The Opelousas courier., 1890-11-22

oy others and for you more depressing thaS
was our Pompeian visit in November.
besloe bhat, would You want to risk tina
temptations Of life over agains From the
fact that you are here conclude that though
IN many respects your life may have been
unfortunate and unconscerated you have got
on SO far tolerably well, if nothing more than
uoleraole. As for mvself. thouah NV life has
Deen Iar from being as consecrated as /!
would ike to have had it, | would not want
TO try 1T over again. lest next time I would d.,
worse. Why, just look at the temptations VIZ
nave all passed through and just look at tins
multlUudes who have gone completely under,
Just call over the roll of your school mates
n college mates, the clerks who were with
you IN the same store or bank, or the opera
tiVes In the same factory with lust as GOOD
prospects as you, who have come to complete
nlisnap. Some young man that told you
That he was going to be a millionaire and
own the fastest ~trotters on Westchester turn
pike and retire by the time he was thirty-fve
years OF age, you do not hear from for MANY
years, and know nothing about him until
some day he comes into your store and asks
Tor i've cents to get a mug Of beer. You, the
good mother OF a household n all your
children rising up to call you blessed, can re-
member when you were quite jealous of the
belle OF the village who was so transcendly
fair and popular. But while you have these
Two honorable and queenly names OF wife and
mother, she became a poor wait of the street,
and went into the blackness of darkness for
ever. Live life over again? Why, il many
OF those who are now respectable were
uermitted to experiment. the na~t
journey would pe 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: II know him now
better than 1 did before, and have for fifty
years been studying his weaknesses, and /
will weave a stronger web of circumstances to
catch him next time.n 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 are in the
right direction. Better go forward than
backward, even if we had the choice. The
greatest disaster I can think OF would
be for you to return to boyhood in 1890. Oh,
II life were a smooth Luzerne or Cayuga Lake,
| would like to get into a yacht and sail over
il, not once, but twics-yea, a 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 bearings and run
into the skerries. aud some are navar heard
of. Surely on such a treacherous sea as that
one voyage is enough.
Besides all this, do you know if you could
nave your wish and live life over again it
would put you SO much further from reun-
ion with your friends in heaven? Ii you are
in the noon of life or the evening of life you
are not very far from the golden gate at
| which you are 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 conjunction. Now suppose
you went back in your earthly life thirty
years or forty years or fifty years, what an
awful postponement of the tine of reunion!
It 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
q better start; as though you were going
to England to be crowned II having come
N sight of the mountains of Wales
you pot back to Sandy Hook in order
to mans a better voyage. The further
on yotN got in life, if a Christian, the
nearer you are to the renewal of broken
up companionship. No; the wheel of
time turns in the right direction, and it is
well it turns so fast. Three hundred n
sixty-fve revolutions in a year and for
| ward, rather than three hundred and
sixtr-fve revolutions in q year and back
ward. But hear ye! hear ye! while ] tell
you how you may practically live your life
over again and be all the better for it. You
may put into the remaining years OF
| your life all you have learned of wisdom
in your past life. You may make the
coming ten years worth the precso-
| ing forty or fifty years. When a man says
he would like to live his life over again be-
| cause ne would do SO much better, and yet
goes right on living as he has always lived,
do YOU not see he ~stultifes himself? He
proves that il he could go back he would do
almost the same as he has done. Ii q man
eat green apples some Wednesday in cholera
time and is thrown into fearful cramps and
says on Thursday: II wish | had been more
prudent in my diet; oh, If | could live Wednes-
day over again. and then on Friday eats ap-
pies just as green, be proves that it would
have been no advantage for him to i've
Wednesday over again. And it we, deplor-
ing onr past life and with the idea OF Inn
snsvement, long for an opportunity to try it
over again, yet go on making the same mis-
takes and committing the same sins, we only
demonstrate that the repetition of our exist
ence would afford no improvement. 1t was
i green apples before and it would 6e
green apples over again. As soon as q snip
captain strikes q rock in the lake or sea he
reports it and a buoy is swung over that reef
and marines henceforth stand OFT from
that rock. And all our mistakes
in the past ought to be buoys warming US to
keen Ia the right channel. There IS no ex-
cuse for us il we split on the same rock
where we split before. Going along the
sidewalk at night where excavations are be
ing made, we frequently see q lantern on a
framework, and we turn aside, for thSst Ian
/ tern keep out of this hole. Ind all
aIonIethe pathway of life lanterns are set as
warnings, and by the time we come to mid
life we ought to know where it Is safe to walk
and where it is unsafe.
Beside that. we ave all these years been
learning how to be useful, and in the next
1arada we 0a1rht to a~econnlish more for sod
and the church and the world than in any
rreyioils four decades. The best way 20
atone for past Incidence or past transgres-
sion is by future assiduity. Yet you often
find Christian men who were not con
verted until they were forty or nfty,
as old age comes on, saying: ca,
nv work is about done and it is time Tor me
to rest.n They gave forty years OF their NE
to Satan and the world, a little fragment o.
their life to God, and now they want TO resi-
Whether that belongs to comedy or tragedy
I say not. The man who gave one. NAN OF n'
earthly existence to the world and or bne re
and the other to rest, would not ! sup
nose. get a very brilliant reception Ii
heaven. If there are any dried Leaves
IN heaven 7 ,sEdheY would be appro
pirate for his garland: or If there is any
throne with broken steps it would be appro
pirate for his coronation; or any harp Will
relaxed string it would be appropriate TO
his lingering. My brother, you give nine
tentfhs of your life to sin and Satan and thei
get converted and then rest awhile in sancti
fed laziness and then 60 up to get your heav
enlv reward, ana I warrant it will not tax
the cashier of the royal banking hons
8 great while to count out to you al
your dues. He viii not ask you whether yol
win have it in bills of large denomination o
small. I would like to put one sentence o
nv sermon in italics, and have it under
scored, and three exclamation points at tn
end OF the sentence, and that sentences j
this: AS we cannot live our lives over again
the nearest we can come to atone for the pas
Is by redoubled holiness and industry in til
future.