Connecticut western news., 1899-06-29


 means famine, oppression and taxa tionT and so 1t really came to pass Christ went on until he broke all the seven seals and opened all the scroll. We'll, the future of all of us is sealed scroll, and l am glad that no one but Christ can open 1t. Do not let us join that class of Christians In our day, who are trying to break the seven seals of the future. They are trying to peep into things they have no business with.
 Do not go to some necromancer or spiritualist or soothsayer or fortune teller to find out what Is going to hap. pen to yourself or your family or your friends. Wait till Christ breaks the seal to find out whether in your own personal life or the life of the nation or the life of the world it is going to be the white horse of prosperity or the red horse of war or the black horse of fam inc. You will soon enough see him paw and hear him neigh. Take care of the present, and the future will take care of itself If a man live 70 years, his biography Is in scroll having at least seven seals, and let him not during the first ten years of his life try to look in- to the twenties, nor the twenties into the thirties, nor the thirties into the forties. nor the forties into the fifties, nor the tifties into the sixties, nor the sixties into the seventies. From the way the years have got the habit of racing along, I guess you will not have to wait a great while before all the seals of the future are broken. I would not give cents to know how long l am going to live, or in what day of what year the world Is going to be demolish- ed. I would rather give $1,OOO not to know. Suppose some one could breal the next seal In the scroll of your per sonal history and should tell you that on the next 4th of July, 1901, you were to die, the summer after next, how much would you be good for between this and that? It would from now until then be a prolonged funeral. You would be counting the months and the days, and your family and friends would be counting them, and next 4th of July you would rub your hands together and whine: "One year from today am to go. Dear me! I wish no one had told me so long before. l wish that ne cromancer had not broken the seal of the future" And meeting some under taker, you would say: T hope you will keep yourself free for an engagement the 4th of July, 1901. That day you will be needed at my house. To save time, you might as well take my meas ure now, 5 feet Il inches" am glad that Christ dropped a thick veil over the hour of our demise and of the hour of the worlds destruction when he said, "Of that day and hour knoweth no man; no, not the angels, but my Father only" Keep your hands of the seven seals.
 There is another mighty seven of the Bible-viz, the seven thunders. What those thunders meant we are not told, and there has been much guessing about them; but they are to come, we are told, before the end of all things, and the world cannot get along with out them. Thunder is the speech of lightning. There are evils in our world which must be thundered down and which will require at least seven vol leys to prostrate them. We are all do- ing nice, delicate, soft handed work in churches and reformatory institu- tions against the evils of the world, and much of 1t amounts to teaspoon dipping out the Atlantic ocean, or a clam shell digging away at noun tain, or tack hammer smiting the Gibraltar. What Is needed is thunder bolts, and at least seven of them. There Is the long line of fraudulent commer cial establishments, every stone in the foundation, and every brick in the wall, and every nail in the rafter made out of dishonesty; skeletons of poorly paid sewing girls arms in every beam of that establishments; human nerves worked into every figure of that em- broidery; blood in the deep dye of that refulgent upholstery; billions of dollars Of accumulated fraud intrenched In massive storehouses, and stock compa- nies manipulated by interruptions men, until the monopoly Is defiant of all earth and heaven. How shall the evil be overcome? By treatises on the maxim: Honesty Is the best policy" Or by soft repetition of the golden rule ttat we must do to others as we would have them do to usY' No; 1t will not be done that way. What Is needed and will come Is the seven thunders.
 There is drunkenness backed up by a capital mightier than in any other busi ness. Intoxicating liquors enough In this country to float navy. Good grain to the amount of 67, ,950, ,00O bush els annually destroyed to make the deadly liquid. Breweries, distilleries ginshops, rum palaces, liquor associa- tions, our nation spending annually seven hundred and forty millions of dollars for rum, resulting in bankrupt cy, disease, pauperism, filth, assassina- ton, death, illimitable woe What will stop them? High license? No Pro hibition laws? No. Churches? No. Moral suasion? No. Thunderbolts will do it; nothing else win. Seven thun- ders
 Yonder are intrenched infidelity and atheism with their magazines of litera- ture scoffing at our Christianity; their Hoe printing presses busy day and night. There are their blaspheming apostles, their drunken Tom Paines and libertine Voltaires of the present as well as the past re-enforced by all the powers of darkness from highest demon to lowest imp. What will extir- pate those monsters of infidelity and atheism? John Browns shorter cate chism about "Who made you?" or Westminster catechism about What Is the chief cld of man?' No. Thur. derbolts! The seven thundersl For the impurities of the world, empalaced as well as cellared, epauletted as we'll as ragged, enthroned as we'll as ditch ed; for corrupt legislation which at times makes our state and national capitals hemispheric stench; for su- perstitions that keep whole nations in squalor century after ceptury their jug gernauts crushing, their knives iacerat- | ing, their waters drowning, their fu- | neral pyres burning the seven thun- |