Connecticut western news., 1898-04-28

| rheumatism for the muscles. 1.-The in- habitants shall never say, am sick. "
 "There shall be no more pain.
 Again, you ought to make the best of | life's finality. Now, you think l have | very tough subject You do not see how | I am to strike spark of light out of | the flint of the tombstone. There arc
 many people who have an idea that death is the submergence of everything | pleasant by everything doleful. If my | subject could close in the upsetting of | all such preconceived notions, it would
 close we'll. Who can judge best of the | features of man-those who are close l by him, or those who are afar off? i "Oh," you say, "those can judge best | of the features of man who are close
 by him.
 Now, my friends, who shall judge of | the features of death-whether they are
 lovely or whether they are repulsiVe? | You? You are too far off. If want to | get judgment as to what really the | features of death are, will not ask you; | I will ask those who have been within a
 month of death or a week of death or | an hour of death or minute of death. | They stand so near the features, they
 can tell. They give unanimous testi- mony, if they are Christian people, that ! death, instead of being demoniac, is | cherubic Of all the thousands of Chris tians who have been carried through the | gates of the cemetery, gather up their | dying experiences and you will find | they nearly all bordered un a jubilate.
 How often you have seen dying man | join in the psalm being sung around his | bedside, the middle of the verse opening | to let his ransomed spirit free, long
 after the lips could not speak looking
 and pointing upward.
 Not Gods Best Work.
 Some of you talk as though God had exhausted himself in building this | world and that all the rich curtains he | ever made he hung around this planet | and all the flowers he ever grew he has woven into the carpet of our daisied | meadows. No. This world is not the | best thing God can do; this world i3 | not the best thing that God has done. | One week of the year is called blos- | som week-called so all through tho | land because there are more blossoms ill
 that week than ir any other week of
 the year. Blossom week. And that is | what the future world is to which the | Christian is invited-blossom week for | ever It is as far ahead of this world as | paradise is ahead of Dry Tortugas, and | yet here we stand shivering and fearing | to go out, and we want to stay on the | dry sand and amid the stormy petrels,
 when we are invited to arbors of jas | mine and birds of paradise.
 One season had two springtimes. l | went to New Orleans ill April, and 1 | marked the difference between going to- ward New Orleans and then coming | back As l went on down toward New | Orleans the verdure, the foliage, became | thicker and more beautiful When came back, tho farther I came toward | home the. less the foliage, and less and I less it became until there was hardly
 any Now, 1t all depends upon the di- | rection ill which yoE travel. If a spirit | from heaven should come toward our ! world, he is travelling from June toward December, from radiance toward dark
 ness, from hanging gardens toward ice- bergs. And one would not be very much surprised if spirit of Goo sent forth | from heaven toward our world should | be slow to come. But how strange it is I that we dread going out toward that | world when going is from December to- | ward June from the snow of earthly | storm to the snow of Edenic blossom, | from the arctics of trouble toward the | tropics of eternal joy.
 Oh, what an ado about dyingl We l get so attached to the malarial marsh | in which we live that we are afraid to go up and live on the hilltop. We are | alarmed because vacation is coming. Eternal sunlight and best programme | of celestial miystrels and halleluiah no l inducement Let us stay here and keep | cold and ignorant and weak. Do not in | troduce us to Elijah and John Milton | and Bourdaloue Keep our feet on the | sharp cobblestones of earth instead of | planting them on the bank of amaranth | in heaven. Give us this small island of leprous world instead of the immen-
 sities of splendor and delight. Keep our hands full of nettles, and our shoulder
 under the burden, and our neck in the yoke, and hopples on our ankles, and | handcuffs on our wrists Dear Lord," | we seem to say, "keep us down here | where we have to suffer instead of let
 ting us up where we might live and | reign and rejoice"
 Death Is True Life.
 l am amazed at myself and at your
 self for this infatuation under which we all rest. Men you would suppose would get frightened at having to stay | in this world instead of getting fright | oned at having to go toward heaven. I ! congratulate anybody who has right | to die. By that mean through sickness | you cannot avert or through accident | you cannot avoid-your work consum-
 mated Where did they bury Lily?" said one little child to another. "Oh," she replied, "they buried her in the ground. " "Whatl In the cold ground?" "Oh, no, no, not ill the cold ground, but in the waIm ground, where ugly | seeds become beautiful flowers"
 | "But, says some one, "it pains me | so much to think that I must lose the body with which my soul has so long | companioned. You do not lose it. You ho Aholo Aooo youl DOuy Uy ueatu bHdu | you lose your watch when you send it
 to have it repaired or your jewel when | you send it to have it reset or the faded | picture when you send it to have it touched up or the photograph of friend | when you have it put in new looket. You do not lose your body. Paul will go to Rome to get his. Payson will go | to Portland to get his, President Ed | wards will go to Princeton to get his, George Goldman will go to the bottom of the Atlantic to get his, and we will | go to the village ohurchyards and the city cemeteries to get ours, and when
 we have our perfect spirit rejoined to our perfect body, then we will be the kind of men and women that the resur-
 rection morning will make possible. So you see you have not made out any