The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1886-09-16

mission. Suffering all ended now. With
respect to that invalid the words Of my
text have been fulfilled:
Thou shalt be missed, because thy seat Will
be empty. 4
4. Ipass on and find one more vacant
chair 1t is high chair. 1t is the child's
chair. If that chair be occupied, 1 think it
Is the most potent chair in all the house,
hold. All the chairs wait on It; and the
chairs are turned toward it. 1t means
more than David's chair at SauPs banquet.
At any rate, it makes more racquet. That
is strange house that can be dull with q
child in it, How that child breaks up the
hard worldliness of the place, and keeps
you young to sixty, seventy and eighty
years of agel If you have no child OF
your own, adopt one; it will open
Heaven to your soul. 1t will pay
Its way. It's Growing in the morning will
give the day a cheerful starting, and
its glee at night will give the day a
cheerful close. You do not like children?
Then you had better stay out of Heaven,
for there are so many there they would
fairly make you crazy! Only about &c.,
100000 of theml The old crusty disciples
told the mothers to keep the children
away from Christ. --
"You bother Him." they said, you
trouble the Master"
Trouble Himl He had filed Heaven
with that kind of trouble.
A pioneer in California says that for the
first year or two after his residence in
Sierra Nevada County there was not a
single child in all the reach of q hundred
miles. Blu the Fourth Of July came,
and the miners were gathered to.
gether, and they were celebrating the
Fourth with oration and poem and a
boisterous brass brand; and while the
band was playing, an infants voice
was heard crying, and all the miners
were startled, and the swarthy men
began to think of their homes
on the Eastern coast and Of their
wives and children far away, and their
hearts were filled with inconsistencies as
they heard the babe cry. But the music
went on, and the child cried louder and
louder and the brass band played louder
and louder, trying to drown out the in.
fantile interruption, when a swarthy
miner, the tears rolling down his face, got
up and shook his fist, and said:
"Stop that noisy band, and give the
baby chance"
Oh, there was pathos in it as well as
good cheer in it! There is nothing to
arouse, and melt, and subdue the soul like
child's voice.
But when it goes away from you, the
high chair becomes higher chair, and
there is desolation all about you. In
three-fourths of the homes of my congr g.
cation there is vacant high chair. Some-
how you never get over it. There is no
one to put to bed at night; no one to ask
strange questions about God and
Heaven. Oh, what is the use of that
high chair? 1t is to call you higher. What
a drawing upward it is to have children
in Heaven. And then it is such pre-
ventive against sin. If father is going
away into sin he leaves his living chill
dren with their mother; but if a father is
going away into sin what is he going to
do with his deal children floating about
him and lowering over his every wayward
step? Oh, speak out, vacant. high chair,
and say:
"Father, come back from sin; mother,
come back from worldliness. am watch
ing you. I am waiting for you"
With respect to your child the words Of
my text have been fulfilled:
Thou shalt be missed, because thy seat
will be empty.
My hearers, / have gathered up the
voices of your departed friends, and tried
to intone them into one invitation up
ward. Iset in array all the vacant chairs
in your homes, and Of your social circle,
and hid them cry out.
"Time is short. Eternity is near. Take
my Saviour. Be at peace with my God.
Come up where am. We lived together
on earth; come, let us live toge her in
heaven"
We answer that invitation. We como.
Keep seat for us, as Saul kept q, seat or
David; but that seat shall not be empty.
When we are all through with this world,
and we have shaken hands all around for
the last time, and all our chairs in the
home circle, and in the outside world,
shall be vacant, may we be worshiping
God in that place from which we shall go
out no more forever. thank God there
will be no vacant chairs in HEAVIER,