Connecticut western news., 1901-12-12

top or mountain or phoSphorescent
 fire and then plunged down, down,
 down until it seemed as if she never
 would again be righted. An, you never
 want to see a cyclone at sea!
 But 1 was In Minnesota, where there
 was one of those cyclones on land that
 swept the city of Rochester from It's
 foundations and took dwelling houses,
 barns, men, women, children, horses,
 cattle, and tossed them into indiscrimi-
 nate ruin and lifted rail train and
 dashed 1t down, a mightier hand than
 that of engineer on the airbrake. Cy-
 clone in Kansas, cyclone In Missouri,
 cyclone in Wisconsin, cyclone In Illi-
 nois, cyclone In Iowa! Satan, prince
 of the power of the air, never made
 such cyclonic disturbances as he has
 in our day. And am I not right In
 saying that one of the characteristics
 of the time in which we live is disaster
 cyclonic?
 But look at the disasters oceanic. Shall I call the roll of the dead ship ping? Ye monsters of the deep, an swer when I call your names. The Vile de Havre, the Schiller, the City of
 Boston, the Melville, the President the Cimbria, the Oregon, the Mohegan. But why should I go on calling the
 roll when none of them answers and the roll is as long as the white scroll of the Atlantic surf at Cape Hatteras breakers? If the oceanic cables could report all the scattered life and all the bleached bones that they rub against In the ocean, what a message of pathos and tragedy for both beach es! In one storm eighty fishermen per ished off the coast of Newfoundland and whole fleets of them off the coast of England. God help the poor fellows at sea and give high seats in heaven
 to the Grace Darlings and the Ida Lew ises and the lifeboat men lowering
 around Goodwin sands and the Sker- ries!, The sea, owning three-fourths of the earth, proposes to capture the oth-
 CT fourth and Is bombarding the land
 all around the earth. The moving of the hotels at Brighton Beach back ward 100 yards from where they once
 stood, type of what Is going on all
 around the world and on every coast.
 The Dead sea rolls today where an
 cient cities stood. Pillars of temples
 that stood on hills, geologists now find
 three-quarters under the water or alto
 gether submerged. The sea, having
 wrecked so many merchantmen and fotillas, wants to wreck the continents,
 and hence disasters oceanic. Alas for Galveston and other cities almost
 drowned!
 A Wealth of Blessings.
 Look at the disasters epidemic. 1
 speak not of the plague in the fourth
 century that ravaged Europe and In Moscow and the Neapolitan dominions and Marseilles wrought such terror in
 the eighteenth century, but I look at the yellow levers and the choleras and the diphtherias and the scarlet levers
 and the typhoids of our time. From Hurdwar, India, where every twelfth
 year 3,000,000 devotees congregate, the caravans brought the cholera, and that
 one disease slew 18,000 in eighteen
 days in Bossorah. Twelve thousand in
 one summer slain by it in India and
 25,000 in Egypt Disasters epidemic. Some of the finest monuments in Green wood and Laurel Hill and Mount Au- burn are to doctors who lost their lives battling with southern epidemic.
 But now I turn the leaf in my sub ject, and I plant the white lilies and the palm tree amid the nightshades
 and the myrtle. This age no more characterized by wonders of disaster than by wonders of blessing-bIessing of longevity; the average of human life rapidly increasing. Forty years now
 worth 400 years once. Now can trav- el from Manitoba to New York In less than three days. Tn other times 1t would have taken three months. In other words, three days now are worth three months of other days The aver age of human life practically greater now than when Noah lived, with his 950 years, and Methuselah lived his 969 years.
 Blessings of intelligence: The Salmon F. Glasses and the Abraham Lincolns , and the Henry Wilson's of the coming time will not be required to learn to read by pine knot lights or seated on ] shoemaker's bench, nor will the Fer 1 gusons have to study astronomy while watching the cattle. Knowledge rolls , its tides along every poor mans door, and his children may go down and bathe ! in them. If the philosophers of a hun I dred years ago were called up to recite ! in class with our boys and girls, those 1 old philosophers would be sent down l to the foot of the class because they i failed to answer the questions! Free ,f i,,o r+av v,f +<~rr 1 cities of the land Historical alcoves and poetical shelves and magazine ta- 1 bles for all who desire to walk through 1 them or sit down at them.
 Ipnde1ity DwindIing.
 Blessings of quick information: News 1 papers falling all around us thick as ! leaves ina September equinoctial News three days old rancid and stale. We 1 see the whole world twice day
 through the newspaper at the break ] fast table and through the newspaper
 at the teatable, with an "extra" here
 and there between.
 Blessing of gospel proclamation: Do l you not know that nearly all the mis-
 sionary societies have been born within i hundred years and nearly all the Bi-
 ble societies and nearly all the great { philanthropic movements? Christian ity Is on the march, while infidelity Is
 dwindling into imbecility. While infi-
 delity Is thus dwindling the wheel of 1 Christianity Is making about a thou
 sand revolutions in minute. All the
 copies of Shakespeare and Tennyson l and Disraeli and of any ten of the
 most popular writers of the day less in
 number than the copies of the Bible
 going out from our printing presses. A
 few years ago in six weeks more than
 100000 copies of the New Testament
 purchased-not given away, but pur-
 chased, because the world will have 1t.
 The most popular book today Is the
 Bible, and the mightiest institution is
 the church, and the greatest name | among the nations and more honored