Baxter Springs news. [volume] (Baxter Springs, Kan.) 1882-1919, 1892-10-29

most always and in almost everything
points forward and not backward. All
the way through the Bible, the lamb
and pigeon on the altar, the pillar OF
fire poised above the wilderness, peace
! offering, sin offering, trespass Offering,
fingers Of Joseph and Isaac and Joshua
and David and Isaiah and Micah and
Ezekiel, all together made the one
finger of God pointing to the human,
the divine, the gracious, the glorious,
the omnipotent, the gentle, the pardon
ing and suffering and atoning Christ.
And now the same finger of God Is
pointing the world upward to the
same Redeemer and forward to the
time of his universal domination. My
hearers, get out of the habit of looking
back and looking down and look up
and look forward. It is useful once in
awhile to look back, but you had bet
ter, for the most part of your time, stop
"Reminiscences and begin anticipation.
We have, none of us, hardly begun yet
II we love the Lord and trust him-and
you may all love him and trust him
from this moment on-we no more I'M
derstand the good things ahead of us
than child ut school studying his A B
G can understand what that has to do
with his reading John Ruskin's Seven
Lamps of Architecture" or Dante's
"Divina Commedia."
20, but" says someone, 81 am get
ting old and / have n touch of rheu-
matism in that foot, and believe some
thing is the matter with my heart, and
l cannot stand as much as used to. !"
Well, congratulate You, for that shows
you are getting nearer the time when
you are going to eternal immortal
youth and be strong enough to hurl off
the battlements of Heaven any bandit,
who, by unheard of burglary, might
break into the Golden City. But"
says someone, II feel so lonely. The
most of my friends are gone, and the
bereavements of life have multiplied
until this world, that was once so bright
to me, has lost its charm" congratu-
late you, for, when you 60, there will
be fewer here to hold you back and
more there to pull you in. Look
ahead! The finger of God is pointing
forward. We sit here in church, and
by hymn and prayer and sermon and
Christian association we try to get into
frame of mind that will be acceptable
to God and pleasant to ourselves. But
what stupid thing it all is compared
with what it will be when we have
gone beyond psalm book and sermon
and Bible, and we stand, our last imper-
lection gone, in the presence of that
charm of the universe-the blessed
Christ-and have him look in our face
and say: ~ have been watching you
and sympathizing with you and help
ing you all these years, and now you
are here Go where you please and
never know a sorrow and never shed a
tear. There is your mother now-she
is coming to greet you-aud there is
your father, and there are your chill
dren. Sit down under this tree of life
and on the banks of this river talk 1t
all over"
My friends, l do not know how we
are going to stand it, mean the full
thrush of that splcndor. Last summer
l saw Moscow, in some respects the
most splendid city under the sun. The
emperor afterward asked me If had
seen it, for Moscow is the pride of Rus
STA. told him yes and that had seen
Moscow burn. / will tell you what
meant After examining 900 brass can
mons which were picked out of the snow
after Napoleon reiterated from Moscow,
each cannon deep cut with the letter
an" l assembled a tower of some $50
feet, just before sunset, and on each
platform there were bells, large and
small, and climbed up among the bells,
and then as l reached the top, all the
bells underneath me began to ring and
they were joined by the bells of 1,4O0
towers and domes and turrets Some
of the bells sent out faint tinkle Of
sound, a sweet standardization that
seemed to bubble in the air, and others
Numbered forth boom after boom, boom
after boom, until it seemed to shake
the earth and fill the heavens-sound
so weird, so sweet, so awful, so grand,
so charming, so tremendous, so soft, so
ripping, so reverberating-and they
seemed to wreathe, and whirl, and rise,
and sink, and burst, and roll, and mount
and die.
The mingling of so many colors with
so many sounds was an entrance almost
too much for human nerves or human
eyes or human ears expect to see
nothing to equal it until you and see
Heaven But that will surpass it and
make the memory Of what / saw that
July evening in Moscow almost tame
and insipid. All Heaven aglow and al
Heaven airing, not in the sunset but in
the sunrise. Voices of our own kim
dred mingling with the doxologies
of empires Organs of eternal worship
responding TO the trumpets that
have Weakened the dead Nations in
white. Centuries in coronation. An