The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1892-10-21

fun is a shipwreck. The mutinous crew
would have killed Columbus had it not
been for the generel opinion on ship
board that he was the only one that
could take them back home in safety.
The promise of silk waistcoat and $40
in money to the man who should first
discover land appeased them somewhat,
but the Indignation aud blasphemy and
threats of assassination must have been
awful. Yet, God sustained the great
sailor commanding the Santa Maria.
Every evening on shipUoard they had
prayers and sung a vesper hymn. But
after all the patience of these on board
the ships had been exhausted, and the
great captain or admiral had been
cursed by every anathema that human
lips could frame, one night a sailor saw
light moving along the shore, and
then moving up and down, and then
disappearing. On Friday morning at ,
o'clock, just long enough after Thurs
day to make it sure that it was Friday
and so give another blow at the worlds
idea of unluclzy days-on Friday morn
ing, October II, 1892, a gun from the
Pinta signalled '1and ahead" Then
the ships lay to. and the boats were
lowered, and Capt Christopher Column
bus first stepped upon the shore, amid
the song of birds and the air surge of
redolence and took possession in the
name of the Father and the Son and
the Holy Ghost. So the voyage that
began with the sacrament ended with
Gloria in Excelsis Dec. From that day
onward you say that there can be moth
ing for Columbus but honors, rewards,
rhapsodies, palaces and world wide ap-
plause. No, no! On his way back to
Spain the ship was so wrenched by the
tempest and threatened with destruc-
tion that he wrote brief account of his
discovery and put it in cask and
threw it overheard that the world might
not lose the advantage of his adven-
lures. HOnors awaited him on the
beach, but he undertook second vow
age and with it came all maligning and
persecution and denunciation and pow
erty. He was called a land gra bber, a
liar, a cheat, fraud, n deceiver of ma
tions. Spectators robbed him of his
good name, courtiers deprecated his
discoveries, and there came to him
ruined health and Imprisonment and
chains, of which he said while he rat
tied them on his wrists: 81 will wear
them as a memento of the gratitude of
princes" Amid keen appreciation of
the worlds abuse and cruelty, and with
body writhing in the tOrtures of gout,
he groaned out his last words: ''In
manus tuas Domino commendo spiritum
meum;" Unto Thy hands o, Lord, |
commend my spirit"
OF course he had regal obsequies
That is the way the world tries to atone
for its mean treatment of great bene-
factors Many man has had fine
ride to his grave who during his life
had to walk all the way. A big funeral,
and instead of bread they give him
stone, that is, tom mbstone. But death
that brings quiet to the body of others
did not bring quiet to his First buried
in the church of Santa Maria. Seven
years afterward removed to Seville.
Twenty-three years afterward removed
to San Domingo. Finally removed to
Cuba. Four post m"rtem journeys from
sepulchre to sepulchre. l wish his
bones might be moved just once more,
and now that they have come so near
to America as Cuba, they might during
the great Columbian year be transport
ed to our own shores where they be-
long, and that in the fifth century after
his deceaSe the American continent
might build a mausoleum worthy of
him who picked this jewel of hemi-
sphere out of the sea and set it in the
crown of the worlds geography.
But the bright MONDAY sun of that
old sailors prosperity went down in
thickest night, and though here and
there n monument has been lifted in
his memory, and here and there
a city called after him, the conti-
nent that he was the means of found
ing was named after another name and
no fitting commemoration of his work
has been proposed until nearly 400
years after his body turned to dust.
May the imposing demonstration now
being made in his honor on the Allan
tic coast, and to be made next year in
his honor mid-continent, be brilliant
enough and far resounding enough and
Christian enough and magnificent
enough to atone for the neglect of CEN
turies. May the good Lord allow that
most illustrious sailor of all time to
look over the amethystine battlements
long enough to see some of the garIands
around his name and hear something of
II h,1
his memory.
What most impresses me in all that
wondrous life, which, for the next
twelve months, we will be commemor-
ating by sermon and song and military
parade and worlds fair and congress of
nations, is something have never heard
stated, and that is that the discovery of
America was religious discovery and
in the name Of God. Columbus, by the
study of the prophesies and by what
Zechariah and Micah and David and
Isaiah had said about the lends of
the earth" felt himself called by
God to carry Christianity TO the lends
Of the earth" Then the administration
Of the last supper before they left the
gulf of Cadiz, and the evening prayers
Turing the voyage, and the devout as
,ription as soon as they saw the new
world, and the doxologies with which
they landed, confirm me in saying that
the discovery of America was religious
discovery. Atheism has no right
mere; infdelity has no right here;
has no right here.
And as God is not apt to fall
N any of His undertakings (at any rate,
have never heard of His having any
thing to do with failure), America is
going to be gospelized, and from the
Golden Gate of California to the Mar
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