St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1886-02-06


of danger who dares not allow her mother
to see her letters.
If you have sensible parents take them
into your confidence in all the affairs of
the heart. They will give you more good
advice in one hour than you can get from
all the world beside in five years. They
have toiled for you so long and prayed for
you so much, they have your best interests
?&heart. At the same time let parents re-
view their opposition to proposed mari.
tai alliance, and see if their opposition is
founded on genuine wish for the child's
welfare, or on some within or notion or
prejudice or selfshness, fighting a natural
law and trying to make Niagara run up
stream. Mr.. Pitt, the Prime Minister of
England, was always saying wise things.
One day Sir Walter Farquar called on him
In great perturbation. Mr.. Pitt inquired
what was the matter, and Sir Walter told
him that his daughter was about
TO be married to one not worthy of her
rank Mr. Pitt said: ais the
young man of respectable family?" eyes"
"Is he respectable in HIMSELF" eyes"
HAS he All estimable character?" eyes"
"Whv, then, my dear Sir Walter, make no
opposition" The advice was taken, and a
happy married life ensued. Let ministers
and officers Of the law decline officiating
at clandestine marriages. When they are
asked to date marriage certificate back.
as we all are asked, let them peremptorily
decline to say that the ceremony was in
November instead of January, or decline
to leave the date blank lest others fill out
the record enormously. Let a law be
4 III &o$o hac a1roo
been in some of our States, making a
license from officers of the law necessary
before we can unite couples, and then make
it necessary to publish beforehand in the
newspapers, as it used to be published in
the New England churches, so that il
there be lawful objection it may be pre-.
sented, not swinging the buoy on the
rocks after the ship has struck and goRe @
pieces. And here it might be we'll for ms
to take all the romance out of an escapade
by quoting dozen lines of Robert Pollock,
the great Scotch poet, where he describes
the crazed victim of one of these esca.
pades:
Yet had she many days
or sorrow in the world, but never wept,
She lived on aims, and carried in her hand
spring.
When any asked the cause. she smiled and
said
They were her sisters and would come and
watch
Her grave when she was dead She never
spoke
OF her deceiver, father mother, home
Or child, or heaven, or he'll, or God, but still
In lonely places walked and ever gazed
no xu;Ah oil ma FOL
Till wasted to the shadow of her youth,
With woe too wide to see beyond, she died.
But now turn on this subject an intensel
light. We have fifteen hundred lights In
this church, and when by electric touch
| they are kindled in the evening service it
| is almost startling. But this whole subject
| of "Clandestine Marriages and Escapades"
! put under more intense light than that
| The headlight of locomotive is terrible if
| you stand near enough to catch the full
! glare of it. AS it sweeps around the
| Horseshoe curve" of the Alleghenies or
| along the edge of the Sierra Nevadas, how
| far ahead, and how deep down, and how
| high up it flashes, and there is instantane.
| GUS revelation of mountain peak and wild
beasts hieing themselves to their caverns,
| and cascades thousand feet tall, clinging
| in white terror to the precipices! But
| more intense, more far-reaching, more
| sudden, swifter and more tremendous,
! is the headlight of an advancing Judgment
| Day, under which all the most hidden af-
| fairs of life shall come to discovery and ar
! raignment. ! quote an overwhelming
| passage of Scr ipture, in which I put the
| whole emphasis on the word "secret:"
God shall bring every work into judgment,
with every secret thing, whether it be good
or evil
| What time that will be in which the
| cover shall be lifted from every home and
from every heart. The iniquity may have
been so sly that it escaped all human de-
lection, but it will be as well known on
that day as the crimes of sodom and Co.
| morrah, unless, for Christ's sake, it has
been forgiven. All the fingers of universal
condemnation will be pointed at it, The
archangel of wrath will stand there with
uplifted thunderbolt ready to strike it.
The squeamishness and prudery Of earth
ly society, which hardly allowed
some sins to be mentioned on earth, are
past, and the man who was unclean and
the woman who was impure will, under
light brighter than thousand monday
| sun, stand with the whole story written on
scalp and forehead and cheeks and hands
and feet; the whole resurrection body
afiame and dripping with fiery disclosures,
ten thousand sepulchral and celestial and
Internal voices crying: "Unclean! I'm
| clean! Uncleann
All marital intrigues and all secret in
EQUITIES will be published as though all
the trumpets spoke them and all the light
nings capitalized them and all the earth