Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1889-04-19


Neapolitan dominions and MGrseilles wrought
such terror in the Eighteenth century, but
| look at the yellow feyeTs, and the choleras,
and the diphtherias and the scarlet fevers,
and the typhoids of our own time. Hear the
wailing of Memphis and Shreveport, and New
1 Orleans and Jacksonville of the last few de
cades. From Hurdwar, India. where every
/ twelfth year three million devotees congre-
/ gate, the caravans brought the cholera, and
| that one disease slew eighteen thousand in
| eighteen days in Bossorah. Twelve thousand
in one summer slain by it in India and TWEEN
ty-five thousand in Egypt Disasters cpl
demic. Some of the finest monuments in
! Greenwood and laurel Hill and Mount Au-
/ burn are TO doctors who lost their life bat
Ting with Southern epidemic.
But now turn the leaf in my subject, and
1 plant the white lilies and the palm tree
amid the night shade and the myrtle. This
age no more characterized by wonders Of dis
aster than by wonders of blessing. Blessing
of longevity; the average of human life rap
idly increasing. Forty. years now worth four
| hundred years once. Now I can travel from
] Manitoba to New York in three days and
three nights. In other timei it would have
taken three months. In Other words three
days and three nights now are worth three
months Of other days. The average of human
life practically greater now than when Noah
| lived his $50 wears and Methusaleh lived his
/ y
| Salmon p. Chases and the Abraham Lincolns
and the Henry Wilson's of the coming time
will not be required to learn tc read by pine
knot lights, or seated on shoemaker's
bench. no" will the Fergusons have
TO study astronomy while Watching the cat
tie. knowledge rolls its tides along every
poor mans door, and his children may go
down and battle In them If the philosophers
of the last century were called up to recite
in class with our boys at the Polytechnic,
or our girls at the Packer, those old philoso-
pliers would be sent down to the foot Of the
class because they failed to answer the ques-
tionsl Free libraries in all the important
towns and cities of the land. Historical alcoves
and poetical shelves and magazine tables for all
that desire to walk through them or sit down
at them. Blessings of quick information:
Newspapers falling all around us thick as
leaves in a September equinoctial. News
three days old, rancid and stale. We see the
whole world twice day-through the news
paper at the breakfast table, and through
the newspaper at the tea table, with an Tex
tran here and there between.
Blessing of Gospel proclamation: 'Do you
not know that nearly all the missionary
societies have been born in this century?
and nearly all the Bible societies and nearly
an the great philanthropic movements
A secretary of one of the denominations
said to me the other day in Dakota:
You were wrong when you said our
denomination averaged new church every
day OF the year: they established nine in
one week, SO you are far within the truth"
A clergyman of our own denomination said:
VI have just been out establishing five mis-
sion stations" | tell you Christianity is Oh
the march while inidelity is dwindling into
imbecility. While infidelity is thus dwir,
ding and dropping down into inn
bbecility and indecency, the wheel of
Christianity is making about a thou
sand revolutions in a minute All the
copies of Shakespeare and Tennyson and Dis
raeli and of any ten of the most popular writ
ers of the day, less in number than the copies
of the Bible going out from our printing
presses. A few years ago, in six weeks, more
than two million copies of the New Tesla
nent purchased, not given away, but pur-
chased because the world will have it,
More Christian men in high official posi-
ton to-day in Great Britain and in the United
States than ever before. Stop shat falsehood
going through the newSpapers-I have seen it
in twenty-that the Judges of the Supreme
Court of the United States are all infidels ex-
cept one. By personal acquaintance 1
know three of them to be old-fashioned
evangelical Christians, sitting at the
Holy Sacrament Of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and I suppose that the majority of
them are stanch believers in our Christian
religion. And then hear the dying words Of
Judge Black, man who had been Attorney
General of the United States, and who had
been Secretary Of the United States, no
Judge Black-dying, his aged wife kneel-
ing by his side and he uttering
that sublime and tender prayer: 30
Lord God, from whom derived my existence,
i'll whom have always trusted, take my spirit
TO Thyself and let Thy richest blessing come
book to-day is the Bible, and the mightiest
institution is the church, and the greatest
name among the nations and more hOuored
than any other is the name Of Jesus.
Wonders of self sacrifice: A clergyman
told me in the Northwest that for six years
he was missionary at the extreme North,
living 400 miles from a postofice, and some
times he slept out Of doors in the winter, the
thermometer sixty and sixty-fve degrees
below zero, wrapped in rabbit skins
woven together l said: "Is it posi-
BILE? You do not mean sixty and sixty-five
degrees below zero" He said: II do, and
was happy" All for Christ Where is there
any other being that will rally such enthus-
iasm? Mothers sewing their fingers off to
educate their boys for the Gospel ministry.
For nine years no luxury on the table until
the course through grammar school and col
lege and theological seminary be COM
pleted. Poor widow putting her mite into
the Lords treasury, the face Of Emperor OF
President impressed upon the coin not so con,
spicuous as the blood with which she earned
it. Millions of good men and women, but
more women than men, to whom Christ is
everything Christ first and Christ last anC
Christ forever.
Why, this age is not so characterized BY
, invention and scientific exploration as il
! is by Gospel proclamation. You can gel
no idea Of it unless you can ring al
; hand, take the scepterl Wounded foot, step
the thronel Chime is the kingdom"
These things l say because l want you to
, be alert. I want you to be watching all these
wonders unrolling from the heavens and the
earth. God has classified them, whether
= calamitous or pleasing The divine purposes
, are harnessed in traces that cannot
and in buckles that cannot loosen, and
are driven by reins they must answer.
2 preach no fatalisn A swarthy engineer at
. one of the depots in Dakota said: when will
you get ON the locomotive and take a ride
q with usP' "Well," | said ''now, if that
motive, and Methodist minister,
: who was also invited, got on the other side,
? and between us were the engineer and the
, stoker. The train started. The engineer had
d his hand on the agitated pulse Of the great
|, engine. The stolzer shoyeled in the coal and
shut the door with loud clang. A vast plain
a slipped under us and the hills swept by,
, and that great monster on which we
n rode trembled and bounded and snorted
n tne church bells In one cnlme, ant
y sound all the organs in one diapason, ant
; gather all the congregations Of Christen
g dom in one Gloria in Excelsis
t Mighty camp meetings. Might Oceal
l. Groves. Mighty Chautauquas. Mighty con
l. ventions Of Christian works. Mighty gen
l. eral assemblies of the Presbyterian church
!. Mighty con ferences of the Methodist church
r Mighty associations of the Baptist church
n Mighty CONVEX Ions of the Episcopal church
# I think before long the best investments will