Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1891-05-28

would give a thousand pounds 70 feel -
did IN lS20" The time will come when
you viii be willing to give thousand
pounds 70 feel as you did in 1891 These
men who have given up their old religion
cannot help you bit IL Is my opinion
that the most Of those ministers who gave
mp the old religion are in search Of noto-
riety. They do not succeed in attracting
much attention. They are tired OF OBJ
scurity. They must do something to at
tract attention, 50 they sit down on the
beach and 60 to tearing to pieces the fish
ing nets instead of mending them. The
staid old denominations to which they be
long does not pay them enough attention,
so,they attract attention by striking their
grandmother. They do not get enough at
tention by standing in the pulpits, so they
go to work and break the church windows.
These dear brethren Of all denominations,
afflicted with theological fdgets, had bet
ter go to mending nets instead Of breaking
them. Before they break up the old relig-
ion and try TO foist on us a new religion
let them go through some great sacrifice
for God that will prove them worthy for
such work, taking the advice of Talley-
rand to a man who wanted to upset the re-
Hgion of Jesus Christ and start a new one,
when he said, Go and be crucified and
then raise yourself from the grave the third
dayP Those who propose to mend their
nets by secular skeptical books are Just like
man who has just one week for fishing,
and six of the days he spends in reading
Isaak Walton's Complete Angler" and
Wheatley's "Rod and Line" and Scott's
Fishing in Northern Waters" and Pull
mans wade Mecum of Fly Fishing for
Trout" and then on Saturday morning,
his last day out, goes to the river to ply
his art, but that day the fish will not bite,
and late on Saturday night he goes home
with empty basket and a disappointed
heart.
Meanwhile man who never saw big
library in all his life has that week caught
with an old fishing tackle enough to supply
his own table and the table of all his neigh
bors, and enough to salt down in barrels
for the long winter that will soon come in.
Alasl alasl If, when the Saturday night of
our life drops on us it shall be found that
we have spent our time in the Libraries of
worldly philosophy, trying to mend our
nets, and we have only few souls to re-
port as brought to God through our instru-
mentality, while some humble Gospel fish
erman, his library made up of Bible and
an almanac, shall come home laden with
the results, his trophies the souls within
fifteen miles of his log cabin meeting
house.
In the time of great disturbance in Ma
Piles in 1649 Massaniello, bare footed fish
ing boy, dropped his fishing rod, and by
strange magnetism took command of that
city of six hundred thousand souls. He
took off his fishing jacket and put on
robe of gold in the presence of bowling
mobs. He put his hand on his lip as sig
nal, and they were silent. He waved his
hand away from him, and they retired to
their homes. Armies passed in review be-
fore him. He became the nations idol.
The rapid rise and complete supremacy of
that young fisherman, Massaniello, has no
parallel in all history But something
equal to that and better than that is an
everyday occurrence in heaven.
God takes some of those, who in this
world were fishers of men, and who toiled
very humbly, but because of the way they
mended their nets and employed their nets
after they were mended, and suddenly
hoists them and robes them and scepters
them and crowns them and makes them
rulers over many cities, and he marches
armies of saved ones before them in re-
view, Massaniellos unhonored on earth,
but radiated in heaven. The fisher boy of
Naples soon lost his power, but those peo-
pie of God who kept their nets mended and
rightly swung them shall never lose their
exalted place, but shall reign forever and
ever and ever Keep that reward in sight.
SWEEP ALL THE SEAS
But do not spend your time fishing with
hook and line. Why did not James the
son of Zebedee sit on the wharf at Cana,
his feet hanging over the lake and with
long pole and worm on the hook dipped
into the wave, wait for some mullet to swim
up and be caught? Why did not Zebedee
spend his afternoon trying to catch one
eel? No, that work was too slow. These
men were not mending hook and line;
they were mending their nets. So let the
church of God not be content with having
here one soul and next month another soul
brought into the kingdom. Sweep all the
seas with nets-scoop nets, seine nets, drag
nets, all enconpassing nets-and take the
treasures in by hundreds and thousands
and millions, and nations be born in a day, |
and the hemispheres quake with the tread
of a ransoming God. Do you know what
will be the two most tremendous hours in |
our heavenly existence? Among the quad
rillions of ages which shall roll on, what
two occasions will be to US the greatest?
The day of our arrival there will be to us
one of the two greatest. The second great |
est, think, will be the day when we shall |
have put in parallel lines before us what |
Christ did for us and what we did for
Christ-the one so great, the other so little. |
That will be the only embarrassment in |
heaven. My Lord and my Godl What |
will we do and what will we say when on
one side are placed the Saviour's great sac
ritices for us and our small sacrifices for
him-his exile, his humiliation, his agonies
on one hand, and our poor weak, insult
fcient sacrifices on the other? To make
the contrast less overwhelming, let us
quickly mend our nets, and like the Cali |
lean fishermen may we be divinely helped
to cast them on the right side of the ship.
A Spanish Afternoon.
A recent entertainment in neighboring
city was ''tea" which took the form of
1t