Fisherman & farmer. [volume] (Edenton, N.C.) 1887-19??, 1890-11-28


six months of midnighrs guarding her whole
family, dead and gibbeted upon the mount
aims?
GO home, Rizpah! You must be awfulIy
tired. You are sacrificing your reason and
your life for those whom you can never
bring back again to your bosom. AS say
that from the darkest midnight of the CEN
fury RiZpah turns upon me and cries: How
dare you tell me to go home? | am moth
er. am rot tired. You might as well ex-
pect God to get tired as for a mother to get
tired. | cared for those bows when they lay
On my breast in iafancy, and will not for
sake them now that they are dead. Inter
rupt me not. There stoops an eagle that
must drive back with my agonized cry.
There is panther / must beat back with my
cIubr'
Do you know what that scene by our road
side In Palestine makes me think of: 1t is no
unusual scene Right here in these three
cities by the American seacoast there are
thousand cases this moment worse than that.
Mothers watching boys that the rum saloon,
that annex of hell, has gibbeted in a living
death. Boys hung in chains of evil habit
they cannot break. The father may go to
sleep after waiting until II o'clock at night
for the ruined boy to come home and, giving
it up, he may say: Mother, come to bed;
there's use sitting up any longer" But
mother will not go to bed. Its o'clock in the
morning. 1t is half-past 1. 1t is 2 o'clock
1t is haIf-past 2 when he comes staggering
through the hall.
Do you say that young man is yet alive?
No; he Is dead. Dead to his fathers en-
treaties. Dead to his mothers prayers. Dead
to the family altar where he was reared
Dead to ali the noble ambitions that once in
spired him. Twice dead. Only corpse Of
what he once was. Gibbeted before God and
man and angels and devils. Chained in a
death that will not loosen its cold grasp His
father is asleep his brothers are asleep his
sisters are asleep; but his motheri is watching
him, watching him in the night After he
has gone to bed and fallen into drunken
see that he is properly covered, and before
she turns out the light will put kiss upon
his bloated lips. ''Mother, why don't you go
to bedP' "Ah" she says. 81 cannot go to
bed. l am Rizpah watching the slain"
And what are the political parties Of this
country doing for such cases? They are TAX
ing care not to hurt the feelings of the
jackals and buzzards that roost on the
shelves Of the grog shops and boot above the
dead. I am often asked to what political
party belong and now declare my opin-
ion of the political parties to-day. Each one
is worse than the other and the only consola-
ton in regard to them is that they have
putrefed until they have no more power to
rot. Oh, that comparatively tame scene up
On which Rizpah looked! American mother
hood and American wifehood this moment
are looking upon seventy of the slain, upon
seven hundred of the slain, upon seventy
thousand of the slain. Woe! woe woe!
My only consolation on this subject is that
foreign capitalists are buying up the Ameri-
can breweries. The present owners see that
the doom or That business IS coming as surely
as that God is not dead. They are unloading
upon foreign capitalists, and when we can
get these breweries into the hands of people
living on the other side of the sea our politi-
cal parties will cease to be afraid of the
liquor traffic, and at their conventions nomi-
mating Presidential candidates will put in
their platform plank as big as the biggest
plank of the biggest ocean steamer, saying:
Resolved unanimously that we always have
been and always will be opposed to alcohol
ism"
But must spur on our Arab steed, and
here we come in sight of BeerOth, said to be
the place where Joseph and Mary missed the
boy Jesus on the way from Jerusalem to
Nazareth, going home now from great
national festival ''Where is my child
Jesusp' says Mary. 'Where is my child
Jesus?" says Joseph. Among the thousands
that are returning from Jerusalem they
thought that certainly He was walking on in
the crowd. They described Him, saying:
she is twelve years old, and of light COM
plexion and blue eyes. A lost child" Great
excitement in all the crowd. Nothing SO
stirs folks as the news that child is lost. I
shall not forget the scene when, in great
outdoor meeting, I was preaching, and some
one stepped on the platform and said that a
child was lost. We went on with the relig-
ious service, but all our minds were on the
lost child.
After while man brought on the plat
form a beautiful little tot that looked like a
piece eff heaven dropped down, and said,
There is that child" And forgot all that
1 was preaching about and lifted the child
to my shoulder and said, "Here is the lost
child and the mother will come and get her
right away, or I will take her home and add
her to my own broodw And some cried and
some shouted, and amid all that crowd [ in
stantly detected the mother. Everybody
had to get out of her way or be walked over.
Hats were nothing and shoulders were moth
ing and heads were nothing IN her pathway,
and realized something Of what must have
been Mary's anxiety when she lost Jesus, and
what her gladness when she found her boy in
the temple of Jerusalem talking with those
old ministers of religion, Shammai, Hillel
and Betirah.
1bear down on you to-day with a mighty
comfort. Mary and Joseph said: Where is
our Jesus?" and you say: ''Where is John?
or where is Henry? or where is George"
Well, I should not wonder if you found him
after while. Where? In the same place
where Joseph and Mary found their boy-in
the temple. What do I mean by that? I
mean you do your duty toward God and to-
ward your child and you will find him after
a while in the kingdom of Christ. Will you
say, 81 do not have any way Of Influencing
my childT' I answer you have the most
tremendous line Of influence open right be-
fore you. As you write a letter, and there
are two or three routes by which it may
go, but you want it to go the quickest
route, and you put on it ''via Southampton"
or Via San Francisco" or via Marseilles,"
the throne of God" How long will such a
good wish take TO get to its destination?