Connecticut western news., 1890-04-02

faint hearted man. gives a Scripture passage in consolation to some bereft woman. picks up child fallen in the street and helps him brush off the dust and puts five cent piece in his hand, telling him not to cry, so that the boy is singing before he gets round the cor ner; waiting on everybody that has letter to carry or a message to deliver; comes into rail train, or stage coach, or depot, or shop, with a smiling face that sets everybody to thinking, If that man can, with what appears small equipment in life, be happy, why can not l, possessing far more than he has, be equally happya" One day of that kind of doing things may not amount to much, but forty years of that-no one but God himself can appreciate it's immensity.
 There are tens of thousands of such people. Their circle of acquaintance is small. The man is known over at the store He is clerk or weigher or drayman, and he is known among those who sit near him clear back in the church under the galleries, and at the ferry gates where he comes in knocking the snow from his shoes, and threshing his arms around his body to revive circulation, on some January morning. But if he should die to- morrow there would not be hundred people who would know about it. He will never have his name in the news papers but once, and that will be the announcement of his death, if some one will pay for the insertion, so much line for the two lines. But he will come up gloriously on the other side, and the God who has watched him all through will give him higher seat and a better mansion and grander eternity than many a man who had on earth, before his name, the word hon. orable, and after his name IL. D. and E. R. s. Christ said in Luke, the sixth. chapter, that in heaven some there.
 And think laugh of delight and congratulation will run around the heavenly circles when this humble one of whom spoke shall go up and take the precedence of many Chris. tlans who in this world felt them selves to be of ninety-nine per cent: more importance. The whisper will go round the galleries of the upper temple: Can it be possible that that was the weigher in our store9" Gan it be possible that that was the cal driver on our street2' ''Can it be pos. sible that was the sexton of ou1 church2" Gan it be possible that is the man that heaved coal into our eel lar2" II never could have thought it. What reversal of things! We he is clear ahead of us in heaven. Why, we had ten times more brains than he had, we had a thousand times more money than he had, we had SO cial position a mile higher than he ties more than he had, but it seems now that he accomplished more with his one talent than we did with our ten;" while Solomon, standing among the thrones, overhears the whisper, with benignant and all-suggestive smile, say, "Yes, it is as I told the world many centuries ago-better is l small faculty actively used than great talent unemployed, better is g living dog than dead lion.'"
 THE DEAD LIONS OF THIS WORLD. 1 The simple fact is that the world has been, and the world is now, full oi dead lions. They are people of great capacity and large opportunity, doing 1 nothing for the improvement of SO ciety, nothing for the overthrow oi evil, nothing for the salvation of souls. 1 Some of them are monetary lions. 1 They have accumulated so many hun dreds of thousands of dollars that you can feel their tread when they walk through any street or come into any circle. They can by one financial move upset the money market. In stead of the ten per cent of their in. 1 come which the Bible lays down as the proper proportion of their contri- button to the cause of God, they do not give five per cent, or three per cent. or two per cent, or one per cent, or a half per cent, or a quarter per cent. 1 That they are lions, no one doubts. When they roar, Wall street, State street, Lombard street and the Bourse tremble.
 In few years they will lie down and die. They will have great fu- neral, and long row of fine carriages, and mightiest requiems will roll from the organ, and polished shaft of Aber- deen granite will indicate where their dust lies, but for all use to the world that man might as we'll have never lived. As an experiment as to how much he can carry with him, put a ten cent piece in the palm of his dead hand, and five years after open the tomb, and you will find that he has dropped even the ten cent piece. A lion! Yes, but dead lion! He left all his treasures on earth, and has no treasures in heaven. What shall the stone cutter put upon the obelisk over him? I suggest let it be the mans
 name, then the date of his birth, then
 the date of his death, then the appro- priate Scripture passage, Better is a living dog than a dead lion."
 But I thank God that we are having just now an outburst of splendid be- neficence that is to increase until the earth is girdled with it. It is spread
 ing with the speed of an epidemic, but
 with just the opposite effect of an epi- demic. Do you not Eotice how wealthy men are opening free libraries and building churches in their native vii: lage2 Have you not seen how men of
 large means, instead of leaving great
 ,hilanthropies ill their wills for disap- pointed heirs to quarrel about and the orphan courts to swamp, are becoming their own executors and administra- tors? After putting aside enough for their families (for The that provideth not for his own, and especially those of his own household, is worse than an infidel'), they are saying: What can 1 do, not after I am dead, but while living and ill full possession of my
 faculties, to properly direct the build
 ing of the churches, or the hospitals,
 or the colleges, or the libraries that
 design for the public welfare, and 1 f,,01 <<,