'^'Sm A. /- . *j. >* fcibrarjp of t:he Checlogical ^eminarjp PRINCETON . NEW JERSEY 'if/ Vis* PRESENTED BY Robert P. Brodsky .• — / BV 4501 .T2 1894 Talmage, T. De Witt 1832- 1902. The pathway of life • fP?^ ♦J' ' ^%'- 'y-f. .'-.■^-iv av .■fill' % "gtfv^ ^!ft i«U^ L«»i«. COPYRIGHT, 1884, H. 8. SMITH. /i-i^PCL^ / '^7' :C_-^ A FEB 21 1964 u the: ^/ atbWay of Life, . Intended to Lead the Young and the Old into Paths of Happiness, and to Prepare them for a Holy Compan- ionship with Him whose Kingdom is as Boundless as His Love. BY. Rev. T. DeWITT TALMAGE, D. D. MAGNIFICENTLY ILLUSTRATED WITH NEARLY THREE HUNDRED ENGRAV- INGS FROM THE MASTERPIECES OF THE WORLD. PUBLISHED AND MANUFACTURED BY HISTORICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA, PA., FOR THL CHRISTIAN HERALD, BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK. 1894. Copyright, 1888, by H. S. Smith. (all rights reserved.) Copyright, 1894, by Louis Klopsch. *^* Tlie illustrations in this work being from original drawings and protected by copyright, their reproduction in any form is unlawful, and notice is hereby given that persons guilty of infringing the copyright thereof will be prosecuted. HbpFEh# EASTER MORNING. PAGE The Angels of the Grass— John Bunyan, the dreamer— Sermon of the lil) — The lily family — A banquet on nightingale's tongues — Evangels of the sky — Flowers for the bridal day — Dear memories — Flowers for the dead — Old Mortality among the gravestones — The floral gospel — The sepulchre in the garden — Religious symbol- ism— Death of the flowers — Christ the rose and the lily — Emblems of the resurrec- tion— Bursting the sepulchre door — Resurrection morn — The last sleep — The dead aroused — The procession of immortals, 49-58 BLESSINGS IN ADVERSITY. Harvest Time in Bethlehem — The gleaners — Effects of trouble — The sweetness of sorrow — Adversity the great educator — Beside the death-bed — A winged horse — Tried by the fires of persecution — Our national distresses — The royalty of friend- ship— ^Job's troubles — Destruction of reputations — F'aithfulness of the jMar}'s and of Ruth — Darkness and dawn — The harvest field of God's mercy — Drinking the gall — The scoff^ers at Noah — Persecutors of Christ — Little incidents that change lives — Martin Luther— Female industry — Greatness from small beginnings, . . . 59-70 THE VALUE OF BEREAVEMENTS. The Scourging of Jesus— Vinegar for the djnng Christ— Bitter sweet — The worm in Solomon's staff" — What is fame?— The great sympathizer — The sourness of pain — To whom shall be given the brightest crowns ? — The cup of bitterness — The vanity of wealth and of genius — Goldsmith's poverty — The poverty of Jesus — The crape (xix) XX CONTENTS. PAGE. on the floor — The trinkets that will be used no more — Christ in grief — Wailing for Lazarus— The hour of death — The season of everlasting love — Taking the sorrows of the world — Herschel, the astronomer — Nana Sahib and his precious ruby, . . . 71-S0 CHRIST'S KINGDOM ON EARTH. Christians Devoured by Lions — Division of the earth — Evangelization of the world — Greenland once a blooming garden — All flowers descended from the Arctic region — Deserts to be reclaimed — A new apportionment — What of certain buildings ? — Imported abominations — Livingstone in Africa — The richness of China — Christian farmers — ^Julius Caesar and King Juba — The division of heaven — Apostolic resi- dences in the skies — Meetings in heaven — Dividing the spoils — As ye sow, so shall ye reap — Squeezing into heaven — Crowns for the patient invalid — The twelve gates — The last day — Queen Victoria distributing the Crimean prizes — The final reward — Medals for bravery — A magnificent pageant of Roman victors — Procession of the redeemed 8i-93 SWEET CONTENT. The Hegira of the Rich — Our fashionable summer resorts — The luxury of health — Napoleon and his gout — Original and the copy— God's glory in the skies and pictures on canvas — Cheerful in poverty — .-^.n old apple woman— Disappointments in Wall street — Nero growling on his throne — A song from the wreck — Where ambition sleeps — Weeds cover the gravestone— Egyptian guano — Departed great- ness— Caesar, Lycurgus, Xerxes, Nebuchadnezzar, Cleopatra, Cromwell, the czars and kings of history — The robe of a Saviour's love — The rest that shall be ours — I am the resurrection, 94-101 TO YOUNG WOMEN. The True Position of Woman — ;Man's better part — Drones that afflict society — Un- happy marriages — The dove that married a vulture — The hand of the inebriate — Sacrifices to rum and war — Why so many unmarried women — Masculine compan- ionship not necessary to happiness — The science of self-support — False dependence — Appropriate occupations — Female employments — How to reach the top — Ro- mantic ideas — Apprenticeships necessary — Two sad sights — Broken vessels — Woman's wages to increase — Justice to women — Women who have won their way — Daughters of the regiment, 102-114 TO THE WOMEN OF AMERICA. The Drunken Nabal— An insult to David— .Vbigail, tlio l)cauliful— The court.ship of Nabal— A June morning smiling on a March squall — An every -day tragedy — IMme. Roland, of history, and her sad death — Lengthening the average of human life — Prayer in lordly castles— Great men as evangelists— Our literary companions— .\ picture from life— Rich but profligate — The master and slave — A broken heart — A prisoner in a gilded castle — Woe, woe — Two ducal palaces — Villains to be expurga- ted and fuinigate~536 SMALL THINGS. The Eye of the East — Paul's persecution of the Christians — His conversion — Pursued by the mob — Refuge on the housetop — The escape — An incident in John Wesley's life — How Pitcairn Island was reclaimed — The manger in Bethlehem — Miriam's rejoicing — In a storm at sea— Success at last — ^John in the wilderness — Holding the rope — A nail nearly wrecks a Cunarder — The Spanish inquisition — Paul's prayer — Amen, , 537-544 PAGE. I Will Follow Jesus, 35 He Will Guide You, etc., 36 Do Not Take the First Step 36 Pray God to Keep, etc., 37 The Heaveus Declare, etc., 40 I Pray That Thou Keep, 43 Come, Ye to the Waters, 43 The Light of the World, 45 Even So Must the Sun, 45 Enter Not in the Path, 46 Peace I Leave With You, 48 The First Glad Easter Morn, 50 An Offering of Flowtrs, 53 Thou Wilt Keep Him, etc., 54 The Rose of Sharon, etc., 55 Our Father Who Art, etc. 56 Sad Memories, 61 These Are They That Make Poor Men Rich, 68 Luther at the Diet of Worms, 65 The Christian Martyr, 66 The Breadwinner, 69 Dead For Our Transgressions, 72 Free From Perplexing Care, 73 The Angel's Whisper, 76 Perishableness, 79 A Student of Prophecy, 82 America, 85 A Dirge in the Desert, 86 Landing of the Romans, 87 The Kingdom of the Blessed, .... 88 PAGE, The Light of the World, 90 The Temptation, 91 Four Famous Medals, 91 Sweet Content, 95 Napoleon's Retreat From Russia, .... 97 Principal Works of Sir Christopher Wren, 99 A Vagabond in the Street, 103 A Vagabond in the Drawing Room, . . . 103 Milton Dictating Paradise Lost, ... 105 Gift of Bridegroom, 107 Idleness, 109 Woman, Behold Thy Son, etc. iii The Sisters of Bethany, 112 Single and Happy, 117 Evening Calm, 118 Burns and His Highland Mar\', 119 The Sourness of Poverty, 123 Jephtha's Daughter Bewailing Her Sac- rifice, 127 Jane Waring Receiving the Notice of Dean Swift's Perfidy, 129 Sick and Neglected, 132 Fashions of Head-dress, 139 Examining the Teacher, 143 The Guardian Angel, 147 Victims of French Revolution, 149 Vashti, the Outcast 150 Luther and His Family Singing Psalms, . 159 Execution of Joan of Arc, 161 Early Troubles, 164 (xxxi) xxxn LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE. Napoleon Announcing to Josephine Her Divorcement 165 A Broken Heart in a Palace, 167 The Old Homestead, 169 The Empty Place, 170 A Birthday Surprise, 171 The Scribe's Difficulty, 174 Grandmother, 177 Talking Over Old Times 17S Visiting the Sick and Destitute 179 The Guiding Angel, 1S2 An Errand of Mercy, 1S3 How Far Yet? 184 The Celestial Welcome, 185 The Lord is Good to All, 186 Slumber Song, 190 Sung to Sleep, 191 Just Like Him, 192 A Chubby Pouter, 193 Henry V. at Agincourt, 195 Destruction of Babes, 198 A Song Without Words 199 A Young Man of the World, ..... 202 A Cloud on His Brow, a Curse in His Heart, 203 Street Urchins 205 Before Monterey, 207 Telling the Secret, etc 209 The Storm Child Screaming Along the Beach 211 Aurora, 2r3 Attila, King of Huns, . 216 Siege of Aquileia 217 Roman Charioteers, 219 The Goddess of Justice 220 Cain and Abel Rocked in the Eirst Cradle, 224 The Ivavcsdropper, 225 The Prodigal Son, 226 Death-bed of Copernicus, 227 Jealous Lovers— the duel 230 Hard Times, 232 The Little Orphan's Dream 235 Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow, .... 237 The Reaper and the ElowerSj 239 The Crown of Thorns, 240 The Bride's New Home 241 l». carry in our minds were not gotten from the Bible topology, but from the Bible pictures. To prove the truth of it in my own case, the other day I took up the old family Bible which I inherited. Sure encmgh, what I have carried in my mind of Ryi Jacob's ladder was exactly the Bible engraving of Jacob's ladder; and so with Samson carrying off the gates of Gaza; Elisha restoring the Shunamite's son; the massacre of the itniocents; Christ blessing little chil- dren; the Crucifixion and the Last Judgment. My idea of all these is that of 15 o r^ot BAD INTENTIONS Coyj TOus Nk: WICKED ACTS Perj^ INTRODUCTION. the old Bible engravings which I scanned before I could read a word. The great intelligence abroad about the Bible did not come from the general reading of the book, for the majority of the people read it but little, if they read it at all ; but all the sacred scenes have been put before the great masses, and no printer's ink, but the pictorial art must have the credit of the achievement. First, painter's pencil for the favored few, and then engraver's plate or wood-cut for millions on millions ! In this connection I implore all parents to see that in their households they have neither in book, nor newspaper, nor on canvas anything that will deprave. Pictures are no longer the exclusive possession of the afiBuent. There is not a comfortable home that has not specimens of w^ood-cut or steel engraving, if not of painting, and I fpNAy5G;.oo TO Keep -^T'^^l your whole family will feel the moral uplifting or depression. Have nothing on 5^our wall or in books that will fa- miliarize the young with scenes of cru- _^'^^•«.»S■ elty or wassail; have only those sketches made by artists in elevated moods, and none of those scenes that seem the product of artistic delirium tremens. Pictures are not only a strong but a universal language. The human race is divided into almost as many languages as there are nations, but the pictures may speak to people of all tongues. Volapuk, many have hoped, with little reason, would become a world-wide language, and printer's types have no emphasis com- pared with it. We say that children are fond of pictures; but notice any man when he takes up a book, and you will see that the first thing that he looks at is the pictures. Have only those in your house that appeal to the better nature. One engraving has sometimes decided an eternal destiny. At the Cyclorama of Gettysburg one day a blind man, who lost his sight in that battle, was with his child heard talking while standing before that picture. The blind man said to the daughter: " Are there at the right of the picture some regiments marching up a hill ?" " Yes," she said. " Well," said the blind man, ' ' is there a general on horseback leading them on ?" " Yes, ' ' she said. ' ' Well, is there rushing down on these men a cavalry charge ?" " Yes, ' ' was the reply. ' ' And xxxviii INTRODUCTION. do there seem to be many dying and dead?" " Yes," was the answer. " Well, now, do you see a shell from the woods bursting near the wheel of a cannon?" "Yes," she said. "Stop right there !" said the blind man. "That is the last thing I ever saw on earth ! What a time it was, Jenny, when I lost my ej-esight !" But when you, who have found life a hard battle, a very Gettysburg, shall stand in the Royal Gallery of Heaven, and with your new vision begin to see and understand that which in your earthly blindness you could not see at all, you will point out to your celestial comrades, perhaps to j-our own dear children who have gone before, the scenes of the earthly conflicts in which you participated, saying: "There, from that hill of prosperity I was driven back; in that valley of humilia- tion I was wounded. There I lost my eyesight. That was the way the world looked when I last saw it." But what a grand thing to get celestial vision, and stand here before the cyclorama of all worlds while the Rider on the white horse goes on "conquering and to conquer," the moon under His feet and the stars of heaven for His tiara ! This book is born under very bright skies. Of all the centuries this is the best centur>', and of all the decades of the century this is the best decade, and of all the years of the decade this is the best year, and of all the months in the year this is the best month, and of all the days of the month this is the best da3^ Although this book may speak of griefs and wrongs, it is with full belief that there is a catholicon that can cure anything and everything. The world is very much what we make it. Show me the color of a man's spectacles and I will tell you what kind of a world it is. Blue spectacles, a blue world. Green spectacles, a green world. Yellow spectacles, a jaundiced world. Transparent spectacles, the beautiful world that God made it. The first thing is to have the heart right, the second is to have the liver right. My friend has for many yearl^been troubled with indigestion. Desirous of cheering him up I looked out of the window and said: " That snow is beautiful." He answered: " It will turn to slush and sleet." I said: " The human body is a fine piece of mechani.sm." He answered: " Warts, croup, marasmus, corns, bunions, gout and indigestion." I hoisted a window and caught one of the flying snowflakes and put it under a microscope and said: " I see God walking in this palace, the jewels of heaven are in these vases; I see the couriers of celestial dominion pawing tho.se crj'stal pavements." He turned up his coat collar and said: " I am in a perfect chill; plea.se to put down that window." I grew vehement and .said: "You must have noticed that this is a splendid world; all the looms of heaven must have been at work on the wing of a kingfisher. What morning was it that a warble slipped heaven and this oriole plucked it ? What grotesque rock of the mountain hath set the streams into roystering laughter ? What liarp of heaven gives the pitch to the music of the south wind ? There is enough wi.sdom to confound the earth and the heavens in INTRODUCTION. xxxix the structure of one cricket. Even the weeds of the field are dressed like the daughters of God, and men may sneer at their commonness, but have no capacity to fathom, or climb, or compass the infinity of beaut)- in a dandelion or the blossom of a potato top. At the foot of this tuberose angelic equipage must halt and its cohort, climbing the winding stair of leaf, look off upon the kingdoms of floral wonder and the glory of them. On a summer night I have seen the stars of heaven and the dews of earth married, the grass-blades holding up their fingers for the setting of the wedding signet, while voices from above said: ' With this ring I thee endow with all my light, and love, and splendor celestial.' At sunset I have seen the flaming chariots of God drive down into Lake Winnipiseogee, the panting nostrils stirring the water and the spray like dust tossed from the glitter- ing wheels." " Bosh! " cried my invalid friend, " I never saw anything like that in all my life." So that, handing him over a bottle of Hoofland's Dyspeptic Bitters, I retired to my room to consider the value of a cheerful spirit. The most of the things of this life may be set to music, but people get the wrong tune and sing Naomi or Windham when they ought to set things to the music of Mount Pisgah and Coronation. We may not all of us have the means to graduate at Harvard, Yale or Oxford, but there is a college at which all of us graduate — the college of hard knocks. Misfortune, Fatigue, Exposure and Disaster are the professors; kicks, cuffs and blows are the curriculum; the day we leave the world is our graduation; some sit down and cry; some turn their faces to the wall and pout; others stand up and conquer. Happy the bee that even under leaden skies looks for blossoming buckwheat ! Wise the fowl that, instead of standing in the snow with one foot drawn up under the wing, ceases not all day to peck ! Different ways of looking at things. Raindrop the first: "Always chill and wet, tossed by the wind, devoured by the sea." Raindrop the second: "Aha! The sun kissed me, the flower caught me, the fields blessed me." Brook the first: "Alas, me ! struck of the rock, dashed of the mill-wheel." Brook the second: " I sang the miller to sleep, I ground the grist ! Oh, this gay somersault over the wheel ! Over the wheel 1" Horse the first: " Pull, pull, pull ; this tugging in traces and lying back in the breeching, and standing at a post with the sharp wind hanging icicles from my nostrils. ' ' Horse the second gives a horse laugh: " Useful life I have been permitted to lead. See that corn; I helped break the sod and run out the furrows. On a star- light night I filled the ravines and mountains with the voice of jingling bells and the laughter of the sleigh-riding party. Then to have the children to throw in an extra quart at my whinny, and to have Jane pat me on the nose and say, ' Poor xl INTRODUCTION. Charlie !' and to bound along with arched neck, and flaming eye, and clattering hoof, and hear people say, ' There goes a two-forty !' " Bird the first; "Weary of migration ! No one to pay me for song. Only here to be shot at." Bird the second: ' ' I have banquet of a thousand wheat fields. Cup of lily to drink out of. Aisle of forest to walk in. Mount Washington under foot and a continent at a glance !" Different ways of looking at things ! Judging from their looks, among the happiest people in all the world are the apple-stand women knitting under their umbrella while they wait for customers, rag-pickers who go around with a dog-cart, soap-fat men that shake the streetir with boisterous racket, day-laborers that break the cobble-stones and put down their chunk of salt pork, with an appetite that kings air tiers might env}-. he largest number of complainers you shall among those us who have lucrative pro- fessions, large stores, well- warmed houses, luxuriant wardrobes and plenty of attendants. It would be well if, when tempted to complain, we would go down to see how other people have it. Saadi, the poet of Persia, in his poverty, walked the streets barefooted and soliloquized day after day: " What a pity that I, the greatest poet in Persia, should have no shoes !" "No shoes !" he constantly complained to himself, until one day he met a man who had no feet. "Ah !" he said, "that man is worse oif than I am. I have no shoes, but he has no feet." According to my calculation in the six thousand years of the world's existence there must have been about two million days of sunshine, allowing one hundred and ninety-five thousand days for storm. Of the myriads of jjlossoms on my peach orchard there was not one blossom that did not beat Walter Scott's Marmion or John Milton's Paradise Lost. In weeding out one patch of canteloupes I threw over the fence about five thousand Tennysons and Longfellows. Nothing but Omnipotence could have made legs strong enough to hold up the great Thanksgiving table of a world. Every grasshopper has a solo, and ^very snowflake a psalm, and every honej'suckle a censer, and ever>' pond-lily is a gondola for eternal glories to sail in, and there are pyramids in THE HEAVENS DECLARE THE GLORY OF GOD. INTRODUCTION. xli the cones of the white pine, and the place of the sunset is where the river of Delight flashes into the sea of the great Forever. Amid so much beauty and luxuriance how can we complain ! It would be well if, not only in looking at our own condition, but at other people, we set out the sparkle instead of the gloom. With five hundred faults of our own, we ought to let somebody else have at least one. When there is such excellent hunting on our own ground, let us not with rifle and greyhound-pack spend all our time in scouring our neighbor's lowlands. I am afraid the imperfec- tions of other people will kill us yet. All the vessels on the sea seem to be in bad trim except our schooner. A person full of faults is most merciless in his criti- cism of the faults of others. How much better, like the sun, to find light wher- ever we look, letting people have their idiosyncrasies and every one work in his own way. But people in the critical mood groan after what they call the good old days. They say: "Just think of the pride of people in our time. Just look at the ladies' hats !" Why, there is nothing in the ladies' hats of to-da)^ to equal the coal-scuttle hats of a hundred years ago. They say: "Just look at the way people dress their hair !" But the extremest style of to-day will never equal the top-knots which our great-grandmothers wore put up with high combs that \ve would have thought would have made our great-grandfathers die of laughter. The hair was lifted into a pyramid a foot high. On the top of that tower la}- a white rosebud. Shoes of bespangled white kid and heels two or three inches high. Grandfather went out to meet her on the floor with coat of sky-blue silk and vest of white satin, embroidered with gold lace, lace ruffles around his wrist and his hair falling in a queue. O ye modern hair-dressers, stand aghast at the locks of our ancestry ! They say our ministers are all askew, but just think of our clerg>'- men entering a pulpit with their hair fixed up in the shape of some of the ancient bishops. The great George Washington had his horses' hoofs blackened when about to appear on a parade, and writes to Europe, ordering sent for the use of himself and familj^ "one silver-laced hat, one pair of silver shoe buckles, a coat made of fashionable silk, ofie pair of gold sleeve buttons, six pairs of kid gloves, one dozen most fashionable cambric pocket handkerchiefs," besides ruffles and tucker. Talk about dissipations, ye who have ever seen the old-fashioned side- board ! Did I not have an old relative who always, when visitors came, used to go upstairs and take a drink, through economical habits not offering anything to his visitors. On the old-time training da3's the most sober men were apt to take a day to themselves. Many of the fancy drinks of to-day were unknown to them, but their hard cider, mint julep, metheglin, hot toddy and lemonade in which the lemon was not at all prominent, sometimes made lively work for the broad- brimmed hats and silver knee buckles. Talk of dissipating parties of to-da}^ and keeping of late hours ! Why, did they not have their bees and sausage-stuffings xlii INTRODUCTION. and tea parties and dances that for heartiness and uproar utterly eclipsed all the waltzes, lancers, redowas and breakdowns of the nineteenth century- ? And they never went home till morning ! And as to the old-time courtships, oh, my ! Wash- ington Irving describes them. Talk about the dishonesties of to-day ! Why, sixty'years ago the Governor of New York State had to disband the Legislature because of its utter corruption. Think of Aaron Burr, Vice-President of the United States and coming within one vote of being President ! Think of the ministry having in it such men as Dean Swift and Sterne ! The world was then such a bad place that I do not see how our fathers and mothers could have been induced to stay in it, although on our account I am glad they consented. Notice the encouraging fact that the world is coming under the domination of the intelligent races. The great characteristics of these races, as you trace them down from the tenth century in England until this present hour, are their love of liberty, their obedience to law and their desire for progress. Wherever they advance go the printing-presses without censorship and the Bible without arbitrary interpretation, prosperous schools and powerful churches and free consti- tutions. The other races seem shrinking away before the march of the intelligent races with the quick brain and the hopeful heart and the brawny arm. They now own more than the eighth part of the globe. The gold mines of the earth are in their possession, the Californias and the Australias, and they hold the most impor- tant gateways of the world's commerce and power, India and the Pacific Islands, and the Cape of Good Hope and Gibraltar and the Red Sea. The most important discoveries of the world have sprung from their laboratory, and the most startling inventions have darted from their brain. While these races have sometimes abused their power and sought advancement in improper ways, their main tendencies have been right, and no philanthropist can read the tendencies of the times in which we live without rejoicing that the intelligent races are becoming dominant in all the earth. Among the encouraging signs of our time are the unparalleled developments of the earth's material resources. Year by year the world's harvests increase, the corn fields are more golden and the granaries more crowded. New weapons have been formed with which to assault the earth and make it surrender its treasures. Vegetable chemistry has made the dumb earth think and natural history has unfolded a world of practical information in the plants, and insects, and animals, and climatology has discussed atmospheres, and geology has decided great ques- tions of soil until man driven forth from paradise is culturing other Edens all around the world. L,iebig in Germany, and Mulden in Holland, and* Payen in France, and Anderson in England, and Silliman in America have built their own monuments in the grain fields, and gardens, and orchards of two hemispheres. Steam-ploughs, and self-revolving rakes, and mowing machines, and sheaf-binders, and threshers of iron-toothed cylinders, and untold varieties of curious mechanism INTRODUCTION. xliii with which the fields and barns of this whole land hum and quake give to the swarthiest industry- attractions weird and romantic. Under the favor of Him who sets the stars in their courses and calls them all by their names astronomy has within the last few years made splendid discoveries and afforded advance- ment to the arts, and given facilities to navigation, and helped settle dis- puted boundaries, and surveyed dangerous coasts, and lifted upon the world the very grandest evi- dence of God's power, and wisdom, ^d goodness. The stars that in their courses fought against Sisera have been marshaled b}' the astro- nomer to fight \? mow sK©ulcl(tsF keeg Hieml^rorrt evil. ^V'^ for the practical interests of our humanity. Sev- enty years ago there was but one reliable ob- servatory in all the world, and that the observatory at Greenwich, Now there are at least eightj^ of these watch-towers in Europe and about thirty in the United States. The long-continued study of refraction by some of the first men of the age has given accuracy to scientific tables and catalogues. Mural circles and Cotn^ ye xliv INTRODUCTION. achromatic lenses have multiplied useful apparatus. The resolution of nebulae and the determination of the parallax of the fixed stars, and the finding of the cometary orbits, and the coming out to human observation of Vesta, and Juno, and Ceres, and Pallas, unknown toother ages of the world, show that astronomers have been busy. In one year in the observatory at Washington a great multitude of fifteen thousand stars, which had never been noticed in our muster-roll of the heavenly host, were recorded, a choir of light and beaut\-, rank above rank, enough to make a song as loud and sweet as when at the creation the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. There has not only been advancement in sciences before known, but others of great importance have been born and baptized with scientific nomenclature within the memory of many now living. Geology, meteorology, physical geography and electro-chemistry, although they have already done such marvels for the race,-may be called young sciences. You know how geography has unfolded the wealth and glorj- of great tracts of land entirely unknown in the last century. Into its wreath of conquest it has woven the cactus of the hidden tropics, and into its crown it hath set the crystals of Arctic ice. Ross, and Parry, and Franklin, and Kane, and Schwatka, and De lyong ma}' have failed to discover the northwest passage to the Pacific, but they discovered to the world a heroism and self-sacrifice for the cause of the world's knowledge and welfare that will last as long as the pillars of ice that stand as tablatures to those who were buried beneath them, and as cenotaphs to those who, worn and wasted, came home to die. Humboldt in South America and Mexico, and the United States Exploring Expedition on the western coast of North America, and the British Expedition on the southern extremity of South America, and Livingston and Stanley traveling in the cause of discovery among the wild beasts, and the fiercer tribes, and the deadliest plagues of Africa; Dr. Robinson, in the Holy Land, gathering up corroborations of Bible statement, and missionary Thompson, in Syria finding the remains of ancient cities of the Bible and scrip- tural customs still in existence, and Lieutenant Lynch, of our own navy, exploring Jordan and the Dead Sea, not only in behalf of commerce, but to the advantage of that kingdom which is not of this v/orld — all these only give us a feeble idea of what is being suffered and achieved for the great cause of geographical dis- covery. The progress of civil and religious liberty is another encouraging fact. God never intended His children to be oppressed, and yet gigantic tyrannies and des- potisms have walked the world over, setting their iron heel on the necks of men who were made in God's own image and who shall be great in the coronations of heaven. Ages dragged their weary lengths along, horrible with midnight shadow and ponderous with the chains of oppression, the chopping of the guillotine answering to the crackling of the fires of martyrdom. How much of all this has INTRODUCTION. xlv vanished ! Within fifty or sixty years the earth has been revolutionized. From the time of the French Revolution of 1830 the world began to shake off the horrid nightmare, and to-day there are in Europe about fifty free constitutions, some of them indicative of more and others of less liberty, some . ^ of them on a large scale and some of them on a .small scale. But what a crashing-down of absolutism ! What an advance of free principles ! Now while I write there are millions of brave hearts all over Europe who are waiting for the moment in which to rise with their majesty and with the accumulated wrath of ages to hurl up until the heavens are blackened with the wreck the governments that have defied God and trampled upon His children. And in that day the little finger of this struggling cause shall be mightier than the glittering bayonets of a world in arms. Among the encouraging things in regard to our own country is the fact that all sections have come to the^most thorough feeling of amity that we have ever had. We were for a great many years under the delusion that we were at peace in this countr)', but there never has been any peace until within the last twenty years. It was war of pen and war of speech. Eook at the Congressional record of 1830. W^as that peace ? The Congressional record of 1837, of 18^6, of 1857, of i860. Was that peace? No! Because of the inimical nature of the interests of the North and the South, there was perpetual collision. It was free labor against slave labor; it was Massachu- setts against South Carolina; it was New York against Virginia representation; it was Charleston Mercury against PAhaxvy Jo7ir7ial; challenge, altercation and duel all over the land. Even at the time ^ when our Northern cities were in riot and bloodshed about the rendi- tion of black men to their owners, we were under the delusion that we were at peace. Monstrous absurdity! It was war, war perpetual. Pennsylvania Hall burned on account of this political agitation in the city of Philadelphia ! Was that peace ? Iv xlvi INTRODUCTION. The printing-press of the Alton Observer thrown into the river. Was that peace ? In 1820 the air was hot with sectional imprecation about the admission of Missouri as a slave State. Was that peace ? Presbyterian and Methodist churches, North and South, split with a fracture that shook all Christeiftlom on account of political agitation. Was that peace? No! All Billingsgate and scorn, and vituperation and hatred, and revenge and blasphemy on both sides were exhausted. It was war of tongue, war of pen, war of trade, war of Church — War ! Bitter, furious, consuming, relentless. Thank God that time has gone by. We have come to a new state of feeling and brotherhood, such as we have never enjoyed, and our Congress, instead of spending nine-tenths of its time wasting the public treasury in discussing sectional difficulties, as it used to do, is now disposed to give nine- tenths of its time to the discussion of the agricultural, the mining, the manufac- turing, the commercial, the literary and the moral interests of this nation. You will hear the anvil ring with a sturdier blow. You will see the furnace glow with a fiercer fire. You will see / the wheel-buckets strike with a swifter dash. We have a land capable of supporting three thousand six hundred millions of people; feeding them, clothing them, sheltering them. We have just begun to open the outside door of this great underground vault in which nature holds its treasures — the copper, the zinc, the coal, the iron, the gold, the silver. What populations, what industries, what enter- prises, what wealth, what civilization you might argue from the coal fields ! What an advance from the time when, under 11 g Edward, a man was put to death for burning coal, and from the time when the House of Commons forbade the use of what INTRODUCTION. xlvii called "the noxious fuel," and these days when the long trains rush down from the mines and fill our coal bins and gorge the furnaces of our ocean steamers ! One hundred and sixty thousand square miles of coal fields — two fields of coal, one reaching from Illinois down through Missouri into Iowa, and the other from Pennsylvania down into Alabama, while side by side with these great coal fields are the mines of iron. These two giants, these two Titans of the earth, iron and coal, insuring perpetual wealth to the nation, standing side by side to help each other, the iron to excavate and pry up the coal, and the coal to smelt and forge and mould the iron. Eight hundred thousand tons of iron sent forth from the mines in one year in this country. Thirty-two million tons of coal sent out from the mines of this country in a year. And all this only a proph- ecy of a larger yield when we shall come on with lon- ger trains and : more miners and stronger machinery to develop, to gather up, to transport and to employ all this treasure. Make this cal- culation for yourselves if you can make it: If England's coal field, thirty-two miles long by eight miles wide, can keep, as it does, seventeen million six hundred thousand spindles at work in that small island, what ma)^ we not expect of our national industries when these one hundred and sixty thousand square miles of coal shall unite with the one hundred and sixty tliousand square miles of iron, both stretching themselves up to full strength and height, two black, world-shaking giants ? Eift up your eyes, O nation of God's right hand, and see the approach of a future grand with success ! Build larger your barns for the harvests ! Dig deeper the vats for the spoil of the vineyards ! Enlarge your warehouses for the mer- chandise ! Build larger your galleries of art for statues and pictures ! But remember xlviii INTRODUCTION. that national wealth iinsanctified is voluptuous waste, is magnificent woe, is splendid rottenness, is gilded death. Woe to us for the wine vats if Drunkenness wallows in them ! Woe for the harvests if Greed sickles them ! Woe for the mer- chandise if Avarice swallows it ! Woe for the cities if Misrule ravages them ! Woe to the land if God-defying Crime debauches it ! Our only safety is more Bibles, more pulpits, more free schools, more Christian printing- presses. And therefore I contribute my mite to the cause by sending forth this book. And now my hearty greeting is to the people. Great is the responsibility of publish- ing a book, especially in this case, where the publishers, a month before the book is published, have sold 250,000 copies thereof, an unprecedented occurrence in the history of literature. Among the pleasant thoughts with which I .send forth this book on "The Pathway op lyiFE," is the as.surance that it is to have the companionship of the greatest painters and .sculptors of all nations. Good morning, Raphael, and Greenough, and Rembrandt, and Inman, and Giotto, and Coleman, and Dore, and Kneller, and Joshua Reynolds ! I,et me have the pleasure of introducing you to my readers. //-^^^tL^ ^' Brooklyn, N. Y., Novemhrr 9, 1S.S8. THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. "THE ANGELS OF THE GRASS." IBL/ICAL writers uniformly regard the lily as the queen of flowers. The rose may have disputed her throne in modern times, and won it; but the rose originally had only five petals. It was under the long continued and intense gaze of the world that the rose blushed into its present beauty. In the Bible train, cassia and hyssop and frankincense and myrrh and spikenard and camphire and the rose follow the lily. Fourteen times in the Bible is the lily mentioned — only twice the rose. The rose may now have wider empire, but the lily reigned in the time of Esther, in the time of Solomon, in the time of Christ. Caesar had his throne on the hills. The lily had her throne in the valley. In the greatest sermon that was ever preached there was only one flower, and that a lily. The Bedford dreamer, John Bunyan, entered the House of the Interpreter and was shown a cluster of flowers and was told to " consider the lilies. " We may study or reject other sciences at our option. It is so with astronom}^ it is so with chemistry, it is so with jurisprudence, it is so with physiology, it is so with geology; but the science of botany Christ commands us to study when He says: " Consider the lilies." Measure them from root to tip of petal. Inhale their breath. Notice the gracefulness of their poise. Hear the whisper of the white lips of the Eastern and of the red lips of the American lil3^ MEMBERS OF THE LILY FAMILY. Belonging to this royal family of lilies is the lily of the Nile, the Japan lily, the Lady Washington of the Sierras, the Golden Band lily, the Giant lily of Nepaul, the Turk's Cap lily, the African lily from the Cape of Good Hope. All these lilies have the royal blood in their veins. But I take the lily as typical of all flowers, and Easter day, garlanded with all this opulence of floral beauty, 4 (49) THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 51 seems to address us, saying: "Consider the lilies, consider the azaleas, consider the fuchsias, consider the geraniums, consider the ivies, consider the hyacinths, consider the heliotropes, consider the oleanders. ' ' With deferential and grateful and intelligent and worshipful souls, consider them. Not with insipid senti- mentalism, or with sophomoric vaporing, but for grand and practical and ever)-- •da}', and, if need be, homely uses, consider them. The flowers are the angels of the grass: they all have voices. When the clouds speak they thunder; when the whirlwinds speak they scream; when the cataracts speak they roar, but when the flowers speak they always whisper. I will attempt to interpret their message. What have ye to say, O ye angels of the grass, to these my readers ? I mean to discuss here what flowers are good for. That is my subject: What are flowers good for? In the first place, they are good for lessons of God's providential care. That was Christ's first thought. All these flowers seem to address us, saying: "God will give you apparel and food. We have no wheel with which to spin, no loom with which to weave, no sickle with which to harvest, no well-sweep with which to draw water; but God slakes our thirst with dew, and God feeds us with the bread of sunshine, and God has appareled us with more than the Solomonic regality. We are prophetesses of adequate wardrobe. If God so clothe us, the grass of the field, will He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" Men and women of worldly anxieties, take this message home with you. How long has God taken care of you ? Quarter of the journej^ of life ? half the journey of life ? three-quarters the journey of life ? Can you not trust Him the rest of the way ? God does not promise you anything like that wdiich the Roman Emperor had on his table, at vast expense— 500 nightingales' tongues — but He has promised to take care of you. He has promised you the necessities, not the luxuries — bread, not cake. If God so luxuriantly clothes the grass of the field, will He not provide for you. His living and immortal children ? He will. No wonder Martin Euther always had a flower on his writing desk for inspiration. Through the cracks of the prison floor a flower grew up to cheer Picciola. Mungo Park, the great traveler and explorer, had his life saved by a flower. He sank down in the desert to die, but seeing a flower near by, it sug- gested God's merciful care, and he got up with new courage and traveled on to safet3^ I said the flowers are the angels of the grass; I add now they are the •evangels of the sky. FLOWERS FOR THE BRIDAL DAY. If you insist on a.sking me the question: What are flowers good for? I respond. They are good for the bridal day. The bride nutst have them on her brow and she must have them in her hand. The marriage altar nui.st be covered with them, A wedding without flowers would be as inappropriate as a wedding 52 THE PATHWAY OF IJFE. without music. At such a time they are for congratulation and prophecies of good. So much of the pathway of life is covered up with thorns, we ought to cover the beginning with orange blossoms. Flowers are appropriate on such occasions, for in 99 out of 100 cases it is the very best thing that could have happened. The world may criticise and pronounce it an inaptitude, and may lift its eyebrows in surprise and think it might suggest something better, but the God who sees the twenty, forty, fifty years of w^edded life before they have begun, arranges all for the best, so that flowers in almost all cases are appropriate for the marriage day. The divergences of disposition will become correspondences, recklessness will become prudence, frivolity will be turned into practicality. There has been many an aged widowed soul who had a carefully locked bureau, and in the bureau a box, and in the box a folded paper, and in the folded paper a half-blown rose, slightly fragrant, discolored, carefully pressed. She put it there forty or fifty years ago. On the anniversar>^ day of her wedding she will go to the bureau, she will lift the box, she will unfold the paper, and to her eyes will be exposed the half-blown bud, and the memories of the past will rush upon her, and a tear will drop upon the flowers; and suddenly it is transfigured, and there is a stir in the dust of the anther, and it rounds out, and it is full of life, and it begins to tremble in the procession up the church aisle, and the dead music of a half century ago conies throbbing through the air; and vanished faces reap- pear, and right hands are joined, and a manly voice promises: " I will for better or for worse," and the wedding march thunders a salvo of joy at the departing crowd; but a sigh on that anniversary day scatters the scene. Under the deep- fetched breath, the altar, the flowers, the congratulating groups are scattered, and there is nothing left but a trembling hand holding a faded rosebud, which is put into the paper, and then into the box, and the box carefully placed in the bureau, and with a sharp, sudden click of the lock the scene is over. Ah, my friends, let not the prophecies of the flowers on your wedding day be false prophecies. Be blind to each other's faults. Make the most of each other's excellences. . Above all, do not both get mad at once? Remember the vows, the ring on the third finger of the left hand and the benediction of the calla lilies. FLOWERS FOR THE DEAD. If you insist on asking me the question: What are flowers good for? I answer, They are good to honor and comfort the obsequies. The worst gash ever made into the side of our poor earth is the gash of the grave. It is so deep, it is so cruel, it is so incurable that it needs something to cover it up. Flowers for the casket, flowers for the hearse, flowers for the cemetery. 'AN OFFERING OF FI^OWERS." (53) 54 THE PATHWAY OF TJFE. What a contrast between a grave in a country churchyard, with the fence broken down and the tombstone aslant and the neighboring cattle browsing amid the mullein stalks and the Canada thistles, and a June morning in Greenwood, the wave of roseate bloom rolling to the top of the mounds, and then breaking into foaming crests of white flowers all around the pillars of dust. It is the difference between sleeping under rags and sleeping under an embroidered blanket. We want Old Mortality with his chisel to go through the graveyards of Christendom, and while he carries a chisel in one hand we want Old Mortality to have some flower-seed in the palm of the other hand. "Oh," you say, "The dead don't know; it makes no difference to them." I think you are mistaken. There are not so many steamers and rail trains coming: to any living city as there are convoys coming from heaven to earth; and if there be instantaneous and constant communication between this world and the better world, do you not suppose your departed friends know what j'ou do with their bodies ? Why has God planted "golden rod " and wild flowers in the forest and on the prairie where no human eye ever sees them ? He planted them there for invisible intelligences to look at and admire, and when invisible intelligences come to look at the wild flowers of the woods and the table-lands, will they not make THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 55 excursions and see the flowers which you have planted in affectionate remem- brance of them ? When I am dead I would like to have a handful of violets — -any one could pluck them out of the grass, or some one could lift from the edge of the pond a water lily — nothing rarely expensive or insane display, as sometimes at funeral rites where the display takes the bread from the children's mouths and the clothes from their backs, but something from the great democracy of flowers. Rather than imperial catafalque of Russian Czar, I ask some one whom I may have helped by gos- pel sermon or Christian deed to bring a sprig of ar- butus or a handful of China -asters. It was left for modern times to spell respect for the departed and c o m f o r t f o r the living in letters of floral gospel. Pil- lows of flow- ers meaning "the rose of sharon and the lily of the valleys." rest for the pilgrim who has got to the end of his journey. Anchor of flowers, suggesting the Christian hope which we have as an anchor to the soul, sure and steadfast. Cross of flowers, suggesting the tree on which our sins were slain. If I had my way I would cover wp all the dreamless sleepers, whether in golden-handled casket or pine box, whether in a king's mausoleum or potter's field, with radiant and aromatic arborescence. The Bible says, in the midst of the garden there was a sepulchre. I wish that every sepulchre might be in the midst of a garden. RELIGIOUS SYMBOLISM. If you insist on asking me the question: What are flowers good for? I answer, For religious symbolism. Have you ever studied vScriptural flora ? The Bible is an arboretum, it is a divine conservator}', it is an herbarium of exquisite 56 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. aM J '-\/ i-\ i-f < beauty. If you want to illustrate the brevity of the finest human life, you will quote from Job: " A man cometh forth as a flower and is cut down;" or, you will quote from the Psalmist: "As the flower of the field, so perisheth, the wind passeth over it, and it is gone," or, you will quote from Isaiah; "All flesh is grass, and the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field;" or, you will quote from James the ^i»« ^^^5-fl apostle; "As the flower of the grass, so he passeth away." VW^^y ■ ■ 'iM What graphic Bible symbolism ! ^^ "*** - All the cut flowers of Easter day will soon be dead, whatever care you take of them. Though morning and night you baptize them in the name of the shower, the bap- tism will not be to them a saving ordinance. They have been fatally wounded with the knife that cut them. They are bleeding their life away; they are dying now. The fragrance in the air is the departing and ascending spirits. Oh, yes! flowers are almost human. Botanists tell us that flowers breathe, they take nourishment, they eat, thej' drink. The}- are sensitive. They have their likes and dislikes. They sleep, they wake. They live in families. They have their ancestors and their descendants, their birth, their burial, their cradle, their grave. The zephyr rocks the one, and the storm digs the trench for the other. The cowslip must leave its gold, the lily must leave its silver, the rose must leave its diamond necklace of morning dew. Dust to dust. So we come up, we pro.sper, we spread abroad, we die, as the flower — as the flower ! ® Change and decay in all around I see ; O Thou who changest not, abide ^\Jth me ! Flowers also afford mighty symbolism of Christ, who compared Himself to the ancient queen, the lily, and the modern queen, the rose, when He said: "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys." Redolent like the one, hum- ble like the other. Like both appropriate for the sad who want sympathizers, and THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 57 for the rejoicing who want banqueters. Hovering over the marriage ceremony like a wedding bell, or folded like a chaplet on the pulseless heart of the dead, O Christ! let the perfume of Thy name be wafted all around the earth — lily and rose, lily and rose — until the wilderness crimson into a garden, and the round earth turn into one great bud of immortal beauty laid against the warm heart of God. Snatch down from the world's banner eagle and lion, and put on lily and rose, lily and rose. EMBLEMS OF THE RESURRECTION. But, my readers, flowers have no grander use than when on Easter morning we celebrate the reanimation of Christ from the catacombs. All the flowers of the day spell resurrection. There is not a nook or corner in all the world but is touched with the incense. The women carried spices to the tomb of Christ, and they dropped spices all around about the tomb, and from those spices have grown all the flowers of Easter morn. The two white-robed angels that hurled the stone away from the door of the tomb, hurled it with such violence down the hill that it crashed in the door of the world's sepulchre, and millions of the stark and dead shall come forth. However labyrinthian the mausoleum, however costly the sarcophagus, how- ever architecturally grand the necropolis, however beautifully parterred the family grounds, we want them all broken up by the Eord of the resurrection. The forms that we laid away with our broken hearts must rise again. Father and mother — they must come out. Husband and wife — they must come out. Brothers and sisters — they must come out. Our darling children— they must come out. The eyes that with trembling fingers we closed must open in the lustre of resurrection morn. The arms that we folded in death must join ours in embrace of reunion. The beloved voice that was hushed must be returned. The beloved form must come up without its infirmities, without its atigues — it must come up. Oh, how long it seems for some of you. Waiting— waiting for the resur- rection. How long ! how long ! I make for your broken hearts a cool, soft bandage of Easter lilies. Last Easter there was sent through the mails a beau- tiful Easter card, on the top of it a representation of that exquisite flower called the " trumpet creeper," and under it the inscription: " The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised." I comfort j-ou with the thought of resurrection. When Lord Nelson was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral in London, the heart of all England was stirred. The procession passed on amid the sobbing of a nation. There were thirty trumpeters stationed at the door of the Cathedral, with instruments of music in hand waiting for the signal, and when the illustrious dead arrived at the gates of St. Paul's Cathedral, these thirty trumpeters gave one 58 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. united blast, and then all was silent. Yet the trumpets did not wake the dead. He slept right on. But I have to tell you, what thirty trumpeters could not do for one man. one trumpeter will do for all nations. The ages have rolled on, and the clock of the world's destiny strikes nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and time shall be no longer. THE DEAD AROUSED. Behold the archangel hovering. He takes the trumpet, points it this way, puts its lips to his lips, and then blows one long, loud, terrific, thunderous rever- berating and resurrectionary blast. L,ook ! Look ! They rise ! The dead ! The dead ! Some coming forth from the family vault; some from the city cemetery; some from the country graveyard. Here a spirit is joined to its body, and there another spirit is joined to another body, and millions of departed spirits are assort- ing the bodies, and then reclothing themselves in forms now radiant for ascension. The earth begins to burn — the bonfire of a great victory. All ready now for the procession of reconstructed humanity I Upward and away ! Christ leads and all the Christian dead follow— battalion after battalion, nation after nation. Up, up ! On, on ! Forward, ye ranks of God Almighty ! Lift up your heads, ye everlasting gates, and let the conquerors come in. Resurrection ! Resurrection ! And so I twist all the festal flowers of the churches of America with all tlie festal flowers of chapels and cathedrals of all Christendom into one great chain, and with that chain I bind the Easter mornings of our lives with the closing Easter of the world's history — resurrection ! May the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do His will ! Jfjig^ % \ii^^^%n^^ In ^i^^i^t^ii^* THE STORY OF RUTH, AND ITS APPLICATION. HE time that Ruth and Naomi arrived at Bethlehem was harvest time. It was the custom when a sheaf fell from a load in the harvest field for the reapers to refuse to gather it up; that was to be left for the poor who might ^••^1 vijfsinff ,.T>^ happen to come along that way. If there were handful s ^^iWA. "4l of grain scattered across the field after the main harvest ^ had been reaped, instead of raking it, as farmers do now, it was, by the custom of the land, left in its place, so that the poor, coming along that way, might glean it and get their bread. But, you say: " What is the use of all these harvest fields to Ruth and Naomi? Naomi is too old and feeble to go out and toil in the sun; and can you expect that Ruth, the young and the beautiful, should tan her cheeks and blister her hands in the harvest field?" Boaz owns a large farm, and he goes out to see the reapers gather in the grain. Coming there, right behind the swarthy sun-browned reapers, he beholds a beautiful woman gleaning — a woman more fit to bend to a harp or sit upon a throne than to stoop among the shea\-es. Ah, that was an eventful day ! It was love at first sight. Boaz forms an attachment for the womanly gleaner — an attachment full of undying interest to the Church of God in all ages; while Ruth, with an ephah, or nearly a bushel of barley, goes home to Naomi to tell her the successes and adventures of the day. That Ruth, who left her nati\-e land of Moab in darkness, and labored in the heat of harvest time, through an undying affection for her mother-in-law, in the field of Boaz, is affianced to one of the best families in Judah, and becomes in after-time the ancestress of Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. Out of so dark a night did there ever dawn so bright a morning ? I learn, in the first place, from this subject, how trouble develops character. It was bereavement, poverty and exile that developed, illustrated and announced to all ages the sublimity of Ruth's character. That is a very unfortunate man who has no trouble. It was sorrow that made John Bunyan the better dreamer, 6o THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. and Dr. Young the better poet, and O'Connell the better orator, and Bishop Hall the better preacher, and Havelock the better soldier, and Kitto the better encyclo- paedist, and Ruth the better daughter-in-law. THE SWEET EFFECTS OF SORROW. I once asked an aged man in regard to his pastor, who was a ver^- brilliant man; " Why is it that your pastor, so very brilliant, seems to have so little heart and tenderness in his sermons?" " Well," he replied, " the reason is our pastor has never had any trouble. When misfortune comes upon him, his style will be different." After a while the Lord took a child out of that pastor's house; and though the preacher was just as brilliant as he was before, oh, the warmth,- the tender- ness of his discourses. The fact is that trouble is a great educator. You see sometimes a musician sit down at an instrument, and his execution is cold and formal and unfeeling. The reason is that all his life he has been prospered. But let misfortune or bereavement come to that man, and he sits down at an instru- ment, and you discover the pathos in the first sweep of the keys. Misfortune and trials are great educators. A young doctor comes into a sick- room where there is a dying child. Perhaps he is very rough in his prescription, and very rough in his manner, and rough in the feeling of the pulse, and rough in his answer to the mother's anxious question; but years roll on and there has been one dead in his own house; and now he comes into the sick-room, and with tearful eye he looks at the dying child, and says: "Oh, how this reminds me of my Charlie !" Trouble, the great educator. Sorrow, I see its touch in the grandest painting; I hear its tremor in the sweetest song; I feel its power in the mightiest argument. Grecian mythology said that the fountain of Hippocrene was struck out by the foot of the winged horse Pegasus. I have often noticed in life that the brightest and most beautiful fountains of Christian comfort and spiritual life have been struck out by the iron-shod hoof of disaster and calamity. I see Daniel's courage best by the flash of Nebuchadnezzar's furnace. I see Paul's prowess best when I find him on the foundering ship under the glare of the lightning in the breakers of the Melita. God crowns His children amid the howling of wild beasts and the chopping of blood-splashed guillotine and the crackling fires of martyr- dom. It took the persecutions of Marcus Aurelius to develop Polycarp and Justin Martyr. It took the world's anathema to develop Martin Luther. It took all the hostilities against the Scotch Covenanters and the fury of Lord Claverhouse to develop James Renwick, and Andrew Melville, and Hugh McKail, the glorious martyrs of Scotch history. It took the stormy sea, and the December blast, and SAD MEMORIES. l6i) 62 THE PATHWAY OF LIFK. the desolate New England coast, and the war-whoop of savages, to show forth the prowess of the Pilgrim Fathers. When amid the storms they sang, And the stars heard, and the sea : And the sounding aisles of the dim wood Rang to the anthems of the free. It took all our pa.st national di.stresses to lift up our nation on that high career where it will march along after the foreign aristocracies that have mocked, and the tyrannies that have jeered, shall be swept down under the omnipotent wrath of God, who hates despotism, and who, by the strength of His own right arm, will make all men free. And so it is individually, and in the family, and in the church, and in the world, that through darkness and storm and trouble men, women, churches, nations are developed. THE ROYALTY OF FRIENDSHIP. I also see in the example of Ruth the beauty of unfaltering friendship. I suppose there were plenty of friends for Naomi while she was in prosperity, but of all her acquaintances how many were willing to trudge off with her toward Judah when she had to make that lonely journey ? One — the heroine Ruth, the devoted. I suppose when Naomi's husband was living, and they had plenty of money, and all things went well, they had a great many callers, but I suppose that after her husband died, and her property went, atid she got old and poor, she was not trotibled very much with callers. All the birds that sung in the bower while the sun shone have gone to their nests now the night has fallen. Oh, these beautiful sunflowers that spread out their colors in the morning hour, but are always asleep when the sun is going down ! Job had plenty of friends when he was the richest man in Uz; but when his property went and the trials came, then there were none so much pestered as Eliphaz, the Temanite, and Bildad, the vShuhite, and Zophar, the Naamathite. Eife often .seems to be a mere game, where the successful player pulls down all the other men into his own lap. Eet suspicions arise about a man's character, and he becomes like a bank in a panic, and all the imputations rush on him and break down in a day that character which in due time would have had strength to defend itself. There are reputations that have been half a century in Iniilding, which go down under some moral expo.sure as a vast temple is consinned by the touch of a sulphurous match. In this world, .so full of heartle.ssne.ss and liypocri.sy, how thrilling it is to find .some friend as faithful in days of adversity as in days of prosperity ! David had such a friend in Httshai: the Jews had .such a friend in Mordecai, who never 64 THiv PATHWAY OF LIFE. forgot their cause; Paul had such a friend in Onesiphorus, who visited him in jail; Christ had such a friend \n the Marys, who adhered to Him on the cross; Naomi had such a one in Ruth, who cried out: " Entreat me not to leave thee; or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest, will I die, and there wuU I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me." DARKNESS AND DAWN. Again I learn from this subject that paths which open in hardship and dark- ness often come out in places of joy. When Ruth started from Moab toward Jerusalem, to go along with her mother-in-law, I suppose the people said: " Oh, what a foolish creature to go awa}^ from her father's house, to go off with a poor old woman toward the land of Judah ! They w^on't live to get across the desert. They will be drowned in the sea, or the jackals of the wilderness will destroy them." It was a very dark morning when Ruth started off with Naomi; but behold her in the harvest field of Boaz, to be affianced to one of the lords of the land, and become one of the grandmothers of Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glor}'. And so it often is that a path which starts very darkly ends very brightly. When you started out for heaven, oh, how dark was the hour of conviction — how Sinai thundered, and devils tormented, and the darkness thickened ! All the sins of your life pounced upon you, and it was the darkest hour you ever saw when you first found out your sins. After a while you went into the har\-est-field of God's mercy; you began to glean in the fields of divine promise, and you had more sheaves than you could carry, as the voice of God addressed you, saying: "Blessed is the man whose transgressions are forgiven and whose sins are covered." So, very often, in our worldly business or in our spiritual career, we start off on a very dark path. We must go. The flesh may shrink back, but there is a voice within, or a voice from above, saying: "You must go," and we have to drink the gall, and we have to carry the cross, and we have to traverse the desert, and we are pounded and flailed with misrepresentation and abuse, and we have to urge our way through 10,000 obstacles that must be slain by our own right arm. We have to ford the river, we have to climb the mountain, we have to storm the castle; but, blessed be God, the day of rest and reward will come. On the tip-top ot the captured battlements we will shout the victory; if not in this world, then in that world where there is no gall to drink, no burdens to carry, no battles to fight. How do I know it ? Know it ! I know it because God says so: "They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on (65) 66 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. them, nor any heat; for the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead theni to living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. ' ' It was very hard for Noah to endure the scofhng of the people in his day. while he was trying to build the ark, and was every morning quizzed about his old boat that would never be of any practical use; but when the deluge came, and the tops of the mountains disap- peared like the backs of sea mon- sters, and the ele- ments, lashed up in fury, clapped their hands over a drowned world, then Noah in the ark rejoiced in his own safety and in the safety of his family, and looked out on the wreck of a ruined earth. Christ, hound- ed of persecutors, denied a pillow, worse maltreated than the thieves on either side of the cross, human hate smacking its lips in satisfaction after it had been draining His last drop of blood, the sheeted dead bursting from the sepulchres at His crucifixion. THE CHRISTIAN MARTYR. In the early ajje of the Church, and particularly during the reign of Nero, the Christians of Rome were thrown into an .\nipliithcatrc with hniiKry tigers and lions, to be devoured, while others were subjected to even a more horrible fate. THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 67 Tell me, O Gethsemane and Golgotha ! were there ever darker times than those ? Like the booming of the midnight sea against the rock, the surges of Christ's anguish beat against the gates of eternity, to be echoed back by all the thrones of heaven and all the dungeons of hell. But the day of reward comes for Christ; all the pomp and dominion of this world are to be hung on His throne; uncrowned heads are to bow before Him on whose head are many crowns, and all the celes- tial worship is to come up at His feet like the humming of the forest, like the rushing of the waters, like the thundering of the seas, while all heaven rising on their thrones beat time with their sceptres: " Hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth ! Hallelujah, the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord Jesus Christ ! ' ' LITTLE INCIDENTS THAT CHANGE LIVES. I learn from my subject that events which seem to be most insignificant may be momentous. Can you imagine anything more unimportant than the coming of a poor woman from Moab to Judah ? Can you imagine anything more trivial than the fact that this Ruth just happened to alight — as they say — just happened to alight on this field of Boaz ? Yet all ages, all generations, have an interest in the fact that she was to become an ancestor of the Lord Jesus Christ, and all nations and kingdoms must look at that one little incident with a thrill of unspeak- able and eternal satisfaction. So it is in your history and in mine; events that you thought of no importance at all have been of very great moment. That casual conversation, that accidental meeting — you did not think of it again for a long w^hile; but how it changed all the phase of your life ! It seemed to be of no importance that Jubal invented rude instruments of music, calling them harp and organ, but they were the introduction of all the world's minstrelsy; and as you hear the vibration of a stringed instrument, even after the fingers have been taken away from it, so all music now of lute and drum and cornet is only the long-continued strains of Jubal's harp and Jubal's organ. It seemed to be a matter of very little importance that Tubal-cain learned the use of copper and iron, but that rude foundry of ancient days has its echo in the rattle of Birmingham machinery' and the roar and bang of factories on the Merrimac. It seemed to be a matter of no importance that Luther found a Bible in a monaster}-; but as he opened that Bible, and the brass-bound lids fell back, they jarred everything, from the Vatican to the furthest convent in Germany, and the rustling of the wormed leaves was the sound of the wings of the angel of the Reformation. It seemed to be a matter of no importance that a woman, whose name has been forgotten, dropped a tract in the way of a ver^^ bad man by the name of Richard Baxter. He picked up the tract and read it, and it was the means of his salvation. 68 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. In after-days that man wrote a book, called " The Call to the Unconverted," that was the means of bringing a multitude to God, among others Philip Dodd- ridge. Philip Doddridge wrote a book, called " The Rise and Progress of Reli- gion," which has brought thousands and tens of thousands into the kingdom of God, and among others the great Wilberforce. Wilberforce wrote a book, called " A Practical View of Christianity," which was the means of bringing a great multitude to Christ, among others Leigh Richmond. Leigh Richmond wrote a tract, called "The Dairyman's Daughter," which has been the means of the salvation of uncounted multitudes. And that tide of influence started from the fact that one Christian woman dropped a Christian tract in the way of Richard Baxter — that tide of influence rolling on through Richard Baxter, through Philip Doddridge, through the great Wilberforce, through Leigh Richmond, on, on, on, forever, forever. So the insignificant events of this world seem, after all, to be most momentous. The fact that you came up that street or this street seemed to be of no importance to you, and the fact that you went inside of some church may seem to be a matter of very great insignificance to you, but you will find it the turning point in your history. FEMALE INDUSTRY. I see in my subject an illustration of the beauty of female industn,'. Behold Ruth toiling in the harvest-field under the hot sun, or at noon taking plain bread with the reapers, or eating the parched corn which Boaz handed to her. The customs of society, of course, have changed, and without the hardships and exposure to which Ruth was subjected, every intelligent woman will find some- thing to do. I know there is a sickl}' .sentimentality on this subject. In some families there are persons of no practical service to the household or community; and though there are so many woes all around about them in the world, they spend their time languishing over a new pattern, or bursting into tears at midnight over the story of some lover who shot himself They would not deign to look at Ruth carrying back the barle}^ on her way home to her mother-in-law, Naomi. All this fastidiousness may seem to do very well while they are under the shelter of their father's hou.se; but when the sharp winter of misfortune comes, what of these butterflies ? Persons under indulgent parentage may get upon themselves habits of indolence; but when they come out into practical life their souls will recoil with disgust and chagrin. They will feel in their hearts what the poet so severely satirized when he said: Folks arc so awkward, things so impolite, They're elegantly pained from morning till night. THE BREADWINNER 70 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. Through that gate of indolence how nian}^ men and women have marched, useless on earth, to a destroyed eternity ! Spinola said to Sir Horace Vere: " Of what did your brother die ?" ' ' Of having nothing to do, ' ' was the answer. " Ah," said Spinola, " that's enough to kill any general of us." Oh ! can it be possible in this world, where there is so much suffering to be alleviated, so much darkness to be enlightened, and so many burdens to be carried, that there is any person who cannot find anything tc do ? Mme. De Stael did a world of work in her time and, one day, while she was seated amid instruments of music, all of which she had mastered, and amid manu- script books which she had written, some one said to her: ' ' How do you find time to attend to all these things ?' ' " Oh," she replied, " these are not the things I am proud of. My chief boast is in the fact that I have seventeen trades, by any one of which I could make a livelihood if necessary." Elihu Burritt learned many things while toiling in a blacksmith's shop. Abercrombie, the world-renowned philosopher, was a philosopher in Scotland, and he got his philosophy, or the chief part of it, while, as a ph^-sician, he was waiting for the door of the sick-room to open. Yet how man}^ there are in this day who say they are so busy they have no time for mental or spiritual improve- ment; the great duties of life cross the field like strong reapers and earn,- off all the hours, and there is only here and there a fragment left that is not worth glean- ing. Ah, my friends, j'ou could go into the busiest da}- and busiest week of your life and find golden opportunities, which, gathered, might at least make a whole sheaf for the Lord's garner. It is the stray opportunities and the stray privileges which, taken up and bound together and beaten out, will at last fill you with abounding joy. There are a tew moments left w^orth the gleaning, Now^ Ruth, to the field ! May each one have a measure full and running over ! O 3'ou gleaners, to the field ! And if there be in your household an aged one or a sick relative that is not strong enough to come forth and toil in this field, then let Ruth take home to feeble Naomi this sheaf of gleaning: " He that goeth forth and weepeth, bear- ing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." May the Lord God of Ruth and Naomi be our portion forever ! ©I^je 33^1wje; crt ffi^rje^bjontjeni^. SORROW SENT TO QUICKEN OUR APPRECIATION. [he brigands of Jerusalem had done their work. It was almost sundown, and Jesus was dying. Persons in cruci- fixion often lingered on from day to day— crying, begging, cursing; but Christ had been exhausted by years of mal- treatment. Pillowless, poorly fed, flogged — as bent over and tied to a low post. His bare back w^as inflamed with the scourges, intersticed with pieces of lead and bone — and now for whole hours the weight of His body hung on delicate tendons, and, according to custom, a violent stroke under the arm-pits had been given by the executioner. Dizzy, swooning, nauseated, feverish — a world of agony is compressed in the two words, " I thirst !" O skies of Judea, let a drop of rain strike His burning tongue. O world, with rolling rivers and sparkling lakes, and sparkling fountains, give Jesus something to drink. If there is any pity in earth or heaven, or hell, let it now be demonstrated in behalf of this royal sufferer. The wealthy women of Jerusa- lem used to have a fund of money with which they provided wine for those people who died in crucifixion — a powerful opiate to deaden the pain; but Christ would not take it. He wanted to die sober, and so He refused the wine. But aftenvard they go to a cup of vinegar and soak a sponge in it, and put it on a stick of hyssop, and then press it against the hot lips of Christ. You say the wine was an anaesthetic, and intended to relieve or deaden the pain. But the vinegar was an insult. I am disposed to adopt the theory of the old English commentators, who believed that, instead of its being an opiate to soothe, it was vinegar to insult. Malaga and Burgundy for Grand Dukes and Duchesses, and costly wines from royal vats for bloated imperialists; but stinging acids for a dying Christ. BITTER SWEET. In some lives the saccharine seems to predominate. Life is sunshine on a bank of flowers. A thousand hands to clap approval ! In December or in Jan- uary, looking across their table, they see all their family present. Health rubi- cund. Skies flamboyant. Days resilient. But in a great many cases there are (71) 72 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. not so many sugars as acids. The annoyances, and the vexations, and the disap- pointments of life overpower the successes. There is a gravel in almost every shoe. An Arabian legend says that there was a worm in Solomon's staff, gnaw- ing its strength away ; and there is a weak spot in ever>^ earthly support that a man leans on. King George, of England, forgot all the grand- eurs of his throne because, one day, in an interview, Beau Brummel called him b}' his first name, and ad- dressed him as a servant, cr\-ing: " George, ring the bell!" Miss Landon, hon- ored all the world over for her poetical gen- ius, is so worried over the evil reports set afloat regarding her that she is found dead, with an empty bottle of prussic acid in her hand. Gold- smith said that his life was a wretched being, and all that want and contempt could bring to it had been brought, and cries out: "What, then, is there formidable in a jail!" Correggio's fine -1! DEAD 1 -:. v'LK TRANSi;. 1- I.--] '".- {From a handkerohief painted by Gabriel Max.) This picture has been regarded by many simple people as being of miraculous origin, a superstition strengthened by a trick of the artist, who has so painted the eyes that when examined steadily for a few moments they seem to open and are then seen plainly to be looking upward. 74 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. painting is hung up for a tavern sign. Hogarth cannot sell his best painting, except through a raffle. Andrew Delsart makes the great fresco in the Church of the Annunciation, at Florence, and gets for pay a sack of corn; and there are annoyance and vexations in high places as well as in low places, showing that in a great many lives the sours are greater than the sweets. It is absurd to suppose that a man who has always been well can sympathize with those who are sick; or that one who has always been honored can appreciate the sorrows of those who are despised; or that one who has been born to a great fortune can understand the distress and the straits of those who are destitute. The fact that Christ Himself took the vinegar makes Him able to sympathize to-day and forever with all those whose cup is filled with sharp acids of this life. In the first place there is the sourness of betrayal. The treachery of Judas hurt Christ's feelings more than all the friendship of His disciples did Him good. You have had many friends; but there was one friend upon whom you put espe- cial stress. You feasted him. You loaned him money. You befriended him in the dark passes of life, when he especially needed a friend. Afterward, he turned upon you, and he took advantage of your former intimacies. He wrote against you. He talked against you. He microscopized your faults. He flung contempt at you when you ought to have received nothing but gratitude. At first you could not sleep at nights. Then you went about wnth a sense of having been stung. That difficulty will never be healed, for, though mutual friends may arbitrate in the matter until you shall shake hands, the old cordiality will never come back. Now, I commend to all such the sympathy of a betra}-ed Christ. Why, they sold Him for less than our twenty dollars. They all forsook Him and fled. They cut Him to the quick. He drank that cup of betrayal to the dregs. There is also the sourness of pain. There are some of you w^ho have not seen a well day for many years. By keeping out of draughts, and by carefully studying dietetics, you continue to this time; but oh, the headaches, and the side- aches, and the backaches, and the heartaches which have been your accompaniment all the way through ! You have struggled under a heavy mortgage of physical disabilities; and instead of the placidity that once characterized you, it is now only with great effort that you keep away from irritability and sharp retort. Difficul- ties of respiration, of digestion, of locomotion, make up the great obstacle in your life, and you tug and sweat along the pathway, and wonder when the exhaustion will end. My friends, the brightest crowns in heaven will not be given to those who, in stirrups, dashed to the cavalry charge, while the General applauded, and the sound of clashing sabres rang through the land ; but the brightest crowns in heaven, I believe, will be given to those who trudged on amid chronic ailments which unnerved their strength, yet all the time maintaining their faith in God. It is comparatively easy to fight in a regiment of one thousand men, charging up THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. - 75 the parapets to the sound of martial music; but it is not so easy to endure when no one but the nurse and the doctor are the witnesses of the Christian fortitude. Besides that you never had any pains worse than Christ's. The sharpness that stung through His brain, through His hands, through His feet, through His heart, were as great as yours certainly. He was as sick and as weary. Not a nerve, or muscle, or ligament escaped. All the pangs of all the nations of all the ages compressed into one sour cup. THE VANiTY OF WEALTH AND GENIUS. There is also the sourness of poverty. Your income does not meet j'our out- goings, and that always gives an honest man anxiety. There is no sign of desti- tution about you — pleasant appearance and a cheerful home for you; but God only knows what a time you have had to manage 3'our private finances. Just as the bills run up the wages seem to run down. But you are not the only one who has not been paid for hard work. The great Wilkie sold his celebrated piece, " The Blind Fiddler;" for fifty guineas, although afterwards it brought its thousands. The world hangs in admiration over the sketch of Gainsborough, yet that very sketch hung for years in the shop-window because there was not any purchaser. Oliver Goldsmith sold his "Vicar of Wakefield" for a few pounds, in order to keep the bailiff out of his door; and the vast majority of men in all occupations and professions are not fully paid for their work. You may say nothing, but life to 3'ou is a hard push; and when you sit down with your wife and talk over the expenses, you both rise up discouraged. You abridge here, and you abridge there, and you get things snug for smooth sailing, and lo ! suddenly there is a large doctor's bill to pay, or j^ou have lost your pocketbook, or some creditor has failed, and you are thrown abeam end. Well, brother, you are in glorious com- pany. Christ owned not the house in which He stopped, or the colt on which He rode, or the boat in which He sailed. He lived in a borrowed house; He was buried in a borrowed grave. Exposed to all kinds of weather, yet He had only one suit of clothes. He breakfasted in the morning, and no one could possibly tell where He could get anything to eat before night. He would have been pro- nounced a financial failure. He had to perform a miracle to get money to pay a tax bill. Not a dollar did He own. Privation of domesticity; privation of nutritious food; privation of a comfortable couch on which to sleep; privation of all worldly resources. The kings of the earth had chased chalices out of which to drink, but Christ had nothing but a plain cup set before Him, and it was very sharp, and it was very sour. There also is the sourness of bereavement. There were years that passed along before your family circle was invaded by death; but the moment the charmed circle was broken everything seemed to dissolve. Hardly have you put 76 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. the black apparel in the wardrobe before you have again to take it out. Great and rapid changes in your family record. You got the house and rejoiced in it, but the charm was gone as soon as the crape hung on the door-bell. The one THE angel's whisper. upon whom you most depended was taken away from you. A cold marble slab lies on your heart to-day. Once, as the children romped through the house, you put your hand over your aching head and said: " Oh, if I could only have it still." THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 77 Oh, it is too still now. You lost 3'our patience when the tops and the strings and the shells were left amid the floor, but oh, you would be willing to have the trinkets scattered all over the floor again, if they were scattered by the same hands. With what a ruthless plowshare bereavement rips up the heart. But Jesus knows all about that. You cannot tell Him anything in regard to bereavement. He had only a few friends, and when He lost one it brought tears to His eyes. Lazarus had often entertained Him at his house. Now Lazarus is dead and buried, and Christ breaks down with emotion — the convulsion of grief shuddering through all the ages of bereavement. Christ knows what it is to go through the house miss- ing a familiar inmate. Christ knows what it is to see an unoccupied plate at the table. Were there not four of them — Mary, and Martha, and Christ, and Laza- rus? Four of them. But where is Lazarus? Lonely and afflicted Christ, His great loving eyes filled with tears, which drop from eye to cheek, and from cheek to beard, and from beard to robe, and from robe to floor. Oh, yes, yes, He knows all about the loneliness and the heartbreak. THE HOUR OF DEATH. Then there is the sourness of the death hour. Whatever else we may escape, that acid sponge will be pressed to our lips. I sometimes have a curiosity to know how I will behave when I come to die. Whether I will be calm or excited; whether I will be filled with reminiscences or with anticipation. I cannot sa5\ But come to the point I must, and you must. In the six thousand years that have passed, only two persons have got into the eternal world without death, and I do not suppose that God is going to send a carriage for us with horses of flame, to draw us up the steps of heaven; but I suppose we will have to go like the preced- ing generations. An officer of the future world will knock at the door of our heart and serve on us the writ of ejectment, and we will have to surrender. And we will wake up after these autumnal, and wintry, and vernal, and summery glories have vanished from our vision — we will wake up into a realm which has only one season, and that the season of everlasting love. But 3^ou say: " I don't want to break out from my present associations. It is so chilly and so damp to go down the stairs of that vault. I don't want anything drawn so tightly over my eyes. If there were only some way of breaking through the partition between worlds without tearing this body all to shreds. I wonder if the surgeons and the doctors cannot compound a mixture bj^ which this body and soul can all the time be kept together. Is there no escape from the separation ?" A great many men tumble through the gates of the future, as it were, and we do not know where they have gone, and they only add gloom and mystery to the passage; but Jesus Christ so mightily stormed the gates of that future world that they have never since been closely shut. Christ knows what it is to leave this 78 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. world, of the beauty of which He was more appreciative than we ever could be. He knows the exquisiteness of the phosphoresence of the sea; He trod it. He knows the glories of the midnight heavens for they were the spangled canopv of His wilderness pillow. He knows about the lilies: He twisted them into his ser- mon. He knows about the fowls of the air: they whirred their way through His discourse. He knows about the sorrows of leaving this beautiful world. Not a taper was kindled in the darkness. He died physicianless. He died in cold sweat and dizziness, and hemorrhage, and agony that have put him in sympathy with all the dying. He goes through Christendom, and He gathers up the stings out of all the death pillows, and He puts them under His own neck and head. He gathers on His own tongue the burning thirsts of many generations. The sponge is soaked in the sorrow of all those who have died in their beds as well as soaked in the sorrows of all those who perished in ic}' or fiery martyrdom. W^hile heaven was pitying, and earth was mocking, and hell was deriding. He took the vinegar ! To all those to whom life has been an acerbity — a dose they could not swallow, a draught that set their teeth on edge and a-rasping — I bespeak the omnipotent sympathy of Jesus Christ. The sister of Herschel, the astronomer, used to help him in his work. He got all the credit; she got none. She used to spend much of her time polishing the telescopes through which he brought the distant worlds nigh, and it is my ambition now, this hour, to clear the lens of your spiritual vision, so that, looking through the dark night of your earthly troubles, j'ou may behold the glorious constellation of a Saviour's mercy and a Saviour's love. Omy friends ! do not try to carry all your ills alone. Do not put your poor shoulder under the Apennines when the Almighty Christ is ready to lift up all your bur- dens. When you have a trouble of any kind, you rush this way, and that way; and you wonder what this man will say about it, and what that man will say about it; and you try this prescription, and that prescription, and the other prescription. Oh, why do you not go straight to the heart of Christ, knowing that for our own sinning and .suffering race, He took the vinegar ! " Whosoever will, let him come and take of the water of life freely." Yet, while I write I am pained at the thought that there are people who will refuse this divine sympathy, and they will tr\'to fight their own battles, and drink their own vinegar, and carry their own burdens; and their life, instead of being a triumphal march from victory to victory, will be a hobbling-on from defeat to defeat, until they make final surrender to retributive di.saster. Oh, I wish I could gather up in mine arms all the woes of men and women — all their heartaches — all their disappointments — all their chagrins — and just take them right to the feet of a sympathizing Jesus. PERiSHABi,ENESS. — Painted by the Crown Princess of Germany. i„^\ 8o THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. Nana Sahib, after he had lost his last battle in India, fell back into the jungles of Iheri — jungles so full of malaria that no mortal can live there. He carried with him also a ruby of great lustre and of great value. He died in those jungles; his body was never found and the ruby has never yet been recovered. And I fear that there are some who will fall back from this subject into the sickening, killing jungles of their sin, carrying a gem of infinite value — a priceless soul — to be lost forever. Oh, that that ruby might flash in the eternal coronation. But no. There are many, I fear, who will turn away from this offered merc}' and comfort and divine sympathy, notwithstanding that Christ, for all who would accept His grace, trudged the long way and suffered the lacerating thongs and received in His face the expectorations of the filthy mob, and for the guilty, and the discouraged, and the discomforted of the race, took the vinegar. May God Almighty break the infatuation and lead you out into the strong hope, and the good cheer, and the glorious sunshine of this triumphant gospel ! THE DAY OF FINAL REWARD. 