The Cooperstown courier. (Cooperstown, Griggs Co., N.D.) 1902-1913, 1904-01-07


than Tom Paine, worse than Vol
taireand worse than Shaftesbury.
The Bible declares tive are
worse than an infidel. After the GER
titicate of death has been made out,
and the thirty or the sixty days have
passed. and the officer of Life Insur-
*The Equitable Life Assurance Society goes
q step farther than this, and pays all policies
of death.
ance Company comes into the bereft
household and pays down the hard cash
on an insurance policy, that officer of
the company is performing purely
religious rite, according to the Apostle
James, who says: "Pure religion and
undefiled before God and the Father
is this: To visit the fatherless and
widows in their atfliction, and so on.
The religion of Christ proposes to take
care of the temporal wants of the peo-
pie as we'll as the spiritual.
Just after the battle of Antietam
there was man found distributing
religious tracts, and a Christian mer-
chant came up to him and said: "What
are you distributing tracts here for?
There are three thousand men out
yonder who have not their wounds
bound up, and they are bleeding to
death. You go and bind up their
woundsand then distribute the tracts"
I think that was good, healthy gospel.
When Hezekiah was dying, the injunc-
tion came to him: "Set thy house in
order, for thou shalt die, and otlive."
That injunction in our day would
mean: "Make your will; settle up your
accounts; make things plain; don't de-
ceive your heirs with deeds for wild
lands that will never yield any corn,
but chills and fever; don't leave for
them notes that have been outlawed,
and second mortgages on property that
will not pay the first; Set thy house
in order.'''
That is, fix up things so that your
going out Of the world may make as
little CONSERVATION as possible. See
the lean cattle devouring the fat cattle
and in time of plenty prepare for the
time of want.
The difficulty is, when men think of
their death they are apt to think of it
only in connection with theirspiritual
welfare, and not of the devastation in
the household which will come because
of their emigration from it. 1t is
meanly selfish for you tobe so absorbed
in the heaven to which you are going
that you forget what is to become Of
your wife and children after you are
dead. You can 90 out of this world
not leaving them dollar and yet die
happily if you could not provide for
them; you can trust them in the hands
of the God who owns all the harvests,
and the herds, and the focks; but if
you could pay the premium on policy
and neglected them, it is mean thing
for you to go up to heaven while they
go to the poorhouse. You, at death,
,moye into a mansion, river front, and
they move into two rooms on the fourth
story of a tenement house in a back
street. When they are out at the ell
bows and the knees, the thought of
your splendid robe in heaven will not
keep them warm. The minister may
preach splendid sermon over your re-
mains, and the quartette may sing
like four angels alighted in the organ
loft, but your death will be a swindle.
You had the means to provide for the
comfort of your household when you
left it, and you wickedly neglected so
| to do.
"O," says someone, II have more
faith than you; believe when 1 go
out of this world the Lord will take
care of my family" Yes He will pro-
vide for them. Go to Blackwell's s Island
go through all the poorhouses of the
country, and will show you how often
God provides for the neglected children
of neglectful parents. That is, He pro-
VlueS lOI Ullelu UIlIOuRll pul1C ClldA1Oy. I.
AS for myself, l would rather have the
Lord provide for my family in private
house and through my own industry
and fraternal and conjugal faithful
ness. "But," says some man, II mean
in the next ten or twenty years to
make great fortune, and so 1 shall
leave my family, when | go out of this
world, very comfortable. How do
you know you are going to live ten or
twenty years? If we could look up the
path Of the future, we would see it
crossed by pneumonias, and pleurisies,
and consumptions, and colliding rail
trains, and runaway horses, and break
ing bridges, and funeral professions.
Are you SO certain you are going to
live ten or twenty years that you can
warrant your household any comfort
after you go away from them? Besides
that, the vast majority of men die
poor. Two-only two-out of a hun
dred succeed in business. Are you
very certain that you are going to be
one of the two? Rich one day, poor
the next.
A man in New York got two million