The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1886-09-17
AN APPEAL FOR CHARLESTON
EX TRACT FROM A SERMON BY REV. C. d.
WILSON.

upon the Imagination OF mankind. Nothing ha
ever more powerfully appealed to the Sensibili
ties of readers than the record of the Jews by thu
waters of Babylon, with unstrung harps, weeping
over desoate Zion. Nomore pathetic words ar
ever articulated than the dirge of Jeremiah owe
fallen Jerusalem.
Some of our fellow citizens, in our own pros
Porous land, are now lamenting their fallen city
as Marius did Carthage, standing among its ruins
God has so constituted man, arranged society
that all calamites are in a real sense universe
ones. We are bound to fellow-man by mysteri
GUS ties. Destroy one city and you have touched
the electric key that starts thrill through man
kind. God has made us with the almost divin,
faculty of sympathy-the power to feel for anC
suffer with our fellow beings. in distress. To tn,
lion in his lair, the tiger in his JUNGLE 1t Is all one
if all others of his genus, save mate and cubs
were blotted out. But man is not granted "thi.
large discourse and faculty. to be limited to foot
and rest, or narrowed to his own offspring. He
is given to feel the pain of all his fellows-giver
brute. So great disaster touches to the quicl
all who have the normal human heart whether il
fall upon our fellows in this hemisphere, or IL
distant divisions of the world.
We are haunted day and night by images of the
wounded, starving and homeless. Like red
handed Macbeth, tender-eyed pity can murder
Sleep" To-day the eyes of our nation and of the
civilized world are on Charleston, as she sits
weeping by the sea-no roof above her-her locks
drenched by the September rains. She for the
time is the centre of the world, She is the cyno-
sure of all eyes, but they are eyes sutfused with
tears
This quick power of sympathy that belongs tc
our time is mainly the cultivated plant of Chris
tianity; 1t may grow wild here and there on the
earth but its perfection is only where the Divine
hand of Jesus Christ has tended it. There has
been something of sympathy within national
lines, as Jews were loyal to Jews, but cut out
hand with the heart to their tribes, but hate the
dogs of Giaours. But Christ ignores these nation
al lines and breaches to Samaritan as we'll as Jew
taught St. Peter by vision to call none common
or unclean, sent His gospel to all people; wecom-
ed to His hospitabe heart people of all languages
and permitted st. John on Patmos view of the
n " n q n n n
the redeemed out of every kindred, and tongue
and people, and nation.
Having quickened the sympathies and softened
the hearts of men, Christ has directly and clearly
taught us the duty aud granted the privilege OF
helping our fellow-man. He devoted one whole
parable to teaching the world that the neighbor
whose claims all men acknowledges always
the man who needs help That is fellowman's
necessity, poverty, sickness wounds, distress,
that make him our neighbor; that bring him as
close to our heart as il he had lived next door.
He taught that the call of distress is q claim on
all the strong, and wise, and able. No man can
escape the imperative duty more than he can flee
from the air that enswathes us, or be free from
the laws of nature, The calamity that has over
taken one city in our nation is then the voice of
Jesus Christ TO every one who is able to succOr or
assist. Charleston is our neighbor All its men
and women and children are our neghbors; and
its cry ought to ring over this planet like the
feet of the stricken city abundance beyond room
to contain; till barns would burst with plenty,
and presses run over, and gold would be us stones
in the street.
Some people have undertaken to interpret this
providence as an index of signal wickedness. We
must not go beyond the wisdom of Christ who
said that those on whom the tower in Sloan fell
were not wicked above their fellows who dwet
in Jerusalem. Neither were those Galileans
whose blood plate mingled with their sacrifices
sinners above all the Galileans because they suf-
fered such things. This was not meant to stigma
tie Charleston, as worse than any other aggre-
CRATE OF men, Learn, rather, that God can in an
hour wreck all the riches and splendor of our
whole nation as easily as one city. Thank God
that only one city has fallen, and give thank Of
fering Tor your own escape.
Fifty thousand people are stretching out empty
hands to all the prosperous in this land. They
say to you: You have plenty you are at ease
and quiet your barns filled to bursting; even
your cattle are sheltered better than we. You
are clad. You have roof over you. Provision
and fuel are stored against the cold. You have
money in pocket-whie we and our children are
in the fields and public squares, and covered only
by canvass. While in sixty or ninety. days, the
poorly protected by fragile tents, and we will
sufer-perhaps perish.
