Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1894-03-02

;. they point out to us on some mountain
two rlvnlets, one of which passes down
into the rivers which pour out into the
Pacific ocean and the other rivulet
flowing down into the rivers which
pass out into the Atlantic ocean?
Every man, every woman, stands at a
point where words uttered, or deeds
done. or prayers offered. decide OPP
posite destinies and opposite eterni-
ties. We see a man planting tree,
and treating the sod firmly on either
side of it, and watering it in dry
weather, and taking a great care
in its culture, and he never
plucks any fruit from it's bough:
but his children will. We
are all planting trees that will yield
fruit hundreds of years after we are
dead; orchards of golden fruit, or
groves of deadly upas. l am SO fasci-
mated with the phosphorescence IN the
track of ship that have sometimes
watched for long while, and have
seen nothing on the face of the deep
but blackness. The mouth of watery
chasms that looked like gaping jaws of
hell. Not d spark as big as FREELY;
not hite scroll of surf; not taper
to illuminate the mighty sepulchers of
dead ships; darkness three thousand
feet deep, and more thousands of feet
long and wide That is the kind of
wake that a bad man leaves behind
him as he plows through the ocean of
this life toward the vaster ocean of
the great future.
Now, suppose a man seated in a cor
ner grocery, or business office among
clerks, gives himself to jolly skeptic-
ism. lie laughs at the Bible, makes
sport of the miracles, speaks of perdi-
ton in jokes, and laughs at revivals
as frolic, and at the passage of a
funeral procession, which always
Solemnizes sensible people, says:
Boys, let's take drink" There is in
that group young man who is MAX
ing great struggle against tempta-
ton, and prays night and morning,
and reads his Bible, and is asking God
for help day by day. But that guffaw
against Christianity makes him lose
his grip of sacred things and he gives
up Sa bbath, and church, and morals,
and goes from bad to worse, till he falls
Inder designations, dies in a laZar
house and is buried in the potter's
field. Another young man who heard
that jolly skepticism made up his mind
that lit makes no difference what we
do or say, for we will ali come out at
last at the right place." began, as a
to purloin. Some money
that came into his hands for others he
applied to his own uses, thinking per-
haps he would make it straight some
other time, and all would be well even
If he did not make it straight. He
ends in the penitentiary. That scoffer
who uttered jokes against Christianity
never realized what bad work he was
doing, and he passed on through life,
and ont of it, and into the future that
| am not now gong to depict. | do not
propose with a searchlight to show
the breakers of the awful coast on
which that ship is wrecked, for my
business now is to watch the sea after
the keel has plowed it. No phosphor-
escence in the wake of that ship, but
behind it two souls struggling in the
wave; two young men destroyed by
reckless skepticism; an unillumined
ocean beneath, and on all sides of
them. Blackness and darkness. You
know what a gloriously good man
Rev John Newland was, the most of
his life, but before his conversion he
was a very wicked sailor, and on board
the ship Harwich, instilled infidelity
and vice in the mind of young
man, principles which DESTROYED
him. Afterward the two met and
Newton tried to undo his bad work,
but in vain. The young man be-
came worse and worse, and died
profigate, horrifying with his pro-
families those who stood by him in his
last moments. Better look out what
bad influence you start, for you may
not be able to stop it. It does not re-
luire very great force to ruin others.
Why was it that many years ago
great flood nearly destroyed New Or
leans? A crawfish had burrowed into
the banks of the river until the ground
was saturated, and the banks weak
ened until the flood burst.
But | find here man who starts out |
in life with the determine ton that he
will never see suffering but he will try
to alleviate it; and never see discour-
and never meet with anybody but he
will try to do him good. Getting his
strength from God, he starts from
home with high purpose of doing all
the good he can possibly uo III one Gay.
standing behind the counter,
or ia liking in the business office with a
pen behind his ear, or making
bargain with fellow-trader, or
out in the field discussing with
his next neighbor the wisest
of crops. or in the shoe
shop pounding sole leather,
there is something in his face, and in
his phraseology, and in his manner
that demonstrates the grace of God in
his heart He can talk on religion
without awkwardly dragging it in by
the ears. He loves God, and loves the
souls of all whom he meets, and is in
terested in their present and eternal
destiny. For fifty or sixty years
he lives that kind of life and then
gets through with it and goes into
Heaven a ransomed soul. But am
not going to describe the port into
which that ship has entered. l am
not going to describe the pilot
who met him outside at the eight
ship" | am not going to say any
thing about the crowds of friends who
met him on the crystalline wharves up
which he goes on steps of ehrysoprases
For God in His words to Job calls me
10 look at the path of foam in the wake