The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1889-06-12

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But I hear some one say: 81 will try some
thing better than that. will try the force
Of q good resolution. That will be more
pungent, more caustic, more extirpating
more cleansing. The snow water has failed
and now I will try the alkai Of the good
strong resolution" My dear brother, have
you any idea that q resolution about
the future will iquidate the past? Sup
pose I owed you five thousand dollars
say: "Sir, will never run in debt to you
again; If should live thirty years, will
never run in debt to you again." will you
! turn to me and say: "If you will not
run in debt in the future. will forgive
you the five thousand dollars" Will you do
that? No! Nor will God. We have been
running up a long score Of indebtedness with
| from sin, that would be no defrayment Of past
Indebtedness. Though you should live from
this time forth pure as an archangel before
| the throne, that would not redeem the
past. God, in the Bible, distinctly
declares that he ''will require that which
is past'-past opportunities, past neg
lects past wicked words. past impure i'm
great cemetery, and every day is buried in
it. And here is long row of three hundred
and sixty-flve graves. They are the
dead days Of 1888. Here is long row Of
rnree hundred and si1ty-tive more graves,
and they are the dead days Of 1887. And
here is q long row Of three hundred and six
ty-fve more graves, and they are the dead
days Of 1886. 1t is vast cemetery Of the
past. But God will rouse them all up with
resurrectionary blast, and as the prisoner
stands face to face with juror and judge so
you and I will have to come up and look
upon those departed days face to face, exult-
ing in their smile or covering in their frown.
Murder will out" is a proverb that
stops too short. Every sin, however small,
as well as great, will out. In hard times
in England, years ago, it is automatically
stated that a manufacturer was on the way,
with bag of money, to pay off his hands. A
man infuriated with hunger met him on the
road, and took rail with nail in it from a
paling fence and struck him down. and the
nail entering the skull instantly slew him.
Thirty years after that the murderer
went back to that place. he passed into the
grave yard, where the sexton was digging a
grave, and while he stood there the spade Of
the sexton turned up a skull, and, 10 the
murderer saw a nail protruding from the
back part of the skull; and as the sex
ton turned the skull it seemed with hol-
low eyes to glare on the murderer;
in silence, but soon cried out. ''Guilty!
guilty! Q God" The mystery OF the
crime was over. The man was tried
and executed. My friends. all the un-
pardoned sins Of our lives. though We
may think they are buried out of sight
and gone into mere skeleton Of
memory, will turn up in the cemetery
Of the. past and glover upon us with
their misdoings. I say all our unpardoned
sins. Oh, have you done the preposterous
thing of supposing that good resolutions for
the future viii wipe out the past? Good re-
solutions, though they may be pungent and
caustic as alkal, have no power to
neutralize sin, have no power to
wash away transgression. 1t wants some
thing more than earthly chemistry to do
this. Yea, yea. though II wash myself with
in alkal, yet shalt thou plunge me in the
ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me-"
You see from the last part of this text that
Jobs idea Of sin was very different from that
Of Eugene Sue, or Geofge Sand, or NJ. j.
Michelet, or Of any Of the hundreds Of writers
who have done up iniquityi in mezzotint,
and garlanded the wine cup with eg-'
lantine and rosemary, and made the
path Of the ibertine end in bowers of
ease instead of on the hot tagging Of eternal
torture. You see that Job thinks that sin is
not fowery parterre; that it is not table.
land Of fine prospects; that it IS not
music, dulcimer, violoncello, castanet
and Pandean pipes, all making music
together. No. He says it is a ditch, long,
deep, loathsoms, stenchful, and we are all
plunged into it, and there we wallow and sink
and struggle, not able to get out. Our robes
of propriety and robes Of worldly profession
are saturated in the slime and abomination,
and our soul, covered over with transgression,
hates its covering, and the covering hates the
soul until we are plunged into the ditch, and
our own clothes abhor us.
know that some modern relgionists carl
cature sorrow for sin, and they make out an
easier path than the ''pilgrim's progress"
that John Bunyan dreamed Of. The road
they travel does not stop where Johns did, at
the city of Destruction, but at the gate of
the university; and I am very certain
that it will not come out where Johns did,
under the shining ramparts Of the celestial
city. No repentance, no pardon. If you do
not, my brother, feel that you are down in
the ditch, what do you want Of Christ to lift
you out? II you have no appreciation of
the fact that you are astray, what do you
want of him who came to seek and save that
which was loste Yonder Is the City of
Paris, the swiftest Of the Inmans, coming
across the Atlantic. The wind is abaft,
so that she has not only her engines
board the Umbria of the Cunard
line. The boat davits are swung around.
The boat is lowered I get into it with a
red flag and cross over to where the City of
Paris is coming and T wave the flag. The
captain looks of from the bridge and says :
What do you want?" I reply: 81 come
to take some of your passengers across
to the other vessel; think they will be safer
and happier there" The captain would look
down with indignation and say: 'Get out Of
the way, or l will run you down." And then
would back oars, amidst the jeering OF
two or three hundred people looking
over the taffrail But the Umbria
and the City of Paris meet under different
circumstances after while. The City of
Paris is coming out of cyclone; the life
boats are smashed; the bulwarks gone; the
vessel rapidly going down. The boatswaln
gives his last whistle of despairing COM
mand. The passengers run up and down the
deck, and some pray, and all make great
about fifteen minutes now to prepare
for the next world" ''No hope? sounds
from stem to stern and from
the ratlines down to the cabin. I
see the distress. am let down by
the side of the Umbria. push
off as fast as I can toward the sink
ing City of Paris. Before I come up people
are leaping into the water in their anxiety to
get to the boat, and when ! have swung up
under the side Of the City of Paris, the
frenzied passengers rush through the gang
way until the officers, with ak and clubs
and pistols, try to keep back the crowd,
each waiting his turn to come next:
There is but one life boat, and they all
want to get into it, and the cry is: ''Me
next! me nextm You see the application
before make it. As long as man going
on in his sin feels that all is well, that he is
coming out at a beautiful port, and has all
sail set, he wants no Christ he wants no help,
he WANTS no rasrne. hut if nndar tha flash of