Connecticut western news., 1892-10-27
those who do not believe in a God, and
 have no faith in the Bible Do not tell

those who do not believe in God, and have no faith in the Bible Do not tell it to me. l said to an aged minister of much experience: "All the events of my life seem to have been divinely con- nected. Do you suppose it is so in all lives~ He answered, "Yes, but most people do not notice the divine leadings.' I stand here this morning to say from my own experience that the safest thing in all the world to do is to trust the Lord. never had misfortune or persecution or trial or 8 disappoint- ment, however excruciating at the time. that God did not make turn out for my good. My one wish is to follow the divine leading. want to watch the finger of God.
 A NATIONAL APPLICATION.
 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. do not believe @ word of it. There will be no cholera here next summer. Four or five sum, mers ago there were those who said it would surely be here the following sum- mer because it was on the way. But it did not come. The sanitary precautions 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 it will start there 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 point ing this nation to something higher and better. It has been demonstrated as never before that we are in the hands of God He allowed the plague to come to our very gates, and then halted it. ~ The quarantine was right and necessary, bu. oh, how easily the plague could have leaped the barriers lifted against itl Thanks to the president of the United States, and thanks to the health officers, and thanks to the Thirteenth regiment, and thanks to all who stood between this evil and our national health, but more than all and higher than all thanks to Godl Out of that solemnity we ought to pass up to something better than any thing that has ever yet characterized us as nation. We ought to quit our na- tional sins, our Sabbath breaking, and our drunkenness, 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 plotted out for our crimes, and that still multiplies our temporal prosperities. Forward and upwardl See you not the finger of God in this protecting mercy9
 l rejoice that there are many encour- aging signs for our nation, and one is that this presidential campaign has less malignity and abuse than any presiden- tial campaign since we have been na- tion. Turn over to the pictorials and the columns of the political sheets of. the presidential settlements all the way back and see what contu1nely Washing ton and Jefferson and Madison and Mon roe 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 hon. esty and good intentions of the opposing candidate, and say that he is better than his party. Instead of vitriol, camomile flowers. That we seem to have escaped the degradation of the usual quadrennial billingsgate is an encouraging fact. Per haps this betterment may have somewhat resulted from the sadness lowering over the home of one of the candidates, sad ness in which the whole nation sympa- thizes. Perhaps we have been so ab- sorbed in paying honors to Christopher Columbus that we have forgotten to anathematize the prominent men of the present. No man in this country is fully honored until he is dead. Whatever be the reason, this nation has escaped many of the horrors that ordinarily accompany the presidential contest. But let us not pause too long in hilarity about the pres ent and forget the fact that there are not only temporal possibilities far great ar than those attained, but higher moral and religious possibilities. The God of our fathers is the God of their children, and his finger points us to higher na- tional career than many have yet sus- pected. For our churches, our schools, our colleges, our institutions of mercy, Iuo UcSI udyS pro yet Io COulo.
 ONWARD THE wATCHwoRD.
 But notice that this finger of God al- 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 offer ing, sin offering, trespass offering, fin gers 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 pardoning and suffering and atoning Christ. And now the same finger of God is pointing the world up- ward to the same Redeemer and for ward to the time of his universal domi- nation. 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 better for the most part of your time stop reminiscence and begin anticipa- tion. We have none of us hardly be- gun yet. If we love the Lord and trust him-and you may all love him and trust him from this moment on-we no more understand the good things ahead of us than child at school studying his A B c can understand what that has to do with his reading John Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture" or Dante's "Di- vina Commedia." The satisfactions and joys we have as yet had are like the music boy makes with his first lesson on the violin compared with what was evoked from his great orchestra by my dear and illustrious and transcendent but now departed friend, Patrick Gil more, when he lifted his baton and all the strings vibrated, and all the trum- pets pealed forth, and all the flutes car oled, and all the drums rolled, and all