The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1898-05-06

places OF the men VINO started life with
a fortune? Some Of them in the pot
ter's field, some in the suicides grave.
Put few Of these men reached 35 years
of age. They drank, they smoked,
they gambled. In them the beast de-
stroyed the man. Some of them lived
long enough to get their fortunes and
went through them. The vast major
ity of them did not live to get their
Inheritance. From the ginshop or
house of infamy they were brought
home to their fathers house, and in
delirium began to pick off loathsome
reptiles from the embroidered pillow
and to fight back imaginary devils.
And then they were laid out in a high
ly upholstered parlor, the casket COW
cred with flowers by indulgent parents
flowers suggestive of a resurrection
| with no hope.
AS you sat this morning at your
! breakfast table and looked into the
faces OF your children, perhaps you
said within yourself: Poor things.
How / wish | could start them in life
with a competence! How l have been
disappointed in all my expectations of
what | would do for them" Upon that
scene of pathOs / break with a paen
of congratulation, that by your inan-
cial losses your own prospects for
heaven and the prospect for the heav-
en- Of your children are nightly
improved. You may have lost a toy,
but you have won a palace.
How hardly shall they that have
riches enter into the kingdom of Cod"
1T is easier for a camel to go through
a needles eye than for a rich man to
enter the kingdom Of heaven" What
does that mean? 1t means that the
grandest blessing God ever bestowed
upon you was to take your money
away from you. Let me here say, in
passing, do not put such stress on the
treasures of this world. You cannot
take them along with you. At any
rate you cannot take them more than
w or three miles; you will have to
leave them at the cemetery. Attila
had three collins. So fond was he of
his life that he decreed that first he
should be buried in a coffin of gold
n her that should be inclosed in a
coffin of silver and that should be in
closed in a coffin of iron, and then a
large amount Of treasure should be
thrown over his body. And so he was
buried, and the men who buried him
were slain, SO that no one might know
| where he was buried and no one might
there interfere with his treasures.
Oh, men of the world, who want to
take your money with you, better have
three collins!
HELPFUL THOUGHTS.
Again, I remark, you ought to make
fbn rnru harf ~ xr0,,r
The whole tendency is to brood over
these separations, and to give much
time to the handling of mementos of
the departed, and to make long vista
tiOns to the cemetery, and to say: ooh,
l can never look up again. My hope is
gone; my courage is gone; my relig-
ion is gone; my faith is gone. Oh, the
wear and tear and exhaustion of this
loneliness The most frequent be-
reavement is the loss of children. If
your departed child had lived as long
as you have lived, do o not suppose
that he would have had about the
same mount of trouble and trial that
you have had? If you could make a
choice for your child between 40 years
of annoyance, loss, vexation, exasper-
alton and bereavements and 40 years
in heaven, would you take the respon-
sibility of choosing the former?
Would you snatch away the cup of
eternal bliss and put into that child's
hands the cup of many bereavements?
Instead of the complete safety into
which that child has been lifted would
you like to hold it down to the risks
of this mortal state? Would you like
to keep it out on a sea in which there
have been nor shipwrecks than safe
voyages? Is it not a comfort to you to
know that that child, instead of being
besoiled and flung into the mire of
sin, is swung clear into the skies?
Are not those children to be congrat-
ulated that the point of celestial bliss
which you expect to reach by a pill
grimage of SO or so or 20 years they
reached at a flash? If the last 10000
children who had entered heaven had
gone through the average of human
life on earth, are you sure all those
10000 children would have finally
reached the blissful terminus? Be-
sides that, my friends, you are to look