The enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 188?-1899, 1898-03-30

take a little risk, and then you have
all your finances fair and right. You
will have large property. You can
leave fortune for your children, and
endow a college, and build public Ii
brary in your native town. You halt
and wait, and halt and wait until
your lips get white. You decide to
risk it. Only few strokes, of the pen
now. But, oh, how your hand trem-
bles, how dreadfully it trembles! The
die is cast. BY the strongest and most
awful conjunction of circumstances
anyone could have imagined you are
prostrated. Bankruptcy, commercial
annihilation, exposure, crime. Good
men mourn and devils hold carnival,
and you see your own name at the
head of the newspaper column in a
whole congress of exclamation points;
and while you are reading the ana
thema in the reportorial and editorial
paragraph it occurs to you how much
this story is like that of the defalca-
tion Is years ago, and clap of thun-
der shakes the window sill, saying:
with what measure ye mete, it shall
be measured to you againw
You look in another direction. There
is nothing like ebullitions of temper to
put man to disadvantage. You, a
man with calm pulse and a fine
digestion and perfect health, cannot
understand how anyone should be
capsized in temper by an infnitesimal
annoyance. You say: Il couldn't be
unbalanced in that way" Perhaps you
smile at provocation that makes an
other man swear. You pride yourself
on your imperturbility. You say with
your manner, though you have too
much good taste to say it with your
words: II have great deal more
sense than that man has; have great
deal more equipoise of temper than
that man has; never could make such
a puerile exhibition of myself as that
man has made"
Let me see. Did you not say that
you could not be tempted to an ebul-
lition of temper. Some September you
come home from your summer water
ing-place and you have inside, away
back in your liver or spleen, what we
call in our day malaria, but what the
old folks called chills and fever. You
take quinine until your ears are first
buzzing beehives and then roaring Nj
agaras. You take roots and herbs, you
take everything. You get well. But
the next day you feel uncomfortable,
and you yawn, and you stretch, and
you shiver, and you consume, and you
suffer. Vexed more than you can tell, you
cannot sleep, you cannot eat, you can
not bear to see anything that looks
happy, you go out to kick the cat that
is asleep in the sun. Your children's
mirth was once music to you; now, it
is deafening. You say: Boys, stop
that racketw You turn back from June
to March. In the family and in the
neighborhood your popularity is 95 per
cent. off. The world says: what is
the matter with that disagreeable mani
What woebegone countenance? ]
can't bear the sight of him" You have
got your pay at last-got your pay,
You feel just as the man felt, that mar
for whom you had no mercy, and my
text comes in with marvellous opposite
ness: with what measure ye mete, il
shall be measured to you again"
In the study of society / have come
to this conclusion, that tht most of the
people want to be good, out they dc
not exactly know how to make it out
They make enough good resolutions to
lift them into angelhood. The vast
majority of people who fall are the
victims of circumstances. They are
captured by ambuscade. If their temp
tations should come out in regiment
and fight them in fair field they
would go out in the strength and
the triumph of David against Goliah
But they do not see the giants and
they do not see the regiment. Tempts'
tion comes and says: Take these Bit
ters, take this nervine, take this aid tc
digestion, take this nighteap." The
vast majority of men and women who
are destroyed by opium and by rum
first take them as medicines. In max.
ing up your dish of criticism in regard
to them, take from the caster and the
cruet of sweet oil and not the cruet Of
cayenne pepper.
Do you know how that phys,c clan,
that lawyer, that journalist became
the victim of dissipation? Why, the
physician was kept up, night by night
on professional duty. Life and death
lowered in the balance. His nervous
system was exhausted. There came a
time of epidemic and whole families
were Frustrated, and his nervous
strength was gone. He was all worn
out in the service of the public. Now
he must brace himself up. Now he
stimulates. The life of this mother,
the life of this child, the life of this
whole family must be saved, and he
stimulates, and he does it again and
again. You may criticise his judg-
ment, but remember the process. II
was not selfish process by which he
went down. 1t was magnificent gen.
erosity through which he fell.
Oh, my friends, let us be resolved to
scold less and pray morel What head
way will we make in the Judgment il
in this world we have been hard on
those who have gone astray9 What
headway will you and l make in the
last great judgment, when we must
have mercy or perish? The Bible says;
"They shall have Judgment without
mercy that showed no mercy"
see the scribes of Heaven looking
up into the face of such man, saying: