Connecticut western news., 1892-08-04

John Bunyan had attempted an essay on the human will.
 Brighter than the light, fresher than the fountains, deeper than the seas are all these Gospel themes. Song has no melody, flowers have no sweetness, sum- set sky has no color compared with these glorious themes. These harvests of grace spring up quicker than we can sickle them. Kindling pulpits with their fire, and producing revolutions with their power, lighting up dying beds with their glory, they are the sweetest thought for the poet, and they are the most thrilling illustration for the orator, and they offer the most intense scene for the artist, and they are to the ambassador of the sky all enthusiasm. Complete pardon for Hest agony. Brightest hope for grim mest death. Grandest resurrection for darkest sepulcher.
 Oh, what a gospel to preach! Christ over all in it. His birth, his suffering, his miracles, his parables, his sweat, his tears, his blood, his atonement, his in- tercession, what glorious themesi Do we exercise faith? Christ is its object. Do we have love? It fastens on Jesus. Have we fondness for the church? It is because Christ died for it. Have we hope of heaven? It is because Jesus went ahead, the herald and the forerun- ner.
 The royal robe of Demetrius was so costly, so beautiful, that after he had put it off no one ever dared put it on; but this robe of Christ, richer than that, the poorest and the wanest and the worst may wear Where sin abounded grace may much more abound"
 "Oh, my sins, my sins," said Martin Luther to Staupitz; my sins, my sinsr' The fact is that the brawny German student had found Latin Bible that had made him quake, and nothing else ever did make him quake; and when he found how, through Christ, he was par saying: "Come over and join us great and awful sinners saved by the grace of God. You seem to be only slender sinner, and you don't much extol the mercy of God; but we who have been such very awful sinners praise his grace the more now that we have been re- deemed"
 Can it be that you are so desperately egotistical that you feel yourself in first rate spiritual trim. and that from the root of the hair to the tip of the toe yo,, are scarless and immaculate? What you need is a looking glass, and here it is in the Bible. Poor and wretched and miserable and blind, and naked from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, full of wounds and putrefying sores. No health in us. And then take the fact that Christ gathered up all the notes against us and paid them and then offered us the receipt.
 And how much we need him in our sorrowsl We are independent of cir cumstances if we have his grace. Why, he made Paul sing in the dungeon, and under that grace St. John from desolate Patmos heard the blast of the apocalyp- tic trumpets. After all other candles hsve been snuffed out, this is the light that gets brighter and brighter unto the perfect day; and after, under the hard hoofs of calamity, all the pools of worldly enjoyment have been trampled into deep mire, at the foot of the eternal rock the Christian, from cups of granite, lily trimmed and vine covered, puts out the thirst of his soul.
 THERE IS NO OTHER NAME.
 Again, 1 remark that Christ is above all in dying alleviations have not any sympathy with the morbidity abroad about our demise. The emperor of Con stantinople arranged that on the day of his coronation the stonemason should come and consult him about his tomb stone that after awhile he would need And there are men who are monomani- acal on the subject of departure from this life by death, and the more they think of it the less they are prepared to go. This is an unmanliness not worthy of you, not worthy of me.
 Saladin, the greatest conqueror of his day, while dying, ordered the tunic he had on him to be carried after his death on a spear at the head of his army, and then the soldier, ever and anon, should stop and say: Behold, all that is left of Saladin, the emperor and conqueror. Of all the states he conquered, of all the wealth he accumulated, nothing did he retain but this shroud." I have no sympathy with such behavior or such absurd demonstration or with much that we hear uttered in regard to de- parture from this life to the next. There is a commonsensical idea on this sub ject that you and I need to consider that there are only two styles of de- parture.
 A thousand feet underground, by light of torch, toiling in 8 miners shaft, a ledge of rock may fall upon us, and we may die miners death. Far out to sea, falling from the slippery ratlines and broken on the halyards, we may die a sailors death. On mission of mercy in hospital, amid broken bones and reeking leprosies and raging levers, we may die philanthropist's death. On the field of battle, serving God and our country, the gun carriage may roll over us and we may die patriots death. But, after all, there are only two styles of depar- ture; the death of the righteous and the death of the wicked, and we all want to die the former.
 God grant that when that hour comes | you may be at homel You want the hand of your kindred in your hand. You | want your children to surround you. You want the light on your pillow from eyes that have long reflected your love. l You want the room still. You do not want any curious strangers standing around watching you. You want your | kindred from afar to hear your last prayer. 1 think that is the wish of all of us. But is that all? Can earthly 1 friends hold us when the pillows oi death come up to the girdle? Car human voice charm open heav.
 ems gate? Can human hands pilot
 us through the narrows of death
 into heavens harbor? Can an earthly | friendship shield us from the arrows oi | death and in the hour when satan shall