The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1888-08-23

block, when Calvin was imprisoned in the
castle, when John Knox died for the
truth, when John Bunyan lay rotting in
Bedford Jail, saying:
eff God will help me and my physical
life continues 1 will stay here until the
moss grows on my eyebrows rather than
give up my faith" The days of retreat
for the Church were days of victory.
But there is a more marked illustration
of victorious retreat in the life of our
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 a retreat. Falling back still
further rom 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 precipices of perdition until He
walked amid the caverns of the eternal
captives, and drank of the wine of the
wrath of Almighty God amid the Arabs
and the Jezebels and the Belshazzars. 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 hack. 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 power 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 Al was was not
SO emptied of it's inhabitants when they
went to pursue Joshua as perdition was
emptied of devils when they started for
theipursuit 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!
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
of Al looked out and saw those men Of
Joshua in a stampede, they expected easy
work. They would scatter them as the
equinox the leaves. o, the gleeful and
jubilant descent of the men Of Al upon the
men of Joshua! But their exhilaration was
brief, for the tide of battle turned and
these quondra am conquerors left their
miserable carcasses in the wilderness of
Pnfh Go ok -, 49,, L,
of the wicked is short. You make twenty
thousand dollars at the gaming table. Do
you expect to keep it? You will 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 building of theaters and
the building of dissipating saloons. l
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, aud 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 5000, 600
all these institutions are to become the
places where honest Christian men do
business.
How long will it take your boys to get
through your ILL gotten gains? The wicked
do not live out half their days. For
awhile they swagger and strut and make
a great splash in the newspapers, but
after awhile it all dwindles down into a
brief paragraphs:
Died suddenly, July %, 1888. at thirty-five
years OF age. Relatives and friends of the fam
lily are invited to attend the funeral on Wednes-
day at two O'Clock, from his late residence on
Madison Square. Interment at Greenwood
Some of them jumped off the docks.
Some of them took prussic acid. Some of
them fell under the snap of Derringer
pistol. Some of them spent their last
days in lunatic asylum. Where are
W lillaH Tweed ana his associates?
Where are Ketcham and Swartwout, alb
sconding swindlers? Where is James
Fisk, the 'libertine? Where is John
Wilkes Booth, the assassin, and all the
other misdemeanants! The wicked do
not live out half their days. Dsembogue,
. world of darkness! Come up Hide
brand, and Henry IL, and Robert Robes
pierre, and with blistering and bias
pheming and ashen lips hiss out: 1.-THE
triumph of the wicked is short" Alas
for the men of Al when Joshua stretches
out his spear toward the city!
Lesson the third: How much NAV be
accomplished by lying in ambush for op-
portunities. Are you hypercritical of
Joshua's maneuver. Do you say that it
was cheating for him to take that CITY bv
ambuscade? Was it wrong for Washing
ton to kindle camp-fires on the New Jer-
sey heights, giving the impression to the
opposing force that great army was en-
camped there when there was none at alls
answer, if the war was right then Joshua
was right in his stratagem. He violated
no flag of truce. He broke no treaty, but
by lawful ambuscade captured the city
OF Al. Oh, that we all knew how to lie in
ambush for opportunities to serve God.
The best OF our opportunities do not lie
on the surface, but are secreted; by tact,