Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1883-1888, 1884-12-19
CHURCH-GOING BELLS.
OUR DAY OF REST AND
WORSHIP.
Red Handed Communism Rob-
bling Our Children of
What God Ordained.
,Tis not enough to worship God alone.

IT'S not the low, self abnegs ted groan
That reads Alright the great life-giving Book.
Yc whose hearts are not touched with
love, BY the music of the church-going bell
and to whose soul its blended power OF
voice and spirit brings no hope, will find
nothing in these lines which you can under
stand. But to you for whom the soft
sounds OF a Sunday mornings bell awakens
such tender emotions as no words can por-
tray, to you for whom back the years come
sweeping, filled with the gentlest memories,
filed with vanished loves and banished
treasures, to you and to you, read on:
sswhat hand can tosch the strings so fiue;
Nearer and nearer comes, till DER the trees
II hangs and breathes In soul-dis0lving air. -
The dissoivlng tones the church going bell.
The weights of life are constantly running
down and sleep was given to wind mp again
the vital machinery, but it has long been
realized by the tired ones of earth that
sleep alone is not enough. God saw that,
in the beginning, and kindly decreed that
one day in seven should be "A day Of rest.
Welcome it comes to the wearied sons Of toll
as they gather about the hearthstones of
peaceful homes for full days rest.
Hail, Holy Day. the blessing from above
| Brightens thy presence like n smile OF love,
| Smoothing, like oil upon stormy sea,
| Thy toughest waves OF human destiny
| Cheering the good, and TO the poor oppress' d,
Bearing the promise OF their heveniv rest
1t is the men and the women who tear
down rather than those who seek to build
up, that attract the most notice and receive
the kndest patronage. The spirit Of red
handed communism is already seen in this
land of ours. 1t seeks not only to strike down
our homes, but 10 tear down our day of
worship and Of rest, and to hush its Sabbath
bells. Year by year the Sabbath that we so
loved and revered in days agone is being
mperceptibly taken away. The magma
charta of virtue, homc-love and purity is
this day, and those who worship at its affairs
should contend against the ingratiating in
fuences that would deny its benefits and its
consultations; its rests, its songs and worship
and its bells and peacefulness.
%, sweeter thsn the msrriage-feast,
| Ills swceter far TO me,
| To walk together to the church
With goodiy company;
| And all together pray
While each to his great Father bends,
Old men and babes and loving friends,
And youths and maidens gay.
The Sabbath mornings bells, how some
chord in unison with what We hear is
touched within US as We are carried back in
years and leagues to green hills and rolling
rivers, to nesting villages and purling
brooks to hear words that echo in the heart
forever and to feel the warmth of smiles of
faces that now are only dust. Those bells:
with easy force they open all the cells
Who're mem'ry slept Wherever hear
kindred melody the scene rscurs
And with 1t all its pleasures and its pains -
Each Sabbath day should be one of
rest ana quiet. The whirling wheels, the
rushing trains, the busy mart and all secu-
lar affairs should cease. Those who work
seven days of every seven, deliberately weak
en- their own powers. The creator who
planned this world of ours with all its ele
ments and its inhabitants, who taught the
the swelling ocean to know its bounds, who
set our fields and prairies with their verdure
and bloom, but directed for them rest and
and winters gloom, who placed the
torches Of heaven, and holds the mighty uni
verse. He surely knows what is best for
His loved offspring men, and what are the
needs Of his soul. That to rest and worship
are among these needs, who that has ever
experienced can deny, who that has ever
felt the solace of'music or the inspiration of
immortal desires and longing gainsay. 1t
comes like dove direct from Heaven, only
to bless and to strengthen.
"SIx days stern labor shuts the poor
From natures careless banquet hail;
The Seventh, an angel opes the door,
And, smiling, welcomes all!"
But for rich and poor there is but one real
rest. To lie abed Sunday morning or to
lounge about home all day affords not the
rest that men and women require. For one
the very sight of her household suggests
care, and for the other laxity that becomes
tiresome. The only way is to turn the
stream of ones thoughts into new channels.
Home music and home companionship may
do this, but not SO surely as to gather with
loved ones and neighbors in sweet compan-
ionship to where the church-going bell calls
to worship and to prayer.
"How oft the music of those village bells,
Falling at intervals upon the ear
In cadence sweet now dying all away,
Now pealing load sgain and louder still,
Clear and sonorous rs the gale comes on -
The man or woman who disregards this
day, who ignores its divine origin, who fails
% nd ral,or,n,,a
cessities, is in Just that much an enemy to
his kind and their well being. If one man
be permitted to run his business to the an
noyance of his neighbor why not another
If the corner grocery why not the corner
bank! As the majority favor the observ-
ance OF the Sabbath either as Christian or
as a sanitary blessing, why permit its viola
ton by any! We have often thought if
ever this country shall become the sport of
revolution and anarchy the calamity will be
seen to have entered through these rents of
Sabbath dissertation.
Then let ms stand for the Sabbath, for its
rest and for its peace and blessings, for its
bells and its sweet influences and worship, |
not because man was made for the Sabbath |
but because the Sabbath was made for man |
not because the laws of man command it |
but because God in his love ordained it.
There is a Sabbath of the weeks, another |
of the years, and who can say that there
may not be another of the centuries, and |
that the labors of six thousand years may
not soon end in the millennium, when
1.-The groans Of nature In this neither world,
Which heaven has heard for ages, have AN end, |
Foretold by prophets and by poets sung,
The time OF rest, the promised Sabbath comes.
six thousand years OF error have well-nigh
FULFILLED their tardy and disastrous course
Over this sinful world; and " hat remsins
OF is tempestnous state of human things
IL merely A. the working OF u sea,
Refa re n IN I'm that rocks itself To rest