Connecticut western news., 1894-06-14

sitting room and the parlor-the wear ing economy of trying to meet large ex' penses with small income. Ten thou sand voices of business, business, busi- ness'' drown the voice of the eternal Spirit, sileneing the voice of the advanc- ing judgment day, overcoming the voice of eternity, and they cannot hear; they cannot listen. They say, "Go thy way for this time" Some of you look upon your goods, look upon your profession, you look upon your memorandum books, and you see the demands that are made this very week upon your time and your patience and your money, and while l am entreating you about your soul and the danger of procrastination you say: "Go thy way for this time. When have a convenient season, I will call for thee.
 Oh, Felix. why be bothered about the affairs of this world so much more than about the affairs of eternity? Do you not know that when death comes you will have to stop business, though it be ill the most exacting period of it-between the payment of the money and the talk ing of the receipt? The moment he comes you will have to go. Death waits for no man, however high, how ever low Will you put your office
 will you put your shop in comparison with the affairs of an eternal world, affairs that involve thrones, palaces, dominions eternal? Will you put 200 acres of ground against immensity? Will you put 40 or 50 years of your life against millions of ages? Oh, Felix, ,xht else, for do you not know that the up holstering of Tyrian purple in your pal ace will fade, and the marble blocks of Casarea will crumble, and the breakwa- ter at the beach, made of great blocks of stone 60 feet long, must give way
 before the perpetual wash of the sea, but the redemption that Paul offers you will be forever? And yet and yet and yet you wave him back to the guard room, saying: "Go thy way for this
 time. When I have convenient sea-
 son, will call for thee"
 The Favor of Men.
 Again, Felix adjourned this subject
 of religion and put off Paul's argument
 because he could not give up the hon. ors of the world. He was afraid some how he would be compromised himself in this matter Remarks he made after ward showed him to be intensely ambi- | tious Oh, how he hugged the favor of men!
 never saw the honors of this world in
 their hollowness and hypocrisy so much as in the life and death of that wonder | ful man, Charles Sumner. AS he went toward the place of burial, even Inde- | pendence hall in Philadelphia asked that his remains stop there on their way | to Boston. The flags were at half mast, and the minute guns on Boston com mon throbbed after his heart had ceased | to beat Was it always so? While he | lived, how censured of legislative reso | lutions; how caricatured of the picto- | rials; how charged with every motive mean and ridiculous; how all the urns | of scorn and hatred and billingsgate emptied upon his head; how, when struck down in senate chamber, there were hundreds of thousands of people | who said, Good for him; serves him right;' how he had to put the ocean
 between him and his maligners that he | might have little peace, and how, when he went off sick, they said he was broken hearted because he could not get to be president or secretary of statel O commonwealth of Massachusetts, who is that man that sleeps in your pub lie hall covered with garlands and wrapped in the stars and stripes? Is that the man who, only few months before, you denounced as the foe of re- publican and democratic institutions? | Is that the same man? Ye American | people, ye could not by one week of flu neral eulogium and newspaper leaders, which the dead senator could neither read nor hear, atone for 25 years of
 malreatment and caricature.
 When see a man like that, pursued | by all the hounds of the political kennel SO long as he lives and then buried un- der a great pile of garlands and amid | the lamentations of whole nation, I | say to myself: What an unutterably
 hypocritical thing is all human ap- | plause and all human favorl You took 25 years in trying to pull down his
 fame and then take % years in trying l to build his monument My friends,
 was there ever better commentary on the hollowness of all earthly favor? If
 there are young men who read this who
 are postponing religion in order that | they may have the favors of this world,
 let me persuade them of their complete
 folly. If you are looking forward to
 gubernatorial, senatorial or presidential
 chair, let me show you your great mis- | take.
 Can it be that there is now any young
 man saying: ''Let me have political l office, let me have some of the high | positions of trust and power, and then will attend to religion, but not now.
 Go thy way for this time. When
 have a convenient season, I will call | for theep"
 And now my subject takes deeper
 tone, and it shows what dangerous
 thing is this deferring of religion.
 When Paul's chain rattled down the
 marble stairs of Felix, that was Felix s
 last chance for heaven. Judging from
 his character afterward, he was repro
 bate and abandoned. And so was Dru-
 silla.
 One day in southern Italy there was
 a trembling of the earth, and the air
 got black with smoke intershot with
 liquid rocks, and Vesuyius rained upon
 Drusilla and upon her son horrible
 tempest of ashes and fire. They did not
 reject religion. They only put it off
 They did not understand that that day,
 that that hour when Paul stood before
 them, was the pivotal hour upon which
 everything was poised, and that it tip
 ped the wrong way. Their convenient
 season came when Paul and his guards
 man entered the palace. It went away
 when Paul and his guardsman left.
 Have you never seen men waiting for a
 convenient season? There is such a
 great fascination about it that, though
 you may have great respect to the truth
 of Christ, yet somehow there is in your
 soul the thought: Not quite yet. It is
 not time for me to become Chris