1W^1^'~3'^f'^^iji?'^^^"^ persecutors used to let out the half-starved lions to eat \ "^^u^v/V • ' '^'^ ^^P Christians in the Colosseum at Rome, there is now K^|^^<^^A^y kingly warrior, having subdued an empire, might divide the palaces, and mansions, and cities, and valleys, and mountains among his officers, so Christ is going to divide up all the earth and all the heavens among His people, and you and I will have to take our share if so be that we are strong in faith and strong in our Christian loyalty. Do I really mean all the earth will surrender to Christ ? Yes. How about the uninviting portions ? Will Greenland be evangelized ? The possibilit}- is that after a few more hundred brave lives are dashed out among the icebergs, that great refrigerator, the polar region, will be given up to the walrus and the bear, and that the inhabitants will come- down by invitation into tolerable climates; or those climates may soften, and, as it has been positively demonstrated that the Arctic region was once a blooming garden and a fruitful field, those regions may change climate and again be a blooming garden and a fruitful field. It is proved beyond controversy by German and American scientists that the Arctic regions were the first portions of this world inhabitable; when the world was hot beyond human endurance, these regions were, of course, the first to be cool enough for human foot and human lung. It is positively proved that the Arctic region had a tropical climate. Professor Heer, of Zurich, sa3'S the remains of flowers have been found in the Arctic, showing it was like Mexico for climate, and it is found that the Arctic was the mother-region from which all the flowers descended. Professor Wallace says the remains of all styles of animal life are found in the Arctic, including those animals that can live only in warm climates. ' Now, that Arctic region which has been demonstrated, by flora, and fauna, and geological argu- ment, to have been as full of vegetation and life as our Florida, may be turned back to its original bloom and glory, or it will be shut up as a museum of crystals for curiosity seekers once in a while to visit. Both Arctic and Antarctic, in some shape, will belong to the Redeemer's realm. 6 (8i) THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. DESERTS TO BE RECLAIMED. What about other unproductive or repulsive regions ? All the deserts shall be irrigated, the waters will be forced up to the great American desert between A STUDENT OF rROPHECY. here and the Pacific by machinery now known or yet to be invented, and, as Great Salt Lake City has no rain and could not raise an apple or a bushel of wheat THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 83 in a hundred years without artificial help, but is now through such means one great garden, so all the unproductive parts of all the continents will be turned into harvest fields and orchards. A half dozen De Eesseps will furnish the world with all the canals needed, and will change the course of rivers and open new lakes, and the Great Sahara Desert will be cut up into farms, with an astounding yield of bushels to the acre. The marsh will be drained of its waters and cured of its malaria. I saw the other day what was for many years called the Black Swamp of Ohio, its chief crop chills and fevers, but now, by the tiles put into the ground to carry off the surplus moisture, transformed into the richest and health- iest of regions. The God who wastes nothing, I think, means that this world, from pole to pole, has to come to perfection of foliage and fruitage. For that reason He keeps us running through space, though so many fires are blazing down in its timbers, and so man}' mock terrors have threatened to dash it to pieces. As soon as the earth is completed Christ will divide it up among the good. The reason He does not divide it now is because it is not done. A kind father will not divide the apple among his children until the apple is ripe. In fulfillment of the New Testament promise, " The meek shall inherit the earth," and the promise of the Old Testament, "He shall divide the spoil with the strong," the world will be apportioned to those worthy to possess it. It is not so now. In this country, capable of holding, feeding, clothing and sheltering twelve hundred million people, and where we have only 60,000,000 inhabitants, we have 2,000,000 who cannot get honest work, and with their families an aggregation of 20,000,000 that are on the verge of starvation. Some- thing wrong most certainly. In some way there will be a new apportionment. Many of the millionaire estates will crack to pieces on the dissipations of grand- children, and then dissolve into the possession of the masses who now have an insufficiencv. WHAT OF CERTAIN BUILDINGS? What, you say, will become of the expensive and elaborate buildings now devoted to debasing amusements ? The}' will become schools, art galleries, museums, gymnasiums and churches. The world is already getting disgusted with many of these amusements, and no wonder. What an importation of unclean theatrical stuff we have had brought to our shores within the last few years ! And professors of religion patronizing such things ! Having sold out to the devil, why don't you deliver the goods and go over to him publicly, body, mind and soul, and withdraw your name from Christian churches, and say: ' ' Know all the world by these presents that I am a patron of uncleanliness and a child of hell." Sworn to be the lyord's, you are perjurers. But at last the tide has turned, and the despisers of purity overdid the matter. A foreign actress of base morals arrived intending to make a tour of the 84 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. States, but the remaining decency of our cities rose up and canceled the contracts and drove her back from our American stage, a woman fit for neither continent. In the name of Ahiiighty God I take these abominations by the throat. If you think those offences are to go on forever, you do not know who the Eord is. God will not wait for the day of judgment. All the.se palaces of sin will become palaces of righteousness. They will come into the possession of those strong for virtue and strong for God. China and Africa, the two richest portions of the earth by reason of metals and rare woods, and inexhaustible productiveness, are not yet divided up among the good because they are not ready to be divided. Wait until all the doors that Livingstone opened in Africa shall be entered, and Bishop Taylor with his band of self-supporting missionaries have done their work, and the Ashantees and Senegambians shall know Christ as well as you know Him, and there shall be on the banks of the Nile and the Niger a higher civilization than is now to be found on the banks of the Hudson, then Christ will divide up that continent among His friends. Wait until China, which is half as large as all Europe, shall have developed her capacities for rice, and tea, and sugar, among edibles; and her amethyst, and sapphire, and topaz, and opal, and jasper, and porphyry, among precious stones; and her rosewood, and ebony, and camphor, and varnish trees among precious woods; and turned up from her depths a half dozen Pennsylvanias of coal and iron, and twenty Nevadas of silver, and fifty Californias of gold, and her 500,000,000 of people shall be evangelized; then the Lord will divide it up among the good. CHRISTIAN FARMERS. If the Lord's promi.se be not a deception, but the eternal truth, then the time is coming when all the farms will be owned by Christian farmers, and all the com- merce controlled by Christian merchants, and all the authority held by Chri.stian ofi&cials, and all the ships conunanded by Christian captains, and all the universi- ties under the instruction of Chri.stian profe.s.sors; Christian kings. Christian presidents. Christian governors. Christian mayors, Chri.stian common councils. Yet, what a scouring out ! what an upturning ! what a demolition ! what a resur- rection mu.st precede this new apportionment ! I do not underrate the enemy. Julius Coesar got his greatest victories by fully estimating the vastness of his foes and prepared his men for their greatest triumph by saying: "To-morrow King Juba will be here with 30,000 horses, 100,000 skirmishers, and 300 elephants." I do not underrate the vast forces of sin and death, but do you know who commands us? Jehovah -Jireh. And the reserve corps behind us are all the armies of heaven and earth, with hurricane and thunderbolt. The good work of the world's redemption is going on every minute. Never so many splendid men AMERICA. —T^Ko;;/ the Group in Marble by John Bell. (85) 86 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. and glorious women on the side of right as to-day. Never so many good people as now. Diogenes has been spoken of as a wise man because he went with a lantern at noonday, saying he was looking for an honest man. If he had turned his lantern toward himself he might have discovered a crank. Honest men by the ten tliousand ! Through the International Series of Sunday-school Lessons A DIRGE IN THR AFRICAN DKSRRT. — Ffom a Paintuig by J. N. NcUlcship. the next generation all through Christendom are going to be wiser than any generation since the world stood. The kingdom is coming. God can do it. THE DIVISION OF HEAVEN. " But," you say, " that is pleasant to think of for others, but before that time I shall have passed up into another existence, and I shall get no advantage from that new apportionment." THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 87 Ah, you have only driven me to the other more exciting and transporting consideration, and that is that Christ is going to divide up heaven in the same way. There are old estates in the celestial world that have been in the possession LANDING OF THE ROMANS, UNDER C^;SAR, IN BRITAIN, B. C. 55. of its inhabitants for thousands of years, and they shall remain as they are. There are old family mansions in heaven filled with whole generations of kindred, 88 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. and the)' shall never be driven out. Many of the victors from earth have al- ready got their palaces, and they are pointed out to those newly arrived. Soon after our getting there we will ask "5 to be shown the c^, apostolic resi- ^' deuces, and ask where does Paul live, and John, and shown the patriarchal resi- dences and shall say: "Where does Abraham live, or Jacob?" and shown the cq w « w martyr residen- ce ^ ces and say: 0 "Where does g John Huss live, g and Ridley?" 1 We will want to see the boule- N'ards where the chariots of con- querors roll. I will want to see the gardens where the prin- ces walk. We will want to see ]Music Row, hear THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 89 Handel, and Haydn, and Mozart, and Charles Wesley, and Thomas Hastings, and Bradbury in their heavenlj^ homes, out of whose windows, ever and anon, are rolling some snatch of an earthly oratorio or hymn transported with the composer. We will want to see Revival Terrace, where Whitefield, and Nettleton, and Payson, and Rowland Hill, and Charles Finney and other giants of soul- reaping are resting from their almost supernatural labors, all their doors thronged with converts just arrived, coming to report themselves. But brilliant as the sunset, and like the leaves for number, are the celestial homes yet to be awarded, when Christ to you, and millions of others, shall divide the spoil. What do you want there ? You shall have it. An orchard ? There it is; twelve manner of fruit, and fruit every month. Do you want river scenery ? Take your choice on the banks of the river, in longer, wider, deeper roll than Danube, or Amazon, or Mississippi, if mingled in one, and emptying into the sea of glass, mingled with fire. Do you want ^-our kindred back again ? Go out and meet your father and mother without the staff or the stoop, and your children in a dance of immortal glee. Do you want a throne ? Select it from the million of burnished elevations. Do you want a crown? Pick it out of that mountain of diamonded coronets. Do you want your old church friends of earth around you? Begin to hum an old revival tune and they will flock from all quarters to revel with you in sacred reminiscence. All the earth for those who are here on earth at the time of continental and planetary distribution, and all the heavens for those who are there. AS YE SOW, SO SHALL YE REAP. That heavenly distribution of spoils will be a surprise to many. Here enters heaven the soul of a man who took up a great deal of room in the Church on earth, but sacrificed little, and among his good works selfishness was evident. He just crowds through the shining gate, but it is a very tight squeeze, so that the door-keeper has to pull hard to get him in, and this man expects half of heaven for his share of trophies, and he would like a monopoly of all its splendor, and to purchase lots in the suburbs, so that he could get advantages from the growth of the city. Well, he had a little grace of heart, just enough to get him through, and to him is given a second-hand crown, which one of the saints wore at the start, but exchanged for a brighter one as he went on from glor)' to glory. And he is put in an old house once occupied by an angel who was hurled out of heaven at the time of Satan's rebellion. Right after him comes a soul that makes a great stir among the celestials, and the angels rush to the scene, each bringing to her a dazzling coronet. Who is she ? Over what realm on earth was she queen ? In what great Dusseldorf festival was she the cantatrice ? Neither. She was an invalid who never left her room 90 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. ^^y^x"^ for twenty years; but she was strong ni prayer, and she prayed down revival after revival, and peutecost after pentecost, upon the churches, and with her pale hands she knit many a mitten or tippet for the poor, and with her contrivances she added joy to many a holiday festival; and now, with those thin hands so strong for kind- ness, and those white lips so strong for supplication, she has won coronation, and enthronement, and jubilee. And Christ says to the angels who have brought each \ \ V ,' ,' ^ y a crown to the glorified invalid: "No, not these ; they are not good enough . But in the jew- eled vase at the right-hand side of My throne there is one that I have been pre- ^°" many a 5^ ear, and for her every pang I have set an amethyst, and for her everj'^ good deed I have set a pearl. Fetch it now and fulfill the prom- ise I gave her long ago in the sick-room: ' Be thou faithful un- to death, and I will give thee a crown.' " But notice that there is only one being in the miverse who can and will dis- tribute the trophies of earth and heaven. It is the divine warrior, the commander-in-chief of the centuries, the champion of the ages, the universal conciueror, the Son of God— Jesus. Have His friendship, and >ou may defy all time and all eternity, but without it you were a pauper, though you had a universe at your command. We are told in Revelation that Jacob's twelve sons were so ^Zfm. ftj THE TEMPTATION.— F;'C>;« the Painting by Tintoretto. 92 THE PATHWAY OF IJFE. honored as to have the twelve gates of heaven named after them — over one gate of heaven NaphtaH, over another gate of heaven Issachar, over another Dan, over another Gad, over another Zebuhin, over another Judah, and so on. But Christ's name is written over all the gates, and on every panel of the gates, and have His help, His pardon, His intercession, His atonement, I must, or be a forlorn wretch forever. My Lord and my God ! make me and all to whom these words shall come Thy re- pentant, believing, sworn, consecrated and ransomed follow- ers fore^•er. What a day it will be ! All my readers would rise to their feet if they could realize it, the day in which Christ shall, in fulfillment of ni}' text, divide the spoil. It was a great day, when Queen Victoria, in the midst of the Crimean war, distributed med- als to the soldiers who had come home sick and wounded. At the Horse Guards, in the presence of the royal family, the injured men were carried in (ir came on crutches and with her own hand the Queen gave each the Crimean medal. And what triumphant days for those soldiers when, further on, they received the French medal with the Imperial eagle, and the Turkish medal with its representation of four flags — France, Turkey, England and vSardinia — and beneath it a map of the Crimea spread over a gun-wheel. KOUR FAMOUS MKDAI.S. The Legion of Honor. The Victoria Cross. The Waterloo Medal. The Crimean Medal. THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 93 THE FINAL REWARD. And what rewards are suggested to all readers of histor>' by the mere mention of the Waterloo medal, and the Cape medal, and the Gold-cross medal, and the medal struck for bravery in our American wars ! But how insignificant are all these compared with the day when the good soldiers of Jesus Christ shall come in out of the battles of this world, and in the presence of all the piled-up glories of the redeemed and unfallen, Jesus, our King, shall divide the spoil ! The more wounds the greater the inheritance. The longer the forced march the brighter the trophy. The more terrific the exhaustion the more glorious the transport. Not the gift of a brilliant ribbon, or a medal of brass, or silver, or gold, but a kingdom in which we are to reign for ever and ever. Mansions on the eternal hills. Dominions of unfading power. Empires of unending love. Continents of everlasting light. Atlantic and Pacific Oceans of billowing joy. It was a great day when Aurelian, the Roman emperor, came back from his victories. In the front of the procession were wild beasts from all lands, 1600 gladiators richly clad, wagon-loads of crowns presented by conquered cities; among the captives, Sj^rians, Egyptians, Goths, Vandals, Sarmatians, Franks; and Zenobia, the beau- tiful captive queen, on foot in chains of gold that a slave had to help her carry, and jewels under the weight of which she almost fainted. And then came the chariot of Aurelian, drawn by four elephants in gorgeous caparison and followed by the Roman Senate and the Roman army, and from dawn till dark the proces- sion was passing. Rome in all her history never saw anything more magnificent. But how much greater the day when our conqueror, Jesus, shall ride under the triumphant arches of heaven , His captives not on foot but in chariots, all the king- doms of heaven and earth in procession, the armies celestial on white horses, rum- bling artillery of thunderbolts never again to be unlimbered, kingdoms in line, centuries in line, saintly, cherubic, seraphic, archangelic splendors in line, and Christ, seated on one great rolling hosanna, made out of all hallelujahs of all worlds, shall ciy, " Halt" to the procession. And not forgetting even the hum- blest in all the reach of His omnipresence, He shall rise and then and there. His work done and His glory consummated, proceed, amid an ecstasy such as neither mortal nor immortal ever imagined, to divide the spoil. E^^ffitS^^^g;j;aj^^;™°^°«"yffyi?gj?^ ^ itiWr''T^^r^ri^rirTyiri^-'t^ii^?i^ HOW TO ATTAIN TRUE HAPPINESS. "\. F, in midsummer, I should ask some one, where are the people of New York, Brooklyn, Boston or Philadelphia, the answer would be: At Brighton Beach, East Hampton, Shelter Island, lyong Branch, Cape May, Sulphur Springs or Europe. But while many are at the pleasure resorts the larger number are at home, detained by business or circumstances. But the genuine American is not happy luiless he is going somewhere, and the passion is so great that there are Christian people with their families detained in the city who come not to the house of God, trying to give people the idea that thcN' are out of town; leaving the door-plate unsecured for the same reason, and for two months keeping the front shutters closed while they sit in the back part of the house, the thermometer at ninety ! M}^ friends, if it is best for us to go, let us go and be happy. If it is best for us to stay at home, let us stay at home and be happy. There is a great deal of good common sense in Paul's advice to the He- brews: " Be content with such things as ye have." To be content is to be in good humor with our circumstances, not picking a quarrel with our obscurit}-, or our poverty, or our social position. There are four or five grand reasons why we should be content with such things as we have. We make a great ado about our hardships, but how little we talk of our bless- ings. Health of body, which is given in largest quantity to those who have never been petted, and fondled, and spoiled by fortune, we take as a matter of course. Rather have this luxury and have it alone, than, without it, look out of a palace window upon parks of deer stalking between fountains and statuary. These people sleep sounder on a straw mattress than fashionable invalids on a couch of ivory and eagle's down. The dinner of herbs tastes better to the appe- tite sharpened on a woodman's axe or a reaper's .scythe than wealthy indigestion experiences seated at a table covered with partridge, and venison, and pineapple. The grandest luxury God ever gave a man is health. He who trades that off for all the palaces of the earth is infinitely cheated. We look back at the glory of the last Napoleon, but who would have taken his Versailles and his Tuilleries if with (94) 96 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. them we had been obliged to take his gout? " Oh," says some one, " it isn't the grosser pleasures I covet, but it is the gratification of an artistic and intellectual taste." Why, my brother, you have the original from which these pictures are copied. THE ORIGINAL AND THE COPY. What is a sunset on a wall compared wath a sunset hung in loops of fire in the heavens ? What is a cascade silent on a canvas compared with a cascade that makes the mountain tremble, its spray ascending like the departing spirit of the water slain on the rocks? Oh, there is a great deal of hollow affectation about a fondness for pictures on the part of those who never appreciate the original from which the pictures are taken. As though a parent should have no regard for a child, but go into ecstasies over its photograph. Bless the Lord to-day, O man ! O woman ! that though you may be shut out from the works of a Church, a Bierstadt, a Rubens, and a Raphael, you still have free access to a gallery grander than the Louvre or the Luxemburg or the Vatican — the roj^al gallery of the noonday heavens the King's gallery of the midnight sky. You see people happy and miserable amid all circumstances. In a family where the last loaf is on the table, and the last stick of wood on the fire, you sometimes find a cheerful confidence in God, while in a very fine place you will see and hear discord sounding the war-whoop, and hospitality freezing to death in the cheerless parlor. I stopped one day on Broadway at the head of Wall street, at the foot of Trinity Church, to see who seemed the happiest people passing. I judged from their looks the happiest people were not those who went down into Wall street, for they had on their brow the anxiety of the dollar they expected to make; nor the people who came out of Wall street, for they had on their brow the anxiety of the dollar they had lost; nor the people who swept by in splendid equipage, for they met a carriage finer than theirs. The happiest person in all that crowd, judging from the countenance, was the woman who sat at the apple- stand knitting. I believe real happiness oftener looks out of the window of an humble home than through the opera-glass in the gilded box of a theatre. I find Nero growling on a throne. I find Paul singing in a dungeon. I find King Ahab going to bed at noon through melancholy, while near by is Naboth contented in the possession of a vineyard. Haman, Prime Minister of Persia, frets himself almost to death because a poor Jew will not tip his hat; and Ahitho- phel, one of the greatest lawyers of Bible times, through fear of dying, hangs him- self. The wealthiest man, forty years ago, in New York, when congratulated over his large e.state, replied: "Ah ! you don't know how much trouble I have in taking care of it." Byron declared in his last hours that he had never seen more than twelve happy days in all his life. I do not believe he had seen twelve min- utes of thorough satisfaction. Napoleon I. said: "I turn with disgust from the .971 98 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. cowardice and selfishness of man. I hold life a horror; death is repose. What I have suffered the last twenty days is beyond human comprehension." While, on the other hand, to show how one may be happy amid the most dis- advantageous circumstances, just after the Ocean Monarch had been wrecked in the English Channel, a steamer was cruising along in the darkness, when the cap- tain heard a song, a sweet song, coming over the water, and he bore down towards that voice, and found it was a Christian woman on a plank of the wrecked steamer, singing to the tune of " St. Martin's." "Jesus, lover of my soul, Let me to Thy bosom fly, While the billows near me roll. While the tempest still is high." The heart right toward God and man, we are happy. The heart wrong toward God and man, we are unhappy. Another reason why we should be filled with the spirit of content is the fact that all the differences of earthly condition are transitory. The houses you build, the land you cultivate, the places in which you barter, are soon to go into other hands. However hard you may have it now, if you are a Christian the scene wall soon end. Pain, trial, persecution will never knock at the door of the grave. A coffin made out of pine boards is just as good a resting-place as one made out of silver-mounted mahogany or rosewood. WHERE AMBITION SLEEPS. Go down among the resting-places of the dead, and you will find that though people there had a great difference of worldly circumstances, now they are all alike unconscious. The hand that greeted the senator, and the president, and the king, is still as the hand that hardened on the mechanic's hammer or the manu- facturer's wheel. It does not make any difference now whether there is a plain stone above them from which the traveler pulls aside the weeds to read the name, •or a tall shaft springing into the heavens as though to tell their virtues to the skies. In that silent land there are no titles for great men, and there are no rum- blings of chariot wheels, and their is never heard the foot of the dance. The Egyptian guano which is thrown on the fields in the East for the enrichment of the soil is the dust raked out from the sepulchres of kings and lords and mighty men. Oh, the chagrin of those men if they had ever known that in the after-ages of the world they would have been called Egyptian guano. Of how much worth now is the crown of Caesar ? Who bids for it ? Who cares now anything about the Amphictyonic council or the laws of Lycurgus ? THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. 99 Who trembles now because Xerxes crossed the Hellespont on a bridge of boats ? Who fears because Nebuchadnezzar thunders at the gates of Jerusalem ? Who cares now whether or not Cleopatra marries Anthony ? Who crouches before Ferdi- nand, or Bonifice, or Alaric ? Can Cromwell dissolve the English Parliament now? Is William, Prince of Orange, King of the Netherlar.ds ? No, no ! How- ever much Elizabeth may love the Russian crown, she must pass it to Peter, and PRINCIPAIv WORKS OF CHRISTOPHER WREN, WITH ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL RISING FROM THE BACKGROUND. — From a Painting by C. R. Cockercll. Peter to Catharine, and Catharine to Paul, and Paul to Alexander, and Alexander to Nicholas. lycopold puts the German sceptre into the hand of Joseph, and Philip comes down off the Spanish throne to let Ferdinand go on. House of Aragon, house of Hapsburg, house of Stuart, house of Bourbon, quarreling about everything else, but agreeing in this: " The fashion of this world passeth away." loo THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. But have all these dignitaries gone ? Can they not be called back ? I have been in assemblages where I have heard the roll called, and many distinguished men have answered. If I should call the roll to-day of some of those mighty ones who have gone I wonder if they would not answer ? I will call the roll. I will call the roll of the kings first: Alfred the Great ! William the Conqueror ! Frederick II. ! Louis XVI. ! No answer, I will call the roll of the poets: Robert Southey ! Thomas Campbell ! John Keats ! George Crabbe ! Robert Burns ! No answer. I will call the roll of artists: Michael Angelo ! Paul Veronese ! William Turner ! Christopher Wren ! No answer. Eyes closed. Ears deaf. Eifis silent. Hands palsied. Sceptre, pencil, pen, sword, put down forever. Why should we struggle for such baubles ? If your path had been smooth, 5'ou would have depended upon your own surefootedness; but God roughened that path, so 3'ou have to take hold of His hand. If the weather had been mild, you would have loitered along the water- courses, but at the first howl of the storm you quickened your pace heavenward and wrapped around you the warm robe of a Saviour's righteousness. "What have I done?" says the wheat-sheaf to the farmer. " What have I done that you beat me so hard with your flail?" The farmer makes no answer, but the rake takes off the straw, and the mill blows the chaff to the wind, and the golden grain falls down at the foot of the windmill. After a while, the straw, looking down from the mow upon the golden grain banked up on either side the floor, under- stands why the farmer beats the wheat-sheaf with the flail. Who are those before the throne? The answer came: "These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Eamb," Would to God that we could understand that our trials are the very best thing for us. If we had an appreciation of that truth, then we should know why it was that John Noyra, the martyr, in the ver>' niidst of the flame, reached down and picked up one of the fagots that was consuming him, and kissed it, and said: " Blessed be God for the time when I was born for this perferment," They who suffer with Him on earth shall be glorified with Him in heaven. Be content, then, with such things as you have. THE REST THAT SHALL BE OURS. But notwithstanding all the promises and inducements to a spirit of content- ment the human race is divided into two classes — those who scold and those who get scolded. The carpenter wants to be anything but a carpenter, and the mason anything but a mason, and the banker anything but a banker, and the lawyer anything but a lawyer, and the minister anything but a minister, and everybody would be happy if he were only somebody else. The anemone wants to be a sunflower, and the apple orchards throw down their blossoms because they are not THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. loi tall cedars, and the scow wants to be a schooner, and the sloop would like to be a seventy -four pounder, and parents have the worst children that ever were, and everybody has the greatest misfortune, and everything is upside down, or going to be. Ah! my readers, you never make any advance through such a spirit as that. You cannot fret yourself up ; you may fret yourself down. Amid all this grating of tones I strike this string of the gospel harp: " Godliness with content- ment is great gain. We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out ; and having food and raiment, let us be therewith content." Let us all remember, if we are Christians, that we are going after a while, whatever be our circumstances now, to have a glorious vacation. As in summer we put off our garments and go down into the cool sea to bathe, so we will put off these garments of flesh, and step into the cool Jordan. We will look around for some place to lay down our weariness ; and the trees will say : ' ' Come and rest under our shadow ; " and the earth will say: " Come and sleep in my bosom ; " and the winds will say : "Hush! while I sing thee a cradle hymn ; " and while six strong men carry us out to our last resting-place, and ashes come to ashes and dust to dust, we will see two scarred feet standing amid the broken soil, and a lacerated brow bending over the open grave, while a voice, tender with all affection and mighty with all omnipotence, will declare : " I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. " Comfort one another with these words. ®)Cir ^oun^ UTontjen^ HOW TO FIGHT THE BATTLE OF LIFE ALONE. 'OMAN is a mere adjunct to man, an appendix to the mascu- line volume, an appendage, a sort of afterthought, something thrown in to make things even — that is the heresy enter- tained and implied by some men. This is evident to them: Woman's insignificance as compared to man is evident to them, because Adam was first created and then Eve. They don't read the whole story or they would find that the por- poise and the bear and the hawk were created before Adam, so that the argument drawn from priority of creation might prove that the sheep and the dog were greater than man. No; woman was an independent creation, and was intended, if she chose, to live alone, to walk alone, act alone, think alone, and fight the battle of life alone. The Bible says, it is not good for man to be alone, but never says it is not good for woman to be alone, and the simple fact is that many women who are harnessed for life in the marriage relation would be a thousand-fold better off' if they were alone. God makes no mistake, and the fact that there is such a large majority of women in this land proves that He intended that multitudes of them should go alone. Who are these men who year after year hang around hotels and engine-houses and theatre doors, and come in and out to bother busy clerks and merchants and mechanics, doing nothing even when there is plenty to do? They are men supported by their wives and mothers. If the statistics of any of our cities could be taken on this subject you would find that a vast multitude of women not only support themselves, but masculines also. A great legion of men amount to nothing, and a woman by tnarriage manacled to one of these nonentities needs condolence. A woman standing outside the marriage relation is several hundred thousand times better off than a woman badly married. Many a bride, instead of a wreath of orange blossoms, might more properly wear a bunch of nettles and night-shade, and instead of the wedding march a more appropriate tune would be the Dead March in Saul, and instead of a banquet of confectionery and ices there (.102) THK PATHWAY OF LIFE. 103 might be more appropriately spread a are outside fair and inside ashes. Many an attractive woman of good, sound sense in other things, has married one of these men to reform him. What was the result? Like when a dove, noticing that a vulture was rapacious and cruel, set about to reform it, and said: "I have a mild disposition and I like peace, and was brought up in the quiet of a dove-cote, and I will bring the vulture to the same liking by marrying him." So one da)^ after the vulture had declared he would give up his carnivorous habits and cease longing for blood of flock table covered with apples of Sodom, which The vagabond in the street. and herd, at an altar of rock covered with moss and lichen, the twain were married, a bald-headed eagle oflBciating, the vulture saying: "With all my dominion of earth and sky I thee endow, and promise to love and cherish till death do us part." But one day in her flight the dove saw the vulture busy at a carcass, and cried: " Stop that ! did you not promise me that you would quit your carnivorous and fil- thy habits if I married you?" " Yes," said the vulture, " but if you don't like my way you can leave," and with one angrj' stroke of beak and another fierce THE VAGABOND IN THE DRAWING ROOM. I04 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. clutch of claw the vulture left the dove eyeless, and wingless, and lifeless. And a flock of robins flying past cried to each other and said: " See there ? that comes from a dove's marrying a vulture to reform him." Many a woman who has had the hand of a young inebriate offered, but declined it, or who was asked to chain her life to a man selfish or of bad temper, and refused the shackles, will bless God throughout all eternity that she escaped that earthly pandemonium. Besides all this, in our country about 1,000,000 men were sacrificed in our Civil War, and that decreed 1,000,000 women to celibacj^. Besides that, since the war, several armies of men as large as the Federal and Confederate armies put together have fallen under malt liquors and distilled .spirits so full of poi.soned ingredients that the work was done more rapidly, and the victims fell while yet young. And if 50,000 men are destroyed every year by strong drink before mar- riage, that makes, in the twenty-three years since the war, 1,150,000 men slain, and decrees 1,150,000 women to celibacy. Take then the fact that so many women are unhappy in their marriage, and the fact that the slaughter of 2,150,000 men by war and rum combined, decides that at least that number of women shall be imaffianced for life. In addressing these women who will have to fight the battle of life alone, I congratulate you on your happy escape. Rejoice forever that you will not have to navigate the faults of the other sex, when you have faults enough of your own. Think of the bereavements you avoid, of the risk of unassirailated temper which you will not have to run, of the cares you will never have to carr>% and of the opportunity of outside usefulness from which marital life would have partially debarred you, and that you are free to go and come as one who has the responsi- bilities of a household can seldom be. God has not given you a hard lot as com- pared with your sisters. When young women shall make up their minds at the start that masculine companionship is not a necessity in order to happiness, and that there is a strong proba1)ility that they will have to fight the battle of life alone, they will be getting the timber ready for their own fortunes and their saw and axe and plane sharpened for its construction, since "every wise woman buildetli her house. ' ' SHOULD LEARN TO SUPPORT THEMSELVES. As no boy ought to be brought up without learning some business at which he could earn a livelihood, so no girl ought to be brought up without learning the science of self-support. The difficulty is tliat many a family goes sailing on the high tides of success, and the husband and father depends on his own health and acumen for the welfare of his household; but one day he gets his feet wet, and in three days pneumonia has closed his life, and the daughters are turned out on a THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 105 cold world to earn bread, and there is nothing practical that they can do. The friends of the family come in and hold consultation. " Give music lessons," says an outsider. Yes, that is st useful calling, and if you have great genius for it go on in that direction. But there are enough music teachers now starving to death in all our towns and cities to occupy all the piano stools, and sofas, and chairs, and front door-steps of the city. Besides that, the daughter has been play ingonly for amuse- ment, and is only at the foot of the ladder, to the top of which a great multitude of masters on piano, and harp, and flute, and organ have climbed. ' ' Put the bereft daughters as sales- women in stores, ' ' says another adviser. But there they must compete with salesman of long experience, or with men who have served an apprentice- ship in commerce, and who began as shop boys at ten years of age. Some kind- hearted dry-goods man having known the father, now gone, says: " We are not in need of any more help just now, but send you daughters to my store, and I will do as well by them as possible." Very soon the question conies up: " Why do not the female employes get as much wages as the male employes?" For the simple reason in many cases the females were suddenly flung by misfortune behind that counter, while the males have from the day they left the public school been learning the business. How is this evil to be cured ? Start clear back in the homestead and teach your daughters that life is an earnest thing, and that there is a possibility, if not a strong probability, that they will have to fight the battle of life alone. Let every MILTON DICT\TING ' DAUGHTERS io6 THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. father and mother say to their daughters: " Now, what would 3'ou do for a liveli- hood if what I now own were swept away by financial disaster, or old age or death should suddenly end my career ?" " Well, I could paint on pottery and do such decorative work." Yes, that is beautiful, and if you have genius for it go on in that direction. But many others before you found the same occupation so pleasant that now it, too, is overdone. " Well, I could make recitations in public and earn my living as a dramatist. I could render King Lear or Macbeth till your hair would rise on end, or give you 'Sheridan's Ride' or Dickens' 'Pickwick.' " Yes, that is a beautiful art, but ever and anon, as now, there is an epidemic of dramatization that makes hun- dreds of households nervous with the cries and shrieks and groans of young tragedians dying in the fifth act, and the trouble is that while your friends would like to hear you, and really think that you could surpass Ristori and Charlotte Cushman and Fanny Kemble of the past, to say nothing of the present, you could not, in the way of living, in ten years earn ten cents. My advice to all girls and all unmarried women, whether in affluent homes or in homes where most astringent economies are grinding, is to learn to do some kind of work that the world must have while the world stands. I am glad to see a marvelous change for the better, and that women have found out that there are hundreds of practical things that a woman can do for a living if she begin soon enough, and that men have been compelled to admit it. You and I can remember when the majority of occupations were thought inappropriate for women, but our Civil War came and the hosts of men went forth from North and South, and to conduct the business of our cities during the patriotic absence, women were demanded by the tens of thousands to take the vacant places, and multitudes of women who had been hitherto supported by fathers, and brothers, and sons, were compelled thenceforth to take care of themselves. From that time a mighty change took place, favorable to female employment. APPROPRIATE OCCUPATIONS. Among the occupations appropriate for women I place the following, into many of which she has already entered, and all the others she will enter: Sten- ography, and you may find her at nearly all the reportorial stands in our educa- tional, political and religious meetings. Savings banks, the work clean and hon- orable, and who so great a right to toil there ? for a woman founded the first savings bank, Mrs. Priscilla Wakefield. Copyists, and there is hardly a profes- sional man that does not need the service of her penmanship, and, as amanuensis, many of the greatest books of our day have been dictated for her writing. There they are as florists, and confectioners, and music teachers, and stationers, and book- keepers, for which they are specially qualified by patience and accuracy; and in GIFT OF BRIDEGROOM. C107) io8 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. wood engraving, in which the Cooper Institute has turned out so many qualified; and telegraphy, for which she is specially prepared, as thousands of the telegraphic ofiices would testify. Photography, and in nearly all our establishments they may be found there at cheerful work. As workers in ivory, and gutta-percha, and gum- elastic, and tortoise-shell, and gilding, and in chemicals, in porcelain, in terra cotta, in embroidery. As postmistresses, and the President is giving them appointments all over the land. As keepers of light-houses, many of tliem, if they had the chance, ready to do as brave a thing with oar and boat as did Ida Lewis and Grace Darling. As proof-readers, as translators, as modellers, as designers, as draught- women, as lithographers, as teachers in schools and seminaries, for which t^iey are specially endowed, the first teacher of every child, by divine arrangement, being a woman. As physicians, having graduated after a regular course of study from the female colleges of our large cities, where they get as scientific and thor- ough preparation as any doctors ever had, and go forth to a work which no one but women could so appropriately or delicately do. On the lecturing platform, for you know the brilliant success of Mrs. Livermore, and Mrs. Hollowell, and Mrs. Willard, and Mrs. Lathrop. As physiological lecturers to their own sex, for which service there is a demand appalling and terrific. As preachers of the gospel and all the protests of ecclesiastical courts cannot hinder them, for they have a pathos and a power in their religious utterances that men can never reach. Wit- ness all those who have heard their mother pray. O young women of America, as many of 3'ou will have to fight your own battles alone, do not wait imtil you are flung by disaster upon the world; until your father is dead, and all the resources of your family have been scattered, but now, while in good house and environed by all prosperities, learn how to do some kind of work that the world must have as long as the world stands. Turn your attention from the embroidery of fine slippers, of whicli there is a surplus, and make the useful shoe. Expend the time in which you adorn a cigar case in learn- ing how to make a good, honest loaf of bread. Turn your attention from the making of flimsy nothings to the manufacturing of important somethings. Much of the time spent in young ladies' seminaries in studying what are called the " higher branches," might better be expended in teaching them some- thing by which they could support themselves. If you are going to be teachers, or if you have so much assured wealth that you can always dwell in those high regions, trigonometery, of course, metaphysics, of course, Latin, and Greek, and German, and French, and Italian, of course, and a hundred other things, of course, but if you are not expecting to teach, and your wealth is not established be^^ond misfortune, after you have learned the ordinary branches, take hold of that kind of study that will pay in dollars and cents in case you are thrown on your own resources. Learn to do something better than anybody else. Buy Virginia THE PATHWAY OF IvIFE. rogj Penny's book entitled " The Employments of Women," and learn there are 50Q ways in which a woman may earn a living. ROMANTIC IDEAS. "No, no!" says some young woman; " I will not undertake anything so unromantic and commonplace as that. ' ' An excellent author writes that after he had, in a book, argued for efficiency in womanly work in order to success, and IDLENESS. positive apprenticeship by way of preparation, a prominent chemist advertised that he would teach a class of women to become druggists and apothecaries if they would go through an apprenticeship as men do; and a printer advertised that he would take a class of women to learn the printer's trade if they would go through an apprenticeship as men do; and how many, according to the account of the no THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. authoress, do you suppose applied to become skilled in the druggist business and printing business ? Not one ! One young woman said she would be willing to try the printing business for six months, but by that time her older sister would be married, and then her mother would want her at home. My sisters, it will be skilled womanly labor that will finally triumph. " But," you ask, " what would my father and mother say if they saw I was doing such unfashionable work ?' ' Throw the whole responsibility upon the pas- tor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle, who is constantly hearing of young women in all these cities who unqualified by their previous luxurious surroundings for the awful struggle of life into which they have been suddenly hurled, seemed to have nothing left them but a choice between starvation and danuiation. There they go along the street seven o'clock in the wintry mornings, through the slush and storm, to the place where they shall earn only half enough for subsistence, the daughters of once prosperous merchants, lawyers, clergymen, artists, bankers and capitalists who brought up their children under the infernal delusion that it was not high-toned for women to learn a profitable calling. Young women, take this affair in your own hands and let there be an insurrection in all prosperous families of Brooklyn and New York and Christendom on the part of the daughters of this day, demanding knowledge in occupations and styles of business by which they may be their own defence and their own support if all fatherly and husbandly and brotherly hands forever fail them. I have seen two sad sights — the one a woman in all the glory of her j-oung life stricken by disease, and in a week lifeless in a home of which she had been the pride. As her hands were folded over the still heart and her eyes closed for the last slumber, and she was taken out amid the lamentations of kindred and friends, I thought that was a sadness immeasurable. But I have seen something compared with which that scene was bright and songful. It was a young woman who had been all her days amid wealthy surroundings, by the visit of death and bankruptcy to the household turned out on a cold world without one lesson about how to get food or shelter, and into the awful whirlpool of city life where strong ships have gone down, and for twenty years not one word has been heard from her. Vessels recently went out on the Atlantic Ocean looking for a shipwrecked craft that was left alone and forsaken on the sea, with the idea of bringing it into port. But who shall ever bring again into the harbor of peace and hope and heaven that lost womanly immortal, driven into what tempest, aflame in what conflagration, sinking into what abyss? O God, help ! O Christ, rescue ! WOMEN'S WAGES TO INCREASE. My sisters, give not your time to learning fancy work which the world may dispense with when hard times come, but connect your skill with the indispensables "woman, BEHOI^D thy son; BEHOI.D THY MOTHER." — JOHN xix. 26. (m^ 112 THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. of life. The world will always want something to wear, and something to eat, and shelter and fuel for the body, and knowledge for the mind, and religion for the soul. And all these things will continue to be the necessaries, and if you fasten your energies upon occupations and professions thus related the world will be unable to do without you. Remember that in proportion as you are skill- ful in anything your rivalries become less. For unskilled toil, women by the million. But you may rise to where there are only a thousand ; and still higher till there are only a hundred; and still higher until there are only ten; and still higher in some par- ticular department till there is only a unit and that yourself. For a while you may keep wages and a place through the kindly sympathies of an em- ployer, but you will eventually get no more compensation than you can make your- self worth. THK sisti:ks ()!•• liivTHANV. — FroiH Marble Giouh b^ J. W. Wood. THE PATHWAY OF UFE. 115 Let me say to all women who have already entered upon the battle of life that the time is coming when woman shall not only get as much salary and wages as men get, but for certain styles of employment women will, have higher salary and more wages, for the reason that for some styles of work they have more adaptation. But this justice will come to woman not through any sentiment of gallantry', not because woman is physically weaker than man and therefore ought to have more consideration shown her, but because through her finer natural taste and more grace of manner and quicker perception and more delicate touch and more educated adroitness she will, in certain callings, be to her employer worth 10 per cent more, or 20 per cent more than the other sex. She will not get it by asking for it, but by earning it, and it shall be hers by lawful conquest. Now, men of America, be fair and give the women a chance ! Are 3^ou afraid that they will do some of your work, and hence harm your prosperities ? Remem- ber that there are scores of thousands of men doing women's work. Do not be afraid ! God knows the end from the beginning, and He knows how many people this world can feed and shelter, and when it gets too full He will end the world, and, if need be, start another. God will halt the inventive faculty, which, by producing a machine that will do the work of ten or twenty or 100 men and women, will leave that number of people without work. I hope that there will not be invented another sewing machine, or reaping machine, or corn thresher, or any other new machine for the next 500 years. We want no more wooden hands, and iron hands, and steel hands, and electric hands substituted for men and women who would otherwise do the work and get the pay and earn the livelihood. .e WOMEN WHO HAVE WON THE DAY. But God will arrange all, and all we have to do is to do our best and trust Him for the rest. Let me cheer all women fighting the battle of life alone with the fact that thousands of women have, in that wa}^, won the day. And tens of thousands of women of whose bravery and self-sacrifice and glory of character the world has made no record, but whose deeds are in the heavenly archives of martyrs, who fought the battle alone and, though unrecognized for the short thirty or fifty or eighty years of their earthly existence, shall, through the quin- tillion ages of the higher world, be pointed out with the admiring cry "These are they who have won a tribute from mankind and a blessing of God by the force of their own genius, by the persistency of their faith, by duties well performed." Let me also say for the encouragement of all women fighting the battle of life alone that their conflict will soon end. There is one word written over the faces of many of them, and that word is. Despair. My sister, you need appeal to that Christ who comforted the sisters of Bethany in their domestic trouble, and who in His last hours forgot all the pangs of His own hands and feet and heart as 8 lU THE PATHWAY OF IJFE. He looked into the face of maternal anguish, and called a friend's attention to it, in substance saying : "John, I cannot take care of her any longer. Do for her as I would have done if I had lived. Behold thy mother ! " If, under the pressure of unrewarded and unappreciated work, your hair is whitening and the wrinkles come, rejoice that you are nearing the hour of escape from your very last fatigue, and may your departure be as pleasant as that of Isabella Graham, who closed her life with a smile and the word "Peace." The daughter of a regiment in any army is all surrounded by bayonets of defence, and in the battle, whoever falls, she is kept safe. And you are the daughter of the regiment commanded by the Lord of hosts. After all, you are not fighting the battle of life alone. All heaven is on your side. UNHAPPY MARRIAGES, AND HOW THEY MAY BE AVOIDED. aBIyE biography introduces to our notice a drunken bloat owning a large propert}-. Before the day of safety deposits and government bonds and national banks, people had their investments in flocks and herds, and a certain man, named Nabal, had much of his possessions in live stock. He came also of a distinguished family and had glorious Caleb for an ancestor. But this descendant was a sneak, a churl, a sot and a fool. One instance, to illustrate : It was a wool-raising country, and at the time of shear- ing a great feast was prepared for the shearer; and David and his warriors, who had in other days saved from destruction the thresh- ing floors of Nabal, sent to him asking, in this time of plenty, for some bread for their starving men. And Nabal cried out: "Who is David?" As though an Englishman had said: " Who is Wellington ?" or a German should say: "Who is Von Moltke?" or an American should say : " Who is Washington ?" Nothing did Nabal give to the starving men, and that night the scoundrel lay dead drunk at home, and the Bible gives us a full-length picture of him sprawling and maud- lin and helpless. Now that was the man whom Abigail, the lovely and gracious and good woman, married— a tuberose planted beside a thistle, a palm branch twined into a wreath of deadly nightshade. Surely that was not one of the matches made in heaven. We throw up our hands in horror at that wedding. How did she ever consent to link her destinies with such a creature ? Well, she no doubt thought that it would be an honor to be associated with an aristocratic family and no one can despise a great name. Beside this, wealth would come, and with it chains of gold and mansions lighted by swinging lamps of aromatic oil, and resounding with the cheer of banqueters seated at tables laden with wines from the richest vineyards, and fruits from ripest orchards, and nuts threshed from foreign woods, and meats smoking in platters of gold set on by slaves in bright uniform. Before she plighted her troth with this dissipated man she sometimes said to herself: ' ' How can I endure him ? To be associated for life with such a debauchee I cannot and will not !" But then again she said to herself: " It is time I was married, and this is a cold world to depend on, and perhaps I might do worse, and may be I ("5) ii6 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. will make a sober man outof liim, and marriage is a lottery anyhow." And when one day this representative of a great house presented himself in a parenthesis of sobriety, and with an assumed geniality and gallantry of manner, and with promises of fidelity and kindness and self-abnegation, a June morning smiled on a March squall, and the great-souled woman surrendered her happiness to the keeping of this infamous son of fortune whose possessions were in Carmel- and the man was ver>' great, and he had 3000 sheep and 1000 goats. AN EVERY-DAY TRAGEDY. Behold here a domestic tragedy repeated every hour of every day all over Christendom — marriage for worldly success without regard to character. So Marie Jeanne Philpon, the daughter of the humble engraver of Paris, became the famous Mme. Roland of history, the vivacious and brilliant girl united with the cold, formal, monotonous man because he came of an affluent family of Amiens and had lordly blood in his veins. The day, when through political revolution, this patriotic woman was led to the scaffold around which lay piles of human heads that had fallen from the axe, she said to an aged man whom she had com- forted: " Go first that you may not witness my death," and then undaunted took her turn to die — that day was to her only the last act of a tragedy of which her uncongenial marriage day was the first. Good and genial character in a man is the very first requisite for a woman's happy marriage. Mistake me not as depreciative of worldly prosperities. There is a religious cant that would seem to represent povertj' as a virtue and wealth as a crime. I can take you through a thousand mansions where God is as much worshiped as He ever was in a cabin. The gospel inculcates the virtues which tend toward wealth. In the millennium we will all dwell in palaces and ride in chariots, and sit at sumptuous banquets, and .sleep under rich embroideries, and live 400 or 500 years; for if, according to the Bible, in those times a child shall die 100 years old, the average of human life will be at least five centuries. The whole tendency of sin is toward poverty, and the whole tendency of righteousness is toward wealth. Godliness is profitable for the life that now is as well as for that which is to come. No inventory can be made of the picture galleries consecrated to God, and of sculpture and of libraries and pillared magnificence, and of parks and fountains and gardens in the ownership of good men and women. The two most lordly residences in which I was ever a guest had morning and evening prayers, all the employes present, and all day long there was an air of cheerful piety in the conversation and behavior. Lord Radstock carried the gospel to the Russian nobility. Lord Cavan and Lord Cairns spent their vacation in evangelis- tic .ser^'ices. Lord Congleton became missionary to Bagdad. And the Christ who was born in an Eastern caravansary has again and again lived in a palace. I mi' m vi'-i''-;! .','.1' mil m 1 ,L I II III I'll iiiiiiikiiiiHiiiiiii^iiiiiyiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii^^^ iiiiiiiiiiiiii SINGLE AND H\PPY 1117) Ii8 THE PATHWAY OF UFE. It is a grand tiling to have plent}- of money, and horses that don't compel you to take the dust of every lumbering and lazy vehicle, and books of history EVENING c\hM.—.ljler a Paintitig by H. Kaulbach. that give you a glimpse of all the past, and shelves of poetry to wliich you may go and ask Milton, or Tennyson, or Spenser, or Tom Moore, or Robert Bums to THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. 119 step down and spend and evening with you ; and other shelves to which you may go while j'ou feel disgusted with the shams of the world and ask Thackeray to express your chagrin, or Charles Dickens to expose the Pecksniffianism, or Thomas Carlyle to thunder your indignation, or the other shelves where the old gospel writers stand ready to warm and cheer us while they open doors into that city which is so bright the noonday sun is abolished. There is no virtue in owning a horse that takes four minutes to go a mile if you can own one that can go in a little over two minutes and a half; no virtue in running into the teeth of a northeast wind with thin apparel if you can aiford furs; no virtue in being poor when you can honestly be rich. There are names of men and women that I have only to mention, and they sug- gest not only wealth, but religion and generosity and philanthropy, such as Amos Lawrence, James Lennox, Peter Cooper, William H. Dodge, Shaftesbury, Miss Wolfe and Mrs. Astor. If there be good moral charac- ter, accompanied by affluent circum- stances, I congratulate you. If not, let the morning lark fly clear of the Rocky Mountain eagle. The sacrifice of woman on the altar of social and financial expectation is cruel and stupendous. I sketch you a scene you have more than once witnessed. I20 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. A PICTURE FROM LIFE. A comfortable home, with nothing more than ordinary surroundings, but an attractive daughter carefully and Christianly reared. From the outside world comes in a man with nothing but money^unless you count profanity and selfish- ness and fondness for champagne and general recklessness as a part of his possessions. He has his coat collar turned up when there is no chill in the air, but because it gives him an air of abandon; and eye-glass, not because he is near- sighted, but because it gives a classical appearance; and with an attire somewhat loud, a cane thick enough to be the club of Hercules and clutched at the middle, his conversation interlarded with French phrases inaccurately pronounced, and a sweep of manner indicating that he was not born like most folks, but terrestrially landed. By arts learned of the devil he insinuates himself into the affections of the daughter of that Christian home. All the kindred congratulate her on the almost supernaturally bright prospects. Reports come in that the young man is fast in his habits; that he has broken several young hearts, and that he is mean and selfish and cruel. But all this is covered up with the fact that he has several houses in his own name, and has large deposits at the bank, and, more than all, has a father worth many hundred thousand dollars and ver^' feeble in health, and may any day drop off, and this is the only son, and a round dollar held close to one's eye is large enough to shut out a great desert, and how much more will several bushels of dollars shut out. The marriage day comes and goes. The wedding ring was costly enough, and the orange blossoms fragrant enough, and the benediction solemn enough, and the wedding march stirring enough. And the audience shed tears of sympa- thetic gladness, supposing that the craft containing the two has sailed oflf on a placid lake, although God knows that they are launched on a dead sea, its waters brackish with tears, and ghastly with faces of despair floating to the surface and then going down. There they are, the newly married pair in their new home. He turns out to be a tyrant. Her will is nothing, his will everything. Lavish of money for his own pleasure, he begrudges her the pennies he pinches out into her trembling palm. Instead of the kind words she left behind in her former home, now there are complaints and fault-findings and curses. He is the master and she the .slave. The worst villain on earth is the man who, having captured a woman from her father's house, and after the oath of the marriage altar has been pronounced, says, by his manner if not in words: " I have you now in my power. What can you do ? My arm is stronger than yours. My voice is louder than 5-ours. My fortune is greater than yours. My name is mightier than yours. Now crouch before me like a dog. Now crawl away from me like a reptile. You are nothing but a woman, anyhow. Down, you miserable wretch !" Can halls of mosaic, can long lines of litruscan bronze, or statuar)' by Palmer and Powers and Crawford THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 121 and Chantty and Canova, can galleries rich from the pencil of Bierstadt and Church and Kenset and Cole and Cropse}', could violins played on b}' an Ole Btdl, or pianos fingered by a Gottschalk, or solos warbled by a Sontag, could wardrobes like that of a Marie Antoinette, could jewels like those of a Eugenie make a wife in such a companionship happy ? Imprisoned in a castle ! Her gold bracelets are the chains of a lifelong ser\d- tude. There is a sword over her every feast, not like that of Damocles, staying suspended, but dropping through her lacerated heart. Her wardrobe is full of shrouds for deaths which she dies daily, and she is buried alive though buried under gorgeous upholster3\ There is one word that sounds under the arches, and rolls along the corridors, and weeps in the falling fountains, and echoes in the shutting of every door, and groans in every note of stringed and wind instrument: "Woe! Woe!" The oxen and sheep in olden time brought to the temple of Jupiter to be sacrificed used to be covered with ribbons and flowers, ribbons on the horns and flowers on the neck. But the floral and ribboned decorations did not make the stab of the butcher's knife less deathful, and all the chandeliers you hang over such a woman, and all the robes with which you enwrap her, and all the ribbons with which you adorn her, and all the bewitching charms with which you embank her footsteps, are the ribbons and flowers of a horrible butchery. TWO DUCAL PALACES. As if to show how wretched a good woman may be in splendid surroundings we have two recent illustrations, two ducal palaces in Great Britain. Each is a focus of the best things that are possible in art, in literature, in architecture, the accumulation of other estates until their wealth is beyond calculation, and their grandeur beyond description. One of the castles has a cabinet set with gems that cost $2,500,000, and the walls of it bloom with Rembrandts and Claudes and Poussins and Guidos and Raphaels, and there are Southdown flocks in summer grazing on its lawns and Arab steeds prancing at the doorways on the ' ' first open day at the kennels. ' ' From the one castle the Duchess has removed with her children because she can no longer endure the orgies of her husband, the Duke, and in the other castle the Duchess remains confronted by insults and abominations in the presence of which I do not think God or decent society requires a good woman to remain. Alas, for these ducal country seats ! They, on a large scale, illustrate what on a smaller scale, may be seen in man}^ places, that without moral character in a husband all the accessories of wealth are to a wife's soul tantalization and mockery. When Abigail finds Nabal, her husband, beastly drunk as she comes home from interceding for Vie fortune and life, it was no alleviation that the old brute had possessions in Carmel, and " was verj- great, and had 3000 sheep and 1000 goats," and he, the worst goat among them. The animal in his nature seized the soul in its mouth and ran off with it. 122 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. Before things are right in this world, genteel villains are to be expurgated. Instead of being welcomed into respectable society because of the amount of stars and garters and medals and estates they represent, they ought to be fumigated two or three years before they are allowed, without peril to themselves, to put their hand on the door-knob of a moral house. The time must come when a masculine estray will be as repugnant to good society as a feminine estray, and no coat of arms or family emblazonry or epaulet can pass a Lothario unchallenged among the sanctities of home life. By what law of God or common sense is an Absalom better than a Delilah, a Don Juan better than a Messalina ? The brush that paints the one black must paint the other black. But what a spectacle it was when one summer much of watering-place society went wild with enthusiasm over an unclean foreign dignitary whose name in both hemispheres is a synonym for profligacy, and princesses of American society from all parts of the land had him ride in their carriages and sit at their tables, though they knew him to be a portable lazaretto, a charnel house of moral putrefacation, his breath a typhoid, his foot that of a satyr, and his touch death. Here is an evil that men cannot stop, but women may. Keep all such out of your parlors, have no recognition for them in the street, and no more think of allying your life and destiny with theirs than " gales from Araby " would consent to pass the honeymoon with an Egyptian plague. All the money or social position a bad man brings to a woman in marriage is a splendid despair, a gilded horror, a brilliant agony, a prolonged death, and the longer the marital union lasts the more evident will be the fact that she might better never have been born. Yet you and I have been at brilliant weddings where, before the feast was over, the bridegroom's tongue was thick and his eye glassy and his step a stagger, as he clicked glasses with jolly com- rades, all going with lightning limited express train to the fatal crash over the embankment of a ruined life and a lost eternity. Woman, join not your right hand with such a right hand. Accept from such a one no jewel for finger or ear, hist that sparkle of precious stone turn out to be the eye of a basilisk; and let not the ring come on the finger of your right hand, lest that ring turn out to be one link of a chain that shall bind you in never-ending captivity. In the name of God and Heaven and home, in the name of all time and all eternity, I forbid the V)anns ! Consent not to join one of the many regiments of women who have married for worldly success, without regard to moral character. A ROYAL MARRIAGE. If you are ambitious, O woman, for noble affiancing, why not marr>- a king? And to that honor you are invited by the monarch of heaven and earth. And this day a voice from the skies sounds forth: "As the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride so shall thy God rejoice over thee." Let Him put upon thee the ring THE SOURNESS OF POVHRTV. (123) 124 THE PATHWAY OF LIFK. of this royal marriage. Here is an honor worth reaching after. By repentance and faith you may come into a marriage with the Emperor of universal dominion, and you may be an empress unto God forever and reign with Him in palaces that the centuries cannot crumble or cannonades demolish. High worldly marriage is not necessary for women, or marriage of an)^ kind, in order to your happiness. Celibacy has been honored ])y the best being that ever lived and His greatest apostle — Christ and Paul. What higher honor could single life on earth have ? But what you need, O woman, is to be affianced forever and forever, and the banns of that marriage the angels will publish in hosannas of rejoicing. One of the most stirring passages in histor}^ with which I am acquainted tells us how Cleopatra, the exiled queen of Egypt, won the sj^mpathy of Julius Caesar, the conqueror, until he became the bridegroom and she the bride. Driven from her throne, she sailed away on the Mediterranean Sea in a storm, and when the large ship anchored she put out with one womanly friend in a small boat until she arrived at Alexandria, where was Caesar, the great general. Knowing that she would not be permitted to land or pass the guards on the way to Caesar's palace, she laid upon the bottom of the boat some shawls and scarfs and richly dyed upholstery, and then lay down upon them, and her friend wrapped her in them, and she was admitted ashore in this wrapping of goods, which was announced as a present for Caesar. This bundle was permitted to pass the guards of the gates of the palace, and was put down at the feet of the Roman general. When the bundle was unrolled there rose before Caesar one whose courage and beauty and brilliancy are the astonishment of the ages. This exiled queen of Egypt told the storj^ of her sorrows, and he promised her that she should get back her throne in Egypt and take the throne of wifel}^ dominion in his own heart. Afterwards they made a triumphal tour in a barge that the pictures of many art galleries have called " Cleopatra's Barge," and that barge was covered with a silken awning, and its deck was soft with luxuriant carpets and the oars were silver- tipped, and the prow was gold-mounted, and the air was redolent with the spicery of tropical gardens and resonant with the music that made the night glad as the day. You may rejoice, O woman ! that you are not a Cleopatra and that the one to whom you may be affianced had none of the sins of Caesar, the conqueror. But it suggests to me how you, a soul exiled from happiness and peace, may find your way to the feet of the conqueror of the earth and sky. Though it may be a dark night of spiritual agitation in which you put out, into the harbor of peace you may sail, and wneu all the wrappings of fear and doubt and sin shall be removed, you will be found at the feet of Him who will put you on a throne, to be acknowledged as His in the day when all the silver trumpets of the sky .shall proclaim, "Behold the bridegroom cometh," and in a barge of light you shall sail with Him the river whose .source is the foot of the throne, and whose mouth is at the sea of glass mingled with fire. THE BROKEN PROMISES OF MARRIAGE. ENERAIv JEPHTHAH, the commander-in-chief of the Israel- itish forces is buckling on the sword for the extermination of the pestiferous Ammonites, and looking up to the sky, he promises that if God will give him the victory he will put to death and sacrifice as a burned offering the first thing that comes out from the door of his homestead when he returns. The hurrahing of triumph soon runs along the line of all the companies, regiments and divisions of Jephthah's army. A worse beaten enemy than those Ammonites never strewed any plain with their car- casses. General Jephthah, fresh from his victor}^, is now on his way home. As he came over the hills and through the valleys the whole march homeward for his men is a cheer, but for him a great anxiety, for he remembers his vow to slay and burn the first thing that comes forth from his house to greet him after his victory. Perhaps it ma}^ be the old watch-dog that shall first come out, and who could get heart to beat out the life of a faithful creature like that as he comes fawning, and barking, and frisking, and putting up his paw against his master in merry welcome after long absence? No; it was not that which came forth to meet Jeph- thah. Perhaps it may be a young dove let out from its cage in the General's home, which, gaining its liberty, may seem to rejoice in the public gladness, and flutter on the shoulder of the familiar head of the household. But who could have the heart to slay such a winged innocent? No; it was not that which came forth to meet Jephthah. Or it may be some good neighbor that will rush out to greet him, after having first been in to tell the family of the near approach of the General. But who could slay a neighbor who had come on the scene to rejoice over the reunited household? No; it was not that which came forth to meet Jephthah. As he advances upon his home the door opens and out of it comes one whose appearance under other circumstances would have been an indescribable joy, but under the pledge of a sacrifice becomes a horror which blanches his cheek and paralyzes his form and almost hurls him flat to the earth. His child, his only child, his daughter comes skipping out to greet him, her step keeping time to a timbrel which she shakes and smites. Did ever a conqueror's cheer end in such a bitter groan ? No wonder Dore in two of his masterpieces, presents the scene. And Handel made it the last and climacteric work of his life to put this pathetic and (125) 125 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. overpowering circumstance in an oratorio seven months toiling amid its majestic harmonies until his eyesight gave out, and, as though the sad scene of Jephthah's daughter's sacrifice were too much for mortal vision, the grand old musician was led blind into the orchestra for the first rendering of Jephthah. All the glories of victorious war are blotted out from Jephthah's memory, and his banner is folded in grief, and his sword goes back into the scabbard with dolorous clang, and the muffled drum takes the place of the cymbals, and the " tremolo " the place of the trumpet, and he cries out: "Alas, my daughter, thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me; for I have opened my mouth to the lyord, and I cannot go back." During two months amid the mountains, without shelter, the maidens who would have been at the wedding ranged with Jephthah's daughter up and down, bewailing her coming sacrifice. BROKEN PROMISES AND THE EFFECT. Commentators and theologians are in dispute as to whether that girl was slain or not, and as to whether, if she were slain, it was right or wrong in Jephthah to be the executioner, a discussion into which I shall not be diverted from the over- mastering consideration that we had better look out what we promise, better be cautious what engagement we make; better that in regard to all matters of l)etrothal and plighted vow we feel the responsibility lest we have either to sacrifice the truth or sacrifice an immortal being, and we be led to cry out with the paroxysm of a Jephthah: " I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back." There is one ward in almost all the insane asylums and a large region in almost every cemetery that you need to visit. They are occupied by the men and women who are the victims of broken promises of marriage. The women in these wards and in tho.se mortuary receptacles are in the majority, because woman lives more in her affections than does man, and laceration of them in her case is more apt to be a dementia and a fatality. In .some regions of this land the promi.se of marriage is considered to have no solemnity or binding force. It was only made in fun. They may change their mind. The engagement may stand until some one more attractive in person or opulent in estate appears on the scene; then the rings are returned and the amatory letters and all relationship ceases. And .so there are 10,000 Jephthah's daughters sacrificed as burnt offerings. The whole subject needs to be taken out of the realm of comedy into tragedy, and men and women need to understand that, while there are exceptions to the rule, once having solemnly pledged to each other, heart and hand, the forfeiture and abandonment of that pledge makes the transgressor, in the sight of God, a perjurer, and so the day of judgment will reveal it. 1 .-"^ one has lied to the other; and all liars shall have their place in the lake that bun. .th with fire and brimstone. jEphTha's daughter bewailing her sacrifice.— /^r();« ///(• Paintins; by W. Hohnan Hunt. 1127) 128 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. If a man or woman make a promise in the business world, is there any obliga- tion to fulfill it ? If a man sign a note for $500, ought he to pa}' it ? If a contract be signed involving the building of a house or the furnishing of a bill of goods, ought they stand by that contract? "Oh, yes," always answered. Then I ask the further question : "Is the heart, the happiness, the welfare, the temporal and eternal destiny of a man or woman worth as much as the house, worth $500, worth anything?" The realm of profligacy is filled with men and women as a result of the wrong answer to that question. The most aggravating, stupendous and God- defying lie is a lie in the shape of broken espousal. But suppose a man changes his mind, ought he not back out ? Not once in 10,000 times. What if I changed my mind about a promissory note and decline to pay it, and suddenly put my property in such, shape that you could not collect your note? How would 3'ou like that? That, you say, W'Ould be a fraud. So i.