Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1894-02-23

one whom / can not find. / am look
ing for one who will have no influence
in tins world 100 years from now. But
/ have found the man who has the
least influence, and inquire into his
history and find that by a yes or n
no he decided some ones eternity. In
time of temptation he gave an affirma-
tive or negative to some temptation
which another. hearing OF, was in
duced to decide in the same way. Clear
on the other side of the next million
years may be the first you hear of the
long-reaching influence of that yes or
no, but hear of it If you will Will
that father make path to shine after
him? Win that mother make a path
to shine after her? You will be
walking along these streets, or along
that country road, 200 years from now
in the character of your descendants.
They will be affected by your courage
or your cowardice, your purity or
your depravity, your holiness or your
sin. You will make the path to shine
after you or blaclken after you. Why
should they point out to us on some
mountain two rivulets, 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 point where words uttered,
or deeds done, or prayers offered,
decide opposite dcstinies and OPP
posite eternities. We see man
planting a tree, and treading the sod
firmly on either side of it, and water
ing it in dry weather, and taking a
great care in its culture, and he never
plucls any fruit from its 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-
am so fascinated with the phosphor-
escence in the track of a ship that
have sometimes watched for a 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 spark
as big as the FREELY; not y white scroll
of surf; not taper to illuminate the
mighty sepulchers of dead ships; dark
ness 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 skepti-
cism. He laughs at the Bible, makes
| sport of the miracles. speaks of perdi-
ton in jokes. and laughs at revivals as
a frolic, and at the passage of n flu
neral procession, which always solemn
ICES sensible people, says, Boys, let's
take a drink" There is in that group
a young man who is making a great
struggle against temptation 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 Sab
bath, and church, and morals, and
goes from bad to worse, till he falls
under designations, dies in a lazar
| house and is buried in the potter
field Another young man who
heard that jolly skepticism made
up his mind that "it makes no
| difference what we do or say, for
we will all come out at last at the
right place." began, as consequence,
to purloin. Some money that came
into his hands for others he applied to
his own uses, thinking perhaps he
would make it straight some other
| time, and all would be well even il he
did not make it straight. He ends in
/ the penitentiary. That scoffer who
uttered the jokes against Christianity
never realized what bad work he was
doing, and he passed on through life,
and out of it, and into future that
am not now going to depict l do not
propose with search-light to show
/ the breakers OF the awful coast on
which that chip is wrecked, for my
business now is to watch the sea after
the keel has plowed it, No phosphores-
cence in the wake OF that ship but
behind it two souls struggling in the
| waves bWO young men ucSITOycu
by reckless skepticism. an unillumined
ocean beneath, and on all sides
of them. Blackness of darkness. You
know what a gloriously good man
Rev. John Newton was, the most OF
his life, but before his conversion he
was very wicked sailor and on board
the ship "Harwich," instilled infdel-
| ity 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 became worse
and worse, and died pronigate, hor-
rifying with his profanities 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. 1t does not require very great
force to ruin others. Why was it that
many years ago great flood nearly
destroyed New Orleans? A crawfish
had burrowed into the banks of the
river until the ground was saturated,
| and the banks weakened until the