The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1890-03-13
IT'S a point long to know.
Oft it causes anxious thought
Do love the Lord Orno,
Am I His or am | pDty

Am MS OF am NOT!
Long to know, do yous Why do you not
find outs Go to work for God and you will
very soon find out. The man who is all the
time feeling of his pulse and looking at his
tongue to see whether it is coated is morbid
and cannot be physically well. The doctor
will say. $50 out into the fresh air and into
active life, and stop thinking of yourself aud
you will get well and strong So there are
people who are watching their spiritual
symptoms, and they call it self-examinatiol
and they get weaklier and siclzlier in taeir
faith all the time. Go out and do some thing
nobly Christian, Take holy exercise aud
then examine yourself, and, instead of New
tons saturnine and bilious hymn that [ first
quoted, you will sing Newton's other hymn:
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved wretch like me!
once was lost but now am fouud
Was blind, bat now see.
What many of you Christians most Heed
is to get your grave clothes off, rejoice
that you have been brought from tho death
of sin to the life of the Gospel, but you need
to get your hand loose and your feet loose
and your tongue loose and your soul loose
There ispo sin that the Bible so arraigns and
punctures and fagellates as the sin of unbe-
lief, and that is what's the matter with you.
"Oh," you say, 'if you knew what | once
was and how many times | have grievously
"
do not come out brighter Then 1 think
you would call yourself the chief of sinners
/ am glad you hit upon that term, for have
promise that fits into your case as the cogs
of one wheel between the cogs of another
wheel or as the key fits into the labyrinths Of
lock. A man who was once called Saul
but afterwar1 Paul decared This is
faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation
that Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners of whom / am chief" Mark that
-''of whom I am chief Put down your
overcoats and hats and | will take care
of them while you kill Stephen"
so Saul said to the stoners of the first
martyr-'I do not care to exert myself
much, but l will guard your surplus apparel
while you do the murder" The New Testa-
ment account says: ''The witnesses laid down
their clothes at young mans feet whose
name was Saul" No wonder he said; Sin
ners, Of whom am the chief" Christ is
used to climbing. He climbed to the top Of
the temple He climbed to the ton of Mount
Olivet He climbed to the top of the
cliffs about Nazareth. Fc climbed
to the top of Golgotha. And to the
top of the hills and the mountains of your
transgression He is ready to climb with par
don for every one of you. The groan of Cal
vary is mightier than the thunder of Sinai.
Full receipt is offered for all your indebted
ness. If one throw stone at midnight into
a bush where the hedgebird roosts. it i'm
mediately begins to sing; and into the mid
night hedges of your dependency these words
hurl, hoping to awaken you to anthem.
Drop the tunes in the minor key and take
the major Do you think it pleases the Lord
for You to be carrying around with YOU the
debris and carcasses Of old transgressions?
You make me think of some ship that has
had tempest1ous time at sea. and now that
il proposes another voyage, keeps on its
davits the damaged life boats and the spln-
tiers of shivered mast, and the broken
glass o. a smashed skylight My advice is:
clear the decks. overheard with all the dam
aged rigging, brighten up the salted smoke
stacks open a new book, haul in
the planks lay out a new course and set sail
for heaven. You have had the spiritual
dumps long enough. You will please the
Lord more by being happy than by being
miserable Have you not sometimes started
out in the rain with your umbrella and you
were busy thinking and you did not no
tice that the rain had stopped, and though it
had cleared off you still had your umbrella
We're doing you felt silly enough? That is
what some of you are doing in religious
things. You have got so used TO sadness
that though the rain has stopped you still
have your umbrella up. Come out of the
shadow. Ascend the stairs OF your
sepulcher. Step out into the broad light of
MONDAY. We come around You to helpre-
move your grave clothes, and voice from
the heavens, tremulous but omnipotent,
commands: Loose him, and let him co.
Again, my text has good advice concern
ing any Christian hainpered and bothered
and bound by fear of his own dissolution. To
such the book refers when it speaks of those
who through fear of death were all their
lifetime subject to bondage. The most of u.s.
even if we have the Christian hope are
towards about death, If plank falls from
scaffolding and just grazss our hat, how pale
we look. If the Atlantic Ocean PLAYS with
the steamship. pitching it toward the
heavens and letting it suddenly drop, how
even the Christian passengers poster the stew
ard or s.ewardess as to whether there is any
danger, and the captain, who has been all
night on the bridge and chilled through,
coming in for cup of coffee, is assailed with
whole battery of questions as to what he
thinks of the weather And many of the
best people are, as Paul says, throughout their
Lifetime in bondage by fear of death. Ny
brothers and sisters, il we made full use of our
religion We would soon get over this. Backed
up by the teachings of your Bible, just look
through the telescope some bright night and
see how many worlds there are and re-
fleet that all .yeu have seen compared
with the number of worlds in existence are
less than the fingers of your right hand
as compared with all the fingers Of the hui
man race. How foolish then for us to think
that ours is the only world fit for us to stay
in. think that all the stars are inhabited
and by beings like the human race in feelings
and seutiIuaufs and tha diffel-enca Il in lung