The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-08-02

or cut amidships with the front prov of the regattas or going down under | the swift hoofs of the fast horses. or
 drowned in the large potations of cog
 mac or Monongahela. That secret so- | ciety was the Loch Earn. Their bust | ness was the Vile de Havre. They struck. and the Vile de Havre went under!
 The third test by which you may
 know whether the society to which you | belong is good or bad Is this: What Is | its effect on your sense of moral and | religious obligation? Now. if I should
 take the names of all the people in this
 audience and put them on roll and | then I should lay that roll back of this
 organ and a hundred years from now
 some one should take that roll and call
 1t from A to z there would not one | of you answer. l say that any society | that makes me forget that fact is | bad society.
 When I go to Chicago I am some- | times perplexed at Buffalo. as suppose | many travellers are. as to whether 1t Is | better to take the Lake Shore route
 or the Michigan Central, equally expe- ditious and equally safe. getting to their destination at the same time. But suppose that I hear that on one route | the track is torn up. the bridges are down and the switches are unlocked. | 1t will not take me great while to decide which road to take. Now. here | are two roads in the future-the Chris | tian and the un-Christian, the safe and the unsafe. Any institution or any as- sociation that confuses my ideas In
 regard to that fact is a bad institution and a bad association. 1 had prayers
 before I joined that society. Did l
 have them afterward? I attended the
 house of God before connected myself
 with that union. Do l absent myself from religious influences?
 In the Last Hours.
 Which would you rather have in your
 hand when you come to die, pack of
 cards or Bible? Which would you
 rather have pressed to your lips in tie
 closing moment, the cup of Belshaz-
 zarean wassail or the chalice of Chris
 tian communion Whom would you
 rather have for your pallbearers, the elders of a Christian church or the companions whose conversation was
 full of slang and inneundo? Whom would you rather have for your eternal
 companions. those men who spend their
 evenings betting, gambling. swearing.
 carousing and telling vile stories. or your little child. that bright girl whom
 the Lord took? Oh, you would not have been away so much nights would you if you had known she was going away so soon? Dear me, your house has never been the same place since.
 Your wife has never frightened up. She has never got over it. She never will get over it. How long the evenings are with no one to put to bed and no one to whom to tell the beautiful Bible stories! What a pity 1t is that you cannot spend more evenings at home in
 trying to help her bear that sorrow!
 You can never drown that grief In the wine cup. You can never break away from the little arms that used to be flung around your neck when she used to say. Papa, do stay with me tonight do stay with me tonight" You will never be able to wipe away from your lips the dying kiss of your little girl The fascination of a bad secret society is so great that sometimes a man has turned his back on his home when a child was dying of scarlet fever. He went away. Before he got back at midnight the eyes had been closed. the undertaken had done his work, and the wife. worn out with three weeks watching. lay unconscious in the next room. Then the returned father comes up stairs, and sees the cradle gone, and he says, What is the matter?" On the judgment day he will find out what was the matter.
 Oh. man astray, God help you! I am going to make a very stout rope. You know that sometimes a ropemaker will take very small threads and wind them together until after while they be- come a ship cable. And I am going to take some very small, delicate threads and wind them together until they make very stout rope. 1 will take all the memories of the marriage day n Of fNPl ltertf thread of music, d thread of banquet ing. thread of congratulations and twist them together, and I have one strand. Then l take a thread of the hour of the first advent in your house, a thread of the darkness that preceded, | and thread of the light that followed, | and thread of the beautiful scarf that | little child used to wear when she | bounded out at eventide to greet you. | and then thread of the beautiful | dress in which you laid her away for l the resurrection, and then I twist all | these threads together, and have an- other strand. Then I take a thread of | the scarlet robe of a suffering Christ and a thread of the white raiment of | your loved ones before the throne, and | a string of the harp cherubic, and a | string of the harp sehaphic. and | twist them all together and have | third strand. "Oh," you say, "either | strand is enough to hold fast world!" No; I will take these strands and | will twist them together. and one end | of that rope will fasten, not to the | communion table. for 1t shall be re- moved: not to a pillar of the organ. fer | that will crumble in the ages; but | wind 1t round and round the cross of | symrathiizng Christ. and. having fat tened one end of the rope to the cross. I throw the other end to you. Lay hold Of it! Pull for your life! Pull fot heaveni
 Copyright 1900. Louis Klopsch, N Y.