The Atlanta constitution. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1885-19??, 1894-06-18

lOngatlOn or depraVlty.
But says one Gin the future
state, evil surroundings will be Withdrawn
, and elevated influences substituted, ana
hence eXpurgation, and sublimatlon, ana
glorfcation.' But the righteous, all their
sins forgiven, have passed on into a beatl-
fic state and consequently the unsaved VIII
be left alone. 1t cannot be expected that
DR.. Duff, who exhausted himself in teach
ing Hndoos the way to heaven, and Dr.
Abeel. who gave his life in the evangelical
ton of China. and Adoniram Judson, who
toiled for the redemption of Borneo, should
be sent down by some celestial missionary
| society to educate those who wasted all
their earthly existence. Evangelistic and
missionary efforts are ended. The entire
kingdom of the morally bankrupt by them
selves. where are the salvatory influences
to come from? Can one specl1led and bad
apple in a barrel of diseased apples turn the
other apples good? Can those who are
themselves down help others up? Can
those who have themselves failed in the
business of the soul pay the debts of their
spiritual insolvents? Can a million wrongs
make one right?
Poneropolis was q city where King Philip
of Thracia put all the bad people of his
kingdom. If any man had opened pri-
mary school at Poneropols, [ do not think
the parents from other cities would have
sent their children there Instead of amend
ment in the other world all the associations
generating and down. You would not want
to send man to a cholera or yellow fever
hospital for his health; and the great laza-
retto of the next world, containing the dis
eased and plague-struck, will be poor
place for moral recovery. If the surround
ings of the next world, after tie righteous
have passed up and on, will he a thousand
per cent more crowded of tempta ton
The count of Chateaubriand made his
little son sleep at night at the top of
castle turret, where the winds howled and
where spectres were said to haunt the
place; and while the mother and sisters al
most died with fright, the son tells us that
the process gave him nerves that could
not tremble and a courage that never fall
tered Hut L don't think that towers of
darkness and the spectral world swept by
sirocco and euroclydon will ever fit one
Tor the land OF eternal sunshine l wonder
what is the curriculum of that college of
inferno, where. after proper preparation
by the sins of this life, the candidate en-
tiers, passing on from the freshman class
of depraVity to the sophomore of abandon
ment and from sophomore to Junior and
from Junior to senior and the day of grad
uation comes, and with diploma signed bv
satin, the president and other professional
demonlacs, attesting that the candidate
has been long enough under their drill he
passed up to enter heaven! Pandemonium
a preparatiVe course for heavenly admis-
sion! All, my friends, satan and his CO.
horts have fitted uncounted multitudes for
ruin, but never fitted one soul for happi-
ness.
Furthermore, it would not be safe for
this world if men had another chance in
the next. If it had been announced that
however wickedly man might act in this
world, ne could fix it up all right in the
next society would be terribly demoralized,
ana the human race demolished in a few
h11 nd
unforSVen here, it will not be well for us
in the next existence is the chief influence
that keeps civilization from rushing back
TO standardization, and semi-barbarsm
from rushing into midnight savagery and
Midnight SaVaSery into extinction: for it
is the astringent impression of all nations
Christian and heather, that there is no
future chance for those Wno have wasted
this.
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 revenge, and all sensu:ities and wait
upon me! My life may be somewhat short
ened in this world by dissouteness, but
that will only make heavenly Indulgence
On larger scale the -soGQeC, possible. L-WUl
the heavenly temple only a little later than
those who have 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 abandonment in this.
SUPPOSE you were party in an important
case at law, and you knew from consulta-
| ton with Judges and attorneys 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 attend
ance of witnesses? You would put all the
| stress upon the second trial, all the ankle
| ty, all the expenditure, saying, 'rhe first
| is nothing the last is everything" Give
the race assurance of a second and more
! important 1rial in the subsequent life, and
all the preparation for eternity would be
"post mortem," post-funsral, POSTSCRIPT
| ch,al and the world with one jerk be pitch
'edoff into impiety and godlessness.
| furthermore, let me ask why a chance
sbuld be given in the next world, if we
hse refused nnumerable chances in this ?
Sppose you give banquet and you in
We a vast number of friends, but one man
| dimes to come, or treats your invitation
| IN Indifference. You in the course Of
, | fenty years give twenty banquets, and
, e same man is invited to them all and
eats them all i'll the same obnoxious
lay. After awhile you remove to another
!, beuSe, larger and better, out send no invi-
= cation to the man who declined or neg
y lected the other invitations. Are you to
! blame? Has he a right to expect to be in
4 Vited after all the indiGnties 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 800 days
of every year since we knew our right
hand from our left If decline it every
time, or treated the invitation with indif-
ference, and gave twenty or forty or fifty
years of magnify of our part toward the
banqueter, and at last He spread the ban
quet 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 invite us?
If twelve gates of salvation stood open
twenty years or fifty years for our admis
sion, and at the end of that time they are
closed, can 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 want to get to
Germany by that line and we read in every
evening and every morning newspaper that
it will sail on a certain day, for two weeks
we have that advertisement before cur
eyes, and then we go down to the docks
fifteen minutes after it had showed Off into
the stream and say: Come back. Give me
another chance 1t is not fair to treat me