Connecticut western news., 1894-02-22


 after we are dead-orchards of golden fruit or groves of deadly upas.
 am so fascinated with the phosphor. essence in the track of a ship that have sometimes watched for long while and have seen nothing on the face of the deep but blacknees. The mouth of watery chasms that looked like gaping jaws of hell. Not spark as big as the frefly; not a white scroll of surf; not taper to illuminate the mighty sepulchers of dead ships; darkness 5000 feet deep, and more thousands of feet long and wide. That is the kind of wake that bad man leaves behind him as he blows through the ocean of this life toward the vaster ocean of the great future.
 THE GROWTH OF SIN.
 Now, suppose a man seated in a COT. her grocery or business office among clerks gives himself to jolly skepticism. He laughs at the Bible, makes sport of the miracles, speaks of perdition in jokes and laughs at revivals as frolic, and at the passage of a funeral process sion, which always solemnizes sensible people, says, "Boys, let's take drink" There is in that group young man who Is making great struggle against temp tation and prays night and morning and reads his Bible and is asking God for help day by day. But that guffaw against Christianity makes him lose his grip of sacred things, and he gives up Sabbath and church and morals and goes from bad to worse. till he falls un- der dissipations, dies in a lazar house and is buried in the potter's field.
 Another young man who heard that jolly skepticism made up his mind that it makes no difference what we do or say, for we will all come out at last at the right place." and began as a consequence to purloin. Some money that came into his hands for others he applied to his own uses. thinking perhaps he would make it straight some other time, and all would be we'll even if he did not make it straight. He ends in the peni- tentiary. That scoffer who uttered the jokes against Christianity never realized what bad work he was doing, and he passed on through life and out of it and into future that am not now going to depict.
 do not propose with searchlight to show the breakers of the awful coast on which that ship Is wrecked, for my busi ness now is to watch the sea after the keel has plowed it. No phosphorescence in the wake of that ship, but behind it two souls struggling in the wave-two young men destroyed by reckless skep- ticism, an unillumined ocean beneath and on all sides of them. Blackness of darkness.
 You know what gloriously good man Rev. John Newton was the most of his life, but before his conversion he was a very wicked sailor, and on board the ship Harwich instilled infidelity and vice in the mind of a young man-principles which destroyed him. Afterward the two met, and Newton tried to undo his bad work, but in vain. The young man became worse and worse and died prof igste, horrifying with his profanities those who stood by him in his last mo ments.
 Better look out what bad influence you start. for you may not be able to stop it. 1t does not require very great force to ruin others. Why was it that many years ago great flood nearly de stroyed New Orleans? A crawfish had burrowed into the banks of the river un- til the ground was saturated and the banks weakened until the flood burst.
 THE SHINING PATH.
 But find here a man who starts out in life with the determination that he will never see suffering but he will try to al- leviate it, and never see Encouragement but he will try to cheer 1t, and never meet with anybody but he will try to do him good. Getting his strength from God, hestarts from home with high pur pose of doing all the good he can possibly do in one day.
 Whether standing behind the counter. or talking in the business office with pen behind his ear, or making a bargain with fellow trader, or out in the fields discuss ing with his next neighbor the wisest TO- tation of the crops, or in the shoemaker's shop pounding sole leather, there is some thing in his face, and in his phrase ology, and in his manner. that demon strates the grace of God in his heart. He can talk on religion without awkwardly dragging it in by the ears. He loves God and loves the souls of all whom he meets
 
 eternal destiny.
 For 50 or 60 years he lives that kind of life and then gets through with it and goes into heaven a ransomed soul. But am not going to describe the port into which that ship has entered.
 am not going to describe the Pilot who met him outside at the "hghtship." am not going to say anything about the crowds of friends who met him on the crystalline wharves up which he goes on steps of chrysoprases. For God in his words to Job calls me to look at the path of foam in the wake of that ship, and tell you it is all a-gleam with splendors of kindness done, and rolling with H. lumined tears that were wiped away, and a-dash with congratulations, and clear out to the horizon in all directions is the sparkling, flashing, billowing phos- phorescence of a Christian life. '.He maketh path to shine after him." And here I correct one of the mean no tions which at some time takes posses sion of all of us, and that is as to the brevity of human life. When I bury some very useful man, clerical or lay, in his thirtieth or fortieth year, say: What 8 waste of energiesi It was hardly worth while for him to get ready for Christian work, for he had so soon to quit it." But the fact is that may insure any man or woman who does any I good on large or small scale for life on earth as long as the world lasts. Sick ness, trolley car accidents, death itself, can no more destroy his life than they can tear down one of the rings of Sat urn. You can start one good word, one kind act, one cheerful smile, on mis- sion that will last until the world be- comes bonfire, and out of that blaze it will pass into the heavens, never to halt as long as God lives.
 WHAT ORDINARY PERSONS CAN DO.
 There were in the seventeenth century men and women whose names you never heard of who are today influencing l schools colleges churches nations You