The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-01-01
PACKING co.
Kansas City, u. S. A.

Many of those who have been largely sue
cessful have been flung of arrogance or
worldliness or dissipation in old age.
They may not have lost their integrity,
but they have become so worldly and so
selfish under the influence of large sue
cess that 1T is evident to everybody that
their success has been a temporal calam-
ity and an eternal damage. Concerning
many people it may be said it seems as if
it would have been better if they could
have embarked from this life at twenty
or thirty years of age. Do you know the
reason why the vast majority of people
die before thirty-hvel 1t is because they
have not the moral endurance for that
which is beyond the thirty, and merci-
full God will not allow them to be put to
the fearful strain.
Again: There is blessing in an alb
breviated earthly existence in the fact
that one is the sooner taken off the defen-
sive. AS soon as one is old enough to take
care of himself he is put on his guard.
Bolts on the door to keep out the robbers.
Fire-proof safes to keep off the flames.
Life insurance and fire insurance against
accident. Receipts lest you have to pay
a debt twice. Lifeboat against ship
wreck. Westinghouse air brake against
railroad collision. There are many ready
to overreach you and take all you have.
Defence against cold defence against
heat, defence against sickness, defence
against the worlds abuse, defence all the
way down to the grave, and even the tomb
stone sometimes is not a sufficient barri-
cade. If a soldier who has been on guard,
shivering and stung with the cold, pacing
up and down the parapet with shouldered
Inusket, is glad when some one comes to
relieve guard and he can go inside the
fortress, ought not that man to shout for
Joy who can put down his weapons of
earthly defence and go into the Kings
castle Who is the more fortunate, the
soldier who has to stand guard twelve
hours, or the man who has to stand guard
six hours We have common sense about
everything but religion, common sense
about everything but transference from
this world.
Again: There is a blessing in an alb
breviated earthly existence in the fact
that one escapes so many bereavements.
The longer we live the more attachments
and the more kindred, the more chords to
be wounded or rasped or sundered. If
man live on to seventy or eighty years of
age, how many graves are cleft at his
feet In that long reach of time father
and mother go, brothers and sisters go,
children go, grandchildren go, personal
friends outside the family circle whom
they have loved with love like that of
David and Jonathan
Beside that, some men have natural
trepidation about dissolution, and ever
and anon during forty or fifty or sixty
years, this horror of their dissolution
shudders through soul and body. Now,
suppose the lad goes at sixteen years of
age? He escapes fifty funerals, fifty cas-
kets, fifty obs equies, fifty awful wrench
ings of the heart. 1t is hard enough for
US to bear their departure. But is it not
easier for us to bear their departure than
for them to stay and bear fifty departures?
Shall we not by the grace of God rouse
ourselves into a generosity of bereave-
ment which will practically say, sit is
hard enough for me to go through this
bereavement, but how glad | am that he
will never have to go through it,"
So / reason with myself, and so you will
find it helpful to reason with yourselves.
David lost his son. Though David was
king he lay on the earth mourning and in
consolable for some time. At this distance
of time. which do you really think was
the one to be congratulated, the short
lived child, or the long-lived father2
Had David died as early as that child
died he would, in the first place, have es-
capped that particular bereavement, then
he would escaped the worse bereavement
of Absalom, his rocreant son. and the pur-
suit of the Philistines, aud the fatigues
of his military campaign, and the jealousy
of Saul and the pertidY of AhithOphel,
destruction of his family at Ziklag, and
above all, he would have escaped the two
great calamities of his life, the great sins
of uncleanness and murder. David lived
to be of vast use to the church and the
world, but so far as his own happiness
was concerned, does it not seem to you
that it would have been better for him to
have gone earlyl
Now. this, my friends, explains some
things that to you have been ineXplicable.
This shows you why when God takes
little children from a household, he is
very apt to take the brightest, the most
genial, the most sympathetic, the most
talented Why? 1t is because that kind
of nature suffers the most when 1t does
suffer, and is most liable to temptation.
God saw the tempest sweeping up from
the Caribbean, and he put the delicate
craft into the first harbor. Taken away
from the evil to come"
Again. my frien DIS, there is a blessing
| in an abbreviated earthly existence In the
fact that it puts 0 ne sooner in the center
of things. All astronomers, lnhdel as
well as Christian, agree IN oelleVlng that
the universe swings around some great
center ANY one who has studied the
earth and studied the heavens knows
| that Gods favorite figure in geometry IS
a circle. When God put forth his hand
to create the universe he did not strike
| that hand at right angles, but ne waved
it in a circle and kept on waving II IN
circle until systems and consultations
and galaxies and all worlds took that
motion. Our planet swinging around the
sun, other planets swinging around other
suns, but somewhere great huo,
around which the great wheel Of the uni
verse turns. Now that center is heaven.
That is the capital of the universe. IhaG
is the great metropolis of immensely
Now, does not our common sense teach
us that. in matters of study, it is better
for us to move out from the center toward
the circumference, rather than to be on
the circumference, where our world now
isl We are like those who study the
American Continent while standing on
the Atlantic beach. The way 10 STUDY
the continent is to cross it, or go to the
heart of it. Our standpoint in this world
is defective. We are at the wrong end OF
the telescope. The best way TO study
piece of machinery is not to stand on the
doorstep and try to look in, but TO go IN
with the engineer and take our place