Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1900-10-26

wise interfere with her imperial GRIM
inality. She folds her hands and says:
1.-The work is done. 1t is completely
done.r Is it? 1nthe swaddling clothes
of that church apartment are wrapped
the cause of God and the cause of good
government. That is the scion of the
house of David. It is Joash, the God
worshiping reformer. 1t is Joash, the
friend of God. 1t is Joash, the demoral-
izer of Baalitish idolatry. Rock him
tenderly, nurse him gently. Athaliah.
you may kill all the other children, but
you cannot kill him. Eternal defenses
are thrown all around him, and this
clergyman's wife, Jehosheba, will
snatch him up from the palace nursery
and will run down with him into the
house of the Lord, and there she will
hide him for six years, and at the end
of that time he will come forth for
your dethronement and obliteration.
Well, my friends, just as poor botch
does the world always make of extin-
gushing righteousness. Superstition
rises up and says: 81 will just put an
end to pure religion" Domitian slew
10000 Christians, Diocletian slew S44,-
600 Christians. And the scythe of per-
secution has been swung through all
ages, and the flames Kissed, and the
guillotine chopped, and the Bastile
groaned, but did the foes of Christian
ity exterminate it? Did they ex-
terminate Alban, the first British sac
rifice, or Zwingli, the Swiss reformer,
or John Oldcastle, the Christian no
bleman, or Abdallah, the Arabian mar
tyr, or Anne Askew or Sanders Or Gran
mer? Great work of determination
they made of it. Just at the time when
they thought they had slain all the
royal family of Jesus some Joash would
spring up and out and take the throne
of power and WELD a very scepter of
Christian dominion.
Infidelity says: 81 will exterminate
the Bible,'' and the Scriptures were
thrown into the street for the mob to
trample on, and they were piled up in
the public squares and set on fire. and
| mountains of indignant contempt were
| hurled on them, and learned universe
! ties decreed the Bible out of existence.
| Thomas Paine said: 'In my. Age of
Reason I have annihilated the Scrip
| lures. Your Washington is pusil-
| luminous Christian, but I am the foe
of Bibles and churches" Oh, how
| many assaults upon that word! All
the hostiities that have ever been ere
ated on earth are not to be compared
| with the hostilities against that book.
Said one man in his infdel desperation
| to his wife: ''You must not be read
ing that Bible" and he snatched it
| away from her. And though in that
Bible was a lock of hair of the dead
| child-the only child that God had
ever given them-he pitched the book
with its contents into the fire and
| stirred it with the tongs and spat on
| it and cursed it and said: "Susan, never
have any more of that damnable stuff
here
How many individual and organized
| attempts have been made to exter-
inmate that Bible? Have it's enemies
done it? Have they exterminated the
American Bible society? Have they
| exterminated the British and Foreign
Bible society? Have they exterminated
| the thousands of Christian institutions
whose only object is to multiply copies
| of the Scriptures and spread them
| broad beast around the world? They
have exterminated until instead of one
| or two copies of the Bible in our houses
we have eight or ten, and we pile them
up in the corners of our Saba th-school
| rooms and send great boxes of them
everywhere. If they get on as well as
they are now going on in the work OF
extermina ton, do not know but that
our children may live to see the mil
| lennium. Yea, if there should come
| a time of persecution in which all the
| known Bibles of the earth should be
destroyed, all these lamps of life that
blaze in our pulpits and in our fam
| lilies extinguished, in the very day that
infdelity and sin should be holding ju.
bilee over the universal extinction there
would be in some secret closet of a
| backwoods church secreted Bible
| and this Joash of eternal literature
would come out and come up and take
the throne, and the Athaliah of infidel
ity and persecution would fly out OF
the back door of the palace and DROP
her miserable carcass under the hoofs
of the horses of the kings stables. You
cannot exterminate Christianity! You
cannot kill Joash!
The second thought hand you from
my subject is that there are opportu.
mites in which we may save royal life
You know that profane history is re.
plete with stories of strangled mon.
archs and of young princes who have
been put out of the way. Here is the
story OF a young king saved. How
Jehosheba. the clergyman's wife, must
have trembled as she rushed into the
imperial nursery and snatched< uf
Joash! How she hushed him lest by
his cry he hinder the escape! Fly with
him, Jehosheba! You hold in your
arms the cause of God and good gov.
eminent Fail and he is slain Suc.