Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1889-02-25
In All ne Ages a Single Loafer
Has Never Entered Heaven.
Jesse Came and Among the Strings of
His Harp Played the Devil Out OF
the Crazy King.
Some Who Have Lived in Good Houses Here
VIII be Found Residing in Poor One on
Back Street in the Celestial City.
snecistto the Gazette.

audience that crowded the immense audi
torium of the Brooklyn tabernacle and
the adjoining. lecture room and parlors
to-day united in singing:
Sun of my. soul, Thou Saviour dear,
II is not night if Thou be near.
DR.. Taimage preached on the subject:
"Dark Sayings on Harp Text Xix
psalm of David, verse 4: u will open
my dark sayings on a harp.
The world is full of the inexplicahle,
the impossible, the unfathomabIe, the
insurmeuntable. We cannot 90 three
STEPS in any direction without coming up
against a hard wall of mystery, riddles,
paradoxes, profundities. labyrinths,
problems that we cannot solve, hero
glyphics that we cannot decipher, ana
grams we cannot spell out, sphinxes that
viii not speak For that reason David
in my text proposed to take up some of
these somber and dark things and try to
set them to sweet music. 81 will open
my dark savings on a harp.
So I look Oft upon society and find
people in unhappy conjunction of circum-
bAdi4IEs anu iIGg ~ liOL hilOM NIldt II
means and they have q right to ask, why
is thisl and why is that? and 1 think I
viii be doing good work by trying to
explain some Of these strange things and
make you more content with your lot,
and l shall only be answering questions
that have often been asked me, or that
we have all asked ourselves, while l try
to set these mysteries to music and open
my dark savings on a harp.
A QUESTION THAT is OFTEN ASKED.
Interrogation the first: Why does God
take out of this world those who are use
ful and whom We cannot spare and leave
alive and in good health so many who are
only nuisance or a positive injury to the
world? L thought 1 would begin
with the very toughest of
all the seeming inscrutables. Many
of the most useful men and women
die at thirty or forty years of age, while
you often find useless people alive at
sixty and seventy and eighty. John
Careless wrote to Bradford, who was
SOON to be put to death, saying: 'Why
doth God suffer me and such other cater
pillars to live that can do nothing but
consume the aims of the church, and
take away so many worthy workmen in
the LORD g Vineyard?' Similar ques-
tions are often asked. Here are two
men The one is q noble character and
Christian man: he chooses for q lifetime
companion one who has been tenderly
reared, and she is worthy of him and he
is worthy of her; as merchant, or farmer,
or professional man, or mechanic, or
artist, he tolls to educate and rear his
children; he is succeeding, but he has not
yet established for his family
A FULL COMPETENCY:
ne seems absolutely indiSDeOS bIp To that
household y bur one day before he has
paid off the mortgage on his house he is
coming home through strong north
east wind and a chill strikes through him
and four days of pneumonia end his
earthly career and the wife and children
go into q struggle for shelter and food.
His next door neighbor is man who,
though strong and we'll, lets his wife
support him; he is round at the grocery
store or some general loafiHg place in the
evenings while his wife sews; his boys
are Initiating his example and lounge
and sWagser and swear; all the use that
man is in that house is to rave because
the coffee is cold when he comes to late
breakfast, or to say cutting things about
his wife looks when be furnishes moth
ing for her wardrobe. The best thing
that could happen to that family would
be that man 5 funeral; but he declines to
die: he lives on and on and on. So we
have all noticed that many OF the useful
are early cut off while the parasites of
society have
GREAT VITAL TENACITE.
1 take up this dark saying on my harp
and give three OF four thrums on the
string in the way of surmising and hope
ful guess Perhaps the useful man was
taken out of the world, because he and
his family were so constructed that they
could not have endured some great pros
perlty that might have been just ahead
and they altogether might have gone
down into the vortex of worldliness which
every year swallows up ten thousand
households. And so he went while he
was humble and consecrated, and they
were by the seventies of life kept close
10 Christ and fitted for usefulness here
and high seats in heaven: and when they
meet At last before the throne, they will |
acknowledge that though the furnace
was hot, it purified them, and prepared |
them for an eternal career OF glory and
reward for which no other kind of life
could have fitted them. On the
other hand, the useless man
lived on to fifty or sixty or seventy
years, because all the ease he ever can
have he must have III this world, and
you OUGHT not, IuGFNlOIG, DS-IuuS Hlui
his earthly longevity. In all the ages
there has not o single loafer ever entered
heaven. There is no place there for him
10 hang around. Not III the temples, for
they are full of the most vigorous, alert
and raptUroas worship. Not on the river
bank, for that is the place where the
conquerers recline. Not in the gates,
because there ale multitudes entering,
and we are told that at each of the
twelve gates there is an angel, and that
celestial guard would not allow the place
TO be blocked up with idlers. If the
good and useful go early, rejoice for
them that they have so soon got through
with human life, which at best is q
struggle. And if the useless and the
bad stay, rejoice that they may be out in
the world 5 fresh air a good many years
before
THEIR FINAL INCARCERATION.
Interrogation the second: Why do |
so many good people have so much Urou-
Bile; sickness. bankruptcy, persecution, |
the three black vultures sometimes put |
ting their fierce beaks into one set of jan
erled nerves? think now Of n rood /