The weekly intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1891-1901, 1896-09-19

those cities, ChTiSt'S churches Will be
more numerous, aud they will be
larger, and they will be more devoted
to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they
will accomplish greater influence for
good. Now, it is often the case that
churches are envious of each other,
and denominations collide with each
other, and even ministers of Christ
sometimes forget the bond of brother
hood. But in the time of which !
speak, while there viii be just as many
differences of opinion as there are now,
there viii be no acer0ity, no hyper
criticism. no eXclusiveness.
In that time also of which | speak,
all the haunts of in:quity and crime
and squalor will be clcansei and will
be Illuminated. How is it to be done?
You say, perhaps, by one influence.
Perhaps / say by another. ! will tell
you what is my idea, and l know | am
right an it: The gospel of the Son of
God is the only agency that will ever
accomplish this.
In that day Of which | speak, do you
believe there will be any midni.ht
carousal? viii there be any kicking
off from the marble steps of shivcring
mendicants? Will there be any I'M
washed, unfed, uncombed children?
Will there be any blasphemics in
the streets? Will there be any
inebriates staggering past? No.
No wine stores. No lager beor
saloons. No distilleries, where they
make the three KS. No ~bloodshot
eye. No blratcd check. No instru-
ments OF ruin and destruction. No fist
pounded forehead. The grandchildren
of that woman who goes down the
street with a curse, stoned by the boys
thai follow her, will be the reformers
and phiianthrophists and the Christian
men and the honest merchants of our
cities.
Then, what municipal governments,
too, we will have in all the cities.
Some cities are worse than others. but
in many of our cities you just walk
by the city halls and look in at some
of the rooms occupied by politicians,
and see to what n sensual, loathsome,
ignorant, besotted crew city politics is
often abandoned. Or they stand
around the city hall picking their
teeth, waiting for some emoluments of
crumbs to fail to their feet, waiting all
day long, and waiting all night long.
Who are those wretched women
taken up for drunkenness, and carried
up to the courts, and put in prison of
course? What will you do with the
grogshops that make them drink?
Nothing. Who are those prisoners in
Jail? One of them stole a pair of shoes.
That boy stole n dollar. This girl
snatched a purse. All of them crimes
damaging society less than $50 or $50.
But what will you do with the gam
bier who last night robbed the
young man of a thousand dollars?
Nothing. What shall be lone with
that one who breaks through and de-
stroys the purity of a Christian home,
and with an adroitness and perfidy
that beat the strategy of hell, filings a
shrinking, shrieking soul into ruin?
Nothing. What will you do with
those who feeced that young man, get
ting him to purloin large sums of
money from his ~employer-the young
man who came to an officer of my
church and told the story, and fran
tically asked what he should do? Moth
ing.
Ali we do well to punish small
crimes; but l have sometimes thought
it would be better in some of our cities
if the officials would only turn ont
from the jai:s the petty criminals, the
little offenders, $40 Gesperadoes,
and put in their places some of the
monsters of iniquity who drive their
roam span through the streets so
swiftly honest men have to leap to get
out of the way of being run over. Oh,
the damnable schemes that protested
Christian men will sometimes engage
in until God puts the finger of His ret
ribution into the collar of their
robe of hypocrisy and rips it
clear to the bottom! But all these
wrongs will be righted. 1 expect to
live TO see the day. / think / heal in
the distance the rumbling OF the Kings
chariot. Not always in the minority
is the church of God going to be, or
are good men going to be. The streets
are going to lie filed with regenerated
populations. Three hundred and sixty
bells rang in Moscow when one prince
was married; but, when righteousness
and peace kiss each other in all the
earth, ten thousand time ten thousand
bells shall strike the jubilee. Poverty
enriched. Hunger fed. Crime banished.
Ignorance enlightened. All h cities
saved. Is not this a cause worth work.
ing in?
So you say 1 go forth, and all the
people of God go forth, and they stretch
forth their hand over the sea, the boil
ing sea of crime and sin and wretched-
ness. at don't amount to anything"
people say. Don't it? Gods winds of
help will, after awhile, begin to blow,
A path will be cleared for the army of
Christian philanthropists. The path
I'LL - it'd 49,
ures of Christian b~eneficence,
and we shall be greeted to
the other beach by the clapping
of all Heavens cymbals, while those
who pursued us and derided us and
tried to destroy us, will go down under
the sea, and all That will be left of
them will be cast high and dry upon
the beach, the s%plintered wheel of n
chariot, or thrust out from the foam,
the breathless nostril of a riderless
charUar