The Brookhaven leader., 1890-03-20

again it would put you so much further
from reunion with your friends in Heav-
en-? II you arc 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 empara-
dised 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 an awful post
ponement of the time OF reunionl 1t
would be as though you were going to
San Francisco to great banquet
and you go to Oakland, four or five
miles this side of il, and then came back
to Hoboken or Harlem to get a better
start; as though you were goingto En-
gland 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, il Christian, the nearer you
are to the renewal of broken up com
panionship. No; the wheel of time
truns in the right direction, and it is
well it turns SO fast. Three hundred
and sixty-five revolutions in year and
forward. rather than three hundred and
sixty-five revolutions in a year and
backward.
But hear ye! hear ye! while tell you
how you may practically live your life
over again, and be all the better for 1t.
You may put into the remaining years
of your life all you have learned of wis
dom in your past life. You may make
the coming ten years worth the preced-
ing forty or fifty years. When man
says he would like to live his life over
again because he would do so much bet
ter, and yet goes right on living as he
has always lived, do you not see he
stultifies himself? He proves that IL he
could go back he would do almost the
same as he has done. If man eats
green apples some Wednesday in cholera
time, and is thrown into fearful cramps,
and says on Thursday: 81 wish l had
been more prudent in my diet; oh, IL /
could live Wednesday over again." and
then on Friday eats apples just as
green, he proves that it would have
DttH uO dufdnbctSO AOA nam w iAfO
Wednesday over again. And IL we,
deploring our past life and with
the idea Of improvement long for an
opportunity to try it over again, yet go
on making the same mistakes and COM
mitting the same sins, we only demon
strate that the repetition of our exist
ence would afford no improvement 1t
was green apples before and it would be
green apples over again. AS soon as
ship captain strikes rock in the lake
or sea he reports it and buoy is swung
over that reef and mariners henceforth
stand off from that rock. And all our
mistakes in the past ought to be buoys
warning US to keep in the right chan
mel. There is no excuse for us II we
split on the same rock where we split
before. Going along the sidewalk at
night where excavations are being made,
we frequently see d lantern on frame
work, and we turn aside, for that
lantern says, keep out of this hole.
And all along the pathway of life Ian
terms are set as warnings, and by this
time we come to midlife we ought to
know where it is safe to walk and where
it is unsafe.
Beside this, we have all these years
been learning how to be useful, and in
the next decade we ought to accomplish
more for God and the church and the
world than in any previous four de-
cades. The. best way to atone for past
Incidence or past transgression is by
future assiduity. Yet you often find
Christian men who were not converted
until they were forty or sixty, as old
age comes on, saying: "Well, my work
is about done, and it is time for me to
rest" They gave forty years of their
life to Satan and the world, little
fragment of their life to God, and now
they want to rest Whether that be-
longs to comedy or tragedy l say not
The man who gave one-half of his
earthly existence to the world, and
of the remaining two-quarters one
to Christian work and the
other to rest, would not, I suppose, get
a very brilliant reception in Heaven.
II there are any dried leaves in Heaven
they would be appropriate for his gar
land; or if there is any throne with
broken steps it would be appropriate for
his coronation; or any harp with re-
laxed string it would be appropriate for
his lingering. My brother, you give
nine-tenths of your life to sin and Sa-
tan and then get converted, and then
rest awhile in sanctified laziness, and
then go up to get you Heavenly reward,
and | warrant it will not take the
cashier of the royal banking house a
great while to count out to you all
dues. He will not ask you whether
you will have it in bills of large
denomination or small. / would like
to put one sentence of my sermon in
italics, and have it underscored, and
three exclamation points at the end of
the sentence, and that sentence is this:
AS we can not live our lives over again,
the nearest we can come to atone for the
mast is by redoubled holiness and indus
try in the future.
If this rail train of life has been de-
tanned and switched off, and is far be-
hind the time table, the engineer. for
the rest of the way, must put on more
pressure of steam and go mile min
ute in order to arrive at the right time
and place under the approval OF con-
ductor and directors. As supposed it
would be, there are multitudes of young
people listening to this sermon on whom
this subject has acted with the force OF
a galvanizic battery. Without my say
ing word to them, they have solio-
quized, saying:
ssAs one can not live his life over
L.. L. trfF II