The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1902-05-15
BENTON, LOUISIANA, THURSDAY, MAY Is, 1902.


factory! They do not understand that
religion in this workday world will
help you to do anything you ought to
do. 1t can lay keel; it can sail a ship;
it can buy a cargo; it can work
pulley; it can pave street; it can At
wristband; it can write a constitu-
ton; it can marshal host. 1t is as
appropriate to the astronomer as his
telescope, to the chemist as his labora-
tory, to the mason as his plumb nne,
to the carpenter as his plane, to the
child as his marbles, to grandfather as
his staff
No time for religion here! You
have no time not to be religious. You
might as well have no clerks in your
store, no books in your library, no
compass on your ship, no rifle in the
battle, no hat for your head, no coat
for your back, no shoes for your feet.
Better travel on toward eternity bare
headed and barefooted and houseless
and homeless and friendless than to
go through life without religion. Did
religion make Raleigh any less of q
statesman or Havelock any less of a
soldier or Grinnell any less of mer-
chant or West any less of a painter?
Why, my friends, religion is the best
security in any bargain; it is the
sweetest note in every song; it is the
brightest gem in every coronet. No
time to be religious? Why, you will
have to take time to be sick, to be
troubled, to die. Our world is only the
wharf from which we are to embark
for Heaven. No time to secure the
friendship of Christ? No time to buy
a lamp and trim it for that walk
through the darkness which other
wise will be illumined only by the
whiteness of the tombstones? No
time to educate the eye for Heavenly
splendors or the hand for choral harps
or the ear for verlasting songs or the
soul for honor, glory and immor
ity? One would think we had time for
nothing else.
Other persons apologize for not en-
tering the Christian life because it is
time enough yet. That is very like
those persons who send regrets and
say: 81 will come in perhaps at II or
12 o'clock; / will not be there at the
opening of the banquet, but 1 will be
there at the close" Not yet! Not
yet! Now, I do not give any doleful
view of this life. There is nothing in
my nature, nothing in the grace of
God, that tends toward doleful view
of human life. / have not much SYM
pathy with Addison's description of
the "Visions of Mirza," where he rep
resents human life as being bridge
of hundred arches and both ends Of
the bridge covered with clouds and,
the race coming on, the most of them
falling down through the first span
and all of them falling down through
the last span. 1t is very dismal pic
ture. l have not much sympathy with
the Spanish proverb which says: "The
sky is good and the earth is good; that
which is bad is between the earth and
the sky" But, while we as Chris
tian men are bound to take a cheerful
view of life, we must also confess that
life is great uncertainty and that
man who says: 81 can't become a
Christian because there is time enough
yet," is running a risk infinite. You
do not perhaps realize the fact that
this descending grade of sin gets
sleeper and sleeper and that you are
gathering up a rush and velocity
which after awhile may not answer to
the brakes.
Here is delusion. People think: II
Gan go on in sin and worldliness, but
after awhile I will repent and then it
will be as though l had come at the
very start" What a mistake! No one
ever gets fully over procrastination.
If you give your soul to God some 9TH
er time than this, you will enter Heav-
en- with only half the capacity for en-
joyment and knowledge you might
have had. There will be heights of
blessedness you might have attained
that then you will never reach;
thrones of glory on which you might
have been seated, but which you will
never climb. We will never get over
procrastination, neither in time nor
in eternity.
We have started on a march from
which there is no retreat. The
shadows of eternity gather on our
pathway. How insignificant is time
compared with the vast eternity! AS
I was thinking of this one day while
coming down over the Allegheny
mountains at noon, by that wonderful
pass which you all have heard de-
scribed as the Horseshoe-a depres-
sion in the side of the mountain where
the train almost turns back again up
on itself, and you see how appropriate
is the name of the Horseshoe-and
thinking on this very theme and pre-
pairing this very sermon, it seemed to
me as if the great courser of eternity
speeding along had just struck the
mountain with one hoof and gone on
into illimitab BILE space. SO short is
time, SO insignificant is earth, COM
pared with the vast eternity! This
moment voices roll down the sky and
all the worlds of light are ready to re-
joice at your disenthrallment. Rush
not into the presence of the King
ragged with sin when YOU NAV have