Connecticut western news., 1897-03-11

There Is 8 land of pure delight.
 And when he came to the next line there were scores of voices singing:
 Where saints immortal reign.
 The song was caught up all through the fields among the wounded until it was said there were at least 10, 1000 wounded men uniting their voices as they came to the verse:
 There everlasting spring abides
 And never whitening flowers.
 Iris but narrow stream divides
 This heavenly land from ours
 An Eloquent Invitation.
 Oh, it is great religion to live by and 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 your self 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. I know not the history, but you know it, you know it. When young man went forth into life, the legend says, his guardian angel went forth with him, and getting him into field, the guardian angel swept circle clear around where the young man stood. It was a circle of virtue and honor, and he must not step beyond that circle. Arm ed foes came down, but were obliged to halt at the circle. They could not pass. But one day a temptress, with diamond ed hand, stretched forth and crossed that circle with the hand, and the tempted son1 took it, and by that one fell grip was brought beyond the circle and died. Some of you have stepped be- yond that circle. Would you not like this day, by the grace of God, to step back? This, I say to you, is your hour of salvation. There was in the closing 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 com ing hour, and in momentary 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 pecul- far about that clock?" She made no answer, but soon died. There is clock scene in every history. If some of you would rise from the bed of lethargy and come out from your delirium of sin and look on the clock of your destiny this moment, you would see and hear some thing you have not seen or heard before, and every tick of the minute, and every stroke of the hour and every swing of the pendulum would say, "Now, now, now, nowp Oh, come home to your Fathers housel Come home, O prodi- gal, from the wilderness! Come home, come homel
 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 trouble with you. An, no! When the proprietor of that estate pro- claimed festival, it was an outburst of l fathers love and fathers joy. God l is your Father. have not much sym pathy with the description of God I | sometimes hear, as though he were a Turkish sultan, hard and unsympathet- | ic, and listening not to the cry of his | subjects. A man told me he saw in one of the eastern lands king riding along, and two men were ill altercation and one charged the other with having eaten his rice, and the king said, ''Then slay | the man and by post mortem examina- tion find whether he has eaten the rice !" | And he was slain. An, the cruelty of a scene like that! Our God is not sultan, not despot, but Father-kind, lov- l ing, forgiving-and he makes all heaven ring again when prodigal comes back. T have no pleasure, he says, "in 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 1 difference the color, no difference the | history, no difference the antecedents, no difference the surroundings, no diff !! ference 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 glad ness, and to express that gladness 1t takes all the rivers of pleasure, all the thrones of pomp and all the ages of eternity. It is joy deeper than all depth and higher than all height and wider than all width and vaster than all immensity. It overtops, it under girds, it outweighs all the united splen dor and joy of the universe and who car tell what Gods joy is? You remembe, reading the story of a king who ol some great day of festivity scattered sil yer and gold among the people, wh' sent valuable presents to his courtiers but methinks, when soul comes back God is so glad that to express his jo, he filings out new worlds into space ant kindles up new suns and rolls anon, the white robed anthems of the redeem ed greater halleluiah, while with voice that reverberates among the noun tains of frankincense and is echoed bacl from the everlasting gates he cries 'This, my son, was dead, and he i alive again."
 He VIII Come Back.
 At the opening of the exposition il New Orleans I saw Mexican futist
 and he played the solo, and then after ward the eight or ten bands of music accompanied by the great organ. cam
 in, but the sound of that one flute a compared with all the orchestras wa greater than all the combined joy of tn
 universe when compared with the re sounding heart of Almighty God. Flo
 ten years father went three times
 day to the depot. His son went off i.
 aggravating circumstances, but the ia
 ther said, "He will come back. '" Tn
 strain was too much and his mind part