The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1892-01-22

on new and absorbing Christian work.
In our desire to inspire the young we
have in our essays had much to say
about what has been accomplished by
the young And it is all very well for
us to show how early in life one can do
very great things for God and the well
fare of the world, but some of the
mightiest work for God has been done
bv septuagenarians and octogenarians
and nonagenarians. Indeed, there is
work which none but such can do.
They preserve the equipoise of senates,
of religious denominations, of reform
atory movements. Young men for
action, old men for counsel Instead of
any of you beginning to fold up
your energies arouse anew your
energies. Let me say to those
in the afternoon of life: Don't be
putting off the harness; when God
wants it off He will take it off. Don't
| be frightened out of life by the grip as
many are. At the first sneeze of the
influenza many give up all as lost. No
new terror has come on the earth. The
microbes as the cause of disease were
described in the Talmud LOO years
ago as invisible legions of dangerous
ones" Don't be scared out of life by
all this talk about heart failure. That
trouble has always been in the world.
That is what all the people that ever
passed out of this life have died Of
heart failure. Adam had it and all of
his descendants have had it or will
have it. Do not be watching for symp-
toms, or you will have symptoms of
everything. Some of you will yet die
of symptoms.
But while looking at the sun dial of
Ahaz and / see the shadow of it move,
/ notice that it went back toward the
sunrise instead of forward toward the
sunset-towari the morning instead of
toward the night That thing the
world is now willing to do and in many
cases has done. There have q great
many things been written and spoken
about the sunset of life. l have said
some of them myself. But my text
suggests better idea. The Lord who
turned back that day from going to-
ward sundown and started it toward
sunrise is willing to do the same thing
for all of us. The theologian who
sticks to old religious technicalities un-
til they become soporifics would not
call it ything but conversion call
it change from goi i1g toward sundown
to going toward sunrise.
That man who never tries to un-
buckle the clasp of evil habit and who
keeps all the sins of the past and the
present freighting him, and who ig-
nores the one redemption made by the
only One who could redeem, if that
man will examine the sun dial he will
find that the shadow is going forward
and he is on the way to sundown. His
day is on the road to night All the
watches that tick, all the clocks that
strike, all the sand g g.asses that empty
themselves, all the shadows that move
on all the sun dials indicate the ap-
proach of darkness. But now, in an
swer to prayer, as in my text the
change was in answer TO prayer, the
pardoning Lord reverses things and the
man starts toward sunrise instead of
sunset. He turns the other way. He
was marching toward Indifference,
toward hardness of heart,
toward prayerlessness,
toward sin, marching toward
gloom, marching toward death. Now
he turns and marches toward peace,
marches toward light and marches to-
ward high hope and marches toward
stupendous and everlasting.
l preach the sunrise. As / look at /.
that retrograde movement of the I
shadow on Ahaz's dial remember that .
it was a sign that Hezekiah was going
to get well, and he got we'll So l have 7
to tell all you who are by the grace of
God having your day turned from de-
cline toward night, to ascent toward
that you are going to get
well-well of all your sins, well of all .
your sorrows, well of all your earthly |
distresses. Sunrise!
But, says someone, all that you say |
may be true, but that does not hinder /!
the horrors of dissolution. Why, you /
who are the Lords are not going to die. /
All that the grave gets of you as COM !
pared with your chief, your immortal
is as the clippings of your
finger nails as compared with your .
whole body. Death will be only the I
off of that which could be of /
no use and the soul has no funeral 4
over that which wou be an awful .
nuisance if we could get rid of It. !
This body as it now is what a failure it
would make of Heaven if our departing
soul had to be burdened in the next
world. While others there go 10. 600
miles a minute we would take about an
hour to walk four miles, and while cur
neighbor immortals could see a hun
ired miles we could see only ten miles,
and the fieeteSt and healthiest of our
bodies if seen there would make it
necessary to open in Heaven an asylum
for cripples. No, no; one of the best
possible things that will happen to US
will be the sloughing off of this body
when we have no more use for it in its
present state. When it shall come up
n it's resurrected form we will be very
? ad to get it back again, but not as i: is
now with it's lin. tations and bedwarf-
nents innumerab!e. Sunrise.
There shall battle my weary soul
IN seas Of heavenly rest,
And not q wave OF trouble roll
Across my peaceful breast
Sunrise, But not like one of those
after you had gone to bed
ate, or did not sleep well, and you get
Up chilled and yawning, and the morn
ng bath is repulsion, and you feel
ike saying to the morning sun shining
nto your window: II do not see what
you find to smile about; your bright
ness is to me mockery." But the in
-ush of the next world will be a morn
ng after a sound sleep. sleep that
,Othintr cnn disturb and Won will rise |