Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1897-03-02
way to a pictured mansion. And I tell

way TO pictured mansion. And tell
You if you will come and enlist under
the banner OF our Victor Emmanuel,
and follow him through thick and thin,
| and fight his battles, and endure his
sacrifices, you will find after awhile
that he has changed your heart from
jungle OF thorny scepticisms into a
garden all abloom with luxuriant joy
that you have never dreamt OF. From
a tangled Caprera of sadness into
paradise of God.
/ do not know how your theological
system went to pieces. 1t may be that
your parents started you with only
one plank, and you believe little or
nothing. Or they may have been too
rigid and severe in religious discipline,
and cracked you over the head with
psalm book. 1t may be that some
partner in business who was a member
OF an evangelical church played on you
trick that Disguised you with re-
ligion. 1t may be that you have asso-
ciates who have talked against Chris
tlanity in your presence until you are
''all at sea-" aud you dwell more on
things that you do not believe than on
things you do believe You are in one
respect like Lord Nelson, when a sig
nal was lifted that he wished to dis
| regard, and he put his sea-glass to his
blind eye and said: II really do not
see the signal" Oh. my nearer, put
this field-glass of the Gospel no longer
to your blind eye, and say, | cannot
| see, but put it to your other eye, the
eye of faith. and you will see Christ,
| and he is all you need to see.
II you can believe nothing else, you
certainly believe in vicarious suffer-
ing. for you Sc 1t almost every day In
some shape. The steamship Knicker-
booker, OF the Cromwell line, running
between New Orleans and New York,
was in great storms, and the captain
| and crew saw the schooner Mary ID.
Cranmer, OF Philadelphia, in distress
The weather cold, the waves mountain
| high. the first officer of the steam
ship and four men put out in life
| boat to save the crew OF the schooner,
| and reached the vessel and towed it
out OF danger, the wind shifting so that
the schooner was saved. But the five
men OF the steamship coming back,
their boat capsized. yet righted again
and came on. the sailors coated with
| ice. The boat capsized again, and three
times upset and was righted, and a
line thrown the poor fellows, but their
| hands were frozen so they could not
grasp it, and great wave rolled over
them, and they went down, never to
rise again till the sea gives up it's
dead Appreciate that heroism and
| self-sacrifice of the brave fellows all
who can. and can We not appreciate
| the Christ who put out into more
biting cold and into a more overwhelm-
ing surge, to bring us out of infinite
peril into everlasting safety? The
wave OF human hate rolled over him
from one side and the wave of hellish
fury rolled over him on the other side.
Oh, the thickness of the night and the
thunder of he tempest into which
Christ plunged for our rescue,
You admit you are all broken up. one
decade of your life gone by, two de-
cades, three decades. four decades. a
half-century, perhaps quarters
of century gone. The hour hand and
the minute hand of your clock of life
are almost parallel. and soon it will
be twelve and your day ended. Clear
discouraged are you? / admit it is a
! sad thing to give all our lives that
are worth anything to sin and the
devil, and then at last make God
present Of first-rate corpse. But the
past you cannot recover. Get on board
that old ship you never will. Have
you only one more year left, one more
month, one more week, one more day,
one more hour-come in on that. Per-
haps If you get to heaven God may let
you go out on some great mission to
some other world, where you can some
! what atone for your lack of service in
this.
From many deathbed have seen
the hands thrown up in deploration
something like this my life has been
| wasted. l had good mental faculties
and fine social position and great op-
portunity, but through worldliness and
| neglect all has gone to waste save these
| few remaining hours. | now accept OF
Christ and shall enter heaven through
his mercy; but alas, alas! that when I
might have entered the haven OF eter-
| nal rest with full cargo, and been
greeted by the waving hands Of null
| titude in whose salvation | had borne
| blessed part, / must confess | now
enter the hartor OF heaven on broken
pieces of the ship"
The PorcupiDc's Quilts.
The current opinion that a porcu-