The Russellville Democrat. [volume] (Russellville, Ark.) 1875-1898, 1889-04-18
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newspaper come into that room, any more
than you would allow cobra to coil on
your table.
Take care of yourself. Nobody else
will take care Of you. Your help will not
come up two or three or four flights OF
stairs; your help will come through the
roof, down from Heaven, from that God
who in the six thousand years OF the
worlds his tory never betrayed young
man who tried to be good and Christian.
me say in regard to your adverse
Idly circumstances, in passing, tha'
re on level now with those who are
fly to succeed. Mark my words,
young man, and think of 1t thirty years
from now. You will find that those VINO
thirty years from now are millionaires OF
this country, who are the orators OF ths
country, who are the poets OF the country
who are the strong merchants OF the
country, who are the great philanthropists
of the country-mightiest in Church and
State-are this morning on a level With
you, not an inch above, and you In
Strengthened circumstances now.
Herschel earned his living by playing a
violin at parties, and in the interstices OF
the play he would go out and look up at
tls midnight heavens, the fields OF his
immortal 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 Goa
gave you in your hand, in your FOOT Ia
your eye, in your ear, and then ask some
doctor to take you into the dissectlng
room and illustrate to you what you have
read about, and never again commit the
blasphemy of saying you have no capltal
to start with. Equipped! Why, the poor
est 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 with his
wonderful soul-oh, that is what makes
me solicitous. | am not so much anxious
about you, young man, because you have
so little to do with, as l am anxious about
you because you have 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 70
drink and their exhausted nervous sys-
tenn seeming to demand stimulus. Their
religion caricatured by the most or the
clerks in the store and most Of the opera
tives in the factory. The rapids Of temp
tation and death rushing against that
young man forty miles the hour, and he
in a frail boat headed up stream, with
nothing but a broken oar to work with.
Unless Almighty God help them they will
go under.
Ahl when l told you to take care OF
la-
thought me ant you are to depend upon
human resolution, which may be DIS
solved in the foam of the wine cup, or
may be blown out with the first gust of
Here is the helmet, the
sword of Lord God Almighty. Clothe
yourself in that panoply, and you shall
not be put to confusion. Sin pays well
neither in this world nor the next, but
right thinking, and right believing, and
right acting will take you in safety
through this life and in transport through
the next.
Inever shall forget prayer l heard
young man make some fifteen years ago.
1t was a very short prayer, but 1t was
prayer: "Oh, Lord help us.
We find it so very easy to dong wrong
and SO hard to do right. Lord, help u.s."
That prayer, l warrant you, reached tho
ear of God and reached his heart. And
there are in this house a hundred men
who have found out-a thousand 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 or
which 1 shall read: Having moved
around somewhat / have run across
many young men of Intelligence, ardent
strivers after that will-o' the -wisp, fort
une, and OF one Of these l would speak.
He was a young Englishman of twenty
three or twenty-four years, who came to
New York, where he had acquaintances,
with barely sufficient to keep him couple
of weeks. He had been tenderly reared
perhaps | should say too tenderly--and
was not used to earning his own living,
and found it extremely difficult to get any
position that he was capable Of filling.
After many vain efforts in this direction
he found himself, on Sunday evening, in
Brooklyn, near your church, with about
three dollars left OF his small capital.
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
church he felt desperate, but while listen
ing to your discourse his better nature
got the mastery. / 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. l am not preaching an abstrac-
ton, but q great reality. Oil friendless
young man, ohi prodigal young man, oh!
broken hearted young man, discouraged
young man, wounded young man, COM
mend you to Christ this day, the best
friend man ever had. He meets you this
morning. You have come here for this
blessing. Despise not that emotion rising
in your soul; it is divinely lifted. Look
into the face OF Christ. Lift ono prayer
to your fathers God, to your mothers
God, and get the pardOning blessing.
Now, while / speak, yoI are at the forks
Of the road, and that is the wrong road,
and see you start on the right road.
One Sabbath morning, at the close OF
my service, / saw 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,
want to wind this watch as long as can,
and then when l am gone want you to
keep it wound up until it gets TO my friend,
DR.. Doremus, in New York, and then no
will keep it wound up until his life is
done, and then want the watch to go to
his young 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
faYorite instruments Of music, closed his
L l. IL 4