The Russellville Democrat., 1890-12-25

Good cheer to all people who are showed under Put your faith in God and you will come out gloriously. Others may be stunted growths, or weak jumpers on the lower levels of spirituality, but you are going to be Lebanon cedars At last it will be said of such as you: These 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 l bethink myself of what an exciting scene 1t must be when one of the cedars does fall it does not go down like other trees wial slight craclxle that hardly makes tb1 woods man look up, or hawk fiutter from neighboring bough. When cedar falls it is the great event in the calendar of the mountains. The axeman fly. The wild beasts slinlx 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 1 trembles as from miles around all ra- vines send back their sympathetic echoes. Crash! Crash Crashl So when the great cedars of worldly or Christian influence fall it is something terrific. Within the past few years how many mighty and overlapping men have gone down. There seems now to be an epi- demic of moral disasters. The moral world, the religious world, the political world, the commercial world are quak, 1 ing with the fall of Lebanon cedars. l It is awful. We are compeled to cry out with Zachariah, the prophet: s'Howl, fir trees, for the cedar is | fallenr Some of the smaller trees are l glad of it. When some great dealer in | stocks goes down the small dealers clap their hands and say: Good for him!' When great political leader goes down the small politicians clap their hands and say: Just as expectedF' When a great minister of religion falls many little ministers laugh mp their sleeves and think themselves somehow advan~ tagged. An, my beloved brethren, no one makes any thing out of moral shipwreck. Not willow by the rivers of Damascus, not sycamore on the plains of Jericho, not an olive tree in all Palestine is helped by the fall of a Lebanon cedar. Better weep, and pray and tremble, and listen to Pauls advice to the Galatians when he says: Considering myself lest thou also be tempted" ~No man is safe until he is dead, unless he be divinely pro tected. A greater thinker than Lord Francis Bacon the world never was, and he changed the worlds mode of thinking for all time, his "Novum Organum" being miracle of literature. With eighty-eight thousand dollars salary, and estates worth millions, and from the highest judicial bench of the 1 world he goes down under the power of bribery, and confessed his crime and was sentenced to the Tower, and the scorn of centuries Howl, fir tree, for the cedar is fallen
 Warren Hastings, rising until he be- came Goyernor-General of India, and the envy of the chief public men of his day, plupges 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 upon him came the anathe- mas of Sheridan, Fox, Edmund Burke, the English nation, and all time. Howl fir-tree, for the cedar is fallenl As emi- nent instances of moral disaster are found in our own land and our own time, instances that do not recite lest wound the feelings of those now alive to mourn the shipwrecl1. Let your in. T f,1 A judge in one of our American courts gives this experience. In respectable but poor family, a 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 going home to his daughter said: "There is the money to complete your musical education. The wife and moth- CT suspected something wrong, and ob- tained from her husband the whole story, and that night went around with her husband to the merchants house and surrendered the whole amount of the money and asked forgiveness. For giveness was denied and the man was arrested. The judge, knowing all the circumstances, and that the money had all been returned, suggested to the merchant he had better let the matter drop for the sake of the wife and the daughter. No! he would not let it drop, and he did all he could to make the case conspicu- ous and blasting. The judge says that afterward that merchant was before him for breaking the law of the land. It is poor rule that will not work both ways. Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall. Not congratulation, but tears when a cedar is fallen!
 Yet there is one cedar of Lebanon that always has and always will over top all others. It is the Christ whom Ezekiel describes as a goodly cedar and says; Under it shall come all fowl of every wing" Make your nest in that great cedar. Then let the storms beat and the earth rock and time end, and eternity begin, all shall be well.
 In my journey up and down Palestine and Syria nothing more impressed me than the trees-the terebinths, the syca- mores, the tamarislSs the oleanders, the mulberrys, the olives, the naples, the palms the cedars-all of them explana- tory of so much of the Scriptures. And the time is coming when, through an improved arboriculture, the round world shall be circrmferenced, engirdled, embosomed, emparadised in shade trees and fruit trees and flower trees. Isaiah declares in one place: ''The glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, 7 and in another place: ''All the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come mp the fir tree. Instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree" Oh, grandest arbores- cence of all time. Beginl Beginl
 Oh. l am so glad that the Holy Land