Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1884-10-27

| When the soldiers of Antigonus the wor-
| rlor, were afraid because their own army was
| so small and the army of the enemy was 40
| numerous. and the affrighted soldiers were
| expressing their fears to their General he
| cried out with great Vehemence: "How many
| do you reckon me to beY' And while we adj
INIT that the forces arrayed against our ma
| tlonal welfare are very great, ask you, in
making an estimate Of the resources of
righteousness, how many do you reckon the
Lord God Almighty 10 be? ''The Lord of Hosts
| Is His name." THE charIOts of God are
| twenty thousand" and the mountains of our
| faith are full of them.
But am asked whom am l going to vote
| Tor. That Is matter of but little Importance
| But ii is a matter of vast interest whom these
| great masses of humanity are going to vote
for, and so l lay before you principles by
| which all may make up their own mind
| Vote for the best men. Vote prayerfulIy.
| vote as Christians. Vote as you will wish you
| had voted when you can vote no more. You
see, without my saying it, that my chief hope
Is IN Christianity. or as my text suggests, the
| upper forces. Political parti.s come and go,
aud they may do right and they NAV do
| wrong, but God lives, and He has ordained
TINS nation Tor q conqueror that demagogism
can't defeat. L hope toltve to see in this cOun-
try party with two planks In its political
platform--the ten commandments and the
sermon on the mount. That would sweep the
land like tornado, was about to say. But
when think that IL is not TO be work of de-
Vastation but OF rescue, change the figure
anu say, 1t VIII sweep like a thousand spice
gales from heaven. American politics will
never be purified and made decent by any
thing less pungent and all-pervading than the
Christian religion.
The simple fact is that we are to have for
our next President either man who has been
pctorialiZed and excOriated as thief or one
VINO is plctorl &llzed and eXcOri ated as liber-
tine. There has never been such high carna-
val OF defamation. Have what faults theY
may, they have all had injustice done them
There have been two great manufactures of
lies that turned out three or four specimens a
day, all fitted out and rugged, ready for cir.
culatiOn, a Democratic manufactory and
Republican manufactory of lies. And these
have had branch houses in all parts of the
ountry, and their agents going up and down.
Lies large and small; lies domestic and
lies public and lies prurient; long
back action; lies cut bias and lies diagonal:
lies smart and lies stupid; lies that some be-
heve and lies that all believe and lies that no
famatory; lies with Jumps like eamels ami
scales like crocodiles and necks long as storks |
and legs swift as antelope and sting sharp as |
adder's; secular lies and religious lies lies
raw and scallOped and panned and steWed; |
lies with attachment screw and belt coupling |
and rufler and braider and ready wound |
bbins; lies by Christians who tell the truth |
except just before election; lies by people
who always lie, but surpass themselves in the |
Presidential campaign.
Ashamed am L to have foreigners visit this |
country at such ii mes. They stand dazed,
their hand on their pocketbooR anu afraid to
be out nights And what impression must
be made on the hundreds and thousands of |
TO- elgners who have recently come to make |
America their home! What a disgust and |
horror must seize on them concerning the |
land of their adoption! The only solace il |
thas many of them cannot understand the |
English language. But suppose the German |
and Swedish and French and Italian
newspapers take up the strain of |
obloquy and peddle it out to their subscribers. |
Nothing short of aH-pervading Christian |
sentiment can stay these floods of inGecency.
The time will come when such scenes of false
hood and bllllngsgate and low scandal as we |
have been going through for the past three
months will be rebuked by thatreligion which |
from its one mountain intones the command:
Thou shalt not bear false witness against |
tiny nelghbor," and from its other mountain |
pleads for love and kindliness and blessing |
rather than cursing.