<> the other a fraud, and punish it God will, certainly as you live and just as certainly if you do not live. I have known men betrothed to loving and good womanhood resigning- their engagement, and the victim went down in hast>' consumption, while suddenly the recreant man would go up the aisle of a church in a brilliant bridal party, and the two promised " I will," with a solemnity that seemed insurarice of a lifetime happiness. But the simple fact was, that was the first act of a Shakespearean play entitled, ' ' Taming the Shrew. ' ' He found out when too late that he had not married into the family of the " Graces," but into the family of the "Furies." To the day of his death the murder of his first betrothal followed him. EXCEPTIONAL CASES. The Bible extols one who " sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not." That is, when 30U make a promise keep it at all hazards. There may be cases where deception has been used at the time of engagement, and extraordinary circumstances where the promise is not binding, but in 999 cases out of 1000 engagement is as binding as marriage. Robert Bums with all his faults well knew the force of a marital engagement. In obedience to some rustic idea, he, standing on one side the l)rook Ayr, and Mary Campbell on the other, they bathed their hands in the water and then put them on the boards of a Bible, making their pledge of fidelity. On the cover of the Old Testament of that book to this day, in Robert Burns' handwriting, may be found the words: " Leviticus xix. 12. Ye shall not swear by my name falsely ; I am the Lord." And on the cover of the New Testament, in his own handwriting, " Matthew v. 33: Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths." Suppose a ship captain offers his services to take a ship out to sea. After he gets a little way he comes alongside of a vessel with a more beautiful flag, and I30 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. which has, perhaps, a richer cargo and is bound for a more attractive port. Sup- pose he rings a bell for the engineer to slow up and the wheel stops. Now I see the captain being lowered over the side of the vessel into a small boat, and he crosses to the gayer and wealthier craft, and climbs up the sides and is seen walking the bridge of the other ship. I pick up his resigned speaking trumpet and I shout through it: " Captain, what does this mean? Did you not promise to take this ship to Southampton, England ?" " Yes," says the captain, " but I have changed my mind, and I have found I can do better, and I am going to take charge here. I shall send back to you all the letters I got while managing that ship, and everything I got from your ship, and it will be all right." You tell me that the worst fate for such a captain as that is too good for him. But it is just what a man or woman does who promises to take one through the voyage of life, across the ocean of earthly existence, and then breaks the promise. The sending back of all the letters and rings and necklaces and keepsakes cannot make that right which is, in the sight of God, and ought to be in the sight of man, an ever- lasting wrong. What American society needs to be taught is that betrothal is an act so solemn and tremendous that all men and women must stand back from it until they are sure that it is right, and sure that it is best, and sure that no retreat will be desired. Before that promise of lifetime companionship any amount of .romance that you wish, any ardor of friendship, any coming and going. But espousal is a gate, a golden gate, which one should not pass unless he or she expects never to return. Engagement is the porch of which marriage is the castle, and you have no right on the porch if you do not mean to pass into the castle. The trouble has always been that this whole subject of affiance has been relegated to the realm of frivolity and joke, and considered not worth a sermon or even a serious paragraph. And so the massacre of human lives has gone on, and the devil has had it his own cruel way ; and what is mightily needed is that pulpit and platform and printing press, all speak a word of unmistakable and thunderous protest on this subject of infinite importance. We put clear out into thin poesy and light reading the marital engagements of Petrarch and his Laura, Dante and his Beatrice, Chaucer and his Philippa, Lorenzo de Medici and his Lucretia, Spenser and his Rosalind, Waller and his Saccharissa, not realizing that it was the style of their engagement that decided their happiness or wretchedness, their virtue or their profligacy. All the literary and military and religious glory of Queen Elizabeth's reign cannot blot out from one of the most conspicuous pages of history her infamous behavior towards Seymour and Philip and Melville and Leicester and others. All the ecclesiastical robes that Dean Swift ever rustled through consecrated places cannot hide from intelligent people of all ages the fact that by promises of marriage which he never fulfilled he broke the heart of Jane Waring after an engagement of seven years, and the heart of Stella after an THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. 131 engagement of fourteen years, and the poetic stanzas he dedicated to their excel- lences only make the more immortal his own perfidy, NO EXCUSE FOR MAKING MISTAKES. " But suppose I should make a mistake," says some man or woman, " and I find it out after the engagement and before marriage?" My answer is, You have no excuse for making a mistake on this subject. There are so many ways of find- ing out all about the character, and preferences, and dislikes, and habits of a man or woman that if you have not brain enough to form a right judgment in regard to him or her, you are not so fit a candidate for the matrimonial altar as you are for an idiot asylum. Notice what society your especial friend prefers, whether he ■» is industrious or lazy, whether she is neat or slatternly, what books are read, what was the style of ancestry, noble or depraved, and if there beany unsolved mystery about the person under consideration postpone all promise until the mystery is solved. Jackson's Hollow, Brooklyn, was part of the city not built on for many years, and every time I crossed I said to myself or to others. Why is not this land built on ? I found out afterward that the title to the land was in controversy, and no one wanted to build there until that question was decided. Afterward I under- stood the title was settled, and now buildings are going up all over it. Do not build your happiness for this world on a character, masculine or feminine, that has not a settled and undisputed title to honor, and truth, and sobriety, and kindness, and righteousness. O woman ! you have more need to pause before making such an important promise than man; because if you make a mistake it is worse for you. If a man blunder about promise of marriage he can spend his evenings away and can go to the club or the Republican or Democratic headquarters, and absorb his mind in city or State and national elections, or smoke himself stupid or drink himself drunk. But there is no place of regular retreat for you, O woman ! and you could not take narcotics or intoxicants and keep your respectability. Before you promise, pray and think, and study and advise. There will never again in your earthly history be a time when you so much need God. It seems to me that the world ought to cast out from business credits and from good neighborhood those who boast of the number of hearts they have won, as the Indian boasts of the number of scalps he has taken. If a man will lie to a woman and a woman will lie to a man about so important a matter as that of a lifetime's welfare, they will lie about a bill of goods, and lie about finances and lie about anything. Society to-day is brimful of gallants and man milliners and carpet knights and coquettes and those most God-forsaken of all wretches — flirts. And they go about drawing-rooms and the parlors of watering places, simpering, 132 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. and l)o\ving, and scraping, and whispering, and then return to the chib-rooms, if they be men, or to their social gatherings, if they be women, to chatter and giggle over what was said to them in confidence. Condign punishment is apt to come upon them and they get paid in their owii coin. I could point you to a SICK AND NEGLECTED. score whom society has let drop ver>' hard in return for their base traffic in human hearts. As to such men, they walk around in their celibacy after their hair is streaked with gray, and pretending they are naturally short-sighted when their THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. i33 eyes are so old in sin that they need the spectacles of a septuagenarian, an eye- glass about No. 8, and think they are bewitching in their stride and overpower- ing in their glances, although they are simply laughing-stocks for all mankind. And if these base dealers in human hearts be females they are left after a while severely alone, striving in a very desperation of agony of cosmetics to get back to the attractiveness they had when they used to brag how many masculine affec- tions they had slaughtered. Forsaken of God and honest men and good women are sure to be all such masculine and female triflers with human and yet immortal affections. O man, O woman, having plighted your troth, stick to it ! DIVORCE A LAST RESORT. I have to say not only to those who have made a mistake in solemn promise of marriage, but to those who have already at the altar been pronounced one, when they are two, or in diversity of tastes and likes and dislikes are neither one nor two, but a dozen: make the best you can of an awful mistake. And here let me answer letters that come from every State of the American Union, and from across the sea, and are coming year after year from men and women who are terrifically allianced and tied together in a hard knot, a very hard knot. The letters run something like this: "What ought I to do, my husband is a drunkard?" " My wife is a gad-about, and will not stay at- home. " "My companion is ignorant and hates books and I revel in them." " I like music, and a piano sets my husband craz}^" " I am fond of social life, and my companion is a recluse." "I am trying to be good, and mj^ life- long associate is very bad. What shall I do?" My answer is, there are certain good reasons for divorcement. The Bible recognizes them. Good society recognizes them. But it must be the very last resort, and only after all reasonable attempts at reclamation and adjust- ment have proved a dead failure. When such attempts fail it is generally because of meddlesome outsiders, and women tell the wronged wife how she ought to stand on her rights, and men tell the wronged husband how he ought to stand on his rights. And let husband and wife in an unhappy marriage relation stand punctiliously on their rights and there will be no readjustment, and only one thing will be sure to them, and that is a hell on earth. If you are unhappily married, in most cases I advise you, make the best you can of an awfully bad bargain. Do not project your peculiarities more than is necessary. Perhaps you may have some faults of j^our own which the other party in the marital alliance may have to suffer. You are in the same yoke. If you pull aside, the yoke will only twist your neck. Better pull ahead. The world is full of people who made mistakes about many things, and among other things about betrothal and marriage, and yet have been tolerably happy and very useful in the strength of God and by the grace promised in every time of need to those 134 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. who seek to conquer the disadvantageous circumstances. I am acquainted with lovely women married to contemptible men, and genial men yoked with termagants inspired with the devil. And yet under these disadvantages my friends are useful and happy, God helps people in other kinds of martyrdom and to sing in the flame, and He will help you in your life-long misfortune. Remember the patience of Job. What a wife he had ! At a time when he was one great blotch of eruptions, and his property was destroyed by a tornado, and, more than all, bereavement had come ami the poor man needed all wise counsel, she advises him to go to cursing and swearing. She wanted him to poultice his boils with blasphemy. But he lived right on through his marital disadvantages, recovered his health and his fortune, and raised a splendid famih', and the closing paragraph of the Book of Job has such a jubilance that I wonder people do not oftener read it: "So the Eord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had 14,000 sheep, and 6000 camels, and 1000 3'oke of oxen, and 1000 she-asses. He had also seven sons and three daughters. And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Kerenhappuch. And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job; and their father gave them inheritance among their brethren. After this lived Job 140 years, and saw his sons, and his sons' sons, even four generations. So Job died, being old and full of days." WHAT A WIFE CAN DO. Now, my badly married friend of either sex, if Job could stand it by the help of God, then you can stand it by the same divine re-enforcement. You have other relations, O woman, beside the wifely relation. If you are a mother, train up your children for God and heaven. If you are a member of a church, help move on its enterprises. You can get so much of the grace of God in your heart that all your home trials will seem insignificant. How little difference does it make what your unrighteous husband calls you, if God calls you His child and you are an heire.ss of whole kingdoms beyond the sky ? Immerse yourself in some kind of outside usefulness, something tliat will enlist your prayers, )^our sympathies, your hand, your needle, your voice. Get your heart on fire with love to God and the disenthrallment of the human race, and the troubles of your home will be blotted out in the glory of your consecrated life. I cry out to you, O woman, as Paul exclaims in his letter to the Corinthians: What knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband ? And if you cannot save him you can help in the grander, mightier enterprise of helping save the world. Out of the awful mistake of your marriage rise into the sublimest life of self-sacrifice for God and suffering humanity. Instead of settling down to mope over your domestic woes, enlist your energies for the world's redemption. THE PATHWAY OF IvIFE. i35 Some parts of Holland keep out the ocean only by dikes or walls of stout masonry. The engineer having these dikes in charge was soon to be married to a maiden living in one of the villages, the existence of which depended on the strength of these dikes. And there was to be a great feast in one of the villages that approaching evening in honor of the coming bridegroom. That day a great storm threatened the destruction of the dikes, and hence the destruction of thousands of lives in the villages sheltered by that stone wall. The ocean was in full wrath, beating against the dikes, and the tides and the terror were still rising. "Shall I go to the feast," says the engineer, "or shall I go and help my workmen take care of the dikes?" " Take care of the dikes," he said to himself, "I must and will." As he appeared on the wall the men working there were exhausted and shouted: " Here comes the engineer. Thank God ! Thank God !" The wall was giving way stone by stone, and the engineer had a rope fastened around his body, and some of the workmen had ropes fastened around their bodies, and were let down amid the wild surges that beat the wall. Everj'thing was giving way. " More stones !" cried the men. " More mortar !" But the answer came: "There is no more !" "Then," cried the engineer, " take off your clothes, and with them stop the holes in the well." And so, in the chill and darkness and surf it was done, and with the workmen' s apparel the openings in the wall were partially filled. But still the tide rose and still the ocean reared itself for more awful stroke and for the overwhelming of thousands of lives in the villages. " Now we have done all we can," said the engineer, " down on your knees, my men, and pray to God for help." And on the trembling and parting dikes they prayed till the wind changed and the sea subsided, and the villages below, which, knowing nothing of the peril, were full of romp and dance and hilarity, were gloriously saved. Now, what we want in the work of walling back the oceans of poverty and drunkenness, and impurity, and sin is the help of more womanly and manly hands. Oh, how the tides come in ! Atlantic surge of sorrow after Atlantic surge of sor- row, and the tempests of human hate and Satanic fury are in full cry. O woman of many troubles, what are all the feasts of worldly delight, if they were offered you, compared with the opportunity of helping to build and support barriers which sometimes seem giving way through man's treacherj' and the world's assault? O woman, to the dikes ! Bring prayer, bring tears, bring cheering words ! Help ! Help ! And having done all, kneel with us on the quaking wall until the God of the wind and the sea shall hush the one and silence the other. To the dikes ! Sisters, mothers, wives, daughters of America, to the dikes ! The mightiest catholicon for all the wounds and wrongs of woman or man is complete absorption in the work to rescue others. Save some man, some woman, some child ! 136 THK PATHWAY OF LIFE. In that effort you will forget or be helped to bear your ovv^n trials, and in a little while God will take you up out of your disturbed and harrowing conjugal relation of earth into heaven, all the happier because of preceding distress. When Queen Elizabeth of England was expiring, it was arranged that the exact moment of her death should be signaled to the people by the dropping of a sapphire ring from the window into the hands of an officer, who carried it at the top of his speed to King James of Scotland. But your departure from the scene of your earthly woes, if you are ready to go, will not be the dropping of a sapphire to the ground, but the setting of a jewel in a king's coronet. Blessed be His glorious name forever ! THE RESULTS OF TRYING TO LEAD A FASHIONABLE LIFE. ^ ^F^O true accomplishments of life .are productive of effeminacy (^.^^^L ^ or enervation. Good manners and a respect for the tastes A^^^fo,^ of others are indispensable. The good Book speaks favor- ^^^wC> ^^^y ^^ those who are a " peculiar" people; but that does p^^^^^'^ not sanction the behavior of queer people. There is no ^^^^ excuse, under an^^ circumstances, for not being and acting ^ the lady or gentleman. Rudeness is sin. We have no words too ardent to express our admiration for the refine- ments of society. There is no law, moral or divine, to forbid elegance of demeanor, or ornaments of gold, or gems for the person, artistic displa}' in the dwelling, gracefulness of gait and bearing, polite salutation or honest compli- ments; and he who is shocked or offended by these had better, like the old Scy- thians, wear tiger-skins and take one wild leap back into midnight barbarism. As Christianity advances there will be better apparel, higher styles of achitecture, more exquisite adornments, sweeter music, grander pictures, more correct behavior and more thorough ladies and gentlemen. But there is another story to be told. Wrong fashion is to be charged with many of the worst evils of society, and its path has often been strewn with the bodies of the slain. It has often set up a false standard by which people are to be judged. Our common sense, as well as all the divine intimations on the subject, teach us that "people ought to be esteemed according to their individual and moral attainments. The man who has the most nobility of soul should be first, and he who has the least of such qualities should stand last. No crest, or shield, or escutcheon can indicate one's moral peerage. Titles of Duke, Lord, Esquire, Earl, Viscount or Patrician ought not to raise one into the first rank. Some of the meanest men I have ever known had at the end of their name D. D., Lrly. D. and F. R. S. Wrong fashion is incompatible with happiness. Those who depend for their comfort upon the admiration of others are subject to frequent disappointment. Somebody will criticise their appearance, or surpass them in brilliancy, or will receive more attention. Oh, the jealousy, and distraction, and heart-burnings of (137) 1 38 THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. those who move in this bewildered maze ! Poor butterflies ! Bright wings do not always bring happiness. "She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth." The revelations of high life that come to the challenge and the fight are only the occasional croppings out of disquietude that are, underneath, like the stars of heaven for multitude but like the demons of the pit for hate. The misery that will to-night in the cellar cuddle up in the straw is not so utter as the princely disquietude which stalks through the splendid drawing-rooms, brooding over the slights and offences of luxurious life. The bitterness of life seems not so unfitting when drunk out of a pewter mug as when it pours from the chased lips of a golden chalice. In the sharp crack of the voluptuary's pistol, putting an end to his earthly misery, I hear the confirmation that in a hollow, fastidious life there is no peace. Devotion to wrong fashion is productive of physical disease, mental imbecility and spiritual withering. Apparel insufficient to keep out the cold and the rain, or so fitted upon the person that the functions of life are restrained; late hours filled with excitement and feasting; free draughts of wine that make one not beastly intoxicated, but only fashionably drunk, and luxurious idleness are the instruments by which this unreal life pushes its disciples into valetudinarianism and the grave. Along the walks of prosperous life Death goes a-mowing — and such harvests are reaped ! Materia Medica has been exhausted to find curatives for those physiological devastations. Dropsies, cancers, consumptions, gout and almost every infirmity in all the realm of pathology have been the penalties paid. To counteract the damage Pharmacy has gone forth with medicament, panacea, elixir, embrocation, salve and cataplasm. A wardrobe is the rock upon which many a soul has been riven. The excite- ment of a luxurious life has been the vortex that has swallowed up moie souls than the Maelstrom of Norway ever destroyed ships. What room for elevating themes in a heart filled with the trivial and unreal ? TUMBLING INTO RUIN. Who can wonder that in this haste for sun-gilded baubles and winged thistle- down, men and women should tumble into ruin? The travelers to destruction are not all clothed in rags. On that road chariot jostles against chariot, and behind steeds in harness, golden-plated and glittering, they go down, coach and four, herald and postilion, racketing on the hot pavements of hell. Clear the track ! Bazaars hang out their colors over the road, and trees of tropical fruitful- ness overbranch the way. No sound of woe disturbs the air, but all is light, and song, and wine, and gorgeousness. The world comes out to greet the dazzling procession with: "Hurrah! Hurrah!" But suddenly there is a halt and an outcry of dismay, and an overflow worse than the Red Sea tumbling upon the FASHIONS OF HEAD DRESS AMONG DIFFERENT NATIONS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. (139) I40 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. Egyptians. Shadow of gravestones upon finest silk ! Wormwood squeezed into inipearled goblets ! Death with one cold breath withering the leaves and freezing the fountains. In the wild tumult of the last day — the mountains falling, the heavens flying, the thrones uprising, the universe assembling; amid the boom of the last great thunder-peal, and luider the cracking of a burning world — what will become of the disciple of unholy fashion ? But watch the career of one thoroughly artificial. Through inheritance, or perhaps his own skill, having obtained enough for purposes of display, he feels himself thoroughly established. He sits aloof from the common herd, and looks out of his window upon the poor man and says: ' ' Put that dirty wretch off my steps inunediately !" On Sabbath days he finds the church, but mourns the fact that he must worship with so many of the inelegant, and says: "They are perfectly awful !" " That man that you put in my pew had a coat on his back that did not cost $5.00." He struts through life unsympathetic with trouble, and says: "I cannot be bothered." Is delighted with some doubtful story of Parisian life, but thinks that there are some very indecent things in the Bible. Walks arm in arm with the successful man of the world, but does not know his own brother. Loves to be praised for his splendid house, and when told that he looks younger than ten years ago, .says: " Well, really, do you think so?" liut the brief strut of his life is about over. Up-stairs, he dies. No angel wings hovering about him. No gospel promises kindling up the darkness; but exquisite embroidery, elegant pictures and a bust of Shakespeare on the mantel. The pulses stop. The minister comes in to read of the Resurrection, that day when the dead shall come up — both he that died on the floor and he that expired under princely upholstery. He is carried out to burial. Only a few mourners, but a great array of carriages. Not one common man at the funeral. No befriended orphan to weep a tear on his grave. No child of want pressing through the ranks of the weeping, saying: " He is the last friend I have and I must see him." What now ? He was a great man. Shall not chariots of salvation come down to the other side of the Jordan and escort him up to the palace? Shall not the angels exclaim : ' ' Turn out ! A prince is coming ?" Will the bells chime ? Will there be haqiers with their harps and tnunjieters with their trumpets ? No ! no ! no ! There will be a shudder, as though a calamity had happened. Standing on heaven's battlements, a watchman will see something shoot past, with fiery downfall and shriek: " Wandering star — for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever !" THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 141 CLOSE OF A LIFE OF FASHION. But sadder yet is the closing of a woman's life that has been worshipful of worldliness, all the wealth of a lifetime's opportunity wasted. What a tragedy. A woman on her dying pillow, thinking of what she might have done for God and humanity, and 5'et having done nothing. Compare her demise with that of a Harriet Newell, going down to die peacefully in the Isle of France, reviewing her lifetime sacrifices for the redemption of India; or the last hours of Elizabeth Hervey, having exchanged her bright New England home for a life at Bombay amid stolid heathenism, that she might illumine it, saying, in her. last moments: " If this is the dark valley, it has not a dark spot in it; all is light, light !" or the exit of Mrs. Lennox, falling under sudden disease at Smyrna, breathing out her soul with the last words: " Oh, how happy !" or the departure of Mrs. Sarah D. Comstock, spending her life for the salvation of Burmah, giving up her children that they might come home to America to be educated, and saying as she kissed them good-bye, never to see them again: " O Jesus, I do this for Thee !" or the going of 10,000 good women, who in less resounding spheres have lived not for themselves, but for God and the alleviation of human suffering. That was a brilliant scene when, in 1485, in the campaign for the capture of Ronda, Queen Elizabeth, of Castile, on horseback, side by side with King Ferdinand, rode out to review the troops. As she in bright armor rode along the lines of the Spanish host, and w^aved her jeweled hand to the warriors, and ever and anon uttered words of cheer to the worn veterans who, far away from their homes, were risking their lives for the kingdom, it was a spectacle that illumines history. But more glorious will be the scene when that consecrated Christian woman, crowned in heaven, shall review the souls that on earth she clothed, and fed, and medicined, and evangelized, and then introduced into the ranks celestial. As on the white horse of victory, side by side with the king, this queen unto God forever shall ride past the lines of those in whose salvation she bore a part, the scene will sur- pass anything ever witnessed on earth in the life of Joan of Arc, or Penelope, or Semiramis, or Aspasia, or Marianne, or Margaret of Anjou. Ride on, victor ! cr il>o 31?<^n^ull^ ®jcit]Ci|iir^ A LESSON FROM AHASUERUS' BEAUTIFUL BUT MODEST QUEEN. CCEPT my arm, and I will escort you into a throne room. We stand amid the palaces of Shushan. The pinnacles are aflame with the morning light. The columns rise festooned and wreathed, the wealth of empires flashing from the grooves: the ceilings adorned with images of birds and beast, the scenes of prowess and conquest. The walls are hung with shields and emblazoned until it seems that the whole round of splendor is exhausted. Each arch is a mighty leap of architectural achievement. Golden stars, shining dow'u on glow- ing arabesque. Hangings of embroidered work, in which mingle the blueness of the sky, the greenness of the grass, and the whiteness of the sea-foam. Tapestries hung on silver rings, wedding together the pillars of marble. Pavilions reaching out in every direction. These for repose, filled with luxuriant couches, in which weary limbs sink until all fatigue is submerged. These for carousal, where kings drink down a kingdom at one swallow. Amazing spectacle ! Light of silver dripi)ing down over stairs of ivory on shields of gold. Floors of stained marble, sunset red and night black, and inlaid with gleaming pearls. Why, it seems as if a heavenly vision of amethyst, and jacinth, and topaz, and chrj-soprasus had descended and alighted upon Shushan. It seems as if a billow of celestial glory had dashed clear over heaven's battlements upon this metropolis of Persia. In connection with this palace there is a garden, where the mighty men of foreign lands are seated at a banquet. Under the spread of oak, and linden, and acacia, the tables are arranged. The breath of honeysuckle and frankincense fills the air. Fountains leap up in the light, the spray struck through with rainbows falling in crystalline baptism upon flowering shrubs, then rolling down through channels of marble, and widening out here and there into pools swirling with the finny tribes of foreign aquariums, bordered with scarlet anemones, hypericums and many- colored ranunculus. Meats of rarest bird and beast smoking up amid wreaths of aromatics. The vases filled with apricots and almonds. The baskets piled up with ajiples and dates, and figs, and oranges, and pomegranates. Melons taste- fully twined with leaves of acacia. The bright waters of Eulaeus filling the urns, (142) THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. H3 and sweating outside the rim in flashing beads amid the traceries. Wine from the royal vats of Ispahan and Shiraz, in bottles of iridescent shell, and lily-shaped cups of silver, and flagons and tankards of solid gold. The music rises higher, MEETING OF THE TRUSTEES OF A BACK SETTLEMENT SCHOOL— EXAMINING THE TEACHER. By Robert Harris. and the revelry breaks out into wilder transport, and the wine has flushed the cheek and touched the brain, and louder than all other voices are the hiccough of the inebriates, the gabble of fools, and the song of the drunkard. 144 THE PATHWAY OF IJFE. In another part of the palace Queen Vashti is entertaining the princesses of Persia at a banquet. Drunken Ahasuerus says to his ser\'ants: "You go out and fetch Vashti from the banquet with the women and bring her to this banquet with the men, and let her display her beauty." The ser\'ants immediately start to obey the king's command, but there was a rule in Oriental society that no woman might appear in public without having her face veiled. Yet, here was a mandate that no one dare dispute, demanding that Vashti come in unveiled, before the multitude. However, there was in Vashti's soul a principle more regal than Aliasuerus, more brilliant than the gold of Shushan, of more wealth than the realm of Persia, which commanded her to disobey this order of the king; and so all the righteousness, and holiness and modesty of her nature rises up into sublime refusal. She says: "I will not go into the banquet unveiled." Of course Ahasuerus was infuriate; and Vashti, robbed of her position and her estate, is driven forth in poverty and ruin to suffer the scorn of a nation, and yet to receive the applause of after generations who shall rise up to admire this martyr to kingly insolence. Well, the last vestige of that feast is gone; the last garland has faded; the last arch has fallen; the last tankard has been destroyed, and Shushan is a ruin; but as long as the world stands there will be multitudes of men and women, familiar with the Bible, who will come into this picture gallery of God and admire the divine portrait of Vashti the queen, Vashti the veiled, Vashti the sacrifice, Vasliti the silent. Though her place was surrendered to Esther, 3'et .^he lives clothed in more royal raiment than any earthly king could pro\ide, with 1 coronet more dazzling than all Persia could purchase, decked now in robes and diadems such as God reserves for righteous womanhood. I want you to look upon Vashti, the queen. A blue ribbon, rayed with white, drawn around her forehead, indicating her queenly position, it was no small honor to be the queen in such a realm as that. Hark to tiie rustle of her robes ! See the blaze of her jewels ! And yet it is not necessa:-^- to have palace and regal robe to be queenlj^ When I see a woman with stout faith in God, putting her foot upon all meanness and selfishness and godless display, going right forward to serve Christ and the race by a grand and glorious service, I say, " That woman is a queen," and the ranks of heaven look over the battlements upon the coronation, and whether she come up from the shanty on the commons or the mansion of the fashionable square, I greet her with the shout: "All hail ! Queen Vashti." What glory was there on the brow of Mary, of Scotland; or Elizabeth, of lingland; or Margaret, of France; or Catharine, of Russia, compared with the worth of some of our Christian mothers, many of them gone into glor>' ? Or of that woman mentioned in the Scriptures who put her all into the Lord's treasury ? Or of Jephthah's daughter, who made a demonstration of unselfish patriotism? Or of Abigail, who rescued the herds and flocks of her husband ? Or of Ruth,. THE PATHWAY OF IvlFK. 145 who toiled under a tropical sun for poor, old, helpless Naomi? Or of Mrs, Adonirani Judson, who kindled the lights of salvation amid the darkness of Burmah ? Or of Mrs. Hemans, who poured out her holy soul in words which will forever be associated with hunter's horn and captive's chain, and bridal hour, and lute's throb, and curfew's knell at the dying day? And scores and hundreds of women, unknown on earth, who have given water to the thirsty, and bread to the hungry, and medicine to the sick, and smiles to the discouraged — their foot- steps heard along dark lane, and in government hospital, and in almshouse corri- dor, and by prison gate? There may be no royal robe; there may be no palatial surroundings. She does not need them, for all charitable men will unite with the cracking lips of fever-struck hospital and plague-blotched lazaretto in greeting her as she passes: " Hail ! Hail ! Queen Vashti." A TRIBUTE TO FEMALE TEACHERS. Among the queens whom I honor are the female day-school teachers of this land. I put upon their brow the coronet. They are the sisters and the daughters of our towns and cities, selected out of a vast number of applicants, because of their especial intellectual and moral endowments. There are in none of your homes w^omen more worthy. These persons, some of them, come out from affluent homes, choosing teaching as a useful profession; others, finding that their father is older than he used to be, and that his eye-sight and strength are not as good as once, go to teaching to lighten his load. But I tell you the history- of the majority of the female teachers in the public schools when I say, " Father is dead." After the estate was settled the family, that were comfortable before, are thrown on their own resources. It is hard for men to earn a living in this day, but it is harder for women their health not so rugged, their arm not so strong, their opportunities fewer. These persons, after tremblingly going through the ordeal of an examination as to their qualifications to teach, half-bewildered step over the sill of the public school to do two things — instruct the young and earn their own bread. Her work is wearing to the last degree. The management of forty or fifty fidgety and intract- able children, the suppression of their vices and the development of their excel- lences, the management of rewards and punishments, the sending of so many bar# of soap and fine tooth combs on benignant ministry, the breaking of so many wild colts for the harness of life, send her home at night weak, neuralgic, unstrung, so that of all the weary people in your cities for five nights of the week there are none more weary than the public school teachers. Now, for God's sake, give them a fair chance. Throw no obstacles in the wa}'. If they come out ahead in the race, cheer them. If you want to smite any, smite the male teachers; they can take up the cudgels for themselves. But keep your hands off of defenceless 145 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. women. Father may be dead, but there are enough brothers left to demand and see that the}- get justice. Within a stone's throw of where I now write there died, years ago, one of the principals of our public schools. She had been twenty-five years at that post. She had left the touch of refinement on a multitude of the young. She had, out of her slender purse, given literally thousands of dollars for the destitute who came under her observation as a school teacher. A deceased sister's children were thrown upon her hands, and she took care of them. She was a kind mother to them, while she mothered a whole school. Worn out with nursing in the sick and dying room of one of her household, she herself came to die. She closed the school book and at the same time the volume of her Christian fidelity; and when she went through the gates they cried: " These are they who came out of great triljulation, and had their robes washed and made white in the blood of the lamb. ' ' Queens are all such, and whether the world acknowledge them or not, heaven acknowledges them. When Scarron, the wit and ecclesiastic, as poor as he was brilliant, was about to marry Madame de Maintenon, he was asked by the notarj' what lie proposed to settle upon Mademoiselle. The reply was: " Immortality ! The names of the wives of kings die with them: the name of the wife of Scarron will live always." In a higher and better sense, upon all women who do their duty to God will settle immortality. Not the immortality of earthly fame, which is mortal, but the innnortality celestial. And they shall reign for ever and ever. GOETHE AND SHAKESPEARE'S IDEAS OF WOMEN. Oh ! the opportunity which every woman has of being a queen. The longer I liv'e the more I admire good womanhood. And I have come to form my opinion of the character of a man by his appreciation or non-appreciation of woman. If a man have a depressed idea of womanly character he is a bad man, and there is no exception to the rule. The writings of Goethe can never have any such attractions for me as Shakespeare, because nearly all the womanly characters of the great German have some kind of turpitude. There is his Mariana, with her clandestine scheming; and his Mignon, of evil parentage, yet worse than her ancestors; and his Theresa, the brazen; and his Aurelia, of many intrigues; and his Philina, the termagant; and his Melina, the tarni.shed; and his Baroness and his Countess, and there is seldom a womanly character ui all his voluminous writ- ings that would be worthy of residence in a respectable coal cellar, yet pictured and dramatized and emblazoned till all the literarj^ world is compelled to see. No, no. Give me William vShakespeare's idea of woman, and I see it in Desdemona, and Cordelia, and Rosalind, and Imogen, and Helena, and Hermione, and Viola, THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 147 and Isabella, and Sylvia, and Perdita, all of them with enough faults to prove them human, but enough kindly characteristics to give us the author's idea of womanhood, his I^ady Macbeth only a dark background to bring out the supreme love- liness of his other female characters. I want you to consider Vashti, the veiled. Had she appeared before Ahasuerus and his court on that day with her face un- covered, she would have shocked all the delicacies of Oriental society, and the very men who in their intoxication demanded that she come, in their sober moments would have despised her. As some flowers seem to thrive best in the dark lane and in the shadow, and where the sun does not seem to reach them, so God ap- points to most womanly natures a retiring and un- obtrusive spirit. God once in a while does call an Isabella to a throne, or a Miriam to strike the timbrel at the front of a host, or a Marie Antoinette to quell a French mob, or a Deborah to stand at the front of an armed battalion, crying out; ' ' Up ! up ! this is the day in which the Lord will deliver Sisera THE GUARDIAN ANGEI.. 148 THE PATHWAY OF UFE. into thy hands." And when women are called to such out-door work, and to such heroic positions, God prepares them for it; and they have iron in their soul, and lightnings in their eye, and whirlwinds in their breath, and the borrowed strength of the I^ord omnipotent in their right arm. They walk through furnaces as though they were hedges of wild flowers, and cross seas as though they were shimmering sapphire, and all the harpies of hell sink down to their dungeons at the stamp of their womanly indignation. But these are exceptions. Generally, Dorcas would rather make a garment for the poor boy, Rebecca would rather fill the trough for the camels, Hannah would rather make a coat for vSamuel, the Hebrew maid would rather give a prescription for Naaman's leprosy, the woman of Sarepta would rather gather a few sticks to cook a meal for famished Elijah, Phebe would rather carry a letter for the inspired apostle, Mother L,ois would rather educate Timothy in the Scriptures. When I see a woman going about her daily duty — with cheerful dignity presiding at the table, with kind and gentle, but firm, discipline, presiding in the nursery, going out into the world without any blast of trumpets, following in the footsteps of Him who went about doing good — I say, " This is Vashti with a veil on." But when I see a woman of unblushing boldness, loud-voiced, with a tongue of infinite clitter-clatter, with arrogant look, passing through the streets with a masculine swing, gaily arrayed in a very hurri- cane of millinery, I cry out, "Vashti has lost her veil. " When I see a woman struggling for political preferment, and rejecting the duties of home as insignifi- cant, and thinking the offices of wife, mother and daughter of no importance, and trying to force her way on up into conspicuit}^ I say, "Ah ! what a pity; Vashti has lost her veil." When I see a woman of comely features, and of adroitness of intellect, and endowed with all that the schools can do for her, and of high social position, yet moving in society with superciliousness and hauteur, as though she would have people know their place, and an undefined combination of giggle, and strut, and rodomontade, endowed with allopathic quantities of self, but only homoeopathic infinitesimals of sense, the terror of dry-goods clerks and railroad conductors, discoverer of significant meanings in plain conversation, a prodigy of badness and innuendoes — I say, " Vashti has lost her veil." But do not misinterpret what I say into a depreciation of the work of those glorious and divinely called women who will not be understood till after the\' are dead; women like Susan B. Anthony, who are giving their life for the betterment of the condition of their sex. Those of you who think that women have, luider the laws of this country, an equal chance with men, are ignorant of the laws. A gentleman writes me from Maryland, saying: "Take the laws of this State. A man and wife start out in life full of hope in every respect; by their joint effi^rts, and, as is frequently the case, through the economic ideas of the wife, succeed in accumulating a fortune, but they have no children; they reach old age together, VICTIMS OF THE FRENCH 'scEvoi.vtio'i^.— Painted by Puul Svedotiesky. (149) I50 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. and then the husband dies. What does the law of this State do then ? It says to the widow, Hands off your late husband's property, do not touch it, the State will find others to whom it will give that; but you, the widow, must not touch it, only so much as will keep life in your aged body, that you may live to see those others enjoy what rightly should be your own." And the State seeks the relatives of the deceased husband, whether they be near or far, whether they were ever heard of before or not, and transfers to them, singly or collectively, the estate of the deceased husband and living widow. VASHTI, THE OUTCAST. Now, that is a specimen of the unjust laws in all States concerning woman- hood. Instead of flying off to the discussion as to whether or not the giving of the right of voting to women will correct these laws, let me say to men, be gal- lant enough, and fair enough, and honest enough, and righteous enough, and God-loving enough to correct these wrongs against women by your own masculine vote. Do not wait for woman suffrage to come, if it ever does come, but so far as you can touch ballot-boxes, and legislatures, and congresses, begin the reforma- tion; but until justice is done to the sex by the laws of all the States, let women THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. 151 of America take the platforms and the pulpits, and no honorable man will charge Vashti with having lost her veil. Again, I want you to consider Vashti, the sacrifice. Who is this that I see coming out of that palace gate of Shushan ? It seems to nie that I have seen her before. She comes homeless, houseless, friendless, trudging along with a broken heart. Who is she ? It is Vashti, the sacrifice. Oh, what a change it was from regal position to a wayfarer's crust. A little while ago approved and sought for; now none so poor as to acknowledge her acquaintanceship. Vashti, the sacrifice. Ah, you and I have seen it many a time. Here is a home empalaced with beauty. All that refinement, and books, and wealth can do for that home has been done; but Ahasuerus, the husband and the father, is taking hold on paths of sin. He is gradually going down. After a time he will flounder and struggle like a wild beast in the hunter's net — further away from God, further away from the right. Soon the bright apparel of the children will turn to rags; soon the household song will become the sobbing of a broken heart. The old story over again. Brutal Centaurs breaking up the marriage feast of Lapithse. The house full of outrage, and cruelty and abomination, while trudging forth from the palace gate are Vushti and her children. O Ahasuerus, that you should stand in a home, by a dissipated life destroj'ing the peace and comfort of that home. God forbid that your children should ever have to ring their hands, and have people point their finger at them, as they pass down the street and say, "There goes a drunkard's child." God forbid that the little feet vShould ever have to trudge the path of poverty and wretchedness. God forbid that any evil spirit, born of the wine cup or the brandy flask should come forth and uproot that garden, and, with a blasting, blistering, all-consuming curse, shut forever the palace gate against Vashti and the children. Oh, the women and the men of sacrifice are going to take the brightest coronals of heaven. This woman gave up a palatial residence, gave up all for what she considered right. Sacrifice ! Is there anything more sublime ! MARTYRS TO DUTY. A steamer, called the Prairie Belle, burning on the Mississippi River, Bludso, the engineer, declared he would keep the bow of the boat to the shore till all were ofiT, and he kept his promise. At his post, scorched and blackened, he perished, but he saved all the passengers. Two verses of pathetic poetry describe the scene, but the venses are a little rough, and so I changed a word or two: Through the hot, black breath of the burning Jim Bludso's voice was heard, And they all had trust in his stubbornness, And knew he would keep his word. 152 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. * And sure's you're born, they all got off Afore the smoke- stacks fell; And Bludso's ghost went up above In the smoke of the Prairie Belle. He weren't no saint, but at Judgment I'd run my chance with Jim 'Longside of some pious gentlemen That wouldn't shake hands with him. He'd seen his duty, a dead sure thing, And went for it there and then, And Christ is not going to be too hard On a man that died for men. I want you to look at Vashti, the silent. You do not hear an}^ outer}- from this woman as she goes forth from the palace gate. From the very dignity of her nature 3'ou know there will be no vociferation. Sometimes in life it is necessary to make a retort; sometimes in life it is necessary to resist; but there are crises when the most triumphant thing to do is to keep silence. The philosopher, con- fident in his newly discovered principle, waited for the coming of more intelligent generations, willing that men should laugh at the lightning rod and cotton gin and steamboat — waiting for long years through the scoffing of philosophical schools, in grand and magnificent silence. Galileo, condemned by mathemati- cians, and monks, and cardinals; caricatured everywhere, yet waiting and watch- ing with his telescope to see the coming up of stellar re-enforcements, when the stars in their courses would fight for the Copernican system; then sitting down in complete blindness and deafness to wait for the coming on of the generations who would build his monument and bow at his grave. The reformer, execrated by his contemporaries, fastened in a pillor}^ the slow fires of public contempt burning under him, ground under the cjdinders of the printing press, 3'et calmly waiting for the day when purity of soul and heroism of character will get the sanction of earth and the plaudits of heaven. Affliction, enduring without any complaint the sharpness of the pang, and the violence of the storm, and the heft of the chain, and the darkness of the night — waiting until a divine hand shall be put forth to sooth the pang, and hush the storm, and release the captive. A wife abused, persecuted, and a perpetual exile from every earthly comfort — waiting, waiting, until the Eord shall gather up His dear children in a heavenly home, and no poor Vashti will ever be thrust out from the palace gate. Jesus, in silence, and answering not a word, drinking the gall, bearing the cross, in prospect of the rapturous consummation when # Angels thronged His chariot wheel, And bore Him to His throne; Then swept their golden harps and sung, — " The glorious work is done. " THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 153 All Arctic explorer found a ship floating helplessly about among the icebergs, and going on board he found that the captain was frozen at his log book, and the helmsman was frozen at the wheel, and the men on the lookout where frozen in their places, ^hat was awful, but magnificent. All the Arctic blasts and all the icebergs could not drive them from their duty. Their silence was louder than thunder. And this old ship of a world has many at their posts in the awful chill of neglect, and frozen of the world's scorn, and their silence shall be the eulogy of the skies, and be rewarded long after this weather-beaten craft of a planet shall have made its last voyage. I thank God that the mightiest influences are the most silent. The fires in a furnace of a factory, or of a steamship, roar, though they only move a few shuttles or a few thousand tons; but the sun that warms a world rises and sets without a crackle, or the faintest sound. Travelers visiting Mount ^tna, having heard of the glories of sunrise on that peak, went up to spend the night there and see the sun rise next morning; but when it came up it was so far behind their anticipations they actually hissed it. The mightiest influences to-day are like the planetary system — completely silent. Don' t hiss the sun ! O woman ! does not this story of Vashti the queen, Vashti the veiled, Vashti the sacrifice, Vashti the silent, move your soul ? When Rome was besieged, the daughter of its ruler saw the golden bracelets on the left arms of the enemy, and she sent word to them that she would betray her city and surrender it to them if they would only give her those bracelets on their left arms. They accepted the proffer, and by night this daughter of the ruler of the city opened one of the gates. The army entered, and, keeping their promise, threw upon her their bracelets, and also their shields, until under their weight she died. Alas, that all through the ages the same folly has been repeated, and for the trinkets and glittering treasures of this world, men and women swing open the portals of their immortal soul for an everlasting surrender, and die under the shining submergement. Through the rich grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, may j^ou be enabled to imitate the example of Rachel, and Hannah, and Abigail, and Deborah, and Mary, and Vashti. ^lyah itit^ ^j^si^itij;!^ THE POWER OF A WIFE OVER HER HUSBAND, AND HOW IT SHOULD BE EMPLOYED. NE day King Ahab, looking out of the window of his palace at Jezreel, said to his wife Jezebel: "We ought to have these royal gardens enlarged. If we could only get that fellow, Naboth, who owns that vineyard out there, to trade or sell, we could make it a kitchen garden for our palace." " Fetch in Naboth," says the king to one of his servants. The gardener, wondering wh}^ he should be called into the presence of his Majesty, comes in a little downcast in his modesty and with verj^ obsequious man- ner bows to the king. The king says: " Naboth, I w^ant to trade vineyards with you. I want your vineyard for a kitchen garden, and I will give you a great deal better vineyard in place of it; or, if you prefer money for it, I will give you cash." " Oh, no," says Naboth. " I cannot trade off my little place, nor can I sell it. It is the old homestead. I got it of my father, and he of his father, and I cannot let the old place go out of my hands. ' ' In a great state of petulancy, King Ahab went into the house and flung him- self on the bed and turned his face to the wall in a great pout. His wife Jezebel comes in and she says: ' ' What is the matter with you ? Are you sick ?" "Oh," he .says, "I feel very blue. I have set my heart on getting that kitchen garden, and Naboth will neither trade nor sell, and to be defeated by a common gardener is more than I can stand." "Oh, pshaw," says Jezebel; "don't go on that way. Get up and eat your dinner and stop moping. I will get for you that kitchen garden." Then Jezebel borrowed her husband's signet or seal, for then, as now, in those lands kings never signed their names, but had a ring with the royal name engraved on it, and that impressed on a royal letter or document was the signa- ture. She stamped her husband's name on a proclamation, which resulted in get- ting Naboth tried for treason against the king, and two perjured witnesses swore their souls away with the life of Naboth, and he was stoned to death and his prop- erty came to the crown, and .so Jezebel got for her husband and herself the kitchen garden. (154) THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. i55 But vvhile the wild street dogs were busy rending the dead body of poor Naboth, Elijah, the prophet, tells them of other canines that will after a while have a free banquet, saying: "Where dogs lick the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine." THE RESULT OF A WIFE'S BAD ADVICE. And sure enough, three years after, Ahab wounded in battle, his chariot drip- ping with the carnage, dogs stood under it lapping his life's blood. And a little afterward his wife, Jezebel, who had been his chief adviser in crime, stands at her palace window and sees Jehu, the enemy, approaching to take possession of the palace. And to make herself look as attractive as possible and queenly to the very last, she decorated her person, and according to Oriental custom closed her eyes, and ran a brush dipped in black powder along the long eyelashes, and then from the window she glared her indignation upon Jehu. As he rode to the gates in his chariot he shouted to the slaves in her room: " Throw her down !" But no doubt the slaves halted a moment from such work of assassination, yet, knowing Queen. Jezebel could be no more to them and the conqueror Jehu would be everything, as he shouted again: "Throw her down," they seized her and bore her strug- gling and cursing to the window casement and hurled her forth until she came tumbling to the earth, striking it just in time to let Jehu's horses trample her and the chariot wheels roll over her. While Jehu is inside at the table refreshing him- self after the excitement he orders his servants to go and bury the dead queen. But the wild street dogs had for the third time appeared on the scene, and they had removed all her body except those parts which in all ages dogs are by a strange instinct or brutal superstition kept from touching after death — the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet. All this appalling scene of ancient history was the result of a wife's bad advice to a husband, of a wife's struggle to advance her husband's interests by unlawful means. Ahab and Jezebel got the kitchen garden of Naboth, but the dogs got them. The trouble all began when this mistaken wife aroused her hus- band out of his melancholy by the words: "Arise, and eat bread, and let thine heart be merry; I will give thee the vineyard of Naboth." The influence suggested by this subject is an influence 3^ou never before read much about perhaps, and may never read of again, but it is a most potent and semi-omnipotent influence, and decides the course of individuals, families, nations, centuries and eternities. I speak of wifely ambition, good and bad. How impor- tant that every wife have her ambition, an elevated, righteous and divinely approved ambition. 156 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. ILLUSTRIOUS EXAMPLES OF WIFELY DEVOTION. No one can so inspire a man to noble purposes as a noble woman, and no one ' so thoroughly degrade a man as a wife of unworthy tendencies. While in the case of Jezebel we have an illustration of wifely ambition employed in the wrong direction, society and history are full of instances of wifely ambition gloriously triumphant in right directions. All that was worth admiration in the character of Henry VI. was a reflection of the heroics of his wife Margaret. William, Prince of Orange, was restored to the right path by the grand qualities of his wife Mary. Justinian, the Roman Emperor, confesses that his wise laws were the suggestions of his wife Theodora. Judith served her people by killing Holofernes. Andrew Jackson, the warrior and President, had his mightiest re-enforcement in his plain wife, whose inartistic attire was the amusement of the elegant circles in which she was invited. Washington, who broke the chain that held America in foreign vas- salage, wore for forty years a chain around his own neck, that chain holding the miniature likeness of her who had been his greatest inspiration, whether among the snows at Valley Forge or amid the honors of the presidential chair. Pliny's pen was driven through all its poetic and historical dominions b}' his wife. Cal- purnia, who sang his stanzas to the sound of flute and sat among audiences enrap- tured at her husband's genius, herself the most enraptured. Pericles said he got all his eloquence and statesmanship from his wife. When the wife of Grotius rescued him from long imprisonment at Lovestein by means of a bookcase that went in and out, carrying his books to and fro, he was one day transported, hidden amid the folios; and the women of besieged Weinsberg, getting permission from the victorious army to take with them so much of their valuables as they could carr)', under cover of the promise shouldered and took with them as the most important valuables their husbands — both achievements in a literal way illustrated what thousands of times has been done in a figurative way, that wifely ambition has been the salvation of men. De Tocqueville, whose writings will be potential and quoted while the world lasts, ascribes his successes to his wife, and says: " Of all the blessings wdiich God has given to me, the greatest of all in my eyes is to have lighted on Maria Motley." ]\Iartin lyUther says of his wife: " I would not exchange my povert}' with her for all the riches of Croesus without her." Isabella, of vSpain, by her superior f^aith in Columbus, put into the hand of Ferdinand, her husband, America. John Adams, President of the United States, said of his wife: " She never, by word or look, discouraged me from running all hazards for the salvation of my country's liberties. ' ' Thomas Carlyle spent the last twenty j-ears of his life in trying by his pen to atone for the fact that during his wife's life he never appreciated her influence on THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. i57 his career and destiny. Alas, that having taken her from a beautiful home and a brilliant career, he should have buried her in the home of a recluse and scolded her in such language as only a dyspeptic genius could manage, until one day, while in her invalidism, riding in Hyde Park, her pet dog got run over, and under the excitement the coachman found her dead. Then the literary giant woke from his conjugal injustice and wrote the lamentations of Craigen-puttock and Cheyne Row. The elegant and fulsome epitaphs that husbands put upon their wives' tombstones are often an attempt to make up for lack of appreciative words that should have been uttered in the ears of the living. A whole Greenwood of monumental inscriptions will not do a wife so much good after she has quit the world as one plain sentence like that which Tom Hood wrote to his living wife when he said: " I never was anything till I knew you." 0 woman, what is your wifely ambition — noble or ignoble ? Is it high social position ? That will then probably direct your husband, and he will climb and scramble and slip and fall and rise and tumble, and on what level or in what depth or on what height he will after a while be found I cannot even guess. The contest for social position is the most unsatisfactory contest in all the world, because it is so uncertain about your getting it, and so insecure a possession after j-ou have obtained it, and so unsatisfactory even if you keep it. The whisk of a lady's fan may blow it out ; the growl of one bear or the bellowing of one bull on Wall street may scatter it. Is the wife's ambition the political preferment of her husband? Then that will probably direct him. What a God-forsaken realm is American politics those best know who have dabbled in them. After they have assessed a man who is a candidate for an office which he does not get, or assessed him for some office attained, and he has been whirled round and round, and round and round among the drinking, smoking, swearing crowd, who often get control of public affairs, all that is left of his self-respect or moral stamina would find plenty of room on a geometrical point, which is said to have neither length, breadth nor thickness. Many a wife has not been satisfied till her husband went into politics, but would afterwards have given all she possessed to get him out. RUINED BY HIS WIFE'S SOCIAL AMBITION. 1 knew a highly moral man, useful in the church and possessor of a bright home. He had a useful and prosperous business, but his wife did not think it genteel enough. There were odors about the business, and sometimes the}- would adhere to his garments when he returned at night. She insisted on his doing something more elegant, although he was qualified for no business except that in which he was engaged. To please her he changed his business, and, in order to get on faster, abandoned church attendance, saying after he had made a certain 158 THE PATHWAY OF IvlFE. number of hundreds of thousands of dollars he would return to the church and its service. Where is that family to-day ? Obliterated. Although succeeding in business for which he was qualified, he undertook a style of merchandise for which he had no qualification, and soon went into bankruptcy. His new style of business put him into evil association. He lost his morals as well as his mone}-. He broke up not onl}- his own home, but broke up another man's home, and from being a kind, pure, generous, moral man he has become a homeless, penniless libertine. His wife's ambition for a more genteel business destroyed him, and disgraced her, and blighted their onl}- child. But suppose now there be in our homes, as, thank God, there are in hundreds of homes represented by the readers of this book, on the wifeh^ throne one who says not only by her words, but more powerfully by her actions: " IMy husband, our destinies are united. Let us see where industr}-, honest}-, common sense and faith in God w-ill put us. I am with you in all your enterprises. I cannot be with }-ou in person as }-ou go to your daily business, but I will be with }-ou in my prayers. Let us see what we can achieve by having God in our hearts, and God in our lives, and God in ovir home. Be on the side of everything good. Go ahead and do your best, and though everything should turn out different from what we have calculated, you may always count on two who are going to help you, and Ood is one and I am the other." That man may have feeble health, and may meet with many obstacles and business trials, but he is coming gloriously through, for he is re-enforced, and inspired, and spurred on by a woman's voice, as much as was Barak by Deborah when Sisera with 900 iron chariots came on to crush him and his army, and Deborah shouted in the ear of Barak: "Up! for this is the day in which the Lord hath delivered Sisera into thine hands." And the enemy fell back, and Sisera's chariot not getting along fast enough in the retreat, the general jumped out and took it afoot, and ran till he came to a place where a woman first gave him a drink of milk and then sent a .spike through his skull, nailing him to the floor. vSome of us could tell of what influence upon us has been a wifely ambition <:onsecrated to righteousness. I have often been called of God, as I thought, to run into the very teeth of public opinion, and all outsiders with whom I advised told me I had better not, it would ruin me and ruin m\- church, and at the same time I was receiving nice little letters threatening me with dirk and pistol and poison if I persisted in attacking certain evils of the day, mitil the Commissioner of Police considered it his duly to take his place in our Sabbath services with forty officers scattered through the house for the preservation of order, but in my home there has always been one voice to say: ' ' Go ahead, and diverge not an inch from the straight line. Who cares if only God is on our side ?" i-,9J i6o THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. And though sometimes it seemed as if I was going out against 900 iron chariots, I went ahead, cheered bj' the domestic voice. A man is no better than his wife will let him be. O wives of America, .sway your .sceptres of wifely influence for God and good homes ! Do not urge your hu.sbands to annex Naboth's vineyard to your palace of success, whether right or wrong, lest the dogs that come out todestroy Naboth come out also to devour you. Righteousness will pay best in life, will pay best in death, will pay Ijest in the judgment, will pay best through all eternity. HOME INFLUENCE ON HUSBANDS. In our efforts to have the mother of every household appreciate her influence over her children we are apt to forget the wife's influence over the husband. In many households the influence upon the husband is the only home influence. In a great multitude of the best and most important and most talented families of the earth there have been no descendants. There is not a child or a grandchild, or any remote descendant of Washington, or Charles Sumner, or Shakespeare, or Edmund Burke, or Pitt, or Lord Nelson, or Cowper, or Pope, or Addison, or Johnson, or Lord Chatham, or Grattan, or Isaac Newton, or Goldsmith, or Swift, or Locke, or Gibbon, or Walpole, or Canning, or Dryden, or Moore, or Chaucer, or Lord Byron, or Walter Scott, or Oliver Cromwell, or Garrick, or Hogarth, or Joshua RcN'nolds, or Spenser, or Lord Bacon, or Macaulay. Multitudes of the finest families of the earth are extinct. As though they had done enough for the world by their genius or wit, or patriotism, or invention, or consecration, God withdrew them. In multitudes of cases all woman's opportunity for usefulness is with her contemporaries. How important that it be an improved opportunity ! While the French warriors on their way to Rheims had about concluded t-o gi\e up attacking the castle at Troyes because it was so heavily garrisoned, Joan of Arc entered the room and told them they would be inside the castle in three days. "We would willingly wait six days," said one of the leaders. "Six!" she cried out; "you shall be in it to-morrow." And, under her leadership, on the morrow they entered. Though Joan afterwards suffered martyrdom at the stake, her glorious deeds will live in the grateful remem- brance of the descendants of those who so cruelly executed her. On a smaller scale every man has garrisons to subdue and obstacles to level, and every wife may be an inspired Joan of Arc to her hu.sband. So that whatever be his suc- cesses he will always bless her name for the helpfulness she gave him. What a noble, wifely ambition, the determination, God helping, to accom- pany her companion across the stormy sea of this life and together gain the wharf of the Celestial City ! Coax him along with you ! You cannot drive him there. You cannot nag him there ; but you can coax him there. That is God's EXECUTION OF JOAN OF ARC. 162 THE PATHWAY OF LIFH. plan. He coaxes us all the way — coaxes us out of our sins, coaxes us to accept pardon, coaxes us to heaven. If we reach that blessed place it will be through a prolonged and divine coaxing. By the same process take your companion, and then you will get there as well, and all your household. Do just the opposite to your neighbor. Her wifely ambition is all for this world, and a disappointed and vexed and unhappy creature she will be all the way. Her residence may be better than yours for the few years of earthly stay, but she will move out of it as to her body into a house about five and a half feet long and about three feet wide and two feet high, and concerning her soul's destiny you can make your own prognos- tication. Her husband and her sons and daughters, who all, like her, live for this world, will have about the same destiny for the bod}- and the soul. You having had a sanctified and divinely ennobled wifely ambition, will pass up into palaces, and what becomes of your body is of no importance, for it is only a scaffolding, pulled down now that your temple is done. You will stand in the everlasting rest and see your husband come in, and see your children come in, if they have not preceded you. Glorified Christian wife ! Pick up any crown 3'ou choose from off the King's footstool and wear it ; it was promised you long ago, and with it cover up all the scars of your earthly conflict. FAITHFUL WIVES' REWARD. Sixteen miles from St. Petersburg, Russia, was one of the royal palaces, and there one night Catharine, the Empress, entertained Prince Henry. It was severe winter and deep snow, and the Empress and the Prince rode in a magnificence of sleigh and robe and canopy never surpassed, followed b}' 2000 sleighs laden with the first people of Russia, the wdiole length cf the distance illuminated by lamps and dazzling temples built for that one night, and imitations of mosques and Egyptian pyramids ; and people of all nations in all styles of costume standing on platforms along the way and watching the blaze of the pyrotechnics. At the palace the luxuries of kingdoms were gathered and spread, and at the tables the guests had but to touch the centre of a plate, and by magical machinery it dropped and another plate came up loaded with still richer viands. lUit all that scene of the long ago shall be eclipsed by the greater splendors that will be gathered at the banquet made by the heavenly King for those consecrated women who came in out of the winter and snowy chill of Iheir earthly existence into the warm and illumined ])alaces of heaven. With the Knig Himself and all the potentates, yourself robed and crowned, you will sit at a tal)le compared with which all the feasts at Kenilworth and St. Cloud and the Alhambra were a beggar's crust. And the ])latter of one royal .satisfaction touched at the centre shall disappear, only tc make room for a gracious viand, and the golden plate of one royal satisfaction, touched at the centre, shall disappear, only to make room for the coming of some richer and grander regalement. WHAT CAN MAKE WOMEN HAPPY, AND WHAT OFTEN MAKES THEM MISERABLE. KCENTlyY the editor of a Boston newspaper wrote asking me the terse question: " What is the road to happiness?" and " Ought happiness be the chief aim of life ?" My answer was: " The road to happiness is the continuous effort to make others happy. The chief aim of life ought to be usefulness, not happiness; ;but happiness always follows usefulness. ' She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.' " My readers, you all want to be happ}'. Yovi have had a great many recipes by which it is propc'Sed to give 3^ou satisfaction — solid satisfaction. At times j-ou feel a thorough unrest. You know as well as older people what it is to be depressed. As dark shadows sometimes fall upon the geography of the school girl as on the page of the spectacled philosopher. I have seen as cloudy da)'S in May as in November. There are no deeper sighs breathed by the grandmother than by the granddaughter. I correct the popular impression that people are happier in childhood and youth than they ever will be again. If we live aright, the older the happier. The happiest woman that I ever knew was a Christian octogenarian; her hair white as white could be; the sunlight of heaven late in the afternoon gilding the peaks of snow. I have to say to a great man}' of the young people that the most miserable time 3'ou are ever to have is just now. As j'ou advance in life, as you come out into the world and have 5^our head and heart all full of good, honest, practical Christian work, then 3'ou will know wliat it is to begin to be happy. There are those who would have us believe that life is chasing thistledown and grasping bubbles. We have not found it so. To many of us it has been discovering diamonds larger than the Kohinoor, and I think that our joy will continue to increase until nothing short of the everlasting jubilee of heaven will be able to express it. Horatio Greenough, at the close of the hardest life a man ever lives — the life of an American artist — wrote: " I don't want to leave this world until I give some sign that, born by the grace of God in this land, I have found life to be a very cheerful thing, and not the daik and bitter thing with which my early prospects were clouded." Albert Barnes, the good Christian, known the world over, stood in his pulpit in Philadelphia, at seventy or eighty years of age, and said: " This world is so very attractive to me, I am very sorry I shall have to leave it." (163) 164 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. I know that Solomon said some very dolorous things about this world, and three times declared: ' ' Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. ' ' I suppose it was a refer- ence to those times in liis career when his 700 wives almost pestered the life out of KAKl.V 1 Rut 1.1. 1„S.- l.liil.l', MiseiIIi;K AND HIS THACIIICK . --Z^>' //. Ili-lliiuk. him. But I would rather turn to the description he gave after his conversion, when he says in another place: " Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. 165 It is reasonable to expect it will be so. The longer the fruit hangs on the tree, the riper and more mellow it ought to grow. You plant one grain of com NAPOI.EON ANNOUNCING TO JOSEPHTNE HER DIVORCEMENT. and it will send up a stalk with two ears, each having 950 grains, so that one grain planted will produce 1900 grains. And ought not the implantation of a grain 1 66 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. of Christian principle in a youthful soul develop into a large crop of gladness on ^arth and to a harvest of eternal joy in heaven ? Hear me, then, while I dis- course upon some of the mistakes which young people make in regard to happi- ness, and point out to the young women what I consider to be the source of complete satisfaction. LITTLE HAPPINESS IN SOCIAL POSITION. And, in the first place, I advise you not to build your happiness upon mere social position. Persons at your age, looking off upon life, are apt to think that if, by some stroke of what is called good luck, you could arrive in an elevated and affluent position, a little higher than that in which God has called you to live, you would be completely happy. Infinite mistake ! The palace floor of Ahasuerus is red with the blood of Vashti's broken heart. There have been no more scalding tears wept than those which coursed the cheeks of Josephine. If the sob of unhappy womanhood in the great cities could break through the tapestried wall, that sob would come along your streets to-day like the simoon of the desert. Sometimes I have heard in the rustling of the robes on the city pavement the hiss of the adders that followed in the wake. You have come out from your home, and 3'ou have looked up at the great house, and covet a life under those arches, when, perhaps, at that very moment, within that house, there niaj- have been the wringing of hands, the start of horror and the very agony of hell. I knew such a one. Her father's house was plain, most of the people who came there were plain; but, by a change in fortune such as sometimes comes, a hand had been offered that led her into a brilliant sphere. All the neighbors congratulated her upon her grand prospects; but what an exchange ! On her side it was a heart full of generous impulse and affection. On his side it was a soul dry and withered as t!i2 stubble of the field. On' her side it was a father's house, where God was honored and the Sabbath light flooded the rooms with the very mirth of heaven. On his side it was a gorgeous residence, and the coming of mighty men to be entertained there, but within it were revelry and godlessness. Hardly had the orange blossoms of the marriage feast lost their fragrance, than the night of dis- content began to cast here and there its shadows. Cruelties and unkindnesses changed all those splendid trappings into a hollow mockery. The platters of solid silver, the casket of pure gold, the head-dress of gleaming diamonds, were there; but no God, no peace, no kind words, no Christian sympathy. The festal music that broke on the captive's ear turned out to be a dirge, and the wreath in the plush was a reptile coil, and the upholstery that swayed in the wind was the wing of a destroying angel, and the bead-drops on the pitcher were the sweat of ever- lasting despair. Oh, how many rivalries and unha])pincsses among those who seek in social life their chief happiness ! It matters not how fine you have things; A BROKEN HEART IN A GiEDED PAEACK. — From a Paiiitiiig by L. stocks. (167) 1 68 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. there are other people who have it finer. Taking out your watch to tell the hour of the day, some one will correct your timepiece by pulling out a watch more riclil}' chased and jeweled. Ride in a carriage that cost you $800, and before you get around the park you will meet with one that cost $2000. Have on 3'our wall a picture by Copley, and before night 3'ou will hear of some one who has a picture fresh from the studio of Church or Bierstadt. All that this world can do for you in silver, in gold, in Axminster plush, in Gobelin tapestry, in wide halls, in lordly acquaintanceship, will not give you the ten thousandth part of a grain of solid satisfaction. The English lord, moving in the ver}^ highest sphere, was one day found seated with his chin on his hand and his elbow on the window sill, looking out and saying: ' ' Oh, I wish I could exchange places with that dog ! ' ' Mere social position will never give happiness to a woman's soul. I have had wide and continuous observation, and I tell the young women that they who build on mere social position their soul's immortal happiness are building on the sand. USEFULNESS IN HOME CIRCLES. f Suppose that a young woman expends the brightness of her early life in this unsatisfactory struggle and omits' the present opportunity of usefulness in the home circle; what a mistake ! So surely as the years roll around, that home in which j-ou now dwell will become extinct. The parents will be gone, the property will be turned over into other possession, you j'ourself will be in other relationships, and that home which, only a year ago, was full of congratulation, will be extinguished. When that period comes you will look back to see what you did or what you neglected to do in the way of making home happy. If you did not smooth the path of your parents toward the tomb; if you did not make their last days bright and happy; if you allowed your younger brother to go out into the world unhallowed by Christian and sisterly influences; if you allowed the younger sisters of your family to come up without feeling that there had been a Christian example set them on your part, there wnll be nothing but bitterness of lamentation. That bitterness will be increased by all the surroundings of that home; by every chair, by every picture, by the old-time mantel ornaments, by ever>'thing you can think of as connected with that home. All these things will rouse up agonizing memories. Young women, have you anything to do in the way of making your father's home happy ? Now is the time to attend to it, or leave it forever undone. Time is flying very quickly away. I suppose you notice the wrinkles are gather- ing and accumulating on those kindly faces that have so long looked upon you; there is frost in the locks; the foot is not as firm in its step as it used to be; and they will soon be gone. The heaviest clod that ever falls on a parent's cofiin-lid THE PATHWAY OF 1,1 FE, i6g is the memory of an ungrateful daughter. Oh, make their last days bright and beautiful. Do not act as though they were in the way. Ask their counsel, seek their prayers, and, after long years have passed, and you go out to see the grave where they sleep, you will find growing all over the mound something lovelier than cypress, something sweeter than the rose, something chaster than the lily — the bright and beautiful memories of filial kindness performed ere the dying hand dropped on you a benediction, and you closed the lids over the weary eyes of the wornout pilgrim. Better that, in the hour of your birth, you had been struck THP: 0I.D HOMESTEAD. with orphanage, and that you had been handed over into the cold arms of the world, rather than that you should have been brought up under a father's care and a mother's tenderness at last to scoff at their example and deride their influence; and on the day when you followed them in long procession to the tomb to find that you are followed by a still larger procession of unfilial deeds done and wrong words uttered. The one procession will leave its burden in the tomb and disband; but that longer procession of ghastly memories will forever march and forever wail. Oh, it is a good time for a young woman when she is in her father's lyo THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. house. How careful they are of her welfare. How watchful those parents of all her interests. Seated at the morning repast, father at one end of the table, mother at the other and children on either side and between, but the years will roll on and great changes will be effected, and one will be missed from one end of the table and another will be missed from the other end of the table. God pity that }'oung woman's soul who, in that dark hour, has nothing but regretful recol- lections. run KMPTY PLACE. " The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." PERSONAL CHARMS OF WOMEN. I go further and advise you not to depend for enjoyment upon mere personal attractions. It would be sheer hypocrisy, because we may not have it ourselves, to THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. 