The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1896-03-04

"Thank God2" Because we are ali
one, bound by one great golden chain
of sympathy. Oh, yes, but L>Aa%ett
tell you that if you will. aggregate all
neighborly, manly. wifefy, motherly
sympathy, it will be found only poor
starving thing compared with the
sympathy of our great Shiloh, who has
held in his lap the sorrows of the ages,
and who is ready to nurse on his holy
heart the woes of all who will come
to him. Oh,. what God, what a
Saviour we have!
But in larger vision see the nations
in some kind of trouble ever since the
world was derailed and hurled down
the embankments. The demon of sin
came to this world, but other demons
have gone through other worlds. The
demon of confagration, the domon OF
volcanic disturbance, the demon OF
destruction.
DR. Place says he saw one world in
the northern hemisphere 16 months
burning. Tycho Brahe said he saw
another world burning. A French
astronomer says that in $50 years,
1,500 worlds have disappeared. I do
not see why infidels find it so hard to
believe that two worlds stopped in
Joshua's time, when the astronomers
tell us that 1,500 worlds have stopped.
Even the moon is a world in ruins.
Stellar, lunar, solar catastrophes in
Vulnerable. But it seems as if the
most sorrows have been reserved for
our world. By one toss of the world
at Ticuboro, of $4,000 inhabitants only
26 people escaped. By one shake of
the world at Lisbon in five minutes
60, 900 perished and 200, 900 before the
earth stopped rocking. A mountain
falls in Switzerland, burying the vii
lage of Goldau. A mountain falls in
Italy in the night, when 1900 people
are asleep, and they never arouse.
By a convulsion. of the earth Japan
broken off from China. By convul-
sion of the earth the Caribbean islands
broken off from America. Three is
lands near the mouth of the Ganges,
with $40, 900 inhabitants-ag great surge
of the sea breaks over them, and 214,-
900 perish that day. Alas, alas, for
our poor world. It has been recently
discovered that a whole continent has
sunk, a. continent that connected Eu-
rope and America, part of the inhabi'
tants of that continent going to Eu-
rope, part coming to America over
the tablelands of Mexico, up through
the valleys of the Mississippi, and we
are finding now the remains OF their
and their cities in Mexico, in
Colorado and the tablelands of the
west. 1t is matter of demonstration
that whole continent has gone
down, the Azores off the coast of
Spain only the highest mountain OF
that sunken continent. Plato des-
cribed that continent, its grandeur,
the multitude of its inhabitants, its
splendor and its awful destruction,
and the world thought it was ro-
nance, but archaeologis.s have
found out it was history, and the
and the German and the
American fleets have gone forth with
The archaeologists, and the Challen-
ger and the Dolphin and the Gazelle
have dropped anchor, and in deep sea
they have found the con-
tour of that sunken continent. :.
Oh, there is trouble marked on the
rocks, on the sky, on the sea, on the
fora and the fauna-astronoulical
geological trouble, oceanic
trouble, political trouble, domestic
trouble-and standing in the presence
of all those stupendous devastations, I
ask if + am not right in saying that
the great want of this age and all ages
is divine sympathy and omnipotent
comfort, and they are found not in the
Brahma of the Hindoo or the Allah
of the Mohammedan, but in the Christ
unto whom shall the gathering of the
people be. Other words may fall, but
this morning star will never be blott-
ed from the heavens. The earth may
quake, but this rock of ages will never
be shaken from its foundations. The
same Christ who fed the 5000 will
feed all the worlds hunger. The
same Christ who cured Bartimeus will
illuminate all blindness. The same
Christ who made the dumb speak will
put on every tongue hosanna. The
same Christ who awoke Lazarus from
the sarcophagus will yet rally all the
pious dead in glorious resurrection.
II know that my Redeemer liveth, "
and that Ito him shall the gathering
of the people be-" All, my friends,
when Christ starts thoroughly and
quickly to Lit this miserable wreck of
a sunken world, it twill not take him
long to liftit.
I have thought that this particular
age in which we live may be given up
to discoveries and inventions by which
through quick and instantaneous COM
all cities and all commu-
mites and all lands will be brought
and then in another period
perhaps these inventions which have
been used for worldly purposes will be
brought out for gospel invitation, and
some great prophet of the Lord will
come and snatch the mysterious, SUBJ
lime and miraculous telephone from
the hand of commerce, and, all lands
and kingdoms connected by won
drous wire, this prophet of the Lord
may, through telephone communica-
ton, in an instant announce to all ma
tions pardon and sympathy and life