Dodge City times., 1889-06-13
grind in the mills of great night


though by some heavenly compass it ha'
had been curved; and as the sun CLINT
it the luster is almost insufferable, ant
it seems as if God had wrapped the
} earth in shroud with white plait
woven in looms celestial. And you say
WAS there ever anything SO pure as tht
snow. so beautiful as the snow: But
YOU brought pail of that snow and put
it upon the stove and melted it; and YOU
found that there was sediment at the
bottom, and every drop of that snow
water was riled; and you found that the
snow bank had gathered up the impurity
of the field and that after all it was no
fit to wash in. And SO / say it Will be L
/ You try to gather up these contrasts ane
comparisons with others, and with tbest
apologies attempt to wash out the SIM
of your heart and life. 1t will be al
unsuccessful ablution. Such snow watel
will never wash away single stain Of
an immortal soul.
But hear some one say: Il will try
something & better than that. Iwilltry the
force of a good resolution. That will
be more pungent, more caustlc. more
extirpating, more cleansing. The snow
water has failed, and now 1 will try the
alkaii of the good, strong resolution.
Ny dear brother, have You any idea that
resolution about the future will liqui-
date the past: Suppose owe you five
thousand dollars and / should come to
you tomorrow and say: Sir. l will
never run in debt to you again; if
should live thirty years, will never run
in debt to you again; will You turn to
me and say: If yeu Will not run In
debt in the future, | will forgive you
the five thousand dollars" Will you do
that2 No. Nor will God. We have
been running up long score of indebt-
edness with God. If for the future We
| should abstain from sin, that would be
no defrayment of past Indebtedness.
Though you should live from this time
| forth pure as an archangel before the
! throne, that would not redeem the past.
God in the Bible. distinctly declares
that He will require that which is past
past opportunities, past neSlects. past
wicked words, past impure imaginations,
past everything. The past is great
| cemetery, and every day is buried in it.
And here is long row of three hun
dred and sixty five graves. They are the
dead days of 1888. Here is long row
| of three hundred and sixty-five more
graves, and they are the dead days of
1887. And here is a long row of three
hundred and sixty-five more graves, and
they are the dead days of 1856. 1t is a
vast cemetery of the past. But God
will rouse them all up with resurrection
AIRY blast, and as the prisoner stands
face to face with juror and judge, SO
you and l will have to come up and look
| upon those departed days face to face,
exulting in their smile or covering in
their frown.
Murder will ont is q proverb that
stops too short. Every sin, however
small, as well as great, will out. In
hard times in England, years ago, it is
authentically stated that a manufacturer
was on the way, with bag of money, to
pay off his hands. A man infuriated
with hunger met him on the road, and
took rail with nail in it from pal
| ing fence and struck him down, and
the nail entering the skull instantly
slew him. Thirty years after that the
murderer went back to that place. He
passed in the grave yard, where the SEX
ton was digging grave, and while he
stood there the spade of the sexton
turned upa skull, and, 10! the murderer
saw nail protruding from the back
part of the skull; and as the sexton
turned the skull, it seemed with hol-
low eyes to glare on the murderer; and
silence, but soon cried out, Guilty.
guilty! o God.' The mystery of the
crime was over. The man was tried and
executed. My friends, all the unpar-
doned sins of our lives, though We may
think they are buried out of sight and
gone into mere skeleton of memory,
Will turn up in the ceNetery of the past,
and glover upon us with their nIisdo-
| ings. l say all our unpardoned sins.
Oh, have you done the preposterous
thing of supposiug that good resolu-
tlons for the future will wipe out the
past? Good resolutions, though they
may be pungent and caustic as alkali,
have no power to neutraliZe a sin, have
no power to wash away a transgression.
1t wants something more than earthly
chemistry to do this. Yea, yea, though
Il wash myself with snow water. and
should | cleanse my hands in alkali, yet
shalt thou plunge me in a ditch, and
mine own clothes shall abhor me-"
You see from the last part of this text
that Jobs idea of sin was very different
from that of Eugene Sue. or George
Sand, or NJ. J. Michelt, or any of the
hundreds of writers who have done up
iniquity in mezzotint, and garianded the
wine cup with eglantine and rosemary,
and made the path of the libertine end
in bowers os.ease instead of on the hot
tagging of eternal torture. You see that
dob thinks that sin is not a fowery par
terre; that it is not a tableland of fine
prospects; that 1t is not music, dulcimer,
violoncello, ,castanet and Pandean pipes,
all making music together. No. He
says 1t Is ditch, long. deep, loathsome,
stenchful, and We are all plunged into
1t, and there We wallow and sink and
struggle, not able to get out. Our robes
of propriety and robes of worldly pro-
fesslon are saturated in the slime and
abominat;on, and our soul, covered
over with transgression, hates its COW
ering, and the covering hates :he soul
until We are plunged into the ditch, and
our own clothes abhor us.
l know that some modern religionists
carlcature sorrow for sin, and they make
out an easier path than the pilgrim
progress" that John Bunyan dreamed Of
The road they travel does not stop
where Johns did, at the city of Destruc-
tlon, but at the gate of the university;
and L am very certain that il will not
come out where Johns did, under the
shining ramparts of the celestial city,
No repentance, no pardon. If you do
not, my brother, feel that you are down
IN the ditch, what do You want of Christ
to lift you out? If you have no appre-
citation of the fact that you are astray,
what do Won want of him who came to
seek and save that which was lost?
londer is the City of Paris, the swiftest
of the Inmans, coming across the At
lantic. The wind is abaft, so that she
has not only her engines at work, but all
sails up. l am on board the Umbria of
the Cunard line. The boat davits are
swung around. The boat is lowered. 1
get into it with red flag, and cross
over to where the City of Paris is COM
ing. and wave the flag. The Captain
looks off from the bridge. and says:
w hat do you WANT l reply: L come
to take some of your passengers across
to the other vessel; l think they will be
safer and happier there" The Captain
would look down with Indignation and