171 despise, or affect to despise, beauty in others. When God gives it He gives it as a blessing and as a means of usefuhiess. The Bible sets before us the portraits of Sarah and Rebecca, and Abishag, Absalom's sister, and Job's daughters, and A BIRTHDAY svRFRiSE. — FroJii u Painting bv W. Hafcnnann. says: " They were fair to look upon." By out-door exercise, and skillful arrange- ment of apparel, let women make themselves attractive. The sloven has only one mission, and that to excite our loathing and disgust. But alas ! for those 172 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. who depend upon personal charms for their happiness. Beauty is such a subtle thing, it does not seem to depend upon facial proportions, or upon the sparkle of the eye, or upon the flush of the cheek. You sometimes find it among irregular features. It is the soul shining through the face that makes one beautiful. But alas ! for those who depend upon mere personal charms. They will come to dis- appointment and to a great fret. There are so many different opinions about what are personal charms; and then sickness, and trouble, and age, do make such ravages. The poorest god that a woman ever worships is her own face. The saddest sight in all the world is a woman who has built everything on good looks, when the charms begin to vanish. Oh, how they try to cover the wrinkles and hide the ravages of time ! When Time, with iron-shod feet, steps on a face, the hoof-marks remain, and you cannot hide them. It is silly to try to hide them. I think the most repulsive fool in all the world is an old fool ! Why, my friends, should you be ashamed to be getting old ? It is a sign — it is prima facie evidence that you have behaved tolerably well or you would not have lived to this time. The grandest thing, I think, is eternity, and that is made up of countless years. When the Bible would set forth the attractiveness of Jesus Christ, it says: "His hair was white as snow." But when the color goes from the cheek, and the lustre from the eye, and the spring from the step, and the gracefulness from the gait, alas ! for those who have built their time and their eternity upon good looks. But all the passage of years cannot take out of one's face benignity, and kindness, and compassion, and faith. Culture your heart and you culture your face. The brightest glory that ever beamed from a woman's face is the religion of Jesus Christ. In the last war 200 wounded sol- diers came to Philadelphia one night, and came unheralded, and they had to extemporize a hospital for them, and the Christian women of my church and of other churches went out that night to take care of the poor wounded fellows. That night I saw a Christian woman go through the wards of the hospital, her sleeves rolled up, ready for hard work, her hair disheveled in the excitement of the hour. Her face was plain, very plain; but after the wounds were washed and the new bandages were put round the splintered limbs, and the exhausted boy fell off into his first pleasant sleep, she put her hand on his brow, and he started in his dream and said: " Oh, I thought an angel touched me !" There may have been no classic elegance in the features of Mrs. Harris, who came into the hospital after the " seven days " awful fight, as she sat down by a wounded drummer boy and heard him soliloquize: " A ball through my body, and my poor mother will never again see her boy. What a pity it is !" And she leaned over him and said: "Shall I be your mother and comfort you?" And he looked up and said: "Yes; I'll try to think she's here. Please to write a long letter to her and tell her all about it, and send her a lock of my hair and THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 173 comfort her. But I would like to have you to tell her how much I suffered — yes, I would like you to do that, for she would feel so for me. Hold m}- hand while Idle." There may have been no classic elegance in her features, but all the hospitals of Harrison's Landing and Fortress Monroe would have agreed that she was beau- tiful; and if any rough man in all that ward had insulted her, some wounded sol- dier would have leaped from his couch, on his best foot, and struck him dead with a crutch. I charge you not to depend for happiness upon the discipleship of worldliness. I have seen men as vain of their old-fashioned and their eccentric hat as your brainless fop is proud of his dangling fooleries. Fashion sometimes makes a reasonable demand of us, and then we ought to yield to it. The daisies of the field have their fashion of color and leaf, the honeysuckles have their fashion of ear- prop, and the snow-flakes flung out of the winter heavens have their fashion of exquisiteness. After the summer shower the sky weds the earth with a ring of rainbow. And I do not think we have a right to despise the elegancies and fash- ions of this world, especially if they make reasonable demands upon us; but the discipleship and worship of fashion is death to the bod}^, and death to the soul. I am glad the world is improving. Look at the fashion plates of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and you will find that the world is not so extravagant and extraordinary now as it was then, and all the marvelous things that the grand- daughter will do will never equal that done by the grandmother. Go still farther back, to the Bible times, and you will find that in those times fashion wielded a more terrible and horrible sceptre. You have only to turn to the third chapter of Isaiah to read: " Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with stretched- forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and mak- ing a tinkling with their feet: in that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon; the chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers, the bonnets, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the ear-rings, the rings, and the nose-jewels, the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins, the glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the veils." Only think of a woman having all that on ! I am glad the world is getting better and that fashion which has dominated in the world so ruinously in other days has for a little time, for a little degree at any rate, relaxed its energies. All the splendors and extravaganza of this world dyed into 3'-our robe and flung over your shoulder cannot wrap peace around your heart for a single moment. The gayest wardrobe will utter no voice of condolence in the day of trouble and dark- ness. That woman is grandly dressed, and only she, who is wrapped in the robe of a Saviour's righteousness. The home may be very humble, the hat may be 174 THE PATHWAY OF UFE. very plain, the frock may be very coarse; but the halo of heaven settles in the room when she wears it, and the faintest touch of the resurrection angel will change that garment into raiment exceeding wliite, so as no fuller on earth could 1111'; SCKllUiS DlKKICUl.TV. THE PATHWAY OF I^IFE. i75 whiten it. I come to you, j^oung women, to-day to say that this world cannot make you happy. I know it is a bright world, with glorious sunshine, and golden rivers, and fire-worked sunset, and bird orchestra, and the darkest cave has its crystals, and the wrathiest wave its foam wreath, and the coldest midnight its flaming aurora; but God will put out all these lights with the blast of his own nostrils, and the glories of this world will perish in the final conflagration. GOOD NIGHT TO TEARS AND POVERTY. The snow was ver>' deep, and it was still falling rapidly when, in the first year of my Christian ministry, I hastened to see a young woman die. It was a very humble home. She was an orphan; her father had been shipwrecked on the banks of Newfoundland. She had earned her own living. As I entered the room I saw nothing attractive. No pictures, no tapestry, not even a cushioned chair. The snow on the window casement was not whiter than the cheek of that dying girl. It was a face never to be forgotten. Sweetness and majesty of soul and faith in God had given her a matchless beauty, and the sculptor who could have caught the outlines of those features and frozen them into stone would have made himself immortal. With her large brown eyes she looked calmly into the great eternity. I sat down by her bedside and said: " Now tell me all your troubles, and sorrows, and struggles, and doubts." She repHed: " I have no doubts or struggles. It is all plain to me. Jesus has smoothed the way for my feet. I wish when you go to your pulpit next Sunday, j^ou would tell the young people that religion will make them happy. 'O death, where is thy sting?' Mr. Talmage, I wonder if this is not the bliss of dying ?" I said: " Yes, I think it must be." I lingered around the couch. The sun was setting, and her sister lighted a candle. She lighted the candle for me. The dying girl, the dawn of heaven in her face, needed no candle. I rose to go, and she said: " I thank you for coming. Good night ! When we meet again it will be in heaven — in heaven ! Good night ! good night !" For her it was good night to tears, goodnight to poverty, good night to death; but when the sun rose again it was good morning. The light of another day had burst in upon her soul. Good morning ! The angels were singing her welcome home, and the hand of Christ was putting upon her brow a garland. Good morn- ing ! Her sun rising. Her palm weaving. Her spirit exulting before the throne of God. Good morning ! Good morning ! The white lily of poor Margaret's cheek had blushed into the rose of health immortal, and the snows through which we carried her to the country- graveyard were symbols of that robe which she wears, so white that no fuller on earth could whiten it. My sister, my daughter, may your last end be like hers ! (Btixntim^ilyitt* THE BLESSED INFLUENCE OF DEVOUT OLD AGE. N a love letter which Paul, the old minister, wrote to Tinioth}-, the 3'oung minister, the famil}- record is brought out. Paul practically sa^-s: " Timothy, what a good grandmother you had. You ought to be better than most folks, because not only was your mother good, but your grandmother. Two preceding generations of piety ought to give you a mighty push in the right direction." The fact was that Timothy needed encouragement. He was in poor health, having a weak .stomach, and was dyspeptic, and Paul prescribed for him a tonic, " a little wine for thy stomach's sake " — not much wine, but a little wine, and only as medicine. And if the wine then had been, as much adulterated with logwood and strychnine as our modern wines, 'y i he would not have prescribed any. ''' But Timothy, not strong phj'sically, is encouraged spiritually by the recital of grandmotherly excellence, Paul hinting to him, as I hint to you, that God sometimes gathers up as in a reservoir away back of the active generations of to-day a godly influence, and then in response to praj'Cr lets down the power upon children and grandchildren and great- grandchildren. The world is woefully in want of a table of statistics in regard to what is the protractedness and immensity of influence of one good woman in the church and world. We have accounts of how much evil has been wrought by Margaret, the mother of criminals, who lived near loo years ago, and of how many hundreds of criminals her descendants furnished for the penitentiaries and the gallows, and how many hundreds of thousands of dollars they cost this country in their arraignment and pri.son support, as well as in the property they burglarized or destroyed. But will not some one come out with brain comprehensive enough and heart warm enough and pen keen enough to give us the facts in regard to some good woman of loo years ago, and let us know how many Christian men and women and reformers and useful people have been found among her descendants, and how many asylums and colleges and churches they built, and how many millions of dollars they contributed for humanitarian and Christian purposes ? The good women whose tombstones were planted in the eighteenth century are more alive for good in the nineteenth century than they were before, as the (176) THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 177 good women of this nineteenth century will be more alive for good in the twentieth centur}- than now. Mark you, I have no idea that the grandmothers were any better than their grandaughters. You cannot get very old people to talk much GRANDMOTHER. about how things were when they were boys and girls. They have a reticence and a non-committalism which makes me think they feel themselves to be the custodians of the reputations of their early comrades. While our dear old folks 12 178 THE PATHWAY OF IvlFE. are rehearsing the follies of the present, if you put them on the witness stand and cross-examine them as to how things were seventy years ago the silence becomes oppressive. XAi,K.iNG ovKR OLD TiMUS.—Ly Ed. Schnlz Bricscn. THE PATHWAY OF IJFE. 179 THE WOMEN OF THE LAST CENTURY. A celebrated Frenchman by the name of Vohiey, visited this countr>' in 1796, and he says of woman's diet in those times: "If a premium was offered for a regimen most destructive to health, none could be devised more efficacious for these ends than that in use among these people." That eclipses our lobster salad at midnight. Everybody talks about the dissipa- tion of modern society and how womanly health goes down under it, but it was worse a hundred years ago, for the chap- lain of a French regi- ment in our Revolution- ary War wrote in 1782, in his book of American women, saying: "They are tall and well propor- tioned, their features are generally regular, their complexions are gener- ally fair and without color. At twenty years of age the women have no longer the freshness of youth. At thirty or forty they are decrepit. ' ' In 18 12 a foreign consul wrote a book entitled, "A Sketch of the United States at the Commence- ment of the Present Century," and he says of the women of those times: " At the age of thirty all their charms have disappeared." One glance at the portraits of the women a hundred years ago and their style of dress makes us wonder how they ever got their breath. All this makes me think that the express rail train is no more an improvement on the old canal boat, or the telegraph no more an improvement on the old-time saddle-bags, than the women of our day are an improvement on the women of the last century. VISITING THK SICK AND DtSTITUTK. i8o THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. But still, notwithstanding that those times were so much worse than ours, there was a glorious race of godly women, seventy and a hundred years ago, who held the world back from sin and lifted it toward virtue, and without their exalted and sanctified influence before this the last good influence would have perished from the earth. Indeed, all over this land there are seated to-day — not so much in churches, for many of them are too feeble to come — a great many aged grand- mothers. They sometimes fqel that the world has gone past them, and they have an idea that they are of little account. Their heads sometimes get aching from the racket of the grandchildren down-stairs or in the next room. They steady them- selves by the banisters as they go up and down. When they get a cold it hangs on to them longer than it used to. They cannot bear to have the grandchildren punished even when they deserve it, and have so relaxed their ideas of family discipline that they would spoil all the 3'oungsters of the household by too great leniency. These old folks are the resort when great troubles come, and there is a calming and soothing power in the touch of an aged hand that is almost super- natural. They feel that they are almost through with the journey of life, and read the old Book more than they used to, hardly knowing which most they enjoy, the Old Testament or the New, and often stop and dwell tearfully over the family record half way betw^een. We hail them to-day, whether in the house of God or at the homestead. Blessed is that household that has in it a Grandmother Lois. Where she is, angels are hovering round and God is in the room. May her last days be like those lovely autumnal days that we call Indian Summer. I never knew the joy of having a grandmother; that is the disadvantage of being the youngest child of the family. The elder members only have that bene- diction. But though she went up out of this life before I began it, I have heard of her faith in God, that brought all her children into the kingdom, and two of them into the ministry, and then brought all her grandchildren into the kingdom, myself the last and least worthy. Is it not time that you and I do two things, swing open a picture gallery of the wrinkled faces and stooped shoulders of the past, and call down from their heavenly thrones the godly grandmothers to give them our thanks, and then persuade the mothers of to-day that they are living for all time, and that against the sides of every cradle in which a child is rocked beat the two eternities ? Do not let the grandmothers any longer think that they are retired, and sit clear back out of sight from the world, feeling that they have no relation to it. The mothers of the last century are to-day in the Senates, the Parliaments, the palaces, the pulpits, the banking houses, the professional chairs, the pri.sons, the almshouses, the company of midnight brigands, the cellars, the ditches of this century. You have been thinking about the importance of having the right influ- ence upon one nursery-. You have been thinking of the importance of getting these THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. i8i two little feet on the right path. You have been thinking of your child's destiny for the next eighty years, if it should pass on to be an octogenarian. That is well, but my subject sweeps a thousand years, a million years, a quadrillion of years. I cannot stop at one cradle, I am looking at the cradles that reach all round the world and across all time. I am not talking of Mother Eunice, I am talking of Grandmother Lois. The only way you can tell the force of a current is by sailing up-stream; or the force of an ocean wave, by running the ship against it. Running along with it we cannot appreciate the force. In estimating maternal influence we generally run along with it down the stream of time, and so we don't understand the full force. Let us come up to it from the eternity side, after it has been working on for centuries, and see all the good it has done and all the evil it has accomplished, multiplied in magnificent or appalling compound interest. The difference between that mother's influence now and the influence when it has been multiplied in hundreds of thousands of lives is the difference between the Missis- sippi River way up at the top of the continent, starting from the little Lake Itasca, seven miles long and one wide, and its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico, where navies might ride. Between the birth of that river and its burial in the sea the Missouri pours in, and the Ohio pours in, and the Arkansas pours in, and the Red and White and Yazoo Rivers pour in, and all the States and Territories between the Alleghany and Rocky Mountains make contribution. Now, in order to test the power of a mother's influence, we need to come in off of the ocean of eternity and sail up toward the one cradle, and we will find 10,000 tributaries of influence pouring in and pouring down. ROLLING ON AND FOREVER. But it is, after all, one great river of power, rolling on and rolling forever. Who can fathom it ? Who can bridge it ? Who can stop it ? Had not mothers better be intensifying their prayers? Had they not better be elevating their example ? Had they not better be rousing themselves with consideration that by their faithfulness or neglect they are starting an influence which will be stupendous after the last mountain of earth is flat, and the last sea has been dried up, and the last flake of the ashes of a consumed world shall have been blown away, and all the telescopes of other worlds, directed to the track around which our world once swung, shall discover not so much as a cinder of the burned-down and swept-off planet. In Ceylon there is a granite column, thirty-six square feet in size, which is thought by the natives to decide the world's continuance. An angel, with robe spun from zephyrs, is once a century to descend and sweep the hem of that robe across the granite, and when, by that attrition, the column is worn away, they say time will end. But by that process that granite column would be worn out of existence before mother's influence will begin to give way. l82 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. ''=^>. "-x/. Ft THK GUIDING ANGEL. o)n the Sciilplurc by L. A. Malcmptc. If a mother tell a child he is not good, some l^ugaboo will come and catch him, the fear excited may make the child a coward, and the fact that he finds that there is no bugaboo may make him a liar, and the echo of that false alarm may be heard after fifteen generations have been born and have expired. If a mother promise a child a reward for good behavior and after the good behavior forgets to give the reward, the cheat may crop out in some faithlessness half a thousand years further on. If a mother culture a child's vanity and eulogize his curls and extol the night-black or sky- blue or nut-brown of the child's eyes, and call out in his presence the admiration of spectators, pride and arrogance may be prolonged after half a dozen family records have been obliterated. If a mother express doubt about some statement of the Holy Bible in a child's pres- ence, long after the gates of this historical era have closed, and the gates of another era have opened, the result may be seen in a cham- pion blasphemer. But, on the other hand, if a mother walking with a child see a suffering one by the way- side and says: " My child, give that ten-cent piece to that lame boy," the result may be seen on the other side of the following century in .some George Muller building a whole village of orphanages. If a mother sit almost every evening by the trundle bed of a child and teach AN ERRAND OF MERCY. (1S3) i84 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. it lessons of a Saviour's example, of the importance of truth and the horror of a lie, and the virtues of industr}- and kindness and sympathy and self-sacrifice, long after the mother has gone and the child has gone and the lettering on both the tombstones shall have been washed out by the storms of innumerable winters, there may be standing, as a result of those trundle bed lessons, flaming evangels, world-moving reformers, circulating Summerfields, weeping Paysons, thundering Whitefields, emancipating Washingtons. 1' A K \ 1 . I /•/ ('/// IIU / itniliiiir by Artz. Good or bad influence may skip one generation or two generations, but it will be sure to land in the third or fourth generation, just as the Ten Conunandments, speaking of the visitation of God on families, says nothing about the second generation, but entirely skips the second and speaks of the third and fourth gene- rations: " Visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the third and fourth genera- tions of them that hate mc." Parental influence, right and wrong, may jump over a generation, but it is sure to appear further on. Timothy's ministry was projected by his grandmother, Lois. There are men and women, the sons and daughters of the Christian Church, who are such as a result of the consecration of THE CKI.ESTIAL WEI.COME. (185) 1 86 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. great-great-grandmothers. Why, who do you think the Lord is? You talk as though His memory was weak. He can no easier remember a prayer five minutes than He can five centuries. A FAMILIAR SIGHT EXPLAINED. This explains what we often see — some man or woman distinguished for benevolence when the father and mother were distinguished for penuriousness; or you see some young man or woman with a bad father and a hard mother come out gloriously for Christ, and make the Church sob, and shout and sing under their ex- hortations. We stand in corners of the ves- try and whisper over the matter and say: " How is this, such great piet}- in sons and daughters of such parental worldliness and sin ?" I will ex- plain it to you if you will fetch me the old family Bible contain- ing the full record. Let some septuagen- arian look with me clear upon the page of births and marriages, and tell me who that woman was with the old-fashioned name of Jemima, or Betsy, or Mehitabel. Ah, there she is, the old grandmother or great-grand- mother, who had enough religion to saturate a centur>'. There she is, the dear old soul, Grandmother Lois. In our beautiful Green- wood cemetery, there is the resting-place of George W. Bethune, once a minister of Brooklyn Heights, his name never spoken among intelligent Americans with- out suggesting two things — eloquence and evangelism. In the same tomb sleeps his grandmother, Isabella Graham, who was the chief in.spiration of his min- istry. You are not surprised at the poetry and pathos and pulpit power of the grandson when you read of the faith and devotion of his wonderful ancestress. When you read this letter in which she poured out her widowed soul in longing ^^^t ^ The ,,;.(3oori)>TQ' ALL.-M THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 187 for a son's salvation, you will not wonder that succeeding generations have been blessed: New York, May 20, 1791. — This day my only son left me in bitter wringings of heart; he is again launched on the ocean — God's ocean. The Lord saved him from shipwreck, brought him to my home, and allowed me once more to indulge my affections over him. He has been with me but a short time, and ill have I improved it ; he is gone from my sight and my heart bursts with tumultuous grief. Lord have mercy on the widow's son, "the only son of his mother." I ask nothing in all this world for him ; I repeat my petition, save his soul alive, give him salvation from sin. It is not the danger of the seas that distresses me ; it is not the hardships he must undergo ; it is not the dread of never seeing him more in this world ; it is because I cannot discern the new birth, nor its fruit, but every symptom of captivity to Satan, the world and self-will. This, this is what distresses me ; and in connection with this his being shut out from ordinances at a distance from Christians ; shut up with those who forget God, profane His name, and break His Sabbaths ; men who often live and die like beasts, yet are accountable creatures, who must answer for every moment of time and every word, thought and action. O Lord, many wonders hast Thou shown me ; Thy ways of dealing with me and mine have not been common ones ; add this wonder to the rest. Call, convert, regenerate and establish a sailor in the faith. Lord, all things are possible with Thee; glorify Thy Son, and extend His kingdom by sea and land ; take the prey from the strong. I roll him over upon Thee. Many friends try to comfort me. Miserable comforters are they all. Thou art the God of consolation ; only confirm to me Thy precious word, on which Thou causedst me to hope in the day when Thou saidst to, "Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive." Only let this life be a spiritual life, and I put a blank in Thy hand as to all temporal things, I wait for Thy salvation. Amen. With such a grandmother, would j^ou not have a right to expect a George W. Bethune ? and all the thousands converted through his ministry may date the saving power back to Isabella Graham. God will fill the earth and the heavens with such grandmothers; we must some day go up and thank these dear old souls. Surely God will let us go up and tell them of the results of their influence. Among our first questions in heaven will be: " Where is grandmother ?' ' They will point her out, for we would hardly know her even if we had seen her on earth; so bent over with years once, and there so straight; so dim of eye through the blinding of earthly tears and now her eye as clear as heaven; so full of aches and pains once and now so agile with celes- tial health, the wrinkles blooming into carnation roses, and her step like the roe on the mountains. Yes, I nnist see her, my grandmother on my father's side, Mary McCoy. You must see those women of the early nineteenth century and of the eighteenth century, the answer of whose prayers is in your welfare to-day. God bless all the aged women up and down the land and in all lands ! Make it as easy for the old folks as you can. When they are sick, get for them the best doctors. Give them your arm when the streets are slippery. Stay with them all the time 1 88 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. you can. Go liomc and see the old folks. Find the place for them in the hymn- book. Never be ashamed if they prefer styles of apparel a little antiquated. Never say anything that implies they are in the way. Make the road for the last mile as smooth as you can. Oh, my ! how you will miss her when she is gone. I would give the house from over my head to see mother. I have so many things I woul4 like to tell her, things that have happened in the twenty-four years since she went away. Morning, noon and night let us thank God for the good influ- ences that have come down from good mothers all the way back. Timothy, don't forget 3-our mother Eunice, and don't forget j'our grandmother Lois. And hand down to others this patrimony of blessing. Pass along the coronets. Make religion an heirlooom from generation to generation. Mothers of America, conse- crate yourselves to God and you will help consecrate all the ages following ! Do not dwell so much on your hardships that you miss your chance of wielding an influ- ence that shall look down upon you from the towers of an endless future. I know Martin Luther was right when he consoled his wife over the death of their daugh- ter by vSaying: "Don't take on so, wife; remember that this is a hard world for girls." Yes, I go further and say: It is a hard world for women. Ay, I go fur- ther and say: It is a hard world for men. But for all women and men who thrust their bodies and souls in the hand of Christ the shining gates will soon swing open. Don't you see the sickly pallor on the skj^? That is the pallor on the cold cheek of the dying night. Don't you see the brightening of the clouds? That is the flush on the warm forehead of the morning. Cheer up you are coming within sight of the Celestial City. Cairo, capital of Eg3'pt, was called "City of Victory." Athens, capital of Greece, was called " City of the Violet Crown;" Baalbeck was called " City of the Sun;" London was called " The City of Masts." Lucian's imaginary metropolis beyond the Zodiac was called "The City of Lanterns." But the city to which you journey hath all these in one, the victory, the crowns, the masts of those that have been harbored after the storm. Ay, all but the lanterns and the sun, because they have no need of any other light, since the Lamb is the light thereof. ^, »r:!fv\^ .^.^ >j5rn03$. SONGS FOR YOUNG AND OLD, FOR AFFLICTION AND DEATH. AND IN HEAVEN. HARMONY ON EARTH IRST and last let Christ be our song. Christ ought to be the cradle song. What our mothers sang to us when they put us to sleep is singing yet. We may have forgotten the words, but they went into the fibre of our soul, and will forever be a part of it. It is not so much what you formally teach your children as what you sing to them. A hymn has wings and can fly everywhither. One hundred and fifty years after you are dead, and "Old Mortality ' ' has worn out his chisel in recutting your name on the tombstone, your great-grandchildren will be singing the scng which you now sing to your little ones gathered about your knee. There is a place in Switzerland where if you distinctly utter your voice there come back ten or fifteen distinct echoes, and every Christian song sung by a mother in the ear of her child shall have 10,000 echoes coming back from all the gates of heaven. Oh, if mothers only knew the power of this sacred spell, how much oftener the little ones would be gathered, and all our homes would chime with the songs of Jesus ! We want some counteracting influence upon our children. The very moment your child steps into the street he steps into the path of temptation. There are foul-mouthed children who would like to besoil your little ones. It will not do to keep your little boys and girls in the house and make them house-plants : they must have fresh air and recreation. God save your children from the scathing, blasting, damning influence of the streets ! I know of no counteracting influence but the power of Christian culture and example. Hold before your little ones the pure life of Jesus ; let that name be the word that shall exercise evil from their hearts. Give to your instruction all the fascination of music, morning, noon and night ; let it be Jesus, the cradle song. This is important if your children grow up, but perhaps they may not. Their pathway may be short. Jesus may be wanting that child. Then there will be a soundless step in the dwelling, and the youthful pulse will begin to flutter, and little hands will be lifted for help. You cannot help. And a great agony will pinch at your heart, and the cradle will be empty, and the world will be empty, and your soul will be empty. No little feet standing on the stairs. No toys scattered on the carpet. No quick following from room to room. No strange and wondering questions. No upturned face, (189) I go THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. with laughing bkie eyes, come for a kiss ; but only a grave, and a wreath of white blossoms on the top of it, and bitter desolation, and a sighing at night- fall with no one to put to bed, and a wet pillow. The heavenly Shepherd will take that lamb safely anyhow, whether you have been faithful or unfaithful, but would it not have KI.rMIil'.K SONG. been pleasanter if you could have heard from those lips the praises of Christ? I never read anything more beautiful than this about a child's departure. The account said, " She folded her hands, kissed her mother good-bye, sang her hymn, turned her face to the wall, said her little prayer, and then swung off into eternal peace." THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 191 Oh, if I could gather up in one paragraph the last words of the little ones who have gone out from these Christian circles, and I could picture the calm SUNG TO SI.EEP. looks, and the folded hands, and sweet departure, methinks it would be grand and beautiful as one of heaven's great doxologies ! J I :,l I.IK1-: 1 iiM.- l>\'ni ./ /\ii>i/nii; by F.uianucl Spitzcr. (192) THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 193 I next speak of Christ as the old man's song. Quick music loses its charm for the aged ear. The school girl asks for a schottish or a glee ; but her grand- mother asks for " Balerma," or the " Portuguese Hymn." Fifty years of trouble have tamed the spirit, and the keys of the music-board must have a solemn tread. Though the voice may be tremulous, so that grandfa- ther will not trust it in church, .still he has the psalm book open before him, and he .sings with his soul. He hums his grandchild asleep with the same tune he sang forty years ago in the old countr}^ meet- ing-house. Some day the choir sings a tune so old that the young people do not know it ; but it starts the tears down the cheek of the aged man, for it re- minds him of the revival scene in which he partici- pated, and of the radiant faces that long since went to dust, and of the gray-haired min- ister leaning over ^ chubby pouter. the pulpit and sounding the tidings of great joy. I was one Thanksgiving Day in my pulpit, in Syracuse, N. Y. , and Rev. Daniel Waldo, at ninety-eight years of age, stood beside me. The choir sang a tune. I .said: "I am sorry they 194 Til]' PATHWAY OF IJI-K. sang that new tune; nobod}- seems to know it." "Bless >oit, my son," said the old man, " I heard that seventy years ago." There was a song to-day that touched the life of the aged with holy fire, and kindled a glory on their vision that our younger eyesight cannot see. It was the song of salvation — ^Jesus, who fed them all their lives long; Jesus, who wiped away their tears; Jesus, who stood by them when all else failed; Jesus, in who.se name their marriage was consecrated, and whose resurrection has poured light upon the graves of their departed. Blessed the Bible in which spectacled old age reads the promise, "I will never leave you, never forsake you !" Blessed the staff on which the worn-out pilgrim totters on toward the welcome of his Redeemer ! Blessed the hymn-book in wdiicli the faltering tongue and the failing eyes find Jesus, the old man's song. I .speak to you again of Jesus as the night-song. Job speaks of Him who giveth songs in the night. John Welch, the old Scotch mini.ster, used to put a plaid across his bed on cold nights, and some one a.sked him why he put that there. He said, " Oh, .sometimes in the night I want to .sing the prai.se of Jesus, and to get down and pray; then I just take that plaid and wrap it around me, to keep myself from the cold." vSongs in the night ! Night of trouble has come down upon many of you. Conmiercial losses put out one star, slanderous abuse put out another star, domestic bereavement has put out a thousand lights, and gloom has been added to gloom, and chill to chill, and .sting to sting, and one midnight has .seemed to borrow the fold from another midnight to wrap itself in more unbearable darkness; but Christ has spoken peace to your heart, and you can sing: Jl'sus, lovtT of my soul, Let nie to Thy bosom fly. While the billows near me roll, While the tempest still is high. Hide me, O my Saviour, hide, Till the storm of life is past ; Safe into the haven guide — Oh, receive my soul at last. SONGS IN THE NIGHT. Songs in the night ! Songs in the night ! l'V)r the sick, who have no one to turn the hot pillow, no one to put the taper on the stand, no one to put ice on the temple, or ]wur out the soothing anodyne, or utter one cheerful word — yet songs in the night ! I'or the poor, who freeze in the winter's cold, and .swelter in the summer's heat, and nnuKh the hard crusts that bleed the .sore gums, and .shiver under blankets that cainiot any longer be patched, and tremble because rent-day is come and thev mav be set out on the sidewalk, and looking into the starved THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. t95 face of the child and seeing famine there and death there, coming home from the bakery and saying in the presence of the little famished ones, " O my God, flour has gone up !" Yet songs in the night ! Songs in the night ! For the widow HENRY V. AT THR BATTI,R OF AGINCOURT. who goes to get the back pay of her husband, slain by the " sharpshooters," and knows it is the last help she will have, moving out of a comfortable home in 196 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. desolation, with pale cheek and lustreless eye. Yet songs in the night ! Foi the soldier in the field hospital, no surgeon to bind up the gunshot fracture, no water for the hot lips, no kind hand to brush away the flies from the fresh wound, no one to take the loving farewell, the groaning of others poured into his own groan, the blasphemy of others plowing up his own spirit, the condensed bitterness of dying away from home among strangers. Yet songs in the night ! Songs in the night ! ''Ah !" said one dying soldier, " tell mv mother that last night there was not one cloud between my soul and Jesus." Songs in the night ! Songs in the night ! The Sabbath day has come. From the altars of 10,000 churches has smoked up the savor of sacrifice. Ministers of the gospel are now preaching in plain English, in broad Scotch, in flowing Italian, in harsh Choctaw. God's people have assembled in Hindoo temple, and Moravian church, and Quaker meeting house, and sailors' Bethel, and king's chapel, and high-towered cathedral. They sang, and the song floated off amidst the spice groves, or struck the icebergs, or floated off into the Western pines, or was drowned in the clamor of the great cities. Lumbermen sang it, and the factor}' girls, and the children in the Sabbath class, and the trained choirs in great assemblages. Trappers, with the same voice with which they shouted yesterday in the stag hunt, and mariners, with throats that only a few days ago .sounded in the hoar.se blast of the sea hurricane, they sang it. One theme for the sermons. One burden for the song. Jesus for the invocation. Jesus for the Scripture lesson. Jesus for the baptismal font. Jesus for the sacra- mental cup. Jesus for the benediction. But the day will go by. It will roll away on swift wheels of light and love. Again the churches will be lighted. Tides of people again setting down the streets. Whole families coming up the church aisle. We must have one more sermon, two prayers, three songs, and one benediction. What shall we preach? What shall we read ? What shall it be, children ? Aged men and women, what shall it be ? Young men and maidens, what shall it be ? THE EVERLASTING SONG. We sing His birth — the barn that sheltered Him, the mother that nur.sed Him, the cattle that fed beside Him, the angels that woke up the shepherds, scattering light over the midnight hills. We sing His ministry- — the tears He wiped away from the eyes of the orphans, the lame men who forgot their crutches, the damsel who from the bier bounded out into the .sunlight, her locks shaking down over the flushed cheek, the hungr\- thousand who broke the bread as it blo.ssonicd into larger loaves — that miracle by which a boy with five loaves and two fishes became the sutler for a whole ann\-. We sing His sorrows— His stone- bruised feet, His aching heart, His mountain loneliness. His desert hunger, His THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 197 storm-pelted body, the eternity of anguish that shot through His last moments, and the immeasurable ocean of torment that heaved up against His cross in one foaming, omnipotent surge, the sun dashed out, and the dead, shroud- wrapped, breaking open their sepulchres and rushing out to see what was the matter. We sing His resurrection — the guard that could not keep Him, the sorrow of His disciples, the cloud piling up on either side in pillared splendors as He went through treading the pathless air, higher and higher, until He came to the foot of the throne, and all heaven kept jubilee at the return of the conqueror. On earth we sing harvest songs as the wheat comes into the barn and the barracks are filled. You know there is no such time on a farm as when they get the crops in; and so in heaven it will be a harvest song on the part of those who on earth sowed in tears and reaped in joy. Lift up your heads, ye ever- lasting gates, and let the sheaves come in ! Angels shout all through the heavens, and multitudes come down the hills, crying: "Harvest home! harv^est home !" There is nothing more bewitching to one's ear than the song of sailors far out at sea, whether in day or night, as they pull away at the ropes — the music is weird and thrilling. So the song in heaven will be a sailor's song. They were voyagers once, and thought they could never get to shore, and before they could get things snug and trim the cyclone struck them. But now they are safe. Once they went with damaged rigging, guns of distress booming through the storm ; but the pilot came aboard and he brought them into the harbor. Now they sing of the breakers past, the light-houses that showed them where to sail, the pilot that took them through the straits, the eternal shore on which they landed. Ay, it will be the children's song. You know very well that the vast majority of our race die in infancy, and it is estimated that eighteen thousand millions of the little ones are standing before God. When they shall rise up about the throne to sing — the millions and the millions of the little ones — ah ! that will be music for you ! These played in the streets of Babylon and Thebes; these plucked lilies from the foot of Olivet while Christ was preaching about them; these waded in Siloam; these were victims of Herod's massacre; these were thrown to crocodiles or into the fire; these came up from Christian homes, and these were foundlings on the city commons — children everywhere in all that land; children in the towers, children on the seas of glass, children on the battlements. Ah ! if you do not like children do not go there. They are in vast majority, and what a song when they lift it around about the throne ! The Christian singers and composers of all ages will be there to join in that song. Thomas Hastings will be there. Lowell Mason will be there. Bradbury will be there. Beethoven and Mozart will be there. They who sounded the cymbals and the trumpets in the ancient temples will be there. The 40,000 lyS THE PATHWAY OF UFE. harpers that stood at the ancient dedication will be there. The 200 singers that assisted on that day will be there. Patriarchs who lived amidst threshing-floors, shepherds who watched amidst Chaldean hills, prophets who walked with long beards and coarse apparel, pronouncing woe against ancient abominations, will meet the more recent martyrs who went up with leaping cohorts of fire; and some will speak of the Jesus of whom they prophesied, and others of the Jesus for whom they died. Oh, what a song ! It came to John upon Patmos, it came to Calvin in the prison, it dropped to John Knox in the fire, and sometimes that song has come to your ear, perhaps, for I really do think it sometimes breaks over the battlements of heaven. THE CHOIR OF HEAVEN. A Christian woman, the wife of a minister of the gospel, was dying in the parsonage, near the old church, where on Saturday night the choir used to assembl e and rehearse for the fol- lowing Sab- bath, and she said : "How strangely sweet the choir re- hearses to- night; they have been rehearsing there for an hour." the choir is DESTRUCTION OF THE BABES. "No," said some one about her; not rehearsing to-night." "Yes," .she said; "I know they are. I hear them sing; how very sweetly they sing !" Now, it was not a choir of earth that she heard, but the choir of heaven. I think that Jesus sometimes sets ajar the door of heaven, and a passage of that rapture greets our ears. The minstrels of heaven strike such a tremendous strain the walls of jasper cannot hold it. The first great concert I ever attended was in New York, when Julien, in the •' Crystal Palace," stood before hundreds of singers and hundred of players upon A SONG WITHOUT WORDS.— /'Vc';// the Painting by C. Button Bather. (199) 200 THE PATHWAY 01^ IvlFE. instruments. Some of you may remember that occasion; it was the first one of the kind at which I was present, and I shall never forget it. I saw that one man standing, and with the hand and foot wield that great harmony, beating the time. It was to me overwhelming. But, oh, the grander scene when they shall come from the East and from the West, and from the North and from the South, "a great multitude that no man can number," into the temple of the skies, host beyond host, rank beyond rank, gallery above gallery, and Jesus shall stand before that great host to conduct the harmony, with His wounded hands and His wounded feet ! Like the voice of many waters, like the voice of mighty thunder- ings, they shall cr>': " Worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive blessings, and riches, and honor, and glory, and power, world without end. Amen and Amen !" Oh, if my ear shall hear no other sweet sounds, may I hear that ! If I join no other glad assemblage, maj^ I join that. I was reading of the battle of Agincourt, in which Henry V. figured; and it is said after the battle was won, gloriously won, the king wanted to acknowledge the divine interposition, and he ordered the chaplain to read the Psalm of David; and when he came to the word, " Not unto us, O Lord, but unto Thy name be the praise," the king dismounted, and all the cavalry dismounted, and all the great host, officers and men, threw themselves on their faces. Oh, at the story of the Saviour's love and the Saviour's deliverance, shall we not prostrate ourselves before Him now, hosts of earth and hosts of heaven, falling upon our faces and crying: " Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy name be the glory !" l<^^4Ss- ProCttniijT* THE VULGARITY OF A VILE HABIT, AND STARTLING INCIDENTS OF ITS SWIFT PUNISHMENT. STORY oriental and marvelous is that of Job. Job was the richest man in all the East. He had camels and oxen, and asses and sheep, and, what would have made him rich without anything else, seven sons and three daughters. It was the habit of these children to gather together for family reunion. One day Job is thinking of his children as gathered together at a banquet at the elder brother's house. While the old man is seated at his tent door he sees some one running, evidently, from his manner, bringing bad news. What is the matter now ? " Oh," says the messenger, " a foraging party of Sabeans have fallen upon the oxen and the asses and destroyed them and butchered all the servants except myself Stand aside. Another messenger running. What is the matter now ? " Oh," says the man, " the lightning has struck the sheep and the shepherds, and all the shepherds are destroyed except myself." Stand aside. Another messenger running. What is the matter now ? "Oh," he says, "the Chaldeans have captured the camels and slain all the camel drivers except myself ' ' Stand aside. Another messenger running. What is the matter now? "Oh," he says, " a hurricane struck the four corners of the tent where your children were assembled at the banquet, and they are all dead." But the chapter of calamity has not ended. Job was smitten with elephanti- asis, or black leprosy. Tumors from head to foot, forehead ridged with tubercles, eyelashes fall out, nostrils excoriated, voice destroyed, intolerable exhalations from the entire body, until with none to dress his sores, he sits down in the ashes, with nothing but pieces of broken pottery to use in the surgery of his wounds. At this moment, when he needed all encouragement and all consolation, his wife comes in, in a fret and a rage, and says: "This is intolerable. Our property gone, our children slain, and now you covered up with this loathsome and disgusting disease. Why don't you swear? Curse God, and die !" (201) THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. PROFANITY EVERYWHERE. Ah, Job knew right well that swearing would not cure one of the tumors of his agonized body, would not bring back one of his destroyed camels, would not restore one of his dead children. He knew that profanity would only make the pain more unbearable, and the poverty more distressing, and the bereavement more excruciating. But judging from the profanity abroad in our day, j'ou might A YOUNG MAN OF THH \^oViX,V). — FroiH the Fainting by H . H~elmick come to the conclusion that there was some great advantage to be reaped from the habit or custom. Blasphemy is all abroad. You hear it in every direction. The drayman swearing at his cart, the sewing girl imprecating the tangled skein, the accountant cursing the long line of troublesome figures. Swearing at the store, swearing in the loft, swearing in the cellar, swearing on the street, swearing in the factory. Children swear; men swear; women swear. Swearing from the rough calling on A CLOUD ON HIS BROW, A CURSE IN HIS HEART. (203) 204 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. the Almighty in the low restaurant clear up to the reckless "O Loid !" of a glittering drawing-room; and the one is as much blasphemy as the other. There are times when we must cry out to the Lord, by reason of our physical agony or our mental distress, and that is only throwing out our weak hand toward the strong arm of a father. It was no profanity when James A. Garfield, shot in the Washington depot, cried out: " My God, what does this mean !" There is no profanity in calling out upon God in the day of trouble, in the day of dark- ness, in the day of physical anguish, in the day of bereavement ; but I am speak- ing now of the triviality and of the recklessness with which the name of God is sometimes used. The whole land is cursed with it. A gentleman coming from the far West sat in the car day after day behind two persons who were indulging in profanity, and he made up his mind he would make a record of their profanities, and at the end of tw^o days several sheets of paper were filled with these imprecations, and at the end of the journey he handed the paper to one of the persons in front of him. " Is it possible," said the man, "that we have uttered so many profanities the last few days?" " It is," replied the gentleman. "Then," said the man who had taken the manuscript, " I will never swear again." But it is a comparativel}- unimportant thing if a man makes record of our improprieties of speech. The more memorable consideration is that every improper word, every oath uttered, has a record in the book of God's remembrance, and that the day will come when all our crimes of speech, if unrepented of, will be our condemnation. I shall not deal in abstractions; I hate abstractions. I am going to have a plain talk with the world, through the medium of this book, about a habit that all admit to be wrong. The habit grows in the community from the fact that 3'oung people think it manly to swear. Little children, hardly able to walk straight on the street, yet have enough distinctness to let 3'ou know that they are damning their own souls, or damning the souls of others. It is an awful thing the first time the little feet are lifted to have them set down on the burning pavement of hell ! Between sixteen and twenty years of age there is apt to come a time when a young man is as much ashamed of not being able to swear gracefull}^ as he is of the dizziness of his first cigar. He has his hat, his boot and his coat of the right pattern, and now, if he can only swear without awkwardness, and" as well as his comrades, he believes he is in the fashion. There are j^oung men who walk in an atmosphere of imprecation — oaths on their lips, under their tongues, nesting in their shock of hair. They abstain from it in the elegant drawing-room, but the street and the club house ring with their profanities. They have no regard for THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. 20S God, although they have great respect for the ladies ! My young brother, there is no manliness in that. The most ungentlemanly thing a man can do is to swear. vSTRrET URCHINS — 1 1 0]>i tlu PattiHtig by J. G. Browiu WHERE CHILDREN LEARN TO SWEAR. Fathers foster this great crime. There are parents who are very cautious not to swear in the presence of their children ; in a moment of sudden anger they look around to see if the children are present when they indulge in this habit. Do yon 2o6 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. not know, O father, that your child is aware of the fact that you swear. He overheard j-ou in the next room, or some one has informed him of your habit. He is practicing now. In ten years he will swear as well as you do. Do not, O father, be under the delusion that you may swear and your son not know it. It is an awful thing to start the habit in a family — the father to be profane, and then to have the echo of his example come back from other generations, so that genera- tions after generations curse the Lord. The crime is also fostered by master mechanics, boss carpenters, those who are at the head of men in hat factories, and in dock yards, and at the head of great business establishments. When you go down to look at the work of the scaffolding, and you find it is not done right, what do 5'ou say ? It is not praying, is it? The employer swears; his employe is tempted to swear. The man says: " I don't know why my employer, worth $50,000 or $100,000, should have any luxury I should be denied, simply because I am poor. Because I am poor and dependent on a day's wages, haven't I as much right to swear as he has, with his large income?" Employers swear, and that makes so many employes swear. The habit also comes from infirmity of temper. There are a good many people who, when they are at peace, have righteousness of speech, but when angered they blaze with imprecation. Perhaps all the rest of the j^ear they talk in right language, but now they pour out the fury of a whole year in one red-hot paragraph of five minutes. I knew of a man who excused himself for the habit, saying, " I only swear once in a great while. I must do that just to clear myself out." The habit comes also from the profuse use of by-words. The transition from a by -word w^hich may be perfectly harmless to imprecation and profanity, is not a very large transition. It is " M3' stars!" and "Mercy on me!" and "Good gracious !" and " By George !" and " By Jove !" and you go on with that a little w^hile, and then 3'ou swear. These words, perfectly harmless in themselves, are next door t(i imprecation and blaspheni}-, A profuse use of by-words always ends in profanity. The habit is creeping up into the highest styles of societ}'. Women have no patience with flat and unvarnished profanity. The}^ will order a man out of the parlor indulging in blasphemy, and yet 3'ou will sometimes find them with fairy fan to the face, and under chandeliers which bring no blush to their cheek, taking on their lips the holiest of names in utter triviality. Why, my readers, the English language is comprehensive and capable of expressing all manner of feeling and ever}^ degree of energy. Are you happ)-, Noah Webster will give you a thousand words with which to express your exhila- ration. Are j-ou righteously indignant, there are whole armories in the vocabu- lary, righteous vocabulary' — whole armies of denunciation, and scorn, and sarcasm, (207) 2o8 THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. and irony, and caricature, and wrath. You express yourself against some mean- ness or hypocrisy in all the oaths that ever smoked up from the pit, and I will come right on after you and give you a thousandfold more emphasis of denuncia- tion to the same meanness and the same hypocrisy in words across which no slime has ever trailed, and into which the fires of hell have never shot their forked tongues — the pure, the innocent, God-honored Anglo-Saxon in which Milton sang, and John Bunyan dreamed and Shakespeare dramatized. There is no excuse for profanity when we have such a magnificent language — such a flow of good words, potent words, mighty words, words just to suit every crisis and every case. Whatever be the cause of it, profanity is on the increase, and if you do not know it, it is because your ears have been hardened by the din of imprecations so that j-ou are not stirred and moved as you ought to be by pro- fanities in these cities which are enough to bring a hurricane of fire like that which consumed Sodom. Do you know that this trivial use of God's name results in perjury ? Do you know that people who take the name of God on their lips in recklessness and thoughtlessness are fostering the crime of perjury? Make the name of God a foot- ball in the community, and it has no power when in court room or in legis- lative assembly it is employed in solemn adjuration ! See the way sometimes they administer the oath: "S'help you God — kiss the book !" Smuggling, which is always a violation of the oath, becomes in some circles a grand joke. You say to a man: " How is it possible for 3'ou to sell these goods so very cheap? I can't understand it." " Ah !" he replies, with a twunkle of the eye, "the Custom House tariff of these goods isn't as much as it might be." An oath does not mean as much as it would were the name of God used in reverence and in solemnity. Why is it that so often jurors render unaccountable verdicts and judges give unaccountable charges, and useless railroad schemes pass in our State capitols, and there are most unjust changes made in tariffs — tariff lifted from one thing and put upon another? What is an oath ? Anything solemn ? Anything that calls upon the Almighty ? Anything that marks an event in a man's history? Oh, no! It is kissing the Book ! There is no habit, I tell you plainly — and I write to hundreds and thousands of men to-day who will thank me for my assertion — I tell you, my brother, there is no habit that so depletes a man's nature as the habit of profanity. You might as well try to raise vineyards and orchards on the sides of belching Stromboli as to raise anything good in a heart from wdiich there pours out the scoria of profanity. You may swear yourself down; you cannot swear yourself up. When the Mohammedan finds a piece of paper he cannot read, he puts it aside very cautiously for fear the name of God may be on it. That is one extreme. We go to the other. Now, what is the cure of this habit? It is a THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 209 mighty habit. Men have struggled for years to get over it. There are men of God who would give half their fortune to get rid of it. An aged man wa.<; in the delirium of a fever. He had for many years hved a most upright life and was honored in all the community, but when he came into the delirium of this fever TELLING THE SECRET OF A BAD DEED. he was full of imprecation and profanity, and they could not understand it. After he came to his right reason he explained it. He said: ' ' When I was a young man I was very profane. I conquered the habit, but I had to struggle all through life. You haven't for forty years heard me say an improper word, but it has been an awful struggle. The tiger is chained, but he is alive yet." 14 2IO THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. HOW TO OVERCOME THE HABIT. If you would get rid of this habit, I want you, my friends, to dwell upon the uselessness of it. Did a volley of oaths ever start a heavy load ? Did they ever extirpate meanness from a customer ? Did they ever collect a bad debt ? Did they ever cure a toothache ? Did they ever stop the twinge of the rheumatism ? ■ Did they ever help you forward one step in the right direction ? Come, now, tell me, ye who have had the most experience in this habit, how much have you made out of it? Five thousand dollars in all your life? No. One thousand? No. One hundred? No. One dollar? No. One cent? No. If the habit be so utterly useless, away with it. But you say: " I have struggled to overcome the habit a long while, and I have not been successful." You struggled in your own strength, my brother. If ever a man wants God, it is in such a crisis of his history. God alone by His grace can emancipate you from that trouble. Call upon Him day and night that you may be delivered from this crime. Remember, also, in the cure of this habit, that it arouses God's indignation. The Bible reiterates from chapter to chapter, and verse after verse, the fact that profanity accurses this life and that it makes a man miserable for eternity. There is not a sin in all the catalogue that is so often peremptorily and suddenly punished in this world as the sin of profanity. There is not a city or a village but can give an illustration of a man struck down at the moment of imprecation. A couple of years ago, briefly referring to this in a sermon, I gave some instances in which God had struck swearers dead at the moment of their profanity. That sermon brought to me from many parts of this land and other lands statements of similar cases of instantaneous visitation from God upon blasphemers. My opinion is that such cases occur somewhere every day, but for various reasons they are not reported. BLASPHEMERS PUNISHED. In Scotland a club assembled every week for purposes of wickedness, and there was a competition as to which could use the most horrid oath, and the man who succeeded was to be president of the club. The competition went on. A man uttered an oath which confounded all his comrades, and he was made president of the club. His tongue began to swell, and it protruded from the mouth, and he could not draw it in, and he died, and the physicians said:' "This as the strangest thing we ever saw; we never saw any account in the books like unto it; we can't understand it." I understand it. He cursed God, and died. At Catskill, N. Y., a group of men stood in a blacksmith's shop during a violent thunder- storm. There came a crash of thunder and some of the men trembled. One man said: " Why, I don't see what you are afraid of. I am not afraid to go out in front of the shop and defy the Almighty, I am not afraid of THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. 211 lightning." And he laid a wager on the subject, and he went out, and he shook his fist at the heavens, crying: "Strike, if you dare !" and instantly he fell under a bolt. What destroyed him ? Any mystery about it ? Oh, no. He cursed God, and died. Oh, my brother, God will not allow this sin to go unpunished. There are styles of writing with manifold sheets, so that a man writing on one sheet writes clear through ten, fifteen or twenty sheets, and so every profanity we utter goes inpiiimpiii s£*/ THE STORM CHII.D SCREAMING AI^ONG THE BEACH. right down through the leaves of God's book of remembrance. It is no excep- tional sin. Do you think you could count the profanities of last week — the profanities of office, store, shop, factory? They cursed God, they cursed His word, they cursed His only-begotten Son. One morning, on Fulton street, as I was passing along, I heard a man swear by the name of Jesus. My hair lifted. My blood ran cold. My breath caught. My foot halted. Do you not suppose that God is aggravated? Do you not suppose that God knows about it ? Dionysius used to have a cave in which his 212 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. culprits were incarcerated, and he listened at the top of that cave, and he could hear every groan; he could hear every sigh, and he could hear every whisper of those who were imprisoned. He was a tyrant. God is not a tyrant; but He bends over this world and He hears everything— every voice of praise, every voice of imprecation. He hears it all. The oaths seem to die on the air, but they have eternal echo. They come back from the ages to come. Listen ! Listen ! " All blasphemers shall have their place in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." And if, according to the theory of some, a man commits in the next world the sins which he committed in this world — if unpardoned, unregenerated — think of a man's going on cursing in the name of God to all eternity. GROWTH OF SWEARING. The habit grows. You start with a small oath, you will come to the large oath. I saw a man die with an oath between his teeth. Voltaire only gradually came to his tremendous imprecation; but the habit grew on him until in the last moment, supposing Christ stood at the bed, he exclaimed: "Curse that wretch ! Curse that wretch !" Oh, my brother, you begin to swear and there is nothing impossible for you in the wrong direction. Who is this God whose name you are using in swearing ? Who is He ? Is He a tyrant? Has He pursued you all your life long? Has He starved you, frozen you, tyrannized over you ? No. He has loved you; He has sheltered you; He watched you last night; He will watch you to-night. He wants to love you, wants to help you, wants to save you, wants to comfort you. He was your father's God and your mother's God. He has housed them from the blast, and He wants to shelter you. Will you spit in His face by an imprecation ? Will you ever thrust Him back by an oath ? Who is this Jesus, whose name I heard in the imprecation ? Has He pursued you all your life long ? What vile thing has He done to you that you should so dishonor His name ? Why, He was the lamb whose blood simmered in the fires of sacrifice for you. He is the brother that took off" His crown that you might put it on. He has pursued you all your life long with mercy. He wants you to love Him — wants you to serve Him. He comes with streaming eyes and broken heart and blistered feet to save you. On the craft of our doomed humanity He pushed out into the sea to take you off" the wreck ! Where is the hand that will ever be lifted in imprecation again ? Let that hand, now blood-tipped, be lifted that I may see it. Not one. Where is the voice that will ever be uttered in dishonoring the name of that Christ ? Let it speak now. Not one. Not one. Oh, I am glad to know that all these vices of the community and these crimes of our nation will be gone. Society is going to THE PATHWAY OF LIF^). 213 be bettered. The world by the power of Christ's gospel is going to be saved, and this crime, this in- iquity, and all the other iniquities will vanish before the rising of the sun of righteousness upon the nation. EMD OF SIN AND CRIME. There was one day in New England memorable for storm and darkness. I believe I never saw another such evening. The clouds which had been gath- ering all day unlim- bered their batteries. The Housatonic, which flows quietly, save as the paddles of pleasure parties rat- tle the oar locks, was lashed into foam, and the waves hardly knew where to lay themselves. Oh ! what a time it was ! The hills jarred under the rumbling of God's chariots. Blinding sheets of rain drove the cattle to the bars, or beat against the window pane as though to dash it in. The grain fields threw their crowns of gold at the feet of the storm king. When night came in it was a double night. Its mantle was torn with the lightnings, and into its 214 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. locks were twisted the leaves of uprooted oaks and the shreads of canvas torn from the masts of the beached shipping. It was such a night as makes you thank God for shelter, and open the door to let in the spaniel howling outside with terror. We went to sleep under the full blast of heaven's great orchestra, the forests with uplifted voices, in chorus that filled the mountains, praising the L,ord. We woke not until the fingers of the sunny morn touched our eyelids. We looked out the window and the Housatonic slept as quiet as an infant's dream. Pillars of clouds set against the sky looked like the castles of the blest built for heavenly hierarchs on the beach of the azure sea. All the trees sparkled as though there had been some great grief in heaven, and each leaf had been God-appointed to catch an angel's tear. It seemed as if our Father had looked upon the earth, His ■wayward child, and stooped to her tear-wet cheek and kissed it. So will the darkness of sin and crime leave our world before the dawn of the morning. The light shall gild the city's spire and strike the forests of Maine and the masts of Mobile and all between. And one end resting on the Atlantic coast and the other resting on the Pacific beach, God will spring a great rainbow arch of peace, in token of everlasting covenant that the world shall never more see a deluge of crime. "But," says some one, "preaching against the evils of society will accom- plish nothing. Do you not see that the evils go right on ?" I answer, we are not at all discouraged. It seemed insignificant for Moses to stretch his hand over the Red Sea. What power could that have over the waters? But the east wind blew all night; the waters gathered into two glittering palisades on either side. The billows reared as God's hand pulled back upon their crystal bits. Wheel into line, O Israel ! March ! March ! Pearls crash under the feet. The shout of hosts mounting the beach answers the shout of hosts mid-sea, until, as the last line of the Israelites has gained the beach, the shields clang, and the cymbals clap, and as the waters whelm the pursuing foe, swift-fingered winds on the white keys of the foam play the grand march of Israel delivered, and the awful dirge of Egyptian overthrow. So we go forth; and stretchout the hand of prayer and Christian effort over these dark, boiling waters of crime and sin. Those who resist and deride and pursue us will fall under the sea, and there will be nothing left of them but here and there, cast high and dry upon the beach, the splintered wheel of a chariot, and, thrust out from the surf, the breathless nostril of a rideless charger. ^ IStnllxn^ St^r^ ATTILA, THE SCOURGE, AND NATIONS THAT HAVE PERISHED. ^ANY commentators, like Patrick and I/Dwth, Thomas Scott, Matthew Henty, Albert Barnes, agree in saying that the star Wormwood, mentioned in Revelation, was Attila, King of the Huns. He was so called because he was brilliant as a star, and, like wormwood, he embittered everj'thing he touched. We have studied the Star of Bethlehem, and the Morning Star of the Revelation, and the Star of Peace, but my present sub- ject calls us to gaze at the star Wormwood, and my theme might be called Brilliant Bitterness. A more extraordinary character history does not furnish than this man thus referred to, Attila, the King of the Huns. One day a wounded heifer came limping along through the fields, and a herds- man followed its bloody track on the grass to see where the heifer was wounded, and went on back further and further, until he came to a sword fast in the earth, the point downward, as though it had dropped from the heavens, and against the edges of this sword the heifer had been cut. The herdsman pulled up that sword and pre- sented it to Attila. Attila said that sword must have dropped from the heavens from the grasp of the god Mars, and its being given to him meant that Attila should conquer and govern the whole earth. Other mighty men have been delighted at being called liberators, or the merciful, or the good, but Attila called himself, and demanded that others call him, the Scourge of God. At the head of 700,000 troops mounted on Cappadocian horses, he swept everything from the Adriatic to the Black Sea. He put his iron heel on Macedonia and Greece and Thrace. He made Milan, and Pavia, and Padua, and Verona beg for mercy, which he bestowed not. The Byzantine castles, to meet his ruinous levy, put up at auction massive silver tables and vases of solid gold. A city captured by him, the inhabitants were brought out and put into three classes: the first class, those who could bear arms, who must immediately enlist under Attila or be butchered; the second class, the beautiful women, who were made captives to the Huns; the third class, the aged men and women, who were robbed of everything and let go back to the city to pay heavy tax. (215) 2l6 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. ATT I LA'S DEATH. It was a common saying that the grass never grew again where the hoof of Attila's horse had trod. His armies reddened the waters of the Seine and the Moselle and the Rhine with carnage, and fought on the Catalonian Plains the fiercest battle since the world stood — 300,000 dead left on the field ! On and on, until all those who could not oppose him with arms lay prostrate on their faces in prayer, and, a cloud of dust seen in the distance, a. bishop cried: " It is the aid ATTILA, KING OF THE HUNS. of God !" and all the people took up the cry: "It is the aid of God !" As the cloud of dust was blown aside the banners of re-enforcing armies marched in to help against Attila, the Scourge of God. The most unimportant occurrences he used as a supernatural resource, and, after three months of failure to capture the City of Aquileia, and his army had given up the siege, the flight of a stork and her young from the tower of the city was taken by him as a sign that he was to capture the city, and his army, inspired by the same occurrence, resumed the siege, and took the walls at a point from which the stork had emerged. So brilliant was THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 217 the conqueror in attire that his enemies could not look at him, but shaded their eyes or turned their heads. Slain on the evening of his marriage by his bride, Ildico, who was hired for the assassination, his followers bewailed him not with tears, but with blood, cutting themselves with knives and lances. He was put into three coffins — the first of iron, the second of silver, and the third of gold. He was buried by night, SIEGE OF AOUILEIA. and into his grave were poured the most valuable coin and precious stones, amounting to the wealth of a kingdom. The grave diggers and all those who assisted at the burial were massacred, so that it would never be known where so much wealth was entombed. The Roman Empire conquered the world, but Attila conquered the Roman Empire. He was right in calling himself a scourge, but instead of being the scourge of God he was the scourge of hell. Because of his brilliance and bitterness the commentators were right in believing him to be the star Wormwood. As the regions he devastated were parts most opulent with 2i8 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. fountains and streams and rivers, you see liow graphic is this reference in Revela- tion: "There fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers and upon the fountains of waters, and the name of the star is called Wormwood." Have you ever thought how many embittered lives there are all about us, misanthropic, morbid, acrid, saturnine? The European plant from which worm- wood is extracted, artemisia absinthium, is a perennial plant, and all the year round it is ready to exude its oil. And in many human lives there is a perennial distillation of acrid experiences. Yea, there are some whose whole work is to shed a baleful influence on others. There are Attilas of the home, or Attilas of the social circle, or Attilas of the Church, or Attilas of the State, and one-third of the waters of all the world, if not two-thirds the waters, are poisoned by the felling of the star Wormwood. It is not complimentary to human nature that most men, as soon as they get great power, become overbearing. The more power men have the better, if their power be used for good. The less power men have the better, if they use it for evil. DESTRUCTION OF GREAT CITIES. Tyre — the atmosphere of the desert, fragrant with spices, coming in caravans to her fairs; all seas cleft into foam by the keels of her laden merchantmen; her markets rich with horses and camels from Togarmah; her bazaars filled with upholstery from Dedan, with emerald and coral and agate from Syria, with wines from Helbon, with embroidered work from Ashur and Chilmad. Where now the gleam of her towers, where the roar of her chariots, where the masts of her ships? Let the fishermen who dry their nets where once she stood, let the sea that rushes upon the barrenness where once she challenged the admiration of all nations, let the barbarians who set their rude tents where once her palaces glittered, answer the question. She was a star, but by her own sin turned to wormwood and has fallen. Hundred-gated Thebes — for all time to be the study of the antiquarian and hieroglyphist; her stupendous ruins spread over twenty-seven miles; her sculp- tures presenting in figures of warrior and chariot the victories with which the now forgotten kings of Egypt shook the nations; her obelisks and columns; Carnac and Luxor, the stupendous temples of her pride ! Who can imagine the greatness of Thebes in those days when the hippodrome rang with her sports, and foreign royalty bowed at her .shrines, and her avenues roared with the wheels of proces- sions in the wake of returning conquerors ? What dashed down the vision of chariots and temples and thrones ? What hands pulled upon the columns of her glory ? What ruthlessness defaced her sculptured wall, and broke obelisks, and left her indescribable temples great skeletons of granite ? What spirit of destruction THE PATHWAY OF I,IFB. 21.9 spread the lair of wild beasts in her royal sepulchres, and taught the miser- able cottagers of to-day to build huts in the courts of her, temples, and sent ROMAN CHARIOTEERS. desolation and ruin skulking behind the obelisks and dodging among the sarco- phagi and leaning against the columns and stooping under the arches and weeping in the waters which go mournfully by as though they were carrying the 2 20 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. THH GODDESS OF JUSTICE. tears of all ages ? Let the mum- mies break their long silence and come up to shiver in the desolation, and point to fallen gates and shat- tered statues and defaced sculpture, responding: ' ' Thebes built not one temple to God, Thebes hated right- eousness and loved sin. Thebes was a star, but she turned to worm- wood and has fallen." WHY BABYLON FELL. Babylon, with her 250 towers and her brazen gates and her em- battled walls, the splendor of the earth gathered within her palaces, her hanging gardens built by Neb- uchadnezzar to please his bride, Amytis, who had been brought up in a mountainous country and could not endure the flat country round Babylon — these hanging gardens built, terrace above terrace, till at the height of 400 feet there were woods waving and fountains play- ing, the verdure, the foliage, the glory looking as if a mountain were on the wing. On the tip-top a king walking with his queen, among statues snowy white, looking up at birds brought from distant lands, and drinking out of tankards of solid gold or looking off over rivers and lakes upon nations subdued and tributary, crying: " Is not this great Babylon which I have built ? ' ' What battering ram smote the walls? What plowshare upturned the gardens ? What army shattered the brazen gates? What long, THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 221 fierce blast of storm put out this light which illumined the world? What crash of discord drove down the music that poured from palace window and garden grove and called the banqueters to their revel and the dancers to their feet? I walk upon the scene of desolation to find an answer and pick up pieces of bitumen and brick and broken pottery, the remains of Babylon, and as in the silence of the night I hear the surging of that billow of desolation which rolls over the scene, I hear the wild weaves saying: " Babylon was proud. Babylon was impure. Babylon was a star, but by sin she turned to wormwood and has fallen." From the persecutions of the Pilgrim Fathers and the Huguenots in other lands, God set upon these shores a nation. The council fires of the aborigines went out in the greater light of a free government. The sound of the war-whoop was exchanged for the thousand wheels of enterprise and progress. The mild winters, the fruitful summers, the healthful skies charmed from other lands a race of hard)^ men who loved God and wanted to be free. Before the woodman's axe forests fell and rose again into ships' masts and churches' pillars. Cities on the banks of lakes begin to rival cities by the sea. The land quakes with the rush of the rail car and the waters are churned white with the steamer's wheel. Fabulous bushels of Western wheat meet on the way fabulous tons of Eastern coal. Furs from the North pass on the rivers fruits from the South. And trading in the same market is Maine lumberman and South Carolina rice merchant and Ohio farmer and Alaska fur dealer. And churches and schools and asylums scatter light and love, and mercy, and salvation upon 60,000,000 of people. WHERE THE NATION'S SAFETY LIES. I pray that our nation may not copy the crimes of the nations that have perished, and our cup of blessing turn to wormwood and like them we go down. I am by nature and by grace an optimist, and I expect that this country will con- tinue to advance until Christ shall come again. But be not deceived ! Our only safety is in righteousness toward God and justice toward man. If we forget the goodness of the Lord to this land; if the political corruption which has poisoned the fountains of public virtue and beslimed the high places of authority, making free government at times a hissing and a by -word in all the earth; if the drunken- ness and licentiousness that stagger and blaspheme in the streets of our great cities as though they were reaching after the fame of a Corinth and a Sodom are not repented of, we will yet see the smoke of our nation's ruin; the pillars of our national and State capitols will fall more disastrously than when Samson pulled down Dagon ; and future historians will record upon the page bedewed with gen- erous tears the story that the free nation of the West arose in splendor which made the world stare. It had magnificent possibilities. It forgot God. It hated justice. 222 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. It hugged its crime. It halted on its high march. It reeled under the blow of calamity. It fell. And as it was going down, all the despotism of earth from the top of bloody thrones began to shout, " Aha, so would we have it," while strug- gling and oppressed people looked out from dungeon bars with tears and groans and cries of untold agony, the scorn of those and the woe of these uniting in the exclamation, " lyook yonder! there fell a great .star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers and upon the fountains of waters; and the name of the star is called Wormwood !" ^j^niTCfxx^^^ A DIABOLICAL SIN THAT SETS ONE-HALF THE WORLD AGAINST THE OTHER. 