The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-03-08

fields among the wounded until it was said
there were at least 10 COO wounded men
uniting their voices as they came to the
verse:
There everlasting Spring abides,
And never whitening flowers;
IT'S but a narrow stream divides
This heavenly land from ours.
Oh, it is a great religion to live by. and
a great religion to die by There is only
one heart-throb between you and that
religion. Just look into the face of your
pardoning God and surrender yourself for
time and for eternity and he is yours, and
heaven is yours, and all is yours Some
of you, like the young man of the text
have gone far astray. / know not the his
tory, but you know it. you know it.
When a young man went forth into life
the legend says, his guardian angel went
forth with him, and getting him into a
field, the guardian angel swept a circle
clear around where the young man stood
1t was a circle of virtue and honor, and
he must not step beyond that circle
Armed foes came down, but were obliged
to halt al the circle. They could not pass
But one day temptress. with diamonded
hand, stretched forth and crossed
that circle with the hand and
the tempted soul took it, and by
that one fell grip was brought
beyond the circle and died. Some of you
have stepped beyond that circle. Would
you not like this day by the grace of God
TO step back? This. say to you, is your
hour of salvation. There was in the clos
ing hours of Queen Anne what is called
the clock scene. Flat down on the pillow
in helpless sickness she could not move
her head or move her hand. She was
waiting for the hour when the ministers
of state should gather in angry contest,
and worried and worn out by the coming
hour, and in monetary absence of the
nurse, in the power, the strange power
which delirium sometimes gives one, she
arose and stood in front of the clock, and
stood there watching the clock when the
nurse returned. The nurse said, do you
see anything peculiar about that clock?"
She made no answer, but soon died. There
is a clock scene in every history. If
some of you would rise from the bed of
lethargy and come out from your delri-
UNI of sin and look on the clock of your
destiny this moment, you would see and
hear something you have not seen or
heard before, and every tick of the min
ute, and every stroke of the hour, and
every swing of the pendulum, would say,
now, now, now, now!'' Oh, come home
to your Fathers house. Come home, oh,
prodigal, from the wilderness. Come
home, come home!
But I notice that when the prodigal
came there was the fathers Joy. He did
not greet him with any formal How do
you do?" He did not come out and say:
you are unfit to enter; go and wash
in the trough by the well, and then you
can come in; we have had enough trou-
BILE with you" All, no. When the pro-
prietor of that estate proclaimed festi-
val, it was an outburst of a fathers love
and a fathers joy. God is your father.
have not much sympathy
with the description of God
I
he were Turkish sultan, hard and I'M
sympathetic, and listening not to the
cry of his subjects A man told me he
saw in one of the eastern lands a king
riding along, and two men We're in al
tercation, and one charged the other with
having eaten his rice, and the king said:
Then Stay the man, and by post-mor-
TEN examination find whether he has
eaten the rice" And he was slain. All!
the cruelty of a scene like that. Our God
is not sultan. not a despot, but a
Father-kind loving, forgiving, and he
makes all heaven ring again when a
prodigal comes back Il have no pleas
ure," he says, sin the death of him that
dieth." All may be saved. If man
does not get to heaven, it Is because he
will not go there. No difference the color,
no difference the history, no
difference the antecedents, no dit
ference the surroundings, no difference
the sin. When the white horses of Christ S
victory are brought out to celebrate the
eternal triumph, you may ride one of
them, and as God is greater than all, his
joy is greater, and when a soul comes
back, there is In his heart the surging of
an infinite ocean of gladness; and 10 eX-
press that gladness it takes all the rivers
of pleasure, all the thrones of pomp and
all the ages of eternity. 1t is a JOY deeper
than all depth and higher than all hight,
and wider than all width, and vaster than
all immensely. II overtops, 1t undergirds
it outWeighs all the united splendor and
| JOY of the universe, and who can tell what
Gods Joy is? You remember reading the
story of a king, who on some great day OF
festiVity scattered silver and gold among
| the people, who sent valuable presents tc
his courtiers; but methinks when a soul
comes back, God is so glad that to express
| his joy he filings out new worlds int-
space, and kindles up new suns, and rolls
| among the white-robed anthems of the re-
| deemed a greater hallelujah, while with
| a voice that invertebrates among the
mountains of frankncense and Is echoed
back from the everlasting gates he cries
/ This my son, was dead, and he is alive
again.
At the opening of the exposition In New
Orleans / saw a Mexican flutist, and he
| played the solo, and then afterwards the
| eight or ten bands Of music, accompanied
| by the great organ, came in; but the sound
! or tnat one mute as compared with all the
orchestra was greater than all the com
bined JOY of the universe when compared
with the resoundng heart of Almighty
God. For ten years "A father went three
times a day to the depot. His son went
off in aggravating circumstances, but the
| father said: He will come back" The
strain was too much and his mind parted
aud three times day the father went In
the early morning he watched the train
its arrival, the stepping out of the pas
sengers and then the departure Of the
| train. At noon he was there again watch
ing the advance Of the train, watching
the departure. At night he was there
again watching the coming, watching
the going for ten years. He was sure his
son would come back. God has beer
watching and waiting for some OF you
my brothers, ten years, twenty years
thirty years, forty years perhaps fifty
years, waiting, waiting. watching, watch.
ing. and II now the prodiga
should come home, what scene Of glad.
ness and festivity and how the grea'
fathers heart would rejoice at your com.
ing home. You viii come, some Of yop
will you not? You will. you win.