Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1896-06-15
Possibilities.


From the prosecutions of the pilgrim
fathers and the Huguenots in other
lands God set upon these shores q ma
ton. The council fires of the aborigines
went out in the greater light of free
government. The sound of the warwhoop
was exchanged for the thousand wheels
of enterprise and progress. The mild
winters, the fruitful summers, the
healthful skies charmed from other
lands race of hardy men who loved
God and wanted to be free. Before the
woodman's AK forests fell and rose again
into ships masts and churches pillars.
Cities on the banks of lakes begin to
rival cities by the sea. The land quakes
with the rush of the rail car and the
waters are churned white with the
steamers wheel. Fabulous bushels of
western wheat meet on the way fabu-
lous tons of eastern coal. Furs from the
north pass on the rivers fruits from the
south And trading in the same market
is Maine IuIn5erman and South Caro-
lima rice merchant and Ohio farmer and
Alaska fur dealer. And churches and
schools and asylums scatter light and
love and mercy and salvation upon co.,
900, 900 of people.
/ pray that our nation may not copy
the crimes of the nations that have per-
ished and our cup of blessing turn to
wormwood, and like them we go down.
I am by nature and by grace an optimist,
and expect that this country will con-
tinue to advance until Christ shall come
again. But be not deceived. Our only
safety is III righteousness toward God
and Justice toward man. If we forget
the goodness of the Lord to this land,
and break his Sabbaths, and improve
not by the dire disasters that have again
and again come to us as nation, and
we learn saving lesson neither from civil
war nor raging epidemic nor drought
nor m1ldew nor scourge of locust and
grasshopper nor cyclone nor earthquake;
if the political corruption which has
poisoned the fountains of public virtue
and beslimed the high places of author
ity, making free government at times
kissing and byword in all the earth;
if the drunkenness and RIGHTEOUSNESS
that stagger and blaspheme in the streets
of our great cities as though they were
reaching after the fame of a Corinth
and Sodom are not repented of, we
will yet see the smoke of our nations
ruin; the pillars of our national. and
state capitols will fall more disastrously
than when Samson pulled down Dagon,
and future historians will record upon
the page believed with generous tears
the story that the free nation of the
west arose in splendor which made the
world stare. 1t had magnificent posi-
bilities. It forgot God. 1t hated justice.
It Rugged it's crime. 1t halted ON it's
high march. 1t reeled under the blow of
calamity 1t fell. And as it was going
down all the despotisms of earth from
the top of bloody thrones began to shout,
ssAha, so would we have it'll" while
struggling and oppressed people looked
out from dungeon bars with tears pnd
groans and cries of untold agony, the
scorn of those and the woe of these unit
ing in the exclamation: "Look yonderl
There fell great star from heaven, burn
ing as it were lamp and it fell upon
the third part of the rivers and upon the
fountains of waters, and the name of
the star is called Wormwoodp'