Connecticut western news., 1891-07-23

ucAu ANO lIoio SlldllSlllS lTOiIl Slue UO side to get an easy position. No more use of the bandage, and the cataplasm, and the prescription. That nvalid's chair may be folded up, or taken apart, or set away, but it will never lose its queenly power; it will always preach of trust in God and cheerful submis- sion. Suffering all ended now. With respect to that invalid the words of my text have been fulfilled, Thou shalt be missed, because thy seat will be empty"
 BABY's PLACE
 l pass on and l find one more vacant chair It is high chair It is the childs chair. If that chair be occupied think it is the most potent chair in all the household. All the chairs wait on It; all the chairs are turned toward it. It means more than David's chair at Saul's banquet. At any rate, it makes more racket That is a strange house that can be dull with a child in it. How that child breaks up the hard worldliness of the place and keeps you young to sixty, seventy and eighty years of agel If you have no child of your own, adopt one; it will open heaven to your soul It will pay its way. Its growing in the morning will give the day cheerful starting, and it's glee at night will give the day cheerful close. You do not like chil- dren2 Then you had better stay out of heaven, for there are so many there they would fairly make you crazyl Only about five hundred millions of then The old crusty Pharisees told the mothers to keep the children away from Christ. You bother him." they said; you trouble the Master" Trou. ble hiln He has filled heaven with that kind of trouble.
 A pioneer in California says that, for the first year or two after his residence in Sierra Nevada county, there was not a single child in all the reach of hun dred miles. But the Fourth of July came, and the miners were gathered to- gether, and they were celebrating the Fourth with oration and poem and a boisterous brass band, and while the band was playing an infants voice was heard crying, and all the miners were startled, and the swarthy men began to think of their homes on the eastern coast, and of their wives and children far away, and their hearts were thrilled with homesickness as they heard the babe cry.
 But the music went on, and the child cried louder and louder, and the brass band played louder and louder, trying to drown out the infantile interruption, when a swarthy miner, the tears rolling down his face, got up and shook his fist and said, "Stop that noisy band and give the baby a chance" Oh, there was pathos in it, as we'll as good cheer in it. There is nothing to arouse and melt and subdue the soul like a child's voice. But when it goes away from you the high chair becomes n higher chair, and there is desolation all about you.
 In three-fourths of the homes of this congregation there is vacant high chair. Somehow you never get over it. There is no one to put to bed at night !; no one to ask strange questions about God and heaven. Oh, what is the use of that high chair2 It is to call you higher What drawing upward it is to have children in heavenl And then it is such preventive against sin. If 8 father is going away into sin he leaves his living children with their mother; but if father is going away into sin what is he going to do with his dead children floating about him and hover ing over his every wayward step3 Oh. speak out, vacant high chair, and say Father, come back from sin; mother, come back from worldliness am watching you. an waiting for you." With respect to your child, the words of my text have been fulfilled, "Thou shalt be missed. because thy seat will be empty"
 DEPARTED VOICES.
 My hearers, have gathered up the voices of your departed friends and tried to intone them into one invitation upward. l set ill array all the vacant chairs of your homes and of your so, cial circle, and bid them cry out this morning: Time is short Eternity is near Take my Saviour Be at peace with my God. Come up where am. We lived together on earth, conle let us live together in heaven" We answer that invitation. We come Keep seat for us. as Saul kept seat for David, but that seat shall not be empty And oh, when we are all through with this world and we have shaken hands all around for the last time and all our chairs in the home circle and in the outside world shall be vacant may we be worslping God in that place from which we shall go out no more for ever thank God there will be no vacant chairs in heaven.
 There we shall meet again, and talk over our earthly heartbreaks How much you have been through since you saw them last On the shining shore you will talk it all over. The heart aches. The loneliness. The sleepless nights The weeping until you had no more power to weep, because the heart was withered and dried up. Story of empty cradle, and little shoe only half worn out never to be worn again, just the shape of the foot that once pressed it. And dreams when you thought the departed had come back again, and the room seemed bright with their faces, and you started up to greet them, and in the effort the dream broke and you found yourself standing amid room in the midnightAalone.
 Talking it all over, and then, hand in hand, walking up and down in the light. No sorrow, no tears, no death