The Pickens sentinel. [volume] (Pickens, S.C.) 1871-1903, 1892-11-03

l
my own experience that the safest
thing In all the world to do is to trust
the Lord. | never had a misfortune,
OF persecution, or trial, or disap.
polEtment, however excruciating at the
time, that God did not make turn out
tor my good. My one wish is to follow
the divine leading. l want to watch
the finger of God.
Nations also would do well to watch
for the finger OF God. What does the
cholera scare in America mean? Some
say it means that the plague will sweep
our land next summer. l do not be-
lleVe word OF it. There will be no
cholera here next summer. Four or
five summers ago there were those who
said 1T would surely be here the follow
ing summer because it was ON the way.
But it did not come. The sanitary pre-
cautions established here will make
next summer unusually healthful
Cholera never starts from where it
stopped the season before, but always
starts in the filth of Asia, and If it
starts next summer, 1T will start here
again-it will not start from New
York quarantine. But it is evident to
me that the finger OF God is in this
cholera scare, and that he IS pointing
this nation to something higher and
never before that we are In the hands
of God. He allow the plague to come
to our very gates and then halted it.
The quarantine was right and neces-
sary, but, oh, how easily the plague
could have leaped the barriers lifted
against It'll Thanks to the president of
the United States, and thanks to the
health officers, and thanks to the Thir-
teenth regiment, and thanks to all who
stood between this evil and our nation
al health, but more than all, and higher
than all, thanks to God! Out Of that
so!emniSy we ought to pass up to some
thing better than anything that has
ever yet characterized us as nation.
we ought to quit our national sins,
our Sabbath breaking, and our drunk
enness, and our impurities, and our
cOrruptionS of all sorts as people.
The tendency is in self graduation at
our prosperity to forget the mercy of
God that has kept us from being blot
ted out Tor our crimes, and that still
multlptleS our temporal prOsperities.
Forward and upward! See you not the
finger of God in this protecting mercy
rejoice that there are many encour-
aging signs for our nation, and one is
that this presidential campaign has less
malignlty and abuse than any presiden-
tlal campaign since we have been ma
ton. Turn over to the pictorials and
the columns Of the political sheets of
the presidential excitemeuts all the
way back, and see what contumely
washington and Jefferson and Madison
and Monroe and Jackson went through.
Now see the almost entire absence of
all that. The political orators notice
this Year are apt to begin by eulogiZing
the honesty and good intentions of the
opposing candidate, and say that he is
better than his party. Instead Cf Wit
rlol, camomile flowers. That we seem
to have escaped the degradation Of the
usual quadrennial billingsgate is an en-.
couraging fact.
If we love the Lord and trust him
and you may all love him and trust
him from this moment on-WenO moro
understand the good things ahead of
us than the child at school studying a
IS q can understand what that has to
do with his reading John Ruskln's
Seven Lamps Of Architecture" or
Dante's "Ddvina Commedia." The
satlsfactions and joys we have as yet
had are like the music a boy makes
with his first lesson on the violin COM
pared with what was evoked from his
great orchestra by my dear and illus
triouS and trancendent but now depert-
ed friend, Patrick Gilmore, when he
lifted his baton and all the strings vi
brated, and all the trumpets pealed
forth, and all the flutes carOled, and all
the drums rolled, and all the b )ofs of
the cavalry charge, which no initiated,
were in full beat. Look ahead! The
finger OF God points forward.
"Oh, but" says some one, "I am get
ting old, and l have touch of rheu-
matism in that foot, and l believe
something Is tho matter with my
heart, and / cannot stand as much as |
used TO-" Well, congratulate you
tor that shows you are getting nearer
to the time when you are going to en-
ter immortal youth and be strong
enough TO hurl off the battlemenrs of
heaven any bandit who by unheard of
burglary might break into the Golden
City. but" says some one, 81 feel so
lonely. The most of my friends are
gone, and the bereavements of life
have multiplied until this world that
was once 80 bright to me has lost its
charm"
l congratulate you, for when you go
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 a frame of mind that
Will be- acceptable to God and pleasant
to ourselves. But what a stupid thing
1t all IS compared with what it will br
when we have gone beyond psalmboOk
and sermon and Bible, and we stand,
our last imperfection gone, IN the pres
ence of that charm of the universe the
blessed Christ-and have him look in
our lace and say: II have been watch
Ing, you and sympathizing with you
and helping you all these years, and
now you are here. Go where you please
and never know a sorrow and never
shed tear. There is your mother now
she Is coming to greet yon-and
there Is your father, and there are your
children. Sit down under this tree OF
life, and on the banks Of this river talk
1t all over.'
l tell you there will be more ioy in
one minute of that than in fifty years
of earthly exultation. Look ahead!
Look at the finest house on earth, and
know that you will have finer one in
heaven. Look up the healthiest per.