Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1901-01-17
yer network before keen appetites could
not he more attractive

| visit, or letter. or message, or prayer
! consolatory. You could call five minutes
on your way to the factory; you could
leave half hour earlier in the afternoon
and fill mission of solace; you could
brighten a sick room with one chrysanthe-
mum; you could put postscript to let
ter that would bring the joys of heaven to
soul; you could send your carriage and
give an afternoon airing to an invalid on
a neighboring street; you could loan
book with some chapters most adapted to
some particular misfortune. Go home to-
day and make out list of things you can
do that will show sympathetic thoughtful
ness for the hardly bestead. How many
dark places you might illumine! How
many tears you could stop or, if already
started you could wipe away! How much
like Jesus Christ You might get to be! So
sympathetic was He with beggary. so
helpful was He for the fallen and so stirred
was He at the sight of dropsy, epilepsy,
paralysis and ophthalmia that, whether
He saw it by the roadside, or at the sea
beach, or at the mineral baths of Bethes-
da, He offered relief Cultivate genuine
sympathy, Christlike sympathy. You can
not successfully dramatize it. False SYM
pathy Alexander Pope sketches in two
lines:
"Before her face her handkerchief she
spread
10 nlue Cne llOOu OF tears Sne Qlu not
she'd"
There are four or five words which ftly
spoken might soothe and emancipate and
rescue. Go to those from whose homes
Christ has taken to Himself loved one
and try the word reunion" not under
wintry sky but in everlasting springtide;
not land where they can be struck with
disease. but where the inhabitant never
says, Il am sick" not a reunion that can
be followed by separation, but in a place
'.from which they shall so no more out
forever" For emancipation and signing,
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 chapter from
the great book open one of the twelve
gates. Give them one note of seraphc
harp, one flash from the sea of glass, one
clatter of the hoofs of the horses on which
victors ride. That word reunion or antici-
patton fifty spoken. Well, no fruit
heaped up in silver baskets could equal
it. OF the 1000 kinds of apples that have
blessed the world not one is so mellow or
so rich or aromatic, but we take the
suggestion of the text and compare that
word of comfort fifty spoken to apples of
gold in baskets of silver
Or the man astray may have an unhappy
home, and that is enough to wreck any
one. we often speak OF men WHO destroy
their homes, but do not say anything
about the fact that there are thousands of
wives in American who by petulance and
fretting and reconsideration and lack of
economy and all manner of disagreeable-
ness drive their husbands into dissipation.
The reason that thousands of men spend
their evenings in clubhouses and taverns
is because they cannot stand it at home.
| know men who are thirty-year martyrs
in, fao tbat ft,ll iaH
That marriage was not made in heaven.
Without 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 / 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 warning. The
difference between you and him may be
that you would have gone down faster
that he is going down if you had the same
kind of conjugal wretchedness.
Besides that, you had better be merciful
in your word of warning for the day may
come when you may need some one to be
lenient and eycusatory to you. There
may be somewhere ahead of you tempta-
ton so mighty that unless you have sym
pathetic treatment you may go under.
"Oh, no." says some one; 81 am too old
for that" How old are you? "Oh,' you
say, Il have been so long in active busi-
ness life that | am clear past the latitude
of danger There is man in Sing Sing
penitentiary who was considered the soul
of honor until he was fifty years of age,
and then committed a dishonesty that star
tied the entire commercial world.
In mentioning fine arts people are apt
to speak of music and painting and sculp-
ture and architecture, but they forget to
mention the finest of all the fine arts, the
art of doing good, the art of helping 9th
ers, the art of saving men.
An art to be studied as You study music,
for it is music in the fact that it drives
out moral discord and substitutes eternal
harmony. An art to be studied like sculp-
ture. for it is sculpture in the fact that it
builds a man not in cold statue, but in i'm
mortal shape that will last long after all
pentelican marble has crumbled.
An art to be studied as you study archi-
lecture. for it is architecture in the fact
that it builds for him a house of God, eter-
nal in the heavens. But an art that we
cannot fully learn unless God helps rs.
Ourselves saved by grace divine, we can
go forth to save others, and with tender
ness ana compassion and pity that we
could not otherwise exercise we can pro-
nounce the warning word with magnifi.
cent result.
The Lord said unto the prophet Amos,
"Amos, what seest thou:" and he an
swered, "a basket of summer fruit" But
| do not think Amos saw in that basket
of summer fruit anything more inviting
and luscious than many saved man has
seen in the warning word of some hearty.
common sense Christian adviser, for a
word fifty spoken is ''hke apples of gold
in baskets of silver
So also is word of invitation potent
and beautiful. Who can describe the
drawing power OF that word, so small and
yet so tremendous, Come" 1t is a short
word, but its influence is as long as eter-
nifty; not a sesqulpedalian word spreading
its energy over many syllables, but mono.
syllable. Whether calling in wrong direc
ton or right direction many have found
it irresistible. That one word has filed
all the places of dissipation and dissolute.
ness. 1t is responsible for the abomna.
tions that curse the earth. Inquire at the
door of prisons what brought the offender
tl.ar. Il z a 4.