Connecticut western news., 1897-11-04

success that It IS evident Io 6Nory DOuy that their success has been temporal calamity and an eternal damage. Con- ,erning many people, it may be said It seems as if it would have been better If they could have embarked from this life at 20 or 30 years of age.
 Do you know the reason why the vast majority of people die before 30? It is because they have not the moral endur- ance for that which is beyond the 30, and merciful God will not allow them to be pu t to the fearful strain.
 On the Defensive.
 Again, there is a blessing in an ab- breviated earthly existence ln the fact that one is the sooner taken of the de- fensive. As soon as one is old enough to take care of himself he is put on his guard. Bolts on the doors to keep out the robbers Fireproof safes to keep off the flames Life insurance and fire in surance against accident. Receipts lest you have to pay debt twice. Lifeboat against shipwreck. Westinghouse air brake against railroad collision, and hundreds of hands ready to overreach you and take all you have. Defense against cold, defense against heat, de- fense against sickness, defense against the worlds abuse, defense all the way down to the grave, and even the tomb stone sometimes is not 8 sufficient bar ricade.
 If a soldier who has been on guard, shivering and stung with the cold, pac- ing up and down the parapet with shouldered musket, is glad when some one comes to relieve guard and he can go inside the fortress, ought not that man to shout for joy who can put down his weapon of earthly defense and go Into the king's castle? Who is the more fortunate, the soldier who has to stand guard 12 hours or the man who has to stand guard six hours? We have common sense about everything but religion, common sense about everything but transference from this world.
 Again, there is a blessing in an ab- breviated earthly existence in the fact that one escapes so many bereavements. The longer we live the more attach ments and the more kindred, the more chords to be wounded or rasped or sum- dered If man live on to 70 or 80 years of age, how many graves are cleft at his feet. In that long reach of time father and mother go, brothers and sis ters go, children go, grandchildren go, personal friends outside the family cir ole whom they had loved with a love like that of David and Jonathan Be- sides that some men have 8 natural trepidation about dissolution, and ever and anon during 40 or 90 or so years this horror of their dissolution shudders through soul and body. Now, suppose the lad goes at 16 ears of age? He es- capes 30 funerals, 50 caskets, 50 obse- quies, 50 awful wrenohings of the heart. It is hard enough for us to bear their departure, but is it not easier for us to bear their departure than for them to stay and bear 50 departures? Shall we not by the grace of God rouse ourselves into generosity of bereavement which will practically say, 'It is hard enough for me to go through this bereavement, have to go through it?'' So reason with myself, and so you will find it helpful to reason with yourselves. Da- vid lost his son. Though David was king he lay on the earth mourning and inoonsolable for some time. At this dis tanoe of time, which do you really think was the one to be congratulated, the short lived child or the long lived ia ther? Had David died as early as that child died he would, in the first place, have escaped that particular bereave- ment, then he would have escaped the worse bereavement of Absalom, his rec reant son. and the pursuit of the Philis- tines, and the fatigues of his military campaign, and the jealousy of Saul, and the perfidy of Ahithophel, and the curse of Shimei and the destruction of his family at Ziklag, and, above all, he would have escaped the two great ca lamities of his life, the great sins of uncleanness and murder. David lived to be of vast use to the church and the world, but 50 far as his own happiness was concerned does it not seem to you that it would have been better for him to have gone early?
 Temptation. -
 Now, this, my friends, explains some things that to you have been inexplica- ble. This shows you why when God takes little children from a household he is very apt to take the brightest, the most genial, the most sympathetic, the most talented. Why? It is because that kind of nature suffers the most when it does suffer, and is most liable to temp tation- God saw the tempest sweeping up from the Caribbean, and he put the delicate craft into the first harbor. "Taken away from the evil to come <"
 Again. my friends. there is a blessing in an abbreviated earthly existence is the fact that 1t puts one sooner in thf center of things. All astronomers, inf del as we'll as Christian, agree in be. heving that the universe swings around some great center. Any one who ha. studied the earth and studied the heav- ems knows that Gods favorite figure in geometry is circle. When God put forth his hand to create the universe he did not strike that hand at right an gies, but he waved 1t in a circle anG kept on waving in a circle until systeml and cancellations and galaxies and al worlds took that motion. Our planet swinging around the sun, other planets swinging around other suns, but some where great hub, around which the great wheel of the universe turns. Nov the center is heaven. That is the capi. tai of the universe. That is the grea, metropolis of mmensity.
 Does not our common sense teach us that in matters of study it is better fo1 us to move out from the center toward the circumference rather than to be or the circumference, where our would now isa We are like those who study the American continent while standing on the Atlantic beach. The way to study the continent is to cross it or go to tn, heart of it. Our standpoint in this world is defective. We are at the wrons end of the telescope. The best way tt study piece of machinery is not tt