The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1894-03-09

the ordeal. After it is all over. the
mother is taken down. Brain
and nervous fever sets in, and
| descent child with a mothers
blessing and goes up to join the
three in the kingdom of Heaven. Life
! for life. Substitution! The fact is that
| there are an uncounted number of
mothers who. after they have navi-
gated a large family of children
through all the diseases of infancy, and
got them fairly started up the flower
ing slope of boyhood and girlhood,
have only strength enough left to die.
They fade away. Some call it con-
sumption; some call it nervous prostra-
ton; some call it intermittent or mala-
rial disposition; but call it martyrdom
of the domestic circle. Life for life.
Blood for blood. Substitution!
Or perhaps the mother fingers long
enough to see son get on the wrong
no I'd and his former kindness becomes
rough reply when she expresses anxiety
about him. But she goes right on,
looking carefully after his apparel, re-
mem bering his every birthday with
some memento, and when he is brought
home worn out with dissipation, nurses
him till he gets we'll and starts him
again, and hopes. and expects, and
prays, and counsels, and suffers, until
her strength gives out and she fails.
She is going, and attendants, bending
over her pillow, asks her if she has any
message to leave, and she makes great
effort to say something. but out of
three or four minutes of indistinct ut
terance they can catch but three words:
"My poor boyr The simple fact is she
died for him. Life for life. Substitu-
ton!
About thirty-four years ago there
went forth from our homes hundreds of
thousands of men to do battle for their
country. All the poetry of battle soon
vanished and left them nothing but the
terrible prose. They waded knee-deep
in mud. They slept in snow banks.
They marched till their cut feet tracked
the earth. They were swindled out of
their honest rations, and lived on meal
not fit for a dog. They had jaws all
fractured, and eyes eXtiuguished, and
limbs shot away. Thousands of them
cried for water as they lay dying
on the field the night after
the battle, and got it not They were
homesick, and received no message
from their loved one. They died in
barns, in bushes. in bitches, the buzz
yards of the summer heat the only at
tendant on their obsequies. No one
but the infinite God who knows every
thing, knows the ten-thousandth part
of the length, and breadth and depth,
height of anguish of the north Arn and
southern battlefelds. Why did these
fathers leave their children and go to
the front, and why did these young
men, postponing the marriage day,
start out into the proba bilities of never
coming back? For the country they
died. Life for life. Blood for blood.
Substitution.
But we need not go so far What is
that monument in Greenwood? 1t is
to the doctors who fell in the southern
epidemics Why go? Were there not
enough sick to be attended to in these
northern ATTITUDES? Oh, yes; but tho
doctor puts few medical books in his
valise. and some walls of medicine and
leaves his patients here in the hands of
other physicians, and takes the rail-
train. Before he gets to the infected
regions he passes crowded rail-trains,
regular and extra, taking the fly
ing and affrighted populations. He
arrives in city over which
great horror is brooding. He goes from
couch to couch, feeling of pulse and
studying symptoms, and prescribing
day after day, night after night, until
fellow physician says: doctor, you
had better go home and rest; you look
miserable" But he cannot rest while
SO many are suffering. On and on, I'M
til some morning finds him in deliri-
um, in which he talks of home. and
then rises and says he must go and look
after those patients. He is told to lie
down; but he fights his attendants I'M
til he falls back, and is weaker and
weaker, and dies for people with whom
he had no kinship, and far away
from his own family, and is hastily
put away in a strangers tomb, and
only the fifth part of newspaper line
tells us of his sacrifice-His name just
mentioned among five. Yet he has
touched the furthest height of sublim-
ity in that three weeks of humanita
rian service. He goes straight as an ar
row to the bosom of Him who said:
Il was sick and we visited me-" Life
for life. Blood for blood Substitu-
tom
Some of our modern theologians who
want to give God lessons about the
best way to save the world tell us they
do not want any blood in their re-
demption. They want to take His
horse by the bit and hurl him back on
his launches and tell this rider from
Bozrah to go around some other
way. Look out, lest We fall under the
flying hoofs of this horse; lest We go
down under the sword of this Con-
querer from Bozrah. What meant the
blood of the pigeons in the old dis
pensation; the blood of the bullock;
the blood of the heifer; of the lamb?
1t meant to prophesy the cleansing
blood of this Conquerer who came from
Bozrah.
/ catch a handful of the red torrent
that rushes out from the heart of the
Lord, and now throw it over this au-
dience, hoping that one drop of its
cleansing power may come upon your
soul o Jesus! in that crimson tide
wash our souls! We accept Thy sacri-
fee! Conqueror of Bozrah, have mercy
upon US! We throw our garments in
the way! We fall into line! Ride on,
Jesus ride on! Travelling. travelling
in the greatness of Thy strength"
But after awhile, the returning Con-