Connecticut western news., 1893-11-23

her spectacles because she will have clear vision in the home to which she has gone, or you give the last kiss to the child reclining amid the flowers that pile the casket and looking as natural and lifelike as she ever did reclining in the cradle, then the only religion worth anything is the old fashioned religion of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
 would give more in such crisis for one of the promises expressed in half @ verse of the old book than for & whole library containing all the productions of all the other religions of all the ages. The other religions are sort of cocaine to benumb and deaden the soul while be- reavement and misfortune do their work, but our religion is inspiration, illumina- tion, imparadisation. It Is mixture of sunlight and halleluiah. Do not adul- terate it with one drop of the tincture of incredulity.
 A SIGNIFICANT 'sIF."
 Another Bible Eff" is the ''if'' of eter- nal significance. Solomon gives us that ''if'' twice in one sentence when he says, ''If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for myself, but if thou soonest, thou alone shalt bear it." Christ gives us that eff when he says, If thou hadst known in this thy day the things which belong unto thy peace, but now they are hidden from thine eyes," Paul gives us that ''if'' when he says, "If they shall enter into my rest" All those ''ifs" and & score more that I might recall put the whole responsibility of our salvation on our ,c xxy{11i f< no ''if' about that Christ's willingness to help-no Eff" about that. Realms of glory awaiting the righteous-no eff about that.
 The only ''if'' in all the case worth a moments consideration is the "if'' that attaches itself to the question as to whether we will accept, whether we will repent. whether we will believe, whether we will rise forever. Is it not time that we take our eternal future off that swivel? Is it not time that we extirpate that ''if," that miserable ''if," that haz- ardous ''if?" We would not allow this else of importance. Let some one say in regard to a railroad bridge, "I have reasons for asking if that bridge is safe, |" and you would not cross it. Let some one say, "I have reasons to ask If that steamer is trustworthy" and you would not take passage on it.
 Let some one suggest in regard to a property that you are about to purchase, 'I have reason to ask if they can give a good title," and you would not pay a dollar down until you had some skillful real estate lawyer examine the title. But I allowed for years of my lifetime, and some of you have allowed for years of your lifetime an .'if'' to stand tossing up and down questions of eternal destiny. Oh, decide! Perhaps your arrival here today may decide. Stranger things than that have put to flight forever the ''if' of uncertainty.
 A few Sabbath nights ago in this church man, passing at the foot of the pulpit, said to me, sI am miner from England" and then he pushed back his scar on my arm~ I said: "Yes. You must have had an awful wound there some time." He said: 'Yes, it nearly cost me my life. I was in mine in England 600 feet nnder ground and three miles from the shaft of the mine, and rock fell on me, and my fellow laborer pried off the rock, and was bleeding to death, and he took newspaper from around his luncheon and bound it around my wound, and then helped me over the three miles underground to the shaft, where was lifted to the top, and when that newspaper was taken off my wound I read on it something that saved my soul, and it was one of your sermons. Good night" he said as he passed on, leaving me transfxed with grateful emotion.
 And who knows but the words I now speak, blessed of God, may reach some wounded soul deep down in the black mine of sin, and that these words may be blessed to the stanching of the wound and the eternal life of the soul? Settle this matter instantly, positively and forever. Slay the last ''if." Bury deep the last eff" How to do it? Fling body, mind and soul in a prayer as ear nest as that of Moses in the text. Can you doubt the earnestness of this prayer of the text? It is so heavy with emotion that it breaks down in the middle. It was so earnest that the translators in the modern copies of the Bible were obliged to put mark, 0 straight line, dash, for an omission that will never be filled up. Such an abrupt pause; such a sudden snapping off of the sentence.
 You cannot parse my text. It is an offense to grammatical construction. But that dash put in by the typesetters is nightly suggestive. 'tIf thou wilt forgive their sin" (then comes the dash)- land if not, blot me. pray thee, out of thy book" Some of the most earnest prayers ever uttered could not be parsed and were poor specimens of language. They halted; they broke down; they passed into groans or sobs or silences. God cares nothing for the syntax of prayers; nothing for the rhetoric of pray CTS. Oh, the worthless prayersi If they were piled up, they would reach to the rainbow that arches the throne of God. A deep sigh may mean more than whole liturgy. Out of the 116,OOO words of the English language there may not be word enough expressive for the soul.
 The most effective prayers I have ever heard have been prayers that broke down with emotion-the young man for the first time rising in prayer meeting and saying, 70 Lord Jesusr' and then sitting down, burying the face in the handkerchief; the penitent in the in- quiry room kneeling and saying, "God help me-" and getting no further; the broken prayer that started great re- vival in my church in Philadelphia. A prayer may have in style the graceful ness of an Addison, and the sublimity of a Milton, and the epigrammatic force of an Emerson, and yet be failure, hay ing horizontal power, but no perpen- dicular power; horizontal power reach ing the ear of man, but no perpendicular power reaching the ear of God.
 USE OF "IF" IN PRAYER.
 Between the first and the last sen- tences of my text there was paroxysm of earnestness too mighty for words. It will take half of an eternity to tell of all