Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1890-03-14

those temples and clapped in those theatres,
not one lett For eighteen hundred years
that city OF Pompeii had been buried be-
fore modern exploration scooped out OF it
the lava Of Vesuvirs Well, he who should
be permitted 20 return on the pathway of
his earthly life and live 1t over again would
find as lonely and sad a pilgrimage. IT
would be an exploration 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 Pompeian visit in
November
Besides that, would YOU want to risk the
temptations OF life over againl From the
fact that you are here l conclude that
though In many respects your life may
have been unfortunate and unc0nsecraJed
you have got on SO far toleraby well, IL
nothing more than tolerable AS for my
self, my life has been far from being as
consecrated as would like to have had it,
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 multi
tudes 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 fac.
tory with just as good prospects as you, who
have come TO complete mishap Some young
man that told you that he was going to be q
millionaire and own the fastest trotters on
Westchester turnpike and retire by the
time he was thirty five years of age, YOU do
not hear from him for many years, and
know nothing about him until some day he
comes into your store and asks tor five
cents to get a mug OF beer. You, the
good mother OF o 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 popu-
lar. But while you have these two honor
able and qneenly names Of wife and moth
er, she became "a poor waf of the street
and went into the blackness of dark ness
forever. Live life over again. Why, il
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 81 know him better now
than / dfdbefore, AMI have for fifty years
been studying his weaknesses, and l will
weave stronger web OF circumstances to
catch him next time" And Satan
would center his forces on this one
man, and the last state OF that man would
be worse than the first. NY friends, our
faces are in the right direction. Better go
forward than backward, even If we had the
choice. The greatest disaster can think
OF would be Tor you to return to bOyhood in
1899. Oh, il life were a smooth Luzerne or
Cayuga lake, 1 would like TO get into a
yacht and sail over it, not once, but twice
yea, thousand times But life is an I'M
certain sea, and some of the ships crash on
the icebergs of cold Indifference, and some
take fro OF evil passion, and some lose their
forbearings aud run into the skerrics, and
some are never heard OF. Surely on such
treacherous SCI as 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 50 much further from re-
union 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 are to meet your transported
and unparalleled 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 time Of reunion
1t would be as though you were going
TO San Francisco to great banquet
and you got to Oakland, four to five
miles this side of it, and then came back
to Hoboken or Harlem to get a better start;
as though you were going to England to be
crowned and having come in sight of the
mountains Of Wales you put back to Sandy
Hook in order to make better voyage.
The further on you get in life if Chris
tian, the nearer you are to the renewal OF
broken up companionship. No; the wheel
of time turns in the right direction, and it
is we'll it turns so fast Three hundred
and sixty-five revolutions in yelr and
forward. But hear We! Hear ye!
while tell you how you may
practically 1.-Two 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 preceding forty or fifty years.
When a man says he would like to live his
life over again because he would do so
much better, and yot goes right on living as
he had always lived, do you not see ne stul-
titles himselfl He proves that If he could
go back he would do almost tho same as he
has done. If man eat green apples some
Wednesday in cholera time and is thrown
into fearful cramps AMI says on Thursday:
~ wish l had boon more prudent in my
diet; oh, If could live Wednesday over
again." and then on. Friday eats apples
just as green, he proves that it would
have been no advantage for him to live
Wednesday over again. And il we, deplor-
ing our past life and with the idea of i'm.
provement, 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
existence would AFFORD no Improvement It
was green apples before and it would b,
green apples OYER again. AS soon as a ship
captain strikes a rock in the lake or sea he
reports it and buoy is swung over that
reef and marines hencoforth stand off
from that rock. And all our mistakes
in the past ought 10 be buoys warning US
TO keep in the right channel. There is no
excuse for US IL we split on the same rock
where we split before. Going along the
sidewalk ut night where excavations are
being made, we frequently see lantern on
q frame work, and we turn aside, for that
lantern says, keep out Of this hole. And
all along the pathway OF life lanterns are
set as WARNINGS aud by tn, time wa come
to mid life we ought to know where IT, is
safe to walk and where IL is unsafe.
Beside that, we have all these years been
learning how TO be useful, and in the next