Capital journal. (Salem, Or.) 1893-1895, 1894-01-02

ocean IL was as SlnOOIn rs u mlllpOnu,
and thought the sea captains and the
voyagers had slandered the old ocean,
and wrote home an essay for maya
zine on 1.-THE Smile of the Sea-" but
never afterward could have written that
thing. for before we got home we got a
terrible shaking up. The first voyage of
life may be very smooth; the last may be
a euroclydon. Many who start life in
great prosperity do not end it in prosper
ity.
The egreat pressure of temptation comes
sometimes in this direction: At about
As years of age mans nervous system
changes, and some one tells him he must
take stimulsnts to keep himself up, and
he takes stimulants to keep himself up
until the stimulants keep him down, or
a man has been going along for 30 or 40
years in unsuccessful business, and here
is an opening where by one dishonorable
action he can lift himself and lift his
family from all financial embarrassment.
He attempts to leap the chasm, and he
falls into it.
Then it is in after life that the great
temptation of success comes. If man
make a fortune before 80 years of age,
he generally loses it before 40. The SOL
id and the permanent fortunes for the
most part do not come to their climax
until midlife or in old age. The most OF
the bank presidents have white hair.
Many of those who have been largely
successful have been full 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 it is evident to everybody that
their success has been 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 20 or 80 years of age. Do you
know the reason why the vast majority
of people die before 35? 1t is because
they have not the moral endurance for
that which is beyond the 80 and a mer-
ciful God will not allow them to be put
to the fearful strain.
Again, there is a blessing in an ab-
breviated earthly existence in the fact
fensive. 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. Fireproof safes to keep off
the flames. Life insurance and fire in
surance against accidents. Receipts lest
you have to pay debt twice. Lifeboat
against shipwreck. Westinghouse air
brake against railroad collision. There
are many ready to overreach you and
take all you have. Defense against cold,
defense against heat, defense against
sickness, defense against the worlds
abuse, defense all the way down TO the
grave, and even the tombstone some
times is not sufficient barricade.
If a soldier who has been ON guard,
shivering and stung with the cold, pacing
up and down the parapet with shoul-
dered musket, is glad when some one
comes to relieve guard and he can go in
side the fortress, ought not that man to
shout for joy who can put down his
weapon of earthly defense and go into
the kings castle? Who is the more for
tunate, the soldier who has to stand guard
10 hours, or the man who has to stand
guard six hours? Wehave common sense
about everything but religion, common
sense about everything but transference
from this world.
THE EVIL TO COME.
Again, there is a blessing in an alb
breviated earthly existence in the fact
that one escapes 30 many bereavements.
The longer we live the more attach
ments and the more kindred, the more
chords to be wounded or rasped or sun
dered. If man live on to 20 or 80 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 had loved with love like that of
David and Jonathan.
Besides that, some men have natural
trepidation about dissolution, and ever
and anon during 40 or so or 60 years this
horror of their dissolution shudders
through soul and body. Now, suppose
the lad goes,at 16 years of age. He es-
capes 80 funerals, so caskets, 80 obse-
quies, 80 awful wrenchings of the heart.
1t is hard enough for us to bear their de-
parture, but is it not easier for us to bear
their departure than for them to stay
and bear 80 departures? Shall we not, by
the grace of God, rouse ourselves into a
generosity of bereavement which will
practically say, at is hard enough for
me to go through this bereavement, but
how glad am that he will never have to
go through itr'
So reason with myself, and so you
will find it helpful to reason with your
selves. David lost his son. Though
David was king, he lay on the earth
mourning and inconsolable 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 father? Had David died
as early as that child died, he would in
the first place have escaped that particu-
lar bereavement, then he would have es-
capped the worse bereavement of Absa-
lom, his recreant son, and the pursuit Of
the Philistines, and the fatigues of his
av,A ha -