The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1888-04-27

dry tnelr nets where once she stood, let the
sea that rushes upon tho barrenness where
once she challenged the admiration of all ma
lions, let the barbarians who set their rude
tents where once her palaces gIittered, an.
swer the question. She was a star, but by
her own sin turned to wormwood and has
fallen.
Hundred-gated Thebes-for all time to be
the study of antiquarian and hieroglyphist;
her stupendous ruins spread over twenty.
seven miles, her sculptures presenting in
figures Of warrior and chariot the victories
with which the now forgotten kings OF Egypt
shook the nations; her obelisks and columns:
Carnac and Luxor, the stupendous temples
of her pride Who can imagine the greatness
Of Thebes In those days, when the hippodrome
rang with her sports and foreign ROYALTY
bowed at her shrines and her avenues roared
with the wheels Of professions in the wake of
returning conquerersl What dashed down
the vision of chariots and temples and
thronesi What hands pulled upon the
columns Of her glorya What ruthlessness
defaced the scultured wall and broke obelisks
and left her indescribable temples great
skeletons Of granitei What spirit of de-
struction spread the lair of wild beasts in her
royal sepulchers, and taught the miserable
cottagers Of today to build huts in the courts
Of her temples, and sent desolation and ruin
skulking behind the obelisks and lodging
among the sarcophagi and leaning against
the columns and STOPPING under the arches
and weeping In the waters which go mourn
fully by, as though they were carrying the
tears Of all agess Let the mummies break
their long silence and come up to shiver in
the desolation, and point to fallen gates and
shattered statues and defaced sculpture, re-
spending: "Thebes built not one temple to
God. Thebes hated Righteousness and loved
sin. Thebes, was a star, but she turned to
wormwood and has fallen"
Babylon-with her $50 towers and her
brazen gates and her embattled walls, the
splendor Of the earth gathered within her
palaces, her hanging gardens built by
Nebuchadnezzar to please his bride Amyittas
who had been brought up in a mountainous
country and could not endure the fat country
round Babylon, those hanging gardens built
terrace above terrace, till at the height of
400 feet there were woods waving and
fountains playing, the verdure, the foliage,
the glory looking as if mountain were on
the wing. On the tip top a king walking
with his queen, among statues snowy white,
looking up at birds brought from distant
lands, and drinking out Of tankards of solid
gold, or looking off over rivers and lakes up-
on nations subdued and tributary, crying, SIS
not this great Babylon shich have builtp'
What battering ram smote the walls. What
plowshare upturned the gardens9 What ar
my shattered the brazen gates? What
long, fierce blast of storm put out this
light which illuminated the world? What
crash of discord drove down the music
that poured from palace window and gar
den grove, and called the banqueters to their
revel and the dancers to their feet? walk
upon the scene Of desolation to find an an
swer and pick up pieces of bitumen and
brick and broken pottery, the remains of
Babylon, and as in the silence of the night
hear the surging Of that billow of des0a-
ton which rolls over the scene, I hear the
wild waves saying, Babylon was proud.
Babylon was impure. Babylon was a star,
but by sin she turned to wormwood and has
fallen"
From the prosecutions of the Pilgrim
Fathers and the Huguenots in other lands
God set upon these shores a nation. The
council fires of the aborigines went out in
the greater light of free government. The
sound of the war whoop was exchanged for
the thousand wheels of enterprise and pro-
gress. The mild winters, the fruitful sum-
mers, the healthful skies charmed from other
lands a race of hardy men who loved God
and wanted to be Free Before the wood
mans ak forests fell and rose again into
ships masts and churches pillars. Cities
on the banks of lakes begin to rival
cities by the sea. The land quakes with
tho y.f,Sh nf fha rail he
waters are churned white with the
steamers wheel. Fabulous bushels of western
wheat meet OH the way fabulous tons of
eastern coal. Furs from the north pass on
the rivers fruits from the south. And trad
ing in the same market Is Maine lumberman
and South Carolina rice merchant and Ohio
farmer and Alaska fur dealer; And churches
and schools and asylums scatter light and
love and mercy and salvation upon GO, OOO, 600
of people
Ipray that our nation may not copy the
crimes Of the nations that have persisted, and
our cup of blessing turn to wormwood and
like them we go down. am by nature and
by grace an optimist, and expect that this
country will continue to advance until the
world shall put on millennial era, and that
when Christ comes again he will set his throne
somewhere between the Alleghanies and the
Sierra Nevadas. But be not deceived Our
only safety is in Righteousness toward God
and justice toward man. II we forget the
goodness of the Lord to this land, and break
His Sabbaths, and improve not by the dire
disasters that have again and again come to
US as q people, and we learn a saving lesson
neither from civil war nor raging epidemic,
nor drought nor mildew nor scourge Of locust
and grasshopper, IL the political corruption
which has poisoned the fountains of public
virtue and beslimed the high places of author
ity, making free government at times hiss
ing and byword in all the earth; If the
drunkenness and licentiousness that stagger
and blaspheme in the streets of our great
cities, as though they were reaching after the
fame of Corinth and Sodom, are not re-
pented Of we will yet see the smoke of our
nations ruin; the pillars of our national and
state capitals will fall more disastrously
than when Sampson pulled down Dagon;
and future historians will record upon the
page believed with generous tears the story
that the free nation of the west arose in
splendor which made the world stare. 1t
had magnificent possibilities 1t forgot God
1t hated justice. 1t Rugged its crime. It
halted on its high march. It reeled under
the blow of calamity. 1t fell. And as it
was going down all the despotisms Of earth
from the top Of bloody thrones began to
shout: saba, so would we have it,n while
struggling and oppressed peoples looked out
from dungeon bars with tears and groans
and cries Of untold agony, tha scorn of those
and the woe of these uniting in the exclama-
ton: "Look yonderi There fell great star
from heaven, burning as it were lamp,
and it fell upon the third part of the rivers
and upon the fountains of waters; and the
name of the star is called Wormwoodrn