The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-02-23

and honor and truth. The meanest hu- man cur that ever crawled in slime could not be more untrue to you than he has been. What do you do? Do you upbraid him and make him suffer the penalty Of the law? No. Like a loving father, your heart is broken. You would like to forgive him. You would even like to give him another start But he will not let you love him. He will flee away from from you. He will get just as far away as he can. Like Absalom of old, all that he will do is to associate with your ene- mics. And all that you can do is to go weeping to your bed chamber as you cry,
 "Oh, my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalomi Would God had died for theei'
 Now, my brother, is that the kind of in-
 gratitude you mean to show to God? Are
 you about to drift into sin? Are you going
 to turn your back upon Christ? Are you
 ready to separate yourself from those
 sweet Christian associations which con-
 tribute to our spiritual life? Remember
 this: No Christian man ever flung him.
 self into sin but he proved himself an in-
 grate and his shame led him to get just
 as far away from God and from his peo-
 pie as he could go.
 There is another fact which the Chris
 tian must bear well in mind Though the
 gospel life grows sweeter and purer and
 luOlO lilulllplldiL lut lOi6 d lIdn iiNto
 it, yet the old scars of sin remain indel-
 ible. And when a Christian backslides it
 is like the relapse of an attack of typhoid
 fever or pneumonia. The relapse is a1-
 ways more dangerous than the first at-
 tack. Then the physical organism is
 weakened. Then the disease can more
 easily attack the vital parts. You and I had better beware. We ought never to let those old wounds of sin reopen If they ar olI -nI fah int tbarn be hemorrhage which will sap away our lives
 Struck In Same Place.
 You know there is an old proverb among the soldiers that in time of war no two bullets ever struck twice in the same place. But that is not always true. Dr. Ryan in his book entitled Under the Red Crescent" gives a vivid account of the siege of Kalafat. The bullets were falling 1 in a perfect hurricane. Suddenly there 1 came tumblng over the wall a monster | shell, and it crashed into the ground and burst, tearing a great hole out of the 1 earth as large as house. A poor fright | ened mother gathered her three children ! about her and ran to this hole for pro- | lection. But hardly had she settled I herself there than there was heard the l singing of another shell flying from a l gun two miles away, and it flung it. | self into that hole and tore, tn ose four ] human beings into shreds. "Oh," you | say, that was horrible; that was grew l some! that was overpowering" Yes, it
 was. It was tragic because 1t was so unusual for two shells to strike the same place. But I want to tell you I that when Satan aims his guns for bomb bardment he has been hitting us
 in the same way for the past twenty i years. And, just as a prizefighter can 1 keep tapping an anniversary in the
 same place over the heart until he 1 saps away his antagonists strength 1 so Satan can keep battering at the old i wounds of our former sins and open them in their weakened condition until i at last we fall before his blows as l helpless as the trembling fawn before , the plunge of a jungle tiger. Beware l of that old sin. man, if you start 1 it again in it's bleeding in all proba- | bility you will never close 1t up. Be- 1 ware!
 I have heard my father again and 1 again tell this tragic story: In his l Philadelphia church he had an elder ] he dearly love. The ider was a Scotch man who stood six feet two and was
 magnificently proportioned. He was l nobleman in brain and in heart. He i was one of those great, big, lovable 1 fellows who hold you with a grip 0, | steel. This man. then nearly sixty
 years of age, had been dssipated in hi, 1 youth. He had once been drunkard | But fort forty years of his life he hat l lived a pure true, Christian life. But l one day under hot summer sun, ht ! became dizzy with a sunstroke. H' l stepped into nearby drugstore fol help. The druggist not knowing hi