St. Landry democrat., 1888-08-04

mounted assassins rode thlc ugh the
streets o. Paris, crying; "Killl Blood
letting is good ia August Kill! Death to
the Huguenots! KillW when Lady Jane
Grey's head rolled from the executloner's
block, when Calvin was imprisoned in the
castle, when John Knox died for the
truth, when John Bunyan lay rotting in
Bedford Jail, saying:
"1f God will help me and my physica
life continues I will stay here until the
moss grows on my eyebrows rather thar
give up my faith" The days Of retrea1
for the Church were days Of victory.
But there is more marked illustration
OF victorious retreat in the life Of ou1
Joshua, the Jesus of the ages. First fall
! ing back from an appalling height to an
| appalling depth, falling from celestial
hills to Terrestrial valleys, from throne to
manager yet that did not seem to suffice
Him as retreat Falling back still
| further from Bethlehem to Nazareth, from
| Nazareth to Jerusalem, back from Jeru-
salem to Golgotha, back from Golgotha
to the mausoleum in the rock, back down
over the preclpices Of perdition until He
| walked amid the caverns of the eternal
captlves, and drank of the wine of the
| wrath of Almighty God amid the Arabs
| and the Jezebels and the BelshazzarB. o
| men of the pulpit and men Of the pew,
| Christ's descent from Heaven to earth
does not measure half the distance. 1t
| was from glory to perdition. He de-
scended into hell. All the records of
earthly retreat are as nothing compared
| with this falling back. Santa Ana, with
the fragments Of the army, flying over
the plateaux of Mexico, and Napoleon and
his army retreating from Moscow into the
awful SHOWS Of Russia, are not worthy to
be mentioned with this retreat when all
the powers Of darkness seem to be pur-
suing Christ as He fell back, until the
body of Him who came to do such won.
derful things lay pulseless and stripped
Methinks that no City of All was was not
so emptied of its inhabitants when they
went to pursue Joshua as perdition was
emptied Of devils when they started for
thelpursuit Of Christ and He fell back and
back, down lower, down lower, chasm be-
low chasm, pit below pit, until he seemed
to strike the bottom of objurgation and
scorn and torture. Oh, the long, loud,
jubilant shout Of hell at the defeat of the
Lord God Almighty! a-'
Lesson the second: The triumph of the
wicked is short. Did you ever see an army
in panic? There Is nothing so uncon.
trolable. If you had stood at Long
Bridge, Washington, during the opening
of our civil war, you would know what it
is to see an army run. And when those men
of Al looked out and saw those men of
Joshua in stampede, they expected easy
work. They would scatter them as the
equinox the leaves. o, the gleeful and
jubilant descent of the men Of All upon the
men Of Joshua! But their exhilaration was
brief, for the tide of hattie turned and
these quondram conqaerors left their
miserable carcesses in the wilderness Of
Bethaven. So Il always is. The triumph
Of the wicked is abort. You make twenty
thousand dollars at the gaming table Do
you expect to keep its You win die in
the poor house. You make fortune
by iniquitous traffic. Do you expect
to keep it? Your money will
scatter, or it Will stay long enough to
curse your children after you are dead.
Call over the roll of bad men who pros
pered and see how short was their pros
perity. For awhile, like the men of All,
they went from conquest to conquest, but
after awhile disaster rolled back upon
them and they were divided into three
parts: Misfortune took their property,
the grave took their body and the lost
world took their soul. / am always in
terested in the bui lding Of theaters and
the building Of dissipating saloons. /
like to have them built Of the best granite
and have the rooms made large and to
have the pillars made very firm. God is
going to conquer them, and they will be
turned into asylums and art galleries and
churches. The stores in which fraud |
ulent men do business. the splendid |
banking institutions where the president |
and cashier put all their property in their
wives hands and then fail for $500, 900 |
all these institutions are to become the |
places where honest Christian men do |
business.
How long will 1t take your boys to get |
through your iil-gotten gains? The wicked |
10 not live out half their days. For
awhile they swagser and strut and make |
; great splash in the newspapers, but /
sfter awhile 1t all dwindles down into |
brief paragraph: G&@
Died suddenly July @ 1883, at thirty-hve
1ears Of age. Relatives and friends Of the fam
" are invited to attend the funeral on Wednes-
lay at two o'clock, from hts late residence on
Madison Square. Interment at Greenwood.
Some of them jumped off the docks.
ooluo VI tucu toOk pEuSSlC dClCl. SOME OF
hem fell under the snap of Derringer
pistol. Some Of them spent their last
lays In lunatic asylum. Where are
William Tweed and his associates?
Where are Keteham and Swartwout, alb
Iconding swindlers? Where is James
fisk, the .libertine? Where is John
Wilkes Booth, the assassin, and all the
'ther misdemeanants! The wicked do
lot live out half their days. DisembQgue,
} world of darknessi Come up Hide
,rand. and Henry IL, and Robert Robes
'lerre, and with blistering and bias
,heming and ashen lips hiss out: ''The
riumph Of the wicked is short" Alas
or the men OF Al when Joshua stretches
ut his spear to,sard the city!
Lesson the third: How much may be
accomplished BY lying in ambush for OPP
'ortunities. Are you hypercritical of
oshua's maneuver. Do you say that it
vas cheating for him to take that city by
Was it wrong for Washing
on to kindle camp-fres on the New Jer-
ey heights, giving the impression to the
pposing force that a great army was en-
amped there when there was none at all?
answer, IL the war was right then Joshua
7as right in his stratagem. He violated
o flag OF truce. He broke no treaty, but