The national leader., 1889-03-02

! MOST TREMENDOUS OF ALL LITERA-
TURE.
1t is the greatest of all libraries. When
Layard exhumed Nineveh he was only
opening the door of its mighty dust.
The excavations of Pompeli have only
been the unclasping of the lids of a vol
ume of nations dust. When Admiral
Farragut and his friends, q few years
ago, visited that resurrecte& osg, the
house of Balbo, who had been eze Ct its
chief citizens in its prosperous days,
was opened. and table VIA spEsaz in
that house which eighteen hundred and
ten years had been buried by volcanic
eruption, and Farragut and his guests
walked over the exquisite mOsaicS and
under the beautiful fresco, and it almost
seemed like being entertained by those
who eighteen centuries ago had turned
to dust. Oh this mighty literature Of
the dustl Where are the remains of
Sennacherib and Attila and Epaminor-
das and Tamerlane and Trojan and
Philip Of Macedon and Julius Caesar?
Dustl Where are the heroes who
fought on both sides at Charonea, at
Hastings, at Marathon, at Cressy, of
the 11O,OO0 men who fought at Agin.
court, of the 250.OO0 men who faced
death at Jena, of the 400,0 whose
armor 5littered in the sun at Wagram,
OF the 900, 900 men under Darius at
arbella, of the 2,641, 900 men under
XerxeS at ThermopylB? Dust!
Where are the guests who danced the
floors Of the Alhambra or the Persian
palaces of Ahasuerus? DustI Where
are the musicians who played, and the
orators who spoke, and the sculptors
who chiseled, and the architects who
built, in all the centuries except our
own? Dustl The greatest library of the
world, that which has the widest
shelves and the longest aiSles and the
most multitudinous volumes and the
vastest wealth, is
THE UNDERGROUND LIBRARY.
1t is the royal library, the continental
library, the hemisphere library, the
planetary library, the library of the
dust. And all these library cases will be
opened. and all these scrolls unrolled,
and all these volumes unclasped; and as
easily as in our library or mine we take
up 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 read it and
display it. And the volume will be re-
bound, to be set in the royal library of
the Kings palace, or In the prison
library of the self-destroyed. Oh this
mil shty literature of the dustl 1t is not
so wonderful, after all, that Christ
chose, instead of an inkstand, the i'm
pressiOnable sand on sthe floor Of an
ancient temple. and, instead Of a hard
pen, put forth his forefnger, with the
same kind of nerve and muscle and bone
and flesh as that which makes up our
own forefinger, and wrote the awful
doom of hypocrisy, and full and COM
plete forgiveness for repentant sinners,
even the worst.
And now l can believe that which 1
read, how that mother kept burning,
A CANDLE IN THE WINDOW
every night for ten years, and one night,
very late, poor waif of the street en-
tered. The aged woman said to her,
''Sit down by the fire." and the stranger
said, ''Why do you keep that light in
the Window" 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 am her mother,
and sometimes, half dozen times a
night, open the door and look out into
the darkness and cry, 'Lizziel' 'Lizziep
But must not tell you any more about
my trouble, for l guess, from the way
you cry, you have trouble enough of
your own. Why, how cold aud sick
you seeml Oh, myl can it be? Yes, you
are Lizzie, my own lost child! Thank
Goa that you are home againl" And
what time of rejoicing there was in
that house that nightl 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
llberating 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 1t all
the armies of heaven, million abreasc,
on white horses, nostril to nOstrll, flank
to flank.