'here is an old sin, haggard, furious, monstrous and diaboli- cal, that has for ages walked and crawled the earth. It combines all that is obnoxious in the races, human, quadru- pedal, ornithological, reptilian and insectile, horned, tusked, hoofed, fanged, stinged; the eye of a basilisk, the tooth of an adder, the jaws of a crocodile, the crushing folds of an anaconda, the slyness of a scorpion, the tongue of a cobra, and the coil of the worm that never dies. It is in every community, in every church, in every legislative hall, in every monetary institution, in every drawing- room levee, in every literary and professional circle. It whispers, it hisses, it lies, it debauches, it blasphemes, it damns. It is grief at the superiority of others; their superiority in talent, or wealth, or beauty, or elegance, or virtue, or social, or professional, or political recognition. It is the shadow of other people's success. It is the shiver in our pocket-book because it is not so fat as some one else's pocket-book. It is the twinge in our tongue because it is not so eloquent as some one else's tongue. It is the flutter in our robes because they are not so lustrous as some one else's robes. It is the earth- quake under our house because it is not so many feet front deep as our neighbor's house. It is the thunder of other people's popularity Souring the milk of our kindness. It is the father and mother of one-half of the discontent and outrages, and detractions, and bankruptcies, and crimes, and woes of the human race. THE FIRST CASE OF JEALOUSY. It was antediluvian as much as it is postdiluvian. It put a rough stick in the liands of the first boy that was ever born, and said to him: "Now, Cain, when Abel is looking the other way, crush in his skull; for his sacrifice has been accepted and yours rejected." And Cain picked up the stick as though just to walk with it, and while Abel was watching some birds in the tree- top, or gazing at some water- fall, down came the blow of the first assassination, which has had its echo in all the fratricides, matricides, uxoricides, homicides, infanticides and regi- cides of all ages and all nations. This passion of jealousy so disturbed Caligula at the prominence of some of the men of his time, that he cut a much-admired curl f223) 224 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. CAIN AND ABEL, ROCKED IN THE FIRST CRADLE. from the brow of Cincin- iiatus, and took the embroi- dered collar from the neck of Torquatus, and had Pto- lemaeus killed because of his purple robe, which attracted too much atten- tion. After Columbus had placed America as a gem in the Spanish crown, jeal- ousy set on the Spanish courtiers to depreciate his achievement, and aroused animosities till the great discoverer had his heart broken. Urged on by this bad passion, Dionysius flayed Plato because he was wiser than himself, and Philoxenus because his music was too popular. Jealousy made Korah lie about Moses and Succoth depreciate Gideon, Jealousy made the trouble between Jacob and Esau. That hurled Joseph into the pit. That struck the twenty-three fatal wounds into Julius Caesar. That banished Aristides. That fired Antony against Cicero. Tiberius exiled an architect because of the fame he got for a beautiful porch, and slew a poet for his fine tragedy. That set Saul in a rage against David. How graphically the Bible 15 (225) 226 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. THK rRODIGAI. SON. puts it when it says: "Saul eyed David." It seems to take posses- sion of both eyes and makes them flash and burn like two port-holes of hell. "Saul eyed David." That is, he looked at him as much as to say: "You little upstart, how dare you attempt anything great. I will grind you under my heel. I will exterminate you, I will, you miser- able homunculus. Crouch, crawl, slink into that rat-hole. I will teach those women to sing some other song, instead of "Saul has slain his thousands, but David his tens of thousands. ' ' When Voltaire heard that Frederick the Great was forgetting him and putting his literary admiration on Bacaulard d'Arnaud, the old infidel leaped out of his bed and danced the floor in a maniacal rage, and ordered his swiftest horses hooked up to carry- him to the Prussian palace. That despicable passion of jealousy led Napoleon I. to leave in his will a bequest of 5000 francs to the ruffian who shot at Welling- ton when the victor of Waterloo was passing through Paris. That sta- tioned the grouty elder brother at the back door of the homestead when the prodigal son returned, and threw a chill on the family reunion while that elder brother complained, saying: "Who ever heard of giving roast veal to such a profligate?" Ay, that passion rose up and under the darkest cloud that ever shadowed the earth, THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 227 and amid the loudest thunder that ever shook the mountains, and amid the wildest flash of lightning that ever blinded or stunned the nations, hung up on two pieces of rough lumber back of Jerusalem the kindest, purest, lovingest nature that Heaven could delegate, and stopped not until there was no power left in hammer, or bramble, or javelin to hurt the dead Son of God. DEATH BKD OK COPICKNICUS A PASSION THAT ANNOYS THE WORLD. That passion of jealousy, livid, hungr}-, unbalked, rages on, and it now pierces the earth like a fiery diameter and encircles it like a fiery circumference. It wants both hemispheres. It wants the heavens. It would, if it could, capture the palace of God, and bethrone Jehovah, and chain the Almighty in eternal exile, and after 228 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. the demolition of the universe would cry: " Satisfied at last, here I am, alone, the undisputed and everlasting I, me, mine, myself!" That passion keeps all Europe perturbed. Nations jealous of Germany, of England, of Russia, and those jealous of each other, and all of them jealous of America. Go into all occupations and professions, and if you want to know how much jealousy is yet to be extirpated, ask master builders what they think of each others' houses, and merchants what their opinion is of merchants in the same line of business in the same street, and ask doctors what they think of doctors, and lawyers what they think of lawyers, and ministers what they think of ministers, and artists what they think of artists. As long as men and women in any depart- ment keep down and have a hard struggle they will be faintly praised and the remark will be: "Oh, yes; he is a good, clever sort of a fellow. " " She is rather, yes, somewhat, quite — well, I may say, tolerably nice kind of a woman." But let him or her get a little too high and off goes the aspiring head by social or com- mercial decapitation. Remember that envy dwells more on small defects of character than on great forces; makes more of the fact that Domitian amused himself by transfixing flies with his penknife than of his great conquests; more of the fact that Handel was a glutton than that he created imperishable oratorios; more of Coleridge's opium habit than of his writing " Christabel " and "The Ancient Mariner;" more of the fact that Addison drank too much than of the fact that he was the editor of the " Spectator;" jealousy that derided and abused Copernicus even to his death-bed; more of a man's peccadilloes than of his mighty energies; more of his defeats than of his victories. JEALOUSY AMONG DOCTORS. lyook at the sacred and heaven-descended science of healing, and then see Dr. Mackenzie, the English surgeon, who prolonged the life of the Crown Prince of Germany until he became Emperor. Yet so great were the medical jealousies that for a time Dr. Mackenzie dared not walk the streets of Berlin. He was under military guard. The medical students of Germany could hardly keep th^ir hands from him. The old doctors of Germany were writhing with indignation. The fact is that in prolonging Frederick's life for several months Dr. Mackenzie saved the peace of Europe. There was not an intelligent man on either side of the ocean that did not fear for the result if the throne passed immediately from wise and good old Emperor William to his inexperienced grandson. But when, under the medical treatment of Dr. Mackenzie, the Crown Prince Frederick took the throne, a wave of satisfaction and confidence rolled over Christendom. But what shall the world do with the doctor who prolonged his life? " Oh," cried out the medical jealousies of Europe, " destroy him; of course, destroy him." THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 229 What a brutal scene of jealousy we had in this country when President Garfield lay dying. There were faithful physicians that sacrificed their other practice and sacrificed their health for all time in fidelity to that death-bed. Doctors Bliss and Hamilton and Agnew went through anxieties and toils and fatigues such as none but God could appreciate. Nothing pleased many of the medical profession. The doctors in charge did nothing right. We who did not see the case knew better than those who agonized over it in the sick-room for many weeks. I, who never had anything worse than a run-round on my thumb, which seemed to me at the time was worthy all the attention of the entire medical fraternity, had my own ideas as to how the President ought to be treated. And in proportion as physicians and laymen were ignorant of the case, they were sure the treatment practiced was a mistake. And when in post-mortem the bullet dropped out of a different part of the body from that in which it was supposed to have been lodged, about 200,000 peopled shouted: " I told you so !" " There ! I knew it all the time." There are some doctors who would rather have the patient die under the treatment of their own schools than have them get well under some other pathy. Yea, look at the clerical profession. I am sorry to say that in matters of jealousy it is no better than other professions. There are now in all denomina- tions a great many young clerg>'men who have a faculty for superior usefulness. But they are kept down and kept back and crippled by older ministers who look askance at these rising evangelists. They are snubbed. They are jostled. They are patronizingly advised. It is suggested to them that they had better know their place. If here and there one with more nerve and brain, and consecration, and divine force go past the seniors who want to keep the chief places, the young are advised in the words of Scripture: " Tarry at Jericho till their beards are grown." They are charged with sensationalism. They are compared to rockets that go up in a blaze and come down sticks, and the brevity of their career is jubilantly prophesied. If it be a denomination with bishops, a bishop is implored to sit down heavily on the man who will not be moulded; or if a denomination without bishops, some of the older men with nothing more than their own natural heaviness and theological avoirdupois are advised to flatten out the innovator. In conferences and presbyteries, and associations and conventions there is often seen the most damnable jealousy. Such ecclesiastical tyrants would not admit that jeolousy had any possession of them, and they take on a heavenly air, and talk sweet oil and sugar plums, and balm of a thousand flowers, and roll up their eyes with an air of unctuous sanctity when they simply mean the destruction of those over whom they pray and snuffle. There are cases where ministers of religion are derelict and criminal, and they must be put out. 230 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. LIKE CUTTING A ROASTED OX. But in tlie majority of cases that I have witnessed in ecclesiastical trials, there is a jealous attempt to keep men from surpassing their theological fellows, and as at the presidential elections in country places the people have a barbecue, which is a roasted ox round which the people dance with knives, cutting off a slice here, JEALOUS LOVERS — THE DUEL.— /vv;;/ a Painting by N. Sicani. and pulling out a rib there, and sawing oif a beefsteak yonder, and having a high time; so most of the denominations of Christians keep on hand a barbecue in which some minister is roasted w'hile the Church courts dance around with their sharp knives of attack, and one takes an ear, another a hand, another a foot, and it is hard to tell whether the ecclesiastical plaintiffs of this world or the demons of THE PATHWAY OF LITE. 231 the nether world most enjoy it. Albert Barnes, than whom no man has accom- plished more good in the last thousand years, was decreed to sit silent for a year in the pew of his own church while some one else occupied his pulpit, the pre- tended offence being that he did not believe in a limited atonement, but the real offence the fact that all the men who tried him put together would not equal one Albert Barnes. Yes; amid all professions and business, and occupations, and trades, and amid all circles needs to be heard what God says in regard to envy and jealous}-, which, though not exactly the same, are twins: " Envy is the rottenness of the bone;" "Where envy and vStrife is, there is confusion and every evil work;" "Jealousy is the rage of man." That which has downed kings and emperors, and apostles, and reformers, and ministers of religion, and thousands of good men and women, is too mighty for you to contend against unaided. The evil has so man}^ roots of such infinite convolution that nothing but the energy of omnipo- tence can pull it out. Awa}^ with the accursed, stenchful, blackening, damning crime of jealousy. Allow it to stay and it will eat up and carry off all the religion 3'ou can pack into your soul for the next half-century. It will do you more harm than it does any one it leads you to assail. It will delude you with the idea that you can build yourself up by pulling somebody else down. You will make more out of the success of others than out of their misfortunes. Speak well of every bod)'. Stab no man in the back. Be a honey-bee rather than a spider; be a dove rather than a buzzard. Surely this world is large enough for 30U and all j'our rivals. God has given you a work to do. Go ahead and do it. Mind 3-0U own business. In all circles, in all businesses, in all professions there is room for straightforward successes. Jealousy entertained will not only bedwarf 5'our soul, but it will flatten your skull, bemean your eye, put pinchedness of look about 5'our nostril, give a bad curl to the lip, and expel from your face the divine image in which 5'ou were created. When yovi hear a man or woman abused, drive in on the defendant's side. Watch for excellences in others rather than for defects, morning-glories instead of night-shade. If some one is more beautiful than 5-011, thank God that 5-0U have not so many perils of vanity to contend with. If some one has more wealth than you, thank God that you have not so great stewardship to answer for. If some one is higher up in social position, thank God that those who are down need not fear a fall. If some one gets higher office in Church or State than you, thank God there are not so many to wish for the hastening on of your obsequies. The Duke of Dantzig, iu luxurious apartments, was visited b}* a plain friend, and to keep his friend from jealousy the Duke said: "You can have 232 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. all I have if you will stand twenty paces off and let me shoot at >ou one hundred times. ' ' "No, no," said his friend. ' ' Well, ' ' said the Duke, ' ' to gain all my honors I faced on the battlefield more than a thousand gunshots fired not more than ten paces off. ' ' A minister of small congregation complained to a minister of large congrega- tion about the sparseness of his attendants. " Ah, ' ' said the one of large audience, HARD TIMES. — Fvoui the Paifitiiiq; by Hubeti Herkomcr. *' my son, you will find in the day of judgment that you had quite enough people for whom to be held accountable." A SUBSTITUTE. Substitute for jealousy an elevating emulation. Seeing others good, let us try to be better. Seeing others industrious, let us work more hours. Seeing others benevolent, let us resolve on giving larger percentage of our means for charity. THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 233 May God put congratulations for others into our right hand and cheers on our lips for those who do brave and useful things. Life is short at the longest ; let it all be filled up with helpfulness for others, work and sympathy for each other's misfortunes, and our arms be full of white mantles to cover up the mistakes and failures of others. If an evil report about some one come to us, let us put on the most favorable construction, as the Rhone enters Lake Leman foul and comes out crystalline. Do not build so much on the transitory differences of this world, for soon it will make no difference to us whether we had ten million dollars or ten cents, and the ashes into which the tongue of Demosthenes dissolved are just like the ashes into which the tongue of the veriest stammerer went. If you are assailed by jealousy, make no answer. Take it as a compliment, for people are never jealous of a failure. Until your work is done, your are invul- nerable. Remember how our Lord behaved under such exasperations. Did they not try to catch Him in His word ? Did they not call Him the victim of intoxi- cants ? Did they not misinterpret Him from the winter of the year i to the spring of the year 33 — that is, from His first infantile cry to the last groan of His assassi- nation ? Yet He answered not a word. But so far from demolishing either His mission or His good name, after near nineteen centuries He outranks everything under the skies, and is second to none above them, and the archangel makes salaam at His footstool. Christ's bloody antagonists thought that they had finished Him w^hen they wrote over the cross His accusation in three languages — Hebrew, Greek and Latin — not realizing that they were by that act introducing Him to all nations, since Hebrew is the holiest language, and Greek the wisest of tongues, and Latin the widest spoken. You are not the first man who had his faults looked at through a microscope and his virtues through the wrong end of a telescope. Pharaoh had the chief butler and baker endungeoned, and tradition says that all the butler had done was to allow a fly in the king's cup, and all the baker had done was to leave a gravel in the king's bread. The world has the habit of making a great ado about what you do wrong and forgetting to say anything about what you do right, but the same God will take care of you who provided for Merlin, the Christian martyr, when hidden from his pursuers in a hay-mow in Paris, a hen came and laid an egg close by him every morning, thus keeping him from starvation. Blessed are they that are persecuted, although persecution is a severe cataplasm. Ointment may smart the wound before healing it. What a soft pillow to die on if when we leave the world we can feel that, though a thousand people may have wronged us, we have wronged no one; or having made envious and jealous attack on others, we have repented of the sin and as far as possible made reparation. ®lnj SouL ITS VALUE COMPARED WITH WORLDLY POSSESSIONS. HAVE to say that the world is a very grand property. Its flowers are God's thoughts in bloom. Its rocks are God's thoughts in stone. Its dewdrops are God's thoughts in pearl. J/^M1BHI^*J^ This world is God's child — a wayward child, indeed; it has ^/r'^fi8Pc!lS«JI wandered off through the heavens. But nearlj' 2000 5'ears ago, one Christmas night, God sent out a sister world to call that wanderer back, and it hung over Bethlehem only long enough to get the promise of the wanderer's return; and now that lo.st world, with soft feet of light, comes treading back through the heavens. The hills, how beautiful they billow up the edge of the wave white with the foam of crocuses ! How beautiful the rainbow, the arched bridge on which heaven and earth come and talk to each other in tears, after the storm is over ! How nimble the feet of the lamp-lighters that in a few minutes set all the dome of the night ablaze with brackets of fire ! How bright the oar of the saffron cloud that rows across the deep sea of heaven ! How beautiful the spring, with bridal blossoms in her hair ! I wonder who it is that beats time on a June morning for the bird orchestra. How gently the harebell tolls its fragrance on the air ! There may be grander worlds, swarthier worlds, larger w^orlds than this; but I think that this is a most exquisite world — a mignonette on the bosom of immensity ! "Oh," you say, "take my soul ! give me that world ! I am willing to take it in exchange. I am ready now for the bargain. It is so beautiful a world, so sweet a world, so grand a world !" Geologists tell us that it is already on fire ; that the heart of the world is one great living coal; that it is just like a ship on fire at sea, the flames not bursting out because the hatches are kept down. And yet you propose to palm off on me, in return for my soul, a world for which, in the first place, you give no title, and, in the second place, for w^hich you can give no insurance. "Oh," you say, "the water of the oceans will wash over all the land and put out the fire." Oh, no. There are inflammable elements in the water, hydrogen and oxygen. Call off the hydrogen and the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans would blaze like heaps of shav- ings. You want me to take this world, for which you can give no possible insurance. (234^ nil iimm^^^^mi^^^'mm^mm'm THE LITTLK ORPHAN'S DREAM. (235) 236 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. Astronomers have swept their telescopes through the sky, and have found out that there have been thirteen worlds, in the last two centuries, that have disap- peared. At first they looked just like other worlds. Then they got deeply red — they were on fire. Then they got ashen, showing they were burned down. Then they disappeared, showing that even the ashes were scattered. And if the geologist be right in his prophecy, then our world is to go on in the same way. And yet you want me to exchange my soul for it. Ah, no ; it is a world that is burning now. Suppose you brought an insurance agent to look at your property for the purpose of giving you a policy upon it, and while he stood in front of the house he should say : "That house is on fire now in the basement," you could not get any insurance upon it. Yet you talk about this world as though it were a safe investment, as though you could get some insurance upon it, when down in the basement it is on fire. I may also add, that this world is a property with which everybody who has taken it as a possession has had trouble. Now, I know a large reach of land that is not built on. I ask what is the matter, and they reply that everybody who has had anything to do wath that property got into trouble about it. It is just so with this world ; everybody that has had anything to do with it, as a possession, has been in perplexity. How was it with Eord Byron ? Did he not sell his immortal soul for the purpose of getting the world ? Was he satisfied with the possession ? Alas! alas! the poem graphically describes his case when it says : Drank every cup of jo}', Heard every trtimp of fame ; Drank early, deeply drank, Drank draughts wliich common millions miglit have quenched, Then died of thirst because there was no more to drink. HOW TO MEASURE A MAN'S PROPERTY. Oh, yes, he had trouble wuth it; and so did Napoleon. After conquering nations by the force of his sword, he lies down to die, his entire possession the military boots that he insisted on having upon his feet while he was dying. Or the even greater sorrow perhaps, of having to retreat from Moscow, his army defeated, his hopes shattered, and his pride of achievement humbled. So it has been with men who had better ambition. Thackeray, one of the most genial and lovable souls, after he had won the applause of all intelligent lands through his wonderful genius, sits down in a restaurant in Paris, looks to the other end of the room and wonders whose that forlorn and wretched face is; rising up after awhile, he finds that it is Thackeray in the mirror. Oh, yes, this world is a cheat. Talk- ing about a man gaining the world! Who ever gained half of the world? Who ever owned a hemisphere ? Who ever gained a continent ? Who ever owned THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. 237 Asia? Who ever gained a city ? Talk about gaining the world! No man ever gained it, or the hundred- thousandth part of it. You are demanding that I sell my soul, not for the world, but for a fragment of it. Here is a man who has had a large estate for forty or fifty years. He lies down to die. You say, ' ' That man is worth millions and millions of dollars !" Is he ? You call up a surveyor, with his compass and chains, and you say, "There is a property extending three miles in one direction, and three miles in another direction." napoleon's retreat from MOSCOW . — Pa I >! frd by Adolphc Yvon. Is that the way to measure that man's property ? No ! You do not want any surveyor, with his compass and chains. That is not the way you want to measure that man's property now. It is an undertaker that you need, who will come and put his finger in his vest pocket, and take out a tape line, and he will measure five feet nine inches one way, and two and a half feet the other wa}-. That is the man's property. Oh, no; I forgot; not so much as that, for he does not own even the place in which he lies in the cemetery. The deed to that belongs to the 2 38 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. execuiors and the heirs. Oh, what a property you propose to give me for my soul ! If you sell a bill of goods you go into the counting room and say to your partner: ' ' Do you think that man is good for this bill ? Can he give proper security ? Will he meet this payment ?" Now, when you are offered this world as a possession, I want you to test the matter. I do not want you to go into this bargain blindly. I want you to ask about the title, about the insurance, about whether men have ever had any trouble with it, about whether you can keep it, about whether you can get all, or the ten- thousandth, or one hundred-thousandth part of it. Now let us look at the other property — the soul. We cannot make a bargain without seeing the comparative value. Tlie soul. How shall I estimate the value of it? Well, by its exquisite organization. "It is the most wonderful piece of mechanism ever put together. Machinery is of value in proportion as it is mighty and silent at the same time. You look at the engine and the machinery in the Philadelphia Mint, and, as you see it performing its wonderful work, j^ou will be surprised to find how silently it goes. Machinery that roars and tears soon destroys itself; but silent machinery is often most effective. Now, so it is with the soul of man, with all its tremendous faculties — it moves in silence. Judg- ment, without any racket, lifting its scales; memory, without any noise, bringing down all its treasures; conscience taking its judgment-seat without any excite- ment; the understanding and the will all doing their work. Velocity, majesty, might; but silence — silence. You listen at the door of your heart. You can hear no sound. The soul is all quiet. It is so delicate an instrument that no human hand can touch it. You break a bone, and with splinters and bandages the surgeon sets it; the eye becomes inflamed, the apothecary's wash cools it; but a soul ofi" the track, unbalanced, no human power can readjust it. With one sweep of its wing it circles the universe, and overv^aults the throne of God. Why, in the hour of death the soul is so mighty it throws aside the body as though it were a toy. It drives back medical skill as impotent. It breaks through the circle of loved ones who stand around the dying couch. With one leap, it springs beyond star and moon and sun, and chasms of immensity. Oh, it is a soul superior to all material things ! No fires can consume it; no floods can drown it; no rocks can crush it; no walls can impede it; no time can exhaust it. It wants no bridge on which to cross a chasm. It wants no plummet with which to sound a depth. A soul so mighty, so swift, so silent, must it not be a priceless soul? THE VALUE AND MEASURE OF A SOUL. I calculate the value of a soul, also, by its capacity for happiness. How much joy it can get in this world out of friendships, out of books, out of clouds, THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 239 out of the sea, out of flowers, out of ten thousand things; and yet all the joy it has here does not test its ca- pacity. You are in a concert before the curtain rises, and you hear the instruments preparing — the sharp snap of the broken string, the scrapings of the bow across the viol. "There is no music in that, ' ' you say. It is only getting ready for the music. And all the enjoyment of the soul in this world, the enjoyment we think is real enjoyment, is only preparative; it is only the first stages of the thing; it is only the entrance, the beginning of that which shall be the orchestral har- monies and splendors of the redeemed. You cannot test the full power of the soul for happiness in this world. How much power the soul has here to find enjoyment in friendship ! but, oh, the grander friendships for the soul in the skies ! How sweet the flowers here ! but how much sweeter they will be there ! I do not think that when flowers die on earth they die forever. I think that the fragrance of the flow- ers is the spirit being wafted awa}- into glory. God says there are palm trees in heaven and fruits in heaven. If so, why not the spirits of the dead flowers? In the sunny valleys of heaven shall not the marigold creep ? On the hills of heaven will not the amaranth bloom ? On the amethj^s- tine walls of heaven will not the jas- mine climb? "My beloved is come down in his garden to gather lilies." No flowers in heaven? Where, then, do they get their garlands for the brows of the righteous? "THE RKAPER AND THE FLOWERS 240 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. Christ is glorious to our souls now, but how much grander our appreciation after a while ! A conqueror comes back after the battle. He has been fighting for us. He comes upon the platform. He has one arm in a sling, and the other arm holds a crutch. As he mounts the platform, oh, the enthusiasm of the audience! They say: " That man fought for us and imperiled his life for us;" and how wild the huzza that follows huzza ! When the Lord Jesus Christ shall at last stand out before the multitudes of the redeemed of heaven, and we meet Him face to face, and feel that He was wounded in the head, and wounded in the hands, and wounded in the feet, and wounded in the side for us, methinks we will be overwhelmed. We will sit some time gazing in silence, until some leader amidst the white-robed choir shall lift the baton of light, and give the signal that it is time to wake the song of jubilee, and all heaven will then break forth into: " Hosanna ! hosanna ! hosanna ! Worthy is the Lamb that was slain." ^..^~, 5.>, - - I calculate further the value of ^^^^ the soul by the price that has been paid for it. In St. Petersburg there is a diamond that the government paid $200,000 for. "Well," you say, "it must have been ver>' val- uable, or the government would not have paid $200,000 for it." I want to see what mj' soul is worth, and what your soul is worth, by ~ seeing what has been paid for it. For that immortal soul, the richest blood that was ever shed, the deep- est groan that was ever uttered, all the griefs of earth compressed into one tear, all the sufferings of earth gathered into one rapier of pain and struck through His holy heart. Does it not imply tremendous value ? I argue also the value of the soul from the home that has been fitted up for it in the future. One would have thought a street of adamant would have done. No; it is a street of gold. One would have thought that a wall of granite would have done. No; it is the flame of sardonyx mingling with the green of emerald. One would have thought that an occasional doxology would have done. Nd; it is a perpetual song. If the ages of heaven marched in a straight line, some day the last regiment, perhaps, might pass out of sight; but, no, the ages of heaven do not march in a straight line, but in a circle around about the throne of God; forever, forever, tramp, tramp ! A soul so bought, so equipped, so provided for» must be a priceless soul, a majestic soul, a tremendous soul. THE CROWN OF THORNS. THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 241 THE STORY OF AN HEROIC SAILOR. I was reading of a sailor who had just got ashore, and was telHng about his last experience at sea. He said: " The last time I crossed the ocean we had a terrific time. After we had 16 THE BRIDE'S NEW HOME. 242 THK PATHWAY OF IvIFE. been out three or four days the machinery got disarranged and the steam began to escape, and the captain, gathering the people and the crew on deck, said: ' Unless some one shall go down and shut off that steam and arrange that machinery at the peril of his life, we must all be destroyed.' He was not willing to go down himself No one seemed willing to go. The passengers gathered at one end of the steamer, waiting for their fate. The captain said: ' I give you a last warning. If there is no one here willing to imperil his life and go down and fix that machinery, we must all be lost.' A plain sailor said: 'I'll go, sir,' and he wrapped himself in a coarse piece of canvas and went down, and was gone but a few moments when the escaping steam stopped, and the machinery was corrected. The captain cried out to the passengers: ' All saved ! Let us go down below and see what has become of the poor fellow.' They went down. There he lay dead." Vicarious suffering ! Died for all ! The time came when our whole race must die unless some one should endure torture and sorrow and shame. Who shall come to the rescue ? Shall it be one of the seraphim ? Not one. Shall it be one of the cherubim ? Not one. Shall it be an inhabitant of some pure and unfallen world? Not one. Then Christ said: " Lo ! I come to do Thy will, O God." Oh, the love ! Oh, the endurance ! Oh, the horrors of the sacrifice ! Shall not our souls go out toward Him, saying: " Lord Jesus Christ, take my souL Thou art worthy to have it. Thou hast died to save it." ^^ni:(^ixjcx&tn^ THE FEAR OF PUNISHMENT, AND THE RESULT OF CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. SOIyAR eclipse was prophesied to take place about the time of the destruction of ancient Jerusalem, Josephus, the historian, says that the prophecy was literally ful- filled, and about that time there were strange appear- ances in the heavens. The sun was not destroyed, but for a little while hidden. Christianity is the rising sun of our time, and men have tried with the uprolling vapors of skepticism and the smoke of their blas- phemy to turn the sun into darkness. Suppose the archangels of malice and horror should be let loose a little while and be allowed to extinguish and destroy the sun in the natural heavens. They would take the oceans from other worlds and pour them on this luminary of the planetary system, and the waters go hissing down amid the ravines and the caverns, and there is explosion after explosion, until there are only a few peaks of fire left in the sun, and these are cooling down and going out until the vast continents of flame are reduced to a small acreage of fire, and that whitens and cools off until there are only a few coals left, and these are whitening and going out until there is not a spark left in all ihz mountains of ashes and the valleys of ashes and the chasms of ashes. An extinguis'ied sun. A dead sun. A buried sun. Let all worlds wail at the stupendous obsequies. Of covirse, this withdrawal of the solar light and heat throws our earth into a universal chill, and the Tropics become the Temperate, and the Temperate becomes the Arctic, and there are frozen rivers and frozen lakes and frozen oceans. From Arctic and Antarctic regions the inhabitants gather in toward the centre and find the equator as the poles. The slain forests are piled up into a great bonfire, and around them gather the shivering villages and cities. The wealth of the coal mines is hastily poured into the furnaces and stirred into rage of combustion, but soon the bonfires begin to lower, and the furnaces begin to go out, and the nations begin to die. Cotopaxi, Vesuvius, Etna, Stromboli, Califomian geysers cease to smoke, and the ice of hailstorms remains unmelted in their crater. All the flowers have breathed their last breath. vShips with sailors frozen at the mast, and helmsmen frozen at the wheel, and passengers frozen in the cabin; all nations (243) 244 , THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. dying, first at the north and then at the south. Child frosted and dead in the cradle. Octogenarian frosted and dead at the hearth. Workmen with frozen hand on the hammer and frozen foot on the shuttle. Winter from sea to sea. All-congealing winter. Perpetual winter. Globe of frigidity. Hemisphere shackled to hemisphere by chains of ice. Universal Nova Zembla. You might fly as high as Icarus, and there the chill would be as great ; or as low as Orpheus descended, and j-et not penetrate beyond the universal congelation. The earth and ice-floe grinding against other ice-floes. The archangels of malice and horror have done their work, and now they may take their thrones of glacier and look down upon the ruin they have wrought. What the destruction of the sun in the natural heavens would be to our phj'sical earth the destruction of Christianity would be to the moral world — the sun turned into darkness. Infidelity in our time is considered a great joke. There are people who rejoice to hear Christianity caricatured, and to hear Christ assailed with quibble and quirk and misrepresentation and badinage and harle- quinade. I propose here to take infidelity and atheism out of the realm of jocularity into one of tragedy, and show you what they mean, and what, if they are success- ful, they will accomplish. There are those in all our communities who would like to see the Christian religion overthrown, and who say the world would be better without it. I want to show 3'ou what is the end of this road, and what is the terminus of this crusade, and what this world will be when atheism and infidelity have triumphed over it, if they can. I say, if they can. I reiterate it, if they can. In the first place, it will be the complete and unutterable degradation of w^omanhood, converting women into slaves or creating in her the fury of a Clytemnestra. 1 will prove it by facts and arguments which no honest man will dispute. In all communities and cities and States and nations, where the Christian religion has been dominant woman's condition has been ameliorated and improved, and she is deferred to and honored in a thousand things, and ever}- gentleman takes off" his hat before her. If your associations have been good, you know that the name of wife, mother, daughter, suggests gracious surroundings. You know there are no better schools and seminaries in Brooklyn or in any cit}' of this country than the schools and seminaries for our 3'oung ladies. You know that while woman may suffer injustice in England and the United States, she has more of her rights in Christendom than she has an3'where else. Now, compare this with woman's condition in lands where Christianity has made little or no advance — in China, in Barbary, in Borneo, in Tartary, in Egypt, in llindostan. The Burmese sell their wives and daughters as so many sheep. The Hindoo Bible makes it disgraceful and an outrage for a woman to listen to music, or look out of the window in the absence of her husband, and gives as a (245) 246 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. lawful ground for divorce a woman's beginning to eat before her husband has finished his meal. What mean those white bundles on the ponds and rivers in China in the morning ? Infanticide following infanticide. Female children destroyed simply because they are female. Woman harnessed to a plow as an ox. Woman veiled and barricaded, and in all styles of cruel seclusion. Her birth a misfortune. Her life a torture. Her death a horror. The missionary of the cross to-day in heathen lands preaches generally to two groups — a group of men, who do as they please and sit where they please; the other group — women, hidden and carefully secluded in a side apartment, where they may hear the voice of the preacher, but may not be seen. No refinement. No liberty. No hope for this life. No hope for the life to come. Ringed hose. Cramped foot. Disfigured face. Embruted soul. Now compare those two conditions. How far toward this latter condition that I speak of would woman go if Christian influences were with- drawn and Christianity were destroyed ? It is only a question of dynamics. If an object be lifted to a certain point and not fastened there, and the lifting power be withdrawn, how long before that object will fall down to the point from which it started? It will fall down, and it will go still further than the point from which it started. Christianity has lifted woman up from the very depths of degradation almost to the skies. If that lifting power be withdrawn, she falls clear back to the depth from which she was resurrected, not going anj^ lower because there is no lower depth. And yet, notwith.standing the fact that the only salvation of woman from degradation and woe is the Christian religion, and the only influence that has ever lifted her in the social scale is Christianity — I have read that there are women who reject Christianity, I make no remark in regard to those persons. I make no remark in regard to them. In the silence of your ow^n .soul make your observations. THE FEAR OF PUNISHMENT. If infidelity triumph and Christianity be overthrown, it means the demorali- zation of society. The one idea in the Bible that atheists and infidels most hate, is the idea of retribution. Take awaj^ the idea of retribution and punishment from society, and it will begin very soon to disintegrate; and take awa\' from the minds of men the fear of hell, and there are a great many of them who would very soon turn this world into a hell. The majority of those who are indignant against the Bible because of the idea of punishment are men whose lives are bad or whose hearts are impure, and who hate the Bible because of the idea of future punishment for the same reason that criminals hate the penitentiary. Oh, I have heard this brave talk about people fearing nothing of the consequences of sin in the next world, and I have made up my mind it is merely a coward's whistling to keep his courage up, I have seen men flaiuit their immoralities in the face of the community, and I have heard them defy the judgment-day and scoff" at the THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 247 idea of any future onscqueuce of their sin; but when they came to die they slirieked until you could hear them for nearly two blocks, and in the summer night the neigh- bors got up to put the windows down because they could not endure the horror. THE FIRST BORN. I would not want to see a rail train with five hundred Christian people on board go down through a drawbridge into a watery grave, I would not want to >4S THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. see five hundred Christian people go into such disaster, but I tell you plainly that I could more easily see that than I could for any protracted time stand and see an infidel die, though his pillow were of eider-down and under a canopy of vermilion. I have never been able to brace up my nerves for such a spectacle. There is some- thing at such a time so indescribable in the countenance. I just looked in upon it YOUTHS TO FORTUNE, BUT TO FAME UNKNOWN. for a minute or two, but the clutch of his fist was so diabolic, and the strength of voice was so unnatural, T could not endure it. " There is no hell, there is no hell, there is no hell ! " the man had said for sixt}^ years; but that night, when I looked in the dying room of my infidel neighbor, there was something on his countenance which seemed to say: " There is, there is, there is, there is ! " THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. " 249 The mightiest restraints to-day against theft, immorality, against Hbertinism, against crime of all sorts — the mightiest restraints are the retributions of eternity. Men know that they can escape the law, but down in the offender's soul there is the realization of the fact that they cannot escape God. He stands at the end of the road of profligacy, and He will not clear the guilty. Take all idea of retribu- tion and punishment out of the hearts and minds of men, and it would not be long before Brooklyn and New York, and Boston, and Charleston, and Chicago became Sodoms. The only restraints against the evil passions of the world to-day are Bible restraints. AS THE INFIDELS WOULD HAVE IT. Suppose now these generals of atheism and infidelity got the victory, and suppose they marshaled a great army made up of the majority of the world. They are in companies, in regiments, in brigades — the whole army. Forward, march, ye hosts of infidels and atheists, banners flying before, banners flying behind, banners inscribed with the words: " No God ! No Christ ! No punish- ment ! No restraints ! Down with the Bible ! Do as you please ! ' ' The sun turned into darkness. Forward, march ! ye great army of infidels and atheists. And first of all you will attack the churches. Away with those houses of worship ! They have been standing there so long deluding the people with consolation in their bereavements and sorrows. All those churches ought to be extirpated; they have done so much to relieve the lost and bring home the wandering, and they have so long held up the idea of eternal rest after the paroxysm of this life is over. Turn the St. Peters, and St. Pauls, and the temples, and tabernacles into club houses. Away with those churches ! Forward, march ! ye great army of infidels and atheists, and next of all they scatter the Sabbath-schools — the Sabbath-schools filled wnth bright-eyed, bright- cheeked little ones, who are singing songs on Sunday afternoon, and getting instruction when they ought to be on the street corners playing marbles, or swear- ing on the commons. Away with them ! Forward, march ! ye great army of infidels and atheists, and next of all they will attack Christian asylums — the insti- tutions of mercy supported by Christian philanthropies. Never mind the blind eyes and the deaf ears and the crippled limbs and the weakened intellects. Let paralyzed old age pick up its own food, and orphans fight their own way, and the half reformed go back to their evil habits. Forward, march ! 3^e great army of infidels and atheists, and with your battle-axe hew down the cross and split up the manger of Bethlehem. On, ye great army of infidels and atheists, and now they come to the grave- yards and the cemeteries of the earth. Pull down the sculpture above Greenwood's 250 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. gate, for it means the resurrection. Tear away at the entrance of Laurel Hill the fi^^ure of Old Mortality and the chisel. On, ye great army of infidels and atheists, into the graveyards and cemeteries; and where you see "Asleep in Jesus," cut it away, and where you find a marble story of heaven, blast it; and where you find over a little child's grave, " Suffer little children to come unto me," substitute the words "Delusion" and "Sham;" and where you find an angel in marble strike off" the wing; and when you come to a family vault, chisel on the door, " Dead once, dead forever." But on, ye great army of infidels and atheists, on ! They will attempt to scale heaven. There are heights to be taken. Pile hill on hill and Pelion upon Ossa, and then they hoist the ladders against the walls of heaven. On and on, until they blow up the foundations of jasper and the gates of pearl. They charge up the steep. Now they aim for the throne «>r Him who 1 ! ves forever .1 nd ever . 'I'liey would I ike down from their liigh place the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, the throne !" they say. Down forever ! Down out of sight ! He is not God. He has no right to sit there. Down with him ! Down with Christ !" the; deluge. Down wdth them !" they say. " Down with Him from A NEFARIOUS PLOT. A world without a head, a universe without a king. Orphan constellations. Fatherless galaxies. Anarchy supreme. A dethroned Jehovah. An assassinated God. Patricide, regicide, Deicide. That is what they mean. That is what they will have, if they can, if they can, if they can. Civilization hurled back into semi-barbarism, and semi-barbarism driven back into Hottentot savagery. The wheel of progress turned the other way, and turned toward the Dark Ages. The clock of the centuries put back 2000 years. Go back, you Sandwich Islands, THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 251 from your schools and from your colleges and from your reformed condition to what you were in 1820, when the missionaries first came. Call home the 500 missionaries from India and overthrow their 2000 schools, where they are trying to educate the heathen, and scatter the 140,000 little children that they have gathered out of barbarism into civilization. Obliterate all the work of Dr. DufF GRIEF. in India, of David Abeel in China, of Dr. King in Greece, of Judson in Burmah, of David Brainard amid the American aborigines, and send home the 3000 mis- sionaries of the cross who are toiling in foreign lands, toiling for Christ's sake, toiling themselves into the grave. Tell these 3000 men of God that they are of no use. Send home the medical missionaries who are doctoring the bodies as well as the souls of the dying nations. Go home, London Missionar>^ Society. Go 252 THE PATHWAY OF IvlFH. home, American Board of Foreign Missions. Go home, ye Moravians, and relin- quish back into darkness, and squalor, and filth, and death the nations whom ye have begun to lift. Oh, my friends, there has never been such a nefarious plot on earth as that which infidelity and atheism have planned. We were shocked a few years ago because of the attempt to blow up the Parliament Houses in London; but if infidelity and atheism succeed in their attempt, they will dynamite the world. Let them have their full way, and this world will be a habitation of three rooms — a habitation with just three rooms; the one a mad-house, another a lazaretto, the other a pandemonium. These infidel bands of music have only just begun their concert — yea, they have only been stringing their instruments. I here put before you their whole programme, from beginning unto close. In the theatre the tragedy comes first and the farce afterward, but in this infidel drama of death the farce comes first and the tragedy afterward. And in the former, atheists and infidels laugh and mock, but in the latter, God himself will laugh and mock. He says so. "I will laugh at their calamity and mock when their fear cometh." From such a chasm of individual, national, world-wide ruin, stand back. O young men, stand back from that chasm ! You see the practical drift of the alarum which I here thus sound. I want you to know where that road leads. Stand back from that chasm of ruin. The time is going to come (you and I may not live to see it, but it will come, just as certainly as there is a God, it will come) when the infidels and atheists who openly and out and out and above board preach and practice infidelity and atheism will be considered as criminals against society, as they are now criminals against God. Society will push out the leper, and the wretch with soul gangrened and ichorous and vermin-covered and rotting apart with his beastiality, will be left to die in the ditch and be denied decent burial, and men will come with spades and cover up the carcass where it falls, that it poison not the air, and the only text in all the Bible appropriate for the funeral sermon will be found in the book of Jeremiah xxii. 19: "He shall be buried with the burial of an ass." THE SAME SUN. A thousand voices come up to me as I write, saying: " Do 5'ou really think infidelity will succeed ? Has Christianity received its death-blow ? and will the Bible become obsolete?" Yes, when the smoke of the chimney arrests and destroys the noon-daj' sun. Josephus says about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem the sun was turned into darkness; but only the clouds rolled between the sun and the earth. The sun went right on. It is the same sun, the same luminary as when at the beginning it shot out like an electric spark from God's finger, and to-day it is warming the nations, and to-day it is gilding the sea, and to-day it is filling the earth with light. The same old sun, not all worn out, (25: ^54 THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. though its light steps 190,000,000 miles a second, though its pulsations are four hundred and fifty trillion undulations in a second. Same sun with beautiful white light, made up of the violet, and the indigo, and the blue, and the green, and the red, and the yellow, and the orange — the seven beautiful colors now just as when the solar spectrum first divided them. At the beginning God said: "Let there be light," and light was, and light is, and light shall be. So Christianity is rolling on, and it is going to warm all nations, and all nations are to bask in its light. Men may shut the window-blinds so they cannot see it, or they may smoke the pipe of speculation until they are shadowed under their own vaporing; but the lyord God is a sun ! This white light of the gospel, made up of all the beautiful colors of earth and heaven — violet plucked from amid the spring grass, and the indigo of the Southern jungles, and the blue of the skies, and the green of the foliage, and the yellow of the autumnal woods, and the orange of the Southern groves, and the red of the sunsets. All the beauties of earth and heaven brought out by this spiritual spectrum. Great Britain is going to take all Europe for God. The United States is going to take all America for God. Both of them together will take all Asia for God. All three of them will take Africa for God, and the world will be redeemed, with Christ the ruler, and love and righteousness will prevail universally. JllarXJ^l^ 0t CS^eniu^^ MEN DISTINGUISHED IN HISTORY WHO BEGAN LIFE IN POVERTY AND AFFLICTION. ti-^^ have in the thirty-third chapter of Isaiah a command f'^ given, or rather implied, that the "lame take the prey." It also, and more directly, perhaps, predicts the utter demo- lition of the Assyrian host. Not only robust men should go forth and gather the spoils of conquest, but even men crip- pled of arm and crippled of foot should go out and capture much that was valuable. Their physical disadvantages should not hinder their great enrichment. So it has been in the past, so it is now, so it will be in the future. So it is in all departments. Men labor under seemingly great disadvantages, and amid the most unfavorable circumstances, yet making grand achievements, getting great blessing for them- selves, great blessing for the world, great blessing for the Church, and so "the lame take the prey . ' ' Do you know that the three great poets of the world were totally blind ? Homer, Ossian, John Milton. Do you know that Mr. Prescott, who wrote that enchanting book, "The Conquest of Mexico," never saw Mexico, could not even see the paper on which he was writing ? A framework across the sheet, between which, up and down, went the pen immortal. Do you know that Gambassio, the sculptor, could not see the marble before him, or the chisel with which he cut it into shapes bewitching ? Do you know that Alexander Pope, whose poems will last as long as the English language, was so much of an invalid that he had to be sewed up every morning in rough canvas in order to stand on his feet at all ? Do you know that Stuart, the celebrated painter, did much of his wonderful work under the shadow of the dungeon, where he had been unjustly imprisoned for debt ? Do you know that Demosthenes by almost superhuman exertion first had to conquer the lisp of his own speech before he conquered assemblages with his eloquence ? Do you know that Bacon struggled all through innumerable sick- nesses, and that Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott went limping on clubfoot through all their life, and that many of the great poets and painters and orators and histo- rians and heroes of the world had something to keep them back, and pull them down, and impede their way, and cripple their physical or their intellectual move- ment, and yet that they pushed on and pushed up until they reached the spoils of (^55) liLIND BARTIMFUS. (256) THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 257 worldly success, and amid the huzza of the nations and cen- turies ' ' the lame took the prey ?" You know that a vast mul- titude of these men started under the disadvantage of ob- scure parentage. Columbus, the son of the weaver. Fer- guson, the astronomer, the son of the shepherd. America the prey of the one; worlds on worlds the prey of the other. But what is true in secular directions is more true in spiritual and religious directions, and I proceed to prove it. There are in all communities many invalids. They never knew a well day. They adhere to their occupations, but they go panting along the streets with exhaustions, and at eventime they lie down on the lounge with achings beyond all medicament. They have tried all prescriptions; they have gone through all the cures which were proclaimed infallible, and they have come now to surrender to perpetual ailments. They consider they are among many disadvantages, and when they see those who are buoy- ant in health pass by, they almost envy their robust frames and easy respiration. But I have noticed among that invalid class those who have the greatest knowledge of the Bible, who are in nearest intimacy with Jesus Christ, who have the most glowing experiences of the truth, 17 2.S8 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. who have had the most remarkable answers to prayer, and who have the most exhilarant anticipations of heaven. The temptations which weary us who are in robust health they have conquered. They have divided among them the spoils of the conquest. Many who are alert and athletic and strong loiter in the way. These are the lame that take the prey. Robert Hall an invalid, Edward Payson an invalid, Richard Baxter an invalid, Samuel Rutherford an invalid. Through raised letters the art of printing has been brought to the attention of the blind. You take up the Bible for the blind and you close your eyes anc you run your fingers ovei the raised letters and you s a 3' : "Why, I never could get any in- formation in this way. What a slow, lumbrous way of read- BRINGING HOME THE LOST SHEEP. i n P" ' O O d lielp the blind." And yet I find among that class of persons, among the blind, the deaf and the dumb, the most thorough acquaintance with God's word. Shut ■out from all other sources of information, no sooner does their hand touch the raised letter than they gather a prayer. Without eyes, they look off upon the "kingdoms of God's love. Without hearing, they catch the minstrelsy of the skies. Dumb, yet with pencil or with irradiated countenance, they declare the glory of God. THE DEAF AND DUMB. A large audience assembled in New York at the anniversary of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, and one of the visitors, with chalk on the blackboard, wrote this question to the pupils: "Do you not find it very hard to be deaf and dumb ?" And one of the pupils took the chalk and wrote on the blackboard this sub- lime sentence in answer: "When the song of the angels shall burst upon our • THE PATHWAY OF I.IFK. 259 enraptured ear, we will scarce regret that our ears were never marred with earthly sounds." Oh, the brightest eyes in heaven will be those that never saw on earth. The ears most alert in heaven will be those that in this world heard neither voice of friend, nor thrum of harp, nor carol of bird, nor doxology of congregations. A lad who had been blind from infancy was cured. The oculist operated upon the lad, and then put a very heavy bandage over the eyes, and after a few weeks had gone by the bandage was removed, and the mother said to her child: " Willie, can you see ?" He said: " Oh ! mamma, is this heaven ?" The contrast between the darkness before and the brightness afterward was overwhelming. And I tell you the glories of heaven will be a thousand-fold brighter for those who never saw anything on earth. While many with good vision closed their eyes in night, and many who had a good artistic and cultured ear went down into discord, these aiSicted ones cried unto the I^ord in their trou- ble, and he made their sorrows their advantage, and so " the lame took the prey. ' ' In the seventh century there was a legend of St. Modobert. It was said that his mother was blind, and one day while looking at his mother he felt so sympa- thetic for her blindness that he rushed forward and kissed her blind eyes, and the legend says her vision came immediately. That was only a legend, but it is a truth, a glorious truth, that a kiss of God's eternal love has brought to many a blind eye eternal illumination. There are those in all communities who toil mightily for a livelihood. They have scant wages. Perhaps they are diseased, or have physical infirmities, so ihey are hindered from doing a continuous day's work. A city missionary finds them up the dark alley, with no fire, with thin clothing, with very coarse bread. They never ride in the street car; they cannot afford the five cents. They never see any pictures save those in the show-window on the street, from which they are often jostled, and looked at by some one who seems to say in the look: " Move on. What are you doing here looking at pictures ?' ' Yet many of them live on mountains of transfiguration. At their rough table He who fed the five thousand breaks the bread. They talk often of the good times that are coming. This world has no charm for them, but heaven entrances their spirit. They often divide their scant crust with some forlorn wretch who knocks at their door at night, and on the blast of the night wind, as the door opens to let him in, is heard the voice of Him who said: "I was hungry and ye fed me." No cohort of heaven will be too bright to transport them. By God's help they have vanquished the Assyrian hosts. They have divided among them the spoils. Lame, lame, yet they took the prey. 26o THE PATHWAY OF I,IFE. A LAME OLD MAN. I was riding along a country road one day, and I saw a man on crutches. I overtook him. He was very old. He was going very slowly. At that rate it would have taken him two hours to go a mile. I said: "Wouldn't you like to ride ?" He said: "Thank you, I would, God bless you." When he sat beside me, he said: "You see, I am very lame and very old, but the I^ord has been a good Lord to me. I have buried all my children. The lyOrd gave them and the I^ord had a right to take them away. Blessed be His name. I was verj- sick, and I had no money, and my neighbors came in and took care of me, and I "wanted I^EEDING THE MULTITUDE. nothing. I suffer a great deal with pain, but then I have so many mercies left. The lyord has been a good Lord to me." And before we had got far I was in doubt whether I was giving him a ride or he was giving me a ride. He said: " Now, if you please, I'll get out here. Just help me down on my crutches, if you please. God bless you. Thank you, sir. Good morning. Good morn- ing. You have been feet to the lame, sir, you have. Good morning." Strong men had gone the road that day. I do not know where the}^ came out, but every hobble of that old man was toward the shining gate. With his old crutch he had struck, down many a Sennacherib of temptation* which has mastered you and me. Lame, so fearfully lame, so awfully lame; but he took the prey. There are in all communities many orphans. During our last war, and in the years immediately following, how many children we heard say: " Oh ! my father was killed in the war." Have you ever noticed — I fear you have not — how well those children have turned out ? Starting under the greatest disadvantage, no orphan asylum could THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 261 do for them what their father would have done had he lived. The skirmisher sat one night, by the light of fagots, in the swamp, writing a letter home, when a sharpshooter's bullet ended the letter, which was never folded, never posted, and, never read. Those children came up under great disadvantage. No father to fight their way for them. Perhaps there was in the old family Bible an old yellow letter pasted fast, which told the story of that father's long march, and how he suffered in the hospital; but they looked still further on in the Bible, and they came to the story of how God is the father of the fatherless, and the widow's portion, and they soon took their father's place in that household. They battled the way for their mother. They came on up, and many of them have in the years since the war taken positions in church and State. While many of those who suffered nothing during those times have had sons go out into lives of indolence and vagabondage, those who started under so many disadvantages because they were so early bereft — these are the lame who took the prey. There are those who would like to do good. They say: "Oh! If I only had wealth, or if I had eloquence, or if I had high social position, how much I would accomplish for God and the Church." I tell you that you have great opportunities for usefulness. WHAT WORKINGMEN HAVE DONE. Who built the Pyramids ? The king who ordered them built ? No; the plain workmen who added stone after stone and stone after stone. Who built the dikes of Holland ? The Government that ordered the enterprise ? No; the plain work- men who carried the earth and rung their trowel on the wall. Who are those who have built these vast cities ? The capitalists ? No; the carpenters, the masons, the plumbers, the plasterers, the tinners, the roofers, dependent on a day's wages for a livelihood. And so in the great work of assuaging human suffering and enlightening human ignorance and halting human iniquity. In that great work, the chief part is to be done by ordinary men, with ordinary speech, in an ordinary manner, and by ordinary means. The trouble is that in the army of Christ we all want to be captains and colonels and brigadier-generals. We are not willing to march with the rank and file and to do duty with the private soldier. We want to belong to the reserve corps, and read about the battle while warming ourselves at the camp-fires, or on furlough at home, our feet upon an ottoman, we sagging back into an arm-chair. As 5^ou go down the street you see an excavation and four or five men are working, and perhaps twenty or thirty leaning on the rail looking over at them. That is the way it is in the Church of God to-day. Where you find one Christian hard at work there are fifty men watching the job. 262 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. Oh, my friends ! why do you not go to work and preach this gospel ? You say, " I have no pulpit. " You have. It maybe the carpenter's bench; it may be the mason's wall. The robe in which you are to proclaim this gospel may be a shoemaker's apron. But woe unto you if you preach not this gospel somewhere, somehow ! If this world is ever brought to Christ it will be through the unani- mous and long-continued efforts of men who, waiting for no special endowment, consecrate to God what they have. Among the most useless people in the world are men with ten talents, while many a one with only two talents, or no talent at all, is doing a great work, and so " the lame take the prey." SABBATH-SCHOOL TEACHERS. There are thousands of ministers of whom you have never heard — in log cabins at the West, in mission chapels at the East — who are warring against the legions of darkness, successfully warring. Tract distributers, month by month undermining the citadels of sin. You do not know their going or their coming, but the footfalls of their ministry are heard in the palaces of heaven. Who are the workers in our Sabbath- schools throughout this land to-day ? Men celebrated, men of vast estate ? For the most part, not that at all. I have noticed that the chief characteristic of the most of those who are successful in the work is that they know their Bibles, are earnest in prayer, are anxious for the salvation of the young, and Sabbath by Sabbath are willing to sit down unobserved and tell of Christ and the resurrection. These are the humble workers who are recruiting the great army of Christian youth — not by might, not by power, not by profound argument, not by brilliant antithesis, but by the blessing of God on plain talk, and humble story, and silent tear, and anxious look. " The lame take the prey." Oh ! this work of saving the youth of our country — how few appreciate what it is. This generation tramping on to the grave — ^we will soon all be gone. What next? An engineer on a locomotive going across the Western prairies day after day, saw a little child come out in front of a cabin and wave to him; so he got in the habit of waving back to the little child, and it was, the day's joy to him to see this little one come out in front of the cabin door and wave to him, while he answered back. One day the train was belated and it came on to the dusk of the evening. As the engineer stood at his post he saw by the headlight that little girl on the track, wondering why the train did not come, looking for the train, knowing nothing of its peril. A great horror seized upon the engineer. He reversed the engine. He gave it in charge of the other man on board, and then he climbed over the engine and he came down on the cow-catcher. He said, though he had reversed the engine, it seemed as though it were going at lightning speed, faster and THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 263 faster, though it was really slowing up, and with almost supernatural clutch he caught that child by the hair and lifted it up, and when the train stopped and the passengers gathered around to see what was the matter, there the old engineer lay, fainted dead away, the little child alive and in his swarthy arms. "Oh!" you say, " that was well done. " But I want you to exercise some kindness and some appreciation toward those in the community who are snatching the Httle ones from under the wheels of temptation and sin— snatching them from RECITING INCIDENTS OF HIS VALOR. under thundering rail-trains of eternal disaster, bringing them up into respecta- bility in this world and into glory for the world to come. THE ROYAL FAMILY. God has a royal family in the world. Now, if I should ask: " Who are the royal families of history ?" you would say: " House of Hapsburg, house of Stuarts, house of Bourbons. " They lived in palaces and had great equipages. But who are the Lord's royal family ? Some of them may serve you in the household, some 264 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. of them are in the unlighted garrets, some of them walk down the street, on their arm a basket of broken food; some of them are in the almshouse, despised and rejected of men; yet in the last great day while it will be found that some of us who fared sumptuously every day are hurled back into discomfiture, there are the lame that will take the prey. Years ago, on a boat on the North River, the pilot gave a very sharp ring to the bell for the boat to slow up. The engineer attended to the machinery, and then he came up, with some alarm, on deck to see what was the matter. He saw it was a moonlight night and there were obstacles in the way. He went to the pilot and said: "Why did you ring the bell in that way? Why do you w^ant to vStop, there's nothing the matter?" And the pilot said to him: "There is a mist gathering on the river; don't you see that? And there is night gathering darker and darker, and I can't see the way." Then the engineer, looking around and seeing it was a bright moonlight, looked into the face of the pilot and saw that he was dying, and then that he was dead. God grant that when our last moment comes we may be found at our post doing our whole duty, and when the mists of the river of death gather in our eyelids may the good Pilot take the wheel from our hands and guide us into the calm harbor of eternal rest ! Drop the anchor, furl the sail, I am safe within the veil. M^tixtxhi^txnj^i^^^ THE DEEP DAMNATION THAT CURSES AND IMPOVERISHES MILLIONS— THE SLAVERY OF THE POOR. SHE onl}^ argument that can be made against the Saturday afternoon closing is that this weekly vacation may be turned into wassail. Better have no Saturday afternoon free, from now until the day of your death, if the liquor saloon adds you to its discipleship. The rum business is pouring its vitriolic and damnable liquids down the throats of hundreds of thousands of laborers, and while the ordi- nary strikes are ruinous both to employers and employes, I pro- claim a strike universal against strong drink, which, if kept up, will be the relief of the working-classes and the salvation of the nation. I will undertake to say that there is not a healthy laborer in the United States w^ho within the next ten years, if he will refuse all intoxicating beverage and be saving, may not become a capitalist on a small scale. Our country in a year spends Si, 500, GOO, GOO for rum. Of course, the working- classes do a great deal of this expenditure. Careful statistics show that the wage-earning classes of Great Britain expend in liquor ;^ioo,- GGG.ooG or $5GO,GGG,GGG a 3^ear. Sit down now and calculate, O workingman ! how much you have expended in these directions. Add it all up. Add up what j'our neighbors have expended, and realize that instead of answering the beck of other people you might have been your own capitalist. When you deplete a workingman's physical energy you deplete his capital. The stimulated workman gives out before the unstimulated workman. My father said: " I became a temperance man in early life, because I noticed in the harvest-field that, though I was physically weaker than other men, I could hold out longer than they. They took stimulants, I took none." A brickmaker in England gives his experience in regard to this matter among men in his employ. He says, after investigation: "The beer-drinker, who made the fewest bricks, made 659,000; the abstainer, who made the fewest bricks, 746,000. The differ- ence, in behalf of the abstainer over the indulger, 87,000. There came a very exhausting time in the British Parliament. The session was prolonged until (265) 266 THE PATHWAY OF UFE. nearly all the members got sick or worn out. Out of 652 members only two went through undamaged; they were teetotalers. Better be like Daniel, who refused the king's wine because, though a young man, he was wise enough to know^ that intoxicants, or stinmlants, if you prefer, weaken both mind and body, and are always hurtful to the brain and damnation to the soul. When an army goes out to the battle the sol- dier who has water or coffee in his canteen marches easier and fights better than the soldier who has whisky in his canteen. Rum helps a man to fight when he has only one contestant, and that at the street- corner. But when he o;oes forth to maintain ome great battle for <>od and his country he t^ants no rum about him. When the Russians go 1 0 war a corporal passes long the line and smells he breath of ever}- sol- dier. If there be in his breath a taint of intoxi- cating liquor, the man is sent back to the barracks. WHiy? He cannot endure fatigue. All our young men know this. When they are preparing for a regatta, or for a ball club, or for an athletic wrestling, they abstain. Our working people will be wiser after a while, and the money they fling away on hurtful indulgences they wall put into co-operative associations, and so become capitalists. Have Saturday afternoons free, but by all means have them sober. DANIEL REFUSING THE KING'S WINE. CS:enis;rttl ^iJr^l^Xttt^ THE CAPTURE OF Al, AND THE GREAT BATTLES WHICH ARE FOUGHT FOR GLORY AND FOR LIFE. jNE Sabbath evening, with my family around me, we were talking over the scenes described in the eighth chapter of Joshua, of the manner in which the great city of Ai was captured. There is the old city, shorter b}^ name than any other city in the ages, spelled with two letters — A, I — Ai. Joshua and his men wanted to take it. How to do it is the question. On a former occasion, in a straightforward, face- to-face fight, they had been defeated; but now they are going to take it by ambuscade. General Joshua has two divisions in his army — the one division the battle-worn commander will lead himself, the other division he sends off to encamp in an. ambush on the west side of the city of Ai. No torches, no lanterns, no sound of heavy battalions, but thirty thousand swarthy warriors moving in silence, speaking only in a whisper; no clicking of swords against shields, lest the watchman of Ai discover it and the stratagem be a failure. If a roistering soldier in the Israel- itish army forgets himself, all along the line the word is " Hush !" Joshua takes the other division, the one with which he is to march, and puts it on the north side of the city of Ai, and then spends the night in reconnoitering in the valley. There he is, thinking over the fortunes of the coming day, with something of the feeling of Wellington the night before Waterloo, or of Meade and Lee the night before Gettysburg. There he stands in the night, and says to himself: "Yonder is the division in ambush on the west side of Ai. Here is the division I have under my especial command on the north side of Ai. There is the old city slum- bering in its sin. To-morrow will be the battle. Look ! the morning already begins to tip the hills. ' ' The military ofiicers of Ai look out in the morning ven," early, and, while they do not see the division in ambush, they behold the other division of Joshua, and the cry, "To arms! To arms!" rings through all the streets of the old town, and every sword, whether hacked and bent or newly welded, is brought out and all the inhabitants of the city of Ai pour through the gates, an infuriated torrent, and their cry is: "Come — we'll make quick work with Joshua and his (267) 268 TH^ PATHWAY OF LIFE. troops!" No sooner had these people of Ai come out against the troops of Joshua than Joshua gave such a command as he seldom gave: "Fall back!" Why, they could not believe their own ears. Is Joshua's courage failing him? "ABOUT FACE-CHARGE." The retreat is beaten and the Israelites are flying, throwing blankets and canteens on every side under this worse than Bull Run defeat. And 3'ou ought to hear the soldiers of Ai cheer, and cheer, and cheer. But they huzza to soon. The men lying in ambush are straining their vision to get some signal from Joshua that they may know" what time to drop upon the city. Joshua takes his burnished spear, glittering in the sun like a shaft of doom, and points it toward the city, and when the men up 3'onder in the ambush see it, with hawk-like swoop they drop upon Ai, and without stroke of sword or stab of spear, take the city and put it to the torch. So much for the division that was in ambush. How about the division under Joshua's command ? No sooner does Joshua stop in the fight than all his men stop with him, and as he wheels they wheel, for in a voice of thunder he cried: "Halt!" One strong arm driving back a torrent of flying troops. And then, as he points his spear through the golden light toward that fatal city, his troops know that they are to start for it. What a scene it was when the division in ambush, which had taken the city, marched down against the men of Ai on the one side, and the troops under Joshua doubled up their enemies from the other side, and the men of Ai were caught between these two hurricanes of Israelitish courage, thrust before and behind, stabbed in breast and back, ground between the upper and nether millstones of God's indignation. Woe to the city of Ai ! Cheer for the triumphs of Israel ! But there is such a thing as victorious retreat. Joshua's falling back was the first chapter in his successful besiegement. And there are times in your life when the best -thing you can do is to run. You were once the victim of strong drink. The demijohn and the decanter were your fierce foes. They came down upon you with greater fury than the men of Ai upon the men of Joshua. Your only safety is to get away from them. Your dissipating companions will come around for your overthrow. Run for your life ! Fall back ! Fall back from the drinking saloon. Fall back from the wine party. Your flight is your advance ! Your retreat is your victory. There is a saloon down on the next street that has been the ruin of your soul. Then, why do you go along that street ? Why do you not pass through some other street rather than by the place of your calamity ? A spoonful of brandy, taken for medicinal purposes by a man who twenty years before had been reformed from drunkenness, hurled into inebriety and the grave one of the best friends I ever had. Your retreat is your victory. Here is a con- verted infidel. He is so strong now in his faith in the gospel he says he can read THE PATHWAY OF IvIFE. 269 anything. What are your reading ? Bolingbroke ? Andrew Jackson Davis' tracts? Tyndall's Glasgow University address ? Drop them and run. You will be an infidel before you die unless you quit that. These men of Ai will be too much for you. Turn your back on the rank and file of unbelief. Fly before they cut you with their swords and transfix you with their javelins. There are people who have been well-nigh ruined because they risked a fool- hardy expedition in the presence of mighty and overwhelming temptations, and the men of Ai made a morning p^ •_ ^-^ .^^^ meal of them. So also there is "^^ ^ ■ — '■ — i — ^ ' -t^Z. ' ,A. such a thing as victorious retreat in the religious world. Thousand of times the kingdom of Christ has seemed to fall back. When the blood of the Scotch Covenanters gave a deeper dye to the heather of the Highlanders; when the Vaudois of France chose extermi- nation rather than make an un- christian surrender; when on St. Bartholomew's Day mounted as- sassins rode through the streets of Paris, crying: " Kill ! Blood- letting is good in August ! Kill ! Death to the Huguenots ! Kill !" when L,ady Jane Grey's head rolled from the executioner's block; when Calvin was imprisoned in the cas- tle; when John Knox died for the truth; when John Bunyan lay rot- ting in Bedford jail, saying: "If God will help me, and my physical life continues, I will stay here until the moss grows on my eyebrows rather than give up my faith." scourging of jesus. The days of retreat for the Church were days of victory. The Pilgrim Fathers fell back from the other side of the sea to Plymouth Rock, but now are marshaling a continent for the Christianization of the world. The Church of Christ falling back from Piedmont, falling back from Rue St. Jacques, falling back from St. Denis, falling back from Wurtemburg castles, falling back from the Brussels market place, yet all the time triumphing. 270 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. Notwithstanding all the shocking reverses which the Church of Christ suffers, what do we see to-day ? Three thousand missionaries of the cross on heathen ground; sixty thousand ministers of Jesus Christ in this land; at least two hundred millions of Christians on the earth. All nations to-day kindling in a blaze of revival. Falling back, yet advancing until the old Wesleyan hymn will prove true: The Lion of Judah shall break the chain And give us the victory again and again ! But there is a more marked illustration of victorious retreat in the life of our Joshua, the Jesus of the ages. First falling back from an appalling height to an appalling depth, falling from celestial hills to terrestrial valleys, from throne to manger, yet that did not seem to suffice Him as a retreat. Falling back still further from Bethlehem to Nazareth, from Nazareth to Jerusalem, back from Jerusalem to Golgotha, back from Golgotha to the mausoleum in the rock, back •down over the precipices of perdition until He walked amid the caverns of the eternal captives, and drank of the wine of the wrath of Almighty God amid the Ahabs and the Jezebels and the Belshazzars. O men of the pulpit and men of the pew, Christ's descent from heaven to earth does not measure half the distance. It was from glorj'- to perdition. He descended into hell. All the records of earthly retreat are as nothing compared with this falling back. Santa Anna, with the fragments of the army, flying over the plateaux of Mexico, and Napoleon and his army retreating from Moscow into the awful snows of Russia, are not worthy to be mentioned with this retreat, when all the powers of darkness seem to be pursuing Christ as He fell back, until the body of Him who came to do such wonderful things lay pulseless and stripped. Methinks that the city of Ai was not so emptied of its inhabitants when they went to pursue Joshua as perdition was emptied of devils when they started for the pursuit of Christ, and He fell back and back, down lower, down lower, chasm below chasm, pit below pit, until He seemed to strike the bottom of objurgation and scorn and torture. Oh, the long, loud, jubilant shout of hell at the defeat of the I^ord God Almighty ! But let not the powers of darkness rejoice quite so soon. Do you hear that disturbance in the tomb of Arimathea ? I hear the sheet rending ! What means that stone hurled down the side of the hill ? Push Him back; the dead must not stalk in this open sunlight. Oh, it is our Joshua. Let Him come out. He comes forth and starts for the city. He takes the spear of the Roman guard and points that way. Church militant marches up on one side and the Church triumphant down on the other side. And the powers of darkness being caught between these ranks of celestial and terrestrial valor, nothing is left of them save just enough to illustrate the direful overthrow of hell and our Joshua's eternal victory. On His head be all the crowns. In His hand be all the sceptres. At His feet be all the human hearts; and here, Lord, is one of them. o2 i,^a E ^ fe ^<^ 3 a; 2 S o j5 O > SIS s 2 '^ «■" o£ 2 tl o S oW ^^^^^■« t/j qj -M u (LI .T^ a^ O 5 _.— ••-' .2 ^ M^ S-9 -fa ^ ^-^ - .ti OJ in O -C >> -!