Sharp County record., 1888-08-09

the powers of darkness sean
yuinr Christ as He fell back,
bndv Of Him who came to do su.
der-uI things lay pulseless and stT-a
uethini.s that no City of Al was was L.
so cmrtied Of its inhabitants vneI JheY
went to pursue Joshua as perdltlon was
amutfed of devils when they started for
tbaiuursuito of Christ, and He fell back ana
back, down lower down lower chasm be-
low chqsm. pit below pit, until he seemed
TO strike the bottom Of obiurgation and
scorn and torture. Oh, the long, loud
iubilaut shout Of hell at the defeat OF the
Lord God Almighty!
Lesson the second: The triumph OF the
wicked is short Did you ever zee IN army
in panic? There Is nothing so ulcon.
trolabIe. IF you had stood at Long
Bridge, Washington, during the opening
of our civil war, you would know what 1t
is to see IN armvTuu And when those men
of Al looked out and saw those men Ot
Joshua in q stampede, they expected easy
work. They would scatter hem rs the
equinox the leaves. 0, the glcetuI ana
iubiIant descent Of the memo Al upon the
men of Joshua But their eXhilaTation was
brief for the tide Of battle turned and
these Quondram couQUerors left their
miserable carcasses in the wilderness OF
Bethaven. SO it always is. The triumph
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 a fortune
bv iniuuitous 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
Dered and see how short was their pros
peritv. For awhile, like the men Of Al,
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. 1
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 S2)O 900
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 i'll gotten gains? The wicked
do not live out half their days. For
awhile they swagger aud strut and make
o great splash in the newspapers, but
after awhile it all dwindles down into a
brief paragraph:
Died suddenly, July q? 1099 at thirtv-fyc
years Of age Relatives and friends of the fam
ilv are invited to attend the funeral on Wcdnes-
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 q Derringer
pistol. Some Of them spent their last
days in a lunatic asylum Where are
william Tweed and his associates?
Where are Ketcham and Swartwout, alb
scouding swindlers? Where is James
Fisk. the libertine? Where is John
Wilkes Booth, the assassin, and all the
other misdemenant5 The wicked do
not live out half their days. DsembOgue,
O world of darkness. Come up Hide
brand, and Henry H., and Robert Robes
pierre, and with blistering and BIAS
pheming and ashen lips hiss out: "The
triumph of the wicked is short" Alas
for the men of All when Joshua stretches
ont his spear toward the city.
Lesson the third: How much may be
accomplished by lying in ambush for op-
portunities. Are you hypercritical Of
JOshua's mGneuver. Do you say that it
was cheating for him to take that city by
ambuscade? Was it wrong for Washing
ton to ldudle camp-hTes on the New Jer-
sey heights giving the impression to the
opposing force that a great army was en-
camped there when there was none ut all?
I 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 secrcted: by tact.
hy stratagem, by Christian ambuscade
You can 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 aiar. or they
are off their guard, or their severe eau
ton is away from home, and then drop in
on them from q Christian ambuscade,
There has been many a man I'D TO his
chin in scientific portfolios which proved
there was no Christ andn0 Divine revela-
ton, his pen scimetar flung into the
heart OF theological opponents. who.
nevertheless, has been discounted and
captured for God by some little three
year-old child who has got up and put
her snowy arms around his sinewv neck.
and asked some simple question about
God aud Heaven.
Oh. make a flank movement: steal q
march on the devil; cheat that man into
Heaven. A tive-dollar treatise that will
stand all the laws of homiletics may fail
10 DO that which a penny tract of