Connecticut western news., 1893-10-12

| hammedanism done in all the hundreds of years of their progress for the eleva- tion of society," Absolutely nothing. Peking and Madras and Cairo are just what they were ages ago, except as Chris tianity has modified their condition. What is the difference between our Brooklyn and their Pompeii2 No diff ference, except that which Christianity has wrought. Favor all good art, but | take best care of your churches, and your | Sabbath schools, and your Bibles, and your family altars.
 TWO REMARKABLE CEMETERIES.
 Yea, see in our walk today through uncovered Pompeii what sin will do for city. We ought to be slow to assign | the judgments of God. Cities are some
 times afflicted just as good people are | afflicted, and the earthquake, and the cy- clone, and the epidemic are no sign in many cases that God is angry with a city, but the distress is sent for some good and kind purpose, whether we | understand it or not. The law that ap- | plies to individuals may apply to Chris tian cities as well, "All things work together for good to those that love God" But the greatest calamity of history came upon Pompei not to improve its future condition, for it was completely | obliterated and will never be rebuilt. It was so bad that it needed to be buried l 1,700 years before even its ruins were fit l to be uncovered. So Sodom and Gomor-
 rah were filled with such turpitude that l they were not only turned under, but have for thousands of years been kept
 under. The two greatest cemeteries are ! the cemetery in which the snnken ships are buried all the way between Fire | island and Fastnet lighthouse, and the other cemetery is the cemetery of dead | cities. get down on my knees and read the | epitapheology of a long line of them. Here lies Babylon, once called "the ham, l mer of the whole earth" Dead and
 buried under piles of bitumen and bro ken pottery and vitrefed brick. And hear wolf howl and reptile hiss as am reading this epitaph. Qsaiah xii, 21),
 "The wild beast of the desert shall be | there, and their houses shall be full of | doleful creatures"
 The next tomb meel before in this cemetery of cities is Nineveh. Her | winged lions are down, and the slabs of | alabaster have crumbled, and the sculp- ture that represented her battles is as completely scattered as the dust of the heroes who fought them. Perhaps put my knee into the dust of her Sar- danapalus as stoop to read her epitaph l (Zephaniah ii, 14,) 'tNow is Nineveh des- olation and dry like wilderness, and | focks lie down in the midst of her; all | the beasts of the nations, both the cor morant and the bittern, lodge in the up | per hntels of it." And while I read 1t l I hear an owl hoot and hyena laugh. The next entombed city pass has 8 monument of 90 prostrate columns of | gray and red granite, and 1t Is Tyre. The next sepulcher of great capital is | covered with scattered columns and de- faced sphinxes and the sands of the des- ert. and it is Thebes. AS pass on find the resting place of Mycenm. city of | which Homer sang, and Corinth, which rejected Paul and depended upon her | fortress, Acrocorinthus, which now lies | dismantled on the hill, and move on in ! this cemetery of cities, and 1 find the tombs of Sardis and Smyrna and Per ! sepolis and Memphis and Baalbek and | Carthage, and here are the cities of the | plain and Herculaneum and Stabia and | Pompeii Some of them have mighty sarcophagus and hieroglyphic entabla- ure, but they are dead and buried nevex | 70 rise. . | But the cemetery of dead cities is na1
 Eet filled, and if the present cities of tho
 world forget God and with their inde- ,encies shock the heavens let them xnow that the God who on the 24th of
 August, 79, dropped on city of Italy ,uperinculnbrance that staid there IT
 Centuries is still alive and hates sin now
 IS much as he did then and has at his
 command all the armament of destruo-
 ion with which he whelmed their in-
 quitous predecessors.
 | It was only few summers ago that
 Brooklyn and New York felt an earth
 quake throb that sent the people af- trighted into the streets, and that sug yested that there are forces of nature now suppressed or held in check which
 easier than a child in a nursery knocks town 0 row of block houses could pros
 trate city or engulf continent deep
 ar than Pompeii was engulfed. Our hops
 is in the mercy of the Lord continued to
 our American cities.
 It amazes me that this city, which
 has the quietest Sabbaths on the conti-
 nent and the best order and the highest
 tone of morals of any city that know
 of, is now having brought into as near
 neighborhood as Coney Island carnivals
 of pugilism as debasing as any of the
 yladiatorial contests of Pompeii. What
 } precious crew that Coney Island Ath-
 letic club is, under whose auspices
 these orgies are enacted! What degra-
 dation to the adjective athletic" which
 ordinarily suggests health and muscle
 developed for useful purposel Instead
 of calling it an athletic club they might
 better style it 'The Rufian Club For
 Smashing the Human Visage."
 Vile men are turning that Cpney Island,
 which is one of the finest watering places
 on all the Atlantic coast, into place for
 the offscouring of the earth to congre-
 gate. the low horse jockeys and gamblers,
 and the pugilists, and the pickpockets,
 and the bloats regurgitated from the
 depths of the worst wards of these cities.
 They invite delegates from universal
 loaferdom to come to their carnival of
 knuckles. But do not believe that the
 pugilism contracted for and advertised
 for next December will take place in our
 neighborhood. s.-.
 STEP TOO FAR.
 Evil sometimes defeats itself by going
 one step too far. You may drive the
 hoop of barrel down 80 hard that it
 breaks. will not believe that theinter-
 national prize fight will take place on
 Long Island or in the state of New York
 until see the rowdy rabble rolling
 drunk off the cars at Flatbush avenue
 and with faces banged and cut and bleed
 ing from the imbruting scene. Against
 this infraction of the laws of the state of | New York | lift solemn protestf The