St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1886-05-08

world will never be converted to God until
Christians sry less and laugh and sing
more. The horrors are poor bait. Ii peo-
pie are to be persuaded to adopt our holy
religion, it will be because they have made
up their minds it is happy religion. They
don't like q morbid Christianity.
know thers are morbid people who enjoy
funeral. They come early to see the
friends take leave of the corpse, and they
steal ride to the cemetery; hut all healthy
people enjoy wedding better than they
do burial. Now, you make the religion
of Christ sepulchral and hearse-like and
you make it repulsive.
Isay, plant the rose of Sharon along the
church walks, and columbine to Chamber
over the church wall; and have smile on
the lip, and have the mouth filled with
holy water. There is no man in the wor Id
except the Christian that has a right to
feel AN untrammeled glee. He is promised
every thing is to be for the best here, and
he is on the way to a delight which will
take all the professions with palm
branches, and all the orchestras, harped
and cy inhaled and trumpted, to express.
"Oh," you say, ~ have so much trouble! !"
Have YOU more trouble than Paul had?
What does he say? "Sorrowful, yet al
ways rejoicing. Poor, yet making many
rich. Having nothing, yet possessing all,
things"
The next laughter mentioned in the Bible
that I shall speak of, is the FOOLS laughter,
or the expression of sinful merriment.
Solomon was very quick at simiie; when
he makes q comparison we all catch it.
What is the laughter of fool like? He
says: "It is the cracking Of thorns under
pot" The kettle is swung, bunch of
bvambles is put under it, and the torch is
applied to it and there is great noise and
big blaze and sputter and quick ex-
tinguishment; then it is darker than it was
before. FOOLS laughter. The most mis-
cradle thing on earth is q bad mans fun.
There they are-ten men in bar
room; they have at home wives,
mothers, daughters. The impure jest
starts at one corner of. bar
room and crackle, crsckle, crackle it goes
all around. In Ave hundred such outlaws
there is not one item of happiness. They
all feel bemeaned if they have any con-
science left. Have nothing to do with men
or women who tell immoral stories. have
no confidence either in their Christian
character or their morality.
The next laughter that shall mention
as being in the Bible is the laugh of Gods
condemnation: ale that stitch in the
heavens shall laugh" Again: ''The Lord
will laugh at him." Again: 81 will laugh
at his calamity" With such demonstra-
tion will God greet every kind of great
sin and wickedness. But men build up
villainies higher and higher. Good men
almost pity God because He is so schemed
against by men. Suddenly pin drops
out Of the machinery of wickedness, or q
secret is revealed, and the foundation be-
gins to rock, and finally the whole thing is
demolished. What is the matter? will
tell you what the matter is. The crash of
ruin is only the reverberation of Gods
laughter.
On Wall street there are Q great many
good men and great many fraudulent
men. A fraudulent man there says: 81
mean to have my million" He goes TO
work, reckless of honesty, and he gets his
first one hundred thousand dollars. He
gets after awhile his two hundred thou
sand dollars. After awhile he gets his
five hundred thousand dollars. Snow"
he says, II have only one more move to
make and shall have my million" He
gathers up all his resources; he makes
that one last grand move; he fails and
loses all, and he has not enough money
left to pay the cost of the car to his home.
People can not understand this spasmodic
revulsion. Some said it was sudden
turn in Erie Railway stock, or in Western
Union, or in Illinois Central; some said it
was Jay Gould some said it was one spec
ulator, some said it was another. They
all guessed wrong. will tell you what it
was: "He that sitteth in the heavens"
laughed.
A man in New York said he would be
the richest man in the city. He left his
honest work of chairmaking and got into
the city councils some way, and in ten
years stole fifteen million dollars from the
city government. Fifteen million dollars.
He held the Legislature of the State of
New York in the grip of his right hand.
Suspicious were aroused. The grand jury
presented indictments. The whole land
stood aghast. The man who expected to
put half tho city in his vest pocket
goes to Blackwell's Island, goes to Ludlow
street jail, breaks prison and goes across
the sea, is rearrested and brought back
and again remanded to jail and died
there. Why. ''He that sitteth in the
heavens" laughed.
Rome was great empire; she had Hor-
ace and Virgil among her poets; she had
Augustus and Constantine among her en-
perors. But what mean the defaced Pam
theon and the Forum turned into cattle
market and the broken walled Coliseum
and the architectural skeleton of her great
aqueducts What was that thunder? "Oh,""