The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-02-16
ABOUT FOUR WASTED LIVES"
MR. SPEAR TELLS SOME PLAIN TRUTHS AT REVIVAL MEETING.

Lowly and the Oppressed.
 The revival meetings at the Howard avenue Baptist church under direction of Rev. D. w. Stoddard, the pastor, continued last night with renewed spiritual interest and a growing at tendance. The spirit animating these meetings Is most encouraging. Mon day night after Mr. Spear had finished his discourse, and MT. Stoddard had concluded an experience meeting, drought with hopeful results, the peo- pie fingered long after the meeting had closed and talked over with each other the sweet spirit of fellowship the ser- vices have thus far engendered. Last night w. H. Spear spoke again. This time his subject was on Wasted Lives" and the text was from Mark, fourteenth chapter and fourteenth verse, tWhy this waste?" MT. Spear said that Christ asks no impossibilities. q told you last night the sweet story of that poor woman who brought to Jesus her all-the best she had-and to make the gift most fit-. ting she enclosed it in box of alabas- ter of the most costly workmanship. Tonight want to follow out still fur sought to impress upon this people, ~1- ,sl~ fNv, E0I ses fpon- mortal, while that done for self dies and is forgotten.
 ''The world is full of blighted hopes and shattered lives. Men have sought to build to their own glory, to their own aggrandizement. They have erected monuments upon the shifting sands instead of upon the rock and when the pillows of sin rolled in and the angry, ever-restless, ever-shifting ocean of fortune beat upon them, the monuments fell, broken pile of disfig uration, and oblivion hid their torn and battered fragments.
 Now and then some dreary pile of desolation rises above the roar of the surges, an awful warning to the build- CTS of time. and men look upon the broken material and ask, Why this waste?'
 Its a sad sight to see the shattered and wasted lives that come drifting into our police courts and into our sta- tion houses day by day and night by night.
 Mothers boys who have gone down under the blight of shattered hopes wrecked many of them ere manhood's S noon has o'ershadowed youths early dawn.
 Many are the victims of environ ment. Others are the natural fruit of vicious percentage, while there are oth- CTS whose monuments Of life loomed up with mighty grandeur, but went down under the surging waves of sin, be- cause they were pounded upon the sands, and many are the wrecks there of.
 T hear some one say tonight, 'Oh had I the gifts of some, what great things I would do for Christi You are not asked to do the work of others. Jesus holds you responsible only in proportion to the talents He has given you for service. What are you doing with those talents? Are they wrapped in napkins and buried in earth until
  If they are, then as Christian men and as Christian women you are not doing your duty by God, and the measuring up of your opportunities and their re- suits show that you are unfaithful to your trust.
 Tt is not needful you should wield sceptre: not necessary you should wear a crown. The grandest eulogium ever uttered was that of this woman who gave her all to Christ: She hath done what she could
 'sHere is a man whose life has been wasted by years of dissipation. At last he comes to himself by the grace of God he rises above self, and says, God helping me, I'll turn over a new leaf and henceforth will lead a Chris tian life And he does turn over the new leaf, and he does try to do as near right as he can by the light that's giv- en him. As Christian men and as Christian women are you and I doing all we can to encourage such an one? It isn't the sinners that clog gospe! work at times half so much as the saints. Are you indifferent to that man S spiritual welfare? Then you are not true to yourself or true to God as a professed follower of Christ. You are shirking your duty, and God will call you to account when the records If the book of life are made known at the throne of judgment.
 T have little sympathy with that phase of so-called Christianity that finds it's sole delight in silks and satins kid gloves and broadcloth, and that frowns upon the poor, the needy and the oppressed.
 T learn from this grand old Bible that Christ Jesus went about doing good among the poor and the lonely No man was sunk too low for Christ to help him. No heart was too wretch ed; no position too lonely for this mar of sorrow, whose big heart of love and of tenderness yearnes with compassion for the sinful and the oppressed o1 every land.
 Christ gave His life for humanity What are you giving tonight for Him He suffered the tortures and the deatt of Calvary that you and I might be. come the interiors of life immortal,
 q think sometimes when I mee1 some poor fellow who has been dow1 on his luck and Is once more getting upon his feet and trying to serve Chris with full and penitent heart, wonder ing if he will ever join the song O.