Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1886-05-28

VI W. SAS VA w ANSoVS VI W
stop or to start. If you had missed that
one chance, you would have missed it
forever. Now just as p%recipitate and
quick and spontaneous will be the ransom
OF your soul. This morning you are max.
ing a calculation. You are on the track
of some financial or social game. With
your pen or pencil you are pursuing it.
This very morning you are devouring the
prey; but tonight you will be in a differ.
emit mood. You find that all heaven 10 Of
fered you. You wonder how you can
get it for yourself and for your family.
You wonder what resources it will give
you now and hereafter. You are dividing
peace and comfort and satisfaction and
Christian reward in your soul. You are
dividing the spoil.
On a Sabbath night at the close of the
service I said to some persons:
"When did you first become serious
about your soul?"
And they told me:
"To-night." 81
And l said to others:
"When did you give your heart to
God?"
And they said:
"To-night."
And l said to still others:
"When did you resolve to serve the Lord
all the days of your lifes"
And they said:
"To-night."
saw by their apparel that whom the
grace Of God struck them they were de-
vouring the prey; but I saw also in the food
of joyful tears and in the kindling rap
lures on their brow, md in their exhil-
arant and transporting utterances, that
they were dividing the spoil. At night,
with one touch Of electricity, all these
lights blaze. Oh, I would to God that
the darkness of your souls might be
broken up, and that by one quick, over.
w%helming, instantaneous flash of illum.
ination you might be brougt into the
light and the liberty of the sons of God!
You see that religion is a diff erent thing
from what some of you people supposed.
You thought it was decadence; you
thought religion was evacuation; you
thought it was highway robbery; that it
struck one down and left him half dead;
that it plucked out the eyes; that it
plucked out the plumes of the soul; that it
broke the wing and crushed the beak as it
came clawing with its blacktalons through
the air. No, that is not religion. What is
religion? 1t is dividing the spoil. It is
taking a defenseless soul and panoplying
tion of prizes by the kings hand, every
medal stamped with a coronation. It il
an exhilaration, an expansion. It is i'm
paradisetion. 1t is enforcement. Re-
| ligion makes a man master of earth, and
death, and hell. It goes forth to gather
the medals of victory won by Prince EN-
manuel, and the diadems of heaven and
the glories of realms terrestrial and celes.
tial, and then, after ranging all worlds for
everything that is Respondent, it divides
the spoil.
What was it that James Turner, the
famous English evangelist, wasdoing when
in his dying moment he said: "Christ is
all! Christ is alp Why, he was enter
ing into light; he was rounding the Cape
of Good Hope; he was dividing the spoil.
What was the aged Christian Quakeress
doing when at eighty years of age she
arose in the meeting one day and said:
"The time of my departure is come. My
grave-clothes are falling off," She was
dividing the spoil.
She longed with wings to fly away,
And mix with that eternal day.
What is Daniel now doing, the lion.
| tanner? and Elijah, who was drawn by the
flaming coursers? and Paul, the rattling of
whose chains made kings quake? and all
| the other victims of flood, and fire, and
wreck, and guillotins? Where are they?
Dividing the spoil.
Ten Thousand times ten thousand,
In sparkling raiment bright,
The armies of the ransomed saints
Throng up the sleeps of light.
IT'S finished, all is finished,
Their fight with death and sin;
Lift high your golden gates
And let the victors in. .
oh, what a grand thing it is to be a
Christian! We begin on earth to divide
the spoil, but the distribution will not be
completed to all eternity. There is a pow
erty -struck soul, there is a business de
spoiled soul, there is a sin STRUCK soul, there
is a bereaved soul-why do you not come
and get the spoils of Christian character,
the comfort, the joy, the peace, the saliva
ton that I am sent to offer you in my
masters name? Though your knees
knock, together in weakness, though
your hand tremble in fear, though your
eyes rain tears of uncomfortable weeping
come and get the spoils. Rest for all the
weary. Pardon for all the guilty. Labor
for all the bestormed. Life for all the
dead. I verify believe that there are some
who nave come in here outcast because the
world is against them, and because they
feel God is against them, who will go
away to-day saying:
Icame to Jesus as I was,
Weary. and worn, and sad;
Ifound in him a resting place,
And He has made me glad.
Though you came in children of the
world, you may go away heirs of Heaven.
Though you were devouring the prey, now,
all worlds Witnessing, you may divide the
spoil.
The Youngest in the Land.
1t is probable that Henry County,
Va, has not a parallel in the youthful
mass Of IFS county officials .Tudoo 6 G..