The Monitor-register., 1897-11-05
to be put to the fearful strain.
I'm tho nafars;vo

down to the grave, and even the IN
stone sometimes is not a sufficient bar
ricade.
If a soldier who has been on guard,
shivering and stung with the cold. pao-
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 kings castle? Who is the more
fortunate, the soldier who has to stand
guard 10 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 alb
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 sun
| dered. If a man live on to 10 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
tiers go, children go, grandchildren 60
| personal friends outside the family cir
| Gle whom they had loved with a love
| like that of David and Jonathan. Be-
| sides that some men have a natural
| trepidation about dissolution, and ever
| and anon during 40 or 90 or go years
| this horror of their dissolution shudders
| through soul and body. Now, suppose
| the lad goes at 16 ears of age? He es-
| eapes so funerals, 90 caskets, 80 obse-
| quies, 80 awful wrenchings of the heart.
| 1t 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 so departures? Shall we
| not by the grace of God rouse ourselves
! into a generosity of bereavement which
will practically say, 1T is hard enough
for me to go through this bereavement,
but how glad l am that he will
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
inconsolable for some time At this dis
lance of time, which do you really think
| was the one to be congratulated, the
short lived child or the long lived IA
Their? Had David died as early as that
| child died he would, in the first place,
have escaped that particular bereave-
ment, her he would have escaped the
worse bereavement of Absalom, his REQ
reant son, and the pursuit of the Philis-
tines, and the fatigues of his military
campaign, and the jealousy of Saul, and
the pertidy 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
Lmities of his life, the great sins Of
u-ncleanness and murder. David lived
to be of vast use to the church and the
| world, but so 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-
BILE. 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? 1t 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 in
the fact that it puts n sooner in the
center of things. All astronomers, inf
del as we'll as Christian, agree in be-
lieving that the universe swings around
some great center. Any one who has
studied the earth and studied the heav-
n knows that Gods favorite figure
IN geometry is a circle. When God put
forth his hand to create the universe,
he / not strike that hand at right an
giles, but he waved it in a circle and
kept on waving in a circle until systems
and consultations and galaxies and all
worlds took that motion. Our planet
swinging around the sun, other planets
swinging around other suns, but some
where a great hub, around which the
great wheel of the universe turns. Now
the center is heaven. That is the capt.
tai OF the universe. That is the great
metropolis of immensely.
Does not our common sense teach us
that in matters of study it is better for
us to owe out from the center toward
the circumference rather than to be on
the circumference, where our would
now is? 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 the
heart OF 1t. Our standpoint in this
world is defective. We are at the wrong
end of the telescope. The best way to
study a piece of machinery is not to
stand on the doorstep and try to look in,
but to go in with the engineer and take
u place right amid the saws and the
cylinders. We wear our eyes out and
our brain out from the fact that we are
studying under such great disadvantage.
Millions of dollars for observatories
to study things about the moon, about
the sun, about the rings of Saturn,
about transits and occultations and
eclipses, simply because our studio, our
observatory, is poorly situated. We are
down In the cellar trying to study the
palace Of the universe, while our de-
parted Christian friends have gone up
stairs amid the skylights to study. Now.
when n can sooner get to the center
OF things, is he not to be congratulated?
Who wants to be always in the fresh
man class? We study God in this world
by the Biblical photograph of him, but
we all know we can in five minutes of
interview with a friend get more accu-
rate idea of him than we can by study
ing him 80 years through pictures or
words. The little child that died last
night knows more Of God than all An
dover, and all Princeton, and all New
Brunswick, and all Edinburgh, and all
the theological institutes in Christen-
dom. Is it not better to go up to the very
headquarters of knowledge?
At the Center.
Does no our common sense teach us
that it is better to be at the center than
to be clear out on the rim of the wheel,
holding %nervously fast to the tire. lest
we be suddenly hurled into light and
eternal felicity Through all kinds of
optical instruments trying to peer in
through the cracks and the keyholes of
heaven-afraid that both doors of the
celestial mansion will be swung wide
open before u entranced vision-rush-
ing about among the apothecary shops
of this world, wondering if this is good
for rheumatism and that is good for
neuralgia and something else is good
for a bad cough, lest we be suddenly