Abilene weekly reflector. [volume] (Abilene, Kan.) 1888-1935, 1889-06-06

geoneu, Dody, mlnd and soul IN the black
ness of despair.
All, do not let Us solace ourselves with
the thought that other people are worse
than we. Perhaps in the future when our
fortunes may change. unless God prevents
1t, we may be worse than they are. Many
man after thirty years, after forty
years, after fifty years, after sixty years,
has gone to pieces on the sand bars. o,
instead of wasting our time in hyper
criticisms about others, let US ask our
selves the questions: Where do we stand:
What are our sins? What are our deficits.
What are our perist What are our hopes.
Let each one say to himself: where will
be? Shall range in summery fields. or
grind in the mills of great night: Where?
Wh.re?"
Some winter morning you go out and see
a snow bank in graceful drifts. as though
by some heavenly compass it had been
curved; and as the sun glints it the luster
is almost insufferable. and it seems as if
God had wrapped the earth in shroud
with white plaits woven in looms celestial.
And you say: WAS there ever any thing
so pure as the snow, so beautiful as the
snow" But you brought pail of that
snow and put it upon the stove and melted
it; and you found that there was a sedi-
ment at the bottom. and every drop of
that snow water was riled; and you found
that the snow bank had gathered up the
impurity of the field. and that after all 1t
was not fit to wash in. And so / say it
will be if you try to gather up these con-
trasts and comparisons with others, and
with the apologies attempt to wash out
the sins of your heart and life. 1t will be
an unsuccessful ablution. Such snow
water will never wash away a single
stain of an immortal soul
But hear some one say: 81 will try
something better than that. Twill try the
force of good resolution. That will be
more pungent more caustic, more extir-
pating, more cleansing. The snow water
has failed and now L will try the alkali of
the good strong resolution" My dear
brother, have you any idea that a resolu-
tion about the future will liquidate the
past? Suppose l owed you 5000 and
should come to you tomorrow and say:
''Sir, l will never run in debt to you again;
If l should live thirty years l will never
run in debt to you again." will you turn
to me and saw: "If you will not run in
debt in the future / will give you the
IS, OOO" Will you do that? No! Nor will
God. We have been running up long
score of Indebtedness with God. If for
the future we should abstain from sin
that would be no defrayment of past in
debtedness. Though you should live from
this time forth pure as an archapgel be-
fore the throne that would not re-
deem the past. Sod, in the Bible,
distinctly declares that He ''will
require that which is past"-past op-
portunities, past neglects, past wicked
words, past impure imaginations, past ev-
cry thing. The past is great cemetery.
and every day is buried in it. And here
is a long row of S65 days. They are the
dead days of 1888. Here is long row of
365 more graves, and they are the dead
days of 1887. And here is a long row of
365 more graves, and they are the dead
days of 1886. 1t is a vast cemetery of the
past. But God will rouse them all up with
resurrectionary blast. and as the prisoner
stands face to face with juror and judge,
so you and 1 will have to come up and
look upon those departed days face to
face, exulting in their smile or covering
in their frown.
Murder will out" is a proverb that
stops too short Every sin, however small,
as we'll as great will out In hard times
in England, years ago, it is authentically
stated that a manufacturer was on the
way with a bag of money to pay off his
hands A man infuriated with hunger
met him on the road and took rail with
a nail in 1t from a paling fence and struck
HIM down. and the nail entering the skull
instantly slew him. Thirty years after
that the murderer went back TO that place
He passed into the grave yard where the
sexton was digging a grave and while he
stood there the spads of the sexton turned
up a skull, and 10! the murderer saw a
nail protrudlng from the back part of the
skull; it seemod with hollow eyes to glare
on the murderer, and he, first petrified
with horror, stood in silence but soon cried
out Guilty! guilty! o Godw The
mystery of the crime was soon over The
man was tried and executed. My friends,
all the unpardoned sins of our lives though
we may think they are buried out of
sight and gone into a mere skeleton of
memory, will turn up in the cemetery of
the past, and glover upon US with their
l say all of our unpardoned
sins. o, have you done the preposterous
thing of supposing that good resolutions
for the future will wipe out the past?
Good resolutions, though they may be
and caustic as alkali, have no
power to neutralize a sin, have no power
to wash away a transgression. 1t wants
something more than earthly chemistry
to do this Yea, yea, though Il wash my
self with snow water. and should l cleanse
my hands in aIkali, yet shalt thou plunge
me in the ditch, and mine own clothes
shall abhor me-"
You see from the last part of this text
that Jobs idea of sin was very different
from that of Eugene Sue, or George Sand,
or NJ. j. Michelet, or any of the hundreds
of writer's who have done up iniquity in
mezzotint and garlanded the wine cup
with eglantine and rosemary, and made
the path of the libertine end in bowers OF
ease instead of on the hot tagging of
eternal torture. You see that Job thinks
that sin is not 1owery parterre; that it
is not tabIeland of fine prospects; that
it is not music, du,cimer, violoncelo,
castanet and Pancean pipes, all making
music together. No. He says it is a
ditch. long. deep, loathsome. stenchful
and we are all plunged into it, and there
we walow and sink and struggle, not
able to get out. Our robes of propriety
and robes of worldly profession are sat-
urated in the slime and abomination, and
our soul, covered with transgression,
hates its covering and the covering hates
the soul until we are plunged into the
ditch and cur own clothes abhor US.
know that some modern religionists
caricature sorrow for sin, and they make
out an easier path than the Pilgrims
Progress" that John Bunyan dreamed Of
The road they travel does not stop where
Johns did at the city of Destruction, but
at the gate of the university; and am
very certain that it will not come out
where Johns did. under the shining ram