The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1882-09-07
THE CROSS.
Continued from 1st Page.)

not see why infidels should be unbelieY-
ing of the Bible story of the sun and
moon standing still in JOshua's time,
when a French infidel says fifteen hun
dred worlds have stopped. The moon Is
a defunct world. There have been solar,
lunar, stellar, catastrOphes innumerable.
But our world has especially suffered
plaques, epidemics, cyclones, eel1pses,
earthquakes. At one toss OF the earth in
TOmbOrO, out of a city Of 1900 only
twenty.six escaped. On the 1st Of No
yember. IT'S, at Lisbon, 10000 perished
in five minutes, and 100000 before the
earth stopped rocking. Many centuries
have not been able to resurreet the
Pompeii and Herculaneum which Vesu-
vius in few hours buried. ROssberg
Mountain, in Switzerland, falls, crush
ing the village of GOldau. One noun
tain in Italy destroyed two hundred
thousand people while sound asleep in
the night. By CONFUSION Japan was
broken off from China, and the Car1b-
bean Islands from the American coast.
Near the mouth of the Ganges three Is
lands had three hundred and forty
thousand inhabitants. In one night the
sea swept over, leaving two hundred and
fifteen thousand dead. 1t has been
lately demonstrated that whole cOnti-
nent reaching from Europe to America
has sunk, a continent that allowed peO-
pie to cross from Spain to South America.
And they did cross, some of the inhabt-
tants of the sunken continent going to
Europe and some going through the
valley of the Mississippi, and pushing
out into Mexico, remains OF their cities
and their graves found in Ohio and in
Colorado and on the table lands, and in
various parts of our land. A whole con-
tinent gone down between Europe and
America, continent once densely pOpu-
lated, the Azores that we see off the
coast of Spain, the top of one Of the
great mountains of the sunken cOnti-
nent. Plato wrote of that continent, its
glOries and its ruin, and men thought
It romance. But a fleet of German,
British and American ships, the Gazelle,
the Dolphin and Challenger, have re-
vealed by deep sea-sOundings the entire
contour of the sunken continent. The
Australian Archipelago is only the top
of mountains of a continent that once
extended from India to America. The
most of the earth is now water, once the
most of 1t was land. Scenes of trouble
on rock and sky and sea, in fauna and
flora, geological trouble, atmospheric
trouble, oceanic trouble. political trOu-
BILE, social trouble, domestic trouble.
Standing in the presence of so many
stupendOus devastatiOns, l tell you that
the great need of the ages Is Divine
sympathy and OmnipOtent comfort, and
they are to be found not in Brahma of
the Hindoo or the Allah of the MOham-
medan, but, in Jesus Christ, and to Him
shall the gathering of the nations be.
Worlds may fall, but this morning
star shall never be blOtted from the
heavens. The earth may quake, but this
rock of ages shall never be shaken from
its foundation. The Christ who fed the
five thousand will yet feed all hungered.
The Christ who opened the eyes Of Bar
tim@us will cure all blindness. The
Christ who made the dumb speak will
put on every tongue hOsanna. The
Christ who walked Lazarus from the sar-
cOphagus will rally all the pious dead
in triumphant resurrection. 81 know
that my Redeemer liveth, and to Him
shall the gathering of the people be-"
When Christ gets fairly to work at the
raising of this wreck of world it will
not take Him long to lift 1t. | have
sometimes thought that the age in which
we live is to be devoted to the discover
les and inventions by which individuals
and communities and nations may be
brought into quick and instantaneous
sympathy and communication, and then
in some further age these inventions
shall be employed for gospel invitation,
and that some day some great prophet
of the Lord will snatch the mysterious,
sublime and miraculous telephone out
of the hand of commerce, and all lands,
and all cities and all homes the
world over being connected by the mys-
teriOus wire, one distinct voice shall
in an instant announce pardon, and
sympathy and life through Christ to all
nations, and through the telephone
tube placed at the ear of the Lords
prophet shall come back the answer. II
believe in God, the Father, Almighty
Maker Of heaven and earth, and in Je-
sus Christ" You and may not live to
see the day. 1 expects our bodies will
be sound asleep in the hammOcke as the
old gospel ship goes sailing on. But
God will wake us up in time to beh old
the contamination. We, who have
sweated In the hot harvest field viii be
at the door Of the heavenly garner when
the sheaves come in. That for which
we have tOiled and suffered and prayed
through all these years of our life on
earth will not come to completion and
leave us obli7ious Of the achievement.
We will be allowed to come out and
shake hands with the victors. Those Of
us who fought in the earlier battles will
have as much right to rejoice as those
who Redeemed their feet in the last Ar
mageddon. Those of US who could
only give a cup Of cold water to the
suffering, or scrape lint for the wound
ed, or shake up the pillow of the dying,
or minister to old age in its decrepitude
or coax a poor waif of the street to go
home to her God, or lifted little child
into Christ's arms, will as certainly
have share in the ovation as a Chryso-
stom or Paul. The divine conqueroI
will pick out the humblest in the crowd
and turn back round on his wlite horse