Connecticut western news., 1894-10-11

have fought against, and the more trial the more help. After all, there are no orphans in the world, for the great God
 is the Father of us all
 Again, our subject is an illustration of what religion may be under the pres sure of poverty. The captivity and crushed condition of this orphan girl and of the kind man who adopted her suggest condition of poverty. Yet from the very first acquaintance we had with Hadassah we find her the same happy and contented Christian. It was only by compulsion she was afterward taken into sphere of honor and affluence In the humble home of Mordecai, her adopted father, she was light that il lumined every privation. In some period in almost every mans life there comes 8 season of straitened circumstances, when the severest calculation and most scraping economy are necessary in order to subsistence and responsibility. At the commencement of business, at the entrance upon a profession, when friends are few and the world is afraid of you because there is a possibility of failure, many of the noblest hearts have struggled against poverty and are now struggling.
 The Wear of Anxiety.
 To such I bear message of good cheer. You say it is a hard thing for you to be Christian. This constant anxiety, this unresting calculation, wear out the buoyancy of your spirit, and al thought you have told perhaps no one about it cannot tell that this is the very trouble which keeps you from be- ing what you ought to be? You have no time to think about laying up treasures
 in heaven when it is a matter of great doubt whether you will be enabled to pay your next quarters rent. You can not think of striving after robe of righteousness until you can get means enough to buy an overcoat to keep out the cold. You want the bread of life, but you think you must get along with out that until you can buy another bar rel of flour for your wife and children. Sometimes you sit down discouraged and almost wish you were dead.
 Christians in satin slippers, with their feet on damask ottoman, may scout at such class of temptations, but those who themselves have been in the strug- gle and grip of hard misfortune can ap- preciate the power of these evils to dis
 suade the soul away from religious duties. We admit the strength of the temptation, but then we point to Ha- dassah, her poverty equaled by her piety. Courage down there in the bat tlei Hurl away your disappointment! Men of half your heart have, through Christ, been more than conquerors. In the name of God, come out of that! The religion of Christ is just what you want out there among the empty flour
 barrels and beside the cold hearths. You have never told any one of what hard
 time you have had, but God knows it as we'll as you know it. Your easy times will come after awhile. Do not let your spirits break down midlife What if your coat is thin? Run fast enough to keep warm. What if you have no lux
 uries on your table? High expectations will make your blood jingle better than the best Madeira. If you cannot afford
 to smoke, you can afford to whistle.
 But merely animal spirits are not sufi- cient. The power of the gospel-that is what you want to wrench despair out of the soul and put you forward into the front of the hosts incased in impenetra- ble armor
 Beauty and Its Perils. Again, our subject Illustrates what religion may he under the temptation of personal attractiveness. The inspired record says of the heroine of my text, "She was fair and beautiful. i" Her very name signified "a myrtle. " Yet the ad- miration and praise and fiattery of the world did not blight her humility. The simplicity of her manners and behavior equaled her extraordinary attractions. It
 is the same divine goodness which puts the tinge on the roses cheek, and the whiteness into the lily, and the gleam | on the wave, and that puts color in the | cheek and sparkle ill the eye, and maj
 esty in the forehead, and symmetry into
 the form, and gracefulness into the gait, but many through the very charm of
 their personal appearance have been de-
 stroyed. What simperings and affecta- ] tions and impertinences have often been | the result of that which God has sent as
 blessingl Japonicas, anemones and |
 which God planted in their very leaf,
 sepal, axil and stamen. There are many
 flowers that bow down so modestly you
 cannot see the color Tn their check until you lift up their head, putting your
 hand under their round chin. Indeed
 any kind of personal attractions, wheth-
 CT they be those of the body, the mind
 or the heart, may become temptations
 to pride and arbitrariness and foolish
 assumption. The mythological story of
 man who, seeing himself mirrored in stream, became so enamored of his ap-
 pearance that he died of the effects it.
 lustrates the fatalities under which
 thousands of both sexes have fallen by
 the view of their own superiority. Ex-
 traordinary capacities cause extraordi.
 nary temptations. Men who have good
 moral health down in the valley on the top of the mountain are seized of con-
 sumption.
 Monimia, the wife of Mithridates,
 was strangled with her own diadem.
 While the most of us will not have the
 same kind of temptation which Hadas.
 sah must have felt from her attractive
 ness of personal appearance, there may
 be some to whom it will be an advan- tage to hold up the character of the
 beautiful captive who sacrificed not he1
 humility and earnestness of disposition to the worlds admiration and f1attery. The chief secret of the beauty of the F violet is that away. down in the grass,
 from one weeks end to another, it never
 mistrusts that it is a violet.
 Bad Home Influences.
 Again, our subject exhibits what re-
 ligion may be under bad domestic influ.
 ences Hadassah was snatched from the
 godly home into which she had been
 adopted and introduced into the abom
 inable associations of which wicked
 Ahasuerus was the center. What 6
 whirl of blasphemy and drunkenness l oY,l No alko, xxo