Connecticut western news., 1899-12-21

myrrh and frankincehse!" Hear il. men and women everywhere, that the advance of the genuine church of Christ means peace for all nations.
 Victor Hugo, in his book entitled Ninety three" says: Nothing calmer than smoke, but nothing more star ting. There are peaceful smokes, and there are evil ones. The thickness and color of a line of smoke make the whole difference between war and peace, between fraternity and hatred. The whole happiness of man or his complete misery is sometimes express ed in this thin vapor which the wind scatters at will" The great FreLch- man was right, but l go further and say that as the kingdom of God ad- vances like pillars of smoke the black volumes belching from batteries of war and pouring out from portholes of ships will vanish.
 A distinguished general of our civil war told me that Abraham Lincoln proposed to avoid our civil conflict by purchase of all the slaves of the south
 
 what would be a reasonable price for them, and when the number of mil lions of dollars that would be requir- ed for such purchase was announced the proposition was secuted, and the north would not have made the offer, and the south would not have accept ed it if made. But" said my military friend, ''the war went on, and just the number of millions of dollars that MT. Lincoln calculated would have been enough to make a reasonable purchase of all the slaves was spent in war, be- sides all the precious lives that were hurled away in the 250 battles. In oth- CT words, there ought to be some other way for men to settle their controyer- sies without butchery.
 The church of God will yet become the arbiter of nations. If the world would allow it, 1t could today step in between Germany and France and set tie the trouble about Alsace and LOT raine, and between England and her antagonists, and between all the other nations that are flying at each others threats, and command peace and dis band armies, and harness for the blow the war horses or saddled for cavalry charge. That time must come or through the increased facility for shooting men and blowing up cities and whelming hosts to instant death, so that we can kill regiment easier than we could once kill a company and kill a brigade easier than we could once kill a regiment, the patent of fees of the world more busy than ever in recognizing new enginery of de struction, the human race will after awhile go fighting with one arm, and hobbling with one foot, and stumbling along with one eye, and some ingenious inventor, inspired of the archangel of all mischief, will contrive a machine that will bore a hole to the earth's center, and some desperate nation will throw into that hole enough dynamite to blow this hulk of planet into frag ments, dropping the meteoric stones on surrounding stellar habitations.
 Column of Peace.
 But this shall not be- for whatever I let go I hang on to my Bible, which tells me that the blacksmith's shop shall yet come to it's grandest use when the warrior and the husbandman shall enter it side by side, and the soldier shall throw into it's bank of fires his sword, and the farmer shall pick it up a plowshare, and the straightest spear shall be bent into crook at each end, and then cut in two, and what was one spear shall be two pruning hooks. Down with Moloch and up with Christ! Let no more war horses eat out of the manager where Jesus was born.
 Peace! Forever roll off the sky the black pillars of smoke from the Maren- gos and Salamancas and Borodinos and Sedans and Gettysburgs of earth! And right after them roll into the heav- ems the peaceful vapors from the chim- neys of farmhouses and asylums and churches and capitals of Christian na- tions, and as the sunlight strikes through these vapors they will write in letters of jet and gold all over the sky from horizon to zenith, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men,"
 While thinking of these things look ed out from my window, and the wind was violently blowing. And I saw from many chimneys the smoke tossed in the air and whirled in great velocity, volume after volume, fold after fold, and carried on the swift wind were the great pillars of smoke. And helped by Solomon in the text saw the speed of the church symbolized. Do you real ize the momentum the church of God is under? Why, the smoke of chim- ney on the top of Mount Washington when the wind is blowing GO miles the hour Is slow as compared with the celerity of good influences. For 59 centuries the devil had it his own way among the nations. Nearly all the great missionary movements have been started within the century, and see what one century has done to recover the world from 59 centuries of devas- tation. What great revivals! What mighty churches! What saved mil lions!
 From the ruins of Babylon and As syria and Nineveh and the valleys of; the Nile combinations have been ex- humed, proving to all fair minded men that the Bible is the truest book ever written. The mythologies of Egypt were found to have embodied in them the knowledge of mans expulsion from paradise and the sacrifice of great emancipator. Moses account of the creation, corroborated by the hammer of Christian geologists; the oldest pro- fane writers, Hiromus, Helanicus and Berosus, confirming the Bible account of ancient longevity; Tacitus and Pliny confirming the Bible accounts of de- stroyed Sodom and Gomorrah; Tacitus and Porphyry telling the same story of Christ as Matthew and Luke told; Macrobius telling of the massacre of children In Bethlehem and Phlegon sketching at the crucifixion.
 It is demonstrated to all honest men that it is not so certain that William