Capital journal. (Salem, Or.) 1893-1895, 1894-02-21

10 decide In the same way.
Clear on the other side of the next
million years may be the first you heal
of the long reaching influence of that
yes or no, but hear of it you will. Will
that father make path to shine after
himt Will that mother make a path to
shine Litter her2 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 affect.
ed by your courage or your cowardice,
your purity or your depravity, your holi.
ness or your sin. You will make the path
to shine after you or blacken after you.
Why should they point out to us Oh
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 a
point where words uttered, or deeds
done, or prayers offered, decide opposite
destinies and opposite eternities. We see
a man planting tree, and treading 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 fruits from its bough. But his chill
dren 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 fascinated with the phosphor-
escence 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 waterv
chasms that looked like gaping jaws of
hell. Not spark as big as the firefy:
not white scroll of surf not taper to
illuminate the mighty sepulchers of dead
ships; darkness 5000 feet deep, and more
thousands of feet long and wide. That
is the kind of wake that bad man leaves
behind him as he plows through the
ocean of this life toward the vaster ocean
of the great future.
THE GROWTH OF SIN.
Now, suppose man seated in cor
ner grocery or business Office among
clerks gives himself to jolly skepticism.
He laughs at the Bible, makes sport of
the miracles, speaks of perdition in
jokes and laughs at revivals as a frolic,
and at the passage of a funeral process
sion, which always solemnizes sensible
people, says, "Boys, let's take a drink" 4"
There is in that group a young man who
is making great struggle against temp
tation 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
Sabbath and church and morals and
goes from bad to worse, till he falls I'M
der 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
'it makes no difference what we do or
say, for we will all come out at last at the
right place" and began as a 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 if he did not
make it straight He ends in the peni-
tentiary. 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.
! do not propose with searchlight to
show the breakers of the awful coast on
which that ship is wrecked, for my bust
ness now is to watch the sea after the
keel has plowed it. No phosphorescence
in the wake of that ship, but behind it
two souls struggling in the wave-two
young men destroyed by reckless skep-
ticism, an unillumined ocean beneath
and on all sides of them. Blackness Of
darkness.
You know what gloriously good man
Rev. John Newton was the most of his
life. but before his conversion he was a
very wicked sailor, and ON board the ship
Harwich instilled inidelity and vice in
the mind of a young 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 prof
igate, horrifying with his profanities
those who stood by him in his last mo-
ments.
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 a great food nearly de-
stroyed New Orleans? A crawfish had
burrowed into the banks of the river un-
til the ground was saturated and the
banks weakened until the food burst
THE SHINING PATH.
But find here a man who starts ont
in life with the determination that he will |
never see suffering but he win try to al |
leviate it, and never see discouragement |
but he will try 10 cheer it, and never
meet with anybody but be will try to do |
him good. Getting his strength from
God, he starts from home with high pur-
pose of doing all the good he can possibly |
do in one day.
Whether standing behind the counter,
or talkingin the business Office with pen |
behind his ear, OF makinga bargain with a |
fellow trader, or out in the fields discuss