Milford chronicle., 1888-09-14

times if not now have had troubles after
them, sharp nuzzled troubles, swift troubles,
all devouring troubles. Many OF you have
made the mistake Of trying to fight them.
Somebody meanly attacked you, and you at
tackled them; they deprecated you, you de-
preciated them; or they overreached you ina
bargain, and you tried in Wall street par
lance, to get corner on them; or you have
had a bereavement, and instead Of being
submissive you are fighting that be-
reavement; you charge on the doctors
who failed to effect a cure; or you charge
on the carelessness of the railroad company
through which the accident occurred; or you
are a chronic invalid, and you fret and
worry and scold and wonder why you cannot
be well like other people, and you angrily
charge on the neuralgia or the laryngitis or
the ague or the sick headache. The fact is
you are deer at bay. Instead Of running
to the waters Of divine consa cation, and slalS-
ing your thirst and cooling your body and
soul in the good cheer of the Gospel, and
swimming away into the mighty deeps Of
Gods love, you are fighting whole kennel
Of barriers. A few days ago l saw in the
Adirondacks dog lying across the road, and
he seemed unable to get up, and i said to
some hunters near by: "What is the
matter with that dogp They answered;
''A deer hurt him." And l saw he had a
great swollen paw and a battered head, show
ing where the antlers struck him And the
probability is that some of you might give
mighty clip to your pursuers, you might
damage their business, you might worry them
into i'll health, you might hurt them as much
as they have hurt you, but, after all, it is not
worth while. You only have hurt a hound.
Better be off for the Upper Saranac, into
which the mountains Of Gods eternal
strength look down and meek their shadows.
As for your physical disorders, the worst
strychnine you can take hs fretfulness and
the best medicine is religion. Il1uow peo-
pie who were only a little disordered,
vet have fretted themselves into COM
plete valetudinarianism, while others put
their trust in God and came up from the
very shadow of DEATH and have lived conf
fortably twenty-five years with only one
lung. A man with one lung, but God with
him, is better OF than goddess man with
two lungs Some of you have been for a
long time sailing around Cape Fear when
you ought to have been sailing around Cape
Good Hope. Do not turn back, but go ahead.
The deer will accomplish more with its swift
feet than with its horns.
saw whole chains of lakes in the Adiror-
dacks, and from one height you can see
thirty, and there are said to be over eight
hundred in the great wilderness So near are
they to each other that your mountain guide
picks up and carries the boat from lake to
lake, the small distance between them for
that reason called 4 ''carry." And the realm
of Gods word is one long chain of bright,
refreshing lakes; each promise lake, very
short carry between them, and though for
ages the pursued have been drinking out Of
them, they are full up to the top Of the green
banks, and the same David describes them,
and they seem so near together that in three
different places he speaks of them as a con-
tinuous river, saying: "There is a river the
streams whereof shall make glad the city Of
Cod" "Thou shalt make them drink of the
rivers Of thy pleasuras% Thou greatly ell
richest it with the river of God, which is full
of water"
But many of you have turned your back
on that supply, and confront your trouble,
and you are sOured with your circumstances,
and you are fighting society, and you are
fighting a pursuing world, and troubles, in
stead Of driving you into the cool lake of
heavenly comfort, have made you stop and
turn round and lower your head, and it is
simply antler against tooth. l do not blame
you. Probably under the same circum-
stances l would have done worse. But you
are all wrong, You need to do as the REIN
deer does in February and March-it sheds
its horns. The Rabbinical writers allude to
this resignation Of antlers by the stag when
they say of man who ventures his money in
risky enterprises, he has hung it ON the
stag's horns; and a prOverb in the far east
tells inan who has foOlishly lost his fortune
to go and find where the deer shed her horns.
My brother, quit the antagonism Of your
circumstances, quit misanthropy, quit COM
plant, quit pitching into your pursuers; be
as wise as, next spring, will be all the rein
deer Of the Adirondacks. Shed your horns.
But very many Of you who are wronged Of
the world-and if in any assembly between
Sandy Hook, New York, and Golden Gate,
San Francisco, it were asked that all those
that had been sometimes badly treated should
raise both their hands, and full response
should be made, there would be twice as
many hands lifted as persons PRESENT. say
many of you would declare: I'VE have al
ways done the best we could and tried to be
useful, and why we should become the vic
tins Of malignment, or invalidism, or mis-
hap, is inscrutable" Why, do you not know
that the finer deer and the more elegant its
ing, the more anxious the hunters and the
hounds are to capture itl Had that roebuck
ragged fur and broken hoofs and an obliter-
ated eye and limping gait, the hunters would
have said: 'Pshawl don't let US waste our am
munition on a sick deer" And the hounds
would have given a few sniffs Of the track,
and then darted Off in another direction for
better game. But when they see a deer with
antlers lifted in mighty challenge to earth
and sky, and the sleek hide looks as if it had
been smoothed by invisible hands, and the
fat sides enclose the richest pasture that
could be nibbled from the bank of rills 50
clear they seem to have dropped out Of
heaven, and the stamp of its foot defies the
jack shooting lantern and the rifle, the horn
and the hound, that deer they will have if
they must needs break their neck in the
rapids. So if there were no noblo stuff in
your makeup, if you were bifurcated moth
ing, if you were a forlorn failure, you Would
be allowed to so undisturbed; but the fact
that the whole pack is in full cry after you
is proof positive that ysu are splendid game
and worth capturing Therefore, sarcasm
draws on you its "finest bead" Therefore,
the world goes cunning for you with its best
Maynard breech loader Highest compli-
ment is it to your talent, or your virtue, or
your usefulness. You will be assailed in pro-
portion TO your great achievements. The
/ best and the mightiest being the world ever
saw, bad set after him all the hounds,
/ terrestrial and diabolic, and they Tapped his
/ blood after the Calvarean massacre. The
world paid nothing to its Redeemer but a
bramble and cross Many who have done
their best to make the world better have had
such rough time Of it that all their pleas
ure is in anticipation Of the next world, and
I they could express their own feelings in the
words Of the Baroness Of Nairn at the close
of her long life:
Would you be young againi
Sowould not /;
One tear Of memory given;
Onward I'll HE;
LIES dark wave forded DER,
Al but at rest on shore,
Say, would you plunge once moro,
With home so nighf
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