The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1897-03-26

down, but he fights his attendants until
he falls back and is weaker and weaker
and dies for people with whom he had
no kinship, and far away from bis own
family, and is hastily put away in a
strangers tomb. and only the fifth part
of a newspapr line tells us Of his sacrifice.
his name just mentioned among five. Yet
he has touched the farthest height of
sublimIty in that three weeks of humani-
tartan service. He goes straight as an
arrow to the bosom Of him who said, Il
was sick, and We visited me-" Life for
life. Blood for blood. Substitution,
In the legal profession / see the same
principle of self sacrifice. In 1916 William
Freeman, a pauperized and idiotic negro,
was at Auburn, N. Y, on trial for murd-
ed.
He had slain the entire Van Nest fami-
ly. The foaming wrath of the community
constables. Who would volunteer to be
his counsel? No attorney wanted to sac
rifice his popularity by such an migrate
full task. All were silent. save one. a
young lawyer with feeble voice, that
could hardly be heard outside the bar,
pale and thin and awkard. 1t was Will
liam II. Seward, who saw that the prison.
er was idiotic and irresponsible and ought
to be put in an asylum rather than put to
death, the heroic counsel uttering these
beautiful words:
Il speak now in the hearing of a people
who have prejudged the prisoner and
condemned me for pleading in his behalf.
He is a convict, a pauper, a negro, with
out intellect, sense or emotion. My child,
with an affectionate smile, disarms my
cdTeWOTn lace OF us ITOWn whenever L
cross my threshold. The beggar in the
street obliges me to give because he says,
God bless you! as 1 pass. My dog car
esses me with fondnes if 1 will but smile
on him. My horse recognizes me when
fill his manager. What reward. what graf
itude, what sympathy and affection can I
Look at him.. Look at the assemblage
around you. Listen to their Ill suppressed
censures and their excited fears and tell
me where among my %neighbors or my fell
low men. where even in his heart c1n
expect to find a sentiment, a thought, not
to say of reward or of acknowledgment,
or even of recognition? Gentlemen, you
may think of this evidence what you
please, bring in what verdict you can, but
l asseverate before heaven and you that,
to the best of my knowledge and belief,
the prisoner at the bar does not at this
moment know why it is that my shadow
falls on you instead of his own"
The gallOWs got it's victim, but the post
mortem examination of the poor creature
showed to all the surgeons and to all the
world that the public was wrong. that
William II. Seward was right, and that
hard, stony step of OblOQuy in the Au-
burn court room was the first step of the
stairs of fame up which he went to the
top, or to within one step of the top, that
last denied him through the treachery of
American politics. Nothing sublimer was
ever seen in an American courtroom than
standing between the fury of the popu-
lace and the loathsome imbecile. Substi-
tuition!
VIA RUSk1N DID.
In the realm of the fine arts there was
as remarkable an instance. A brilliant
but unprecedented painter, Joseph Will
liam Turner, was met by a volley of abuse
from all the art galleries of Europe. His
paintings, which have since won the APP
plause of all civilized nations-"The Fifth
Plague of Egypt FISHERMAN on a Lee
Shore In Squally weather. calais Pier"
. Tho Sun Rn,,d Rising ca Thr 9gef-N Mist t hnd
targets for critics to shoot at. In defense
of this outrageously abused man., a young
author of "a years, just one year out of
college. came forth with his pen and
wrote the ableSt and most famous essays
On art that the world ever saw, or ever
will see-John Ruskin'S Modern Paint
ers. For seventeen years this author
fought the battles of the maltreated
artist, and after, in poverty and broken
heartedness, the painter had died, and
ward him by giving him a big funeral
and burial in st: Paul's cathedral, his old
pieces of paper containing drawings by
the old painter, and through many weary
and uncompensated months assorted and
arranged them for public observation.
People say John Ruskin in his old days
is cross, misanthropic and morbid. What
ever he may do that he ought not to do,
and whatever he may say that he ought
not to say between now and his death, he
will leave this world insolvent as far as it
has any capacity to pay this authors pen
for it's chivalric and Christian defense OF
a poor painters pencil. John Ruskin for
William Turner. Blood for Blood. Sub
stitution!
What an exalting principle this which
leads one to suffer for another! Nothing
so kindles enthusiasm, or elo-
quence, or chimes poetic canto, or moves
nations. The principle is the dominant
one in our religion-Christ the martyr,
Christ the celestial hero, Christ the de-
fender. Christ the substitute. NO new
ture, but now on a grander, wider, higher,
deeper and more world r~esounding scale.
The shepherd boy as a champion for
Israel with a sling toppled the giant of
Phillistine braggadocio in the dust, but
! here is another David, who, for all. the
armies of churches militant and trium>
plant, hurls the Goliath of perdition into
defeat. the crash of his brazen armor like
an explosion at He'll Gate. Abraham had
. at Gods command agreed to sacrihce his
had provided a ram of the thicket as a
substitute. but here is another Isaac
. bound to the altar, and no hand arrests
| and the universe shivers and quakes and
! recoils and groans at the horror.
All good men have for centuries been
trying to tell who this substitute was like,
and every comparison, inspired and unin-
! spired. evangelistic, prophetic, apostolic
and human, falls short, for God was the
cause he came directly from God, Noah a
type of Christ because he delivered his
own family from the deluge, Melchisedec
a type of Christ because he had no prede.
. cessor or successor, Joseph a type OF
Christ because he was cast out by his
brethren, Moses a type of Christ because
he was a deliverer from bondage. Samson
a type of Christ because of his strength
to slay the lions and carry off the iron
gates of impossibility. Solomon a type OF
Christ in the affluence of his dominion,
Jonah a type of Christ because of the
. stormy sea in which he threw himself Tor
the rescue of others, but put together
Adam and Noah and Melchisedec and
Joseph and Moses and JoSua and Samson
and Solomon and Jonah. and they would
not make a fragment Of Christ. a quarter
of a Christ. the half of a Christ or the
millionth part of a Christ.
WHAT CHRIST DID.
He forsook a throne and sat doWn on
his own footstool. He came from the top
of glory to the bottom of humiliation and
changed a circumference seraphic for a
circumference diabolic. Once waited on
by angels, now Kissed at by brlgandS
From afar and high up he came down:
past meteors swifter than they; by starry
thrones. himself more lustrous: past lars-
ar uorlIS 70 smaller worlds. down stairs