The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1898-08-05

"
write the other in dust. mo, no, says
the world; "let woman go down, and
let man go up" What is that hear
FLASHING into the Hudson or Potomac
at midnight2 And then there is a
gurgle of strangulation and all is still
Never mind. 1t is only a woman too
discouraged to live. Let the mills of
the cruel world grind right on.
But while l speak of Christ Of the
text, His STOPPING down writing in the
dust, do not think / underrate the
literature of the dust. 1t is the most
tremendous of all literature. 1t is the
greatest of all libraries When Lay
ard exhumed Nineveh he was only
opening the door of its mighty dust.
The excavations of Pompeii have only
been the unclasping Of the lids of a
volume of a nations dust. When Adj
miral Farragut and his friends visited
that resurrected city, the house of
Balbo, who had been one of its chief
citizens in it's prosperous days, was
opened and table was spread in that
house which for 1,S1O years had been
buried by volcanic eruption, and Far
ragut and his guests walked over the
equisite mosaics and under the beauti-
full fresco, and IL almost seemed like be
ing entertained by those who IS CEN
turtles ago had turned to dust
Oil this mighty literature of the
dust Where are the remains of Sem
nacherib and Attila and Epaminondas
and Tamerlane and Trajan and Philip
of Macedon and julius Caesarp Dust!
Where are the heroes who fought on
both sides at Chaeronea, at Hastings,
at Marathon, at Cressy, of the 10000
men who fought az ACiucourt of the
$50, 900 men who faced death at Jena,
of the 400, 900 whose armor glittered in
the sun at Wagram, of the 100000
men under Darius at krbela, of the
2,641, 900 men under Xerxes at Their
mopylae? Dust Where are the
guests who danced on the floors of the
Alhambra or the Persian palaces
of Ahasuerus? Dust! Where are
the musicians who played, or the
orators who spoke, and the sculptors
who chiseled, and the architects
who built, in all the centuries except
our own? Dust! Where are most of
the books that once entranced the
worldp Dust! Pliny wrote 20 books
of history; all lost The most of
Meander's writing lost OF 1870 come
dies of Plautus, all gone but 20. Euri-
pides wrote 100 dramas, all gone but
10 Eschylus wrote 100 dramas, all
gone but seven. Varro wrote the
laborious biographies of 700 Romans,
not fragment left. Quintilian wrote
his favorite book on the corruption of
eloquence, all lost Thirty books of
Tacitus lost. Dion Cassius wrote
so books, only 20 remain. Beros-
sious' history all lost Where there
is one living book there are a
thousand dead books The greatest
library in the world, that which has
the widest shelves and longest aisles
and the most multitudinous volumes
and the vastest wealth. is the under
ground library. 1t is the royal library,
the continental library, the hemis-
pheric library, the planetary library,
the library of the dust. And all these
library cases will be opened, and all
these scrolls unrolled, and all these
volumes unclasped. and as easily as in
your library or mine we take up a
book, blow the dust off of il, and turn
over its pages, so easily will the Lord
of the Resurrection pick out of this
| library of dust every volume of human
life aud open IL and read il and display
it. And the volume will be rebound,
TO be set in the royal library of the
Kings palace, or in the prison library
of the self-destroyed.
Oh, this mighty literature of the
| 1nNgN 10 AN I'll
all, that Christ chose, instead of an
inkstand, the impressionable sand on
the floor of an ancient temple, and
instead of hard pen, put forth his
toretinger, with the same kind of
nerve and muscle and bone and flesh
as that which makes up our own fore
finger, and wrote the awful doom of
hypocrisy, and full and complete for
giveness for repentant sinners, even
the worst. We talk about the ocean
of Christs mercy. Put four ships upon
that ocean and let them sail out in
opposite directions for thousa nd
years, and see if they can find the
shore of the ocean of the divine
mercy. Let them sail to the north
and the east and the west, and then
after the thousand years of voyage let
them come back and they will report,
mo shore, no shore TO the ocean of
| Gods mercyr'
And now that | can believe that
which read, how that mother kept
burning a candle in the window every
night for ten years, and one night,
very late, poor waif of the street en-
| tered. The aged woman said to her;
"Sit down by the fire." and the strang.
err said: why do you keep that light
in the window?" The aged woman
said; THAT is to light my way
ward daughter when she returns.
Since she went away, ten years
ago, my hair has turned white.
Folks blame me for worrying about
her, but you see l am her mother and
sometimes, half dozen times night,
| open the door and look out into the
darkness and cry: 'Lizziey Lizzie?
But must not tell you any more
| about my trouble for | ruess from, tho