Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1900-11-08

snatched it away from her. And though
in that bible was a lock cf hair of the
dead chld..the only child that God had
ever given them-he pitched the book with
with the tone- and spat on it and cursed
it and said, "Susan. never have any more
of that damnahle stuff here"
How many individual and organized at
tennis have heen made to exterminate
that Bible? Have its enemies done it?
Have thev exterminated the American
the British ana Foreign Bible Society?
Have they exterminated the thousands of
Christian institutions whose only object
it is to mnltnly copies of the Scriptures
and spread them broadcast around the
world? They have exterminated until in
stead of one or two copies of the Bible in
onr houses we have eight or ten, and we
pile them up in the corners of our Sabbath
school rooms and send great boxes ct
then, everywhere. If they get on as well
as thev are now going on in the work OF
exter,ni,.ation, I do not know but that
our childr-r NAV live to see the milen-
mum. Yea if there should come time
Of persecution in which all the known Bi-
hles Of the earth should be destroyed, all
these lamps of life that blaze in our pull
pits and in our families extinguished, in
the verv day that inideitv ard sin should
be holding Jubilee over the universal ex-
tinction there would be in some cloret of
u
Bible. and this Joash of eternal literature
would COR ont and come up and take the
throne. and the Athaliah of infidelitv and
persecution would fly out the back door of
the palace and dron her miserable carcass
under the boots of the horses Of the kings
stables. You cannot exterminate Chris
tianity! You cannot kill Joash!
The second thouoht | hand vou from
my subject is that there are onnnrtunites
in which YOU may save roval life. Yon
know that prof no history is renlete with
stories of straroled monarchs and of voung
princes vno have been put out of the
way. Here is the story Of a Young king
savod. How .Jehosheha the c'ergyman's
wife. must have trem5led as she rushed
into the imperial nursery and snatched mo
Joash! How she hushed bin, lest nv his
crv he hinder the escana! Fly with him.
Jehosheba! You hold in your arms the
cars, of God md GOOD government. Fall
and he is slain Sncceed and you tnrn
the tide of the worlds hstorv in the right
direction. 1t seems as If between that
Young king and his assassins there is moth
ing bnt the fral an of . woman. But
why should we spend onr time in praising
this bravery of expedition When God asks
the same thing of Won and me? All
around us the imperiled children Of
great king. Thev are born of Almighty
parentaoe. and will come TO a throne or
crown if permitted. Put sin, the old Ath-
allah. goes forth to the massacre. Muir
derous temptations are out for the assas-
sination. Nalens, the Emperor, was told
that there was somebody in his realm who
would rsurp his throne. and that the name
of the man who should be the usurper
would begin with the letters T. IT. j.. o,
D, and the edict went forth from the En-
peror's throne "Kill everybody whose
name begins with T. H, f. o. D. And
hundreds of thousands were slain. hoping
by that massacre to put an end to that
one usurper But sin is more terrific in
its denunciation. 1t matters not how YOU
spell your name. you come under its knife,
under its sword, under its doom, unless
there be some omnipotent relief brought to
the rescue. But. blessed be God, there is
such thing as delivering a royal soul
Who will snatch away Joash?
How few of Us appreciate the fact that
the cuhrch of God is a hiding place. There
are many neople who put the church at so
low mark that they hegrudGe it every
thing, even the few dollars they give to-
ward it. They make no sacrifices. They
dole little out of their surplusage. They
nay their butchers bill, and they pay their
doctors bill, and they pay their landlord
and they nav everybody but the Lord. and
thev come in at the last to pay the Lord
in His church and frown as they say:
"There. Lord. it is. Send me a recent in
full and don't bother me soon again!"
There is not more than one man out of
thousand that appreciates what the
church is. Where are the souls that put
aside one-tenth for Christian institutions
onet tenth of their income? Where are
those who, having put aside that one tenth
draw upon it chenrfully? Why. it is pull
and drag hold on and grab and clutch.
and giving is an attiiction to most people
when it ought to be an exhlaration and
ranture.
~ - n I 4
on this subject and that we might appre-
ciate the house of God as the great ref
nge! If your children are to come up to
lives of virtue and happiness they will
come up under the shadow of the church.
If the church does not get them, the
world will.
An, when vou ass away-and it will not
be long before YOU do-when you pass
away, it will be a satisfaction TO see
your children in Christian society. You
want to have them sitting at the holy sac
raments. You want them mngling in
Christian associations You would like
to have them die in the sacred precincts.
When You are on Your diving bed and your
little ones cor up to take your last word,
and you look into their bewidered faces,
YOU will want to leave them under the
church's benedction. | do not care how
hard YOU are, that is so.
And So though you NAV have been wan
derers from God and though YOU may
have some times caricatured the church of
Jesus. it is your great desire that your
sons and daughters should be standing all
their lives within this sacred inclosiire.
More than that. You yourself will want
the church for n hiding place when the
mortgage is foreclosed when your ,,augh-
ter. lust blooming into womanhood, sud
denly clasps her hands in slumber that
knows no waking; when the eaunt {. 1uble
walks through the parl,r and the sitting
room and the dining hall and the nursery,
YOU will want some shelter from the tenn
pest. All. some of You have been run
upon by misfortune and trial. Why do
you not come into the shelter
! said to a widowed mother after she
had buried her only son-months after
\ said to her. How do you get along now
a, ays~ "Oh," she replied. II get along
toerably well except when the sun shines"
| said What do You mean by that?"
when she said: II can't bear to see the
sun shine. Ny heart is so dark that all
the brightness of the natural world seems
a moekery to me-"
o darkened souli O broken hearted
man, broken hearted womanl Why do
Won not come into the shelterg swing