Connecticut western news., 1894-01-04

Many of those who have been largely successful have been full of arrogance or worldliness or dissipation in old age. They may not have lost their integrity, but they have become so worldly and so selfish under the influence of large suc- cess that it is evident to everybody that their success has been Q temporal calam- ity and an. eternal damage.
 Concerning many people it may be said it seems as if it would have been better if they could have embarked from this life at 20 or 30 years of age. Do you know the reason why the vast majority of people die before 35? It is because they have not the moral endurance for that which is beyond the 80, and mer- ciful God will not allow them to be put to the fearful strain.
 Again, there is blessing in an ab- breviated earthly existence in the fact that one is the sooner taken off the de- fensive. As soon as one is old enough to take care of himself, he is put on his guard. Bolts on the door to keep out the robbers. Fireproof safes to keep off the flames. Life insurance and fire in- surance against accidents. Receipts lest you have to pay debt twice. Lifeboat against shipwreck. Westinghouse air brake against railroad collision. There are many ready to overreach you and take all you have. Defense against cold, defense against heat, defense against sickness, defense against the world's abuse, defense all the way down to the grave, and even the tombstone some times is not a sufficient barricade.
 If soldier who has been on guard, shivering and stung with the cold, pacing up and down the parapet with shoul- dered musket, is glad when some one comes to relieve guard and he can go in- side the fortress, ought not that man to shout for joy who can put down his weapon of earthly defense and go into the kings castle? Who is the more for tunate, the soldier who has to stand guard 12 hours, or the man who has to stand guard six hours? Wehave common sense about everything but religion, common sense about everything but transference from this world.
 THE EVIL TO COME.
 Again, there is blessing in an ab- breviated earthly existence in the fact that one escapes so many bereavements The longer we live the more attach ments and the more kindred, the more chords to be wounded or rasped or sum- dered. If man live on to TO or 80 years of age, how many graves are cleft at his feet? In that long reach of time father and mother go, brothers and sisters go, children go, grandchildren go, personal friends outside the family circle whom they had loved with love like that of David and Jonathan.
 Besides that, some men have a natural trepidation about dissolution, and ever and anon during 40 or 30 or 60 years this horror of their dissolution shudders through soul and body. Now, suppose the lad goes at 16 years of age. He es- capes 90 funerals, 50 caskets, 30 obse- quies, 50 awful wrenchings of the heart. It is hard enough for us to bear their de- parture, but is it not easier for us to bear their departure than for them to stay and bear 90 departures2 Shall we not, by the grace of God, rouse ourselves into generosity of bereavement which will practically say, "It is hard enough for me to go through this bereavement, but how glad am that he will never have to go through itr'
 So reason with myself, and so you will find it helpful to reason with your selves. David lost his son. Though David was king, he lay on the earth time. At this distance of time, which do you really think was the one to be congratulated, the short lived child or the long lived father? Had David died as early as that child died, he would in the first place have escaped that particu- lar bereavement, then he would have es- capped the worse bereavement of Absa- lom, his recreant son, and the pursuit of the Philistines, and the fatigues of his military campaign, and the jealousy of Saul, and the perfidy of Ahithophel, and the curse of Shimei, and the destruction of his family at Ziklag, and, above all, he would have escaped the two great ca- lamities of his life, the great sins of un- cleanness and murder. David lived to be of vast use to the church and the world, but so far as his own happiness was concerned, does it not seem to you that it would have been better for him to have gone early?
 Now, this, my friends, explains some things that to you have been inexplica- ble. This shows you why when God takes little children from a household he is very apt to take the brightest, the most genial, the most sympathetic, the most talented. Why? It is because that kind of nature suffers the most when it does suffer and is most liable to tempta- tion. God saw the tempest sweeping up from the Caribbean, and he put tho delicate craft into the first harbor. sTaken away from the evil to come."
 Again, my friends, there is blessing in an abbreviated earthly existence in the fact that it puts one sooner in the center of things. All astronomers, infidel as we'll as Christian, agree in believing that the universe swings around some great center. Any one who has studied the earth and studied the heavens knows that Gods favorite figure in geometry is a circle. When God put forth his hand to create the universe, he did not strike that hand at right angles, but he waved it in circle and kept on waving it in a circle until systems and cancellations and galaxies and all worlds took that motion. Our planet swinging around the sun, other planets swinging around other suns, but somewhere great hub around which the great wheel of the uni verse turns. Now, that center is heaven. That is the capital of the universe. That is the great metropolis of immensity.
 KNOWLEDGE AT FIRST HANDS.
 Now, does not our common sense teach us that in matters of study it is better for us to move out from the center to- ward the circumference rather than to be on the circumference, where our world now is? We are like those who study the American continent while standing on the Atlantic beach. The way to study the continent is to cross it or go to the heart of it. Chr standnOinf in this world