Connecticut western news., 1893-02-09

would be mighty successes as prlvaue Christians. If you catch only one soul for God, that will be enough to fill your eternity with celebration. All hail the fisherman with hook and linel
 I have seen man in toughest cordu- roy outfit come back from the woods loaded down with string of finny treas ures hung over his shoulder and his gamebag filled, and dog with his teeth carrying the basket filled with the sur plus of an afternoons angling, and it was all the result of hook and line, and in the ett rnal world there will be many man and many a woman that was never heard of outside of village Sun day school or prayer meeting buried in a church basement who will come be- fore the throne of God with multitude of souls ransomed through his or her in strumentality, and yet the work all done through personal interview, one by one, one by one.
 You do not know who that one soul may be. Staupitz helped one soul into the light, but it was Martin Luther. Thomas Bilney brought salvation to one soul, but it was Hugh Latimer. An edge tool maker was the means of saving one soul, but it was John Summerfeld. Our blessed Lord healed one blind eye at time, one paralyzed arm at time, one dropsical patient at time, and raised from the dead ore girl at time, one young man at time. Admire the net that takes in a great many at once, but do not despise the hook and line.
 THE APPLICATION TO CHRISTIANITY.
 God help us amid the gospel fisheries, whether we employ hook or net, for the day cometh when we shall see how much depended on our fidelity. Christ himself declared: "The kingdom of heaven is like unto net that was cast into the sea and gathered of every kind, which, when it was full, they drew to shore and sat down and gathered the good in the yes sells, but cast the bad away. So shall it be at the end of the world-theaangels shall come forth and separate the wicked from the just"
 Yes, the fishermen think it best to keep the useful and worthless of the haul in the same net until it is drawn upon the beach, and then the division takes place, and if it is on Long Island coast the mossbankers are thrown out and the bluefish and shad preserved, or if it is on the shore of Galilee the fish classified as siluroids are hurled back into the water or thrown up on the bank as unclean, while the perch and the carp and the barbel are put into pails to be carried home for use.
 So in the church on earth the saints and the hypocrites, the generous and the mean, the chaste and the unclean, are kept in the same membership, but at death the division will be made, and the good will be gathered into heaven, and the bad, however many holy commun- ions they may have celebrated, and however many rhetorical prayers they may have offered, and however many years their names may have been on the church rolls, will be cast away. God forbid that any of us should be among the least away" But may we do our work, whether small or great, as thor oughly as did that renowned fisherman, George w. Bethune, who spent his summer rest angling in the waters around the Thousand Isles and beating at their own craft those who piled it all the year, and who the rest of his time gloriously preached Christ in pulpit only 15 minutes from where I now stand, and ordering for his own obse- quies: "Put on me my pulpit gown and bands, with my own pocket Bible in my right hand. Bury me with my mother, my father and my grandmother. Sing also my own hymn:
 Jesus, thou prince of lifel
 Thy chosen cannot die;
 Like thee, they conquer in the strife,
 To reign with thee on high"