Connecticut western news., 1899-06-29
lew will come, and those who do come will wish they had not come at all.
 The Seven CandIesticks.

Golden candlesticksi Scour up the six lilies on each branch, and know that the more lovely and bright they are the more fit they are to hold the light. But Christless light is q dam age to the world rather than a good. Cromwell stabbed his cavalry horses in St. Paurs cathedral, and many now use the church in which to stable vani- ties and worldliness. A worldly church Is candlestick without the candle, and 1t had It's prototype in St. Sophia in Constantlnople, built to the glory of God by Constantine, but transformed to base uses by Mohammed the Second Built out of colored marble; a cupola with 24 windows soaring to height of 1S0 feet; the ceiling one great bewilder ment of mosaic; galleries supported by eight columns of porphyry and 67 col umns of green jasper; nine bronze doors with alto-relievo work, fascinat- ing to the eye of any artist; vases and vestments incrusted with all manner of precious stones. Four walls on fire with indescribable splendor Though labor was cheap, the building cost $1,- | most supernatural in pomp and maj esty. But Mohammedanism tore down from the walls of that building all the saintly and Christly images, and high up in the dome the figure of the cross was rubbed out that the crescent of the harbarous Turk might be substituted. A great church. but no Christi A gor- geous candlestick, but no candle! Ten thousand such churches would not give the world as much light as one home made tallow candle by which last night some grandmother in the eighties put on her spectacles and read the Psalms of David in larger type. Up with the churches, by all means! Hundreds of them, thousands of them, and the more the better. But let each one be blaze of heavenly light, making the world brighter and brighter, till the last shadow has disappeared, and the last of the suffering children of God shall have reached the land where they have no need of candlestick or ''of candle, neither light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light, and they shall reign forever and ever" Seven candle sticks the complete number of lights! Let your light shine before men, that they. seeing your good works, may glorify your Father which is in heaven.
 Turn now in your Bible to the seven stars. We are distinctly told that they are the ministers of religion. Some are large stars, some of them small stars, some of them sweep a wide circuit and some of them a small circuit, but so far as they are genuine they get their light from the great central sun around which they make revolution. Let each one keep In his own sphere. The solar system would be soon wrecked if the stars, instead of keeping their own orbits, should go to hunting down other stars. Ministers of religion should never clash. But in all the centuries of the Christian church some of these stars have been hunting an Edward Irving or a Horace Bushnell or an Al bert Barnes. And the stars that were In pursuit of the other stars lost their own orbit, and some of them could never again find 1t. Alas for the heresy hunters! The best way to destroy error is to preach the truth. The best way to scatter darkness Is to strike light. There Is In immcnsity room enough for all the ministers. The min isters who give up righteousness and the truth will get punishment enough anyhow, for they are "the wandering stars for whom Is reserved the black ness of darkness forever"
 1 should like, as a minister, when am dying, to be able truthfully to say what a captain of the English army, fallen at the head of his column and dying on the Egyptian battlefield, said to General Wolseley, who came to con dole with him: "I led them straight. Didn't lead them straight, general?' God has put us ministers as captains in this battlefield of truth against error. Great at last will be our chagrin if we fall leading the people the wrong way; but great will be our gladness if, when the battle is ovec, we can hand our sword back to our great commander, saying: "Lord Jesus! We led the peo- pie straight Didn't we lead them stIaightY'
 Those ministers who go off at a tan gent and preach some other gospel are
 
 across the heavens a little while and make people stare, and throw down few meteoric stones, and then go out of sight if not out of existence. Brethren in the ministry, let us remember that God calls us stars, and our business Is to shine and to keep our own sphere, and then when we get done trying to light up the darkness of this world, we will wheel into higher spheres, and In us shall be fulfilled the promise they that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars forever and ever."
 The ministers are not all Pecksniffs and canting hypocrites, as some would have you think! Forgive me, If having at other times glorified the medical pro- fession, and the legal profession, and the literary profession-I glorify my own. I have seen them in their homes and heard them in their pulpits, and a grander array of men never breathed, and the Bible figure is not strained when 1t calls them stars; and whole cancellations of glorious ministers have already taken their places on high, where they shine even brighter
 
 Kirk of the Congregational church, Stephen H. Tyng of the Episcopal church, Matthsw Simpson of the Meth odist church, >bn Bowling of the Baptist church, Samuel K. Talmage of the Presbyterian church. Thomas De Witt of the Reformed <urch, John Chambers of the Independent church, and there stop, for 1t so hapI kns that I have mentioned the seven stars of the seven churches.
 The Seven Seals.
 l pass on to another mighty Bible seven and they arc the seven seals St. John in vision saw scroll with seven seals, and he heard an angel cry, "Who Is worthy to loose the seals thereof? Take eight or ten sheets of foolscap pa per, paste them together and roll them into scroll, and have the scroll at sev- T ,~I. -J~l