The enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 188?-1899, 1894-11-14

other worlds to conquer, and yet
drowned in his own bottle; Byron,
whipped by disquietudes around the
world; Voltaire, cursing his own soul
while all the streets of Paris were APP
plauding him; Henry H., consuming
with hatred against poor Thomas
a-Becket--all illustrations of the fact
that this world cannot make a man
happy. The very man who poisoned
the pommel of uthe saddle on which
Queen Elizabeth rode, shouted in the
street: God save the queen" One
moment the world applauds, and the
next moment the world mathematics.
0, come over into this greater joy, this
sublime solace, this magnificent beati-
tude. The night after the battle of Shi-
loh there were thousands of wounded
on the field, and the ambulances had
not come, one Christian soldier lying
there a-dying under the starlight, be-
gan to sing:
There is o lando of pure delight,
And when he came to the next line
there were scores of voices uniting:
Where saints immortal reign.
The song was caught up all over the
field among the wounded, until, it was
said, there were ot least ten thousand
wounded men uniting their voices as
they came to the verse:
There everlasting spring abides,
And whitening flowers;
Death like a narrow stream divides,
That heavenly land from ours.
o, it is great religion to live by,
and it is great religion to die by.
There is only one heart throb between
you and that religion this moment.
Just look into the face of your pardon
ing God, and surrender yourself for
time and for eternity, and He is yours,
and Heaven is yours, and all is yours.
Some of you, like the young man of the
text, have gone far astray. know not
the history, but you know it-you
know it.
When young man went forth into
life, the legend says, his guardian angel
went forth with him, and getting him
into field, the guardian angel swept
circle clear around where the young
man stood. 1t was circle of virtue
sand honor, and he must not step be-
yond that circle. Armed foes came
down, but were obliged to halt at the
circle-they could not pass. But one
day temptress, with diamonded hand
stretched forth and crossed that circle
with the hand, and the tempted soul
took it, and by that one fell grip was
brought beyond the circle, and died.
Some of you have stepped beyond that
circle. Would you not like this day, by
the grace of God, to step back? This,
say to you, is your hour of salvation.
There was in the closing hours OF
Queen Anne what is called the
clock scene. Flat down on the
pillow in helpless sickness, she
could not move her head or move
her hand. She was waiting for the
hour when the ministers of state should
gather in angry contest; and worried
and worn out by the com ing hour, and
in momentary absence of the nurse, in
the power-the strange power which
delirium sometimes gives one-she
arose and stood in front of the clock,
and stood there watching the clock
when the nurse returned. The nurse
said "Do you see anything peculiar
about that clock?" She made no an.
swer, but soon died. There is clock
scene in every history. If some of you
would rise from the bed of lethargy
and come out of your delirium of sin,
and look on the clock of your destiny
this moment, you would see and hear
something you have not seen or heard
before, and every tick of the minute,
and every stroke of the hour, and every
swing of the pendulum, would say;
"Now, now, now, now" o, come
home to your Fathers house. Come
home, oh, prodigal, from the wilder
ness. Come home, come home!
But notice that when the prodigal
came there was the fathers joy. lie
did not greet him with any formal
chow do you do?" He did not come out
and say: "You are unfit to enter; &c
out and wash in the trough by the well,
and then you can come in; we have had
enough trouble with YOU" All, mo-
When the proprietor of that estate pro
claimed festival, it was an outburst OF
| JOY. God is your father. have not
much sympathy with that description
of God sometimes hear, as though He
were Turkish sultan-hard and un-
sympathetic, and listening not to the
cry of His subjects A man told me he
saw, in one of the eastern lands, a
king riding along, and two men were
in alteration, and one charged the
other with having eaten his rice; and
the king said: "Then slay the man,
and by post-mortem examination find
whether he has eaten the rice" And
he was slain. Ahl the cruelty of a
scene like that. Our God is not sui
tan, not despot, but a Father-lSind,
loving, forgiving, and He makes all
Heaven ring again when prodigal
comes back. 81 have no pleasure" He
says, "in the death of him that dieth. "
If man does not get to Heaven it is
because he will not go there, No diff
ference the color, no difference the his
tory, no difference the antecedents, no
difference the surrounding, no differ
ence the sin. When the white horses
of Christ's victory are brought ont to
celebrate the eternal triumph, you may
ride one of them, and as God is greater
than all, His joy is greater; and when
soul comes back, there is in His heart
the surging of an infinite ocean of glad
ness; and to express that gladness il
takes all the rivers of pleasure, and all
the thrones of pomp, and all the ages
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