The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-09-07

passport. This passport signed by the secretary of state at Washington. Is a notification that you are an American citizen. If any foreign nation insults or maltreats you, that nation will have to answer for the insult to the United States government.
 Getting an Eternal Passport.
 Now my lriend as you have to take an eternal journey, as perhaps in the very near future you will have to leave this old planet and go into the endless life beyond. what spiritual preparation have you made for the momentous em- barkation? Have you made the proper spiritual preparation for the Journey which shall take you Into a country where you would like to live through endless eternity, where you would like to l live until time itself shall be no onger? Have you in readiness for this eternal journey a letter of credit made out at the Bank of Divine Grace? Have you an eternal passport written in red ink-writ- ten in the blood which flowed out of the wounded side of a dying and atoning Christ? If you have not such letter of credit you are i'll prepared. you are lost indeed, even though in this world you had all the wealth of Rothschid, a Wander bilt a Rockefeller or an Astor; even though you once on earth lived in as magnificent a mansion as did Dives of old, at whose gate the dogs were licking the sores of a dying beggar. Shrouds have no pockets, and a skeletons bony fingers can hold no gold, and all your worldly riches will then be but dross, which you cannot carry with you on that ast journey. But, if you have the letter of credit of divine grace and the passport stamped with the crimson seal of Cal vary, then the long journey will be &C., complished safely, and the gates of the l New Jerusalem will be opened unto you, no matter hom financially poor you may have been on earth, because you are pleading there for admittance in Christ's name.
 Henry Clews tells us that when old 1 Cornelius Vanderbilt the richest man of his day, lay dying, turning his back upon l his S90000,000 as though he had been the poorest outcast in the street, he had to ask his Christian wife to pray for him and sing one of the old Christian hymns which she had learned in her fathers house. May we, one and all, never make the mistake the aged millionaire made In trying to fix up our divine passport at the last moment. May we, long before our earthly demise. apply at the Bank of Grace for a letter of credit which will successfully carry us through the dark days when we are dying and be sufficient for us until we. realize the bright and tri- umphant advent of a heavenly welcome
 The Long, Long Journe.
 The similei of death as long journey away from the family fireside is very striking. When man takes a long earth ly journey, he is very apt to gather his family about him and say If I should take this journey, in all probability I will return home at such and such a time" or If the father is going into a new coun- try to establish another home he says to his children: After am settled there and find everything all right, you can sell the goods and pack up and come to me. 1 will be in such and such place at such and such a tile" Or perhaps the man who is about to take long journey will do as my father and myself did when we started on our journey around the world. We were to set sail from San Francisco i and go by the way of the Sandwich Islands, Samoa, Australia and India. It was long, hard journey, and mother was physically unable to undertake it. So father said, Mother, you take the two girls and go to Europe and meet Frank and myself as we come around the world. Meet us either at Brindisi or in Paris or London" So mother set sail from New York and went east. Father and myself set sail from San Francisco. going west. We were all to meet by a preconcerted plan at the French capital.
 My brother. as you must take this long journey through the valley of the shadow of death with the divine passport in your hands, how can you ever expect to rejoin