The McCook tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 1886-1936, 1896-06-19

/ ~ q . - pAAS oS"a - oAS
OF chariots and temples and thrones?
What hands pulled upon the columns
of her glory? What ruthlessness de-
faced her sculptured wall and broke
obelisks and left her indescribable
temples great skeletons of granite?
What spirit Of destruction spread the
lair Of wild beasts in her royal sepui-
chres, and taught the miserable cot
tagers of to-day to build huts in the
courts Of her temples, and sent desola-
ton and ruin skulking behind the ODE
lisks and lodging among the sarcoph-
agi and leaning against the columns
and STOPPING under the arches and
weeping in the waters which go mourn
fully by as though they were carrying
the tears of all ages? Let the mum
mics break their long silence and come
up to SILVER in the desolation, and
point TO fallen gates and shattered stat
ues and defaced sculpture, responding:
"Thebe3 built not one temple to God.
Thebes hated righteousness and loved
sin. Thebes was a star, but she turned
to NORWOOD and has fallen"
Babylon, with her $50 towers and
her braZen gates and her embattled
walls, the splendor of the earth gath
cred within her palaces, her hanging
gardens built by Northumberland to
please his bride, Amytis, who had been
brought up in a mountainous country
and could not endure the fiat country
round Babylon-these hanging gardens
built, terrace above terrace, till at the
height of 400 feet there were woods
waving and fountains playing, the YER
dure, the foliage, the glory looking as
if a mountain were on the wing. On
the tiptop a king walking with his
queen, among statues snowy white,
looking up at birds brought from dis
tant lands, and drinking out of tank
ards of solid gold or looking off over
rivers and lakes upon nations subdued
and tributary, crying: Us not this
great Babylon which I have built?"
I pray that our nation may not copy
the crimes of the nations hat have
psrished, and our cup of blessing turn
to NORWOOD, and like them we go
down. l am by nature and by grace
an optimist, and l expect that this
Christ shall come again. But be not
deceived! Our only safety is in right
eousness toward God and justice to-
ward man. If we forget the goodness
of the Lord to this land, and break
his Sabbaths, and improve not by the
dire disasters that ave again and
again come to us as a nation, and we
learn saving lesson neither from civil
war nor raging epidemic, nor drought,
nor mildeW, nor scourge of locust and
grasshopper, nor cyclone, nor earth
quake; if the political corruption
which mas poisoned the fountains Of
public virtue and beslimed the high
places of authority, making free gov
eminent at times a Kissing and a by
word in all the earth; if the drunken
ness and RIGHTEOUSNESS that stagger
and blaspheme in the streets of our
great cites as though they were reach
ing after the fame of a Corinth and a
Sodom are not repented of, we will
yet see the smoke OF cur nations ruin;
the pillars OF our national and state
capitols will fall more di~sastrously
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
possibilities. 1t forgot God. It hated
1t Rugged its crime 1t halted
its high march. 1t reeIed under
the blow of calamity. 1t fell. And rs
it was going down, all the despotisms
Of earth from the top Of bloody thrones
began to shout, aha, so would We
have it," while struggling and oppress- |
ed people looked u from dungeon
bars with tears and groans and cries
of untold agony, the scorn OF those
and the woe of these uniting in the
exclamation, Look yonder! there fell
a great star from heaven, burning as
it we're a 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 WormWood!!"
st. James the Less was thrown from a
pinnacle or wing Of the temple and then |
beaten to death with a fuller's club.
st. John was put into a caldron of
oil at Rome and escaped death.
He afterward died a natural death 1t
Ephesus in Asia.