Connecticut western news., 1895-04-25

to positive dominion of moral power.
 You do not tell him that, do you? No. You say to him: ''Loan you money? No. You are down. You will have to go to the dogs. Lend you dollar? I would not lend you 5 cents to keep you from the gallows. You are debauched! Get out of my sight now! Down! You will have to stay downp And thus those bruised and battered men are some- times acoosted by those who ought to lift them up. Thus the last vestige of hope is taken from them. Thus those who ought to go ana lift and save them arc guilty of stripping the slain.
 The point want to make is this: Sin is hard, cruel and merciless. Instead of helping man up, it helps him down, and when, like Saul and his comrades, you lie on the field it will come and steal your sword and helmet and shield, leaving you to the jackal and the crow.
 Deceived.
 But the world and satan do not do all their work with the outcast and aban- doned. A respectable impenitent man comes to die. He is fiat on his back. He could not get up if the house was on fire. Adroitest medical skill and gen. tlest nursing have been failure. He has como to his last hour. What does satan do for such man? Why, he fetches up all the inapt, disagreeable and narrowing things in his life. He says: Do you remember those chances you had for heaven and missed them? Do you remember all those lapses ill conduct? Do you remember all those op- probrious words and thoughts and &C., tions? Don't remember them, eh? I'll make you remember them.' And then he takes all the past and empties it on that deathbed, as the mailbags are emp tied on the postoffice floor. The man is sick. He cannot get away from them.
 Then the man says to satan: "You have deceived me. You told me that all would be we'll You said there would be no trouble at the last. You told me if did so and so you would do so and so. Now you corner me and hedge me up and submerge me in everything evil. ''Ha, hal" says satan. tI was only fool ing you. It is mirth for me to see you suffer. I have been for 30 years plotting. to get you just where you are. It is hard for you now; it will be worse for you after awhile. It pleases me. Lie still, sir. Don't finch or shudder. Come, now, will tear off from you the last rag of expectation. will rend away from your soul the last hope. I will leave you bare for the beating of the storm. It is my business to strip the slain. ....
 While men are in robust health and their digestion is good and their nerves are strong they think their physical strength will get them safely through the last exigency. They say it is only cowardly women who are afraid at the last and cry out for God. "Wait till come to die. I will show you. You won't hear mo pray, nor call for min- ister, nor want chapter read me from the Bible. But after the man has been three weeks in sickroom his nerves are not so steady, and his worldly com panions are not anywhere near to cheer him up, and he is persuaded that he must quit life. His physical courage is all gone.
 He jumps at the fall of teaspoon in a saucer. He shivers at the idea of go- ing away. He says: Wife, 1 don't think my infdelity is going to take me through. For Gods sake don't bring up the children to do as have done If you feel like it, I wish you would read a verse or two out of Fannie's Sabbath school hymnbook or New Testament. !" But satan breaks in and says: "You hauo al x,o x-c tbo70bt troeL o,1 a lie. Don't give up at the last. Besides that, you cannot, in the hour you have to live, get off on that track. Die as you lived. With my great black wings 1 shut out that light. Die in darkness. I rend away from you that last vestige of hope. It is my business to strip the slain. D
 A man who had rejected Christianity and thought it all trash came to die. He was in the sweat of great agony, and his wife said, I've had better have some prayer. Mary, not breath of that, he said. "The ightest word of prayer would roll back on me like rocks on drowning man. I have come to the hour of test I had chance, but for feited it. I believed in liar, and he has left me in the lurch. Mary, bring me Tom Paine-that book that I swore y and lived by-and pitch it into the fire, and let it burn and burn as I my self shall soon burn" And then, with the foam on his lip and his hands toss ing wildly in the air, he cried out: 'Blackness of darknessl Oh, my God, too late!" And the spirits of darkness whistled up from the depth and wheel ed around and around him, stripping the slain.
 Sin is a luxury now; it is exhilaration now; it is victory now. But after awhile it is collision; it is defeat; it is exter- imitation; it is jackalism; it is robbing the dead; it is stripping the slain. Give it op today-giye 1t upl Oh, how you have been cheated on, my brother, from one thing to anotherl All these years you have been under an evil mastery that you understood not. What have your compositions done for you? What have they done for your health? Nearly | ruined it by ca1ousal What have they done for your fortune? Almost scattered it by spendthrift behavior. What have they done for your reputation? Almost ruined it with good men. What have they done for your immortal soul? Al | most insured its overthrow.
 You are hastening on toward the con- | summation of all that is sad. Today you stop and think, but it is only for a moment, and then you will tramp on, and at the close of this service you will go out, and the question will be, "How | did you like the sermon?" And one man will say, ''I liked it very well, and another man will say, 1T didn t like it at all, " but neither of the an swers will touch the tremendous fact that if impenitent you are going at 30 knots an hour toward shipwreck. Yea, you are in battle where you will fall, and while your surviving relatives will