All, my friends, That is what we ought to
nave, and what we VIII have-a national re-
ligion. There are two kinds of national re-
ugions. The one is supported by the State, |
and Is matter of human politics. immense
worldly patronage, men struggling to get
places IN it without reference to their quail
ications, great churches with large salaries
and no audience, at the head Of the establish |
ment an Archbishop with a salary of $4,000 |
year, and its cathedrGls that would hold |
thousand people, and with all the ecclesias-
teal machinery of music and canOncals. and
an audience of fifty or a hundred attendant |
upon the services. Such a national religion |
would be of no use in America But what we |
need is such vast mu titudes of con-
verted and evangelical people that
they shall be in majority, and that
they shall control everything secular as
well as everything religious. Is that imprac
tlcable and impossible? No; it is as certain |
as that there Is God and that He wrote the
Bible, and that He is strong enough and hon
est enough to 90 as He has said. An ancient
Emperor prided himself in doing that which
his Councillors prom unced impossible, and |
have to tell you that mems "Impossibes" are |
Gods "eaSies.o ttHath He said and shall He |
not do 1t? Hath He spoken and shall He not
bring il to pass" The Christian religion will
yet take possession of every ballot-box, of
every school-house, of every home, of every |
valley, of every mountain top, of every acre,
Of every national domain.
One,Q the seven wonders of the world was
Pharos, the white marble watch of
Egypt. Sostratus, architect and sculptor, cut
his name on the front of it, then covered 1t
with plastering, and, to please the king. put
the monarch's name on the outside Of this
plasterng. The storms beat on the front OF
that Watch-tower and the sea dashed its fu-
ries, and in time the plasteriDg with the kings
name was washed out and washed of
and washed down, and only the name Of Sos
Uratus, the architect, remained. That stood
deep cut into the imperishable rock. Thus
many and mighty have been the names writ
ten across this continent in politics and
literature and refOrm-names worthy Of re-
memDrance written In our architecture and
across our capitols and churches and univer-
sties and asYlums-but tod was the
arehltect tbe scnntoa Of this continent aod
long after all other names have by the wash
Of the ages and the tempests OF the centuries
been obliterated, the divine signature, tn
hlvine name, shall appear brighter and
brighter as the mlilenniums go by, and all the
world will see and acknowledge that the
same God who built this nation redeemed it
from all its crimes and from all its woes
Name high over all in earth and air and
skies " After all the other chariOts have been
unwheeled and all the other charges shall
have been crippled, the chariOts that Elisha
saw that morning of his peril shall roll on In
the triumph of Ou King and all the armies of
heaven follow HI i'm on white horses.
But, while God could do all this without us,
He will not do it without us. The weakest of
us, the humblest of us, the faintest of us, the
smallest Drained of us, the sIckest of us may
have a share in the triumph; and though our
name may not be Kept like that of the archi-
tect, Sostratus, hewn for centuries on a con-
spicuOus watch-tOwer, we shall have our
names and what we do kept in a grander
place. even in the memory of Him who died to
redeem us. and to redeem the world and
around the wounds in his hands our names
are already written. as We see when he throws
out His arms toward us this moment saying:
"Behold, have engraved thee upon the palms
Of my hands,"
By the mightiest force in the universe, the
potency of prayer. beseech Him day and
night for the deliverance Of this nation. In
the dead letter post Office at w ashington there
are 100000 letters that lost they way, but
never one earnest, honest, Christian suppli-
cation directed God has miscarried. The
way is all clear for the immediate ascent of
our best wishes for this nation. In Olden time
and when arrangements for postal communi-
cation were less complete there was on rock
hundred feet high, on the coast Of England,
a barrel fastened to a post and marAed in
large letters ''post office" and the ships
went by boat was sent ashore to take and
fetch letters, and in that way sailors
heard from home or sent word to those
far away. So safe were those deposits OF af-
fectiOn that no lock was on that barrel con-
tanning letters for America and Europe and
Asia and Africa and the islands Of the sea,
and through that ocean post Office many q
poor sailors heart was cheefed, and tIdngs
Of giadness went to the old homestead. Would
to God that from all the heights of our nations
pr sperity there might be con- .tant inter-
change OF sympathles, the ascending prayers
be answered by corresponding blessings. pos
tai celestial not by medium of a storm struck
rock on wintry beach, but by means OF the
Rock of Ages. In the deep cleft of that rock
may our nation hide from all It's pufsuers.
A High Priced Bible.
Mr.. W. W. Pascbal, fol many years Or
the Alabama tripOd saws the TuscaIOosa