Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1901-03-22


evangelistic inkhorn into service IN
the early morning. when you feel well
and you are grateful for the protec-
ton during your sleeping hour=. and
write before you retire at close OF day
to those who all night long will be say
ing: would to God it were morn
ing!" How many bruised and disap-
pointed and wronged souls of earth
would be glad to get a letter from you!
Stir up that consolatory inkhorn.
All Christendom has been waiting
for great REVEALS of religion to start
from the pulpits and prayer meet
ings. I now suggest that the
greatest revival of all time may
start a concerted and organized
movement through the inkhorns
of all Christendom. each writer Dip
ping from the inkhorn nearest him a
letter of gospel invitation, gospel
hope. gospel warning, gospel in
struction. The ink is all ready on
hundred thousand tables, and beside
it are the implements with which to
dip it out. Why not, through such
process, have millions of souls brought
to God before next summer? BY let
ter you could make the invitation
more effective than by word of mouth.
The invitation from your lips may be
argued back, may evoke querulous
reply, may be answered by joke, but
a good, warm, gospel letter, written in
prayer and started with prayer and
followed by prayer, will be read over
and over again and cannot be an
swered in frivolous way. It will
speak from the table by day and night
or, if pettishly torn up, will, in it's
scattered fragments, speak louder
than when it remained whole. Within
arms reach of where you sit there
may be fluid that you may put on
wing with message of light and love.
The other angels spoken of in my
text were destroying angels, and each
had what the Bible calls a "slaugh-
ter weapon" in his hand. It was
lance or a battleax or a sword. God
hasten the time when the last lance
shall be shivered and the last bat
tleax dulled and the last sword
sheathed, never again to leave the
scabbard, and the angel of the text,
who, Matthew Henry says, was the
Lord Jesus Christ, shall, from the
full inkhorn of His mercy, give saw
ing call to all nations. That day may
be FAR off, but it is helpful to think
of its coming. AS DIR. Raleigh de-
clared that when so miles at sea
eff the coast of New England the
cattle on board the ship, as well as
himself, scented the clover on tho
New England hills, so we, amid all
the tossing waves of the worlds con-
troversies, inhale the redolence of the
white lilies of universal peace. Is
it not time that the boasted inven-
ton of new and more explosive and
more widely devastating weapons Of
death be stopped forever and the
Gospel have a chance and the ques-
ton be not asked: GLOW many shots
can be fired in minute?" but "How
many souls may be ransomed in
day?" The world needs less powder
more churches, less power to destroy
and more power to save. Oh, I am
sick of the war cries and the extin-
guished eyesight and the splintered
bones and the grave trenches and
the widowhood and orphanage and
childlessness which sob and groan
and die in the wake of the armies on
both sides of the sea! Oh, for less
of the slaughter weapon and more
of the evangelizing inkhorn! Oh,
for the stopping of the science Of
assassination, that crime of crimes,
that woe of woes, that horror of hor-
rors, that hell of hells-war, which
this moment stands reeking with
blood and washing. itself in tears
and disappearing the heavens and
pushing of the edge OF this life men
who have as much right to live as
you and I have and blasting homes
in which there dwe1ls as much lowell
ness as in. our own! Would that the
mercifu1 angel of my text take the
last weapon of war and fling it of
and fling it down with such force
that it shall c1ang on the lowest
round of the perdition where the
first keen edge of human strife was
sharpenedi War! In the name of
Almighty God and of all the home
steads it has destroyed and is now
destroying, hate it, denounce it,
I curse it'll
If our Bible is true-and no other
book that was ever printed is as
true as that book, which Moses be-
gan and John fnished-then the time
will come when all the weapons OF
cruelty will stop and the inkhorns
of evangelization Will have their way.
| In the museums of the world the
carbine and the cannon and the bomb
| will be kept as curiosities. and chill
dren will be incredulous as parents
| tell them that civilized nations once
employed such instruments of death
and more incredulous when told by
their parents that the army that
killed the most men was considered
| the most glorious army. The red
| horse of carnage that st. John saw
| in vision. and the black horse of