Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1901-01-04

Scott had to walk on, and that the |
greatest poet who ever ived-Milton |
was blind, that one of the grandest |
musicians of all the ages-Beethoven |
was deaf, and that Stewart, in some |
respects the greatest merchant that |
America ever saw, began in his small |
store, dining on bread and cheese be-
hind the counter in a snatched inter
regnum between customers, he open
ing the store and closing it, sweeping
it out with his own broom and bein~
his own errand boy. Show them that
within ten minutes walk there are
stores, shops, and factories, and homes
where as brave deeds have been ione
as those of Leonidas at Thermolylae,
as that of Horatius at the bridge, as
that of Colin Campbell at Balaklava.
Tell them what Napoleon said to his
staff officer when that officer de-
clared certain military attempt to
be impossible. "Impossible!" said the
great commander. Impossible is the
adjective of FOOLS"
Show them also that what is true
| in worldly directions is more true in
| spiritual directions. Call the roll of
prophets, apostles and martyrs and
private Christians from the time the
world began and ask them to mention
| one man or woman greatly good or
| useful who was not deprecated and
| failed and made laughing stock.
! Racks and prisons and whips and
shipwrecks and axes of beheadment
| did their worst, yet the heroes were
| more than conquerors. With such
things you will illustrate that word
courage" and they will go out from
your presence to start anew and right,
challenging all earth and hell to the
combat.
| There are four or five words which
| fifty spoken, might soothe and emanci-
pate and rescue. Go to those from
whose homes Christ has taken to Him
self loved one, and try the word "re-
union"-not under wintry sky, but in
everlasting springtide; not a land
where they can be struck with disease,
but where the inhabitant never says:
81 am sick;" not a reunion that can be
followed by separation, but in place
'from which they shall go no more out
forever" For emaciation and sigh
| ing, immortal health. Reunion, or, if
you like the word better, anticipation.
There is nothing left for them in this
world. Try them with Heaven. With
a chapter from the great book open
one of the IL gates. Give them one note
of seraphic harp, one flash from the sea
of glass, one clatter of the hoofs of the
horses on which victors ride. That
| word reunion. or anticipation, fifty
| spoken-well, no fruit heaped up in sill
| yer baskets could equal it. Of the 1000
kinds of apples that have blessed the
| world, not one is so mellow or so rich
| or SO aromatic, but we take the sugges-
ton of the text, and compare that
word of comfort, fifty spoken, to apples
| of gold in baskets of silver.
There must be no impatience in the
warning we give others. We must
| realize that but for the kindness of
God to us we would have been in the
same rapids. That man going wrong
may be struggling with tide OF evil
inherited from father and grandfather
and great-grandfather. The present
temptation may be the accumulated
force of generations and centuries.
"No," you say, "his father was a
good man. knew him." But did you
know his grandfather? Evil habit
is apt to skip one generation, fact
recognized in the Ten Commandments,
which speak of the third and fourth
generations, but say nothing of the
second generation.
Or the man astray may have an I'M
happy home, and that is enough to
wreck anyone. We often speak of
men who destroy their homes, but do
not say anything about the fact that
there are thousands of wives in Amer
lea who by petulance and fretting and
! reconsideration and lack of economy
and all manner of disagreeableness
drive their husbands into dissipation.
The reason that thousands of men
! spend their evenings in clubhonses
and taverns is because they cannot
stand it at home. I know men who
are 3O-year martyrs in the fact that
| they are awfully married. That mar
! rage was not made in Heaven. With
out asking Divine guidance they en-
| tered into an alliance which ought
never to have been made. That is
what is the matter with many men
you and I know. They may be very
brave and heroic and say nothing
about it but all the neighbors know.
Now, if the man going wrong has such
domestic misfortune, be very lenient
and excusatory in your word of warn
ing. The difference between you and
him may be that you would have gone
down faster than he is going down if
| you had the same kind of conjugal
| wretchedness.
| In mentioning fine arts people are
apt to speak of music and painting
and sculpture and architecture, but
they forget to mention the finest of
all the fine arts-the art of doing
| good, the art of helping others, the
art of saving men. An art to be
| cf.,died "a Won st1ldv music for il is