Connecticut western news., 1899-12-14


 new plan of cornering his foe will keep him wide awake while the clock strikes Il, 12, l, ?. I give you an unfailing prescription for wakefulness: Spend the evening hours rehearsing your wrongs and the best way of averaging them. Hold a convention of friends on this subject in your parlor or office at 8 or 9 o'clock. Close the evening by writing bitter letter expressing your sentiments. Take from the desk or pigeonhole the papers in the case to re- fresh your mind with your enemy's meanness Then lie down and wait for the coming of the day, and it will come before sleep comes or your sleep will be worried quiescence and, if you take the precaution to lie flat on your back, frightful nightmare.
 Why not put a bound to your ami mostly? Why let your foes come into the sanctities of your dormitory? Why let those slanderers who have already torn your reputation to pieces or in- jured your business bend over your midnight pillow and drive from you one of the greatest blessings that God can offer-sweet, refreshing, all in- vigorating sleep? Why not fence out your enemies by the golden bars of the sunset? Why not stand behind the barricade of evening cloud and say to them, "Thus far and no farther.' Many man and many a woman is having the health of body as well as the health of soul eaten away by n malevolent spirit. I have in time of religious awakening had persons night after night come into the inquiry room and get no peace of soul. After awhile I have bluntly asked them, ''Is there not some one against whom you have a hatred that you are not willing to give up?" After a little confusion they have slightly whispered, 'Yes." Then have said, You will never find peace with God as long as you retain that virulence."
 Forgive Your Enemies.
 A boy in Sparta having stolen q fox kept him under his coat, and. though the fox was gnawing his vitals, he sub mitted to it rather than expose his misdeed. Many man with q smiling face has under his jacket an animosity that is gnawing away the strength of his body and the integrity of his soul. Better get rid of that hidden fox as soon as possible. There are hundreds of domestic circles where that which most is needed is the spirit of forgive ness. Brothers apart, and sisters apart, and parents and children apart. Solo mon says brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city. Are there not enough sacred memories of your childhood to bring you together? The rabbins recount how that Neb- uchadnezzar's son had such a spite against his father that after he was dead he had his father burned to ashes and then put the ashes into four sacks and tied them to four eagles necks which flew away in opposite directions. And there are now domestic antipa thies that seem forever to have scat tered all parental memories to the four winds of heaven. How far the eagles fly with those sacred ashes! The hour of sundown makes to that family no practical suggestion. Thomas Carlyle, in his biography of Frederick the Great, says the old king was told by the confessor he must be at peace with his enemies if he wanted to enter heaven. Then he said to his wife, the queen, Write to your brother after I am dead tha. forgive him." Roloff, the confessor, said, "Her majesty had better write him immediately" "No." said the king, after I am dead; that will be safer." So he let the sun of his earthly existence go down upon his wrath.
 Again, we ought not to allow the sun to set before forgiveness takes place, because we might not live to see another day. And what if we should be ushered into the presence of our Maker with grudge upon our soul? The majority of people depart this life in the night Between II o'clock D. m. and o'clock a. m. there is some thing in the atmosphere which relaxes the grip which the body has on the soul, and most people enter the next world through the shadows of this world. Perhaps God may have ar ranged it In that way so as to make the contrast the more glorious. I have seen sunshiny days in this world that
  ance of heaven. But as most people leave the earth between sundown and sunrise they quit this world at its darkest, and heaven, always bright, will be the brighter for that contrast. Out of darkness into irradiation.
 Burden of old Grudges.
 Shall we then leap over the roseate bank of sunset into the favorite hunt ing ground of disease and death, car rying our animosities with us? Who would want to confront his God, against whom we have all done mean CT things than anybody has even done against us, carrying old grudges? How can we expect his forgioeness for the greater when we are not willing to for give others for the less? Napoleon was encouraged to undertake the cross ing of the Alps because Charlemagne had previously crossed them. And all this rugged path of forgiveness bears the bleeding footsteps of him who con- quered through suffering, and we ought to be willing to follow. On the night of our departure from this life in- to the next our one plea will have to be for mercy, and it will have to be offered ill the presence of him who has said, "If you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Heavenly Father forgive your trespasses." What sorry plight if we stand there hat ing this one, and hating that one, and wishing that one a damage, and wish ing some one else a calamity and we ourselves needing forgiveness for 1O,- 900 obliquities of heart and life. When our last hour comes. we want it to find us all right. Hardly anything affects me so much in the uncovering of Pom- peii as the account of the soldier who, after the city had for many centuries been covered with the ashes and scorie of Vesuvius, was found stand ing in his place on guard, hand on