The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1888-08-09

from heaven to earth does not measure half
Tho distahce, 1t Was from glory to perditon
He descended into hell. All the records OF
arthly retreat are as nothing compared with
his falling. Santa Anna with the frag-
nents of his army flying over the plateaux
II Mexico. aud Napdleon and his army re-.
treating from Moscow in the awful
SHOWS OF Russia are not worthy to
DO mentioned with this retreat, when
NIL tne mowers of darkness seemed to be pur-
sning Christ as he foil back Until the body
nf him who cahie to do sricl, wonderful
things lay puseless and stripped. Methinks
that the city of All was not so emptied of its
inhabitants when they went to pursue Joshua
Is pcrdition was emptied Of devils when they
Startel for the pursuit OF Christ, and he fell
back and back, down lower, down lower,
chasm below chasm, pit below pit, until no
seemed TO strike the bottom Of objurgation
and scorn and torture Oil the long, loud,
inbi,ant shout Of hell at the defeat of the
Lord God Almighty,
But let not the powers of darkness rejoice
quite so soon. Doyou hear that disturbance
in the tomb OF Arin1athea? / hear the sheet
rendingi What means that stone hurled
down the side of the hIlls Who is this COM
stalk in this open sunlight. Oh, 1t is our
Joshua. Lethim come out. He comes forth
and starts for the city. He takes the spear
of tho Roman guard and points that way:
Church militant marches up on one side and
the church triumphant marches down
on the other side. Aud the powers of
darkness being caught between these ranks
of celestial and terrestrial valor. nothing
is left of them save Just enough to illus
trate the dreful overthrow of hell and our
Joshua's eternal vitofy. 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
assnu fha cnc0nI. Tho friurn nh Of tho
wicked is short Did you ever see an army
In panic! 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
an army run. And when those men Of All
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 geeful and jubllant de.
scent OF the mon of All upon the men
of Joshua! But their exhiaration 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 100000 at the
gaming table. DO you expect to keep it! You
will die in the poorhouse. You made fortune
BY iniquitous traffic Do you expect to keep It'll
Your money will scatter, or it will stay long
enough to curse your children after you are
uedu. Sdll over tIc Toll OL Ddu Hlen WHO
prospered and see how short was their pros
perity. For a while like the men Of All
they went from conquest to CONQUEST.
but after n whole disaster rolled back upon
them and they were divided into three
parts; misfortune took their property, tho
grave took their body, and the lost
world took their soul. | am always inter-
ested in the building of theatres 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, and thoy will be turned into asylums,
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 names and then fail for
$500 000-all these institutions are to be-
come to 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 while
they swagger and strut and make a great
splash in the newspapers, but after a while
it all dwindles down into a brief paragraph:
"Died, suddenly, July %, 1888, at IS years of
age. Relatives and friends of the family are
invited to attend the funeral, on Wednesday,
at o'clock, from his late residence on Madi-
SON 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 a Derringer pistol Some Of
them spent their last days in q lunatic asy-
lum. Where are William Tweed and his
associates. Where are Ketcham and Swart-
wout, absconding swindlers. Where is
| James Fisk, the libertne Where is John
| Wilkes Booth the assassin, and all the other
misdemeanants: The wicked do not live out
| half their days Disemboyue, world of
| darkness! Come up Hidebrand and Henry
| H. and Robespierre, and with bstering and
| blaspheming and ashen lips hiss out: 'The
triumph of the wicked is shortT Alas for
the men of All when joshua stretches out his
spear toward the city.
! Lesson the third: How much may be ac-
| complished by lying in ambush for oppor-
| tunities Are you hypercrtical of Joshua's
maneuver? Do you say that it was cheating
for him to take that city by ambuscade!
Was it wrong for Washington to kindle
camp fires on New Jersey Heights giving
the impression to the opposing force that a
1 great army was encamped there when there
was none at all! j answer, if the war was
4 right then Joshua was right in his stratagem.
lie violated no flag of truce He broke no
| treaty but by lawful ambuscade captured
the city of All. Oh, that we all knew how to
lie in ambush for oppo rtunities to serve God.
The best of our opportunities do not lie on the
surface, but are secreted; by tact, by strata
| gem, by Christian ambuscade, you may take
almost any castle of sin for Christ. Come up
toward men with q regular besiegement of
| argument, and you will be defeated but Just
wait until the door of their hearts is set jar,
| or they are off their guard, or their severe
| caution is away from home, and then drop in
on them from Christian ambusca1e. There
has been many man up to his chin in scien-
| tific portfolios which proved there was no
| Christ and no divine revelation his pen a
scimetar flung into the heart of theological
opponents, who, nevertheless, has been dis
! cOmited and captured for God by some little
three-year child, who has got up and put
her snowy arms around his snewy neck and
asked some simple question about God and
heaven.
oh, make a flank movement; steal marcA
On the devil: cheat that man into heaven.
five dollar treatise that will stand all the
laws of homiletics may fail to do that which
| penny tract of Christian entreaty may ac-
buscade, not lying in ideness, but waiting
for quick spring, waiting until just the
right time comes Do not talk to q man
about the vanity of this world on the day
when he has bought something at twelve
and is going to sell it at "fi teen. But tais
to him about the vanity of the world
on the day when he has bought something
at "fifteenn and is compelled to sell at
twelve Do not rub a mans disposition
the wrong way. Do not take the imperative
mood when the subjunctive mood will do
just as we'll Do not talk in perfervid style
to phlegmatic, nor try to TICKLE torrld
temperament with an icic.e. You can take
any man for Christ if you know how to get
at him. Do not send word to him that to-
morrow at 10 o'clock you propose to open
your batteries upon him, but come on him
by ssiilful, persevering, God directed am
buscade.
Lesson the fourth: The Importance OF TAX
ing good aim. There is Joshua, but how are
these people in ambush up yonder to know
when they are to drop upon the city, and
how are these men around Joshua to know
when they are to stop their flight and ad
, vancel There must he some signal-a sigma
! TO stop the one division and to start the
other. joshua with spear on which wert
ordinarily hung the colors of battle, points
toward the city. He stands in such con-
i Epicuous position. and there is so much of the
, morning light dripping from that spear tip
that all around the horizon they see it. 1t wa.
rs much as TO say: "There is the city. TAXI
it, Take it now. Roll down from the west
Surge up from the north 1t is ours. the city oi
Ai' God knows and we know that great
, deal of Christian attack amounts to nothing
simply because we do not take good aim
Nobody knows and we do not know our