The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1886-01-31

Mr. Fltt inquired Wnat was the matter. ana Dir
Walter told him that his daughter was about to
be married to one not worthy of her rank. Mr.
Pitt said rs the young man of respectable
family" Yes" us he respectable in him
self9' Yes" HAS he an estimable characteri'
Yes why. 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 mar
riage certificates back, as we all are asked, let
them persmptorily decline to sayssthat the cere-
mony was in November instead of January, or
decline to leave the date blank, lest others fill out
the blank enormously. Let a law be passed IN
our States, as it has already been in some Of the
States, making 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 if there be lawful
objection it may be presented, not swinging the
buoy on the rocks after the ship has struck and
gone to pieces. And here it might be we'll for
me to take all the romance out of an escapade
by quoting a dozen lines of Robert Pollock, the
great Scotch poet, where he describes the crazed
victim Of one of these escapades
Yet had she many days
Of sorrow in the world but never wept.
She lived on aims and carried in her hand
Some wther stalks she gathered in the 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, heaven, hell, God; but still
In lonely places walked, and ever gazed
Upon the withered stalks and talked to them;
Till wasted to the shadow of her youth
With woe too wide to see beyond, she died.
But now I turn on this subject an intenser
light. We have ], 500 lights in this church, and
when, by electric touch, they are kndled 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
tO foh kho fu1l OILS
OF it, AS it sweeps around the Horseshoe
curve" of the Alleghenies, or along the edge of
the Sierra Nevadas. how far ahead, ard how
deep down, and how high up it flashes, and there
and wild beasts hieng themselves to their
caverns. and cascades a thousand feet
TALL clngng in white terror to the precipices
But more intense, more far-reaching moro sud-
den, swifter and more tremendous, is the head
light of an advancing Judgment Day. under
which all the most hidden affairs of life shall
come to discovery and arraignment. quote an
overwhelming passage of Scripture, in which /
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 homo and from every
heart The iniquty may have been so sly that
1t escaped all human detection. but it will be as
well known or that day as the crimes of Sodom
and Gomorrah, unless, for Christ's sake it had
been forgiven. All the fingers of universal con-
demnation will be pointed at it. The archangel
of wrath will stand there with uplifted thunder
bolt ready to strike it. The squeamishness and
prudery of earthly 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 a thousand monday suns, stand with the
whole story written on scalp. and forehead, and
cheek, and hands, and feet; whole resurrection
body afame and dripping with fiery disclosures.
ten thousand sepulchral, and celestial. and in
fernal voices crying: "Unclean! Unclean! I'm
clean!"
All martial intrigues and all secret iniquities
will be published as though all the trumpets
spoke them, and all the lightnings capitalized
them, and all the earthquakes rumbled them. o
man, recreant to thy marriage vow! o woman,
in sinful collision! What then will become of
thy poor soul? The tumbling APPS and Pyre
nees and Mount Washington cannot hide thee
from the consequences of thy secret sins. Bet
ter repent of them now, so that they can not be
brought against thee. For the chief Of sinners
there is pardon, if you ask it in time But
leave you to guess what chance there will be
for those who earth lived in clandestine rela-
tons, when on that day the very Christ who had
such high appreciation of the marriage relation
that he compared it to his own relation with the
church, shall appear at the door of the great
hall of the last assize and all the mntidudes of
earth, and hell and heaven shall rise up and cry
out from the three galleries.
Behold. the bridegroom cometh.