The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1894-02-07

! and the carpenters and the artisans toll on
| the craft so many hours a day, each one
| doing his part. until with flags flying, and
thousands Of people huzzsing on the docks,
| the vessel is launched. But out on the sea
| that steamer breaks her shaft and is limping
slowly along toward harbor, when Caribbean
whirlwinds, those mighty hunters OF the
deep. looking out for prey of ships, surround
that wounded vessel and pitch it on a rocky
coast, and she lifts and falls in the breakers
until every Joint is loose, and every spar Is
down, and every wave sweeps over the
| hurricane deck as she parts mtdships.
Would it not require more skill and power
| to get that spiintered vessel off the rocks
| and reconstruct it than it required origin.
| ally to build her? Aye! Our world that
| God built so beautiful. and which started out
| with all the flags of Edenic foliage and with
| the chant of paradisaical bowers, has been
sixty centuries pounding in the skerries OF
| sin and sorrow. and to get hee out, and to
| get her off. and to get her on the right way
again will require more of omnipotence than
| it required to build her andlaunch her. SO
| I am not surprised that though in the dry
dock OF one word our world was made, it
will take the unsleeved arm of God to lift her
| from the rocks and put her on the right
course again. 1t is evident from my text
and its comparison with other texts that 1t
| make whole constellation of worlds. and
whole galaxy of worlds, and whole astrono-
| my Of worlds, and swing them in their right
| orbits as to take this wounded world, this
stranded world. this bankrupt world, this
| DESTROYED world, and make 1t as good as
| when 1t started.
Now, just look at the enthroned difficulties
| in the way. the removal Of which, the over
throw of which, seem to require the bare
right, arm Of omnipotence. There stands
heathenism, with its $50 900 600 victims.
do not care whether you call them Brahmans
or Buddhists. Confucians or fetch idolaters.
At the Worlds Fair in Chicago last summer
| those monstrosities OF religion tried to make
themselves respectable, but the long hair
and baggy trousers and trinketed robes OF
their representatives cannot hide from the
world the fact that those religions are the
authors Of funeral pyre, and Juggernsut
crushing, and Ganges intanticide, and Chi
nese shoe torture, and the aggregated mas
sacres of many centuries. They have their
heels on India, on China, on Persia, on
Borneo, on three -fourths OF the acreage OF
our poor old world.
know that the missionaries, who are the
most sacrificing and Christlike men and
women on earth, are making steady and
glorious inroads upon these built up abomi-
nations of the centuries. All this stuff that
you see in some OF the newspapers about the
missionaries as living in luxury and 1dleneS5
is promulgated by corrupt American or Eng
lish OF Scotch merchants, whose. loose be-
havior in heathen cities has been rebuSed b.
the missionaries, and these corrupt mer-
chants write home or tell innocent and un-
suspecting visitors In India or China or the
darkened islands Of the sea these faIsehoods
about our consecrated missionaries, who,
turning their backs on home and civilization
and emolument and comfort. spend their
lives in trying to introduce the mercy oil
the gospel among the downtrodden OF
heathenism. Some of those mer-
chants leave their families IN America
or England or Scotland Srd stay for few
years in the ports of heathenism while they
are making their fortunes In the tea or rice
or opium trade, and while they are thus
absent from home give themselves to orgies
Of dissoluteness such as no pen or tongue
could, without the abolition Of al decency,
attempt to report. The presence OF the mis-
sionarles with their pure and noble house
holds, In those heather ports is a constant
rebuke to such debauchees and miscreants.
If satan should visit heaven, from which he
was once roughly but Justly expatriated,
and he would write home to the realms pan
demoniac, his correspondence published in
Dlabolos Gazette or Apollyonic News, about
what he had seen, he would report the
temple of God and the Lamb as q broken
down church, and the house Of many
mansions as disreputable place, and
the cherubim as suspicious OF NOR
ais. Sin never did like holiness, and you
had better not depend upon satanic report OF
/, the sublime and multipotent work OF our
missionaries in foreign lands. But notwith.
standing all that these men and women OF
God have achieved, they feel and we all feel
kI- 10 ~ Il al lon n a GhriQ-
tianized there needs to be power from the
heavens that has not yet condescended, and
we feel like crying out In the words OF Charles
Wesley:
Arm of the Lord. awake. awake!
Put on Thy strength. the Nations shake.
Ave, it is not only the Lords arm that Is
needed, the holy arm, the outstretched arm,
but the bare arm!
There, too. stands Mohammedanism, with
its 176, 900, 900 victims Its Bible the Koran,
book not quite as large as our New Testa-
ment, which was revealed to Mohammed
when in epileptic fits, and resuscitated from
these fits he dictated 1t to scribes. Yet 1t is
read to-day by more people than any other
Look ever written. Mohammed, the founder
Of that religion, polygamist, with superhu-
ity OF wives, the first step OF his religion on
the body, mind and soul of woman, and no
wonder that the heaven OF the Koran is an
everlasting Sodom, On infinite seraglio,
about which Mohammed promises that each
follower shall have in that place seventy-two
wives, in addition to all the wives he had on
earth, but that no old woman shall ever
enter heaven. When a bishop OF England
recently proposed that the best way Of
saving Monammedans was to let them
keep their religion, but engraft upon
1t some new principles from Chris
tianity, he perpetrated On ecclesiastical joke,
at which no man can laugh who has ever
seen the tyranny and domestic wretehedness
which always appear where that religion
gets foothold. 1t has marched across CONT
nents and now proposes to set up Its filthy
and accursed banner In America, and what
1t has done for Turkey it would like to do
for our Nation. A religion that brutally
treats womanhood ought neverto be fostered
in our country. But there never was a re-
ligion so absurd or wicked that 1t did not get
disciples, and there arc enough fools In
America to make large disclpiesnlp Oh
Mohammedanism. This corrupt religion has
been making steady progress for hundreds ot
years, and notwithstanding all the splendid
work done BY the Jessups, and the Goodells,
and the Blisses. and the Van Dykes, and the
Posts, and the Misses Bowens, and the Misses
Thompsons, and scores OF other men and wo.
men Of whom the world was not worthy,
there it stands, the giant OF sin, Mohamme.
danism, with one foot on the heart OF Wo.
man and the other on the heart OF Christ,
while it mumbies from its minarets this stu
penduous blaspbemy "God is great. and
Mohammed His is prophet" Let the Chris
tian printing press at Bsyroot and Constant
nople keep on with their work and the men
and women of God in the mission fields toll
until the Lord crowns them, but what Wi
are all hoping Tor is some supernatural from
the heavens, as yet unseen, sonetninS
Russia, the soma OF India, the aguardiente
~ Moroooo tba araE NJ Arabia the maStic