The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1889-02-22

one Of Its chief citizens In its prosperous days,
was opened, and q table was spread In that
house which eighteen hundred and ten years
has been buried by volcanic eruption, and
Farragut and his guests walked over the ex-
ouisite mosaics and under the beautiful
fresco, and Il almost seemed like being enter
tanned by those who eighteen centuries ago
had turned to dust. oh, this mighty htera-
ture of the dusti Where are the remains OF
S~ennacherib and Attila AM Epaminondas
and Tamerlane and Trojan n Philip Of
Macedon and Julius C@sarf Dustl Where
are the heroes who fought on both sides at
Ch@ronea, at Hastings, at Marathon, at
Cressy, Of the 10000 men who fought at
Agincourt, Of the 100000 men who faced
death at Jena, of the 100000 whose armor
glittered In the sun at Wagram. OF the 1,O0O,-
600 men under Darius at Arbella, Of the
2,64l, 600 men under Xerxes at T~hermopyl@i
Dustl
Where are the guests who danced the floors
of the Alhambra, or the Persian palaces Of
Ahasuerusl Dusti Where are the musicians
who played, and the orators who spoke, and
the sculptors who chiseled, and the archi-
tects who built In all the centuries except our
owni Dustl The greatest library In the
world, that which has the widest shelves and
the longest aisles and the most multitudinous
volumes and the vastest wealth, Is tho m
derground library. II is the royal library,
the continental library, the hemisphere IL
brary, the planetary library, the library of
the dust. And all these library cases will be
opened, and all these scrolls unrolled,
and all these volumes unclasped; and
as easily as In your library or mine
we take up a book, blow the dust of
of 1t, and turn over its pages, so easily will
the Lord of the Resurrection pick up out Of
this library of dust every volume Of human
life. and open it and read 1t and display it.
And the volume will be rebound, to be set in
the royal library of the Kings palace, or In
the prison library of the self destroyed. Oh,
this mighty literature of the dusti It is not
80 wonderful after all hat Christ chose, in
stead of an inkstand, the impressionable sand
ON the floor of an ancient temple, and instead
of a hard pen, put forth his forefnger with
the same kind Of nerve and muscle and bone
and flesh as hat which makes up our own
foreflnger, and wrote the awful doom Of
hypocrisy and full and complete forgiveness
for repentant sinners, even the worst.
And now I can believe that which ! read,
how that a mother kept burning a candle in
the window every night for ten years, and
one night very late, q poor wait of the street
entered. The aged woman said to her, ''Sit
down by the fire" and the stranger said,
"Why do you keep that light in the Window
The aged said: 'That is to light my
hayward daughter when she returns. Since
she went away ten years ago, my hair has
turnel white. Folks blame me for worrying
about her, but you see ] am her mother and
sometimes, half a dozen times a night, | open
the door and look out into the darkness and
cry, sLizzier 'LizzieI' But I must not tell
YOU any moro about my trouble, for I guess,
from the way you cry, you have trouble
enough of your own Why, how cold and
sick you seclnl Oh, myl can it bel Yes,
you are Lizzie, my own lost child. Thank
God that you are nome againr" And what a
time of rejoicing there was in that house that
night And Christ again stopped down and
In the ashes of that heGrth, now lighted up
not more by the great blazing logs than by
the joy of a reunited household, wrote the
same iberating words that he had written
more than eighteen hundred years ago In the
dust of the Jerusalem temple. Forgiveness
A word broad enough and high enough to let
pass through it all the armies of heaven, a
million abreast, on white horses, nostril to
nostril, iank to flank