Abilene weekly reflector. [volume] (Abilene, Kan.) 1888-1935, 1889-04-18

worlds history never betrayed a young
man who tried to be good and Christian
Let me say in regard to your adverse
worldly circumstances, m passing. that
you are on a level now with those who are
finally to succeed. Mark my words,
young man, and think of it thirty years
from now. You will find that those who
thirty years from now are millionaires of
this country, who are the orators of the
country, who are the poets Of the country,
who are the strong merchants of the
country, who are the great philanthro-
pists of the country-mightiest in Church
and State-are this morning on level
with you, not an incn above you, and in
Strengthened circumstances now.
Herschel earned his living by playing a
violin at parties aud in the interstices of
the play he would go out and look up at
the midnight heavens, the fields of his i'm
mortal conquests. George Stephenson
rose from being the foreman in colliery
to be the most renowned of the worlds
engineers. No outfit no capital to start
with! Young man, go down to the Mer-
camille Library and get some books and
read of what wonderful mechanism God
gave you in your hand, in your foot, in
your eye, in your ear, and then ask some
doctor to take you into the dissecting room
and illustrate to you what you have read
about and never again commit the BIAS
phemy Of saying you have no capital to
start with. Equipped! Why, the poorest
young man in this house is equipped as
only the God Of the whole universe could
afford to equip him. Then his body-a
very poor affair compared to his wonder.
full soul-O, that is what makes me solicit
tous. / am not SO anxiods about you,
young man, because you have so little to
do with, as l am anxious about you because
you have SO much to risk and lose or gain.
There is no class of persons that so stir
my sympathies as young men in great
cities. Not quite enough salary to live on,
and all the temptations that come from
that deficit. Invited on all hands to drink,
and their exhausted nervous system SEEM
ing to demand stimulus. Their religion
caricatured by the most of the clerks in
the store and most of the operatives in the
factory. The rapids of temptation and
death rushing against that young man
forty miles an hour, and he in frail boat
headed up stream, with nothing but a
broken oar to work with. Unless Almighty
God help them they will go under.
All! when 1 told you to take care of
yourself you misunderstood me if you
thought meant you are to depend upon
human resolution, which may be dissolved
in the foam of the wine cup, or may be
blown out with the first gust of tempta-
ton. Here is the helmet, the sword of the
Lord God Almighty. Clothe yourself in
that panopiy and you shall not be put to
confusion. Sin pays we'll neither in this
he Int rirbf hi hi, ~
right believing and right acting will take
you in safety through this life and in
transport through the next
1 never shall forget a prayer l heard a
young man make some fifteen years ago.
1t was very short prayer, but it was a
tremendous prayer: 20, Lord, help u.s.
We find it so very easy to do wrong and
so hard to do right Lord, help u.s." That
prayer, Pill warrant you, reached the ear
of God and reached his heart And there
are in this house hundred men who have
found out-a thousand young men, per-
haps, 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 l will read: Having moved around
much have run across many young men
of intelligence, ardent strivers after that
will o. the-wisp, fortune, and of one of
these 1 would speak. He was a young
of twenty-three or twenty
four years, who came to New York, where
he had acquaintance, with barely enough
to keep MIN a couple of weeks. He had
been tenderly raised; perhaps l 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 filling. After many vain eff
forts in this direction he found himself on
Sunday evening in Brooklyn near your
church with about So left of his small cap
ital. Providence seemed to lead him to
your door, and he determined to go 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 church
he felt desperate, but while listening to
your discourse his better nature got the
mastery. l 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 great reality. o! frisndless young
man. o! prodigal young man. o! broken
hearted young man, l commend you to
Christ this day, the best friend man ever
had. He meets you this morning. You
have come here for this blessing. Dsspise
not that emotion rising in your soul; 1t is
divinely lifted. Look into the face of
Christ Lift one prayer to your fathers
God, to your mothers God, and get the |
pardoning blessing. Now, while l speak,
you are at the forks of the road, and this |
is the right road and that is the wrong |
road, and see you start on the right road. |
One Sabbath morning, at the close Of |
my service, 1 saw a gold watch of the |
vorld-renowneda and deeply -lamented vio-
inist, Ole Bull You remember he died /
IN his island home off the coast of Nor
way. That gold watch he had wound up
lay after day through his illness, and
hen he said to his companion: Now l
want to wind this watch as long as can, |.
md then when l am gone l want you to
Keep it wound up until it gets to my
riend, DR.. Doremus, in New York, and |
hen he will keep it wound up until his
ife is done, and then l want the watch to
90 to his young son, my especial favorite."
The great musician, who, more than any
,ther artist has made the violin speak
md sing and weep and laugh and triumph
for it seemed when he drew the
DOW across the strings as if all earth and
lea, en- trembled in delightful sympathy
he great musician, in a room looking eff
lpon the sea, and surrounded by his
avorite instruments of music, slouded his
yes in death. While ell the world was
at his departure, sixteen
rowded steamers fell into line Of funeral
recession to carry his body to the main
and. There were fifty thousand of his
.aonlA patherad in an amnhithAater of