Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1891-10-26

Carthage-all of them developing down
ward instead of upward. They have evo-
luted from magnficence into destruction
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only
elevator of individual and social national
character. Let all the living cities know
that pomp and opulence and temporal pros.
perity are no security.
IF MORALITY is GONE, ALL is LOST.
Those ancient cities lacked nothing but
good morals. Dissipation and sin slew
them, and unless dissipation and sin are
halted, they will some day slay our
modern cities, and leave our palaces of
merchandise and our galleries of art and
our city hall as fiat in the dust as we found
Memphis on the afternoon of that Thanks
giving day. And if the cities go down, the
nation will go down. "Oh," you say, that
is impossible; we have stood so long-yea,
over a hundred years as a nation" Why,
what of that? Thebes stood five hundred
years. Memphis stood thousand years.
God does not forget. One day with the
Lord is as a thousand years and thousand
years as one day.
Rum and debauchery and bad politics
are more rapidly working the destruction
of our American cities than sin of any kind
and all kinds worked for the destruction
of the cities of Africa, once so mighty and
now so PROSTATE. But their gods were
idols, and could do nothing except for de-
basement. Our God made the heavens
and sent his Son to redeem the nations.
And our cities will not go down, and our
nation will not perish because the gospel
is going to triumph. Forward! all schools
and colleges and churchesl Forward! all
reformatory and missionary organizations.
Forward! all the influences marshaled to
bless the world. Let our modern European
and American cities listen to the voice of
th@e ancient cities resurrected, and by
hammer and ehisel and crowbar be com
PEELED to speak.
| notice the voice of those ancient cities
is hOarse from the exposure of forty cen
turtles and they accentuate slowly with
lips that were palsied for ages, but all to-
gether those cities along the Nile intone
these words: Hear us, for we are very old,
and 1t is hard for us to speak We were
wise long before Athens learned her first
lesson. We sailed our ships while yet
navigation was unborn. These obelisks,
these pyramids, these fallen pillars, these
wrecked temples, these colossi of black
granite, these wrecked sarcOphagi under
the brow of the hills, tell you of what | was
in grandeur and of what l am coming
down to be. We sinned and we fell.
Our learning could not save us. See
those half obliterated hieroglyphics on
yonder wall. Our architecture could not
save us. See the painted columns of
Phile, and the shattered temple of Esneh.
Our heroes could not save u.s. Witness
Menes, Diodorus, Rameses and Ptolemy
Our Gods Ammon and Osiris could not
save us. See their fallen temples all along
the four thousand miles of Nile Oh,
ye modern cities get some other God;
God who can help, God who can pardon,
God who can save, Called up as we are
for a little while to give testimony, again
the sands of the desert will bury us. Ashes
to ashes dust to dustl" And as these
voices of porphyry and granite ceased, all
the sarcophagi under the hills responded,
"Ashes to ashesl" and the capital of lofty
column fell grinding itself to powder
among the rocks, and responding, Dust
to dustYD