Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-05-05

TO be waving handkerchief. In the
small boat the crew pushed out to the
wreck, and found that it was q capsized
vessel, and that three men had been dig
glng their way out through the bottom Of
the ship. When the vessel oapsized they
had no means of escape. The CAPTAIN
took his penknife and dug away through
the planks until his knife broke. Then
an old nail was found, with which thew
attempted to sorape their way out of the
darkness, each one working until his
hand was wellnigk paralyzed, and he
sank back faint aud sick. After long
and tedious work, the light broke
through the bottom of the
ship. A handkerchief was hoIsted.
Help came. They were taken on board
the vessel and saved. Did ever men
come SO near q watery grave without
dropping into itP How narrowly they
scaped-escaped only
with THE SKIN OF THEIR TEETH.''
There are men who have been capsized
of evil passions, and capsized mid ocean, ,
and they are thousand miles away from
any shore of help. They have for years
been trying to dig their way out. They
have been digging away, and digging
away, but they can never be delivered
unless they will hoist some signal of dis
tress. However weak and feeble it may
be, Christ will see it, and bear down
upon the helpless craft, and take them
on board, and it will be known in earth
and in heaven how narrowly they es-
capped" escaped as with the skin of
their teeth.
There are others who in attempting to
come to God, must run betw cen a great
many business perplsxities. If man 90
over to business at 10 O'Clock in the
morning and comes away at o o'clock in
the afternoon, he has some time for re-
ligion; but how shall you find time for
religious contemplation when you are
driven from sunrise TO sunset, and have
been for five years going behind in BUSH
ness and are frequently duuned by credi-
tors whom you cannot pay, and when,
from Monday morning until Saturday
night, you are lodging bills that you can
not meet? You walk day by day in I'M
certainties that have kept your brain on
fire for the past three years. Some with
less business troubles than you have gone
crazy. The clerk has heard noise in
the back counting room, and gone in,
and found the chief man of the firm a
bang of pistol in the back parlor, and
gone in, stumbling over the
dead body OF her husbands suicide.
There are in this house to-day 800 men
pursued, harassed. trodden down and
scalped of business perplexities, and
which way to turn next they do not
know. Now, God will not be hard on
you. He knows what obstacles are in
the way of your being Christian, and
your first effort in the right direction He
will crown with success. Do not let
satan, with cotton bales and kegs and
hogsheads and counters and stocks of
unstable goods, block up your way to
heaven. Gather up all your energies.
Tighten the girdle about your loins. Take
an agonizIng look into the face OF God,
and then say, "Here goes one grand
effort for life eternall' and then bound
away for heaven, escaping as with the
skin of your teeth
In the last day it will be found that
Hugh Latimer and John Knox and Russ
and Ridley were not the greatest mar
tyrs, but Christian men who went up in
corrupt from the communications and
perplexities OF Wall street, Water street,
Pearl street. Broad street, State street,
and Third street. On earth they were
called brokers, or stock jobbers, or re-
tailers, or importers; but in heaven,
Christian heroes. No fagots were hesped
about their feet; no iRquisition demanded
from them reeantation; no soldier aimed
q pike at their heart.
But thev had mental fortunes.
Compared with which all physical con-
Stunning is as the breath of a spring morn
ing.
Ind IN he mi 1ora III
of men who have been so cheated, SO lied
about, SO outrageously wronged, that
they have lost their faith in everything.
In @ world where everything seems
so opsy-turyey, they do not see
how there can be any God. They are
COMPOUNDED and frenzied and misanthrop-
10. Elaborate arguments to prove to
them the truth of Christianity, or the
truth of anything else, touch them no.
where. Hear me, all such men.
preach to you no rounded periods, no
ornamental discourse; but put my hand
on your shoulder, and inyite you into the
peace of the Gospel. Eere is a rock on
which you may stand firm, though the
waves dash against it harder than the
Atlantio, pitching its surf clear above |
EddYstone lighthouse. Do not charge |
upon God all these troubles of the world. |
As long as the world stuck to God, God |
stuck to the world; but the earth seeded |
from His government, and hence all |
these outrages, and all these woes. |
God is good. For many hundreds OF |
years He has been eeaxiHg the world to |
come back to Him; but the more He has |
coaxed, the more violent have men been |
in their resistance, and they have step |
ped back and stepped back until they |
have dropped into ruin.
Try this God, ye who have had the |
blood hounds after you, and who have |
thought that God had forgotten you. Try |
Him, and see If He will not help. Try |
Him and see if He viii not pardon. Try |
Him and see if he Will not save. The
flowers of spring have no bloom so sweet |
as the towering of Christ's affections.
The sun hath ne warmth compared with
the glow OF His heart. TINS waters have
no refreshment like the fountain that will
slaks the thirst of thy soul. At the mo-
ment the reindeer stands with his lip and
nostrils thrust in the cool mountain
torrent the hunter may be coming
through the thicker. Without cracking
q stick under his foot, he comes close by
The stag. aims his gun, draws the trig-
ger and the poor thing rears in its death
agony and falls backward, its aHtlers
crashing on the rocks; but the painting
heart that drinks from the water brooks
IF Gods promise shall never be fatally