Roanoke daily times. (Roanoke, Va) 1886-1890, 1890-03-11

teresting boy you would be with your
present attachments in child's mind.
No one would want such q boy around
the house: A philosopher at twenty,
scientist at fifteen, an arch9ologlst
at ten and domestic nuisance all the
time. An oak crowded into an acorn.
A Rocky mountain eagle thrust back
into the egg shell from which it was
hatched.
Beside that, if you took life over
again, you would have to take its deep
sadnesSes over again. Would you
want to try again the griefs and the
heart breaks and the bereavements
through which you have gomez What
a mercy that we shall never be called
to suffer them again! We may have
others bad enough, but. those old ones
never again. Would you want to 60
through the process Of losing your ia
ther again or your mother again or
your companion in life again or your
child again? Ii YOU were permitted
TO stop AT the Sixlieth milestone or the
hfticth milestone or the fortieth mile
stone and retrace Your steps to the
twentieth. yoar experience would be
something like mine one day last No
ycmber in Italy. l walked through
great city with a friend and two
guides. and there were in all the city
only four persons and they were
those OF our own group. We went
up and down the streets, we entered
the houses, the museums, the temples,
the theatres. We examined the Won,
derful pictures on the walls and
tie most exquisite mosaic ON
the floor. In the streets were
The deep Worn ruts of wagons, but not
wagon in the city. On the front
steps Of mansions the word Wei
come, in Latin, but no human being
to greet Us. The only bodies of any OF
the citizens that we saw were petrlhed
and III tic museum at the gates. Ot
the thirty-iive thousand people who
once lived in those homes and wor.-
SHIPPED in those temples and clapped
in those theatres, not one leftl For
eighteen hundred years that city OF
Pompeii had been buried before mod
crn exploration scooped out of it the
IlNaOl NCSuNiuS. wen, Ho NV o.iO@1ANs
be permitted 10 return on the pathway
of his earthly life and live it over
again would find as lonely and sad q
pilgrimage. 1t would be an eXplora-
ton OF the dead past The old school
house. the old church, the old home,
the old play ground either gone or
occupied By others, and for you more
depressing than was our Pompcian
visit in November.
Beside that, would YOU want TO risk
the temptations of life over againl
From the fact that YOU are here Icon
cludc that though in many respects
Your life may have been unfortunate
and uuconsecrated you have got on so
far toleYably well, il nothing more
than tolerable. As for myself, though
ny life has been far from being as con-
sccrated as | would like 10 have had 1t,
| would not want to try it over again,
lest next time l would do worse. Why,
Just look at the temptations we have
all passed through and just look at the
multitudes who have gone completely
under. Just call over the roll OF your
school mates and college mates, the
clerks who were with you in the same
store or bank, or the operatives in the
same factory with just as good pros
poets as YOU. who have come to com
plete mishap. Some young man that
told YOU that he was going to be q
millionaire and own the fastest trot-
tiers on WeStchester turnpike and
retire by the time he was thirty
FIVE years OF age, you co not
hear from for many years, and know
nothing about him until some day he
comes into your store and asks for five
cents TO get mug of beer. You, the
good mother of q household and all
your children rising up to call you
blessed, can remember when you were
quite Jealous of the belle of the village
Who was so transcendently fair and
popular But while you have these
two honorable and queenly names OF
wife and mother, she became poor
wait of the street, and went into the
b!ackness of darkness forever Live
life over again2 Why, if many OF
those who are now respectable were
permitted to experiment, the next
Journey would be demolition. You
got through, as JOB says, by the skin
of the teeth. Next time you might
not get through at all. Satan would
say know him now better than | did
before, and have for fifty years been
studying his weaknesses, and will
weave stronger web OF circumstances
10 catch him next time" And Satan
would concenter his forces on this one
man, and the last state of that man
would be worse than the first. My
friends. our faces a,c in the right di-
Yection. Better go forward than back
ward, even if we had the choice. The
greatest disaster can think of would
be for You TO rety;rn TO boyhood in
1890. Oh, if life were q smooth Lu-
zerne or Cayuga lake, would like to
get into yacht and sail over it, not
once, but twice-yea, thousand times.
But life is an uncertain sea, and some
of the ships crash on the icebergs of
cold indifference, and some take fire of
evil passion, and some lose their bear
ings and run into the skerries, and some
are never heard OF. Surely on such
treacherous sea rs that one voyage is
enough.
Beside all this, do you know if you
could have Your wish and live life over
again it would put you SO much fur
ther from reunion with your friends
in heaven? If you are in the noon of
life or the evening OF life you are not
very far from the golden gate at which
you arc to meet your transported and
emparadised loved ones. You are now,
let US say, twenty years or ten years
or one year off from celestial conj,nc-
ton. Now suppose you went back in
your earthly life thirty years or forty
years or fifty years, what an awful
postponement of the time of reunioni
1t would be as though you were going
to San Francisco to a great banquet
and you got to Oakland, four or five
miles this side of it, and then came
back TO Hoboken or Harlem to get a