The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1888-08-24

utJecUou hiiu Lue lowest DOWN vaSsals OF per
ditioni And Martin Luther so far forgot
himself as to say, in regard to his theological
opponents: "Put them In whatever sauce you
please, roasted, or fried, or baked. or stewed,
or boiled, or hashed, they are nothing but
assesp All, my friends, IL John Milton or
Martin Luther could down to such sour.
rility. what may you not expect from
less elevated opponentsi Now, the
world sometimes takes after them;
the newspapers take after them; public opin-
ion takes after them; and the unfortunate
man Is lied about until all the dictionary Of
Billingsgate is exhausted on him. You often
see man whom you know to be good, and
pure, and honest. set upon by the world, and
mauled by whole communities, while vicious
men take on a supercilious air In condemna-
tion Of him; as though Lord Jeffreys should
write an essay on gentleness, or Henry VIII
talk about purity, or Herod take to blessing
little children
Now, a certain amount Of persecution
rouses mans defiance, stirs his blood for
magnificent battle, and makes him fifty
times more man than he would have been
without the persecution. So IL was with the
great reformer when he saids ~ win not be
put down; win be heard" And 30 1t was
with Willard, the preacher, In the time Of
Louis XII When Louis XII sent word to him
that unless he stopped preaching In that
style he would throw him into the river, he
replied: "Tell the king that win reach
heaven sooner by water than he will reach 10
by fast horses" A certain amount Of perse-
cution Is tonic and inspiration, but too
much Of it, and too long continued, be-
comes the rock Bozez, throwing a dark
shadow over a mans life What is he to do
thenf Go home. you say. Good advice,
that That is just the place for man to go
when the world abuses him. Go home
Blessed be God for our quiet and sympathetic
homes. But there Is many a man who has
the reputation of having home when he has
none Through unthinkingness or precipita-
ton, there are many matches made that
ought never to have been made. An ofici-
ating priest cannot alone unite a couple The
Lord Almighty must proclaim banns. There
Is many home In which there Is no SYM
pathy, and no happiness, and no good cheer.
The clamor of the battle may not have been
heard outside, but God knows, notwithstand-
ing all the playing Of the wedding March"
and all the odor Of the orange blossoms, and
the benediction of the officiating pastor, there
has been no marriage.
Sometimes men have awakened to find on
one side Of them the rock of persecution and
on the other side the rock Of domestic infelic-
ity. What shall such one do2 Do as
Jonathan did-climb Get up the heights of
Gods consolation, from which we may look
down In triumph upon outside persecution
and home trouble. While good and great
John Wesley was being silenced by the
magistrates, and having his name written on
the board fences Of London In doggerel, at
that very time his wife was making him as
miserable as she could-acting as though
she were possessed with the devil, as
I suppose she was; never doing him a
kindness until the day she ran away, so
that he wrote in his diary these words:
81 did not forsake her; have not dis
missed her; ! will not recall her." Planting
one foot, John Wesley did, upon outside
persecution, and the other foot upon home
trouble, he climbed up into the heights of
Christian joy, and after preaching forty
Thousand sermons and travelling two hundred
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 a sharp rock on the other"
Again, that woman stands In the crisis Of
the text, who has bereavement and struggle
mentioning names, Ispeak from observation.
All, it is a hard thing for woman to make
troubled, and she has a 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 and watching, she
goes forth-a grave, a hearse, coffin,
;,oI la, 10
and the existence of her children. When
see such battle as that open I shut my eyes
at the ghastliness Of the spectacle. Men sit
with embroidered slippers and write heart
less essays about womens wages, but that
question is made up of tears and blood, and
there is more kood 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 God put into my hand the cold, bitter
cup of privation and give me nothing but a
windowless hut for shelter for many years
rather than that after am dead there should
go out from my home into the pitiless 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 the other.
Bozez and Seneh interlocking their shadow
and dropping them upon her miserable way.
''There is sharp rock on the one side, and
a sharp rock on the other side" What are
such to do2 Somehow, let them climb up
into the heights Of the glorious promise:
"Leave thy fatherless children; l will pre-
serve them alive, and let thy widows trust In
me-" Or get up into the heights Of that
other glorious promise: "The Lord preserv-
eth the stranger and relieveth the widow and
the fatherless." Oh ye sewing woman on
starving wages Oh ye widows turned
out from the once beautiful home.
OF ye female teachers, kept on mig
gardly stipend. Of ye despairing woman,
seeking in vain for work, wandering along
the docks, and thinking to throw yourself
into the river last night OF ye women Of
weas nerves and aching sides, and short
breath and broken heart, you aeed 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 a
sharp rock on the one side, and a 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 unillumined eternity on the other. Though
a man may all his life have cultured deliber-
alton and self poise, If he gets into that po-
sition all his self possession is gone. There
are all the wrong thoughts of his existence,
all the wrong deeds, all the wrong words
strata above strata, granitic, ponderous,
overshadowing. That rock call Bozez. On
the other side are all the retributions Of the
future, the thrones of judgment, the eternal
ages, angry with his long defiance That
rock call Seneh. Between these two rocks
Lord Byron persisted, and Alcibiades per
ished, and Herod persisted, and ten thousand
times ten thousand have persisted Obi man
immortal, 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 ID
threatens to be You can afford to lose your
health, you can afford to lose your property,
you can afford to lose your reputation; but
you cannot afford to lose your soul That
bright, cleaning, glorious, precious, eternal
possession you must carry aloft on the day
when the earth burns up and the heavens
burst.
You see from my subject that when man
goes into the safety and peace of the Gospel,
he does not demean himself There is moth
ing In religion that leads to meanness or UNI
manliness The Gospel of Jesus Christ only
asks you to climb as Jonathan did-climb