Now there are some causes presented To the
two sides. You may differ at times Now you
cannot differ There is but one side. The dis
tress cannot be exaggerated. Rembrandt could
not lay. on too heavy brush. Shelter, food,
health! You know what these mean. Here is a
great mass of people without shelter, without
food, and with disease staring at them. You can
imagine what that means Too much cannot be
done. 1t is hole into which you can cart a great
deal without filling it..
NOW tneSe are nara Times IN money matters,
and we have not heart to plead for luxuries. But
here is pressing demand for the common neces-
saries OF life. OF course each man Of you knows
best his own circumStances-knows what he has
the places for 1.-THE calls upon him. But there
are many who will not be poorer for one dollar
others for five; others for ten, and so on up the
scale. And suppose gift now causes little
self-denial. suppose we cut OFF luxury or two
for a time. Five dollars to-day to this cause may
mean to one the loss of cigars for awhile. or use
of cheaper article, or denial of some Superfluity.
Put it this way. Suppose the slight shudder of
earthquake we felt here in Hartford had thrown
these thirty thousand of us out into the fields and
woods, and we had spent the past ten days and
nights under canvass tents, or in rough huts, and
all our children and women were exposed to the
night nc, dews ana staIVaaon ana disease were upon
and we sent up a great cry and wall to the nation
for help, we would think the Devil ought to get
the man who would go on using his five cent
cigar. drinking his wine, wearing extravagant
clothes or having three or four courses at dinner,
and would not curtail his self-indulgence to help
us by dollar. Now some of our fellow citizens
are in that plight. The way to tell il razor is
sharp is to try it your own hair You can tell if
dagger has needle point by prickin9 your fin
ger with it. So the test of what ought to be done
now is to feel the edge and point of this disaster
yourself. Put yourself in his place, just as it
would seem to you then, the case appears now to
every man in Charleston. Charleston men may to-
day rightly think that it is an excuseless crime
deny the help in the sad condition into which they
are plunged by no fault of theirs but by the OPP
Grafton of general laws under God. What we
would expect the nation to do for us under re-
versed conditions is the measure now of what we
should do. Please sir, touch that stiletto on your
own flesh and feel if it is sharp.
AS we pass on with these remarks 1t is fitting to
call attention to the striking fact that the appeal
listened to most attentively and responded to
most generously by the Christian public. do
not mean only church members, but all believers
in the Gospel of Christ. You do not read that the
intidel associations in the United States are max
ing any great effort TO help just now. You do
not read of atheists exhorting the populace to
tb.,ta No NhAd. &c u,
the background now when Christians are minis
terng to the stricken. The test, then. of any
cause is its works: "Ye shall know them by their
fruits, said the Founder of Christianity. And
infidelity which is helpless and unresponslve in
the presence of Distress the world has no use for
For it is Christianity that is ready to help in time
of need. A great Frenchman has remarked, IF
you point to the hospital of the lepers, Christian
lty follows; II you speak of the Hottentots,
poor lack bread Christianity is first to respond ;
If tyrants Cypress, Christianity has dared to
draw the sword; IL wrongs are to be redressed
foremost in demanding Justice and Judgment
For Christianity dips its palm branch In the blood
of Jesus Christ and sprinkies Herewith the brow
of every man and beast.
Our Lord once drew back the curtain and re-
vealed to man his judgment seat, before which
all nations are to be gathered. He has shown that
those on His right hand and blessed, are those
who gave meat, drink and garments to hungry,
thirsty and naked. Those on His left, who are
ordered to depart into fire. are those who did not
so minister to the necessities of the distressed.
For He declared that He is represented on earth
by the necessitous. and those who minister to
these. do it to Him as really as If in person. And
Jesus Christ, the Goldman, in whose veins is part
of the circulation of the human race. and whose
heart beats true to every man, looks down o-day
upon all who with tender hands and sOftened
hearts bend as ministering angels above His crea-
lures who are stricken in inscrutable wisdom by
the terrific forces of earthquake.
To-day we are all brethren. There is no north
or south, no east or west-all up and down this
land and over the seas men are touched and we
are one, in the presence of calamity, to our breth-
rem In the flesh.