The Valley Virginian. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1865-1895, 1885-11-12

i unCl! some morning mas MIN III deHr-
iunl, il which he talks of home, and then
rises and says hs must go and look after
those patients. He is told to lie down,
/ but he fights his attendants until he falls
! back, and is weaker and weaker, and dies
! for people with whom he had no kinship,
and far away from his family, and is hast
: lily put away in strangers tomb, and on
/ ly the fifth part of a newspaper line tells of
his sacrifice, his name just mentioned
among five. Yet he has touched the fur
thest height OF sublimity in that three
weeks of humanitarian service. He goes
straight as an arrow to the bosom Of him
/ VITO said: Il was sick, and We visited
me- Life for life. Blood fer blood.
Substitution.
In the legal profession | see the same
4 principle OF self-sacrifice. In 1916, VIM.
Freeman, a pauperized and idiotic negro,
was at Auburn, n. y, on trial for muir
Ger. lie had slain the entire Van Ness
family. The foaming wrath of the COM
mnnily could be kept off him only by armed
his counsel. No attorney wanted to sacri-
fee his popularity by such an ungrateful
/ task. All were silent save one, a young
! lawyer with feeble voice, that could hardly
be heard outside the bar, pale and thin and
awkward. 1t was VIM. II . Seward, who
saw hat tie prisone. was idiotic and ire
sponsible and ought to be put in an asylum
rather than put TO death, the heroic coun-
sci littering these beautiful words: II
speak BOW in the hearing OF people who
| haye PROMULGATED the prisoner and con-
DENIED NE for pleading in his behalf. He
is convict, a pauper, a negro, without
intellect, sense or emotion. My child.
with an fftctionate smile, disarms my
careworn face of its frcwn whenever l
cross my threshold. The beggar in the
street obligeS me to give. because he says,
God bless you, as l pass. Ny dog ca
resses me with fondness if [ will but
smile on him. My horse recognizes me
when | fill his manger What reward,
what gratitude, what sympathy and affec-
ton can | expect here There the pris-
oner sits. Look at him. Look at the
assemblage around you. Listen to their
Unsurpassed censures and their excited
fears, and tell me where, among my neigh
bors or my fellow-men, where even in his
heart can expect to find sentiment, a
thought, not to say of reward OF acknowl-
edgement, or even of recognition? =
Gentlemen, you may think of this evil
dence what you please bring in what
verdict you can, but [ asseyrate. before
Heaven and you, that to the best Of my
knowledge and belief, the prisoner at the
bar does not at this moment know why it
is that my shadow falls on you instead of
his own.n The galiows got its victim, but
the post mertem examination of the poor
creature showed to all the surgeons and to
all the world that the public were wrong
and VIM. H. Seward was right, and that the
hard, stony step of obloquy in the Auburn
courtroom was the first step of the stairs
OF fame up which he went to the top, or to
within one step of the top, that last de-
| MED him through the treachery of Amer
lean politics. Nothing sublimer was ever
seen in an American courtroom than
VIM. II. Seward, without reward, stand
ing between the fury of the populace and
the loathsome imbecile. Substitution
In the realm Of fine arts there was as re-
markable an instance. A brilliant but
hypercriticised painter. Joseph William
Turner, was met by volley of abuse from
all the art galleries Of Europe His paint
ings, which have since won the applause of
all civilized nations, 1.-The Fifth Plague
OF Egypt, Fishermen on a Lea Shore in
Squally Weather. calais Pier" "The
Sun Rising Through Mist" and ''Dido
Building Carthage, were then targets for
critics to shoot at. In defense of this out
rageously abused man young author of
twenty four years, just one year out of
college, came forth with his pen and wrote
the ablest and most famous essays on art
that the world ever saw, or ever will see
John nuskin's Modern Painters For
seventeen years this author fought the
battles of the maltreated artist, and after
in poverty and broken heartedness the
painter had died and the public tried to
undo their cruelties toward him by giving
him a big funeral and burial at st. Paul S
Cathedral, his old-time friend took out of a
tin-box 10000 pieces of paper containing
drawings by the old painter, and through
many weary and uncompensated months,
assorted and arranged them for public OBJ
servation. People say John Ruskin in his
old days is cross, misanthropic and morbid.
Whatever he may do that he ought not to
do, and whatever he may say that he ought
not to say between now and his death, lie
will leave this world insolvent as far as it
has any capacity to pay this authors pen
for it's chivalric and Christian defense of
a poor painters pencil. John Ruskin for
William Turner. Blood for blood. Sub
! Stitution.
What an exalting principle this which
leads one to suffer for another. Nothing
! so kindles enthusiasm, or awakens elo-
quence, or chimes poetic canto, or moves
nations. That principle is the dominant
one in our religion-Christ the martyr,
Christ the celestial hero Christ the. de-
fender, Christ the substitute. No new
principle, for it was as old as human ma
ture, but now on a grander, wider, higher,
! deeper and more understanding scale
The shepherd boy, as champion for Israel,
with sling toppled the giant of Philistine
braggadocio in the dust, but here is another
David, who, for all the armies of churches,
militant and triumphant, hurs the Goliath
of hell into defeat, the crash ofEhis brazen
armor like an explosion at He'll Gate.
Abraham had, at God S command, agreed
to sacrifice his son Isaac, and the same
God, just in time, had provided ram OF
the thlcket as a substitute but here is an.
other Isaac, bound to the altar, and nc
hand arrests the sharp edges of liberation
and death, and the universe shivers and
quakes and recoils and grcans at the
horror. AL good men have for centuries
been trying to tell what this substitute
was like, and every comparison, INSPIRED
and uninspired, evangelistic, prophetic
apostolic and human, falls short, fol-
Christ was the great unlike. Adam tyre
of Christ hncausa hn canoo d;roo+lv fropo