The Wilmington daily Republican. (Wilmington, Del.) 1890-1902, 1900-01-01

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SseSellist " Nh dine pEelch Hhst Imp;
nssc ~ e.TssAt sermon. but ! fekpfn,l,sg
hdth1nk of fieScept asts5y that he told,
and that. Judge from the seeming effect,
may that afternoon have brought hun
dreds into the kingdom Of God. heard
Truman Osborne preach several ser.
mons. but remember nothing of what he
said In public or private except a STORY
that be told, and that was. among other
things. the means Of my salvation. Tbs
lifelong work Of John B. Cough, the
greatest temperance reformer of all time.
was the victory Of anecdote, and who can
ever forget his story of Joel Straton
touching him on the shoulder. or Of Dea-
con Moses Grant at Hopkinton, or Of the
outcast woman, nicknamed Hell Fire."
but redeemed by the thought that she
"was one Of us?" Dwight L. Moody. the
evangelist Of worldwide fame and useful
ness, who recently passed to his great re-
ward on high. during bis valuable labors
In the pulpit welded the anecdote for
God and heaven until all nations have
been moved by it.
II you have had experiences Of pardon
and comfort and disinthrallment. tell Of
It. Tell It In the most pointed and dra-
matte way you can manage. Tell II s0on,i
or you may never tell it at all. Oh, the
power OF "the tale that Is told" An
hours discourse about the fact that bias
phemous behavior Is sometimes punished
in this world would not impress US as
much as the simple story that In town
of New York state, at the close of the
l., NOD
themselves into club, calling them
selves Society of the Druids." They
met regularly to deride and damage
Christianity. One night In their awful
meeting they burned Bible and admin
istered the sacrament to dog. Two Of
them died that night. Within three days
three were drowned. In FIVE years all the
SO came to a bad end. Before justices Of
the peace it 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. In
cidents like that, sworn to, would balk
any proposed irreverent and blasphemous
behavior.
In what way gould the fact that inf
deity will not he.H any one die well be so
powerfully presented as by the incident
after the death Of voltaire, when a pro-
fessional nurse was called in and she
asked. "Is the gentleman Christian|
"Why do you ask that :" said the messen-
ger. II am the nurse who attended Vol
taire in his last illness, and for all the
wealth Of Europe | would never sec an
other inidel die" What discourse In its
moral and spiritual effect could equal
tale like that?
.,l Saving a Brother.
You might argue upon the fact that
those fallen are our brothers and sisters,
but could we impress any one with such
truth so well as by the scene near Vic
toria park, London, where men were dig
ging 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
spectator threw off his coat and went to
work with an agony of earnestness to
fetch up his brother. What course of ar
gument could soNwell as that incident set
forth that when we toll for the salvation
Of soul it is a brother whom we are try
ing to save?
A second reading of my text reminds
me that life is not only story told. but
that it is brief story. A long narrative
stretched out indefinitely. loses its inter-
est. 1t is generally the story that takes
only minute or half minute to re-
hearse that arrests the attention. And
that gives additional interest to the story
Of our life. 1t is a 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 child
hood 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 a hands
BREADTH" and can appreciate the apostle
James expression when he compares
life to "a vapor that appeareth for lit
lie season and then vanishes away"
1t does not take long to tell all the Vi
cissitudes OF life--the gladness and the
griefs. the arrivals and the departures,
the successes and the failures, the victo-
ries and the defeats, the ups and the
downs. The longer we live the shorter
the years. We hardly get over the bewil-
dering fatigue of selecting gifts for chill
dren and friends and see that the pres
ents get off in time to arrive on the ap-
propriate day than we see another ad-
vancing group of holidays. Autumnal
fruit so sharply chases the summer har-
vest, and the snow Of the white blossoms
of springtme come SO soon after the
SHOWS of winter. 1t is remark so often
made that 1t fails to make any impress
sion and the platitude that calls forth no
reply. "How rapidly time goes"
Every century is big wheel Of years,
which makes hundred revolutions and
breaks down. Every year is big wheel
of months and makes II revolutions and
then ceases. Biologists and theologians
20 into elabora tons of guesses as to how
long the world will probably last; how
long before the volcanic forces will ex-
plode 1t, or meteoric stroke demolish it,
or the cold of long winter freeze out its
population, or the fires of last conia-
grafton 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 cry
and end it with groan, and the cry and
the groan are not far apart. Life. Job
says, is like the flight Of weaver's shut
tie, or, as David intimates in my text. a
story quickly told and laughed at aud
gone and displaced by another story, Us
tale that is told"
No Time to Waste.
l have to say that If life is so short we
have not much of it to waste. In all our
engagements 10 o'clock ought to be 10
o'clock and 3 o'clock 8 o'clock and s
o'clock o'clock. will not waste your
time, and you must not waste my time.
Just reproof was that which Mrs. Wash
ington, the wife Of the first president,
gave James Peale, the great painter. His
daughter says: my father had an en-
gagement to paint miniature of Mrs.
Washington i'm Philadelphia. the general
being then out of town. He was obliged
to 90 to her house, and the appointment
for sitting was arranged at 7 o'clock In
the morning. My father arrived at the
house, and, taking out mis- watch. be
found he was exactly on time. A thought
than etruck him TINT nossihly II might be