The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1889-03-06

Pompeii have only been the upclasp-
ing Of the lids Of volume Of nations dust.
When Admiral Farragut and his friends.
few years ago, visited that resurrected city,
the house of Balbo, who had been one Of It's
ch ef citizens in its prosperous days, was
opened and a table was spread in that house
which eighteen hundred and ten years has
been buried by volcanic eruption. and Farra-
gut and his guests walked over the
EXQUISITE mosaics and under the beautiful
fresco. and it almost seemed like being enter
tained by those who eighteen centuries ago
literature of the dust. Where are the
remains OF Sennacberib and Attila and
Enamimondas and Tamerlane and Tro-
ian and Philip of Macedon ard Julius
Cesar? Dust. Where are the heroes
who fought on both sides at Charonea. at
Hastings. at Marathon, at Cressy, OF the lio.-
600 man who fought at Agncourt, OF the
25J. .0G0 men who faced death at Jena, OF tne
4DO 600 whose armor glttered IN the sun at
Wragram, Of the 1,0D0, ,010 men under Darius
at Arbella. of the 2, Gal, 900 men under Aer1es
at Thermopyla! Dust!
Where ara the guests who danced the floors
of the Alhambra. or the Persian palaces OF
Ahasuerus' Dust! Where ara the musicians
who PLAYED and the orators who spoke, ana
the sculptors who chiseled. and the archl-
tects who built in all the centuries ex-
cept our ownl Dust! The greatest
library of the world that which has
the widest shelves and the longest als'es
and the most multitudinous volumes
and the vastest wealth, is the Underground
library. 1t is the royal library, the con-
tinental library, the hemispheric library
the dust. And oil 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 off of it, 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
readit and display it. And IN tn the ,ol1 volume ne
brary of the Kings palace, or in the prison
library of the self destroyed. Oh, this
mighty literature of the dust. 1t is not SO
wonderful after all that Christ chose, instead
of an inkstand, the impressionable sand on
the floor of an ancient temple, and, instead
of hard pen, put forth His forelnger with
the same kind of nerve, and muscle, and
bone, and flesh. as that which makes up our
own forefnger, and wrote the awful doom
of hypocrisy and full and complete Forgive
ness for repentant sinners, even the worst.
And now can believe that which l read,
how that mother kept burning candle IN
the window every night for ten years. and
one night very late poor walf of the street
entered The aged woman Salu 10 ner: olt
down by the fire. and the stranger said:
"Why do you keep that light in the win
dow" The aged woman said: THAT
is to light my wayward daughter
when she returns Since she went away ten
years ago my hair has turned white. Folks
blame me for worrying about her, but you
see I am her mother, and some metimes, half q
dozen times night, I open the door and
look out into the darkness and cry:
'Lizzie Lizzien But I must not
tell you any more about my
trouble, for I guess, from the way you cry,
you have trouble enough Of your own.
Why. how cold and sick you seem! Oh, my
can it be' Yes, you are Lizzie, my own lost
child. Thank God that you are home againp p'
And what time Of rejoicing there was in
that house that night! And Christ again
stopped down. and in the ashes
of that hearth. now lighted up
not more by the great blazing logs than by
the Joy of reunited household, wrote the
same liberating 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, nostrn to
nostrl, flank to flank.