Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1898-07-18

blackness of darkness forever. Live life
over again? Why, if many of those who
are respectable were permitted to ex-
pertinent, the next journey would be
demolition. You get through, as Job
says, by the skin of your teeth. Next
time you might not get through at all.
Satan would say, 81 know him now
better than did before and have for so
years been studying his weaknesses, and
will weave a stronger web of circum-
stances to catch him next time And
satan would concentrate his forces on
this one man, and the last state of that
man would be worse than the first My
friends, our faces are in the right direc-
ton Better go forward than backward,
even if we had the choice. The greatest
disaster I can think of would be for you
to return to boyhood in 1898. Oh, if life
were a smooth Luzerne or Cayuga lake,
would like to get into yacht and sail
over it, not once, but twice-yea, a
thousand times But life is an uncer-
tain sea and some of the ships crash on
the icebergs of cold indifference, and
some take fire Of evil passions and some
lose their bearings and run into the
Goodwin sands and. some are never
heard of. Surely on such a treacherous
sea as that one voyage is enough.
Delayed joys.
Besides all this, do you know, if you
could have your wish and live life over
again it would put you so much further
from reunion with your friends in heav-
en-? If you are in the noon Of life or
the evening Of life, you are not very
far from the golden gate at which you
are to meet your transported and en-
paradised loved ones. You are now, let
us say, 20 years, or 10 years, or one year
off from celestial conjunction. Now,
suppose you went back in your earthly
life 80 years, or 40 years, or SO years,
what an awful postponement of the
time Of reunion. It would be as though
you were going to San Francisco to
great banquet, and you got to Oakland,
four or five miles this side of it, and
then came back to Baltimore to get
better start, as though you were going
to England to be crowned, and having
come in sight of the mountains of Wales
you put back to Sandy Hook in order
to make a better voyage Would you
like for many years to adjourn the
songs Of heaven to adjourn the thrones
of heaven, to adjourn the companion
ship of heaven, to adjourn the rest of
heaven, to adjourn the presence of
Christ in heaven? No, the wheel of
time turns in the right direction, and
it is we'll it turns so fast. Three hun
dred and sixty-fve revolutions in
year and forward rather than 365 revo-
1r,4s he III
But hear We, hear We, while tell you.
how you may practically live your life
over again and be all the better for it.
You may put into the remaining years
of your life all you have learned of wis
dom in your past life. You may make
the coming 10 years worth the preceding
40 or so years. When man says he
would like to live his life over again
because he would do so much better,
and yet goes right on living as he has
always lived, do you not see he stulti-
fies himself? He proves that if he could
go back he would do almost the same
as he has done.
If man eat green apples some
Wednesday in cholera time and is
thrown into fearful cramps and says on
Thursday, 81 wish I had been more
prudent in my diet; oh, if I could live
Wednesday over again" and then on
Friday eats apples just as green, he
proves that it would have been no adj
vantage for him to live Wednesday over
again. And if we, deploring our past
life, and with the idea of improvement.
long for an opportunity to try it over
again, yet go on making the same mis-
takes and committing the same sins,
we only demonstrate that the repetition
of our existence would afford no i'm
provement It was green apples before,
and it would be green apples over again.
Atone For Past Incidence.
AS soon as ship captain strikes
rock in the lake or sea he reports it,
and buoy is swung over that reef, and
mariners henceforth stand off from that
rock. And all our mistakes in the past
ought to be buoys, warning US to keep
in the right channel. There is no ex-
cuse for us if we split on the same rock \
where we split before. Going along the
sidewalk at night where excavations
are being made we frequently see Ian
tern on framework, and we turn aside,
for that lantern says keep out Of this
hole. And all along the pathway of life
lanterns are set as warnings, and by the
time we come to midlife we ought to
know where it is safe to walk and
where it is unsafe.
Besides that we have all these years
been learning how to be useful, and in
the next decade we ought to accomplish
more for God and the church and the
world than in anv nreviouS fo1r dec
AIDES. The best way to atone for past
Incidence or past transgression is by fu-
ture assiduity. Yet we often find Chris
tian men who were not converted until
they were 40 or so, as old age comes