Connecticut western news., 1898-03-10

means to teach me this. I think he means to teach me that. Perhaps 1t is to humble my pride. Perhaps 1t is to make me feel more dependent. Perhaps to teach me the uncertainty of life" But after all it is only guess-a looking through the glass, darkly. The Bible assures us there shall be satisfactory unfolding. "What do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereaft- er." You will know why God took to himself that only child. Next door there was a household of seven children. Why not take one from that group instead of your only one? Why single out the dwelling in which there w..s only one heart beating responsive to yours? Why did God give you child at all if he meant to take it away? Why fill the cup of your gladness brimming if he meant to dash it down? Why allow all the tendrils of your heart to wind around that object, and then, when every fiber of your own life seemed to be interlock- ed with the child's life, with strong hand to tear you apart, until you fall. bleeding and crushed, your dwelling desolate, your hopes blasted, your heart broken? Do you suppose that God will explain that? Yea. He will make it plainer than any mathematical problem -as plain as that two and two make four. In the light of the throne you will see that it was right-all right. "Just and true are all thy ways, thou King of saints. '
 The Explanation.
 Here is a man who cannot get on in the world. He always seems to buy at the wrong time and to sell at the worst disadvantage. He tries this enterprise and fails, that business and Is disap- pointed. The man next door to him has a lucrative trade, but he lacks custom CTS. A new prospect opens. His income is increased. But that year his family are sick, and the profits are expended in trying to cur the ailments. He gets a discouraged look, becomes faithless as to success, begins to expect disasters. Others wait for something to turn up, he waits for it to turn down. Others with only half as much education and character get on twice as well. He sometimes guesses as to what it all means. He says: Perhaps riches would spoil me. Perhaps poverty is necessary to keep me humble. Perhaps might if things were otherwise be tempted into dissipauions. But there is no complete solution of the mystery. He sees through a glass darkly and must wait for higher unfolding. Will there be an ex- plantation? Yes. God will take that man in the light of the throne and say: "Child immortal, hear the explanation. You remember the failing of that great enterprise, your misfortune in 1857, your disaster in 1867. This is the ex- planation. And you will answer, "It is all right.
 Mysteries Made Clear.
 I see every day profound mysteries of providence. There is no question we ask oftener than, Why? There are hundreds of graves in Oak Hill and Greenwood and Laurel Hill that need to be ex- plained. Hospitals for the blind and lame, asylums for the idiotio and in sane, almshouses for the destitute and a world of pain and misfortune that de- mand more than human solution. An, God will clear it all up! In the light that pours from the throne no dark mystery can live. Things now utterly inscrutable will be illumined as plainly as though the answer were written on the jasper wall or sounded in the tenn pie anthem. Bartimeus will thank God that he was blind, and Lazarus that he was covered with sores, and Joseph that he was cast into the pit and Daniel that he denned with lions, and Paul that he was humpbacked. and David that he was driven from Jerusalem, and that sewing woman that she could get only few pence for making garment, and that invalid that for 20 years he could not lift his head from the pillow, and that widow that she had such hard work to earn bread for her children. You know that in song different voices carry different parts. The sweet and over- whelming part of the halleluiah of heav- en will not be carried by those who rode in high places and gave sumptuous entertainments, but pauper children will sing it, beggars will sing it, re- deemed bod carriers will sing it, those who were once the offscouring of earth will sing it. The halleluiah will be all the grander for earths weeping eyes and aching heads and exhausted hands and scourged backs and martyred agonies.
 Few Will Be Lost.
 Again, the thought of the text is just when applied to the enjoyments of the righteous in heaven. I think we have but little idea of the number of the righ teous in heaven. Infidels say, "Your heaven will be a very small place compared with the world of the lost, for, according to your teaching, the majority of men will be destroyed. I deny the charge. I suppose that the multitude of the finally lost, as com pared with the multitude of the finally saved, will be a handful. Isuppose that the few sick people in the hospital today as compared with the hundreds of thou sands of we'll people in the city would not be smaller than the number of those who shall be cast out in suffering com pared with those who shall have upon them the health of heaven. For we are to remem Der that we are living in com paratively the beginning of the Chris tian dispensation, and that this world is to be populated and redeemed. and that ages of light and love are to flow on. If this be so, the multitudes of the saved will be in vast majority.
 Take all the congregations that have today assembled for worship. Put them together and they would make but small audience compared with the thou sands, and tens of thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand, and the hundred and forty and four thousand that shall stand around the throne. Those flashed up to heaven in martyr fires; those tossed for many years upon the invalid couch; those fought in the armies of liberty and rose as they fell i; those tumbled from high scaffoldings or slipped from the mast or were washed off into the sea. They came up from Corinth, from Laodicea, from the Red sea bank and Genesareth's wave, from