News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1888-08-30

COIlSOIaGlOn, from winch we may lOOl
down in triumph upon outside persecution
| and home trouble. While good and grea
| John Wesley was Icing silenced by the mag:
istrates, and having his name written on thG
| board fences of London in doggerel, at tina
very time his wife was making him as miser
able as she could-acting as though she wen
possessed with the devil, as suppose she was
never doing him a kindness until the dav she
ran away, so that he wrote in his dairy these
words: 81 did not forsake her; have not
| dismissed her; will not recall her," Plant
ing one foot-John Wesley did-upon outside
! persecution, and the other foot on home
trouble, he climbed up into the heights of
! Christian joy, and after preaching forty
thousand sermons, and travelling two hun
| dred and seventy thousand miles, reached
the heights of heaven, though in this world
| he had it hard enough-''a sharp rock on the
one side, and sharp rock on the other"
Again, that woman stands in the crisis of
| the text, vino has bereavement and a strug-
| gle for a livelihood at the same time. With
! out mentioning names, L speak from obSer-
walton. All, it is hard thing for woman
to make an honest living, even when her
/ heart is not troubled, and she has fair
cheek and the magnetism of an exquisite
presence. But now the husband, or the
father, is dead. The expenses of the obsequies
have absorbed all that was left in
| the savings bank; and wan and wasted
with weeping. she goes forth-a grave,
a hearSe, a collin, behind her-tO contend for
ner EXISTENCE ana Ule existence OF ner cnli-
dren. When | see such a battle as that open
l shut my eyes at the ghastliness of the
spectacle. Men sit with embroidered slip
pers and write heartless essays about women's
wages; but that question is made up OF
tears and blood, and there is more blood than
tears oh, give women free access TO all the
realms where she can get livelihood, from
the telegraph Office to the pulpit. Let mems
wages be cut down before hers are cut down.
Men have iron in their souls and can stand
it. Make the way free to her of the broken
heart. May Col put into my hand the cold,
bitter cup of privation, and give me nothing
bat a windowless hut for shelter for many
years, rather than that after am dead there
should go out from my home into the pltiless
world a woman's arm to fight the Gettysburg,
the Austerlitz, the Waterloo of life for
bread.
And yet how many women there are
seated between the rock of bereavement on
the one side, and the rock of restitution on
tie other-BozeZ and Seneh interlocking their
shadow and dropping them upon her miser-
abe way. "There is a sharp rock on the one
side and a sharp rock on the other side"
What are such to do. Somehow, let them
climb up into the heights of the glorious
promise: Leave thy fatherless children; 1
will preserve them alive, and let thy widows
trust in Me-" Or get up into the heights of
that other glorious promise: THE Lord
preserveth the stranger and relieveth the
widow and the fatherlesS." o! ye sewing
turned out from the once beautiful home. o.
We female teachers, kept on niggardly
stipend. o. We despairing woman, seeking liz
vain for work, wandering along the docks, and
thinking to throw yourself into the river last
night. o! We women of weak nerves and
aching sides, and short breath and broken
heart, you need something more than human
sympathy; you need the sympathy of God.
Climb up into His arms. He knows it all,
and He loves you more than father, or
mother, or husband ever could or ever did;
and instead of sitting down, wringing your
hands in despair, you had better begin to
climb. There are heights of consolation for
you though now 'there is sharp rock on
the one side, and sharp rock on the other
side"
Again, that man is in the crisis of the text
who has a wasted life on the one side, and
an Illuminated eternity on the other. Though
a man may all his life have cultured delibera-
ton and self-poise, if he gets into that posi-
ton all his salf-posSe ssion is gone. There are
all the wrong thoughts of his existence, all
the wrong deeds, all the wrong words-strata
above strata, granite, ponderous over
shadowing. That rock call Bozez On the
other side are all the Tetributions of the fu-
ture, the thrones OF Judgment, the eternal
ages, angry with his long defiance. That
rock I call Seneh. Between these two rocks
Lord Byron parished and Alcibiades persisted,
and Herod persisted, and ten thousand times
ten thousand have parished. o. man immor
tai, man redeemed, man blood bought climb
up out of those shadows. Climb up by the
way of the Cross. Have your wasted life
forgiven have your eternal Life secured.
This morning just take one look to the past
and see what it has been, and take one look
to the future and see what it threatens to be.
You can afford to lose your health, you can |
afford to lose your property, you can afford |
10 lose your reputation: but you cannot af- |
lord to lose your soul. That bright gleam- |
ng, glorious, precious, eternal possession you
must carry aloft in the day when the earth |
burns up and the heavens burst.
You see from my subject that when a man
goes into the safety and peace of the Gospel,
he does not demean himself. There is moth
ng in religion that leads to meanness or I'M
nanliness. The Gospel of Jesus Christ only
isks you to climb as Jonathan did-clmb to-
ward God, climb toward heaven, climb into
he sunshine Of Gods favor. To become a
Christian is not to go meanly down; it is to
ome gloriously up-up into the communion
If saints, up into the peace that passeth all
up into the companionShip of
angels He lives up; he dies up.
o! then, accept the wholesale invitation |
which make this morning to all the people. |
Come mp from between your lnvalidism ana !
financial endorsements Come up from |
'etween wasted life and unillumned
ternity. Like Jonathan, climb with all
our might, instead of sitting down to wiring
our hands in the shadow and in the dark
sharp rock ON the one side and a
harp rock on the other side u