The Greenville times. [volume] (Greenville, Miss.) 1868-1917, 1899-12-23

| let go ] hung onto my Bible, which tells
me that the blacksmiths shop shall yet
! come 10 its gruudcst use when the war
| riur and the husbundmau shall enter IT
side hy side, and the soldier shall throw
| into It's bank OF fires his sword, and the
farmer shall pick itup piowshare, and
the straightest spear shall be bent into
a 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 Christi Let no more war
horses eat out Of the Manager where
Jesus was born.
Peace! Forever roll OF the sky the
blacltpilars of smoke from the Maren-
gus and Selamancas and Borodinos
and Sedans and Gettysburgs OF earth!
And right after them roll into the
heavens the peaceful vapors from the
chimnoys of farmhouses and asylums
and churches and capitals of Christian
nations, and, rs the sunlight strikes
through these yapors, 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 |
looked out from my window, and the
wind was violently blowing. And l
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 smy-
bolized. Do you realize the momentum
| the church of God is under? Why,
the smoke of a chimney on the top
Of Mount Washington, when the wind
is blowing GO miles the hour is slow
as compared with the CELEBRITY of good
| influences. For 80 centuries the devil
had it his own way among the ma
tons Nearly all the great missionary
movements have been started within
the century, and see what one century
has done to recover the world from 50
centuries of devastation. What great
reyivals! What mighty churches!
What saved millions!
From the ruins of Babylon and As
syria and NiEeyeh and the valleys of
| the Nile combinations have been ex-
humed proving 10 all fair-minded men
that the Bible is the trucst 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 profane writers, Hromus, Hell
anicus and Berosus, confirming the
Bible account of ancient longevity;
Tacitus and Pliny confirming the
Bible accounts of destroyed Sodom
and Gomorruh; 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 crucifXion
1t is demonstrated to all honest men
that it is not so certain that William
Cullen Bryant wrote "Thanatopsis" or
Longfellow wrote "Hiawatha" as that
God, by the hand of prophet and apos-
tie, wrote the Bible. All the wise men
in science ard law and medicine and
literature and merchandise are grad
ually coming to believe in Christianity,
and soon there will be no people who
disbelieve in it except those conspicu
Gus for lack of brain or men with two
families, who do not like the Bible
because it rebulles their swinish pro-
pensities.
The time is fastening when there |
will be no infdels left except liber-
tines and harlots and murderers. Mil
lions of Christians where once there |
were thousands, and thousands where !
once there were hundreds. What a
bright evening this, the evening of the
nineteenth century! And the TWEEN
tieth century, which is about to dawn.
will, in my opinion, bring universal
victory for Christ and the church that
quick or, if you prefer the figure of
the text, is being swept on in the
mighty gales of blessing imposing and
grand and majestic and swift like pill
lars of smoke.
Oh, come into the church through
Christ the door, a door more glorious
than that of the temple of Hercules,
which had two pillars, and one was
gold and the other emerald! Come in
to-day! The world you leave behind
is a poor world, and it will burn and
pass off like pillars of smoke. Whether
the final conhagration will start in the
coal mines of Pennsylvania, which. in
some places, have for many years been
burning and eating into the heart of
the mountains, or whether it shall be-
gin near the California geysers or
whether from out the furnaces of
CotopaXi and Vesuvius and Stromboli
it shall burst forth upon the aston
ished nations l make no prophecy, but
all biologists tell us that we stand on
the lid of world, the heart of which
is a raging, roaring awful flame, and
some day God will let the red mon
sters out of their imprisonment Of
centuries, and New York, on fire in
1885, and Charleston on fire in 1868
and Chicago on fire in 1872. and Bos-
ton on fire in 1878 were only like one
spark from blacksmith's forge as
with that last universal
blaze which will be seen in other
worlds. But gradually the flames will
lessen, and the world will become a
great living coal, and that will take on
asben hue, and then our ruined planet
will begin to smoke, and the noun
tains will smoke, and the valleys viii