Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1869-03-04
Apples OF Gold.


ssHome is the only place in all thi:
world where hearts are sure OF each
other. 1t is the place of confidence
1t is the place where we tear off the
mask of guarded and dsuspiciOus coldness
which the world forces us to wear in
self-defence, and where we pour out the
unreserved communications of full con-
fiding hearts. 1t is the spot where ex-
pressions of tenderness gush out without
any sensation of ofawkwardness, and with
out any dread of ridicule. Let a man
travel where he will, home is the place
to which his heart untravelled fOndly
turns He is 10 double all pleasure
there. He is to divide all pain. A
happy home is the single spot of rest
which man has upon thisearth for the
cultivation of his noblest sensibilities.-
And now, brethren, if that be the des-
cription of home, is Gods place of rest
your home? Walk abroad and alone by
night. That awful other world. in the
stiffness and the solmn deep of the eter-
mites above, is it your home? Those
graves that lie beneath yeu, holding in
them the infinite secret, and stamping
upon all earthly loveliness the mark OF
frailty, and change, and fieetingness,-
are those graves the prospects to which
in bright days and dark days -you-can
turn without dismay. God in his splen-
dors,-dare we feel Him affectionate and
familiar? So that trial comes softened
by this feeling? 1t is my Father, and
enjoyment can be taken with frank
feeling: My Father, has given it me,
without grudging to make me happy ?
All that is having a home with God.
Are we at home then?u q
1--WE hear in these days great deal
respecting Rights: the rights OF. private
judgement, the rights of labor, the rights
of property, and the rights of man.
Rights are grand things, divine things
in this world of Gods; but the way in
which we expound these rights, alas !!
seems to me to be very incarnation of
selfishness. 1 can see nothing very no.
BILE in a man who is for ever going about
calling for his rights, Alas !aalas for
the man who feels nothing more grand
in this wondrous divine world than his
own rights |! =
Two thousand years agothere was One
here on earthlwiies lived the grandest
life that ever has been lived yet, life
that every thinking man, with deeper
or shallower meaning, has agreed to call
Divine. l read. little respecting his
Rights or of his claims of Rights; but
I have read great deal respecting his
Duties. Every act He did He called
Duty. I read very little in that life re-
specting his Rights; but L hear a'vast.
deal respecting his Wrongs-wrongs in
finite-wrongs born with majestic,
Godlike silence. His reward? His-to
be cast out in his day and generation,
and a alife-conferring death at last. These
were His Rights.
"WHo can look on this entangled web
Of human affairs in which evil struggles
with good, good gradually and slowly
itself, without having
hope within him that there are better
times to come? Who can see this evil
world, full of envy and injustice, and be
content to believe that things will re-
main as they are, even to the end Who
can see the brilliancy of character al
ready attained by individuals of our race,
without feeling that there is pledge in
this that what has been done already in
the individual will yet be accomplished
in the nation and in the race ?'
EARTHLY happiness is a husk We
say not that there is ne satisfaction in
the pleasure of worldly life. That
would be an overstatement of the truth.
there is, or else why should
men persist in living for them |? The
of mans appetite may be stay
ed by things which cannot satisfy him.
Every new pursuit contains in il new
hope; and it is long before. hope is bank
rupt. But it is strange if man has not
found out, long before he has reached
the age of thirty, that everything here
is empty and disappointing. The no
bier his heart, and the more unquencll-
able his hunger for the high and good,
the sooner will he find that out. Bubble
after bubble bursts, each bubble tinted
with the celestial colors of the rain bow,
md each leaving in the hand which
brushes it cold, damp drop of disap-
pointment. All that is described in
Scripture By the emphatic metaphor of
sowing thewind, andreaping the whirl4I
whirlwind of blighted hopes,
md unreturned feelings, and crushed
,xpectations-that is the harvest which
;he world gives you to reap.
And now is the question asked, Why
s this world unsatisfying Brethren,
It is the grandeur of the soul which God
mas given us, which makes it Unsuitable
n its desire-an.. infinite void which
,annot be filled up. A soul which was
made. for God, how can the world fill it,
IF the ocean can be still, with miles of
Unstable waters beneath it, then the
,oul of man, rocking itself upon its own
ieep longings, with the Infinite beneath
t, may rest. We were created once in
to find enjoyment in God; and
,ei
nothing for it but TO fill up the hollow
hess of the soul with God. Let net that
xpression-filling the soul with God
BASS away without a distinct meaning.
God is Love and Goodness. Fill the
oul with goodness and fill the soul with
ove-THAT is the filling it with God
If we love one another, God dweIIeth in
IS. There is nothing else that can satis-
v. So that when we hear men of this,
world acknowledge, as they semetimesE
will do, when they are wearied with thei
phantom chase of life, sick of gaieties, |
md tired of toll, that it is not in their |
pursuits they can drink the fount of |
and when we see them ,in-t
'tead of turning aside broken-hearted or
Else made wise, still persisting TO trust
q exPectations-at fifty, sixty, orseyen-
u years, still feverish about some new
1lan of ambition-what we see is this |
We see soul formed with capacity for
nigh and noble. things, fit for the ban
Iuet-table of God Himself, trying to
i'll its infinite hollowness with husks.n
"THEY tell US that just as the cater
pillar passes into the chrysalis, and the |
,hrsalis into the butterfly, SO profiigacy
,asses into disgust, and disgust into re-
igion. To use their own phraseology,
when people become disappointed with |
he world it is the last resource, they say,
o to turn saint. So the men of the !
world speak, and they think they are
profoundly philosophical and concise in
he account they give. The world is
Welcome to its very small sneer. 1t is
he glory of our Masters Gospel that it |
8 the refuge of the broken-hearted. I'll
s the strange mercy of God that He
IOes not reject the writings of q -iaded |