Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1898-11-07

| cnce gone wrong" So with this unfor-
| tunate, things get worse and worse, and
| his family have to give up the house,
| and the last valuable goes to the pawn
brokers' shop. But that unfortunate
man is sauntering along the street one
Sunday night, and he goes up to church
door, and the congregation are singing
the second hymn, the one just before
sermon, and it is William Cowper's
glorious hymn:
There is fountain filed with blood
Drawn from Emmanuels veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.
Wavering at the Door.
He goes into the vestibuIe of the
church and stops there, not feeling we'll
enough dressed to go among the wor-
shippers, and he hears the minister say,
"You will find the words of my text in
Luke, the nineteenth chapter and tenth
verse, 'The Son of Man is come to seek
and save that which was lost. - The
listener in the vestibule says: eff any
man was ever lost | am lost, and the
Son of Man came to save that which is
lost, and he has found me and he will
take me out of this lost condition. Oh,
Christ, have mercy on meP' The poor
man has courage now to enter the main
audience room, and he sits down on the
first seat by the door, and when at the
close of the service the minister comes
down the aisle the poor man tells his
story, and he is encouraged and invited
to come again, and the way is cleared
for him for membership in a Christian
church, and he feels the omnipotence of
what Peter, the apostle, said when he
spoke Of those except by the power of
God through faith unto complete saliva
tion." Yet he is to have one more
Wrestle before he is free from evil habits
and he goes into it, not in his own
strength, for that has failed him twice,
but in the strength of the Lord God
Almighty The old habit seizes him,
and he seizes it, and the wrestlers bend
backward and forward and from side to
side, in awful struggle, until the mo-
ment comes for his liberation and, with
both arms infused with strength from
God, he lifts that habit swings it in
air and hurls it into the perdition from
which it came and from which it never |
again will rise Victory, victory through |
our Lord Jesus Christ! Hear it, all We
wIestlers 1t threw him twice, but the |
third time he threw it, and, by the |
grace Of God, threw it so hard he is as |
safe now as if he had been ten years in
heaven. Oh, I am SO glad that Paul in |
my text suggests the wrestler and the |
power of the third throw!
But notice that my text suggests that |
the wrestlers on the other side in the
great struggle for the worlds redemp-
ton have all the forces of demonology
to help them, 1--WE wrestIe not against
flesh and blood, but against principal
ties, against powers, against the rulers
of the darkness of this world, against
spiritual wickedness in high places.'
All military men will tell you that
there is nothing more unwise than to
underestimate an army. In estimating
what we have to contend with, the
most of the reformers do not recognize
the biggest opposers. They talk about
the agnosticism, and the atheism, and
the materialism, and the nihilism, and
the pantheism, and the Brahmanism,
and the Mohammedanism as we'll as the
more agile and organized and endowed
of our day. But these are
only a part of the hostilities arrayed
against God and the best interests of
humanity. The invisible hosts are far
more numerous than the visible 1t is
not so much the bottle; it is the demon
of the bottle. It is not so much the rou-
lette table; it is the demon of the rou-
lette table. 1t is not so much the act of
stock gambling as it is the demon of
stock gambling. 1t is the great host Of
spiritual antagonists led on by Aziel or
Lucifer or Beelzebub or Asmodeus or
Ahrimanes or Abaddon, just as you
please to call the leader infernalistic.
Can you doub bit that the human agencies
IF evil are backed up by Plutonic agen-
cies? If it were only common war
:teed, with painting nostril and fiaunt-
ng name and gathering hoof, rushing
upon US, perhaps we might clutch him
BY the bit and hurl him back upon his
but it is the black horse cav
airy of perdition who dash down and
heir riders swing swords which, though
Invisible, cleave individuals and homes
md nations. | tell you, Paul was right
when he suggested that we wrestle, not
With pygmies, but with giants that will
Town u.s. unless the Lord Almighty is
our coadjutor. Blessed be God that we
nave now, and further on will have in
nightier degree, that divine help!