Connecticut western news., 1900-01-04


 ever forget his story of Joel Straton touching him on the shoulder, or of Deacon Moses Grant at Hopkinton. or of the outcast woman nicknamed Hell Fire" but redeemed by the thought that she was one of usT" Dwight l.. Moody, the evangelist of worldwide fame and usefulness, who recently passed to his great reward on high, during his valuable labors in the pulpit wielded the anecdote for God and heaven until all nations have been nov ed by it.
 Make Blessings Known.
 If you have had experiences of par don and comfort and disenthrallment. tell of 1t. Tell 1t In the most pointed and dramatic way you can manage. Tell 1t soon. or you may never tell It at all. Oh, the power of ''the tale that Is toldr' An hours discourse about the fact that blasphemous behavior Is sometimes punished in this world would not impress us as much as the simple story that In a town of New York state at the close of the last cen tury 36 profane men formed them
 
 Society of the Druids." They met regularly to deride and damage Chris tianity. One night in their awful meet. ing they burned Bible and admins tered the sacrament to dog. Two of them died that night. Within three days three were drowned. In five years all the 36 came to bad end. Before justices of the peace 1t was sworn that two were starved to death, seven were drowned, eight were shot, five committed suicide, seven died on the gallows, one was frozen to death and three died accidentally. Incidents like that, sworn to, would balk any pro- posed irreverent and blasphemous be- havior.
 In what way could the fact that in- fidelity will not help any one die we'll be so powerfully presented as by the incident concerning a man falling Ill in Paris just after the death of Vol taire, when a professional nurse was called In, and she asked, "Is the gentle man a Christian?" Why do you ask thatf" said the messenger. The nurse replied, ''I am the nurse who attended Voltaire in his last Illness, and for all the wealth of Europe would never see another infidel die" What discourse In its moral and spiritual effect could equal a tale like that?
 You might argue upon the fact that those fallen are our brothers and sis ters, but could we impress any one with such a truth so we'll as by the scene near Victoria park, London, where men were digging a deep drain, and the snoring gave way, and great pile of earth fell upon the workmen. A man stood there with his hands in his pockets, looking at those who were trying to shovel away the earth from those who were buried, but when some one said to the spectator, "Bill, your brother Is down there," then the spec tator threw ofr his coat and went to work with an agony of earnestness to fetch up his brother. What course of argument could so well as that incl dent set forth that when we toll for the salvation of a soul 1t is brother whom we are trying to saver
 A Brief Story.
 A second reading of my text reminds me that life is not only a story told, but that 1t Is brief story. A long mar rative stretched out indefinitely loses it's interest. It Is generally the story that takes only minute or half min ute to rehearse that arrests the atten- ton. And that gives additional inter est to the story of our life. It Is short story. Subtract from our life all the hours of necessary sleep, all the hours of incapacity through fatigue or Illness, all the hours of childhood and youth before we get fairly to work, and you have abbreviated the story of life so much that you can appreciate the psalmist's remark when he says, '"Thou hast made my days as hands breadth" and can appreciate the apos- tie James expression when he com pares life to "a vapor that appeareth for little season and then vanishes away"
 It does not take long to tell all the vicissitudes of life-the gladness and the griefs, the arrivals and the de- partures, the successes and the fail ures, the victories and the defeats, the ups and the downs. The longer we live the shorter the years. We hardly get over the bewildering fatigue of se- lecting gifts for children and friends and see that the presents get off in time to arrive on the appropriate day than we see another advancing group of holidays. Autumnal fruit so sharp ly chases the summer harvest, and the snow of the white blossoms of spring time come so soon after the snows of intn geo ,,r.I- NFt fIs> that 1t fails to make any impression and the platitude that calls forth no reply. How rapidly time goes."
 Every century Is a big wheel of years, which makes a hundred revolu- tions and breaks down. Every year Is a big wheel of months and makes 12 revolutions and then ceases. Geologists and theologians go into elaborations of guesses as to how long the world will probably last; how long before the vol canic forces will explode It, or meteoric stroke demolish 1t, or the cold of a long winter freeze out its population, or the fires of last conflagration burn it. That Is all very well, but so far as the present population of the earth Is concerned the world will last but a little longer We begin life with a cry and end 1t with a groan, and the cry and the groan are not far apart. Life, Job says, is like the flight of weaver's shuttle or, as David intimates in my text, story quickly told and laughed at and gone and displaced by another story as ''tale that Is told"
 I have to say that If life Is so short we have not much of 1t to waste. In all our engagements 10 o'clock ought to be 10 o'clock, and 3 o'clock 3 o'clock, and 8 o'clock 8 o'clock. I will not waste your time, and you must not waste my time. Just reproof was that which Mrs. Washington, the wife of the first president, gave James Peale, the great painter. Ills daughter says: My father had an engagement to fnt n iaf ft,ra of NTrS Wa hin oto