Connecticut western news., 1890-12-17

tian character. I got letter a few
 days ago saying: ''I have hardly seen
 a well day since was born, and could
 not write my own name until was 50
 years of age, and am very poor; but l
 am, by the grace of God, the happiest
 man in Chicago" -
 The Bible speaks of the snows of
 Lebanon, and at this season of the year
 the snows there must be tremendous.
 The deepest snow ever seen in America
 would be insignificant compared with
 the mildest winter of snows on those
 Lebanon mountains. The cedars catch
 that skyfun of crystals on their brow
 and on their long arms. Piled up in
 great heaps are those snows, enough to
 crush other trees to the ground, split ting the branches from the trunk and leaving them rent and torn, never to rise. But what do the cedars care for these snows on Lebanon7 They look up to the winter skies and say: Snow on! Empty the white heavens upon
 us, and when this storm is passed let other processions of tempest try to bury us in their fury. We have for five hundred winters been ac-
 customed to this, and for the next five hundred winters we will cheerfully take all you have to send; for that is
 the way we develop our strength, and that is the way we serve God and teach
 all ages how to endure and conquer" So I say: Good cheer to all people who are showed under! Put your faith in God and you will come out glorious ly. Others may be stunted growths, or weak junipers on the lower levels of spirituality, but you are going to be Lebanon cedars. At last it will be said of such as you: 'sThese are they who
 came out of great tribulation and had their robes washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb"
 But while crossing over these mount aims of Lebanon I bethink myself of what an exciting scene it must be when one of the cedars does fall It does not go down like other trees, with slight crackle that hardly makes the woods man look up, or a hawk flutter from 8 neighboring bough. When a cedar falls it is the great event in the calendar of the mountains. The axmen fly. The wild beasts slink to their dens. The partridges swoop to the valley for es- cape The neighboring trees go down under the awful weight of the descend ing monarch. The rocks are moved out of their places, and the earth trem- oil send back their sympathetic echoes. Crash! crash! crash! So when the great cedars of worldly or Christian in fuence fall it is something terrific. Within the past few years how many l mighty and overlapping men have gone down.
 THE PRESENT MORAL STORM. 1 There seems now to be an epidemic ] of moral disaster. The moral world, the religious world, the political world, l the commercial world are quaking with the fall of Lebanon cedars. It l is awful. We arc compelled to cry out with Zechariah, the prophet, ''Howl, fir trees, for the cedar is fallenw Some of the smaller trees 1 are glad of it. When some great dealer in stocks goes down the small dealers clap their hands and say,
 Good for him!'' When a great political leader goes down the small politicians clap their hands and say, "Just as I expectedl' When great minister of religion falls many little ministers laugh up their sleeves and think themselves somehow advantaged. An, beloved brethren, no one makes ] anything out of moral shipwreck. Not willow by the rivers of Da- mascus, not 3 sycamore on the plains of Jericho, not an olive tree in all Pal estine is helped by the fall of a Leba- non cedar. Better weep and pray and tremblo and listen to Paul's advice to the Galatians when he says, "ConGd ering myself lest thou also be tempt ed" No man is safe until he is dead unless he be divinely protected. A greater thinker than Lord Francis Ba- con the world never saw, and he changed the worlds mode of thinking for all time, his "Novum Organum, Q niracle of literature. With $38, 900 salary and estates worth millions and bon the highest judicial bench of tho world he goes down under the power of bribery, and confessed his crime anl was sentenced to the Tower and the scorn of centuries. Howl fir tree, fer the cedar is fallen!
 Warren Hastings, rising until he be- came governor general of India and the envy of the chief public men of bis day, plunges into cruelties against the barbaric people he had been sent to rule, until his name is chiefly associated with the criminal trial in Westminster hall, where came upon him the anathe mas of Sheridan, Fox, Edmund Burke, the English nation, and all time. Howl, fir tree, for the cedar is fallen! As eminent instances of moral disaster are found in our own land and our own time, instances that do not recite lest I wound the feelings of those now alive to mourn the shipwreck, let your indignation against the fallen turn to pity.
 A judge in one of our American
 courts gives this experience. In re-
 spectable but poor family daughter was getting musical education. She needed one more course of lessons to
 complete that education. The fathers means were exhausted, and so great
 was his anxiety to help his daughter
 that he feloniously took some money from his employer, and, gsing home to
 bis daughter, said, There is the money
 to complete your musical education"
 The wife and mother suspected some thing wrong, and obtained from her
 husband the whole story, and that