Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1894-06-21

oeAhN2
cities would have sent their children
there. Instead of amendment in the
other world, all the associations now
that the good are evolved, will be de-
generating and down. You would not
want to send a man to cholera or
yellow fever hospital for his health;
and the great lazaretto of the next
world, containing the diseased and
, plague-struck, will be poor place for
moral recovery. If the surroundings
in this world were crowded of tempta-
ton, the surroundings of the next
world, after the righteous have passed
up and on, will be l, 600 per cent more
crowded of temptation.
Multitudes of men who are kept
within bounds would say go to,
now. Let me get all out of this life
there is in it. Come. gluttony and
inebriation, and uncleanness, and re-
venge, and all sensualities, and wait
upon me! My life may be somewhat
shortened in this world by dissolute-
ness, but that will only make heavenly
indulgence on a larger scale the sooner
possible. / will overtake the saints at
Temple only little later than those
who behaved themselves here will
on my way to heaven take little
wider excursion than those who were
on earth pious, and / shall go to
| heaven via Gehenna and via SheoL"
| Another chance in the next world
means free license and wild abandon
ment in this
Suppose you were a party in an i'm
| portant case at law, and you knew
from consultation with judges and at
torneys that it would be tried twice,
and the first trial would be of little
| Importance, but that the second would
| decide everything; for which trial
would you make the most preparation,
for which retain the ablest attorneys,
for which be most anxious about the
attendance of witnesses? You would
put all the stress upon the second trial,
all the anxiety, all the expenditure,
saving, THE first is nothing, the last
is everything Give the race assurance
of a second and more important trial in
the subsequent life, and all the prepare
ton for eternity would be post NOR
tem," post funeral, post sepulchral and
the world with one jerk be pitched off
into impiety and godlessness
Furthermore, let me ask why
chance should be given in the next
world if we have refused innumerable
chances in this? Suppose you give a
banquet, and you invite vast number
of friends, but one man declines to
come, or treats your invitation with
Indifference You in the course of
twenty years give twenty banquets,
and the same man is invited to them
all, and treats them all in the same
obnoxious way. After awhile you
remove to another house, larger and
better, and you again invite your
friends, but send no invitation to the
man who declined or neglected the
other invitations Are you to blame?
Has he right to expect to be invited
after all the indignities he has done
you? God in this world has invited us
all to the banquet of his grace. He
invited us by his Providence and his
Spirit 365 days of every year since we
knew our right hand from our left. If
we declined it every time, or treated
the invitation with Indifference,
and gave twenty 81 forty or fifty years
of indlgnity on our part toward the
banqueter and at last he spreads the
banquet in a more luxurious and
kingly place, amid the heavenly
gardens, have we right to expect
him to invite us again, and have we a
right to blame him if he does not in
vite us
If twelve gates of salvation stood
open twenty years or fifty years for
our admission, and at the end of that
time they are closed, can we complain
of it and say: "These gates ought to
be open again. Give us another
chance?" If the steamer is to sail for
Hamburg, and we want to get to
Germany by that line, and we read in
every evening and every morning
newspaper that it will sail on a GER
tain day, for two weeks we have that
advertisement before our eyes, and
then we GO down to the docks fifteen
minutes after it has showed off into the
stream and say: Come back. Give
me another chance. 1t is not fair to
treat me in this way. Swing up to the
dock again, and throw out planbs and
let me come on board" Such behavior
would invite arrest as mailman.
You see that this idea lifts this
world up from an important way sta
ton to platform of stupendous issues,
and makes all eternity whirl around
this hour. But one trial for which all
the prepare ton must be made in this
world, or never made at all. That
piles up all the emphases all the eli
makes and all the destinies into life
here. No other chance! o, how that
augments the value and the imopar-
lance of this chance!
Alexander with his army used to
surround a city, and then would lift a
great light in token to the people that,
is they surrendered before that light
went out, all would be WE'LL but ii
once the light went out, then the bat
tering-rams would swing against the
wall, and demolition and disaster
would follow. Well, all we need do
} for our present and everlasting safety