Custer chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, Black Hills, D.T. [S.D.]) 1880-1890, 1889-02-16

ABOUT perdon and peace and life anC
comfort and hope and Heaven and twist
them into one garland. and put it on the
humblest child of God in this assemblage,
and cry: Wear it, wear it now, wear
II forever, son of God, daughter Of the
Lord God Almighty" Oh, the JOY Of the
new convert! Oh, the gladness of the
Christian s|ervicel
You have seen sometimes a man in q
religious assembly get up and give his
experience. Well, Paul gave his exper-
fence. lie arose in the presence Of two
churches, the church on earth and the
church in heaven, and he said: Now
This Is my experience: 'sorrowful. yet
always rejoicing-poor, yet making
many ich-having nothing, yet possess
ing all things" If the people IN this
house this morning knew the joys of the
Christian religion, they would all pass
over into the kingdom Of God the next
moment. When Daniel Sandman was
dying Of cholera his attendant said:
Have you much pain.' oh" he
said, since ! found the Lord / have
never had any pain except sin" Then
they said to him: Would you like to
send a message to your ~friends?' Ives,
! would; tell them that only last night
the love Of Jesus came rushing into my
soul like the surges Of the sea. and !
had to cry out: Stop, Lord, il is enough;
stop, Lord, enough" Oh, the joys Of
this Christian religion!
Just pass over from those tame joys in
which you are Neutrality-suspicious. Of this
world-into the raptures of The gospel.
The world canno satisfy you; you have
| found thof Yt-A1avonIar tnpuipn for
other worlds to conquer, and yet drowned
in his own bottle; Byron whipped by
disquietudes around the world; Voltaire
cursing HE W soul, while all the streets
of Paris were applauding him: Henry III
consuming with hatred against poor
Thomas A. Becket-all illustrations Of
the fact that this world cannot make a
man happy. The very man who pois-
oned the pommcl of the saddle on which
Queen Elizabeth rode, shouted in the
street: God save the Queen" One
moment the world applauds and the next
moment the world mathematics. Oh,
come over into this greater joy, this
sublime solace, this magnificent beati.
tude. The night after the battle Of
Shiloh, and there were thousands of
wounded on the field, and the ambu-
lances had not come, one Christian sol
dier, lying there a dying under the star
light, began to sing:
''There lis a land Of pure delight"
And when he came TO the next line
there were scores of voices uniting:
Where saints immortal reign"
The song was caught up all through
the fields among the wounded, until it
was said there were at least 10, 600
wounded men reuniting their voices as
they came TO the verse:
"There everlasting spring abides,
And ne~ver-withering flowers;
Death, like a narrow stream, divides
That heavenly land from ours"
Oh, il is a great religion to live by and
it is a great religion to die by. There is
only one heart throb between you ard
that religion this morning. Just look
into the face of your pardoning God and
surrender yourself for time and for eter-
nifty and He is yours and heaven is yours
and al is yours. Some of you, like the
young man Of the text, have gone far
astray. ! know not the history, bat you
know il, you know IT. When n young
man went forth into life, the legend says,
his guardian angel went forth with him
and getting him into a field the guardian
angel swept a circle clear around where
the young man stood. 1t was a circle Of
virtue aud honor, and he must not step
beyond that circle. Armed foes came
down, but were obliged 10 halt Gt the cir
Cle-they could not pass. But one day a
tcmptrcss with diamonded hand stretched
forth and crossed that circle with the
hand ard the tempted soul took il and by
that one fell grip was brought beyond
the circle and died. Some of you have
stepped beyond that circle. Would you
not ike this day by the grace of God to
step back? This | say TO you in your
hour OF salvation. There was in the
closing hours Of Queen Anne what is
called the clock scene. First down on
the pillow in helpless sickness, she could
not move her head nor move her hand.
She was waiting for the hour when the
ministers of state should gather in angry
contest and worried and worn u by the
coming hour and in momentary absence
OF the nurse, in the power, the strange
power which delirium sometimes gives
Ohc, she arose and stood in front a the
clock and stood there watching the clock
when the nurse returned. The nurse
said: DO you see anything peculiar
about the clock?' She made no answer,
but soon died. There is a clock scene in
every history. If some OF you would rise
from the bed Of legarthy and come out
from your delirium Of sin and look on
the clock Of your destiny this morning,
you would see and hear something you
have not seen or heard before, and every
tick of the minute, and every stroke of the
hour. and every swing of the pendulum
would say: Now, now, now, nowv'
Oh, come to your Fathers house. Come
home. oh, prodigal, from the wilderness.
Come home, come, home!
But | notice that when the prodigal
came there was the fathers joy. He
did not greet himNwith any formal How
DO you dor" He did not come out and
say: "You are unfit to enter; go out
and wash in the trough by the well, and
then you can come in; we have had
enough trouble with you" All 40.
When the proprietor of that estate pro-
claimed festival, it was an outburst Of a
fathers love and a fathers Joy. God is
your father. ! have o much sympa-
thy with that description of God some
times hear, as though He were a Turkish
Sultan, hard and unsympathetic. and
listening not to the cry of His subjects.
| A man told me he saw in one Of the
eastern lands a king riding along, and