The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1889-04-17

on the StanQ. II you can auOrO IL anu
can play one, have an instrument of mu-
sic-harp or flute, or cornet, or melodeon,
or violin, or piano. Every morning be-
fore you leave that room pray. Every
night after you come home in that room
pray. Make that room your Gilbratar,
your Sebastopol, your Mount Zion. Let
no bad book or newspaper come into that
room, any more than you would allow a
cobra to coil on your table.
Take care of yourself. Nobody else will
take care of you Your help will not
come up two or three or four flights of
stairs; your help will come through the
roof, down from heaven, from that God
who, in the 5000 years of the worlds his
tory, never betrayed a young man who
tried to be good and Christian. Let me
say In regard to your adverse worldly cir
cumstances, in passing, that you are on
level now with those who are finally to
succeed. Mark my words, young man,
and think of it thirty years from now.
You will find that those who, thirty years
from now, are millionaires of this country,
who are the orators of the country, who
are the poets of the country, who are the
strong merchants of the country, who are
the great philanthropists of the country
mightiest in the church and state-are
this morning on level with you, not an
inch above, and you in Strengthened cir
cumstances now.
Herschel earned his living by playing a
violin at parties and in the interstices OF
the play he would go out and look up at
the midnight heavens, the fields of his
immortal conquests. George Stephenson
rose from being the foreman in collierv
to be the most renowned OF the worlds
engineers. No outfit, no capital to start
20 h, 10
chanic library and get some books and
read OF what wonderful mechanism God
gave you in your hand, in your foot, in
your eye, in your ear, and then ask some
doctor to take you into the dissectlng room
and illustrate to you what you have read
about, and never again commit the bias
phemy of saying you have no capital to
start with. Equipped? Why, the poorest
young man in this house is equipped as
only the God of the whole universe could
afford to equip him. Then his body-a
very poor affair as compared with his
wonderful soul-oh, that is what makes
me solicitous. | am not so much anxious
about you, young man, because you have
so little to do with l am anxious about
you because you have so much to risk
and lose or gain.
There is no class of persons that so stir
my sympathies as young men In great
cities. Not quite enough salary to live on
and all the temptations that come from
that deficit. Invited on all hands to
drink, and their exhausted nervous sys-
tenn seeming TO demand stimulus Their
religion CariCatured by most Of the clerks
in the store and most of the operatives In
the factory. The rapids of temptation and
death rushing against that young man
forty miles the hour, and he in frail
boat headed upstream, with nothing but
broken oar to work with. Unless Al
mighty God help them they will go under
All! when l told you to take care of
yourself, you misunderstood me II you
thought meant you are to depend upon
human resolution, which may be dissolved
in the foam of the wine cup or may be
blown out with the first gust of tempta-
ton. Here is the helmet, the sword of
Lord God Almighty Clothe yourself in
that panoply and you shall not be put to
confusion. Sin pays well neither in this
world nor the next, but right thinking
and right believing and right acting will
take you in safety through this life and in
transport through the next
never shall forget prayer l heard a
young man make some fifteen years ago.
1t was a very short prayer but it was a
tremendous prayer: 20 Lord, help us
We find it so very easy to do wrong and
so hard to do right. Lord, help u.s." That
prayer warrant you reached the ear of
God and reached his heart. And there
are in this house hundred men who
have found out-a thousand young men
perhaps who have found out that very
thing. 1t is so very easy to do wrong and
so hard to do right.
got a letter, only one paragraph of
which / shall read: Having moved
around somewhat have run across many
young men of intelligence, ardent strivers
after that will-o' -the-wisp, fortune, and of
one of these l would speak. He was a
young Englishman of twenty-three or
twenty-four years, who came to New York,
where he had acquaintance, with barely
sufficient to keep him a couple of weeks.
He had been tenderly reared; perhaps /
should saw too tenderly, and was not used
to earning his own living and found it ex-
tremely difficult to get any position that
he was capable of filling. After many vain
efforts in this direction he found himself
Sunday evening in Brooklyn, near your
church, with about So left of his small
capital Providence seemed to lead him
to your door and he determined to go in
and hear you.
''He told me his going to hear you that
night was undoubtedly the turning point
in his life, for when he went into your
church he felt desperate, but while listen
ing to your discourse his better nature got
the mastery. / truly believe from what
this young man told me that your sound
ing the depths of his heart that night
alone brought him back to his God, whom
he was SO near leaving"
The echo that is of multitudes in the
house. am not preaching an abstraction,
but great reality. Oh, friendless young
man! On, prodigai young man Oh, bro
ken-hearted young man, discouraged
young man, wounded young man! | COM
mend you to Christ this day, the best
friend a man ever had. He meets YOU
this morning. You have come here for
| this blessing. Despise not that emotion
rising in your soul, it is divinely lifted.
Look into the face of Christ. Lift one
PRAYER to your fathers God, to your
mothers God. and getthe pardoning bless
ing. Now, while l speak, you are at the
forks of the road, and this is the right road
and that is the wrong road, and l see you
start on the right road.
One Sabbath morning at the close OF
my service | saw a gold watch of the
wOrld-renowned and deeply lamented
violinist Ole Bull. You remember he
died in his island home off the coast of
| Norway. That gold watch he had wound
/ mn day after day through his illness and