The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1889-04-24

never shall forget O prayer L heard q
young man make some fifteen years ago. E
was very short prayer, but it was tremend-
GUS prayer: "Oh 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 a
hundred men who have found out-a thou,
sand 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 letter, only one paragraph OF which
I shall read: "Having moved around some
what have run across many young men of
intelligence, ardent strivers after that Wlll-o'-
the wisp, fortune, and of one of these would
speak. He was a young Englishman of
twenty-three or four years, who came to
a ~ COUPLE ' Of Weeks aie lad
been tenderly reared; perhaps should
say too tenderly, and was not used to earning
his living, and found it extremely difficult to
get any position that he was capable of fill
tion he found himself on Sunday evening in
Brooklyn, near your church, with about
three dollars left of his small capital Provi-
dence seemed to lead him to your door, and
he determined to 90 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 listening to your
discourse his better nature got the mastery.
7 truly believe from what this young man
told me that your sounding 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 O great reality. Oh! friendless young
man, OH prodigal young man. Oh broken
hearted young man, discouraged young man,
wounded young man, I commend 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 ris-
ing in your soul; it is divinely lifted. Look
your fathers God, to your mothers God, and
get the pardoning blessing. Now, while T
speak, you are at the forks of the road, and
this is the right road, and that is the wrong
road, and I see you start on the right road.
Ono Sabbath morning at the close of
my service, I 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 up day after
day through his illness, and then he said to
his companion: "Now I want to wind this
watch as long as can, and then when am
gone want you to keep it wound up until it
gets to my friend, DR.. Doremus, in New
York, and then he will keep it wound up until
his life is done, and then I want the watch to
60 to his younger son, my especial favorite."
The great musician, who more than any
other artist had made the violin speak and
sing and weep and laugh and triumph-for
it seemed when he drew the bow across the
strings as if all the earth and heaven
trembled in delighted sympathy-the great
musician, in room looking off upon the sea,
and surrounded by his favorite instruments
While all the world was mourning
at his departure, sixteen crowded steam
ers fell into line Of funeral procession to carry
his body to the main land. There were fifty
thousand Of his countrymen gathered in an
amphitheatre of the hills waiting to hear the
eulogium and it was said when the great
orator of the day with stentorian voice be-
gan to speak, the fifty thousand people on the
hillsides burst into tears
Oh that was the close Of life that had
done so much to make the world happy. But
I have to tell you, young man, if you live
right and die right, that was tame scene
compared with that which will greet you
when from the galleries Of heaven the one
hundred and forty and four thousand shall
accord with Christ in crying: "Wel done,
thou good and faithful servant"
And the influences that on earth you put in
motion will 60 down from generation to gen.
GRAFTON, the influences you wound up handed
to your children, and their influences wound
up and handed to their children until watch
and clock ore no more needed to mark the
progress, because time itself shall be no
longer,