The Wilmington daily Republican. (Wilmington, Del.) 1890-1902, 1899-12-18
j could hiss thy very dust with ecstasy O
Affection.
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For hsr ny prayers asceD4,
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"Perfumsd smoke" says Solomon Il
the words following my text. Not liz
the fumes eoughed up from the throat o
q steam pipe or poisoned with the gases
Of chemical factories or floating in BLACK
wrath from the conHagration Of home.
steads or suiphurous from blazing bat.
teries, but sweet as q burning grove Of
cinnamon or jungle Of sassafras or the
odors Of temple censor. "Who ia this
that cometh out Of the wilderness like
pillars of smoke perfumed with myrrh
and frankincense? Hear II, 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 startling.
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 frater-
nifty and hatred. The whole happiness Of
man or his complete misery is some.
times expressed in this thin vapor which
the mind scatters at will" The great
Frenchman was right, but 60 further
and say that as the kingdom of God i'd
yances like pillars Of smoke the black
volumes belching from batteries Of war
and pouring out from portfolios Of ships
will vanish. .aN'-
A distinguished general Of our civil
war told me that Abraham Lincoln pro-
posed to avoid our civil conflict by pur-
chase of all the slaves of the south and
setting them free. He calculated what
would be q reasonable price for them,
and, when the number of millions of dol
lars that would be required for such
purchase was announced, the proposition
was secuted, and the north would not
have made the offer, and the south would
not have accepted It il made. But"
said my military friend, "the war went
on, and just the number of millions of
dollars that Mr.. Lincoln calculated would
have been enough to- make reasonable
purchase of all the slaves were spent In
war, besides all the precious lives that
were hurled away in the $50 battles" In
other words, there ought to be some 9th
er way for men to settle their c0ntrover-
sizes without butchery.
The Arbiter of Nations.
The church of God will yet become the
arbiter of nations. II the world would
allow it, it could today step lin between
Germany and France and settle the trou-
BILE about Alsace and Lorraine, and be-
tween England and her antagonists, and
between all the other nations that are fly
ing at each others throats and command
ov,,tao aud he 1aoo
for the plow the war horses now being
hitched to ammunition wagons 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, 80
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 Offices of the world
more busy than ever in recognizing new
enginery of destruction, the human race
will after awhile 60 fighting with one
arm, and hobbling with one foot, and
stumbling along with one eye, and some
ingenious inventor, inspired Of the arch
angel of all mischief, will contrive ma
chine that will bore 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.
But this shall not be, for whatever I
let 90 hang on to my Bible, which tells
me that the blacksmith's shop shall yet
come to its grandest use when the war
rior and the husbandman shall enter it
side by side. and the soldier shall throw
into its bank Of fires his sword, and the
farmer shall pick it up 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 manger where Jesus was
born.
Peace! Forever roll off the sky the
black pillars of smoke from the Maren-
COS and Salamancas and Borodinos and
Sedans and Gettysburgs Of earth! And
right after them roll into the heavens the
peaceful vapors from the chimneys OF
farmhouses and asylums and churches
and capitals of Christian nations. 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 saw from
many chimneys the smoke tossed in the
air and whirled in great velocity, volume
after volume, fold after fold, and car
ried on the swift wind were the great
pillars of smoke. And, helped by Solo
mon in the text, l saw the speed Of the
church symbolized. Do you realize the
the church of God is under?
Why. the smoke Of chimney on the top
of Mount Washington, when the wind is
blowing 60 miles the hour. is slow as
with the celebrity of good infu-
ences. For SO 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 SO centuries Of devastation.
What great revivals! What mighty
churches. What saved millions!
From the ruins of Babylon and Assyria
and Nineveh and the valleys of the Nile
have been exhumed prov
ing to all fair minded men that the Bible
is the truest book ever written. Tsn
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 ham
mer of Christian biologists: the oldest
profane writers, Hiromus. Helanicus and
confirming the Bible account Of
ancient longevity; Tacitus and Pliny
confirming the Bible accounts of destroy
ed Seldom and Gomorrah; Tacitus and
Porphyry telling the same story Of Christ
rs Matthew and Luke told; Macrobius
telling of the massacre of children In
and Phlegon sketching at the
,ruciiixion.
God Wrote the Bible.
1t is demonstrated to all honest men
hat It is not so certain that William
Cullen Bryant wrote "rhanatopsis" or
Longfellow wrote "Hiawatha" as that
God, by the hand OF prophet and apostle,
wrote the Bible. All the wise men in sci
nee and law and medicine and literature
md merchandise are gradually coming
O believe in Christianity, and soon there
viii be no people who disbelieve in it ex-
ept those conspicuous for lack of brain
II men with two families, who do not
ike the Bible because 1t rebukes their
wnish propensitics.