- — ■" "^ 5 C x; rt JJ -t; ya<2 ^o a li V , ir. ajJ= ■" ,r 3 a: o M f J > m O - ~ !: - i- - a c« cx^ P. ^u. 3 g 11 (271) 272 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. THE TRIUMPH OF THE WICKED. The triumph of the wicked is short. Did you ever see an army in a panic ? There is nothing so uncontrollable. If you had stood at Long Bridge, Washing- ton durino- the opening of our Civil War, you would know what it is to see an army run . And when those men of Ai looked out and saw those men of Joshua in a stampede, they expected easy work. They would scatter them as the equinox IN THK HKAVK DAYS OF OI,D. the leaves. Oh, the gleeful and jubilant descent of the men of Ai upon the men of Joshua! But their exhilaration was brief, for the tide of battle turned and these quondam conquerors left their miserable carcasses in the wilderness of Bethaven. So it always is. The triumph of the wicked is short. You make twenty thousand dollars at the gaming table. Do you expect to keep it ? You will die in the poor THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 273 house. You make a fortune by iniquitous traffic. Do you expect to keep it? Your money will scatter, or it will stay long enough to curse your children after you are dead. Call over the roll of bad men who prospered and see how short was their prosperity. For a while, like the men of Ai, they went from conquest to conquest, but after a while disaster rolled back upon them and they were divided into three parts: Misfortune took their property, and the grave took their body, and the lost world took their soul. I am always interested in the building of theatres and the building of dissipating saloons. I like to have them built of the best granite and have the rooms made large and to have the pillars made very firm. God is going to conquer them, and they will be turned into asylums and art gal- leries and churches. The stores in which fraudulent men do business, the splendid banking institutions where the president and cashier put all their propertj'- in their wives' hands and then fail for $200,000 — all these institutions are to become the places where honest Christian men do business. Where are William Tweed and his associates ? Where are Ketcham and Swartwout, absconding swindlers ? Where is James Fisk, the libertine? Where is John Wilkes Booth, the assassin, and all the other misdemeanants ! The wicked do not live out half their days. Disembogue, O world of darkness ! Come up Hildebrand, and Henry II., and Robert Robespierre, and with blistering and blaspheming and ashen lips hiss out: ' ' The triumph of the wicked is short. ' ' Alas for the men of Ai when Joshua stretches out his spear toward the city ! THE IMPORTANCE OF TAKING GOOD AIM. In the strategem by which Ai was captured we have an illustration of the importance of taking good aim — that is, of thorough preparation. There is Joshua, but how are those people in ambush up yonder to know w^hen they are to drop on the city ? and how are these men around Joshua to know when they are to stop their fight and advance ? There must be some signal — a signal to stop the one division and to start the other. Joshua, with a spear on which were ordinarily hung the colors of battle, points toward the city. He stands in such a conspicuous position, and there is so much of the morning light dripping from that spear-tip that all around the horizon can see. It was much as to say: " There is the city. Take it. Take it now. Roll down from the west. Surge up from the north. It is ours, the city of Ai." God knows and we know that a great deal of Christian attack amounts to nothing, simply because we do not take good aim. Nobody knows, and we do not know ourselves, which point we want to take, when we ought to make up our minds what God will have us to do, and point our spear in that direction, and then hurl our body, mind, soul, time, eternity at that one tar- get. Many are called by Christ, as was Matthew, but few leave their tithe- gathering, or their worldly engagements to follow Him who gave His life for the 18 274 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. world. In our pulpit and pews, and vSunday schools and prayer meetings, we want to get a reputation for saying pretty things, and so we point our spear toward the flowers; or we want a reputation for saying sublime things, and we point our spear toward the stars; or we want to get a reputation for historical knowledge, and we point our spear toward the past; or we want to get a reputation for liber- ality, so we swing our spear all around; and it strikes all points of the horizon, and you can make out of it whatever you please; while there is the old world, proud, rebellious and armed against all righteous- ness; and instead of running any further away from its pursuit, we ought to turn around, plant our foot in the strength of the eternal God, lift the old cross and point it in the direction of the world's conquest till the redeemed of earth, march- ing up from one side and the glorified of heaven marching down from the other side, the last battlement of sin is compelled to swing out the streamers of Immanuel. O Church of God, take aim and conquer. THE BRAVERY THAT CONFRONTS STEEL AND BULLET. It is comparatively easy to keep on a parade amid a shower of bouquets and handclapping and the whole street full of huzzas, but it is not so easy to stand up in the day of battle, the face blackened with smoke, the uniform covered with the earth plowed up by whizzing bullets and bursting shells, half the regiment cut to pieces, and yet the commander crying: "Forward, march!" Then it requires old-fashioned valor. IVIy readers, the great trouble of the Kingdom of God in this day is the cowards. They do splendidly on a parade day, and at the com- munion, when they have on their best clothes of Christian profession; but put them out in the great battle of life, at the first sharpshooting of skepticism they HUSBANX)I,Y SYMPATHY. ES5 276 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. dodge, they fall back, they break ranks. We confront the enemy, we open the battle against fraud, and lo ! we find on our side a great many people that do not try to pay their debts. And we open the battle against intemperance, and we find on our own side a great many people who drink too much. And we open the battle against profanity, and we find on our own side a great many men who make hard speeches. And we open the battle upon infidelity, and lo ! we find on our own side a great many men who are not quite sure about the Book of Jonah. And while we ought to be massing our troops and bringing forth more than the united courage of Austerlitz, and Waterloo, and Gettysburg, we have to be spending our time hunting up ambuscades. There are a great many in the Lord's army who like to go out on a campaign with satin slippers and holding umbrellas over their heads to keep off the dew, and having rations of canvas-back ducks and lemon custards. If they cannot have them, they want to go home. They think it unhealthy among so many bullets ! I believe that the next twelve months will be the most stupendous year that Heaven ever saw. The nations are quaking now with the coming of God. It will be a year of successes for the men of Joshua, but of doom for the men of Ai. Year of mercies and of judgments. Year of invitation and of warning. Year of jubilee and of woe. Which side are you going to be on ? — with the men of Ai or the men of Joshua. ®i5rn5iijeU^it- short life. Their sins kill them. I know hundreds of good old men, but I do not know half a dozen bad old men. Why ? They do not get old. Lord Byron died at Missolonghi at thirty-six years of age, himself his own Mazeppa, his unbridled passions the horse that dashed with him into the desert. Edgar Allan Poe died at Baltimore at thirty-eight years of age. The black raven that alighted on the bust above his chamber door was delirium tremens — Ouly this and nothing more. Napoleon Bonaparte lived only just beyond mid-life, and died at St. Helena, and one of the docters said that his disease was induced by excessive snuffing. The hero of Austerlitz, the man who by one step of his foot in the centre of Europe shook the earth, killed by a snuff"- box ! Oh, how many people we have known who have not lived out half their days because of their dissipations and indul- gences ! Now practical religion is a protest against all dissipation of any kind. "But," you say, " professors of religion have fallen, professors of religion have got drunk, professors of religion have misappropriated trust funds, professors of religion have absconded." Yes, but they threw away their religion before they did their morality. If a man on a White Star Line steamer bound for Liverpool in mid- Atlantic jumps overboard and is drowned, is that anything against the White Star Line's capacity to take the man across the ocean ? And if a man jumps over the gunwale of his religion and goes down never to rise, is that any reason for your believing that religion has no capacity to take the man clear through ? In the one case if he had kept to the steamer his body would have been saved; in the other case if he had kept to his religion his morals would have been saved. There are aged people who would have been dead twenty-five years ago but for the defences and equipoise of religion. You have no more natural resistance than hundreds of people who lie in the cemeteries to-daj^ slain by their own vices. The doctors made their case as kind and pleasant as they could, and it was called congestion of the brain, or something else, but the snakes and the blue flies that seemed to crawl over the pillow in the sight of the delirous patient showed what was the matter with him. You, the aged Christian man, walked along by that unhappy one until you came to the golden pillar of a Christian life. You went to the right; he went to the left. That is all the difference between you. Oh, if this religion is a protest against all forms of dissipation, then it is an illustrious friend of longevity. " With long life will I satisfy him." THE BlyOOM OF HEALTH AND THE WHISPER OF LOVE. (295) 296 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. I WORRY AND TROUBLE. Religion is a friend of longevity in the fact that it takes the worry out of our temporalities. It is not work that kills men; it is worry. When a man becomes a genuine Christian he makes over to God not only his affections, but his family, his business, his reputation, his body, his mind, his soul — everything. Industri- ous he will be, but never worrying, because God is managing his affairs. How can he worry about business, when in answer to his prayers God tells him when to buy and when to sell; and if he gain that is best, and if he lose that is best? Suppose you had a supernatural neighbor who came in and said: " Sir, I want you to call on me in every exigency; I am your fast friend; I could fall back on $20,000,000; I can foresee a panic ten years; I hold the controll- ing stock in thirty of the best monetary institutions of New York: whenever you THH HPAIJNC, HA.ND — CLEANSING THE LEPER. are in trouble call on me and I will help you; 5'ou can have my money and you can have my influence; here is my hand in pledge for it." How much would you worry about business? Why, you would say: "I'll do the best I can, and then I'll depend on my friend's generosity for the rest." Now, more than that is promised to every Christian business man. God says to him: " I own New York, and London, and St. Petersburg, and Pekin; and Aus- tralia and California are mine; I can foresee a panic a million years: I have all the resources of the universe, and I am your fast friend; when you get in business trouble, or any other trouble, call on Me and I will help; here is My hand in pledge of omnipotent deliverance." How much should that man worry ? Not much. What lion will dare to put his paw on that Daniel ? Is there not rest in this ? Is there not an eternal vacation in this ? THE PATHWAY OF LIFK 297 going plays plays " Oh, " you say ; ' ' here is a man who asked God for a bless- ing in a certain enterprise, and he lost $5000 in it. Explain that." I v/ill. Yonder is a fac- tory, and one wheel is going north and the other wheel is south, and one wheel laterally and the other vertically. I go to the manufacturer and I say : " O manufacturer, your machinery is a contradiction. Why do you not make all the wheels go one way ?" "Well," he said, "I made them go in opposite directions on purpose, and they produce the right result. You go down stairs and examine the carpets we are turning out in this estab- lishment and you will see." I go down on the other floor and I see the carpets, and I am obliged to confess that though the wheels in that factory go in opposite directions, they turn out a beau- tiful result; and while I am standing there looking at the exquisite fabric an old Scripture passage comes into my mind: ' ' All things work together for good to them who love God." Is there not rest in that ? Is there not tonic in that ? Is there not longevity in that ? There is a kind of sickness that is beautiful when it comes from overwork for God, or one's country, or one's own family. I REVERENCE.- After the Sculpture of C. B. Birch. 298 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. have seen wounds that were glorious. After the battle of Antietam, in the hospital a soldier in reply to my question: "Where are you hurt?" uncovered his bosom and showed me a gash that looked like a badge of eternal nobility. I have seen an empty sleeve that was more beautiful than the most muscular forearm. I have seen a green shade over the eye shot out in battle that was more beautiful than any two eyes that had passed without injury. 1 have seen an old missionary, worn-out with the malaria of African jungles, who looked more radiant to me than a rubicund gymnast. I have seen a mother, after a six weeks' watching over a family of children down with the scarlet fever, with a glory around her pale and wan face that surpassed the angelic. It all depends on how you got your sickness and in what battle your wounds. Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, the pride of New Jersey — ay, of the nation — and one of the pillars of the Christian Church, and for nearly four years practically President of the United States, although in the office of Secretary of State, in his determination to make peace with all the governments on this American continent, wore himself out, and while his brain was as keen as it ever was, and his heart beat as regularly as it ever did, he was, according to the bulletins of his physicians at Washington and Newark, dying of hardening of the liver. Satan, who does not like good men, sent a darl through his liver. The last my dear friend — for he was my friend and my father's friend before me — the last he was seen in Washington was in the President's carriage, leaning his head against the shoulder of the President, on his way to the depot to take the train to go home to die. Martyr of the public service, he died for his country, though he died in time of peace. In his earlier life he was called the nephew of his uncle, Theodore Frelinghuysen, but he lived to render for God and his country a service that will make others proud to be his nephew, and which will keep his name on the scroll of history as the highest style of Christian statesman that this century or any other century has produced. COMFORTING ASSURANCES. Practical religion is a friend of longevity in the fact that it removes all cor- roding care about a future existence. Every man wants to know what is to become of him. If you get on board a rail train you want to know at what depot it is going to stop; if you get on board a ship you want to know into what harbor it is going to run, and if you should tell me you have no interest in what is to be your future destiny, I would, in as polite way as I know how, tell you I did not believe you. Before I had this matter settled with reference to my future existence, the question almost worried me into ruined health. The anxieties men have upon this subject put together would make a martyrdom. This is a state of awful unhealthiness. There are people who fret themselves to death for fear of dying. I want to take the Strain off your nerves and the depression off your soul, and I make two or three experiments. THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 299 Experiment First: When you go out of this world it does not make any dif- ference whether you have been good or bad, or whether you believe truth or error, you will go straight to glor}\ "Impossible," you say; " my common sense as well as my religion teaches me that the bad and the good cannot live together forever. You give me no com- fort in that experiment." Experiment Second: When 3'ou leave this world ^-ou will go into an inter- mediate state, where j^ou can get converted and prepared for heaven. "PEACE BE STILL." *' Impossible," you say; " as the tree falleth so it must lie, and I cannot post- pone to an intermediate state reformation which ought to have been effected in this State." Experiment Third: There is no future w^orld; when a man dies that is the last of him. Do not worry about what you are to do in another state of being; you will not do anything. " Impossible," 3^ou say; " there is something that tells me that death is not the appendix, but the preface; there is something that tells me that on this side of 300 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. the grave I onl}- get started, and that I shall go on fore\er; my power to think says, 'forever'; my affections say, 'forever'; my capacity to enjoy or suffer, * forever,' " Well, you defeat me in my three experiments. I have only one more to make, and if you defeat me in that I am exhausted: A mighty One, on a knoll back of Jerusalem, one day, the skies filled with forked lightnings and the earth filled with volcanic disturbances, turned His pale and agonized face tow^ard the heavens, and said: I take the sins and sorrows of the ages into My own heart. I am the expiation. Witness earth and heaven and hell, I am the expiation. And the hammer struck Him, and the spears punctured Him, and heaven thundered: "The wages of sin is death !" " The soul that sinneth it shall die !" " I will by no means clear the guilty !" Then there was silence for half an hour, and the lightnings were drawn back into the scabbard of the sky, and the earth ceased to quiver and all the colors of the sky began to shift themselves into a rainbow woven out of the falling tears of Jesus, and there was red as of the blood- shedding, and there was blue as of the bruising, and there was green as of the heavenly foliage, and there was orange as of the day-dawn. And along the line of the blue I saw the words: "I was bruised for their iniquities." And along the line of the red I saw the words: ' ' The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin." And along the line of the green I saw the words: " The leaves of the tree of life for the healing of the nations." And along the line of the orange I saw the words: " The day-spring from on high hath visited us." THE SACRIFICE TO ACCEPT. And then I saw the storm was over, and the rainbow rose higher and higher until it seemed retreating to another heaven, and planting one column of its colors on one side the eternal hill, and planting the other column of its colors on the other side the eternal hill, it rose upward and upward, " and behold there was a rambow about the throne." Accept this sacrifice and quit worrying. Take the tonic, the inspiration, the longevity of this truth. Religion is sunshine; that is health. Religion is fresh air and pure water. Religion is warmth; that is healthy. Ask all the doctors and they will tell you that a quiet conscience and pleasant anticipations are hygienic. I offer you perfect peace now and hereafter. What do you want in the future world ? Tell me and you shall have it. Orchards ? There are the trees with twelve manner of fruits, yielding fruit every month. Water scenery ? There is the River of Life, from under the throne of God, clear as crj^stal, and the sea of glass mingled with fire. Do you want music ? There is the oratorio of the Creation led on by Adam, and the oratorio of the Red Sea led on by Moses, and the oratorio of the Messiah led on by St. Paul, while THE PATHWAY OF LIFK. 301 the archangel, with swinging baton, contiols the one hundred and forty -four thousand who make up the orchestra. Do you want reunion ? There are your dead children waiting to kiss you, waiting to embrace you, waiting to twist garlands in your hair. You have been accustomed to open the door on this side of the sepulchre. I open the door on the other side of the sepulchre. You have been accustomed to walk in the wet grass on the top of the grave. I show you the under side of the grave; the bottom has fallen out and the long ropes with which the pall-bearers let down your dead, let them clear through into heaven. THE ANGEL OF THE SEPULCHRE. ^ ^i}xijfiiixftiii^ick. REACHING THE GOLDEN SHORE ON FRAGMENTS OF WRECK. 'ever off Goodwin Sands, or the Skerries, or Cape Hatteras was a ship in worse predicament than in the Mediterra- nean hurricane was the grain ship, on which 276 passen- gers were driven on the coast of Malta, five miles from the metropolis of that island, called Civita Vecchia. After a two weeks' tempest and the ship was entirely disabled, and captain and crew had become completely demoralized, an old missionary took command of the vessel. He was small, crooked-back and sore-eyed, according to tradition. It was Paul, the only unscared man aboard. He was no more afraid of a Euroclydon tossing the Medi- terranean Sea, now up to the gates of heaven and now sinking it to the gates of hell, than he was afraid of a kitten playing with a string. He ordered them all down to take their rations, first asking for them a blessing. Then he insured all their lives, telling them they would be rescued, and, so far from losing their heads, they would not lose so much of their hair as you could cut off with one click of the scissors; ay, not a thread of it, whether it were gray with age or golden wnth youth. " There shall not a hair fall from the head of any of you." THE WRECK. Knowing that they can never get to the desired port, they make the sea on the fourteenth night black with overthrown cargo, so that when the ship strikes it will not strike so heavily. At daybreak they saw a creek, and in their exigency resolved to make for it. And so they cut the cables, took in the two paddles that they had on these old boats, and hoisted the mainsail so that they mio^ht come with such force as to be driven high up on the beach by some fortunate billow. There she goes — tumbling toward the rock, now prow foremost, now stern foremost, now rolling over to the starboard, now a wave dashes clear over the deck, and it seems as if the old craft has gone forever. But up she comes again, Paul's arm around a mast, he cries: " All is well. God has given me all those that sail with me." Crash went the prow with such force that it broke off the mast. Crash went the timbers till the sea rushed through from side to side of the vessel. She parts THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 303 amidships, and into a thousand fragments the vessel, and into the waves 276 mor- tals are precipitated. Some of them had been brought up on the seashore and had learned to swim, and with their chins just above the waves, and by stroke of both arms and propulsion of both feet, they put out for the beach and reach it. But alas ! for those others. They have never learned to swim, or they were wounded by the falling of the mast, or the nervous shock was too great for them. And others had been weakened by the long sea-sickness. Oh, what will become of them ? ' ' Take that piece of a rudder, ' ' says Paul to one. "Take that fragment of a spar," says Paul to another. " Take that table." ' ' Take that image of Castor and Pollux. " " Take that plank from the lifeboat. ' ' " Take anything and head for the beach." What a struggle for life in the breakers ! Oh, the merciless waters, how they sweep over the heads of men, women and children ! Hold on there ! Almost ashore, keep up your courage ! Remember what Paul told you. There the reced- ing wave on the beach leaves in the sand a whole family. There crawls up out of the surf the centurion. There another plank comes in with a life clinging fast to it. There another piece of the shattered vessel with its freightage of an immortal soul. They must by this time all be saved. Yes; there comes in last of all, for he had been overseeing the rest, the old missionary, who wrings the water from his gray beard and cries out: " Thank God, all are here !" Gather them around the fire and call the roll. Paul builds a fire, and when the bundles of sticks begin to crackle, and, standing and sitting around the blaze, the passengers begin to recover from their chill, and their wet clothes begin to dry, and warmth begins to come into all the shivering passengers, let the purser of the vessel go round and see if any of the poor creatures are missing. Not one of the crowd that were plunged into the sea. How it relieves our anxiety as we read: " Some on broken pieces of the ship, and so it came to pass they all escaped safe to land." Having on previous occasions looked at the other passengers, I confine myself here to an examination of those who came in on broken pieces of the ship. There is something about them that excites in me an intense interest. I am not so much interested in those that could swim. They got ashore, as I expected. A mile of water is not a very great undertaking for a strong swimmer, or even two miles are not. But I cannot stop thinking about those on broken pieces of the ship. The great gospel ship is the finest vessel of the universe, and can carr^^ more passengers than any ship ever constructed, and you could no more wreck it than you could wreck the throne of God Almighty. I wish all the people would come aboard of her. I could not promise a smooth voyage, for ofttimes it will be tempestuous or a chopped sea, but I could promise safe arrival for all who took passage on that Great Eastern, so called by me because its commander came out of the East, the star of the East a badge of His authority. 304 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. But a vast multitude do not take regular passage. Their theology is broken in pieces, and their lives are broken in pieces, and their habits are broken in pieces, and their worldly and spiritual prospects are broken in pieces, and yet I believe they are going to reach the shining shore; and I am encouraged by the experience of those people who were saved with Paul, and the promise on record that even the sea shall give up its dead, mother and child, father and son, sailor and captain, if they died in Christ, to whatever port in life they were bound they shall gain the heavenly port. I do not underrate the value of a great theological system, but where in all the Bible is there anything that says: Believe in John Calvin and thou shalt be saved, or believe in Arminius and thou shalt be saved, or believe in the Synod of Dort and thou shalt be saved, or believe in the Thirty-nine Articles and thou shalt be saved? A man may be orthodox and go to hell, or heterodox and go to heaven. The man who, in the deep affection of his heart accepts Christ is saved, and the man who does not accept Him is lost. I believe in both the Heidelberg and Westminster catechism, and I wish you all did, but you may believe in nothing they contain except the one idea that Christ came to save sinners, and that you are one of them, and you are in- stantly rescued. If you can come in the grand old ship, I would rather have you get aboard, but if you can find only a piece of wood as long as the human body, or a piece as wide as the out- spread human arms, and either of them is a piece of the cross, come in on that piece. Tens of thousands of people are to-day kept out of the kingdom of God because they cannot believe ever5'thing. I am talking with a man thoughtful about his soul who has lately traveled through New England and passed the night at Andover. He saj's to me: "I cannot believe that in this life the destiny is irrevocably fixed; I think there will be another opportunity of repentance after death. ' ' I say to him: ' ' My brother, what has that to do with you ? Don't you realize that a man who waits for another chance after death when he has a good chance before death is a stark fool ? Had not you better take the plank that is thrown to you now and head for shore, rather than wait for a plank that may by invisible hands be thrown to you after you are dead ? Do as you please, but as for myself, with pardon for all my sins offered me now, and all the joys of time and eternity SAVED ON BROKEN PIECES OE THE SHIP. THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 305 offered me now, I instantly take them rather than run the risk of such another chance as wise men think they can peel off or twist out of a Scripture passage that has for all the Christian centuries been interpreted another way." THE SEA SHAiUtir^n. COUNSEL UPON PARENTAL DUTY AND RESPONSIBILITY- SEVERITY AND OVER-INDULGENCE. GOOD man was Judge EH, as described in the Book Samuel, but he let his two boys, Hophni and Phinehas, do as they pleased, and through over-indulgence they went to ruin. The blind old Judge, ninety-eight years of age, is seated at the gate waiting for the news of an important battle in which his two sons were at the front. An express is coming with tidings from the battle. This blind nonagen- arian puts his hand behind his ear, and listens, and cries: " What meaneth the noise of this tumult?" An excited messenger, all out of breath with the speed, said to him: " Our army is defeated. The sacred chest, called the Ark, is captured, and your sons are dead on the field." No wonder the father fainted and expired. The domestic tragedy in which these two sons were the tragedians had finished its fifth and last act. ' ' He fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck brake, and he died: for he was an old man, and heavy." Eli had made an awful mistake in regard to his children. The Bible distinctly says: " His sons made themselves vile and he restrained them not." Oh, the 10,000 mistakes in rearing children, mistakes of parents, mistakes of teachers in day-school and Sabbath-classes, mistakes which we all make. Will it not be useful to consider them ? THE ALL-CONQUERING ARMY. This country is going to be conquered b}^ a great arm}^ compared with which that of Baldwin I., and Xerxes, and Alexander, and Grant, and Lee, all put together, were in numbers insignificant. They will capture all the pulpits, store- houses, factories and halls of legislation, all our shipping, all our wealth, and all our honors. They will take possession of all authority, from the United States presidency down to the humblest constabulary — of everything between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. They are on the march now, and they halt neither daj^ nor night. They will soon be here, and all the present active population of this ■country must surrender and give way. I refer to the great army of children. 336 PATHWAY OF LIFE. Whether they shall take possession of ever}- thing for good or for bad depends upon the style of preparation through which they pass on their way from cradle to throne. Cicero acknowledges he kept in his desk a collection of prefaces for books, which prefaces he could at any time attach to anything he wanted to publish for himself or others; and all parents and teachers have all prepared the THE FIRST STEP. — Froui the Painting by Frank Pen/old. preface of every young life under their charge, and not only the preface, but the appendix, whether the volume be a poem or a farce. Families, and schools, and legislatures are in our day busily engaged in di.scussing what is the best mode of educating children. Before this question almost every other dwindles into insig- nificance, while dependent upon its proper solution is the welfare of government and ages eternal. Macaulay tells of the vvar which Frederick II. made against (337) ^3« THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. Queen Maria Theresa. And one da}' she appeared before the august Diet wearing mourning for her father, and held up in her arms before them her child, the Arch- duke. This so wrought upon the officers and deputies of the people that with half- drawn swords they broke forth in the war cry, " Let us die for our Queen, Maria Theresa !" So realizing that the bo}' of to-day is to be the ruler of the future, the popular sovereign, I hold him before the American people to arouse their enthusiasm in his behalf, and to evoke their oath for his defence, his edu- cation, and his sublime destiny. If a parent, you will remember when j-ou were aroused to these great re- sponsibilities, and when you found that j'ou had not done all required after you had admired the tiny hands, and the glossy hair, and the bright eyes that lay in the cradle, you suddenly remembered that that hand would yet be raised to bless the world with its benediction, or to smite it with a curse. In Ariosto's great poem there is a character called Ruggiero, who has THE QUEEN OF THE BARNYARD. THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 339 a shield of insufferable splendor, but it is kept veiled, save on certain occasions, and when uncovered it startled and overwhelmed its beholder, who before had no suspicion of its brightness. My hope here is to uncover the destiny of your •child or student, about which you may have no especial appreciation, and flash THE CHIMNEY SWEEP. — From tlic Painting- by /\ D. Hardy. upon you the splendors of its immortal nature. Behold the shield and the sword of its coming conflict. I propose in this essay to set forth what I consider to be some of the errors prevalent in the training of children. First, I remark that many err in too great severit}^ or too great leniency of family government. Between parental tyranny and ruinous laxativeness of dis- jcipline there is a medium. Sometimes the father errs on one side and the mother 340 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. on the other side. Good family government is all-important. Anarchy and mis- rule in the domestic circle is the forerunner of anarchy and misrule in the State. What a repulsive spectacle is a home without order or discipline; disobedience and impudence, and anger, and falsehood lifting their horrid front in the place which should be consecrated to all that is holy and peaceful and beautiful. In the attempt to avoid all this, and bring the, children under proper laws and regula- tions, parents have sometimes carried themselves with great rigor. John Howard, who was merciful to the prisons and lazarettos, was merciless in the treatment of his children. JOHN MILTON'S DOMESTIC BLUNDERS. John Milton knew everything but how to train his family. Severe and unreasonable was he in his carriage toward them. He made them read to him in four or five languages, but would not allow them to learn any of them, for he said that one tongue was enough for a woman. Their reading was mechanical drudgery, when, if they had understood the languages they read, the employment o^ reading might have been a luxury. No wonder his children despised him, and stealthily sold his books, and hoped for his death. In all ages there has been need of a society for the prevention of cruelty to children. When Barbara was put to death by her father because she had countermanded his order, and had three windows put in a room instead of two, this cruel parent was a type of many who had acted the Nero and the Robespierre in the home circle. The heart sickens at what you sometimes see, even in families that pretend to be Christian- perpetual scolding, and hair pulling, and ear boxing, and thumping, and stamp- ing, and fault-finding, and teasing, until the children are vexed beyond bounds and growl in the sleeve, and pout, and rebel, and vow within themselves that in after-days they will retaliate for the cruelties practiced. Many a home has become as full of dispute as was the home of John O' Groat, who built his house at the most northerly point in Great Britain. And tradition says that the house had eight windows and eight doors, and a table of eight sides, because he had eight children, and the only way to keep them out of bitter quarrel was to have a .separate apartment for each one of them. That child's nature is too delicate to be worked upon by sledge-hammer and gouge and pile-driver. Such fierce lashing, instead of breaking the high mettle to bit and trace, will make it dash off the more uncontrollable. Many seem to think that children are flax — not fit to use till they have been hackled and swingled. Some one talking to a child said: " I wonder what makes that tree out there so crooked?" The child replied: "I suppose it was trod on while it was young. " iMilllMiMMki. Tiiu PLGiusTic PVPiz.—From the Painting by Shut ze. (341) 342 THE PATHWAY OF I.IFK. THE FAMILY SCAPEGOAT. In some families all the discipline is concentrated upon one child's head. If anything is done wrong the supposition is that George did it. He broke the latch. He left open the gate. He hacked the banisters. He whittled sticks on the carpets. And George shall be the scapegoat for all domestic misunderstand- ings and suspicions. If things get wrong in the culinary department, in comes the mother and says, angrily: "Where is George?" If business matters are perplexing at the store, in comes the father at night and says, angrily: " Where is George ?' ' In many a household there is such a one singled out for suspicion and castigation. All the sweet flowers of his soul blasted under this perpetual northeast storm. He curses the day in which he was born. Safer the child in an ark of bulrushes on the Nile, among crocodiles, than in an elegant mansion, amid such domestic Gorgons. A mother was passing along the street one day and came up to her little child, who did not see her approach, and her child was saying to her playmate: " You good-for-nothing little scamp, you come right into the house this minute, or I will beat you till the skin comes off." The mother broke in, saying: " Why, Lizzie, I am surprised to hear you talk like that to any one !" "Oh," said the child, "I was only playing, and he is my little bo}^, and I am scolding him, as you did me this morning." Children are apt to be echoes of their parents. Safer in a Bethlehem manger among cattle and camels, with gentle Mary tO' watch the little innocent, than in the most extravagant nursery over which God's star of peace never stood. The trapper extinguishes the flames on the prairie by- fighting fire with fire, but you cannot, with the fire of your own disposition, put out the fire of a child's disposition. DANGERS OF OVER-INDULGENCE. Yet we may rush to the other extreme and ruin children by too great leniency. The surgeon is not unkind because, notwithstanding the resistance of his patient, he goes straight on with firm hand and unfaltering heart to take off the gangrene. Nor is the parent less affectionate and faithful because, notwithstanding all violent remonstrances on the part of the child, he, with the firmest discipline, advances to the cutting off of the evil inclinations. The Bible says: " Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying." Childish rage unchecked will, after a while, become a hurricane. Childish petulance will grow up into misanthropy. Childish rebellion will develop into the lawlessness of riot and sedition. If 3'ou would ruin the child, dance to his every caprice and stuff him with confectionery. Before you are aware of it that boy of six years will go down the street, a cigar in his mouth, and ready on any corner with his comrades to compare pugilistic attainments. The parent who -4^ INDULGENCE — THE RIVAL GRANDFATHERS. 1343) 344 THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. allows the child to grow up without ever having learned the great dutj^ of obedience and submission has prepared a cup of burning gall for his own lips and appalling destruction for his descendant. Remember Eli and his two sons, Hoplmi and Phinehas. A second error prevalent in the training of children is the laying out of a theory and following it without arranging it to varieties of disposition. In every family you will find striking differences of temperament. This child is too timid, and that too bold; and this too miserly, and that too wasteful; this too inactive, and that too boisterous. Now, the farmer, who should plant corn and wheat and turnips in just the same way, then put them through one hopper and grind them in the same mill, would not be so much of a fool as the parents who would attempt to discipline and educate all their children in the same manner. It needs a skillful hand to adjust these checks and balances. The rigidity of gov^^rnment which is necessary to hold in this impetuous nature would utterly crush that flexible disposition, while the gentle reproof that would suffice for the latter would, when used on the former, be like attempting to hold a champing Bucepha- lus with reins of gossamer, GOD'S HINTS TO PARENTS. God gives us, in the disposition of each child, a hint as to how we ought to train him, and as God, in the mental structure of our children, indicates what mode of training is the best, He also indicates, in the disposition, their future occupation. Do not write down that child as dull because it may not now be as brilliant as your other children or as those of your neighbor. Some of the mightiest men and women of the centuries had a stupid childhood. Thomas Aquinas was called at school ' ' the dumb ox, ' ' but afterward demonstrated his sanctified genius and was called ' ' the angel of the schools ' ' and ' ' the eagle of Brittany." Kindness and patience with a child will conquer almost anything, and they are virtues so Christ-like that they are inspiring to look at. John Wesley's kiss of a child on the pulpit stairs turned Mathias Joyce from a profli- gate into a flaming evangel. The third error prevalent in the training of children is the one-sided develop- ment of either the physical, intellectual, or moral nature at the expense of the others. Those, for instance, greatly mistake who, while they are faithful in the intellectual and moral culture of children, forget the physical. The bright eyes half-quenched by night study, the cramped chest that comes from too much bending over school-desks, the weak side resulting from sedentariness of habit, pale cheeks and the gaunt bodies of multitudes of children attest that physical development does not always go along with intellectual and moral. THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 345 TREASURES IN A SHATTERED CASKET. How do you suppose all those treasures of knowledge wnich a child gets will look in shattered caskets ? And how much will you give for the wealthiest cargo -when it is put in a leaky ship? How can that bright, sharp blade of a child's attainments be wielded without any handle? What are brains worth without shoulders to carry them ? What is a child with magnificent mind but an •exhausted body ? Better that a young man of twenty-one go forth in the world without knowing A from Z, if he have health of body and energy to push his way through the world, than at twenty-one to enter upon active life, his head stuffed with Socrates, and Herodotus, and Bacon, and I^a Place, but no physical force to sustain him in the shock of earthly conflicts. From this infinite blunder of par- ■ents how many have come out in life with a genius that could have piled Ossa upon Pelion and mounted upon them to scale the heavens, and have laid down panting with physical exhaustion before a mole-hill. They who might have thrilled senates and marshaled armies and startled the world with the shock of their scientific batteries, have passed their lives in picking up prescriptions for indigestion. They owned all the thunderbolts of Jupiter, but could not get out of their rocking-chair to use them. George Washington in early life was a poor speller, and spelled hat " h-a-double-t, " and a ream of paper he spelled " rheam," but he knew enough to spell out the independence of this country from foreign oppression. The knowledge of the schools is important, but there are other things quite as important. Just as great is the wrong done when the mind is cultivated and the heart neglected. The youth of this day are seldom denied any scholarly attainments. Our schools and seminaries are ever growing in efficiency, and the students are conducted through all the realms of philosophy, and art, and language, and mathematics. The most hereditary obtuseness gives way before the onslaught of adroit instructors. RELIGIOUS RESTRAINT ESSENTIAL. But there is a development of infinite importance which mathematics and the ■dead languages cannot effect. The more mental power the more capacity for evil, unless coupled with religious restraint. You discover what terrible power for evil unsanctified genius possesses when you see Scaliger, with his scathing denuncia- tions, assaulting the best men of his time; and Blount, and Spinoza, and Bolingbroke leading their hosts of followers into the all-consuming fires of skepticism and infidelity. Whether knowledge is a mighty good or an unmitigated evil depends •entirely upon which course it takes. The river rolling on between sound banks makes all the valley laugh with golden wheat and rank grass, and, catching hold the wheel of mill and factory, whirls it with great industries. But, breaking 346 THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. away from restraints and dashing over banks in red wrath, it washes away harvests from their moorings and makes the valleys shrink with the catastrophe. Fire in the furnace heats the house or drives the steamer; but, uncontrolled, ware- houses go down in awful crash before it, and in a few hours half a city will lie in black ruin, walls, and towers, and churches, and monuments. You must accompany the education of the intellect with the education of the heart, or you are rousing up within your child an energy which will be blasting and terrific. Better a wicked dunce than a wicked philosopher. The fourth error often committed in the training of children is the suppression of childish sportfulness. The most triumphant death of any child that I ever knew was that of Scoville Haynes McCollum. A few days before that he was at my house in Sj^racuse, and he ran like a deer and his halloo made the woods echo. You could hear him coming a block off, so full was he of romp and laughter and whistle. Don't put religion on your child as a strait-jacket. Parents, after having for a good many years been jostled about in the rough world, often lose their vivacity, and are astonished to see how their children can act so thoughtlessly of the earnest world all about them. That is a cruel parent who quenches any of the light in a child's soul. Instead of arresting its sportfulness, go forth and help him trundle the hoop, and fly the kite, and build the snow castle. Those shoulders are too little to carry a burden, that brow is too young to be wrinkled, those feet are too sprightly to go along at a funeral pace. God bless their young hearts ! LET THE CHILDREN ROMP. Now is the time for them to be sportful. Let them romp and sing and laugh, and go with a rush and a hurrah. In this way they gather up a surplus of energy for future life. For the child that walks around with a scowl, dragging his feet as though they were weights and sitting down by the hour in moping and grumbling I prophesy a life of utter inanition and discontent. Hush the robins in the air till they become silent as a bat, and lecture the frisking lambs on the hillside until they walk like old sheep, rather than put exhilarant childhood in the stocks. ■ The fifth error in the training of childhood is the postponement of its moral culture until too late. Multitudes of children because of their precocity have been urged into depths of study where they ought not to go, and their intellects have been overburdened and overstrained and battered to pieces against Latin grammars and algebras, and coming forth into practical life they will hardly rise to mediocrity; and there is now a stuffing and cramming system of education in the schools of our country that is deathful to the teachers who have to enforce it, and destructive to the children who must submit to the process. You find children at nine and ten years of age with school lessons only appropriate for children of fifteen. If children are kept in school and studying from nine to three o'clock, no THE PATHWAY OF UFE. 347 home study except music ought to be required of them. Six hours of stud}- is enough for any child. The rest of the day ought to be devoted to recreation and pure fun. But you cannot begin too early the moral culture of a child or on too complete a scale. You can look back upon your own life and remember what mighty impressions were made upon you at five or six ^-ears of age. Oh, that child does not sit so silent during your conversation to be uninfluenced by it. You say he does not understand. Although much of your phraseology is beyond his grasp, he is gathering up from your talk influences which will affect his immortal destiny. From the question he asks 3'ou long afterward you find he understood all about what you were saying. You think the child does not appreciate that beautiful cloud, but its most delicate lines are re- flected into the very depths of the youthful nature, and a score of years from now you will see the shadow of that cloud in the tastes and refinements developed. The song with which you sing that child to sleep will echo through all its life, and ring back from the very arches of heaven. I think that often the first seven years of a child's life decide whether it shall be irascible, waspish, rude, false, hypocritical, or gentle, truthful, frank, obedient, honest and Chris- tian. THE BEAUTY OF EARLY PIETY. ^ The present generations of men " °^^ ^^"^^^^ '''^^^" ^^"^ '^ heaven." will pass off very much as they are now. Although the gospel is offered them, the general rule is that drunkards die drunkards, thieves die thieves, libertines- die libertines. Therefore, to the youth w^e turn. Before they sow wild oats get them to sow wheat and barley. You fill the bushel measure with good corn and there will be no room for husks. Glorious Alfred Cooknian was converted at ten years of age. At Carlisle, Pa., during the progress of a religious meeting in a Methodist church, while many were kneeling at the foot of the altar, this boy knelt in a corner of the church, all by himself, and said: "Precious Saviour, Thou art saving others, oh, will Thou not save me?" A Presbyterian elder knelt 348 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. beside him and led him into the light. Enthroned Alfred Cookman ! Tell me from the skies, were you converted too early ? But I cannot hear his answer. It is overpowered by the huzzas of the tens of thousands who were brought to God through his ministry. Isaac Watts, the great Christian poet, was converted at nine years of age. Robert Hall, the great Baptist evangelist, was converted at twelve years of age. Jonathan Edwards, the greatest of American logicians, was converted at seven years of age. Oh, for one generation of holy men and women. Shall it be the next? Fathers and mothers, you, under God, are to decide whether from your families shall go forth cowards, inebriates, counterfeiters, blasphemers, and whether there shall be those bearing your image and carrying your name festering in the low haunts of vice, and floundering in dissipation, and making the midnight of their lives horrid with a long howl of ruin, or whether from your family altars shall come the Christian, the reformers, the teachers, the ministers of Christ, the com- forters of the troubled, the healers of the sick, the enacters of good laws, the founders of charitable institutions, and a great many who shall in the humbler spheres of toil and usefulness serve God and the best interests of the human race. You cannot as parents shirk the responsibility. God has charged you with a mission, and all the thrones of heaven are waiting to see whether you will do j^our duty. We must not forget that it is not so much what we teach our children, as what we are in their presence. We wish them to be better than we are, but the probability is that they will only be reproductions of our own character. German literature has much to say of the ' ' Spectre of Brocken. ' ' Among those mountains travelers in certain conditions of the atmosphere see themselves copied on a gigantic scale in the clouds. At first the travelers do not realize that it is themselves on a larger scale. When they lift a hand or move the head this monster spectre does the same, and with such enlargement of proportions that the scene is most exciting, and thousands have gone to that place just to behold the spectre of Brocken. The probability is that some of our faults which we consider small and insignificant, if we do not put an end to them, will be copied on a larger scale in the lives of our children, and perhaps dilated and exaggerated into spectral proportions. You need not go as far off as the Brocken to see that process. The first thing in impor- tance in the education of our children is to make ourselves, by the grace of God, fit examples to be copied. The day will come when you must confront that child, not in the church pew on a calm Sabbath, but amid the consternation of the rising dead, and the flying heavens and a burning world. From your side that son or daughter, bone of your bone, heart of your heart, the father's brow his brow, the mother's eye his eye, shall go forth to an eternal destiny. What will be your joy if at last you hear their feet in the same golden highway, and hear their voices in i iiilliiiSll'liiliii'"'™!'" ill I II 7M J/x't "our father who art in heaven." (349) 350 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. the same rapturous song, illustrations, while the eternal ages last, of what a faith- ful parent could, under God, accomplish ! THE DYING MOTHER'S REQUEST. I was reading of a mother who, dying, had all her children about her, and took each one of them by the hand and asked them to meet her in heaven, and with tears and sobs, such as those only know who have stood by the death-bed of a good old mother, they all promised. But there was a young man of nineteen who had been very wild and reckless, and hard, and proud, and when she took his hand, she said: ' ' Now, my boy, I want you to promise me before I die that you will become a Christian and meet me in heaven." The young man made no answer, for there was so much for him to give up if he made and kept such a promise. But the aged mother persisted in saying: "You won't deny me that before I go, will you ? This parting must not be forever. Tell me now you will serve God and meet me in the land where there is no parting. " Quaking with emotion, he stood making up his mind, and halting, and hesitating, but at last his stubborn- ness yielded, and he threw his arms around his mother's neck and said: "Yes, mother; I will, I will." And as he finished the last word of his promise her spirit ascended. I thank God the young man kept his promise. Yes, he kept it. May -God give all mothers and fathers the gladness of their children's salvation. \TQ:^iX^^ A DESCRIPTION OF CHRIST'S SACRIFICES AND THE MARVELOUS MAGNIFICENCE OF HEAVEN. 'T is absurd to suppose that all the worlds which on a cold winter's night make the heavens one great glitter are inhabitantless. Philoso- phers tell us that many of these worlds are too hot, or too cold, or too rarefied of atmosphere for residence. But if not fit for human abode, they may be fit for beings different from and superior to our- selves. We are told that the world of Jupiter is changing until it is almost fit for creatures like the human race, and that Mars would do for the human family, with a little change in the structure of the respiratory organs. But that there is a great world swung some- where, vast beyond imagination, and that it is the headquarters of the universe, and the metropolis of immensity, and has a popula- tion in numbers vast beyond all statistics, and appointments of splendor beyond the capacity of canvas, or poem, or angel to describe, is as certain as the Bible is authentic. Perhaps some of the astronomers with their big telescopes have already caught a glimpse of it, not knowing what it is. We spell it with six letters, and pronounce it — Heaven. A GLIMPSE OF HEAVEN. That is where Prince Jesus lived nineteen centuries ago. He was the King's son. It was the old homestead of eternity, and all its castles were as old as God. Not a frost had ever chilled the air. Not a tear had ever rolled down the cheek of one of its inhabitants. There had never been in it a headache, or a sideache, or a heartache. There had not been a funeral in the memory of the oldest inhabi- tant. There had never in all the land been woven a black veil, for there had never been anything to mourn over. The passage of millions of years had not wrinkled or crippled or bedimmed any of its citizens. All the people theie were in a state of eternal adolescence. What floral and pomonic richness ! Gardens of perpetual bloom and orchards in unending fruitage. Had some spirit from another world entered and asked: "What is sin? What is bereavement? What is sorrow? What is death ?' ' the brightest of the intelligences would have failed to give defini- tion, though to study the question there were silence in heaven for half an hour. (351) 352 THE PATHWAY OF I^IFE. The Prince of whom I spoke had honors, emoluments, acclamations, such as no other prince, celestial or terrestrial, ever enjoyed. As He passed the street, the inhabitants took off from their brows garlands of white lilies and threw them in the way. He never entered any of the temples without all the worshipers rising- up and bowing in obeisance. In all the processions of the high days He was the one who evoked the loudest welcome. Sometimes on foot, walking in loving talk with the humblest of the land, but at other times He took chariot, and among the 20,000 that David spoke of His was the swiftest and most flaming; or, as wiien John described Him, He took white palfrey, with what prance of foot,' and arch Tower of i^ondon. of neck, and roll of mane, and gleam of eye, is only dimly suggested in the Apoca- lypse. He was not like other princes, waiting for the Father to die and then take the throne. When, a few years ago, an artist in Germany made a picture for the Royal Gallery, representing Emperor William on the throne and the Crown Prince as having one foot on the step of the throne, Emperor William ordered the picture changed, and said: " lyct the Prince keep his foot off the throne till I leave it." THE WEALTH OF THE PRINCE. Already throned was the Heavenly Prince side by side with the Father. What a circle of dominion ! What myriads of admirers ! What unending round of (35^) 354 I'HE PATHWAY OF LIFE. glories ! All the towers chimed the Prince's praises. Of all the inhabitants, from the centre of the city on over the hills and clear down to the beach against which the ocean of immensity rolls its billows, the Prince was the acknowledged favorite. No wonder Paul says that " He was rich." Set all the diamonds of the earth in one sceptre, build all the palaces of the earth in one Alhambra, gather all the pearls of the sea in one diadem, put all the values of the earth in one coin, the aggregate would not express His affluence. Yes, Paul was right. Solomon had in gold $3,400,000,000, and in silver $5,145,- 001,885. But a greater than Solomon is here. Not the millionaire, but the quad- rillionaire of heaven. To describe His celestial surroundings the Bible uses all colors, gathering them in rainbow over the throne and setting them as agate in the temple window, and hoisting twelve of them into a wall from striped jasper at the base to transparent amethyst in the capstone, while between are green of emerald, and snow of pearl, and blue of sapphire, and yellow of topaz, and gray of chrj-so- prasus, and flame of jacinth. All the loveliness of landscape in foliage, and river and rill, and all enchantment aqua-marine, the sea of glass mingled with fire as the sun sinks in the Mediterranean. All the thrill of music, instrumental, and vocal, harps, trumpet, doxologies. There stood the Prince, surrounded by those who had under their wings the velocity of millions of miles in a second, rich in love, rich in adoration, rich in power, rich in worship, rich in holiness, rich as God. A FALLEN WORLD. But one day there was a big disaster in a department of God's universe. A race fallen ! A world in ruins ! Our planet the scene of catastrophe ! A globe swinging out into darkness, with mountains, and seas, and islands, an awful cen- trifugal of sin seeming to overpower the beautiful centripetal of righteousness, and from it a groan reached heaven. Such a sound had never been heard there. Plenty of sweet sounds, but never an outcry of distress, or an echo of agony. At that one groan the Prince rose from all the blissful circumjacence, and started for the outer gate, and descended into the night of this world. Out of what a bright harbor into what rough sea ! " Stay with us," cried angel after angel, and potentate after potentate. " No," said the Prince; " I cannot stay; I must be off for that wreck of a -world. I must stop that groan. I must hush that distress. I must fathom that ^woe. I must redeem those nations. Farewell, thrones and temples, companions <:herubic, seraphic, archangelic ! Excuse this absence, for I will come back again, •carrying on My shoulder a ransomed world. Till this is done I choose earthly ;scoff to heavenly acclamation, and a cattle-pen to a king's palace, frigid zone of •earth to atmosphere of celestial radiance. I have no time to lose, for hark ye to the groan that grows mightier* while I wait. Farewell ! Farewell ! m^i I - lllliniii!iiii|j^||||iiiii|||!ii|^[||[iii|iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii|:iil||^^^ THE ANCHOR OF THE SOUI,. (355^ 356 THK PATHWAY OF LIFE. CHRIST'S ARRIVAL ON EARTH. Was there ever a contrast so overpowering as that between the noonday of Christ's celestial departure and the midnight of His earthly arrival ? Sure enough, the angels were out that night in the sky, and especial meteors acted as escort, but all that was from other worlds and not from tliis world. The earth made no demonstration of welcome. If one of the great princes of this world steps out at a depot cheers resound, and the bands play, and the flags wave. But for the arrival of this missionary Prince of tlie skies not a torch flared, not a trumpet blew, not a plume fluttered. All the music and the pomp were overhead. Our world opened Jor Him nothing better than a barn door. The Rajah of Cashmere sent to Victoria a bedstead of carved gold and a canopy that cost $750,000, but the world had for the Prince of heaven and earth only a litter of straw. The Crown jewels in the Tower of London amount to $15,000,000, but this member of eternal royalty had nowhere to lay His head. To know how poor He was, ask the camel drivers, ask the shepherds, ask Mary, ask the three wise men of the East who afterward came there, young Caspar, middle-aged Balthaser and old Melchior. To know how poor He was, examine all the records of real estate in all that Oriental country and see what vineyard, or what house, or what field He owned. Not one. Of what mortgage was He the mortgagee ? Of what tenement was He the landlord ? Of what lease was He the lessee ? Who ever paid him rent ? Not owning the boat on which He sailed, or the beast on which He rode, or the pillow on w^hich He slept. He had so little estate that in order to pay His tax He had to perform a miracle, putting the amount of the assessment in a fish's mouth and having it hauled ashore. And after His death the world rushed in to take an inventory of His goods, and the entire aggregate was the garments He had worn, sleeping in them by night and traveling in them by day, bearing on them the dust of the highway and-the saturation of the sea. Paul did not go far from hitting the mark when He said of the missionary Prince: " For j^our sakes He became poor !" A CHILLING RECEPTION. The world could have treated Him better if it had chosen. It had all the means for making His earthly condition comfortable. Only a few years before, when Porapey, the General, returned in triumph, he was greeted with arches and a costly column which celebrated the 12,000,000 people whom he had killed or conquered, and he was allowed to wear his triumphal robe in the Senate. The world had applause for imperial butchers, but buffeting for the Prince of Peace; plenty of golden chalices for the favored to drink out of, but our Prince must put His lips to the bucket of the well by the roadside after he had begged for a drink. Poor ? Born in another man's barn and eating at another man's table, and cruis- ing the lake in another man's fishing-smack, and buried in another man's MATERNAI, JOY. (357) 358 THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. mausoleum. Four inspired authors wrote His biography, and innumerable lives of Christ have been published, but He composed His autobiography in the most compressed way. He said: " I have trodden the wine-press alone. " Poor in the estimation of nearly all the prosperous classes. They called Him Sabbath-breaker, wine-bibber, traitor, blasphemer, and ransacked the dictionary of opprobrium from lid to lid to express their detestation. I can think now of only two well-to-do men who espoused His cause, Nicodemus and Joseph, of Arimathea. His friends for the most part were people who, in that climate where ophthalmy or inflammation of the eyeball sweeps ever and anon as a scourge, had become blind, sick people who were anxious to get well, and troubled people in whose family there was some one dead or dying. If He had a purse at all it was empty, or we would have heard what was done with the contents at the post-mortem. Poor? The pigeon in the dove-cote, the rabbit in its burrow, the silk- worm in its cocoon, the bee in its hive is better provided for, better off, better sheltered. Ay, the brute creation has a home on earth, which Christ had not. But the Crown Prince of all heavenly dominion has less than the raven, less than the chamois, for He was homeless. Ay, in the history of the universe there is no other instance of such coming down. Who can count the miles from the top of the throne to the bottom of the cross ? Cleopatra giving a banquet to Antony, took a pearl worth $100,000 and dissolved it in vinegar and swallowed it. But when our Prince, according to the evangelist, in His last hours took the vinegar, in it had been dissolved all the pearls, of His heavenly royalty. Down until there was no other depth for Him to touch, troubled until there was no other harass- ment to suffer, poor until there was no other pauperism to torture. Billions of dollars spent in wars to destroy men, who will furnish the statistics of the value of that precious blood that was shed to save us ? THE GRACE OF GOD. One of John Bunyan's great books is entitled " Grace Abounding." " It is all of grace that I am saved " has been on the lips of hundreds of dying Christians. The boy Sammy was right when, being examined for admission into Church membership, he was asked: " Whose work was your salvation ?" and he answered: ** Part mine and part God's." Then the examiner asked: "What part did you do, Sammy ?" and the answer was: " I opposed God all I could, and He did the rest." Oh ! the height of it, the depth of it, the length of it, the breadth of it — the grace of God ! Mr. Fletcher having written a pamphlet that pleased the king, the king offered to compensate him, and Fletcher answered: " There is only one thing I want, and that is more grace. ' ' Yes, blood-bought readers, grace to live by and grace to die by. Grace that PAUL BEING TAKEN AWAY FROM PRISON TO ROME.— i^w^w a Painting by Bonn (359) 36o THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. saved the publican, that saved Lydia, that saved the dying thief, that saved the jailer, that saved me. But the riches of that grace will not be fully understood until heaven breaks in upon the soul. An old Scotchman who had been a soldier in one of the European wars, was sick and dying in one of our American hospitals. His one desire was to see Scotland and his old home, and once again walk the heather of the highlands and hear the bagpipes of the Scotch regiments. The iii^dit that the old Scotch soldier died, a young man, somewhat reckless but kind- hearted, got a company of musicians to come and play under the old soldier's window, and among thi instruments was a bagpipe. The instant that the musicians began, the dying old man, in delirium, said: " What's that, what's that? Why, it's the regiments coming home. That's the tune; yes, that's the tune. Thank God, I have got home once more !" ' ' Bonny Scotland and Bonny Doon ' ' were the last words he uttered as he passed up to the highlands of the better countr}-. When Artaxerxes was hunting, Tirebazus, who was attending him, showed the king a rent in his garment. The king said: " How shall I mend it ?" " By giving it to me," said Tirebazus. Then the king gave him the robe, but com- manded him never to wear it, as it would be inappropriate. See the startling and comforting fact ! While our Prince throws off the habit, He not only allows us to wear it, but commands us to wear it, and it will become us well, and for the poverties of our spiritual state we may put on the splendors of heavenly regalement. For our sakes ! Oh the personality of this religion ! Not an abstraction, not an arch under which we walk to behold elaborate masonry, not an ice castle like that which Empress Elizabeth, of Russia, over a hundred years ago ordered constructed, winter with its trowel of crystal cementing the huge blocks that had been quarried from the frozen rivers of the North; but a father's house, with a wide hearth crackling a hearty welcome. A religion of warmth and inspiration, and light and cheer; something we can take into our hearts, and homes, and business recreation, and joys and sorrows. Not an unmanageable gift, like the galley presented to Ptolemy, which required 4000 men to row, and its draught of water was so great that it could not come near the shore, but something you can run up any stream of annoyance, however shallow. Enrichment now, enrichment forever. The seven wise men of Greece were chief! 3' known each for one apothegm: Solon for the saying, " Know thyself; " Periander for the saying, " Nothing is impossible to industry; " Chilo for the saying, " Consider the end; " Thales for the saying, " vSuretyship is the precursor of ruin." And Paul, distinguished for a thousand utterances, might well afford to be memorable for the saying: " Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty- might be rich." ®oncorr^ ntXiX ^x^jccuci^* FOUNDING OF THE WORLD TO THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES. Y readers have all seen the ceremony at the laying of the corner-stone of church, asylum or Masonic temple. Into the hollow of the stone were placed scrolls of his- tory and important documents, to be suggestive if, one or two hundred years after, the building should be destroyed by fire or torn down. We remember the silver trowel or iron hammer that smote the square piece of granite into sanctity. We remember some venerable man who presided, wielding the trowel or hammer. We remember also the music, as the choir stood on the scattered stones and tim- ber of the building about to be constructed. The leaves of the note-books fluttered in the wind, and were turned over with a great rustling, and we remember how the bass, barytone, tenor, con- tralto and soprano voices commingled. They had for many days been rehearsing the special programme that it might be worthy of the corner-stone laying. Job, the poet of Uz, reminds us of a grander ceremony than an)' mortal eyes have ever witnessed when he asks: " Who laid the corner-stone thereof when the morning stars sang together ? ' ' — the laying of the foundation of this great temple of a world. The corner-stone was a block of light and the trowel was of celestial crystal. All about and on the embankments of cloud stood the angelic choristers, unrolling their librettos of overture, and other worlds clapped shining cymbals while the ceremony went on, and God, the architect, by stroke of light after stroke of light, dedicated this great cathedral of a world, with moun- tains for pillars, and sky for frescoed ceiling, and flowering fields for floor, and sunrise and midnight aurora for upholstery. A MUSICAL PORTFOLIO. The fact is that the whole universe was a complete cadence, an unbroken dithyramb, a musical portfolio. The great sheet of immensity had been spread out, and written on it were the stars, the smaller of them minims, the larger of them sustained notes. The meteors marked the staccato passages, the whole (361) 362 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. heavens a gamut, with all sounds, intonations and modulations, the space between the worlds a musical interval, trembling of stellar light, a quaver, the thunder a bass clef, the wind among the trees a treble clef. That is the way God made all things in perfect harmony. But one day a harp-string snapped in the great orchestra. One day a voice sounded out of tune. One day a discord, harsh and terrific, grated upon the glorious antiphone. It was sin that made the dissonance, and that harsh discord has been sounding through the centuries. All the work of Christians and philan- thropists and reformers of all ages is to stop that discord, and get all things back into the perfect harmony which was heard at the laying of the corner-stone, when the morning stars sang together. I hope here to show you that sin is discord and righteousness is harmony. That things in general are out of tune is as plain as to a musician's ear is the unhappy clash of clarionet and bassoon in an orchestral rendering. The world's health out of tune: Weak lung and the at- mosphere in collision, disordered eye and noonday light in quar- rel, rheumatic limb and damp THE MORNING OF THE woRi,D. wcatlicr iu Struggle, neuralgias, and pneumonias, and consumptions, and epilepsies in flocks swoop upon neigh- borhoods and cities. Where you find one person with sound throat, and keen eyesight, and alert ear, and easy respiration, and regular pulsation, and supple Hmb, and prime digestion, and steady nerves, you find a hundred who have to be very careful because this, or that, or the other ph^'sical function is disordered. The human intellect out of tune: The judgment wrongly swerv^ed, or the memory leaky, or the will weak, or the temper inflammable, and the well-balanced mind exceptional. Domestic life out of tune: Only here and there a conjugal outbreak of incompatibility of temper through the divorce courts, or a filial out- break about a father's will through the surrogate's court, or a case of wife-beating or husband-poisoning through the criminal gourts, but thousands of families with June outside and January within. Society out of tune: Labor and capital, their hands on each other's throat. Spirit of caste keeping those down in the social scale in a struggle to get up, and putting those who are up in anxiety lest they have to come down. No wonder WTTLE sister's EVII. HOUR. (363) -364 THE PATHWAY OF UFE. ithe old piano-forte of society is all out of tune, when hypocrisy, and lying, and subterfuge, and double-dealing, and sycophancy, and charlatanism and •revenge have for six thousand years been banging away at the keys and stamping the pedals. On all sides there is a perpetual shipwreck of harmonies. Nations in discord. Without realizing it, so wrong is the feeling of nation for nation that the symbols chosen are fierce and destructive. In this country, where our skies are full of robins, and doves, and morning larks, we have our national symbol, the fierce and filthy eagle, as immoral a bird as can be found in all the ornithological catalogues. In Great Britain, where they have lambs and fallow-deer, their symbol is the merciless lion. In Russia, where, from between her frozen north and blooming ■south, all kindly beasts dwell, they choose the growling bear, and in the world's heraldry a favorite figure is the dragon, which is a winged serpent, ferocious and •deathful. FOND OF CONTENTION. And so fond is the world of contention that we climb out through the heavens .and baptize one of the other planets with the spirit of battle and call it Mars after the god of war, and we give to the eighth sign of the zodiac the name of the scorpion, a creature which is chiefly celebrated for its deadly sting. But, after all, these symbols are expressive of the way nation feels toward nation. Discord wide as the continent and bridging the seas. I suppose you have noticed how warmly in love dry goods stores are with other dry goods stores, and how highly grocery- men think of the sugars of the grocery men on the same block. And in what a ■eulogistic way allopathic and homoeopathic doctors speak of each other, and how many ministers will sometimes put ministers on their beautiful cooking instrument which the English call a spit, an iron roller with spikes on it and turned by a crank before a hot fire, and then if the minister being roasted cries out against it, the men who are turning him say: " Hush, brother ! we are turning this spit for the glory of God and the good of your soul, and you must be quiet while v/e •close the service with: Blest be the tie that binds Our hearts in Christian love." The earth is diametered and circumferenced with discord, and the music that was rendered at the laying of the world's corner-stone, when the morning stars sang together, is not heard now; and though here and there, from this and that part of society, and from this and that part of the earth, there comes up a thrilling solo of love, or a warble of worship, or a sweet duet of patience, they are drowned •out bv a discord that shakes the earth. THK PATHWAY OF LIFE. 365- Paul says: ' ' The whole creation groaneth." And while the nightingale, and the woodlark, and the canary, and the plover sometimes sing so sweetly that their notes have been written out in musical notation, and it is found that the cuckoo- sings in the kej^ of D, and that the cormorant is a basso in the winged choir, yet THE BOAT SONG. sportsman's gun and the autumnal blast often leave them ruffled and bleeding, or dead in meadow or forest. Paul was right, for the groan in nature drowns out the prime donne of the sky. THE DEVIL'S SONATA. Tartini, the great musical composer, dreamed one night that he made a contract with Satan, the latter to be ever in the composer's service. But one night he handed to Satan a violin, on which Diabolus played such sweet music that the composer was awakened by the emotion and tried to reproduce the sounds, and 366 THK PATHWAY OF LIFE. therefrom was written Tartini's most famous piece, entitled the " Devil's Sonata," a dream ingenious but faulty, for all melody descends from heaven, and only discords ascend from hell. All hatreds, feuds, controversies, back-bitings and revenges are the devil's sonata, are diabolic fugue, are demoniac phantasy, are grand march of doom, are allegro of perdition. But if in this world things in general are out of tune to our frail ear, how much more so to ears angelic and divine. It takes a skilled artist fully to appre- ciate disagreement of sound. Many have no capacity to detect a defect of musical execution, and, though there were in one bar as many offences against harmony as could crowd in between the lower F" of the bass and the higher C of the soprano, it would give them no discomfort, while on the forehead of the educated artist beads of perspiration would stand out as a result of the harrowing disso- nance. While an amateur w^as performing on a piano, and had just struck the Avrong chord, John Sebastian Bach, the immortal composer, entered the room and the amateur rose in embarrassment, and Bach rushed past the host, who stepped forward to greet him, and before the keyboard had stopped vibrating, put his adroit hand upon the kej^s and changed the painful inharmony into glorious _ •cadence. Then Bach turned and gave salutation to the host who had invited him. MORAL DISCORD. But the worst of all discords is moral discord. If society and the world are painfully discordant to imperfect man, what must they be to a perfect God ? People try to define wdiat sin is. It seems to me that sin is getting out of harmony with God, a disagreement with His holiness, with His purity, with His love, with His commands; our will clashing with His will, the finite dashing against the Infinite, the frail against the puissant, the created against the Creator. If a thousand musicians, wdth flute, and cornet-a-piston, and trumpet, and violoncello, and hautboy, and trombone, and all the wind and stringed instruments that e\-er gathered in a Dusseldorf jubilee, should resolve that they would pla}- out of tune, and put concord to the rack, and make the place wild with shrieking, and grating, and rasping sounds, they could not make such a pandemonium as that which rages in a sinful soul when God listens to the play of its thoughts, passions and emotions — discord, lifelong discord, maddening discord. The world pays more for discord than it does for consonance. High prices have been paid for music. One man gave $225 to hear the Swedish songstress in New York, and another $625 to hear her in Boston, and another $650 to hear her in Providence. Fabulous prices have been paid for sweet sounds, but far more has been paid for discord. The Crimean War cost $1,700,000,000, and our American Civil War over $9,500,- 000,000, and the war debts of professed Christian nations are about $15,000,000,000. The world pays for this red ticket, which admits it to the Saturnalia of broken THE PATHWAY OF UFE. 367 bon s, and death agonies, and destroyed cities, and plowed graves, and crushed hcci.ts, any amount of money Satan asks. Discord ! Discord ! OVERTURE OF THE MORNING STARS. But I have to tell you that the song that the morning stars sang together at the laying of the world's corner-stone is to be resumed again. Mozart's greatest overture was composed one night when he was several times overpowered with sleep, and artists say they can tell the places in the music where he was falling asleep, and the places where he awakened. So the overture of the morning stars, spoken of in Job, has been asleep, but it will awaken and be more grandly rendered by the evening stars of the world's existence than by the morning stars, and the vespers will be sweeter than the matins. The work of all good men and women, and of all good churches, and all reform associations, is to bring the race back to the original harmony. The rebellious heart to be attuned, social life to be attuned, commercial ethics to be attuned, internationalit}^ to be attuned, hemi- spheres to be attuned. But by what force and in what way ? In olden times the choristers had a tuning-fork with two prongs, and they would strike it on the back of pew or music-rack and put it to the ear, and then start the tune, and all the other voices would join. In modern orchestra the leader has a complete instrument rightly attuned, and he sounds that, and all the other performers turn the keys of their instruments to make them correspond, and sound the bow over the string, and listen, and sound out over again until all the keys are screwed to concert pitch, and the discords melt into one great symphony, and the curtain hoists, and the baton taps, and audiences are raptured with Schu- mann's "Paradise and the Peri," or Rossini's " Stabat Mater," or Bach's ^' Magnificat" in D, or Gounod's " Redemption." THE INSTRUMENT TO ATTUNE THE WORLD. Now our world can never be attuned by an imperfect instrument. Even a Cremona would not do. Heaven has ordained the only instrument, and it is made out of the wood of the cross, and the voices that accompany it are imported voices, cantatrices of the first Christmas night, when Heaven serenaded the earth with: " Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men." Many men have thought to get their heart heavenly attuned by withdrawing from the world and living like Hieronymus, with a lion merely to remind them of a power dangerous unless controlled, but love moves us more mightily than fear. lycst we start too far off and get lost in generalities, we had better begin with ourselves — get our own hearts and life in harmon}^ with the eternal Christ. Oh, for His almighty spirit to attune us, to chord our will with His will, to modulate 368 THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. our life with His life, and bring us into unison with all that is pure and self^ sacrificing and heavenly. The strings of our nature are all broken and twisted, and the bow is so slack it cannot evoke anything mellifluous. The instrument made for Heaven to play on has been roughly twanged and struck by influences worldly and demoniac. O master hand of Christ, restore this split, and fractured, and despoiled, and unstrung nature, until first it shall wail out for our sin, and then thrill with divine pardon. The whole world must also be attuned by the same power. Some time ago I was in the Fairbanks Weighing Scale Manufactory of Vermont. Six hundred hands, and they have never had a strike. Complete harmony l^etween labor and capital, the operatives of scores of years in their beautiful homes near by the mansions of the manu- facturers whose invention and Chris- tian behavior made the great enter- pri.se. So, all the world over, labor and capital will be brought into euphony. THE ANVIL CHORUS. You may have heard what is called the ' ' Anvil Chorus, ' ' composed by Verdi, a tune plaj^ed by hammers, great and small, now with mighty stroke, and now with heavy stroke, beating a great iron anvil. That is what the world has got to come to — anvil chorus, j-ard-stick chorus, shuttle chorus, trowel chorus, crowbar chorus, pick-axe chorus, gold-mine chorus, rail-track chorus, locomotive chorus. It can be • done, and it will be done. So all social life will be attuned by the gospel harp. There will be as many classes in society as now, but the classes will not be regulated by birth, or wealth, or accident, but by the scale of virtue and benevolence, and people will be assigned to their places as good, or ver>' good, or most excellent. So, also, commercial life will be attuned, and there will be twelve in every dozen , and sixteen ounces in every pound, and apples at the bottom of the barrel will be as sound as those on the top, and silk goods will not be cot- ton, and sellers will not have to charge honest people more than the right price becau.se others will not pay, and goods will come to you corresponding^ with the sample by which you purchased them, and coffee will not be chickoried, and sugar AT THE CROSS. WORKSHOP OF A PHII^OSOPHER O.F THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. Hieronymus, a German recluse of great piety, fitted up a room with many comforts in the mountains near Wurtemburg, and for years had no other companions than a dog and pet lion. During his retire- ment he made hundreds of holy figures in which one or both of these animals were invariably prominent. 