The Brookhaven leader. [volume] (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1883-1891, 1889-02-28


Then the people, moved by the idea that
any one could find any thing pleasant
concerning q dead dog, saidi "Why,
this must be Jesus of Nazareth"
Reproved and convicted they went
away. Surely this legend Of Christ
is good enough TO be true. Kindness
In all His words and ways and habits.
Forgiveness. Word OF eleven letters,
and some OF them thrones, and some OF
them plain branches. Better have Christ
write close to our names that one word,
though he write ii in dust than to have
our name cut into monumental granite
with the letters that the storms OF thou
sand years can not obiterate. Bishop
Darlington had a book of only three
leaves. The first leaf was black, 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 aound-
antly pardon.
must not forget to say that as Christ
STOPPING down, with his finger wrote Oh
tho ground, il is evident that his sympa.
thies are with this penitent woman, and
that he has no sympathy with her hypo-
critical pursuers. Just opposite to that
is the worlds habit. Why Didn't these
unclean Pharisees bring one of their own
number to Christ for excoriation and cap
ital punishment? No, nc; they overlook
that in a man which they damnate in
woman. And so the world has had for
offending women scourges and obJurga-
ton, and for just one offense she becomes
an outcast, while for men whose lives have
been sodomic for twenty years the world
swings open its doors of brilliant well
come and they may sit in Legislatures and
Senates and parliaments or on thrones.
Unlike the Christ Of my text, the world
writes a mans misdemeanor In dust, but
chisels woman's offense with great capt-
tails upon ineffaceable marble. For Tor.
eign lords and princes, whose nsmes can
not even be mentioned in respectable cir
cles 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 dress and
foreign manners, but an imitation of for
eign dissoluteness. l like an Englishman
and like an American, but the sickest
creature on earth is an American playing
the Englishman. Society needs to be re-
on this subject. Treat them
alike, masculine crime and feminine
crime. II you cut the one in granite, cut
them both in granite. II 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
that hear FLASHING into the East river
at midnight, and there is gurgle as OF
and all is still. Never
mind. 1t is only a woman too discouraged
TO live. Let the mills of the cruel world
grind right on.
But while speak of Christ Of the text,
His STOPPING down writing in the dust, do
not think underrate the literature Of the
dust. 1t is the most solemn and tremen-
dous OF all literature. 1t is the greatest Of
all libraries. When Layard exhumed
Nineveh he was only opening the door of
it's mighty dust. The excavations OF
Pompeii have only been the unclasping
of the lids of q volume of n nations dust.
w hen Admiral Farragut and his friends,
q few years ago, visited that resurrected
city, the house of Balbo, who had been
one of its chief citizens in its prosperous
days, was opened and table was spread
in that house which 1910 years has been
buried by volcanic eruption, and Far
ragut and his guests walked over the ex-
uuisite mosaics and under the beautiful
fresco, and it almost seemed like being
by those who, eighteen CEN
turtles ago, had turned to dust. oh, this
mighty literature of the dust! Where are
the remains of Sennacherib and Attila
and Epaminondas and Tamerlane and
Trojan and Philip of MacedOn, and
Julius Caesar? Dust! Where are the
heroes who fought on both sides at Cher
onea, at Hastings, at Marathon, at Cressy,
of the one hundred and ten thousand men
who fought at Agincourt, Of the two
hundred and fifty thousand men who
faced death at Jena, of the four hundred
thousand whose armor glittered in the
sun at Wagram, of the one million men
under Darius at Arbella, of the two
million six hundred and forty one thou
sand men under Xerxes at Thermopyla?
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 CHS
eled, and the architects who built in all
the centuries except our own? Dustl The
greatest library Of the world, that which
has the widest shelves, and the longest
aisles, and the most multitudinous VOL
umes, and the vastest wealth, is the UNDER
ground library. 1t is the royal library
the continental library, the hemisphere
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 of 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 dis play
it. And the volume will be rebound, to
be set in the royal library of the Kings
palace, or in the prison library of the
self destroyed. Oh, this mighty litera-
ture of the dust! 1t is not so wonderful
after all that Christ chose, instead of an
inkstand. the impressionable sand on the
floor of an ancient temple, and instead of
a hard pen, put forth his forefnger with
the same kind Of nerve and muscle, and
bone, and flesh, as that which makes up
our own forefnger, and wrote the awful
doom Of hypocrisy and full and complete
forgiveness for repentant sinners, even
the worst.
And now l can believe that which l read,
how that mother kept burning 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 hayward