Milford chronicle., 1888-07-27

mounted assassins rode through the streets Of
Paris crying: "Knll Blood letting is good
In Augllstl KILL Death to the Huguenotsl
Killr when Lady Jane Grey's head rolled
from the executioner'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; III God
will help me, and my physical life continues,
] will stay here until the moss grows on my
eyebrows rather than give up my faith, tho
days Of retreat for the church were days Of
victory.
The Pilgrim Fathers fell back from the
other side of the sea TO Plymouth Rock, but
now are marshaling a continent for tho
Christianization of the world The Church
Of Christ, falling back from Piedmont, fall
ing back from Rue st. Jacques, falling back
from St Denis, falling back from Wurtem-
burg CASTLES, falling back from the Brussels
market place, yet all the time triumphing.
Notwithstanding all the shocking reverses
which the church Of Christ suffers, what do
we see todayl Three thousand missionaries
of the cross on heather ground; sixty thou
sand ministers of Jesus Christ in this land;
st least two hundred millions Of Christians
on earth. All nations today kindling in "a
blaze Of revival Falling back, yet ad-
vancing until the old Wesleyan hymn will
prove true:
The Lion Of Judah shall break the chain,
And give us the victory again and again!
But there is a more marked illustration Of
victorious retreat in the life of our Joshua,
the Jesus of the ages. First falling back
from an appalling height to an appalling
depth, falling from celestial hills to terres-
trial valleys, from throne to manser; yet
that did not seem to suffice him as a retreat
Falling back still further from Bethlehem to
Nazareth, from Nazareth to Jerusalem, back
from Jerusalem to Golgotha, back from Col
gotha b the mausoleum in the rock, back
down ever 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 Ahabs AID 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 descended into hell. All the records of
earthly retreat are as nothing compared with
this falling Santa Anna, with the frag-
ments of his army flying over the plateaux
Of Mexico, and Napoleon and his army re-
treating from Moscow in the awful
be mentioned with this retreat, when
MI the powers of darkness seem to be pur-
suing Christ as he fell back, until the body
Of him who came to do such wonderful
things lay pulseless and stripped. Methinks
hat the city of All was not so emptied of its
inhabitants when they went to pursue Joshua
rs perdition was emptied of devils when they
started for the pursuit of Christ and he fell
back and back, down lower, down lower.
rhasm below 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
But let not the powers Of darkness rejoice
quite so soon. Do You hear that disturbance
in the tomb Of Arimatheal hear the sheet
rending What means that stone hurled
down the side of the hilll Who is this COM
ing out? Push him back the dead must not
stalk in this open sunlight. Oh, it is our
Joshua. Let him come out. He comes forth
nnd starts for the city. He takes the spear
of the Roman guard and points that way.
Church militant marches mp on one side and
the church triumphant marches down
on the other side And the powers
of darkness being caught between these
ranks of celestial and terrestrial valor, moth
ing is left of them save stehough to illus
trate the direful overthrow of hell and our
Joshua's eternal victory. On his head be all
the crowns In his hand be all the scepters.
At his feet be all the human hearts; and
here, Lord, is one of them.
Lesson the second: The triumph of the
wicked is short. Did you ever see an army
in a panicl There is nothing so uncontrol-
liable. If you had stood at Long Bridge,
Washington, during the opening of our sad
civil war, you would know what it is to see
m 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 jubilsnt de-
scent of the men of Al upon the men
of Joshual But their exhilaration was
brief, for the tide of battle turned,
and these quondam conquerers left their
miserable carcasses in the Wilderness of
Bethaven. So it always is. The triumph of
the wicked is short You make $50, 900 at the
gaming table. Do you expect to keep it, You
will die in the poorhouse. You made fortune
by iniquitous traffic Doyou 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
I prospered and see how short was their pros
perity. For a while like the men of Al
they went from conquest to conquest,
but after a while 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. 1 am always inter
ested in the building of theatres and the
building of dissipahng saloons. l like to
have them built of the best granite and hnve
! the rooms made large, and to have the pillars
made very firm. God is going to conquer
1 them, and they will be turned into asyums,
and art galleries, and churches. The stores
| in which fraudulent men do business, the
| splendid banking institutions where the
president and cashier put all their property
/ in their wives hands and then fail for $780,
I O00-all these institutions are TO become the
/ places where honest Christian men do busi-
ness.
How long will it take your boys to get
: through your i'll gotten gainsl The wicked
do not live out half their days. For a while
/ they swagger and strut and make a great
/ splash in the newspapers, but after while
( it all dwindles down into a brief paragraphs:
( "Died suddenly, July -, 1888 at So years Of
age Relatives and friends Of the family are
/ invited to attend the funeral, on Wednesday,
HJ = clOck, from his iiiie iesluetCt Oh AlAti-
son square Interment at Greenwood. Some
IF them jumped off che docks. Some Of them
took prussic acid. Some Of them fell under
The snap Of a Deriinger pistol. Some Of
chem spent their last days in lunatlc asy-
lum Where arc William Tweed and his
associatesl Where are Ketcham and Swart-
wout, absconding swindlersi Where is
James Fisk, the libertinei Where is John
Wilkes Booth, the assassin, and all the other
misdemeauantsl The wicked do not live out
half their days Disembogue, o world Of
1arknessl Come up, Hildebrand and Henry
II and Robespierre, and with blistering and
disappearing and ashen lips hiss out: The
triumph Of the wicked IS shortln Alas for
the men Of Al when Joshua stretches out his
spear toward the city.
Lesson the third How much may be ac-
conplished by lying in ambush for oppor-
tunities. Are you hypercritical Of Joshua's
maneuveri Do you say that it was cheat
ing for him to take that city by ambuscadel
Was it wrong for Washington to kindle