News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1894-03-08
THE SACRIFICE OF PATRIOTISM.

THE SACRIFICE OF PATRIOTISM.
Or perhaps the mother fingers long
enough to see Il son get on the wrong
road, and his former kindness becomes
rough reply when she expresses anxiety
about him. But she goes right on, look
ing carefully after his apparel, remem-
bering his every birthday with some me-
mento, and when he is brought home,
worn out with dissipation, nurses him
till he gets well and starts him again
and hopes and expects and prays and
counsels and suffers until her strength
gives out and she falls. She is going,
and attendants bending over her pillow
ask her if she has any message to leave,
and she makes great effort to say some
thing, but out of three or four minutes
of indistinct utterance they can catch
but three words, MY poor boy!" The
simple fact is she died for him. Life for
life. Substitution!
About SO years ago there went forth
from our homes hundreds of thousands
of men to do battle for their country.
All the poetry of war soon vanished and
left them nothing but the terrible prose.
They waded knee deep in mud. They
slept in snowbanks. They marched till
their cut feet tracked the earth. They
were swindled out of their honest rations
and lived on meat not fit for dog. They
had jaws all fractured, and eyes extin-
guished and limbs shot away. Thou
sands of them cried for water as they lay
diving on the field the night after the
battle and got it not. They were home
sick and received no message from their
loved ones. They died in barns, i'll
bushes, in bitches, the buzzards of the
summer heat the only attendants on their
obsequies.
No one but the infinite God, who knows
everything, knows the ten thousandth
part of the length and breadth and
depth and height of anguish of the
northern and southern battlefields. Why
did these fathers leave their children and
80 to the front, andwhy did these young
men, postponing the marriage day, start
out into the probabilities of never COM
ing back? For the country they died.
Life for life. Blood for blood. Substi-
tuition!
But we need not go so far. What is
that monument in Greenwood? 1t is to
the doctors who fell in the southern cpl
denies. Why go? Were there not
enough sick to be attended in these
northern latitudes? Oh, yes; but the
doctor puts few medical books in his
Salise, and some walls of medicine, and
leaves his patients here in the hands Of
other physicians, and takes the raj train.
Before he gets to the infected regions he
passes crowded T"il trains, regular and
extra, taking the flying and affrighted
populations. He arrives in city over
which u great horror is brooding. He
goes from couch to couch, feeling of
pulse and studying symptoms, and pre-,
scribing day after day, night afte1
night, until fellow physician says,
doctor, you had better go home and
rest; you look miserable
But he cannot rest while so many are
suffering. On and on until some morn.
ing finds him in delirium, in which he
talks of home and then rises and says he
must go and look after those patients.
He is told to lie dowss, Int he fights his
attendants until he falls back, and is
weaker and weaker, and dies for people
with whom he had no kinship, and far
away from his own family, and is hasti-
ly put away in a strangers tomb, and
only the fifth part of newspaper line
tells US of his sacrifce-his name just
mentioned among five. Yet he has
touched the furthest height of sublimity
in that three weeks of humanitarian
service. He goes straight as an arrow
to the bosom of him who said, 81 was
sick and ye visited me-" Life for life.
Blood for blood. Substitution!
THE CRIMSON TIDE.
Some of our modern theologians who
want to give God lessons about the best
way to save the world tell US they do not
want any blood in their redemption.
They want to take this horse by the bit
and hurl him back on his launches and
tell this rider from Bozrah to go around
some other way. Look out lest We fall
under the flying hoofs of this horse, lest
We go down under the sword of this con-
queror from Bozrah! What means the
blood of the pigeons in the old dispen-
satiOn; the blood of the bullock; the blood
of the heifer; the blood of the lamb? 1t
meant to prophesy the cleansing blood,
the pardoning blood, the healing blood
of this conqueror who comes up from
Bozrah, travelling in the greatness of his
strength"
| catch o handful of the red torrent
that rushes out from the heart of the
Lord, and throw it over this audience,
hoping that one drop of its cleansing
power may come upon your SOIL. o
Jesus, in that crimson tide wash our
souls! We accept thy sacrifice. Con-
queror of Bozrah, have mercy upon us!
We throw our garments in the way.
We fall into line. Ride on, Jesus, ride
on! Travelling, travelling is the great
ness of thy strength"
But after awhile the returning con-
queror will reach the gate, and all the
armies of the saved will be with him. |
hope you will be there and l will be
there. As we go through the gate and
around about the throne for the review,
''a great multitude that no man can
number"-all heaven can tell without
asking right away which one is Jesus,
not only because of the brightness of his
face, but because while all the other in
habitants in glory are robed in white
saints in white, cherqbim in white, sera-
phim in white-his robes shall be scar
let, even the dyed garments of Bozrah.
| catch a glimpse of that triumphant
joy, but the gate opens and shuts so
quickly can hear only half sentence,
and it is this: Unto him who hath
washed us in his bloodr'