresponds with the sap, fiber, life and whatever else makes the tree good; and righteousness corresponds with the fruit the good tree bears; and “without holiness no man shall see the Lord.”