FRIDAY, October 17.  We have meeting at Bethel church.  Matthew 11 is read.  Cross the South Fork mountain and stay all night at Chlora Judy’s.  I am not surprised that these people are fond of hunting.  Several deer crossed our path in front of us to-day.

SATURDAY, October 18.  Meeting at Chlora Judy’s.  Romans 6 is read.  Magdalena Rorabaugh is baptized.  Brother Daniel Miller spoke in the German on the twelfth verse of the chapter read; and I interpreted to such as could not well understand German, following him.  Text:  “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body.”

He said:  “Man, as he first came from the hand of his Creator, was not a sinner.  He was included in the creation which God had just finished, and upon which he looked down and said that it was ’good, yea, very good.’  With this agree the words of Solomon, greatly gifted in wisdom.  After going over and investigating the whole human family, as far as his knowledge and wisdom enabled him to go, he returned to his own reflections and expressed the sad conclusion of his mind in these words:  ’Lo, this only have I found, that God made man upright:  but they have sought out many inventions.’  The Word of God from beginning to end shows us that man is no longer upright.  The inventions which Solomon speaks of are inventions of evil.  They are not good inventions.  In the opening chapters of the Bible we learn how man fell from the high and holy state in which he was created.  It is there declared that ’God made man in his own image, in the image of God made he him.’

“The Apostle John says that ‘God is light.’  By this I understand him to mean that God is infinitely wise, knowing all truth.  The same apostle says that ‘God is love.’  By this I understand that the Lord God has a will for good to every creature that he has made.  That he has no other feeling than that of love for the human race and for every individual of the human family.  Now, it was in the image and likeness of God that man was made at his first creation.  Is it not plain from this, then, that he must have been wise in regard to the things of his understanding, and filled with love in his heart for all that is truly good?  In this state he could love the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his strength, and love his neighbor as he loved himself.  But what does the Bible, and what does the history of the world tell us about man ever since he fell from this heavenly state in which he was first created?  The Bible declares that the ‘heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.’  The Lord said to the Pharisees, a class of people who even claimed to be religious:  ’Ye are of your father the devil; and the works of your father ye do.’  From the Bible we turn to the history of man’s career through all the ages down to the present time, and we find its lines all written in characters of blood.  Revenge, murder, cruelty, deceit, malice and ill-will of one toward another are manifest on almost every page of history.