The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1889-03-01

cut into monumental granite with the let.
tiers that the storms of thousand years
can not obliterate. Bishop Darlington had
. book of only three leaves. The first leaf
was blac k, the second leaf red, the third
leaf white. The black leaf suggested sin;
the red leaf atonement; the white leaf
publication. That is the whole story,
God will abundantly pardon.
must not forget to say that as Christ,
STOPPING down, with His finger wrote on
the ground, it Is evident that His sym.
pathies are with this penitent woman,
that He has no sympathy with her hypo-
critical pursuers. Just opposite to that is
the worlds habit Why didn't these un-
clean Pharisees bring one Of their own
number to Christ for excoriation and
capital punishment! No, no; they over
look that in a man which they damnate in
q woman. And SO the world has had for
offending women scourges and objurga.
tion, and for just one oTense she becomes
| an outcast, while for men whose lives have
been sodomic for twenty years the world
swings open its doors of brilliant welcome,
and they may sit in Legislatures and Sen.
ates and Parliaments or on thrones. I'm.
like the Christ Of my text, the world
| writes q mans misdemeanor in dust, but
chisels a woman's offense with great
| capitals upon ineffaceable marble. For for.
eign Lords and Princes. whose names can
! not even be mentioned in respectable
| circles abroad because they are walking
lazarettos of abomination our American
| princesses of fortune wait. and at the first
beck sail out with them into the blackness
of darkness forever And in what are
called higher circles of society there Is
now not only the imitation of foreign man
ners, but an imitation of foreign disso-
luteness. like an Englishman and like
| an American, but the sickest creature on
earth is an American playing the En-
glishman. Society needs to be recon-
structed on this subject Treat them
alike, masculine crime and feminine
crime. IL you cut the one in granite cut
them both in granite. If you write the
one in dust, write the other in dust No,
no. says the world; let woman go down
and let man go up. What is thai l hear
splashing into the East river at midnight,
and then there is a gurgle as of strangu.
lation and all is still? Never mind; It il
only a woman too discouraged to live.
Let the mills of the cruel world grind
right on.
But while speak of Christ of the psxt,
His STOPPING down writing in the dust do
not think underrate the literature of the
dust. 1t is the most solemn and tremsnd-
Gus OF all literature 1t is the greatest of
all libraries. When Layard exhumed
Ninevah he was only opening the door of
its mighty dust. The excavations OF Pom.
peii have only been the unclasping of the
lids of a volume of a Nations dust. When
Admiral Farragut and bis friends = few
years ago, visited that resurrected city
the house Of Balbo, who had been ore OF
its chief citizens in its prosperous days,
was opened and table was spread in that
house which 1, $40 years had been buried
by volcanic eruption, and Farragut and
his guests walked over the equisite mo.
sales and under the beautiful fresco, and
it almost seemed like being entertained
by those who eighteen centuries ago
had turned to dust. o, this mighty liter
AZURE of the dust! Where are the remains
of Sennacherib and Attila and Epaminon-
das and Tamerlane and Trojan and
Philip of Macedon and Julius Caesar!
Dustl Where the heroes who fought on
both sides at Cb@ronea, at Hastings, at
Marathon, at Cressy, of the 10 0OO men
who fought at Agncourt. of The $4,000
men who faced death at Jena, Of the 4OO,-
900 men whose armor glittered In the sun
at Wagram, of the 1000 900 men under
Darius at Arbella, of the 2,64tO00 men
under Xerxes at Thermopy;e? Dust
Where are the guests who danced the
floors of the Alhambra, or the Persian
palaces of Ahasuerus? Dust! 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? Dust! The great library of the |
world, that which has the widest shelves |
and the longest aisles and the most multi |
tudinous volumes and the vastest wealth, |
is the underground library. 1t is the royal !
library, the continental library, the hemis-
phere 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 your library or mine
we take up book, blow the dust off 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 rebound to be set
in the royal library Of the self destroyed.
o. this mighty literature of the dust! 1t
I
chose. instead of an iukstand. the impress
sionable sand on the floor of an ancient
temple. and instead of hard pen, put
forth his forefinger with the same kind of,
nerve, and muscle, and bone, and flesh
and wrote the awful doom of hypocrisy
and full and complete forgiveness for re-
pentant sinners, even the worst.
And now can believe that which read,
how that a mother kept burning a candle
in the window every night for ten years,
and one night very late poor waif OF the
street entered. 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 worry
ing 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: 'tLizZie
Lizzie" But l 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 and
sick you seem. o. my! can it be? Yes,
you are Lizzie, my own lost child. Thank
God that you are home again" And
W hat a time of rejoicing there was in that
house that night. And Christ stopped down
and in the ashes of that hearth, now
lighted up not more by the great blazing
logs than by the joy Of q reunited house,
hold, wrote the same liberating words
that He had written more than eighteen
hundred years ago in the dust of the
temple. Forgiveness! A word
broad enough and high enough to let pass
it all the armies of Heaven, a