News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1889-06-06

I
resurrectionary blast, and as the prisoner
stands face to face with juror and Judge so
| you and l Will have to come up and look
| upon those departed days face to face, exult-
ing in their smile or covering in their frown.
| Murder will out" is a proverb that
stops too short. Every sin, however small,
as well as great, will out. In hard times
in England, years ago, it is automatically
| stated that a manufacturer was on the way,
| with a bag OF money, to pay off his hands. A
man Infatuated with hunger met him on the
road and took a rail with a nail in it 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 spade of
the sexton turned up skull, and, 10 the
murderer saw nail protruding from the
hack part of the skull; and as the sex
ton turned the skull it seemed with hol-
low eyes to glare on the murderer;
and he first petrified with horror, stood
IN silence, but soon cried out. 'Guilty!
guilty! o Godr' The mystery of the
crime was over. The man was tried
and executed. My friends, all the I'm,
pardoned 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 misdoings. say all our unpardoned
sins. Oh, have you done the preposterous
thing of surprising that good resolutions for
the future will wipe out the past? Good re-
solutions, though they may be pungent and
caustic as alkali, have no power to
neutralize a sin, have no power to
wash away a transgression. 1t wants some
thing more than earthly chemistry to do
this. Yea, yea though Il wash myself with
:s.iow water, and should I cleanse my hands
in alkah, yet shalt thou plunge me in the
ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me.n
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 M. j.
Michelet or of any of the hundreds of writers
who have done up iniQuity in meZzotint,
and garlanded the wine cup with eg
lantine and rosemary, and made the
path of the hbertine end in bowers of
ease instead of ON the hot tagging of eternal
torture. You see that Job thinks that sin is
not fowery parterre; that it is not table
land of fine prospects; that 1t is not
music, dulcimer, violoncello, castanet
and Pandean pipes all making music
together. No. He says it is a ditch, long,
deep, loathsoma, stenchful, and we are all
plunged into it, and there we wallow and sink
and struggle not able to get out. Our robes
of propriety- and robes of worldly profession
are saturated in the slime and abomination,
and our soul, covered over with transgression,
hates its covering, and the covering hates the
soul until we are plunged into the ditch, and
our own clothes abhor us.
know that some modern religionistS Carl
cature 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 l am very certain
that it will not come out where Johns did
under the shining ramparts of the celestial
city. No repentance no pardon. If you do
not, my brother feel that you are down in
you out? If you have no appreciation of
the fact that you are aStray, what do you
want of him who came to seek and save that
which was lost Yonder Is the City of
Paris, the swiftest of the Inmans, coming
across the Atlantic The wind is abaft,
at work, but an sails up. l am .on
board the Umbria of the Cunard
line. The boat davits are swung around
The boat is lowered. l get into it with a
Paris is coming and 1 wave the flag. The
captain looks off from the bridge and saws
g What do you want?" 1 reply: '' come
to take some of your passengers across
TO the other vessel; | think they will be safer
and happier there The captain would look
the way, or will run you down" And then
l would back oars, amidst the jeering of
two or three hundred people looking
over the taffrail But the Umbria
and the City Paris meet under different
circumstances after while. The City of
Paris is coming out of a cyclone; the life
boats are smashed; the bulwarks gone; the
vessel rapidly going down. The boatswain
gives his last whistle of despairing COM
mand. The passengers run up and down the
deck, and some pray, and all make great
cutlery. The captain says: ''You have |
about fifteen minutes now to prepare
for the next world.n mo hopper sounds |
from stem to stern and from |
the ratlines down to the cabin. I |
see the distress. l am let down by |
the side of the Umbria. | push
off as fast as / can toward the sink |
ing City of Paris. Before | come up people |
are leaping into the water in their anxiety to |
get to the boat, and when l have swung up |
under the side of the City of Paris, the |
frenzied passengers rush through the gang |
way until the officers, with ak and clubs |
and pistols, try to keep back the crowd,
ach waiting his turn to come next.
There is but one life boat, and they all
nextl me nextr' Y on see the application
before / make it. As long as a man going
n in his sin feels that all is WELL that he is
ming out at q beautiful mort and has all
sail set he wants no Christ he wants no help
he wants no rescue; but if under the fash of
Gods convicting spirit he shall see that by
reason of sin he is dismasted and water
logged, and going down into the trough of |
the sea where he cannot live how soon he |
t'SANS
horizon and at the first sign of help |
cries OUT II want to be saved I |
want to be saved now. / want to be saved |
forever" No sense of danger, no applica- /
ton for rescue.
Oh, that Gods eternal spirit would flash |
upon us sense of our sinfulnessl The Bible |
tells the story in letters of fire but we get used
to it, We joke about sin. Wemake merry over
1t. w hat is sin? Is it a triiing thing? Sin is /
vampire that is sucking out the life blood of
iS
that no earthly key ever unlocked Sin? 1t /
IS expatrlatlon from God and heaven Sin? |
1t Is grand larceny against the Al
mighty, for the Bible asks the question:
affirmative This Gospel is a writ of reple-
vim TO recover property unlawfully detained |
from God.
In the Shetland Islands there is a man
with leprosy. The hollow of the foot has
swollen until it is fat on the ground. The
joints begin to fall away. The ankle
thickens until it looks like the foot of |
comes to tho eye. The nostril
is CONSTRUCTED The voice drops to an |
almost inaudible hoarseness. Tubercles blotch
the whole body, and from them there comes
an emulation that is unbearable to the be-
holder. That is leprosy, and we have all got
it unless cleased by the grace of God. See |
Leviticus. See Ii Kings. See Mark SEQ |
Luke. See fifty Bible illusions and confir-
nations.
The Bible is not complimentary in its Ian
guage. IL does not speak mincingIy about
our sins. 1t does not talk alphabetically. |
There is no vermilion in its style. 1t does
not cover up our transgreSSions with bloom
ing metaphor. 1t does not sing about !
them in weak falsetto; but it thunders out:
THE imagination of mans heart is evil /
from his youth" Every one has gone back.
He has altogether become filthy. He is |
abominable and filthy, and drinketh in in
EQUITY like water And then the Lord |
Jesus Christ filings down at our feet this hui
Of men proceed evil thoughts adulteries, |
fornication, murders, thefts, blasphemy."
There is text for your rational |
lists to preach from. Oh, the dignity /
Of human naturel There is an /
clement of your science of man /
that the anthropologist never has had /
the courage yet to touch; and the
Bible, in all the ms and outs of the |
most forceful style, sets forth our natural
pollution, and repre- ents iniquity as a fright
full thing, as an exhausting thing, as loath-
some thing. 1t is not mere bemiring of the |
feet, it is not mere befouling of the hands:
it is going down, head and ears under, in a /
ditch, until our clothes abhor us.
My brethren, shall we stay down where sin
thrusts US? / shall not if you do We can
not afford to. l have to-day to tell you that
there is something purer than snow water,
something more pungent than alkali, and
that is the blood of Jesus Christ that
cleanseth from all sin. Ay, the river
of salvation, bright, crystalline and heaven
born, rushes through this audience with bill
lowy tide strong enough to wash your sins
completely and forever away. Oh. Jesus, let