24 (369) 370 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. will not be sanded, and milk will not be chalked, and adulteration of food will be a States prison offence. Ay, all things shall be attuned. Elections in England and the United States will no more be a grand carnival of defamation and scurrility, but the elevation of righteous men in a righteous way. In the sixteenth centur}- the singers called the Fischer Brothers reached the lowest bass ever recorded, and the highest note ever trilled was by I^a Bastardella, and Catalini's voice had a compass of three and a half octaves; but Christianity is more wonderful, for it runs all up and down the greatest heights and the deepest depths of the world's necessity. All the sacred music in homes, and concert halls and churches tends toward this consummation. Make it more and more hearty. Sing in your families and places of business. If we with proper spirit use these faculties, we are rehearsing for the skies. A NEW SONG. Heaven is to have a new song, an entirely new song, but I should not wonder if, as sometimes on earth a tune is fashioned out of man}- tunes, or it is one tune with the variations, so some of the songs of the redeemed may have played through them the songs of earth; and how thrilling, as coming through the great anthem of the saved, accompanied by harpers with their harps and trumpeters with their trumpets, we should hear some of the strains of "Antioch," and "Mount Pisgah," and "Coronation," and "Eenox," and "St. Martin's," and "Fountain," and "Ariel, and "Old Hundred," How they would bring to mind the praying circles and communion days, and the Christmas festivals, and the Church worship in which on earth we mingled ? I have no idea that when we bid farewell to earth we are to bid farewell to all these grand old gospel hymns, which melted and raptured our souls for so many years. Now, my readers, if sin is discord and righteousness is harmony, let us get out of the one and enter the other. After our dreadful Civil War was over, and in the summer of i86g, a great national peace jubilee was held in Boston, and, as an elder of my church had been honored by the selection of some of his music to be rendered on that occasion, I accompanied him to the jubilee. Forty thousand people sat and stood in the great Colosseum erected for that purpose. Thousands of wind and stringed instru- ments. Twelve thousand trained voices. The masterpieces of all ages rendered, hour after hour, and day after day — Handel's "Judas Maccabaeus," Spohr's " Last Judgment, " Beethoven's " Mount of Olives," Ha3^dn's "Creation," Men- delssohn's "Elijah," Meyerbeer's "Coronation March," rolling on and up in surges that billowed against the heavens. The mighty cadences within were accompanied on the outside by the ringing of the bells of the city and cannon on the commons, in exact time with the music, discharged by electricity, thundering A POEM OF LOVE. (371) 37^ THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. their awful bars of a harmony that astounded all nations. Sometimes I bowed my head and wept. Sometimes I stood up in the enchantment, and sometimes the effect was so overpowering I felt I could not endure it. When all the voices were in full chorus, and all the batons in full wave, and all the orchestra in full triumph, and a hundred anvils under mighty hammers were in full clang, and all the towers of the city rolled in their majestic sweetness, and the whole building quaked with the boom of thirty cannon, Parepa Rosa, with a voice that will never again be equaled on earth until the archangelic voice proclaims that time shall be no longer, rose above all other sounds in her render- ing of our national air, the Star-Spangled Banner. It was too much for a mortal, and quite enough for an immortal, to hear, and while some fainted, one w^omanly spirit, released under its power, sped away to be with God. O Lord, our God, quickly usher in the whole world's peace jubilee; let all islands of the sea join the five continents, and all the voices and musical instru- ments of all nations combine, and all the organs that ever sounded requiem of sorrow sound only a grand march of joy, and all the bells that tolled for burial ring for resurrection, and all the cannon that ever hurled death across the nations sound to eternal victory, and over all the acclaim of earth and minstrelsy of heaven there will be heard one voice sweeter and mightier than any human or angelic voice, a voice once full of tears, but then full of triumph, the voice of Christ saying: " I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." Then, at the laying of the top-stone of the world's history, the same voices shall be heard as when at the laying of the world's corner-stone, "the morning stars sang together. ' ' 3[fi5rrXir|:^r:^f;en l^jcrni^g. BAD LITERATURE, STOCK GAMBLING, CARD PLAYING, FARO AND STRONG DRINK. *ARVElvOUSIyY ingenious in architecture is the hone)^-bee, a Christopher Wren among insects, a geometer drawing hex- agons and pentagons, a free-booter robbing the fields of pollen and aroma, a wonderous creature of God, whose biography, written by Huber and Swammerdam, is an enchantment for any lover of nature. Virgil celebrated the bee in his fable of Aristseus, and Moses, and Samuel, and' David, and Solomon, and Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and St. John used the delicacies of bee manufacture as Bible symbol. A miracle of formation is the bee; five eyes, two tongues, the outer having a sheath of protection hairs on all sides of its tiny body to brush up the particles of flowers; its flight so straight that all the world knows of the bee-line. The honeycomb is a palace such as no one but God could plan, and the honej^-bee construct; cells sometimes a dormitory, and sometimes a storehouse, and sometimes a cemetery. These winged toilers first make eight strips of wax, and by their antennae, which are to them hammer, and chisel, and square, and plumb-line, fashion them for use. Two and two, these workers shape the \Vall. If an accident happen they put up buttresses or extra beams to remed)^ the damage. When, abovit the year 1776, an insect, before unknown, in the night time attacked the bee-hives all over Europe, and the men who owned them were in vain trying to plan something to keep out the invader that was the terror of the bee-hives of the continent, it was ■found that everywhere the bees had arranged for their own protection, and built before their honey-combs an especial wall of wax, with port- hole through which the bees might go to and fro, but not large enough to admit the winged combatant, called the sphinx atropos. Do 3^ou know that the swarming of the bees is divinely directed ? The mother bee starts for a new home, and because of this the other bees of the hive get into some excitement, which raises the heat of the hive some four degrees, and they must die unless they leave their heated apartments, and they follow the mother bee and alight on the branch of a tree, and cling to each other and hold (373) 374 THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. on until a committee of two or three have explored the region and found the hol- low of a tree or rock not far off from a stream of water, and they here set up a new colony and ply their aromatic industries, and give themselves to the manufac- ture of the saccharine edible. But who can tell the chemistry of that mixture of sweetness, part of it the very life of the bee and part of it the life of the fields ? THE FORBIDDEN HONEY. Plenty of this luscious product was hanging in the woods of Bethaven during the time of Saul and Jonathan. Their army was in pursuit of an enemy that by God's command must be exterminated. The soldiery were positively forbidden to stop to eat anything until the work was done. If they disobeyed they were accursed. Coming through the w^oods they found a place where the bees had been busy — a great honey manufactory. Honey gathered in the hollow of trees until it had overflowed upon the ground in great profusion of sweetness. All the army obeyed orders and touched it not, save Jonathan, and he, not knowing the military order about abstinence, dipped the end of a stick he had in his hand into the candied liquid, and as yellow, and brown, and tempting, it glowed on the end of ■the stick, he put it to his mouth and ate the honey. Judgment fell upon him, and but for special intervention he would have been slain. Jonathan announces his awful mistake thus: " I did but taste a little honey with the end of the rod that was in my hand, and, lo, I must die." Alas, what multitudes of people in all ages have been damaged by forbidden honey — by which I mean temptation — delicious and attractive, but damaging and destructive. lyiterature, fascinating but deathful, comes in this category'. "Where one good, honest, healthful book is read now there are one hundred made up of rhetorical trash consumed with avidity. When the boy on cars comes through with a pile of publications, look over the titles and notice that nine out of ten of the books are depleting and injurious. All the way from New York to Chicago or New Orleans, notice that objectionable books dominate. Taste for pure literature is poisoned by this scum of the publishing house. Everj^ book in which sin triumphs over virtue, or in which a glamour is thrown over dissipation, or which leaves you at its last line with less respect for the marriage institution, and less abhon'ence for the paramour, is a depression of your own moral character. The book binding may be attractive, and the plot dramatic and startling, and the style of writing sweet as the honey that Jonathan dipped up with his rod, but your best interests for- bid it, your moral safety forbids it, your God forbids it, and one taste of it may lead to such bad results that you may have to say at the close of the experiment, or at the close of a misimproved lifetime: " I did but taste a little hone}^ with the rod that was in my hand, and, lo, I must die." THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 375 CORRUPT INFLUENCE OF BAD BOOKS. Corrupt literature is doing more to-day for the disruption of domestic life than any other cause. Elopements, marital intrigues, sly correspondence, fictitious names given at post-office windows, clandestine meetings in parks, and at ferrj^ gates, and in hotel parlors, and conjugal perjuries are among the damnable results. When a woman, young or old, gets her head thoroughh- stuffed with the modern novel she is in appalling peril. But some one will say: "The heroes are so adroitly knavish, and the persons so bewitch- ingly untrue, and the turn of the story so exquisite, and all the characters so enrapturing, I cannot quit them." My brother, my sister, you can find stjdes of literature just as charming that will elevate and purify, and ennoble, and Chris- tianize while they plea.se. The devil does not own all the honey. There is a wealth of good books coming forth from our publishing houses that leaves no excuse for the choice of that w^hich is debauching to bod}', mind and soul. Go to some intelligent men and women, and ask for a list of books that will be strengthen- ing to your mental and moral "^"^^ novei, j^eadkr. condition. I^ife is so short and your time for improvement so abbreviated, that you cannot afford to fill up with husks, and cinders, and debris. In the interstices of business that young man is reading that which will prepare him to be a merchant prince, and that young woman is filling her mind with an intelligence that will yet either make her the chief attraction of a good man's home, or give her an independence of character that will qualify her to build her own home and main- tain it in a happiness that requires no augmentation from any of our rougher sex. That young man or young woman can, by the right literary and moral improvement 376 THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. of the spare ten minutes here or there in every day, rise head and shoulders in prosperity, and character, and influence above the loungers who read nothing or that which bedwarfs. See all the forests of good American literature dripping with honey. Why pick up the honey-combs that have in them the fiery bees which will sting you with an eternal poison while you taste it ? One book may for you or me decide everything for this world or the next. It was a turning point with me when in Wynkoop's book store, Syracuse, one day I picked up a book called " The Beauties of Ruskin." It was only a book of extracts, but it was all pure honey, and I was not satisfied until I had purchased all his works, at that time expensive beyond an easy capacity to own them, and what a heaven I went through in reading his "Seven I^amps of Architecture," and his "Stones of Venice." It is impossible for me to describe except by saying that it gave me a rapture for good books, and an everlasting disgust for decrepit or immoral books that will last me while my immortal soul lasts. All around the Church and the world to-day there are busy hives of intelligence occupied by authors and author- esses from whose pen drip a distillation which is the very nectar of heaven, and why will you thrust your rod of inquisitiveness into the deathful saccharine of perdition ? THE FALSE HONEY OF STIMULANTS. Stimulating liquids also come into the category of temptations delicious but deathful. You say: " I cannot bear the taste of intoxicating liquor, and how any man can like it is to me an amazement." Well then, it is no credit to you that you do not take it. Do not brag about your total abstinence, because it is not from any principle that you reject alcoholism, but for the same reason that you would reject certain styles of food — you simply don't like the taste of them. But multi- tudes of people have a natural fondness for all kinds of intoxicants. They like it so much that it makes them smack their lips to look at it. They are dyspeptic, and they take it to aid digestion; or they are annoyed by insomnia, and they take it to produce sleep; or they are troubled, and they take it to make them oblivious; or they feel good and they must celebrate their hilarity. They begin with mint julep sucked through two straws on the Long Branch piazza and end in the ditch, taking from a jug a liquid half kerosene and half whisky. They not only like it, but it is an all-consuming passion of body, mind and soul, and after a while have it they will, though one wine-glass of it should cost the temporal and eternal destruction of themselves, and all their families, and the whole human race. They would say: " I am sorry it is going to cost me, and my family, and all the world's population so very much, but here it goes to my lips, and now let it roll over my parched tongue and down my heated throat, the sweetest, the most inspiring, the most rapturous thing that ever thrilled mortal or immortal. ' ' THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 377 To cure the habit before it comes to its last stages, various plans were tried in olden times. This plan was recommended in the books: When a man wanted to reform he put shot or bullets into the cup or glass of strong drink — one addi- tional shot or bullet each day, that displaced so much liquor. Bullet after bullet AFTKR The feast, "YOUR LITTLE BILL, SIR." — FroDi the Painting by F. Dadd. added da}' by day, of course the liquor became less and less until the bullets would entirely fill up the glass and there was no room for the liquid, and by that time it was said the inebriate would be cured. Whether any one ever was cured in that 378 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. way I know not, but by long experiment it is found that the only way is to stop short off, and when a man does that he needs God to help him. And there have been more cases than you can count when God has so helped the man that he quit forever, and I could count a score of them to-day, some of them pillars in the house of God. One would suppose that men would take warning from some of the ominous names given to the intoxicants, and stand off from the devastating influence. You have noticed, for instance, that some of the restaurants are called " The Shades," typical of the fact that it puts a man's reputation in the shade, and his morals ia the shade, and his prosperity in the shade, and his wife and children in the shade, and his immortal destiny in the shade. Now, I find on some of the liquor signs in all of our cities the words "Old. Crow," mightily suggestive of a carcass and the filthy raven that swoops Upon it. "Old Crow!" Men and women without numbers slain of rum, but unburied, and this evil is pecking at their glazed eyes, and pecking at their bloated cheek, and pecking at their destroyed manhood and womanhood, thrusting beak and claw into the mortal remains of what was once gloriously alive, but now morally dead. " Old Crow !" But alas, how many take no warning. They make me think of Caesar on his way to assassination, fearing nothing; though his statue in the hall crashed into fragments at his feet, and a scroll containing the names of the con- spirators was thrust into his hands, yet walking right on to meet the dagger that was to take his life. This infatuation of strong drink is so mighty in many a man that though his fortunes are crashing, and his health is crashing, and his domestic interests are crashing, and we hand him a long scroll containing the names of perils that await him, he goes straight on to physical, and mental, and moral assas- sination. In proportion as any style of alcoholism is pleasant to your taste, and stimulating to your nerves, and for a time delightful to all your physical and mental constitution, is the peril awful ! Remember Jonathan and the forbidden honey in the woods of Bethaven. Furthermore, the gamester's indulgence must be put in the list of temptations delicious but destructive. I have croSvSed the ocean eight times, and always one of the best rooms has, from morning till late at night, been given up to gambling practices. I heard of many men who went on board with money enough for a European excursion who landed without money enough to get their baggage up to- the hotel or railroad station. To many there is a complete fascination in games of hazard, or the risking of money on possibilities. It seems as natural for them to bet as to eat. Indeed, the hunger for food is often overpowered with the hunger for wagers, as in the case of Lord Sandwich, a persistent gambler, who, not being willing to leave the dice table long enough for the taking of food, invented a pre- paration of food that he could take without stopping the game, namely, a slice of THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 379 beef between two slices of bread, which was named after Lord Sandwich. It is absurd for those of us who never felt the fascination of the wager to speak slight- ingly of the temptation. It has slain a multitude of intellectual and moral giants, men and women, stronger than jou or I. Down under its power went glorious Oliver Goldsmith, and Gibbon, the historian, and Charles Fox, the statesman, and in olden times famous Senators of the United States, who used to be as regularly at the gambling house all night as they were in the halls of legislation by day. FARO AND CARD PLAYING. Oh, the tragedies of the faro table ! I know persons who began with a slight stake in a ladies' parlor, and ended with the suicide's pistol at Monte Carlo. The)-- played with the square pieces of bone with black marks on them, not knowing that Satan was playing for their bones at the same time, and was sure to sweep all the stakes off on his side of the table. The New York Legislature recently sanc- tioned the might)^ evil by passing a law for its defence at the race-tracks, and many young men in these cities lost all their wages at Coney Island and were tempted into borrowing from the money tills of their employers or arranging by means of false entry to adjust their demoralized finances. Every man who voted for the Ives pool bill has on his hands and forehead the blood of these souls. But in this connection some young converts say to me: "Is it right to play cards? Is there any harm in a game of whist or euchre?" Well, I know good men who play whist and euchre and other styles of games without any wagers. I had a friend who played cards with his wife and children, and then at the close said: "Come, now, let us have prayers." I will not judge other men's con- sciences, but I will tell you that cards are in my mind so associated with the tem- poral and eternal damnation of splendid young men, that I should no sooner say to my family: "Come, let us have a game of cards," than I would go into a menagerie and say, " Come, let us have a game of rattlesnakes," or into a ceme- tery, and, sitting down by a marble slab, say to the grave-diggers, " Come, let us have a game of skulls." Conscientious young ladies are silently saying: "Do you think card playing will do us any harm?" Perhaps not; but how will you feel if in the great day of eternity, when we are asked to give an account of our influence, some man shall say to you: " I was introduced to games of chance in the year 1888, at your house, and I went on from that sport to something more exciting, and went on down until I lost my business, and lost my morals, and lost my soul, and these chains that 3^ou see on my wrists and feet are the chains of a gamester's doom, and I am on my way to a gambler's hell." Honey at the Start — eternal catastrophe at the last. Stock gambling comes into the same catalogue. It must be very exhilarating to go into Wall street. New York, or State street, Boston, or Third street. THE PATHWAY OF I,IFE. Philadelphia, and depositing a small sum of money, run the risk of taking out a fortune. Many men are doing an honest and safe business in the stock market, and you are an igno- ramus if you do not know that it is just as legitimate to deal in stocks as to deal in coflFee, or sugar, or flour. But nearly all the outsiders who go there on a little financial excursion lose all. The old spiders eat up the unsuspecting flies. I had a friend who put his hand on his hip pocket and said to me in sub- stance: "I have there the value of $150,000." His home is to-day penniless. What was the matter? Wall street. Of the vast ma- jority who are victimized you hear not one word. One great stock firm goes down and whole columns of newspapers discuss their fraud, or their disaster, and we are presented with their features and their biography. But where one such famous firm sinks, five hundred unknown men sink with them. The great steamer goes down and all the little boats are swallowed in the same engulfment. I^ike Boad- icea of old, who, in wreaking her vengeance, brought destruc- tion on thousands of innocents, and lastly upon her own head. Gambling is gambling, whether in stocks or bread- stuffs or dice or race-track bet- ting. Exhilaration at the start, and a raving brain, and a shat- tered nervous system, and a sac- rificed propert}^ and a destroyed soul at the last. Young man, buy no lotterj^ tickets, purchase no prize packages, bet on no base-ball games or yacht racing, have no faith in luck, answer no mysterious circulars proposing Boadicea was an An^'o, Or British, heroine, queen of the Iceni. Havinsr been basely and harshly treated by the Romans, she headed an insurrection, which destroyed several Roman settle- ments and then reduced London to ashes, A. D. about 60. She was afterwards defeated by Paulinus, and being taken prisoner, she put an end to her life by poison. THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 381 great income for small investment, shoo away the buzzards that hover around our hotels trying to entrap strangers. Go out and make an honest living. Have God on your side and be a candidate for heaven. Remember all the paths of sin are banked with flowers at the start, and there are plenty of helpful hands to fetch the gay charger to your door and hold the stirrup while you mount. But further on the horse plunges to the bit in a slough inextricable. The best hone}- is not like that which Jonathan took on the end of the rod and brought to his lip, but that which God puts on the banqueting table of mercy, at which we are all invited to sit. I was reading of a boy among the mountains of Switzerland ascending a dan- gerous place with his father and the guides. The boy stopped on the edge of the cliff, and said: "There is a flower I mean to get." " Come away from there," said the father; " you will fall off." " No," said he; " I must get that beautiful flower;" and the guides rushed toward him to pull him back, when they heard him say, " I almost have it," as he fell 2000 feet. Birds of prey were seen a few days after circling through the air and lowering gradually to the place where the corpse lay. SEEK ONLY THE HONEY OF HEAVEN. Why seek flowers off the edge of a precipice when you may walk knee-deep amid the full blooms of the very paradise of God ? When a man may sit at a king's banquet, why will he go down the steps and contend for the gristle and bones of a hound's kennel? "Sweeter than honey and the honey-comb," says David, "is the truth of God." "With honey out of the rock would I have satisfied thee," saj-s God to the recreant. Here is honej^ gathered from the blossoms of trees of life, and with a rod made out of the wood of the cross I dip it up for all your souls. The poet Hesiod tells of an ambrosia and a nectar, the drinking of which would make men live forever, and one sip of this honey from the Eternal Rock will give 3-ou immortal life with God. Come off the malarial levels of a sinful life. Come and live on the uplands of grace where the vineyards sun themselves. Oh, taste and see that the L,ord is gracious. Be happy now and happ}^ forever. For those who take a different course the honey will turn to gall. For man}' things I have admired Percy Shelley, the great English poet, but I deplore the fact that it was a great sweetness to him to dishonor God. The poem "Queen Mab " has in it the maligning of the Deity. The infidel poet was impious enough to ask for Rowland Hill's Surrey Chapel that he might denounce the Christian religion. He was in great glee against God and the truth. But he visited Italy, and one day on the Mediterranean with two friends in a 382 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. boat, which was twenty-four feet long, he was coming toward shore when a great squall struck the water. A gentleman standing on shore through a glass saw many boats tossed in this squall, but all outrode the terror except one, that in which Shelley, the infidel poet, and his two friends were sailing. That never came ashore, but the bodies of two of the occupants were washed upon the beach, one of them the poet. A funeral pyre was built on the seashore by some classic friends, and the two bodies were consumed. His glory went up with the flames that consumed him, like the funeral pyre of the Nor.se King who thought to perpetuate his name on earth and secure everlasting blessing hereafter by having his body devoured by fire, and his spirit accompanied thither by the soul of a self-sacrificed wife and the burning of prisoners. Poor Shelley ! He would have no God while he lived, and he probably had no God when he died. "The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish." M^J^ )itJCti^i o^ ^mcjci^^^* REVERSES THAT REFINE CHARACTER AND ELEVATE THE SUFFERER. OTHING in the world can keep a good man down. God has decreed for him a certain elevation to which he must attain. He will bring him through though it cost Him a thousand worlds. There are men constantly in trouble lest they shall not be appreciated. Every man comes in the end to be valued at just what he is worth. How often you see men turn out all their forces to crush one man or set of men. How do they succeed ? No better than did the government that tried to crush Joseph. Learn from the story of Joseph that the world is compelled to honor Christian character. Potiphar was only a man of the world, yet Joseph rose in his estimation until all the aifairs of that great house were committed to his charge. From this servant no honors or confidences were withheld. When Joseph was in prison he soon won the heart of the keeper, and, though placed there for being a scoundrel, he soon convinced the jailer that he was an innocent and trustworthy man, and, released from close confinement, he became a general superintendent of prisoa affairs. Wherever Joseph was placed — whether a servant in the house of Potiphar or a prisoner in the penitentiary — he became the first man everywhere, and is an illustration of the truth I lay down, that the world is compelled to honor •Christian character. Chr3'sostom, when threatened with death by Budoxia, the Empress, sent word to her, saying: " Go tell her that I fear nothing but sin." Such nobility of character will always be applauded. There was something in Agrippa and Felix which demanded their respect for Paul, the rebel against government. I doubt not that they would willingly have yielded their office and dignity for the thousandth part of that true heroism which beamed in the eye and beat in the heart of the unconquerable apostle. The infidel and worldling are compelled to honor in their hearts, though they maj^ not eulogize with their lips, a Christian firm in persecution, cheerful in poverty, trustful in losses, triumphant in death. I find Christian men in all professions and occupations and I find them respected and honored, and successful. John Frederick Oberlin alleviating igno- rance and distress; John Howard passing from dungeon to lazaretto, with healing for the body and soul; Elizabeth Fry coming to the profligates of Newgate Prison (383) 382 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. boat, which was twenty-four feet long, he was coming toward shore when a great squall struck the water. A gentleman standing on shore through a glass saw many boats tossed in this squall, but all outrode the terror except one, that in which Shelley, the infidel poet, and his two friends were sailing. That never came ashore, but the bodies of two of the occupants were washed upon the beach, one of them the poet. A funeral pyre was built on the seashore by some classic friends, and the two bodies were consumed. His glory went up with the flames that consumed him, like the funeral pyre of the Norse King who thought to perpetuate his name on earth and secure everlasting blessing hereafter by having his body devoured by fire, and his spirit accompanied thither by the soul of a self-sacrificed wife and the burning of prisoners. Poor Shelley ! He would have no God while he lived, and he probably had no God when he died. " The L,ord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish." ®It^ S^^r^ei i>t SwjrjCj0j$3$^ REVERSES THAT REFINE CHARACTER AND ELEVATE THE SUFFERER. OTHING in the world can keep a good man down. God has decreed for him a certain elevation to which he must attain. He will bring him through though it cost Him a thousand worlds. There are men constantly in trouble lest they shall not be appreciated. Every man comes in the end to be valued at just what he is worth. How often you see men turn out all their forces to crush one man or set of men. How do they succeed ? No better than did the government that tried to crush Joseph. Learn from the story of Joseph that the world is compelled to honor Christian character. Potiphar was only a man of the world, yet Joseph rose in his estimation until all the affairs of that great house were committed to his charge. From this servant no honors or confidences were withheld. When Joseph was in prison he soon won the heart of the keeper, and, though placed there for being a scoundrel, he soon convinced the jailer that he was an innocent and trustworthy man, and, released from close confinement, he became a general superintendent of prisoM affairs. Wherever Joseph was placed — whether a servant in the house of Potiphar or a prisoner in the penitentiary — he became the first man everywhere, and is an illustration of the truth I lay down, that the world is compelled to honor •Christian character. Chrysostom, when threatened with death by Eudoxia, the Empress, sent word to her, saying: " Go tell her that I fear nothing but sin." Such nobility of character will always be applauded. There was something in Agrippa and Felix which demanded their respect for Paul, the rebel against government. I doubt not that they would willingly have yielded their office and dignity for the thousandth part of that true heroism which beamed in the eye and beat in the heart of the unconquerable apostle. The infidel and worldling are compelled to honor in their hearts, though they ma}^ not eulogize with their lips, a Christian firm in persecution, cheerful in poverty, trustful in losses, triumphant in death. I find Christian men in all professions and occupations and I find them respected and honored, and successful. John Frederick Oberlin alleviating igno- rance and distress; John Howard passing from dungeon to lazaretto, with healing for the body and soul; Elizabeth Fry coming to the profligates of Newgate Prison (383) 384 THE PATHWAY OF I.IFK. to shake down their obduracy, as the angel came to the prison at Phihppi, driving open the doors and snapping locks and chains, as well as the lives of thousands of the followers of Jesus who have devoted themselves to the temporal and spiritual ELIZABETH FRY PLEADING EOR THE PARDON OF CONVERTED CRIMINALS. From the Painting by Eviile Wauters. welfare of the race, are monuments of the Christian religion that shall not crumble while the world lasts. A man in the cars said: " I would like to become a Christian if I only knew what religion is. But if this lying and cheating, and bad behavior among men who profess to be good, is religion, I want none of it." But, my readers, if I am an artist in Rome, and a man comes to me and asks what the art of painting is, I must not show him the daub of some mere pretender. I will take him to the THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 385 Raphaels and the Michael Angelos. It is most unfair and dishonest to take the ignominious failures in Christian profession instead of the glorious successes. PERSECUTIONS BRING ABOUT VICTORIES. I go into another department and I find that those great denominations of Christians which have been most abused have spread the most rapidl}-. No good man was ever more vilely maltreated than John Wesley. His followers were hooted at and ma- ligned and called by every detestable name that infernal ingenuity could invent, but the hot- ter the persecution the more rapid the spread of that denomination until you know what a great host they have become, and what a tremendous force for God and the truth they are wielding all the world over. It was persecution that gave Scotland to Presbyte- rianism. It was perse- cution which gave our own land first to civil liberty and afterwards to religious freedom. Yea, I may go further back and say it was persecu- tion that gave the world the great salvation of the gospel. The ribald mockery, the hungering and thirsting, the unjust trial and ignominious death, where all the force of hell's fury was hurled against the cross, where the introduction of that religion which is yet to be the earth's deliverance from 25 THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. SEBASTIAN. — Ft'om the Painting by Antonio Pollainolo. 386 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. guilt and suffering, and her everlasting enthronement among the principalities of heaven. The fires of the stake have only been the torches which Christ held in His hand by the light of which the Church has marched to her present position. In the sound of racks and implements of torture I hear the rumbling of the wheels of the gospel chariot. Scaffolds of martyrdom have been the stairs by which the Church has ascended. Aquafortis is the best test of pure gold, CRIME WILL OUT. Furthermore, our subject impresses us that sins will come to exposure. Eong, long ago had these brothers sold Joseph into Egypt. They had suppressed the crime, and it was a profound secret, well kept by the brothers. But suddenly the secret is out. The old father hears that his son is in Egypt, having been sold there by the malice of his own brothers. How their cheeks must have burned and their hearts sunk at the flaming out of this suppressed crime. The smallest iniquity has a thousand tongues, and they will blab out an exposure. Saul was sent to destroy the Canaanites, their sheep and their oxen. But when he got down there among the pastures he saw some fine sheep and oxen too fat too kill, and so he thought he would steal them. He drove them towards home, but stopped to report to the prophet how well he had executed his commis- sion, when in the distance the sheep began to bleat and the oxen to bellow. The secret was out, and Samuel said to the blushing and confounded Saul: "What means the bleating of the sheep that I hear and the lowing of the cattle?" Ay, dear reader, you cannot keep an iniquity quiet. At just the wrong time the sheep will bleat and the oxen will bellow. Achan cannot steal the Babylonish garment without getting stoned to death. Eook over the police arrests — these thieves, these burglars, these adulterers, these counterfeiters, these highwaymen, these assassins. They all thought they could bury their iniquity so deep down that it would never come to resurrection. But there was some shoe that answered to the print in the sand, some false keys found in possession, some bloody knife that whispered of the deed, and the public indignation and the anathema of out- raged law hurled him into the Tombs or hoisted him on the gallows. EASIER TO SIN THAN TO GET OUT OF IT. At the close of the battle between the Dauphin of France and the Helvetians, Burchard Monk was so elated with the victory that he lifted his helmet to look off upon the field, when a wounded soldier hurled a stone that struck his uncovered forehead and he fell. Sin will always leave some point exposed, and there is no safety in iniquit5\ Francis the First, King of France, was discussing how it was best to get his army into Italy. Amaril, the court fool, sprang out from the corner FAILURE — PLEASURE BEFOkn isuciiiMiaa. — ^jicr u Fainting by Emanuel Spitzer. (3S7) 388 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. and said to the king and his staff officers: " You had better be thinking how you will get your army back out of Italy after once you have entered." In other words, it is easier for us to get into sin than to get out of it. White- field was riding on horseback in a lonely way with some missionary money in a sack fastened to the saddle-bags. A highwayman sprang out from the thicjjet and put his hand out toward the gold, when Whitefield turned upon him and said: " That belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ; touch it if you dare," and the villain fell back empty-handed into the thicket. Oh, the power of conscience ! If offended it becomes God's avenging minister. Do not think that you can hide any great and protracted sin in your hearts. In an unguarded moment it will slip off the lip, or some slight occasion may for a moment set ajar this door of hell that }ou wanted to keep closed. But suppose that in this life you hide it, and you get along with that transgression burning in your heart, as a ship on fire within for days may hinder the flame from bursting out by keeping down the hatchways, yet at last, in the judgment, that iniquity will blaze out before the throne of God and the universe. ALL EVENTS LINKED TOGETHER. Furthermore, learn from this subject the inseparable connection between all events however remote. Lord Hastings was beheaded one year after he had caused the death of the queen's children, in the very month, the verj^ day, the ver>- hour and the very moment. There is wonderful precision in the divine judgments. The universe is only one thought of God. Those things which seem fragmentary and isolated are only different parts of that one great thought. How far apart seemed these two events — ^Joseph sold to the Arabian merchants and the rulership of Egypt. Yet 3'ou see in what a mysterious way God connected the two in one plan. So all events are linked together. You who are aged can look back and group together a thousand things in your life that once seemed isolated. One undivided chain of events reached from the Garden of Eden to the cross of Calvarj^ and thus up to heaven. There is a relation between the smallest insect that hums in the summer air and the archangel on his throne. God can trace a direct ances- tral line from the bluejay that last spring built its nest in a tree behind the house to some one of that flock of birds which, when Noah hoisted the ark's window, with a whirl and a dash of bright wings went out to sing over Mount Ararat. The tulips that bloomed this summer in the flower-bed were nursed of last winter's snow flakes. The furthest star on one side the universe could not look to the fur- thest star on the other side and say: " You are no relation to me;" for from that bright orb a voice of light would ring across the heavens responding; " Yes, yes;, we are sisters." Sir Sidney Smith, in prison was playing lawn-tennis in the yard and the ball flew over the wall. Another ball containing letters was thrown back> SUCCESS -BUSINESS BEFORE PLEASURE.— v4//f^r a Pai7itins^ by Emanuel Spitzer. (.^89) 390 THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. and so communication was opened with the outside world, and Sidney Smith escaped in time to defeat Bonaparte's Egyptian expedition. What a small acci- EXECUTION OK LOKD HASTINGS. dent connected with what vast result ! Sir Robert Peel, from a pattern he drew on the back of a pewter dinner-plate, got suggestions of that which led to the important invention by which calico is printed. THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 391 GOD'S PLANS BEYOND OUR COMPREHENSION. Nothing in God's universe swings at loose ends. Accidents are only God's way of turning a leaf in the book of His eternal decrees. From our cradle to our grave there is a path all marked out. Each event in our life is connected with every other event in our life. Our loss may be the most direct road to our gain. Our defeats and victories are twin brothers. The w'hole direction of your life was changed by something which at the time seemed to 3'ou a trifle, while some occur- rence w^hich seemed tremendous affected you but little. The Rev. Dr. Kennedy, of Basking Ridge, New Jersey, went into his pulpit one Sabbath, and by a strange freak of memory forgot his subject and forgot his text, and in great embarrass- ment rose before his audience and announced the circumstance and declared him- self entirely unable to preach; then launched forth in a few earnest words of entreaty and warning, which resulted in the outbreaking of the mightiest revival of religion ever known in that State, a revival that resulted in churches still stand- ing and in the conversion of a large number of men who entered the gospel ministry, who have brought their thousands to the kingdom of God. Finall)^ learn from this subject that in ever>' famine there is a storehouse. Up the long row of buildings, piled to the very roof with corn, came the hungry multitudes, and Joseph commanded that their sacks and their wagons be filled. The world has been blasted. Every green thing has withered under the touch of sin. From all continents, and islands, and zones comes up the groan of dying millions. Over tropical spice-grove, and Siberian ice hut, and Hindoo jungle the blight has fallen. The famine is universal. But, glorj' be to God, there is a great storehouse. Jesus Christ, our elder brother, this day bids us come in from our hunger and beggary, and obtain infinite supplies of grace, enough to make us rich forever. Many of you have for a long while been smitten of the famine. The world has not stilled the throbbing of your spirit. Your conscience sometimes rouses you up w^ith such suddenness and strength that it requires the most gigantic determination to quell the disturbance. Your courage quakes at the thought of the future. Oh ! why will you tarrj^ amid the blastings of the famine when such a glorious storehouse is open in God's mercy ? I^otr^l 33JiDrnt^ni7Cro3bf> ANGELS OF MERCY THAT FEED THE POOR, COMFORT IN ADVERSITY AND SPREAD THE BALM OF GRACE OVER BATTLE-FIELD AND HOSPITAL. ^OLOMON, by one stroke, set forth the imperial character of a true Christian woman. She is not a slave, not a hireling, not a subordinate, but a queen; and as such, Solomon sees sixty of these helping to make up the roj^al pageant of Jesus. In a previous essay, I showed you that crown, and courtly attendants, and imperial wardrobe were not necessary to make a Queen; but that graces of the heart and life will give coronation to any woman. I showed you at some length that woman's position was higher in the world than man's, and that although she had often been denied the right of suffrage, she always did vote and always would vote by her influence; and that her chief desire ought to be that she should have grace rightly to rule in the dominion which she has already won. I began an enumeration of some of her rights, and in this paper I resume the subject. In the first place, woman has the special and superlative right — not again going back to what I have already written — woman has the special and superlative right of blessing and comforting the sick. What land, what street, what house, has not felt the smitings of disease? Tens of thousands of sick beds ! What shall we do with them ? Shall man, with his rough hand and clumsy foot, go stumbling around the sick-room trying to soothe the distracted nerves, and alleviate the pains of the tossing patient ? The young man at college may scoff at the idea of being under maternal influences; but at the first blast of the typhoid fever on his cheek, he says: "Where is mother?" Walter Scott wrote partly in satire and partly in compliment when he said: O woman, in our hours of ease. Uncertain, coy and hard to please ; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou. I think the most pathetic passage in all the Bible is the description of the lad who went out to the harvest field of Shunem and got sunstruck— throwing his (392) THE OUREN OF SYMPATHY.— Frow the Painting by Alexander Cabonel. (393) 394 I'HE PATHWAY OF LIFE. hands on his temples and crying out: " Oli, my head ! my head !" and they said: " Carry him to his mother," And the record is: " He .sat on her knees till noon, and then died." THE MINISTRIES OF HOME. it is an awful thing to be ill away from home in a strange hotel; once in a while men coming in to look at you, holding their hand over their mouth for fear they will catch the contagion. How roughly they turn you in bed. How loudly they talk. How you long for ministries of home. I knew one such who went away from one of the brightest of homes for several weeks' business absence at the West. A telegram came at midnight that he was on his death-bed, far awa)^ from home. By express train the wife and daughter went westward, but they were too late. He feared not to die, but he was in an agony to live until his family got there. He tried to bribe the doctors to make him live a little while longer. He said: " I am willing to die, but not alone." But the pulses fluttered, the eyes closed and the heart stopped. The express trains met in the midnight; wife and daughter going westward — lifeless remains of husband and father coming eastward. Oh, it was a sad, pitiful, overwhelming spectacle ! When we are sick we want to be sick at home. When the time comes for us to die, we want to die at home. The room may be very humble, and the faces that look into ours may be very plain; but who cares for that ? Loving hands to bathe the temples. Loving voices to speak good cheer. Loving lips to read the comforting promises of Jesus. In our last dreadful war men cast the cannon; men fashioned the musketry; men cried to to the hosts: " Forward, march !" men hurled their battalions on the sharp edges of the enemy, crying: "Charge ! charge !" but woman scraped the lint; woman administered the cordials; woman watched by the dying couch; woman wrote the last message to the home circle; woman wept at the solitary burial attended by herself and four men with a spade. WOMAN'S HEROISM. We greeted the general home with brass bands, and triumphal arches, and wild huzzas; but the story is too good to be written anywhere, save in the chronicles of heaven, of Mrs. Brady, who came down among the sick in the swamps of the Chickahominy ; of Annie Ross, in the cooper-shop hospital; of Margaret Breckinridge, who came to men who had been for weeks with their wounds undressed, some of them frozen to the ground, and when she turned them over, those that had an arm left waved it and filled the air with their " hurrah;" of Mrs. Hodge, who came from Chicago with blankets and with pillows, until the men shouted: " Three cheers for the Christian Commission ! God bless the women at home," then sitting down to take the last message: " Tell my wife not to fret about me, but to meet me in heaven. Tell her to train up the boys whom we THK PATHWAY OF LIFE. 395 have loved so well. Tell her we shall meet again in the good land. Tell her to bear my loss like the Christian wife of a Christian soldier;" and of Mrs. Shelton, A FEAST OP CHERRIES. into whose face the convalescent soldier looked and said: "Your grapes and cologne cured me. " Men did their work with shot, and shell, and carbine, and 396 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. howitzer. Women did their work with sock.s, and slippers, and bandages, and warm drinks, and vScripture texts, and gentle strokings of the hot temples, and stories of that land where the}- never have any pain. Men knelt down over the wounded and said: " On which side did you fight?" Women knelt down over the wounded and said : " Where are you hurt? What nice thing can I make for you to eat? What makes you cry?" To-night, while men are sound asleep in their beds, there will be a light in yonder loft; there will be groaning down that dark alley; there will be cries of distress in that cellar. Men will sleep, and women will watch. FRIENDS OF THE POOR. Again, woman has a superlative right to take care of the poor. There are hundreds and thousands of them all over the land. There is a kind of work that men cannot do for the poor. Here comes a group of little barefoot children to the door of the Dorcas Society. They need to be clothed and provided for. Wliich of these directors of banks would know how many j-ards it would take to make that little girl a dress ? Which of these masculine hands could fit a hat to that little girl's head? Which of the wise men would know how to tie on that new pair of shoes? Man sometimes gives his charity in a rough way, and it falls like the fruit of a tree in the East, which fruit comes down so heavily that it breaks the skull of the man who is trying to gather it. But woman glides so softly into the house of destitution, and finds out all the sorrows of the place, and puts so quietly the donation on the table, that all the familj^ come out on the front steps as she departs, expecting that from under her shawl she will thrust out two wings and go right up toward heaven, from whence she seems to have come down, O Christian 3'oung woman ! if you would make yourself happy and win the blessing of Christ, go out among the destitute. A loaf of bread or a bundle of socks may make a homely load to carry, but angels of God will come out to watch, and the Lord Almighty will give his messenger hosts a charge, saying: " Look after that woman. Canopy her with your wings and shelter her from all harm;" and while you are seated in the house of destitution and suffering, the little ones around the room will whisper: "Who is she? Ain't she beautiful?" and if you will listen right sharply you will hear dripping down through the leaky roof, and rolling over the rotten stairs the angels' chant that shook Bethlehem: Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, good will to men. PROTECTED BY GOD. Can 5^ou tell me why a Christian woman going down among the haunts of iniquity on a Christian errand never meets with any indignity ? I stood in the LoNFlDEN'CE. (397) 400 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. matter ?' ' but he believes it a sort of Christian duty to keep all that trouble withirk his own soul. Oh, sir, your first duty was to tell your wife all about it. She, perhaps, might not have disentangled you finances or extended your credit, but she would have helped you to bear misfortune. You have no right to carry on one shoulder that which is intended for two. There came a crisis in your affairs. You struggled bravely and long, but after a while there came a day when you said: " Here I shall have to stop," and 3'ou called in your partners, and you called in the most prominent men in your employ, and you said: " We have got to stop." You left the store suddenly. You could hardly make up your mind to pass through the street and over on the ferry-boat. You felt everybody would be looking at you, and blaming you, and denouncing you. You hasten home. You told your wife- all about the affair. What did she say ? Did she play the butterfl}- ? Did she talk about the silks, and the ribbons, and the fashions ? No. She came up to the emergency. She quailed not under the stroke. She helped you to begin to plan right away. She offered to go out of the comfortable house into a smaller one, and wear the old cloak another winter. She was one who understood your affairs with- out blaming you. You looked upon what you thought was a thin, weak woman's arm holding you up; but while you looked at that arm there came into the feeble muscles of it the strength of the eternal God. No chiding. No fretting. No- telling you about the beautiful house of her father, from which j-ou brought her, ten, twenty or thirty years ago. You said: "Well, this is the happiest day of my life. I am glad I have got from under my burden. My wife doesn't care, I don't care." WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY. At the moment you were utterly exhausted God sent a Deborah to meet the host of the Amalekites and scatter them like chaff over the plain. There are sometimes women who sit reading sentimental novels, and who wish that they had some grand field in which to display their Christian powers. Oh, what grand and glorious things they could do if they only had an opportunity ! My sister, you need not wait for any such time. A crisis will come in 3'our affairs. There will be a Thermopylae in your own household where God will tell you to stand. There are scores and hundreds of households to-day where as much braver}^ and courage are demanded of women as was exhibited b}' Grace Darling, or Marie Antoinette or Joan of Arc. It is woman's right to bring to us the kingdom of heaven. It is easier for a woman to be a Christian than for a man. Why? You say she is weaker. No. Her heart is more responsive to the pleadings of divine love. She is in vast majority. The fact that she can more easily become a Christian I prove by the statement that three-fourths of the members of the churches in all Christendom are women. So God appoints them to be the chief agencies for bringing this world back to- THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 401 Him. I may say the soul is immortal. There is a man who will refute it. I may say we are lost and undone, without Christ. There is a man who will refute it. I say there will be a judgment day after a wdiile. Yonder is some one who will refute it. But a Christian woman in a Christian household, living in the faith and the consistency of Christ's gospel -nobody can refute that. The great- est sermons are not preached on celebrated platforms: they are preached with an audience of two or three, and in private home life. A consistent, consecrated Christian service is an unanswerable demonstration of God's truth. Oh, what a multitude of women in heaven ! Mar>% Christ's mother, in heaven; Elizabeth Fry in heaven; Charlotte Elizabeth in heaven; the mother of WHERE THE WOODS LIFT THEIR HEADS IN PRAISE. Augustine in heaven; the Countess of Huntingdon, wdio .sold her .splendid jewels to build chapels, in heaven, while a great many others who have never been heard of on earth, or known but little, have gone into the rest and peace of heaven. REST IN HEAVEN. What a rest ! What a change it was from the small room, with no fire and one window, the gla.ss broken out, and the aching side, and worn-out eyes, to the "house of many mansions ! " No more stitching until twelve o'clock at night, no more thrusting of the thumb by the employer through the work to show it was 26 402 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. not done quite right. Plenty of bread at last. Heaven for aching heads. Heaven for broken hearts. Heaven for anguish-bitten frames. No more sitting up until mid- night for the coming of staggering steps. No more rough blows across the temple. No more sharp, keen, bitter curses. Some of you will have no rest in this world. It will be toil, and struggle, and suffering all the way up. You will have to stand at your door fighting back the wolf with your own hand, red with carnage. But God has a crown for you. I want you to realize that He is now making it, and whenever you weep a tear He sets another gem in that crown, until, after a while, in all the tiara there will be no room for another splendor, and God will say to His angel: "The crown is done: let her up that she may wear it." And as the Lord of righteousness puts the crown upon your brow, angel will cry to angel: " Who is she?" and Christ will say: " I will tell you who she is. She is the one that came up out of great tribulation. ' ' And then God will spread a banquet, and He will invite all the principalities of heaven to sit at the feast; and the tables will blush with the best clusters from the vineyards of God, and crimson with the twelve manner of fruits from the Tree of Life; and waters from the fountains of the rock will flash from the golden tankards; and the old harpers of heaven will sit there, making music with their harps; and Christ will point you out, amid the celebrities of heaven, saying: " She suffered with Me on earth, now we are going to be glorified together. ' ' And the banqueters, no longer able to hold their peace, will break forth with congratula- tion: "Hail! hail!" And there will be handwritings on the wall — not such as struck the Persian nobleman with horror — but fire-tipped fingers, writing in blazing capitals of light, and love, and victory: " God hath wiped away all tears from all faces !" SFnTpliDfjinT^itt xix ^:etti;>jeiT* OCCUPATIONS IN THE CELESTIAL WORLD NOT DIFFERENT FROM THOSE ON EARTH. ZKKIEIy, with others, had been expatriated, and while in foreign slavery, standing on the banks of the royal canal which he and other serfs had been condemned to dig by the order of Nebuchadnezzar — this ro^-al canal, in the Bible called the river of Chebar, the illustrious exile had visions of heaven. Indeed, it is almost alwaj'S so that the brightest visions of heaven come not to those who are on mountain top of prosperity, but to some John on desolate Patmos, or to some Paul in Mamertine dungeon, or to some Ezekiel standing on the banks of a ditch he had been compelled to dig — yea, to the weary, to the heart-broken, to those whom sorrow has banished. The Bible is very particular to give us the exact time of the vision. It was in the thirtieth 3'ear, and in the fourth month, and in the fifth day of the month. So you have had visions of earth you shall never forget. You remember the year, you remember the month, you remember the day, j-ou remember the hour. The question is often silently asked, though perhaps never audibly propounded: "What are our departed Christian friends doing now?" The question is more easily answered than you might perhaps suppose. Though there has come no recent intelligence from the heavenly city, and we seem dependent upon the story of eighteen centuries ago, still I think we may from strongest inference decide what are the present occupations of our transferred kinsfolk. After God has made a nature He never eradicates the chief characteristics of its temperament. You never knew a man phlegmatic in temperament to become sanguine in temperament. You never knew a man sanguine in temperament to become phlegmatic in temperament. Conversion plants new principles in the soul, but Paul and John are just as different from each other after conversion as they were different from each other before conversion. If conversion does not (403) 404 THE PATHWAY OF I^IFE. eradicate the prominent characteristics of the temperament neither will death eradi- cate them. You have, then, only by a sum in subtraction and a sum in addition to decide what are the employments of your departed friends in the better world. You are to subtract from them all earthly grossness and add all earthly goodness, and then you are to come to the conclusion that they are doing now in heaven what in their best moments they did on earth. The reason that so many people never start for heaven is because they could not stand it if they got there, if it should turn out to be the rigid and formal place some pious people photograph it. We like to go to church, but w e would not want to stay there till next Christmas. W"e like to hear the Halle- lujah Chorus, but we would not want to hear it all the time for fifty cen- turies. It might be on some great occa- sion it would be pos- sibly' comfortable to- wear a crown of gold weighing several THE FI,OWER GATHERER. pOUuds, but it WOUld be an affliction to wear such a crown forever. In other words, we run the descrip- tions of heaven into the ground while we make that which was intended as THOSE BivissFuiv HOURS. — Ffom an Original Drawing by Hermann Koch. (405) 4o6 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. especial and celebrative to be the exclusive einployment of heaven. You might as well, if asked to describe the habits of American society, describe a Decoration Day or a Fourth of July, or an autumnal Thanksgiving, as though it were all the time that way. I am not going to speculate in regard to the future world, but I nuist, by inevitable laws of inference and deduction and common sense, conclude that in heaven we will be just as different from each other as we are now different, and hence there will be at least as many different employments in the celestial world as there are employments here. Christ is to be the great love, the great joy, the great rapture, the great worship of heaven; but will that abolish employment? No more than loves on earth — paternal, filial, fraternal, conjugal love — abolish earthly occupation. In the first place, I remark that all those of our departed Christian friends who on earth found great joy in the fine arts are now indulging their tastes in the same direction. On earth they had their gladdest pleasure amid pictures and statuary, and in the study of the laws of light and shade and perspective. Have you any idea that that affluence of faculty at death collapsed and perished ? Why so, when there is more for them to look at, and they have keener appreciation of the beautiful, and they stand amid the very looms where the sunsets and the rain- bows and the spring mornings are woven. Are you so obtuse as to suppose that because the painter drops his easel, and the sculptor his chisel, and the engraver his knife, that therefore that taste, which he was enlarging and intensih'ing for forty or fifty years, is entirely obliterated ? These artists, or these friends of art, on earth worked in coarse material and with imperfect brain and with frail hand. Now they have carried their art into large liberties and into wider circumference. They are at their old business yet, but without the fatigues, without the limitations, without the hindrances of the terrestrial studio. THE CELESTIAL ART GALLERY. Raphael could now improve upon his masterpiece of Michael, the archangel, now that he has seen him, and could improve upon his masterpiece of the Holy Family, now that he has visited them. Michael Angelo could better present the Last Judgment after he has seen its flash and heard the rumbling battering-rams of its thunder. Exquisite colors here, graceful lines here, powerful chiaro-oscuro here; but I am persuaded that the grander studios and the brighter galleries are higher up by the winding marble stairs of the sepulchre, and that Tunier and Holman, Hunt and Rembrandt, and Titian, and Paul Veronese, if they exercised saving faith in the Christ whom they portrayed upon the canvas, are painters yet, but their strength of faculty multiplied ten thousand-fold. The reason that God THE HOLY SIGN. It 1^ ^ai.I that when Constatitine was opposing the Christian religion at the moment of engaging in battle with his brother-in-law, Maxentius, he perceived the shadow of a cross in the sky over which were written the words, In hoc signo vinces — " With this sign you will conquer." He gained the battle and immediately adopted and established Christianity in the Roman Empire. (407) 4o8 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. took away their eye and their hand, and their brain was that He might give theta something more limber, more wieldly, more skillful, more multipliant. Do not, therefore, be melancholy among the tapestries, the bric-a-brac, and the embroideries, and the water-colors, and the works of art which your departed friends used to admire. Do not say: "I am sorry they had to leave all these things." Rather sa}': "I am glad they have gone up to higher artistic oppor- tunity and appreciation." Our friends who found so much joy in the fine arts on earth are now luxuriating in I^ouvres and I,uxembourgs celestial. I feel sure that all our departed Christian friends who in this world were passionately fond of music are still regaling that taste in the world celestial. The Bible says so much about the music of heaven that it cannot all be figurative. The Bible over and over again speaks of the songs of heaven. If heaven had no songs of its own a vast number of those on earth would have been taken up by the earthly emigrants. Surely the Christian at death does not lose his memory. Then there must be millions of souls in heaven who know "Coronation," and "Antioch," and "Mount Pisgah," and "Old Hundred." The leader of the eternal orchestra need only once tap his baton and all heaven will be read}- for the hallelujah. Cannot the soul sing? How often we compliment some exquisite singing by saying: "There was so much soul in her music." In heaven it will be all soul until the body after a while comes up in the resurrection, and then there will be an additional heaven. Cannot the soul hear? If it can hear, then it can hear music. Do not, therefore, let it be in your household when some member leaves for heaven, as it is in some households, that 3-ou close the piano and unstring the harp for two years, because the fingers that used to play on them are still. You must remember that they have better instruments of music where they are. You ask me: " Do they have real harps, and real trumpets, and real organs ?' ' I do not know. Some wiseacres say positively there are no such things in heaven. I do not know, but I should not be surprised if the God who made all the moun- tains, and all the hills, and all the forests, and all the metals of the earth, and all the growths of the universe — I should not be surprised if He could, if He had a mind to, make a few harps and trumpets and organs. Grand old Haydn, sick and worn out, was carried for the last time into the music hall, and there he heard his own oratorio of the " Creation." History says that as the orchestra came to that famous passage, "Let there be Light!" the whole audience rose and cheered, and Haydn waved his hand toward heaven and said: " It came from there." Overwhelmed with his own music, he was carried out in his chair, and as he came to the door he spread his hand toward the orches- tra as in benediction. THE HARVEST OF THE s-E;A.—J^rom the Painting by G. Clausen. (409) 4IO THK PATHWAY OF LIFE. Haydn was right when he waved liis hand toward heaven and said: " It comes from there." Music was born in heaven, and it will ever have its highest throne in heaven; and I want you to understand that our departed friends who were passionately fond of music here are now at the lieadquarters of harmony. I think that the grand old church tunes that died when your grandfathers died have gone with them to heaven. THE CHURCH MILITANT IN HEAVEN. I believe that those of our departed Christian friends who, in this world, had very strong military spirit are now in armies celestial and out on bloodless battle. There are hundreds of people born soldiers. They cannot help it. They belong to regiments in time of peace. They cannot hear a drum or fife without trying to keep step to the music. They are Christians, and when they fight they are on the right side. Now, when these, our Christian friends, who had natural and power- ful militarj^ spirit, entered heaven they entered the celestial army. The door of heaven hardly opens but you hear a military demonstration. David cried out: "The chariots of God are twenty thousand." Eli.sha saw the mountains filled with celestial cavalry-. St. John said: " The armies which are in heaven followed him on white horses." Now, when those who had the military spirit on earth sanctified entered glory, I suppose they right away enlisted in some heavenly campaign; the}^ volunteered right away. There must needs be in heaven soldiers with a soldierly spirit. There are grand parade daj-s when the King reviews the troops. There must be armed escort sent out to bring up from earth to heaven those who were more than conquerors. There must be crusades ever being fitted out for some part of God's dominions — battles, bloodless, groanless, painless. Angels of evil to be fought down and fought back. Other rebellious worlds to be conquered. Worlds to be put to the torch. Worlds to be saved. Worlds to be demolished. Worlds to be sunk. Worlds to be hoisted. Besides that, in our own world there are battles for the right and against the wrong where we must have the heavenly military. That is what keeps us Chris- tian reformers so buoyant. So few good men against so many bad men, so few churches against so many grog shops, so few pure printing presses against so many polluted printing presses; and yet we are buoj-ant and coiirageous, because while we know that the armies of evil in the world are larger in numbers than the army of the truth, there are celestial cohorts in the air fighting on our side. I have not so nuich faith in the army on the ground as I have in the army in the air. The military spirits that went up from earth to join the military spirits before the throne — Joshua, and Caleb, and Gideon, and l)a\id, and Samson, and the hinidreds of Christian warriors who on earth fought with fleshly arm, and now having gone up on high, are coming down the hills of heaven ready to fight among J V O rj (411) 412 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. the invisibles. Yonder they are — coming, coming. Did you not hear them as they swept by ? THE MATHEMATICS OF HEAVEN. But what are our mathematical friends to do in the next world ? They found their joy and their delight in mathematics. There was more poetry for them in Euclid than in John Milton. They were as passionately fond of mathematics as Plato, who wrote over his door: " Let no one enter here who is not acquainted Avith geometrj'." What are they doing now? They are busy with figures yet. No place in all the universe like heaven for figures. Numbers infinite, distances infinite, calculations infinite. The didactic Dr. Dick said he really thought that the redeemed in heaven spent some of their time with the higher branches of mathematics. Some of our transferred and transported metaphysicians. What are they doing now? Studying the human mind, only under better circumstances than they used to study it. They u.sed to study the mind sheathed in the dull human body. Now the spirit is unsheathed — now they are studying the sword outside the scabbard. Have you any doubt about what Sir William Hamilton is doing in heaven, or what Jonathan Edwards is doing in heaven, or the multitudes on earth Avho had a passion for metaphj'sics sanctified by the grace of God ? No difficulty in guessing. Metaphysics, glorious metaphysics, everlasting metaph5^sics. What are our departed Christian friends who are explorers doing now? Exploring yet, but with lightning locomotion, with vision microscopic and tele- scopic at the same time. A continent at a glance. A world in a second. A planetary system in a day. Christian John Franklin no more in disabled ' ' Erebus ' ' pushing toward the North Pole, Christian De Eong no more trying to free block- aded ' ' Jeannette ' ' from the ice. Christian Livingstone no more amid African malarias trying to make revelation of a dark continent; but all of them in the twinkling of an eye taking in that which was unapproachable. Mont Blanc scaled without alpenstock. The coral depths of the ocean explored without a diving bell. The mountains unbarred and opened without Sir Humphrey Davy's safety lamp. What are our departed friends who found their chief joy in study doing now ? Studying yet, but instead of a few thousand volumes on a few shelves, all the vol- umes of the universe open before them — geologic, ornithologic, conchologic, botanic, astronomic, philosophic. No more need of Ley den-jars, or voltaic piles, or electric batteries, standing as they do face to face with the facts of the universe. What are the historians doing now ? Studying history yet, but not the his- tory of a few centuries of our planet only, but the history of the eternities — whole millenniums before Xenophon, or Herodotus, or Moses, or Adam was born. History of one world, history of all worlds. THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 413 ASTRONOMERS AND CHEMISTS IN CELESTIAL INQUIRY. What are our departed astronomers doing ? Studying astronomy yet, but not through the dull lens of earthly observatory, but with one stroke of wing going right out to Jupiter, and Mars, and Mercury, and Saturn, and Orion, and the- Pleiades — overtaking and passing swiftest comet in their flight. Herschel died a Christian. Have you any doubt about what Herschel is doing ? Isaac Newton died a Christian. Have you any doubt about what Isaac Newton is doing?' Joseph Henry died a Christian. Have you any doubt about what Joseph Henry is doing? They were in discussion, all these astronomers of earth, about what the aurora borealis was, and none of them could guess. They know now ; they have been out there to see for themselves. What are our departed Christian chemists doing ? Following out their own science, following out and following out forever. Since they died they have solved 10,000 questions which once puzzled the earthly laboratory. They stand on the other side of the thin wall of electricity, the wall that seems to divide the physical from the spiritual world, the thin wall of electricity, so thin the wall that ever and anon it seems to be almost broken through — broken through from our side by telephonic and telegraphic apparatus, broken through from the other side by strange influences which men in their ignorance call spiritualistic manifesta- tions. All that matter cleared up. Agassiz standing amid his student explorers down in Brazil coming across sonie great novelty in the rocks, taking off his hat and saying: "Gentlemen, let us pray; we must have divine illumination; we want wisdom from the Creator to study these rocks; He made them; let us pray.'" Agassiz going right on with his studies forever and forever. But what are the men of the law, who in this world found their chief joy in the legal profession — what are they doing now ? Studying law in a universe where everything is controlled by law from flight of humming-bird to flight of world — law, not dry and hard and drudging, but righteous and magnificent law, before which man, and cherub, and seraph, and archangel, and God Himself bow. The chain of law long enough to wind around the immensities of infinit}' and eternity. Chain of law. What a place to study law, where all the links of the chain are in the hand ! What are our departed Christian friends who in this world had their joy in the healing art, doing now ? Busy at their old business. No sickness in heaven, but plenty of sickness on earth, plenty of wounds in the different parts of God's dominion to be healed and to be medicated. You cannot understand why that patient got well after all the skillful doctors had said he must die. Perhaps Aber- crombie touched him — Abercrombie who, after many years' doctoring the bodies and the souls of people in Scotland, went up to God in 1844. Perhaps Aber- crombie touched him. 414 "THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. I should not wonder if my old friend, Dr. John Brown, who died in Edin- burgh— John Brown, the author of " Rab and His Friends " — ^John Brown, who was as humble a Christian as he was skillful a physician and world-renowned author — I should not wonder if he had been back again and again to see some of his old patients. Those who had their joy in healing the sickness and the woes of earth, gone up to heaven, are come forth again for benignant medicament. But what are our friends who found their chief joy in conversation and in sociality doing now ? In brighter conversation there and in grander sociality. A WONDERFUL PLACE TO VISIT. What a place to visit in, where your next door neighbors are kings and queens. You yourselves kingly and queenly. If they want to know more par- ticularly about the first paradise, they have only to go over and ask Adam. If they want to know how the sun and the moon halted, they have only to go over and ask Joshua. If they want to know how the storm pelted Sodom, they have only to go over and ask Lot. If they want to know more about the arrogance of Haman, they have only to go over and ask Mordecai. If they want to know how the Red Sea boiled when it was cloven, they have only to go over and ask Moses. If they want to know the particulars about the Bethlehem advent, they have only to go over and ask the serenading angels who stood that Christmas night in the balconies of crystal. If they want to know more of the particulars of the crucifixion, they have only to go over and ask those who were personal spectators while the mountains crouched and the heavens got black in the face at the spectacle. If they want to know how the Huguenots suffered at the hands of their persecutors, they may learn the story from thousands who were victims of Henry II. If they want to know more about the sufierings of the Scotch Covenanters, they have only to go over and ask Andrew Melville. If they want to know more about the old-time revivals, they have onl}- to go over and ask Whitefield, and Wesley, and L,ivingston, and Fletcher, and Nettleton, and Finney. Oh ! what a place to visit in. It eternity were one minute shorter it would not be long enough for such sociality. Think of our friends who in this world were passionately fond of flowers, turned into paradise ! Think of our friends who were very fond of raising superb fruit, turned into the orchard where each tree has twelve kinds of fruit at once, and bearing fruit all the year round ! What are our departed Christian friends doing in heaven, those who on earth found their chief joy in the gospel ministry ? They are visiting their old congre- gations. Most of those ministers have got their people around them already. When I get to heaven — if by the grace of God, as I hope, I am destined to go to that place — I will come and see you all. Yes, I will come to all the people to (415) 41 6 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. whom I have administered in the gospel, and to the miUions of souls to whom, through the kindness of the printing-press, I am permitted to preach every week in this land, and in other lands — and to the friends who find pleasure, and I hope profit, in " The Pathway of IvIFE." I will visit them all. I give them fair notice. Our departed friends of the ministry are engaged in that delectable entertainment now. A PLACE OF PERPETUAL LABOR OF LOVE. But what are our departed Christian friends who, in all departments of use- fulness were busy, finding their chief joy in doing good — what are they doing now ? Going right on with their work. John Howard visiting dungeons; the dead women of Northern and Southern battlefields still abroad looking for the wounded; George Peabody still watching the poor; Thomas Clarkson still looking after the enslaved — all of those who did good on earth busier since death than before. The tombstone not the terminus but the starting post. What are our departed Christian friends who found their chief joy in studying God doing now ? Studying God yet. No need of revelation now, for unblanched they are face to face. Now they can handle the omnipotent thunder-bolts just as a child handles the sword of a father come back from victorious battle. They have no sin, no fear conse- quently. Studying Christ, not through a revelation, save the revelation of the scars, that deep lettering which brings it all up quick enough. Studying the Christ of the Bethlehem caravansary, the Christ of the awful massacre with its hemorrhage of head, and hand, and foot, and side — the Christ of the shattered mausoleum — Christ, the sacrifice, the star, the sun, the man. But hark! the bell of the cathedral rings — the cathedral bell of heaven. What is the matter now ? There is going to be a great meeting in the temple. Worshipers all come through the aisles. Make room for the conqueror. Christ standing in the temple. All heaven gathering around Him. Those who loved music come to listen to His voice. Those who were mathematicians come to count the years of His reign. Those who were explorers come to discover the height and the depth, and the length and the breadth of His love. Those who had the military spirit on earth sanctified, and the military spirit in heaven, come to look at the Captain of their salvation. The astronomers come to look at the Morning Star. The men of the law come to look at Him who is the Judge of quick and dead. The men who healed the sick come to look at Him who was wounded for our transgressions. A DREAM OF HEAVEN. One twilight, after I had been playing with the children for some time, I laj' down on the lounge to re.st. The children said, "Play more." Children always THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 417 want to play more. And, half asleep and half awake, I seemed to dream this dream: It seemed to me that I was in a far-distant land — not Persia, although more than Oriental luxuriance crowned the cities; nor the tropics — although more than tropical fruitfulness filled the gardens; nor Italy — although more than Italian softness filled the air. And I wandered around, looking for thorns and nettles, but I found none of them grew there. And I walked forth and I saw the sun rise, and I said: "When will it set again?" and the sun sank not. And I saw all the people in holiday apparel, and I said: "When will they put on working- man's garb again, and delve in the mine, and swelter at the forge ?' ' But neither the garments nor the robes did they put off. And I wandered in the suburbs, and said: " Where do they bury the dead of this great city ?" and I looked along by the hills where it would be most beautiful for the dead to sleep, and I saw castles, and towns, and battlements; but not a mausoleum, nor monument, nor white slab could I see. And I went into the great chapel of the town, and I said: "Where do the poor worship? where are the benches on which they sit?" and a voice answered: " We have no poor in this great city." And I wandered out, seeking to find the place where were the hovels of the destitute; and I found mansions of amber, and ivory, and gold, but no tear did I see or sigh hear. I was bewildered; and I sat under the shadow of a great tree, and I said: " What am I, and whence comes all this ?" And at that moment there came from among the leaves, skipping; up the flowery paths and across the sparkling waters, a very bright and sparkling^ group; and when I saw their step I knew it, and when I heard their voices I thought I knew them; but their apparel was so diiferent from anything I had ever seen, I bowed, a stranger to strangers. But after a while, when they clapped their hands and shouted: " Welcome ! Welcome !" the mystery was solved, and I saw that time had passed, and that eternity had come, and that God had gathered us up into a higher home; and I said: " Are we all here?" and the voices of innu- merable generations answered: "All here;" and while tears of gladness were raining down our cheeks, and the branches of the Lebanon cedars were clapping their hands and the towers of the great city were chiming their welcome, we began to laugh, and sing, and leap, and shout: " Home ! Home ! Home !" Then I felt a child's hand on my face, and it woke me. The children wanted to play more. Children always want to play more. ^'^^^^ 27 51cluotcrn3 WITCHCRAFTS, ORACLES, AND FOOLISH DEVICES TO DELUDE THE CREDULOUS. H£)RE are two modes of divination by which the king of Babylon proposed to find out the will of God. He took a bundle of arrows, put them together, mixed them up, then pulled forth one, and by the inscription on it decided what city he should first assault. Then an animal was slain, and by the lighter or darker color of the liver, the brighter or darker prospect of success was inferred. Stupid delusion ! And yet all the ages have been filled with delusions. It .seems as if the world loves to be hoodwinked. In the latter part of the la.st century, Johanna Southcote came forth, pretending to have divine power, made prophecies, had chapels built in her honor, and 100,000 disciples came forth to follow her. About five years before the birth of Christ, Apollonius was bom, and he came forth, and after five years, being speechless, according to the tradition, he healed the sick and raised the dead, and preached virtue, and, according to the myth, having deceased, was brought to resurrection ! ORACLES AND SIBYLS. The Delphic Oracle deceived vast nuiltitudes of people; the Pythoness, seated in the Temple of Apollo, uttered a crazy jargon from which the people guessed their individual or national fortunes or misfortunes. The utterances were of such a nature that you could read them any way you wanted to read them. A general going forth to battle consulted the Delphic Oracle, and he wanted to find out ^vhether he was going to be safe in the battle or killed in the battle, and the answer •came forth from the Delphic Oracle in such words that if you put the comma before the word " never," it means one thing, and if you put the comma after the word "never," it means another thing just opposite. The mc.s.sagc from the Delphic Oracle to the general was: "Go forth, retuni never in battle shalt thou perish." If he was killed, that was according to the Delphic Oracle; if he came home safely, that was according to the Delphic Oracle. So the ancient auguries deceived (4 IS) ii lliPi:^r»' (419) |2o THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. the people. The priests of those auguries, by the flight of birds, or by the intona- tion of thunder, or by the inside appearance of slain animals, told the fortunes or misfortunes of individuals or nations. The sibyls deceived the people. The sibyls were supposed to be inspired women, who lived in caves, and who wrote the sibyl- line books afterward purchased by Tarquin the Proud. So late as the year 1829, a man arose in New York, pretending to be a divine being, and playing his part so well that wealthy merchants became his disciples and threw their fortunes into his discipleship. And so, in all ages, there have been necromancies, incantations, witchcrafts, sorceries, magical arts, enchantments, divinations, and delusions. None of these d(,'lusions accomplished any good. They deceived, they pauperized the people. They were as cruel as they were absurd. They opened no hospitals, they healed no wounds, they wiped away no tears, they emancipated no serfdom. IS CHRISTIANITY SIMPLY A DELUSION ? But there are those who say that all these delusions combined are as nothing compared with the delusion now abroad in the world — the delusion of the Chris- tian religion. That delusion has to-day 200,000,000 dupes. It proposes to encircle the earth with its girdle. That which has been called a delusion has already overshadowed the Appalachian range on this side the sea, and it has overshadowed the Balkan and Caucasian ranges on the other side the sea. It has conquered England and the United States. This champion delusion, this hoax, this swindle of the ages, as it has been called, has gone forth to conquer the islands of the Pacific; the Melanasia, and the Micronesia, and Malayan Polynesia have already surrendered to the delusion. Yes, it has conquered the Indian Archipelago, and Borneo, and Sumatra, and Celebes, and Java have fallen under its wiles. In the Fiji Islands, where there are 120,000 people, 102,000 have already become the dupes of this Christian religion, and, if things go on as they are now going on, and if the influence of this great hallucination of the ages cannot be stopped, it will swallow the globe. Admiral Farragut, one of the most admired men of the American navy, early became a victim of this Christian delusion, and, seated, not long before his death, at Long Branch, he was giving some friends an account of his early life. He said: " My father went down in behalf of the United States Government, to put an end to Aaron Burr's rebellion, I was a cabin boy and went along with him. I could swear like an old salt. I could gamble in every style of gambling. I knew all the wickedness there was at that time abroad. One day my father cleared everybody out of the cabin except myself and locked the door. He said: " ' David, what are you going to do ? What are you going to be?' " ' Well,' I said, ' father, I am going to follow the sea.' THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 421 " ' Follow the sea ! and be a poor, miserable, drunken sailor, kicked and cuffed about the world, and die of a fever in a foreign hospital ?' " ' Oh ! no,' I said, ' father, I will not be that; I will tread the quarter-deck and command, as you do.' " ' No, David,' my father said; 'no, David, a person that has your princi- ples and your bad habits will never tread the quarter-deck or command. ' " My father went out and shut the door after him, and I said then: ' I will change; I will never swear again; I will never drink again; I will never gamble again;' and gentlemen, by the help of God I have kept those three vows to this time. I soon after that became a Christian, and that decided my fate for time and for eternity. ' ' SWAYING NOBLE INTELLECTS. Ah ! that is the remarkable thing about this delusion of Christianity; it over- powers the strongest intellects. Gather the critics, secular and religious, of this century together, and put a vote to them as to which is the greatest book ever written, and by large majority they will say ' ' Paradise lyost. ' ' Who wrote ' 'Para- dise Lost?" One of the fools who believed in this Bible, John Milton. Benjamin Franklin surrendered to this delusion, if you may judge from the letter that he wrote to Thomas Paine, begging him to destroy the " Age of Reason " in manu- script and never let it go into type, and writing afterward, in his own days: ' Of this Jesus of Nazareth I have to say that the system of morals He left, and the religion He has given us, are the best things the world has ever seen or is likely to see." Patrick Henry, the electric champion of liberty, enslaved by this delu- sion, so that he says: "The book, worth all other books put together is the Bible." Benjamin Rush, the leading physiologist and anatomist of his day, the great medical scientist — what did he say ? ' ' The only true and perfect religion is Christianity." Isaac Newton, the leading philosopher of his time — what did he say ? That man surrendering to this delusion of the Christian religion crying out: "The sublimest philosophy on earth is the philosophy of the gospel." David Brewster, at the pronunciation of whose name everj^ scientist the world over bows his head, David Brewster saying: " Oh, this religion has been a great light to me, a very great light all my days." President Thiers, the great French statesman, acknowledging that he prayed when he said: " I invoke the Lord God, in whom I am glad to believe." David Livingstone, able to conquer the lion, able to conquer the panther, able to conquer the savage, yet conquered by this delusion, this hallucination, this great swindle of the ages, so when they find him dead they find him on his knees. William E. Gladstone, the strongest intellect in England to-day, unable to resist this chimera, this fallacy, this delusion of the Christian religion, goes to the house of God every Sabbath, and often, at the invitation of the rector, reads the prayers to the people. Oh, if those mighty 422 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. < intellects are overborne by this delusion, what chance is there for you and for me ? Yea, this awful chimera of the gospel comes to the poor, and it says to them: " You are on your way to vast estates and to dividends always declarable." This delusion or Christianity comes to the bereft, and it talks of re-union before the throne, and of the cessation of all sorrow. And then to show that this delusion will stop at absolutely nothing, it goes to the dying bed and fills the ■ man with anticipations. How much better it would be to have him die without any more hope than swine and rats and snakes. That is all. Nothing more left of him. He will never know anything again. Shovel him under ! The soul is only a superior part of the body, and when the body disintegrates the soul dis- integrates. Annihilation, vacancy, everlasting blank, obliteration. . Why not present all that beautiful doctrine to the djang, instead of coming with this hoax, this swindle of the Christian religion, and filling the dying man with anticipa- tions of another life, until some in the last hour have clapped their hands, and some have shouted, and some have sung, and some have been so overwrought with joy they could only look ecstatic. Palace gates opening, they thought; diamonded coronets flashing, hands beckoning, orchestras sounding. Little children dying, actually believing they saw their departed parents, so that, although the little children had been so weak and feeble and sick for weeks, they could not turn on their dying pillow, at the last, in a paroxysm of rapture uncontrollable, they sprang to their feet and shouted : " Mother, catch me, I am coming ! ' ' A SUSTAINING BELIEF. And to show the immensity of this delusion, this awful swindle of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I open a hospital and I bring into that hospital the death-beds of a great many Christian people, and I take you by the hand and I walk up and down the wards of that hospital and I ask a few questions. I ask: Dying Stephen, what have you to say ? " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Dying John Wesley, what have you to say? "The best of all is, God is with us. ' ' Dying Edward Payson, what have you to say ? "I float in the sea of glory." Dying John Bradford, what have you to say? "If there be any way of going to heaven on horseback, or in a fiery chariot, it is this." Dying Neander, what have you to say? " I am going to sleep now — good- night." Dying Mrs. Florence Foster, what have you to say? " A pilgrim in the valley, but the mountain tops are all agleam from peak to peak." Dying Alexander Mather, what have you to say ? ' ' The Lord who has taken care of me fifty years, will not cast me off" now; glory be to God and to the Lamb ! Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen !" THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 423 Dying John Powson, after preaching the gospel so many years, what have you to say ? " My death-bed is a bed of roses." Dying Dr. Thomas Scott, what have you to say? "This is heaven begun." Dying soldier in the last war, what have you to say ? ' ' Boys, I am going to the front." Dying telegraph operator on the battlefield of Virginia, what have you to say? " The wires are all laid, and the poles are up from Stony Point to head- quarters. ' ' Dying Paul, what have you to say ? "I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith." "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory ? Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victor}^ through our Lord Jesus Christ. ' ' O my Lord, my God, what a delusion, what a glorious delusion ! Submerge me with it ; fill my eyes and ears with it ; put it under my dying head for a pillow — this delusion — spread it over me for a canopy; put it underneath me for an outspread wing; roll it over me in ocean's surges ten thousand fathoms deep ! In an experience meeting, a gentleman, not long ago, arose and spoke as follows: "On my way here to night I met a man who asked me where I was going, I said: 'I am going to praj^er meeting.' He said: 'There are a good many religions, and I think most of them are delusions; as to the Christian reli- gion, that is only a notion; that is a mere notion, the Christian religion.' I said to him: 'Stranger, you see that tavern over there?' 'Yes,' he said, 'I see it.' ' Do you see me?' 'Yes, of course, I see you.' ' Now, the time was, as every- body in this town knows, that if I had a quarter of a dollar in my pocket I could not pass that tavern without going in and getting a drink; all the people of Jefferson cculd not keep me out of that place; but God has changed my heart, and the Lord Jesus Christ has destroyed my thirst for strong drink, and there is m)' whole week's wages, and I have no temptation to go in there; and, stranger, if this is a notion, I want to tell you it is a mighty powerful notion; it is a notion that has put clothes on my children's back, and it is a notion that has put good food on our table, and it is a notion that has filled my mouth with thanksgiving to God. And, stranger, you had better go along with me, you might get religion, too; lots of people are getting religion now.' " But despite all these practical benefits of belief there are those who make answer: " Give me the world's dollars and you may have the eternal rewards. Give me the world's applause and you may have the garlands of God. Give me twenty, or forty, or sixty years of worldly successes, and I don't care what becomes of the future. I am going into that world uninsured. I take the responsibility. Don't bother me about your religion. Here I have the two 424 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. worlds before me — this one and the next. I have chosen this. me, God and angels, and all thoughts of the future !" SOME RICH FOOLS. Go away from But where is Croesus, and Cleopatra, and ^sopus, who had one dish of food that cost $1,400,000; and Lentulus, who had a pond of fish worth $175,000; and Scaurus, who bought a country seat for $29,000,000; and Tiberius, who left at death a fortune of $118,120,000? "Where are they? If a windy day should blow all the dust that is left of them into j^our eyes it would not make you wink twice. Ah, my readers, then very certainly your comforts of surrounc'^'ng cannot keep back the old archer. You cannot charm him with music, or dazzle him with plate, or decoy him with pictures, or bribe him with your money. Well, we will soon understand it all. Your life and mine will soon be over. We will soon come to the last bar of the music, to the last act of the tragedy, to the last page of the book — yea, to the last line and to the last word, and to you and to me it will either be midnoon or midnight. GOOD FATHER AND MOTHER, WHAT SHALL YOUR CHILDREN READ? AUIv once stirred up Epliesus with some lively sermons about the sins of that place. Among the most important results was the fact that the citizens brought out their bad books and in a public place made a bonfire of them. I see the people coming out with their arms full of Ephesian literature, and tossing it into the flames, I hear an economist standing by and saying: "Stop this waste. Here are $7500 worth of books — do you propose to burn them all up? If you don't want to read them yourself sell them and let somebody else read them." ' ' No, ' ' said the people, ' ' if these books are not good for us, they are not good for anybody else, and we shall stand and watch until the last leaf has turned to ashes. They have done us a world of harm, and they shall never do others harm. ' ' Hear the flames crackle and roar. My readers, one of the wants of the cities of this country iS a great bonfire of bad books and newspapers. We have enough fuel to make a blaze 200 feet high. Many of the publishing houses would do well to throw into the blaze their entire stock of goods. Bring forth the insufferable trash and put it into the fire, and let it be known in the presence of God, and angels, and men, that you are going to rid your homes of the overtopping and underlying curse of profligate literature. The printing-press is the mightiest agency on earth for good and for evil. The minister of the gospel, standing in a pulpit, has a responsible position; but I do not think it is as responsible as the position of an editor or a publisher. At what distant point of time, at what far-out cycle of eternity, will cease the influ- ence of a Henry J. Raymond, or a Horace Greeley, or a James Gordon Bennett, or a Watson Webb, or an Erastus Brooks, or a Thomas Kinsella? Take the simple statistic that our New York dailies now have a circulation of about 850,000 per day, and add to it the fact that three of our weekly periodicals have an aggregate circulation of about 1,000,000, and then cipher, if you can, how far up, and how far down, and how far out, reach the influences of the American printing-press. (425) 426 THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. POWER FOR GOOD OR EVIL. Great God ! what is to be the issue of all this ? I believe the Lord intends the printing-press to be the chief means for the world's rescue and evangelization, and I think that the great last battle of the world will not be fought with swords and guns, but with types and presses — a purified and gospel literature triumphing over, trampling down, and crushing out forever that which is depraved. The only way to overcome unclean literature is by scattering abroad that which is healthful. May God speed the cylinders of an honest, intelligent, aggressive, Christian printing-press. I have to tell you that the greatest blessing that ever came to this nation is that of an elevated literature, and the greatest scourge has been that of unclean literature. This last has its victims in all occupations and departments. It has helped to fill insane asylums, and penitentiaries, and almshouses, and dens of shame. The bodies of this infection lie in the hospitals and in the graves, while their souls are being tossed over into a lost eternity, an avalanche of horror and despair. The London plague was nothing to it. That counted its victims by thou- sands, but this modern pest has already shoveled its millions into the charnel- house of the morally dead. The longest rail-train that ever ran over the Erie or Hudson tracks is not long enough nor large enough to carry the beastliness and the putrefaction which have been gathered up in bad books and newspapers of this land in the last twenty years. Now, it is amid such circumstances that I put a question of overmastering importance to j^ou and your families. What books and newspapers shall we read ? You see I group them together. A newspaper is only a book in a swifter and more portable shape, and the same rules which will apply to book reading will apply to newspaper reading. What shall we read ? Shall our minds be the receptacle of everything that an author has a mind to write ? Shall there be no distinction between the tree of life and the tree of death ? Shall we stoop down and drink out of the trough which the wickedness of men has filled with pollu- tion and shame ? Shall we mire in impurity and chase fantastic Will-o' -the-wisps across the swamps, when we might walk in the blooming gardens of God? Oh, no ! For the sake of our present and everlasting welfare we must make an intelli- gent and Christian choice. BOOKS THAT ARE GOOD. Standing, as we do, chin-deep in fictitious literature, the first question that many of the young people are asking me is: " Shall we read novels?" I reply: There are novels that are pure, good. Christian, elevating to the heart, and ennobling to the life. But I have still further to say that I believe that ninety-nine THE PATHWAY OF UFE. 427 out of the hundred novels in this day are baleful and destructive in the. last degree. A pure work of fiction is history and poetry combined. It is a history of things around us, with the licenses and the assumed names of poetry. The world can never pay the debt which it owes to such fictitious writers as Hawthorne piiipw^^^^^^^^^^^^^ THE WAYWARD DAUGHTER.— Frow the Paiuting by H. Hehnick. and McKenzie, and Landor and Hunt, and Arthur and Marion Harland, and others whose names are familiar to all. The follies of high life were never better exposed than by Miss Edgeworth. The memories of the past were never more faithfully embalmed than in the writings of Walter Scott. Cooper's novels are 428 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. healthfully redolent with the breath of the seaweed, and the air of the American forest. Charles Kingsley has smitten the morbidity of the world, and led a great many to appreciate the poetry of sound health, strong muscles, and fresh air. Thackeray did a grand work in caricaturing the pretenders to gentility and high blood. Dickens has built his own monument in his books, which are an everlast- ing plea for the poor, and the anathema of injustice. Now, I say, books like these, read at right times, and read in right propor- tion with other books, cannot help but be ennobling and purifying; but alas for the loathsome and impure literature that has come upon this country in the shape of novels, like a freshet overflowing all the banks of decency and common sense ! They are coming from some of the most celebrated publishing houses of the ■country. They are coming with recommendation of some of our religious news- papers. They lie on your centre-table to curse your children, and blast with their infernal fires generations unborn. You find these books in the desk of the school miss, in the trunk of the young man, in the steamboat cabin, on the table of the hotel reception room. You see a light in your child's room late at night. You suddenly go in and say: " What are you doing?" ' ' I am reading. ' ' " What are you reading ?' ' "A book." You look at the book; it is a bad book. ' ' Where did you get it ?" " I borrowed it." Alas, there are always those abroad who would like to loan your son or -daughter a bad book. Everywhere, everywhere an unclean literature. I charge upon it the destruction of ten thousand immortal souls, and I bid you wake up to the magnitude of the theme. I shall take all the world's literature — good novels and bad, travels true and false, histories faithful and incorrect, legends beautiful and monstrous, all tracts, all chronicles, all epilogues, all family, city. State and national libraries — and pile them up in a pyramid of literature, and then I shall hring to bear upon it some grand, glorious, infallible, unmistakable Christian principles. MORAL AND PHYSICAL EFFECT. I charge you, in the first place, to stand aloof from all books that give false pictures of human life. lyife is neither a tragedy nor a farce. Men are not all ■either knaves or heroes. Women are neither angels nor furies. And yet if you ■depended upon much of the literature of the day, you would get the idea that life, instead of being something earnest, something practical, is a fitful and fantas- tic and extravagant thing. How poorly prepared are that young man and woman THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. 429 for the duties of to-day who spent last night wading through brilliant passages- descriptive of magnificent knavery and wickedness ! The man will be looking all day long for his heroine, in the tin-shop, by the forge, in the factory, in the counting-room, and he will not find her, and he will be dissatisfied. A man who gives himself up to the indiscriminate reading of novels will be nerveless, insane and a nuisance. He will be fit neither for the store, nor the shop, nor the field. He will always be looking out for some monster of fable, like Polyphemus, who fed on human flesh, or a fairy looking for a proper subject for her munificence. A woman who gives herself up to the indiscriminate reading of novels will be unfitted for the duties of wife, mother, sister, daughter. There she is, hair dis- heveled, countenance vacant, cheeks pale, hands trembling, bursting into tears at midnight over the fate of some unfortunate lover; in the daytime when she ought to be busy, staring by the half hour at nothing, biting her finger nails into the quick. The carpet that was plain before will be plainer after having wandered through a romance all night long in tessellated halls of castles. And your indus- trious companion will be more unattractive than ever now that 3'ou have walked in the romance through parks with plumed princesses, or lounged in the arbor with the polished desperado. Oh, these confirmed novel readers ! They are unfitted for this life, which is a tremendous discipline. They know not how tO' go through the furnaces of trial through which they must pass, and they are un- fitted for a world where everything we gain we achieve by hard, long-continuing, and exhaustive work. Again, abstain from all those books which, while they have some good things- about them, have also an admixture of evil. The heart of most people is like a sieve, which lets the small particles of gold fall through, but keeps the great cinders. Once in a while there is a mind like a loadstone, which, plunged amid steel and brass filings, gathers up the steel and repels the brass. But it is gen- erally just the opposite. If you attempt to plunge through a fence of burrs to get one blackberry, you will get more burrs than blackberries. You say: " The- influence is insignificant." I tell you that the scratch of a pin has sometimes produced the lock-jaw. Alas, if through curiosity, as many do, you pry into an evil book, your curiosity is as dangerous as that of the man who would take a torch into a gunpowder mill merely to see whether it would really blow up or not. TORN BY A LEOPARD. In a menagerie in New York a man put his arm through the bars of a black leopard's cage. The animal's hide looked so sleek, and bright, and beautiful. He just stroked it once. The monster seized him, and he drew forth a hand torn, and mangled, and bleeding. Oh, touch not evil, even with the faintest stroke I 430 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. Though it may be glossy and beautiful, touch it not, lest you pull forth your soul torn and bleeding under the clutch of the black leopard. " But," you say, " how can I find out whether a book is good or bad without reading it ?' ' There is always something suspicious about a bad book. I never knew an exception — something suspicious in the index or style of illustration. This venom- ous reptile almost always carries a warning rattle. I charge you to stand off from all those books which corrupt the imagination and inflame the passions. I do not refer now to that kind of a book which the villain has under his coat waiting for the school to get out, and then, looking both ways to see that there is no policeman around the block, offers the book to your son on his way home. I do not speak of that kind of literature, but that which evades the law and comes out in polished style, and with acute plot sounds the tocsin that rouses up all the baser passion of the soul. To-day, under the nostrils of this land, there is a fetid, reeking, unwashed literature, enough to poison all the fountains of public virtue, and smite your sons and daughters as with the wing of a destroying angel, and it is time that the ministers of the gospel blew the trumpet and rallied the forces of righteousness, all armed to the teeth, in this great battle against a depraved literature. Abstain from those books which are apologetic of crime. It is a sad thing that some of the best and most beautiful book-binderies, and some of the finest rhetoric, have been brought to make sin attractive. Vice is a horrible thing, any- how. It is born in shame, and dies howling in the darkness. In this world it is scourged with a whip of scorpions, but afterwards the thunders of God's wrath pursue it across a boundless desert, beating it with ruin and woe. When you come to paint carnality, do not paint it as looking from behind embroidered curtains, or through lattice of royal seraglio, but as writhing in the agonies of a city hospital. A TERRIBLE CURSE. Cursed be the books that try to make impurity decent, and crime attractive, and hypocrisy noble ! Cursed be the books that swarm with libertines and des- peradoes, who make the brain of the young people whirl with villainy. Ye authors who write them, ye publishers who print them, ye booksellers who distribute them, shall be cut to pieces, if not by an aroused community, then at last, by the hand of divine vengeance, which shall sweep to the lowest pit of perdition all you mur- derers of souls. I tell you, though you may escape in this world, 5^ou will be ground at last under the hoof of eternal calamities, and you will be chained to the rock, and you will have the vultures of despair clawing at your soul, and those whom you have destroyed will come around to torment you, and to pour hotter coals of fury upon your head, and rejoice eternally in the outcry of your pain and THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 431 the liowl of your damnation. ' ' God shall wound the hairy scalp of him that goeth on in his trespasses. ' ' The clock strikes midnight. A fair form bends over a romance. The eyes flash fire. The breath is quick and irregular. Occasionally the color dashes to the cheek, and then dies out. The hands tremble as though a guardian spirit were trying to shake the deadly book out of the grasp. Hot tears fall. She laughs with a shrill voice that drops dead at its own sound. The sweat on her brow is the spray dashed up from the river of death. The clock strikes " four," and the rosy dawn soon after begins to look through the lattice upon the pale form that looks like a detained spectre of the night. Soon in a mad-house she will mistake her ringlets for curling serpents, and thrust her white hand through the bars of the prison, and smite her head, rubbing it back as though to push the scalp from the skull, shrieking: " My brain ! My brain !" Oh, stand off from that ! Why will you go sounding your way amid the reefs and warning buoys, when there is such a vast ocean in which you may voy- age, all sail set ? Cherish good books and newspapers. Beware of the bad ones. One column may save your soul; one paragraph may ruin it, Benjamin Franklin said that the reading of Cotton Mather's essay on "Doing Good" moulded his entire life. The assassin of Lord Russell declared that he was led into crime by reading one vivid romance. The consecrated John Angell James, than whom England never produced a better man, declared in his old days that he had never yet got over the evil effects of having for fifteen minutes once read a bad book. If there is any- thing in your home that cannot stand the test, do not give it away, for it might spoil an immortal soul ; do not sell it, for the money you get would be the price of blood; but rather kindle a fire on your kitchen hearth, or in your back yard, and then drop the poison into it, and keep stirring the blaze until from preface to appendix there shall not be a single paragraph left, and the bonfire shall be as consuming as that one in the streets of Ephesus. pill^r^si iCft Sntjcrlije^ SYMBOLISM OF MARTYRDOM, OF PEACEFUL PURSUIT AND A BURNING WORLD. SONDROUS is the architecture of the smoke, whether God with His finger curls it into a cloud, or rounds it into a dome, or points it in a spire, or spreads it in a wing, or, as Solomon says, ' ' hoists it in a pillar. ' ' Watch it winding up from the country farm-house in the early morning, showing that the pastoral industries have begun; or see it ascending from the chimneys of the city, telling of the homes fed, the factories turning out valuable fabric, the printing- presses preparing book and newspaper, and all the ten thousand wheels in motion. On a clear day this vapor spoken of mounts with such buoyancy and spreads such a delicate veil across the sky, and traces such graceful lines of circle and semicircle, and waves, and tosses, and sinks, and soars, and scatters with such afl&uence of shape, and color, and suggestiveness, that if you have never noticed it you are like a man who has all his life lived in Paris and yet never saw the I^uxembourg, and all his life in Rome and never saw the Vatican, and all his life at Lockport and never saw Niagara. Forty-four times the Bible speaks of the smoke, this strange, weird, beautiful, elastic, charming, terrific and fascinating vapor. Across the Bible sky floats the smoke of Sinai, the smoke of Sodom, the smoke of Ai, the smoke of the pit, the smoke of the volcanic hills when God touches them, to symbolize the glorious Church of God coming up out of the wilderness. MARTYRDOMS AND PERSECUTIONS. Pillars of smoke may be likened to the suffering the Church of God has endured. What do I mean by the Church ? I mean not a building, not a sect, but those who in all ages and all lands, and of all beliefs, love God and are trjnng to do right. For centuries the heavens have been black with the smoke of martyr- dom. If set side by side you could girdle the earth with the fires of persecution. Rowland Taylor burned at Hadleigh; Latimer burned at Oxford; John Rogers (432) THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 433 burned at Smithfield; John Hooper burned at Gloucester; John Huss burned at Constance; Lawrence Saunders, burned at Coventry; Joan of Arc, burned at Rouen. Protestants have sometimes pointed at Catholics as persecutors, but both Protestant and Catholic have practiced infamous cruelties. The Catholics during the reign of Hunneric were by Protestants put to the worst tortures, stripped of their clothing, hoisted in the air by pulleys with weights suspended from their feet, then let down, and ears and eyes, nose and tongue, were amputated, and red- hot plates of iron were put against the most tender part of their bodies. George Bancroft, the historian, says of the State of Mar3dand: " In the land which Catholics had opened to Protestants, mass might not be said publicly; no Catholic priest or bishop might utter his faith in a voice of persuasion; no Catholic might teach the j^oung. If a wayward child of a Papist would but become an apostate, the law wrested for him from his parents a share of their property. Such were the methods adopted to prevent the growth of Popery." Speaking of Ireland, Bancroft, the historian says: " Such priests as were per- mitted to reside in Ireland were required to be registered, and w^ere kept like prisoners at large within prescribed limits. All Papists exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction, all monks, friars and regular priests, and all priests not then actually in parishes and to be registered, were banished from Ireland under pain of trans- portation and, on return, of being hanged, drawn and quartered." OTHER PERSECUTIONS. Catholicism as well as Protestantism has had its martyrs. It does seem as if when any one sect got complete dominancy in any land the devil of persecution and cruelt)^ took possession of that sect. Then see the Catholics after the Hugue- nots. See the Gentiles after the Jews in Touraine, where a great pit was dug and fire lighted at the bottom of the pit, and 160 Jewish victims were consumed. See the Presbyterian Parliament of England, more tyrannical in their treatment of opponents than had been the criminal courts. Persecution against the Baptists by Pedobaptists. Persecution of the Established Church against the Methodist Church. Persecution against the Quakers. Persecution against the Presbyterians. Under Emperor Diocletian 144,000 Christians were massacred, and 700,000 more of them died from banishment and exposure. Witness the sufferings of the Waldenses, of the Albigenses, of the Nestorians. Witness St. Bartholomew's massacre. Witness the Duke of Alva driving out of life 18,000 Christians. Witness Herod, and Nero, and Decius, and Hildebrand, and Torquemada, and Earl of Montfort, and Lord Claverhouse, who when told that he must give account for his cruelties, said: " I have no need to account to man, and as for God I will take Him in my own hands." A red line runs through the Church history of 1900 years, a line of blood. Not by the hundreds of thousands, but by the millions must we count 28 434 I'HK PATHWAY OF LIFE. those slain for Christ's sake. No wonder John Milton put the groans of the martyrs to an immortal tune, writing: " Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold." Look at the St. Pauls, St, Peters, St. Eulalias, and the millions of righteous and courageous souls that have died by the flame, the bludgeon, the lion and the cross. The smoke of martyrs' homes and martyrs' bodies if rolling up all at once would have eclipsed the noonday sun and turned the brightest day the world ever saw into a midnight. " Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke ?' ' HAS PERSECUTION CEASED? Has persecution ceased? Ask that young man who is trjnng to be a Christian in a store or factory where from morning to night he is the butt of all the mean witticisms of unbelieving employes. Ask that wife whose husband makes her fondness for the house of God, and even her kneeling prayer by the bedside, a derision, and is no more fit for her holy companionship than a filthy crow would be fit companion for a robin or a golden oriole. Compromise with the world and surrender to its conventionalities and it may let you alone, but all who will live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution. Be a theatre-going, card-pla3-ing, wine-drinking, round-dancing Christian, and you may escape criticism and social pressure. But be an up-and-down, out-and-out follower of Christ, and worldling will wink to worldling as he speaks your name, and you will be put in many a doggerel and snubbed by those not worthy to blacken your oldest shoes. When the bridge at Ashtabula broke and let down the most of the carload of passengers to instant death, Mr. P. P. Bliss was seated on one side of the aisle of the car writing down a Christian song which he was composing, and on the other side a group of men were playing cards. Whose landing-place in eternity would you prefer — that of P. P. Bliss, the gospel singer, or of the players ? A great complaint comes from the theatres about the ladies' high hats because they obstruct the view of the stage, and a lady reporter asked me the other day what I thought about it, and I told her that if the indecent pictures of actresses in the show-windows of Brooklyn and New York were accurate pictures of what goes on in many of the theatres night after night, then it would be well if the ladies' hats were a mile high so as to completely obstruct the vision. If professed Christians go to such places during the week, no one will ever persecute them for their religion, for they have none and they are the joke of hell. But let them live a consecrated and Christian life and they will soon run against sneering opposition. For a compromise Christian character an easy time now, but for con- secrated behavior, grimace and caricature. For the body, thanks to the God of BAD NEWS FROM THE SEA. (435) 436 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. free America, there are now no swords or fiery stakes, but for the souls of thou- sands of the good, in a figurative sense, rack and gibbet and Torquemada. The symbol of the domestic, and social, and private, and public suffering of a great multitude of God's dear children, pillars of smoke. A TERRIBLE VENGEANCE. What an exciting scene in India when, during the Sepoy rebellion a regiment of Highlanders came up and found the dead body of one of General Wheeler's daughters, who had been insulted, and mauled, and slain by the Sepoys. So great was the wrath against these murderers that the Scotch regiment sat down, and cutting off the hair of this dead daughter of General Wheeler, they divided it among them, and each one counted the number of the hairs given him, and each took an oath, which was executed, that for each hair of the murdered daughter they would dash out the life of a miserable Sepoy. But as we look over the story of those who, in all ages, have suffered for the truth, while we leave vengeance to the lyord, let us band together in one solemn vow, one tremendous oath, after having counted the host of the martyrs, that for each one of those glorious men and women who died for the truth, an immortal soul shall live — live with God — • and live forever. But as I already hinted in the first sentence, nothing can be more beautiful than the figures of smoke on a clear sky. You can see what you will in the contour of this volatile vapor, now enchanted castles, now troops of horsemen, now bannered procession, now winged couriers, now a black angel of wrath under a spear of the sunshine turned to an angel of light, and now from horizon to horizon the air is a picture gallery filled with masterpieces of which God is the artist, morning clouds of smoke born in the sunrise, and evening clouds of smoke laid in the burnished sepulchres of the sunset. A BEAUTIFUL SYMBOL. The beauty of the transfigured smoke is a divine symbol of the beauty of the Church. The fairest of all the fair is she. Do not call those persecutors of whom I spoke, the Church. They are the parasites of the Church, not the Church itself Her mission is to cover the earth with a supernatural gladness, to open all the prison-doors, to balsam all the wounds, to moss all the graves, to burn up the night in the fireplace of a great morning, to change iron handcuffs into diamond wristlets, to turn the whole race around, and whereas it faced death, commanding it, " Right about face for heaven !" According to the number of the spires of the churches in all our cities, towns and neighborhoods, are the good homes, the worldly prosperities, and the pure morals, and the happy souls. Meet me at any depot the world over, and with my eyes closed, take me by the hand and lead me so that my feet will not stumble, and without my once THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 437 looking down, or looking on the level, take me to some high roof or tower, and let me see the tops of the churches, and I will tell you the proportion of suicides, of arsons, of murders, of thefts. According as the churches are numerous are the crimes few. According as the churches are few the crimes are numerous. The most beautiful organization the world ever saw or ever will see is the much- maligned Church, the friend of all good, the foe of all evil, " fair as the moon and clear as the sun." Beautiful in her author, beautiful in her mission, the heroine of the centuries, the bride of Christ, the queen of the nations. There are hundreds of kindly institutions, some caring for inebriates, some for the crippled, some for the imbecile, some for the misled, some for the blind, but the Church is the mother of all these kindly institutions. There are asylums, American, or English, or Scotch, or Irish, or French, or German, or Italian, but the Church spreads her mantle over all these, and will yet spread it over all nations. Her gates are beautiful, her songs are beautiful, her prayers are beautiful, her convocations are beautiful, her work is beautiful. All kings and warriors will yet bow down at her altars, all chains of serfdom be shattered against her doorstep, all nations will yet follow her leading. How amiable are thy tabernacles ! How sacred thy altars ! How glorious thy auditoriums ! So graceful, so aspiring, so grand, and rolling on, and rolling up, we cry out in regard to her: " Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke ?' ' THE SMOKE OF PEACE. " Perfumed smoke," says Solomon, not like the fumes coughed up from the throat of a steam pipe, or poisoned with the gases of chemical factories, or floating in black wrath from the conflagration of homesteads, or sulphurous from blazing batteries, but sweet as a burning grove of cinnamon or jungle of sassafras, or the odors of a temple censer. Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense ? Hear it, men and women everywhere, that the advance of the genuine Church of Christ means peace for all nations. Victor Hugo, in his book entitled ' ' Ninety- three," sa)^s: " Nothing calmer than smoke, but nothing more startling. There are peaceful smokes and there are evil ones. The thickness and color of a line of smoke make the whole difference between war and peace, between fraternity and hatred. The whole happiness of man or his complete misery is sometimes expressed in this thin vapor which the wind scatters at will." The great Frenchman was right, but I go further and say that as the kingdom of God advances like pillars of smoke, the black volumes belching from batteries of war and pouring out from port-holes of ships will vanish from the sky. 438 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. A distinguished gentleman of the late war told nie recently that Abraham Lincoln proposed to avoid our civil conflict by purchase of all the slaves of the South and setting them free. He calculated what would be a reasonable price for them, and when the number of millions of dollars that would be required for such a purpose was announced the proposition was scouted, and the North would not have made the offer, and the South would not have accepted it, if made. " But," said my military friend, " the war went on, and just the number of millions of dollars that Mr. Lincoln calculated would have been enough to make a reasonable purchase of all the slaves were spent in war, besides all the precious lives that were hurled away in the 250 battles." In other words, there ought to be some other way for men to settle their con- troversies without wholesale butchery. THE HORRORS OF WAR. The Church of God will j^et become the arbiter of nations. If the world would allow it, it would to-day step in between Germany and France and settle the trou- ble about Alsace and Lorraine, and between Russia and Bulgaria, and between England and her antagonists, and between all the other nations that are flying at each others' throats, and command peace and disband armies, and harness for the plow the war horses now being hitched to ammunition wagons, or saddled for cavalry charge. That time must come, or, through the increased facility for shoot- ing men and blowing up cities and overwhelming hosts to instant death, so that we can kill a regiment easier than we could once kill a company, and kill a brigade easier than we could once kill a regiment, the patent offices of the world more busy than ever in recognizing new enginery of destruction, the human race will, after a while, go fighting with one arm, and hobbling with one foot, and stumbling along with one eye, and some ingenious inventor, inspired of the archangel of all mischief, will contrive a machine that will bore a hole to the earth's centre, and some desperate nation will throw into that hole enough dynamite to blow this hulk of a planet into fragments, dropping like meteoric stones on surrounding stellar habitations. But this shall not be, for whatever else I let go, I hang on to my Bible, which tells me that the blacksmith's shop shall yet come to its grandest use when the warrior and the husbandman shall enter it side by side, and the soldier shall throw into its bank of fires his sword, and the farmer shall pick it up a plowshare, and the straightest spear shall be bent into a crook at each end, and then cut in two, and what was one spear shall be two pruning forks. Down with Moloch and up with Christ ! Let no more war-horses eat out of the manger where Jesus was born. Peace ! Forever roll off the sky the black pillars of smoke from the Marengos, and Salamancas, and Borodinos, and Sedans, and Gettysburgs of earth ! And THE PATHWAY OF I,IFE. 439 right after them roll into the heavens the peaceful vapors from the chimneys of farm houses, and asylums, and churches, and capitals of Christian nations, and, as the sunlight strikes through these vapors they vi^ill write in letters of jet and gold CRUCIFIXION OF ST. PETER. St. Peter accompanied Paul on his last trip to Rome, and there preached the gospel until the uprising against the Christians, at the instigation of Nero, when he was crucified, head downwards, while the Roman populace glutted their bloody vengeance for the burning of the city by destroying thousands of innocent Christians. all over the sky from horizon to zenith: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men !" Then let all the men-of-war fire a broadside, and all the forts thunder forth a resounding volley, and the earth be girdled with the cannonade over the final victory of the truth. 440 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. BURNING OF THE WORLD. Oh, come into the Church through Christ, the door — a door more glorious than that of the Temple of Hercules, which had two pillars, and one was gold and the other emerald ! Come in to-day. Come in and be one of the eternal victors ! The world you leave behind is a poor world, and it will burn and pass off like pillars of smoke. Whether the final conflagration will start in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, which, in some places, have for many years been burning and eat- ing into the heart of the mountains; or whether it shall begin near the California geysers; or whether from out the furnaces of Cotopaxi, and Vesuvius, and Strom- boli, it shall burst forth upon the astonished nations, I make no prophecy ; but all geologists tell us that we stand on the lid of a world the heart of which is a raging, roaring, awful flame, and some day God will let the red monsters out of their imprisonment of centuries, and New York on fire in 1835, and Charleston on fire in 1865, and Chicago on fire in 1871, and Boston on fire in 1873, were only like one spark from a blacksmith's forge as compared with that last universal blaze which will be seen in other worlds. But gradually the flames will lessen, and the world will become a great living coal, and that will take on ashen hue, and then our ruined planet will begin to smoke, and the mountains will smoke, and the valleys will smoke, and the islands will smoke, and the seas will smoke, and the cities will smoke, and the five continents will be five pillars of smoke. But the black vapors will begin to lessen in height and density, and then will become hardly visible to those who look upon it from the sky galleries, and after a while from just one point there will curl up a thin solitary vapor, and then even that will vanish, and there will be nothing left except the charred ruins of a burned-out world, the corpse of a dead star, the ashes of an extinguished planet, a fallen pillar. of smoke. But that will not interfere with your investments if 3^ou have taken Christ as your Saviour. Secure heaven as your eternal home, 3'ou can look down upon a dismantled, disrupted and demolished earth without any perturbation. When wrapped in fire the realms of ether glow, And heaven's last thunder shakes the earth below, Thou, undisniaj'ed, shalt o'er the ruins smile. And light thy torch at nature's funeral pile. A TRIBUTE TO OUR WAR FLEETS AND THE BRAVE SAILORS WHO MANNED THEM. ONG ago, even eighteen centuries ago, the Apostle James said, " Behold the ships." If any exclamation was in any measure appropriate then concerning the crude fishing-smacks that sailed L,ake Galilee, how much more appropriate in an age which has launched from the dry docks, for purposes of peace, the "Arizona," of the Guion Line; the "City of New York," of the Inman lyine; the "Egypt," of the National Line; the "Germanic," of the White Star Line; the " Circassia," of the Anchor Line; the " Ktruria," of the Cunard Line, and the " Great Eastern," with hull 680 feet long — not a failure, for it helped lay the Atlantic cable, and that was enough glory for one ship's existence — and in an age which for purposes of war has launched the screw-sloops like the ' ' Idaho, ' ' the ' ' Shenandoah, ' ' the ' 'Ossipee, ' ' and our iron-clads like the ' ' Kalamazoo, ' ' the ' ' Roanoke, ' ' and the ' ' Dunderberg, " and those which have already been buried in the deep, like the ' ' Monitor, ' ' the ' ' Housa- tonic, ' ' the ' ' Weehawken, ' ' and the ' ' Tecumseh, ' ' the tempests ever since sounding a volley over their water sepulchres, and the scarred veterans of war shipping like the " Constitution," or the " Alliance," or the " Constellation," that have swung into the naval yards to spend their last days, their decks now all silent of the feet that trod them, their rigging all silent of the hands that clung to them, their port- holes silent of the brazen throats that once thundered out of them. If in the first centurj^ when war vessels were dependent on the oars that paddled at the side of them for propulsion, his words were suggestive, with how much more emphasis, and meaning, and overwhelming reminiscence we can cry out, as we see the " Kearsarge " lie across the bows of the " Alabama " and sink it, teach- ing foreign nations they had better keep their hand off our American fight; or as we see the ram "Albemarle," of the Confederates, running out and in the Roanoke, and up and down the coast, throwing everything into confusion as no other craft ever did, pursued by the " Miami," the "Ceres," the "South- field," the "Sassacus," the " Mattabesett," the "Whitehead," the " Commodore Hull,", the "Louisiana," the "Minnesota" and other armed vessels, all trying in vain to catch her, until Captain Cushing, twenty-one years of age, and his men blew her up, himself and only one other escaping; and as I see the flagship {441) 442 THE PATHWAY OF I^IFB. ' ' Hartford, ' ' and the ' ' Richmond, ' ' and the ' ' Monongahela, ' ' with other gun- boats, sweep pass the batteries of Port Hudson, and the Mississippi flows forever free to all Northern and Southern craft, I cry out with a patriotic emotion that I cannot suppress if I would, and would not if I could: " Behold also the ships !" THE NEGLECTED SAILOR. At the annual decoration of graves, North and South, among Federals and Confederates, full justice has been done to the memory of those who fought on SHIP AHOY ! the land in our great contest, but not enough has been said of those who on ship's deck dared and suffered all things. So, ye admirals, commodores, commanders, captains, pilots, gunners, boatswains, sailmakers, surgeons, stokers, messmates and seamen of all names, to use your own parlance, we might as well get under way and stand out toward sea. I^et all land-lubbers go ashore. Full speed now ! Four bells. Never since the sea fight of Ivcpanto, where 300 royal galleys, manned by 50,000 warriors, at sunrise, September 6, 1571, met 250 royal galleys, manned THB PATHWAY OF LIFE. 445 by 120,000 men, and in the four hours of battle 8000 fell on one side and 25,000- on the other; yea, never since the day when at Actium, thirty-one years before Christ, Augustus, with 269 ships, scattered the 260 ships of Mark Antony and gained universal dominion as the prize; 5-ea, since the day when at Salamis the 1200 galleys of the Persians, manned by 500,000 men, were crushed by Greeks with less than a third of that force; yea, never since the time of Noah, the first ship captain, has the world seen such a miraculous creation as that of the Ameri- can navy in 1861. There were about 200 available seamen in all the naval stations and receiving ships, and here and there an old vessel. Yet orders were given to blockade 2500 miles of sea-coast, greater than the whole coast of Europe, and, beside that, the Ohio, Tennessee, Cumberland, Mississippi and other great rivers, covering an extent of 2000 more miles, were to be patrolled. No wonder the whole civilized world burst into a guffaw of laughter at the seeming impossi- bility. But the work was done, done almost immediately, done thoroughly, and done with a .speed and consummate skill that eclipsed all the history of naval architecture. What brilliant achievements are suggested by the mere mention of the names of the rear-admirals. If all they did should be written, every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. But these names have received the honors due. The most of them went to their graves under the cannonade of all the forts, navy yards and men- of-war, the flags of all the shipping and capitols at half-mast, DEEDS OF NAVAL HEROES. But I recite now the deeds of our naval heroes who have not yet received appropriate recognition. " Behold also the ships." As we will never know what our national prosperity is worth until we realize what it cost, I recall the unrecited fact that the men of the navy ran especial risks. They had not only the human weaponry to contend with, but the tides, the fog, the storm. Not like other ships could they run into harbor at the approach of an equinox, or a cyclone, or a hurricane, because the harbors were hostile. A miscalculation of a tide might leave them on a bar, and a fog might overthrow all the plans of wisest commodore and admiral, and accident might leave them not on the land ready for an ambulance, but at the bottom of the sea, as when ■the torpedo blew up the "Tecumseh," in Mobile Bay, and nearly all on board perished. They were at the mercy of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, which have no mercy. Such tempests as wrecked the Spanish "Armada" might any day swoop upon the squadron. No hiding behind the earthworks. No digging in of cavalry spurs at the sound of retreat. Mightier than all the fortresses on all the coasts, is the ocean when it bombards a flotilla. In the cemeteries for Federal and Confederate dead, are the bodies of most of those who fell on the 444 I'HK PATHWAY OF IvlFE. land. But where those are who went down in the w^ar vessels will not be known until the sea gives up its dead. The Jack tars knew that while loving arms might carry the men who fell on the land and bury them with solemn liturgy and the honors of war, for the bodies of those who dropped from the ratlines into the sea, or went down with all on board under the stroke of a gunboat, there remained the shark, and the whale, and the endless tossing of the sea which cannot rest. How will 3'ou find their graves for a national decoration ? Nothing but the arch- angel's trumpet shall reach their lowly bed. A few of them have been gathered into naval cemeteries of the land, and you will garland the sod that covers them, but who will put flowers on the fallen crew of the exploded ' ' Westfield ' ' and "Shawsheen," and the sunken "Southfield," and the " Winfield Scott." Bullets threatening in front, bombs threatening from above, torpedoes threaten- ing from beneath, and the ocean, with its reputation of 6000 years for ship- wreck lying all around — am I not right in saying it required a special courage for the navy ? FROM PICTURESQUE DISPLAY TO DEATH. It looks picturesque and beautiful to see a war vessel going out through the Narrows, sailors in new rig singing: A life on the ocean wave, A home on the rolling deep ! the colors gracefully dipping to passing ships, the decks immaculately clean, and the guns at Quarantine firing a parting salute. But the poetry is all gone out of that ship as it comes out of an engagement, like that off Trafalgar, where Nelson gained imperishable honors, its decks red with human blood, wheel-house gone, the cabin a pile of shattered mirrors and destroj^ed furnittire, steeriqg-wheel broken, smoke-stack crushed, a 100-pound Whitworth rifle shot having left its mark from port to starboard, the shrouds rent away, ladders splintered and decks plowed up, and smoke-blackened and scalded corpses lying among those who are gasping their last gasp, far away from home and kindred, whom they love as much as we love wife, and parents, and children. Not waiting until j-ou are dead to put upon your graves a wreath of recognition, this hour we put on your living brow the garland of a nation's praise. O men of the Western Gulf squadron, of the Eastern Gulf squadron, of the South Atlantic squadron, of the North Atlantic squadron, of the Mississippi squadron, of the Pacific squadron, of the West India squadron, and of the Potomac flotilla, hear otir thanks ! Take the benediction of otir churches. Accept the hospitalities of the nation. If we had our w^ay we would get j^ou not only a pension, but a home and a princely wardrobe, and an equipage, and a banquet while you live, and after 5^ our departure a catafalque, and a matisoletim of sculptured marble, with a model of the ship in which j^ou won the day. It is THE PATHWAY OF IvIFE. 445 considered a gallant thing when in a naval fight the flag-ship, with its blue ensign, goes ahead up a river or into a bay, its admiral standing in the shrouds watching and giving orders. But I have to tell you, O veterans of the American navy, if you are as loyal to Christ as j^ou were to the government there is a flag- ship sailing -„„.,,^,, _ -.,■ , ,....- -:-/^, ■ -;;..- ---:■■ -^ ,,_„—_-_-_ . ""'^ ahead of you of which Christ is the Admiral, and He watches f r o m the shrouds, and the heavens are the blue en- sign, and He leads you to- ward the har- bor, and all the broadsides of earth and hell cannot damage you, and ye, whose gar- ments weie once red with your own blood, shall have a robe washed and made white in the blood of the lyamb. Then strike eight bells ! High noon in heaven! With such anticipation, O veterans of the American navy, I charge you bear up under the aches and weaknesses that you still carry from the war times ! You are not as stalwart as you would have been but for that nervous strain and for that terrific exposure. Let every ache and CRUISERS AFTKR THE BATTI,E. 446 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. pain, instead of depressing, remind you of your fidelity. The sinking of the " Weehawken" off Morris Island, December 6, 1863, was a mystery. She was not under fire. The sea was not rough. But Admiral Dahlgren, from the deck of the flag steamer "Philadelphia," saw her gradually sinking, and finally she struck the ground, but the flag still floated above the waves in the sight of the shipping. It was afterward found that she sank from weakness through injuries in previous service. Her plates had been knocked loose in previous times. So you have in nerve, and muscle, and bone, and dimmed eyesight, and difiicult hearing, and shortness of breath, many intimations that you are gradually going down. It is the service of twenty-three years ago that is telling on you. Be of good cheer. We owe you just as much as though your life-blood had gurgled through the scuppers of the ship in the Red River expedition, or as though you had gone down with the ' ' Melville ' ' off Hatteras. Only keep you flag flying as did the illustrious ' ' Weehawken. ' ' Good cheer, my boys ! The memory of man is poor, and all that talk about the country never forgetting those who fought for it is an untruth. It does forget. Witness how the veterans sometimes had to turn the hand-organs on the street to get their families a living. Witness how ruthlessly some of them have been turned out of office that some bloat of a politician might take their place. Witness the fact that there is not a man or woman now under thirty years of age who has any full appreciation of the four years' martyrdom of 1861 to 1865 inclusive. But while men may forget, God never forgets. He remembers the swinging hammock. He remembers the forecastle. He remembers the frozen ropes of that January tempest. He remembers the amputation without sufficient ether. He remembers the horrors of that deafening night when forts from both sides belched on you their fury and the heavens glowed with the ascending and descending missiles of death, and your ship quaked under the recoil of the 100- pounder, while all the gunners, according to command, stood on tiptoe with mouth wide open lest the concussion shatter hearing or brain. He remembers it all better than you remember it, and in some shape reward will be given. God is the best of all paymasters, and for those who do their whole duty to Him and the world the pension awarded is an everlasting heaven. Sometimes off the coast of England the royal family have inspected the British navy manoeuvred before them for that purpose. In the Baltic Sea the Czar and Czarina have reviewed the Russian navy. To bring before the Ameri- can people the debt they owe to the navy, I go out with you on the Atlantic Ocean, where there is plenty of room, and in imagination review the war-shipping of our three great conflicts — 1776, 181 2, and 1865. Swing into line all ye frigates, ironclads, fire-rafts, gunboats, and men-of-war. There they come, all sail set and .all furnaces in full blast, sheaves of crystal tossing from their cutting prows. THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 447 That is the " Delaware," an old Revolutionary craft, commanded by Commodore Decatur. Yonder goes the ' ' Constitution , ' ' Commodore Hull commanding. There is the "Chesapeake," commanded by Captain lyawrence, whose dying words were: " Don't give up the ship," and the "Niagara," of 1 812, commanded by Commodore Perry, who wrote on the back of an old letter, resting on his navy cap: " We have met the enemy, and they are ours." Yonder is the flagship " Wabash," Admiral CROSSING THE BAR.— From the Painting by Hamilton Macallum. Dupont commanding; yonder the flagship "Minnesota," Admiral Goldsborough commanding; yonder the flagship " Philadelphia," Admiral Dahlgren command- ing; yonder the flagship "San Jacinto," Admiral Bailey commanding; yonder the flagship "Black Hawk," Admiral Porter commanding; yonder the flag steamer " Benton," Admiral Foote commanding; yonder the flagship " Hartford," David Glascoe Farragut commanding. And now all the squadrons of all departments, from smallest tugboat to mightiest man-of-war, are in procession, decks and rigging 448 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. filled with the men who fought on the sea for the old flag ever since we were a nation. Grandest fleet the world ever saw. Sail on before all ages ! Run up all the colors ! Ring all the bells ! Yea, open all the port-holes ! Unlimber the guns and load and fire one great broadside that shall shake the continents in honor of peace and the eternity of the American Union ! But I lift my hand and the scene has vanished. Many of the ships have dropped under the crystal pavement of the deep sea, monsters swimming in and out the forsaken cabin, and other old craft have swung into the navy yards, and many of the brave spirits who trod their decks are gone up to the eternal fortress, from whose casements and embrasures may we not hope they look down to-day with joy upon a nation in re-united brotherhood ? DEATH OF FARRAGUT. At the annual commemoration I bethought that most of you who were in the naval service during our late war are now in the afternoon or evening of life. With some of you it is two o'clock, three o'clock, four o'clock, six o'clock, and it will soon be sundown. If you were of age when the war broke out you are now at least forty-eight. Many of you have passed into the sixties and seventies; therefore it is appropriate that I hold two great lights for your illumination — the example of Christian admirals consecrated to Christ and their country. Admiral Foote and Admiral Farragut. Had the Christian religion been a cowardly thing they would have had nothing to do with it. In its faith they lived and died. In our Brooklyn Navy Yard, Admiral Foote held prayer meetings and conducted a revival on the receiving-ship " North Carolina," and on Sabbath, far out at sea, followed the chaplain with religious exhortation. In early life on board the sloop of war " Natchez," impressed by the words of a Christian sailor, he gave his spare time for two weeks to the Bible, and, at the end of that, declared openly: "Hence- forth, under all circumstances, I will act for God." His last words while dying, at the Astor House, New York, were: " I thank God for all His goodness to me. He has been very good to me." When he entered heaven he did not have to run a blockade, for it was amid the cheers of a great welcome. The other Christian Admiral will be honored until the day when the fires from above shall lick up the waters from beneath, and there .shall be no more sea. Oh, while old ocean's breast Bears a white sail, And God's soft stars to rest Guide through the gale Men will him ne'er forget Old hearts of oak, Farragut, Farragut, Thunderbolt stroke ! THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 449 When in Mobile Bay the monitor ' ' Tecumseh ' ' sunk from a torpedo, and the great war-ship " Brooklyn," that was to lead the squadron, turned back, he said he was at a loss to know whether to advance or retreat, and he says: " I prayed, ' O God, who created man and gave him reason, direct what to do. Shajl I go on ?' And a voice commanded me: ' Go on.' And I went on." Was there ever a more touching Christian letter than that which he wrote to his wife from his flagship " Hartford ?" My dearest Wife. —I write and leave this letter for you. I am going into Mobile Bay- in the morning, if God is my leader, and I hope He is, and in Him I place my trust. If He thinks it is the proper place for me to die I am ready to submit to His will in that as in all other things. God bless and preserve yoii, my darling, and my dear boy, if anything should happen to me. May His blessings rest upon you, and your dear mother, and all your sisters and their children. Cheerful to the end, he said, on board the " Tallapoosa," in the last voyage he ever took: " It would be well if I died now, in harness." The sublime Episcopal service for the dead was never more appropriately read than over his casket, and well did all the forts of New York harbor thunder as his body was brought to the wharf, and well did the minute guns sound and the bells toll as in a procession having in its ranks the President of the United States and his Cabinet, and the mighty men of land and sea, the old admiral was carried amid hundreds of thousands of uncovered heads on Broadway, and laid on hia pillow of dust in beautiful Woodlawn, amid the pomp of our autumnal forests. Ye veterans who sailed and fought under him, take your admiral's God and Christ for your God and Christ. After a few more conflicts you too will rest. For the few remaining fights with sin, and death, and hell make ready. Strip your vessel for the fra}'; hang the sheet chains over the side; send down the top- gallant masts; barricade the wheel; rig in the flying jib-boom; steer straight for the shining shore, and hear the shout of the great Commander of earth and heaven as He cries from the shrouds: "To him that overcometh, will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the Paradise of God." 29 Wnt^ jcrC il^^ ^^^^^ ANCIENT WARRIORS IN ARMED PANOPLY, AND THE STRIFE OF BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER.-THE GREAT REBELLION. b IlylTARY science in the Bible is set forth in a very inter- esting manner. In olden times all the men between twenty and fifty }'ears of age were enrolled in the ami}-, and then a levy was made for a special service. There were only three or four classes exempt — those who had built a house and had not occupied it; those who had planted a garden and had not reaped the fruit of it; those who were engaged to be married and yet had not led the bride to the altar; those who were yet in the first year of wedded life; those who were so nervous that they could not look upon an enemy but they fled, and could not look upon blood but the}^ fainted. EARLY WEAPONS OF WARFARE. The army was in three divisions — the centre, and right and left wings. The weapons of defence were helmet, shield, breast- plate, buckler. The weapons of offence were sword, spear, javelin, arrow, catapult — which was merely a bow swung by machinery, shoot- ing arrows at vast distances; great arrows, one arrow as large as several men could lift, and ballista, which was a sling slung by machinery, hurling great rocks and large pieces of lead vast distances. The shields were made of woven willow-work, with three thicknesses of hide, and a loop inside through which the arm of the warrior might be thrust; and when these soldiers were march- ing to attack an enemy on the level all these shields touched each other, making a wall moving but impenetrable; and then when they attacked a fort- ress and tried to capture a battlement this shield was lifted over the head so as to resist the falling missiles. The breastplate was made of two pieces of leather, brass covered, one piece falling over the back. At the side of the warrior the two pieces fastened with buttons or clasps. The bows were so stout and stiff and strong that warriors often challenged each other to bend one. The strings of the bow were made from the sinews of oxen. A case like an inverted pyramid was fastened to the back, that case containing the arrows, so that when the warrior (450) THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. 451 wanted to use an arrow he would put his arm over his shoulder and pull forth the arrow for the fight. The ankle of the foot had an iron boot. When a wall was to be assaulted a battering-ram was brought up. A battering-ram was a great beam swung on chains in equi- librium. The battering-ram would be brought close up to the wall and then a great number of men would take hold of this beam, push it back as far as they could and then let go, and the beam became a great swinging pendulum of destruction. Twenty or fort}' men would stand in a movable tow- er on the back of an elephant, the elephant made drunk with wine, and then headed toward the en- emj', and what with the hea\'>' feet and the siege of tyre. swinging proboscis and the poisoned arrows shot from the movable tower, the destruction was appalling. War chariots were in vogue and they were on two wheels so they could easily turn. A sword was fastened to the pole between the 452 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. horses, so when they went ahead the sword thrust and when they turned around it would mow down. The armies carried flags beautifully embroidered. The tribe of Judah carried a flag embroidered with a lion; tribe of Reuben, embroidered with a man; tribe of Dan, embroidered with cherubim. The noise of the host as they moved on was overwhelming. What with the clatter of shields and the rumbling of wheels and the shouts of the captains, and the vociferations of the entire host, the prophet says it was like the roaring of the sea. Because the arts of war have been advancing all these 3'ears you are not to conclude that these armies of olden times were uncontrollable mobs. I could quote you four or five passages of vScripture showing you that they were thoroughly drilled; they marched step to step, shoulder to shoulder. FOREIGN NATIONS JEALOUS OF US. Nothing could be more important than a great national encampment. Un- drilled troops can never stand before those which are drilled. At a time when other nations are giving such care to military tactics, it behooves this nation to •lack nothing in skill. We shall never have another war between North and South. The old decayed bone of contention, American slaver}^ has been cast out, although here and there a depraved politician takes it up to see if he can gnaw something off of it. We are floating off further and further from the possi- bility of sectional strife, but about foreign invasion I am not so sure. There is absolutely no room on this continent for any other nation. I have been across the country again and again, and I know that we have not a half-inch of ground for the gouty foot of foreign despotism to stand on. I do not know but that a half- dozen nations, envious of our prosperity, may want to give us a wrestle. During our Civil War there were two or three nations that could hardly keep their hands off of us. It is very easy to pick national quarrels, and if our nation escapes it much longer it will be the exception. If a foreign foe should come, we want men like those of 181 2, and like those who fought on both sides in 1862. We want them all up and down the coast, Pulaski and Fort Sumter in the same chorus of thunder as Fort Lafayette and Fort Hamilton, men who will not only know how to fight, but how to die. When such a time comes, if it ever does come, the gen- eration on the stage of action will say: " My country will care for my family as the}' did in the soldiers' asylums for the orphans in the Civil War, and ni}' coun- try will honor ni}- dust as it honors those who preceded me in patriotic sacrifice, and once a j-ear at any rate, on Decoration Day, I .shall be resurrected into the remembrance of those for whom I died. Here I go, for God and m}' countr}-." If foreign foe should ever come, all sectional animosities would be obliterated. Here go our regiments into battle, side by side, 15th New York Volunteers, loth Alabama Cavalry, 14th Pennsylvania Riflemen, loth Massachusetts Artillery; 7th South Carolina Sharpshooters. I have no faith in the cry: ' ' No North, no South, WAR. - Ftoni the Painting by James Drumniond. (453) 454 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. no East, no West. ' ' Eet all four sections keep their peculiarities and their prefer- ences, each doing its own work and not interfering with each other; each of the four carr3ang its part in the great harmony — the bass, the alto, the tenor, the soprano in the grand march of the Union. Contrast the feeling of sectional bitterness in 1862 with the feeling of sectional unity in 1888. At the first date the South had banished the national air, "The Star-Spangled Banner, ' ' and the North had banished the popular air of ' ' Way Downi South in Dixie.' ' The Northern people were " mudsills " and the Southern people were " white trash." The more vSouthern people were killed in battle, the better the North liked it. The more Northern people killed in battle, the better the South liked it. F'or four ^-ears the head of Abraham lyincoln or Jefferson Davis would have been worth a million dollars, if delivered on either side of the line. No need now, standing in our pulpits and platforms, of saying that the North and South did 'not hate each other. To estimate how dearly they loved each other, count up the bombshells that were hurled, and the carbines that were loaded, and the cavalry horses that were mounted; North and South facing each other all armed, in the attempt to kill. The two sections not only marshaled all their earthly hostilities, but tried to reach up and get hold of the sword of heaven, and the prayer of the Northern and Southern pulpits gave more information to the heavens about the best mode of settling this trouble than was ever used. For four 3^ears both sides tried to get hold of the Lord's thunderbolts, but could not quite reach them. At the breaking out of the war we had not for months heard of my dear uncle, Samuel J. Talmage, President of the Oglethorpe University, in Georgia. He was about the grandest man I ever knew, and as good as good could be. The first we heard of him was his opening prayer in the Confederate Congress in Richmond, which was reported in the New York papers, which praN'er, if answered, would, to say the least, have left all his Northern relatives in very uncomfortable circumstances. The ministry at the North prayed one way and the ministry at the South prayed the other wa3^ No use in hiding the fact that the North and the South cursed each other with a withering and all-consuming curse. WAR CONTRASTED WITH PEACE. Beside that antipathy of war time I place the complete accord of this time. Not long ago a meeting in New York was held to raise money to build a home at Richmond for crippled Confederate soldiers, the meeting presided over by a man who lost an arm and a leg in fighting on the Northern side, and the leg not lost so hurt that it does not amount to much. The Cotton Exhibition held not long ago in Atlanta was attended by tens of thousands of Northern people, and by General Sherman, who was greeted with kindness, as though they had never seen him before. At the New Orleans F^xhibition, held two years ago, every Northern THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 455 State was represented. A thousand- fold kindlier feeling after the war than before the war. No more use of gunpowder in this country, except for rifle practice, or Fourth of July pyrotechnics, or a shot at a roebuck in the Adirondacks. Briga- dier-Generals in the Southern Confederac}' making their fortunes as lawyers in the Northern cities. Rivers of Georgia, Alabama and North Carolina turning mills of New England capitalists. The old lions of war — Fort Sumter, and Moultrie, and Lafayette, and Pickens, and Hamilton, sound asleep on their iron paws, and instead of raising money to keep enemies out of our New York Harbor, raising money for the Bartholdi statue on Bedloe's Island, figure of Liberty with uplifted torch to light the way to all who want to come in. Instead of war antipathies, when you could not cross the line between the contestants, without fighting your waj' with keen steel, or getting through by passes carefully scrutinized at every step by bayonets, you need onl}^ a railroad ticket from New York to Charleston or New Orleans to go clear through, and there is no use for any weapon sharper or stronger than a steel pen. Since the 3'ears of time began their roll has there ever been in about two decades such an overwhelming antithesis as between the war time of com- plete bitterness and this time of complete sympathj' ? Contrast also the domestic life of those times with the domestic life of these times. Many of you were either leaving home or far away from it, communicating by uncertain letter. What a morning that was when j-ou left home ! Father and mother crying, si-sters crying, 3'ou smiling outside, but crying inside. Everybody nervous and excited. Boys of the blue and gray ! whether you started from the banks of the Hudson, or the Savannah, or the Androscoggin, don't you remember the scenes at the front door, at the rail-car window, on the steamboat landings ? The huzza could not drown out the suppressed sadness. Don't you remember those charges to write home often, take good care of yourself, be good boys, and the good-bye kiss which the}^ thought, and you thought, might be forever? Then the homesickness as you paced the river bank on a starlight night on picket duty, and the sly tears which you wiped off when 3-ou heard a group at the camp-fire singing the plantation song about the old folks at home. The dinner of hard-tack on Thanksgiving Day, the Christmas without any presents, and the long nights in the hospital so different from the sickness when you were at home, with mother and sister at the bedside and the clock in the hall giving the exact moment for the medicine; and that forced march, when your legs ached, and your head ached, and your wounds ached, and more than all, 3'our heart ached. Home-sickness w^hich had in it a suffocation and a pang worse than death. You never got hardened as did the guardsman in the Crimean War, who heartlessly wrote home to his mother: " I do not want to see any more crying letters come to the Crimea from you. Those I have received I put into my rifle, after loading it, and have fired them at the Ru.ssians, because you appear to have a strong dislike of them. 456 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. If you had seen as many killed as I have you would not have as many weak ideas as you now have. ' ' NEWS FROM THE BATTLE. You never felt like that. When a soldier's knapsack was found after his death in the American war there was generally a careful package containing a Bible, a few photographs and letters from home. On the other hand, tens of thousands of homes waited for news, parents saying: " Twenty thousand killed ! I wonder if our boy was among them." Fainting dead away in post-offices and telegraph stations. Both the ears of God filled with the sobs and agonies of kindred waiting news, or dropping under the announcement of bad news. Speak, swamps of the-Chickahominy, and midnight lagoons and fire-rafts of the Missis- sippi, and gunboats before Vicksburg, and the weeks of Antietam, and tell to all the mountains, and valleys, and rivers, and lakes of North and South, jeremiads of war times that have never been syllabled. Beside that domestic perturbation and home-sickness of those days put the sweet domesticity of to-da)^ The only camp-fire you now ever sit at is the one kindled in stove, or furnace, or hearth. Instead of a half ration of salt pork, a repast luxuriant because partaken of by loving family circle and in secret con- fidence. Oh ! now I see whom those letters were for, the letters 5^ou, the young soldier, took so long in your tent to write, and that you were so particular to put in the mail without any one seeing you, lest j-ou be teased by our comrades. God spared you to get back, and though the old people have gone you have a home of your own construction, and 5''ou often contrast those awful absences, and filial, and brotherly, and loverly heart-breaks with your present residence, which is the dearest place you will find this side of heaven. The place where your children were born is the place where you want to die. To write the figures of 1862 I set up four crystals — crystals of tears. To write the figures of 1888 I stand up four members of your household — figures of rosy cheeks and flaxen hair — if I can get them to stand still long enough. Contrast also the religious opportunities of twenty years ago with now. Often on the march from Sunday morn till night, or commanded b)' ofiicers who considered the names of God and Christ of no use except to swear by. Some- times the drum-head the pulpit, and you standing in heat or cold, all the sur- roundings of military life having a tendency to make you reckless. No privacy for prayer or Bible reading. No sound of church bells. Sabbath spent far away from the place w^iere you were brought up. Now the choicest sanctuaries, easy pew, all Christian surroundings, the air full of God and Christ, and heaven and doxology. Three mountains lifting themselves into the holy light — Mount Sinai thundering its law. Mount Calvary pleading the sacrifice, Mount Pisgah dis- playing the Promised Land. PEACE. — From the Painting by James Drummond. (457) 458 THP: pathway OF IJFE. Contrast of national condition: 1862, spending money by the millions in devastation of property and life; 1888, the finances so reconstructed that all the stock gamblers of Wall street combined cannot make a national panic; 1862, surgeons of the land setting broken bones, and amputating gangrened limbs, and studying gunshot fractures, and inventing easy ambulances for the wounded and dying; 1888, surgeons giving their attentions to those in casualty of agriculture, of commerce or mechanical life, the rushing of the ambulance through our streets, not suggesting battle, but quick relief of some one fallen in peaceful industries; 1862, 35,000,000 inhabitants in this land; 1888, 60,000,000; 1862, wheat about 80,000,000 bushels; 1888, the wheat will be about 500,000,000 bushels; 1S62 Pacific coast five weeks from the Atlantic; 1888, for three reasons — Union Pacific, Southern Pacific and Northern Pacific — only seven days across. Look at the long line of churches, universities, asylums and houses with which during the last few years this land has been decorated. THE BURIED HEROES. Living soldiers of the North and South, take a new and special ordination at each season of the year, to garland the sepulchres of your fallen comrades. Nothing is too good for their memories. Turn all the private tombs and the national cemeteries into gardens. Ye dead of Malvern Hill, and Cold Harbor, and Murfreesboro, and Manassas Junction, and Cumberland Gap, and field hospital, receive these floral offerings of the living soldiers. But they shall come again, all the dead troops. We sometimes talk about earthly military reviews, such as took place in Paris in the time of Marshal Ney, in London in the time of Wellington, and in our own land, but what tame things compared with the final review, when all the armies of the ages shall pass for divine and angelic inspection. St. John says the armies of heaven ride on white horses, and I don't know but many of the old cavalry horses of earthly battle, that were wounded and worn out in service, may have resurrection. It would be only fair that, raised up and ennobled, they would be resurrected for the grand review of the judgment day. It would not take any more power to reconstruct their bodies than to reconstruct ours, and I should be very glad to see them among the white horses of Apocalyptic vision. Hark to the trumpet blast, the reveille of the last judgment. They come up — all the armies of all lands and all centuries, on whichever side they fought, whether for freedom or despotism, for the right or the wrong. They come ! They come ! Darius, and Cyrus, and Sennacherib, and Joshua, and David, leading forth the armies of Scriptural times; Hannibal and Hamilcar leading forth the armies of the Carthaginians; Victor Ematmel and Garibaldi leading on the armies of the Italians; Tamerlane and Ghengis Khan followed by the armies of Asia; Gustavus Adolphus, and Ptolemy THE PATHWAY OF 1,1 Fli. 459 Philopater, and Xerxes, and Alexander, and Semiramis, and Washington, leading battalion after battalion. The dead American armies of 1776, and 1812, and 1,000,000 of Northern and Southern dead in our Civil War — they come up; they pass on in review. The 6,000,000 fallen in Napoleonic battles; the 12,000,000 Germans fallen in the Thirty Years' War; the 15,000,000 fallen in the war under Sesostris; the 20,000,000 fallen in the wars of Justinian; the 25,000,000 fallen in Jewish w^ars; the 80,000,000 fallen in the Crusades; the 180,000,000 fallen in the wars with Saracens and Turks; the 35,000,000,000 estimated to have fallen in battle — enough, according to one statistician, if they stood four abreast, to reach clear around the earth 442 times. But we shall have time to see them pass in review before the throne of judg- ment, the cavalrymen, the artillerymen, the spearmen, the infantry, the sharp- shooters, the gunners, the sappers, the miners, the archers, the skirmishers, men of all colors, of all epaulets, of all standards, of all weaponry, of all countries. Let the earth be especially balanced to bear their tread. Forward ! Forward ! Let the orchestra of the heavenly galleries play the grand march, joined b}- all the fifers, drummers and military bands that ever sounded victory or defeat at Kylau or Borobino, Marathon or Thermopylae, Bunker Hill or Yorktown, Solferino or Balaklava, Sedan or Gettysburg, from the time w^hen Joshua halted astronomy above Gibeon and Ajalon till the last man surrendered to Garnet Wolseley at Tel-el-Kebir. Nations, companies, battalions, ages, centuries and the universe ! Forward in the grand review of the judgment ! Forward ! Gracious and eternal God ! On that day may it be found that we are all marching in the right regi- ment and that we carried the right standard, and that we fought under the right commander, all heaven, some on amethystine battlement and others standing in the shining gates, some on pearly shore and others on turreted heights, giving us the resounding million-voiced cheer: " Lo, him that overcometh !" MORAL ILLUSTRATIONS TAKEN FROM THE CHASE. UNTING is a sport of our day; but in the lands and the times infested with wild beasts, it was a matter of life or death with the people. It was very different from going out on a sunshiny afternoon with a patent breechloader, to shoot reed- birds on the flats, when Pollux, and Achilles, and Diomedes went out to clear the land of lions, and tigers, and bears. The Bible sets forth Nimrod as a hero, when it presents him wdth broad shoulders, and shaggy apparel, and sun-browned face, and arm bunched with muscle — " a mighty hunter before the Lord." I think he used the bow and arrow with great success practicing archery. I have thought if it is such a grand thing and such a brave thing to clear wild beasts out of a country, if it is not a better and braver thing to hunt down and destroy those great evils of society that are stalking the land with fierce eye, bloody paw, and sharp tusk, and quick spring. How much awkward Christian work there is done in the world ! How many good people there are who drive souls away from Christ, instead of bringing them to Him ! — religious blunderers who upset more than they right. Their gun has a crooked barrel and kicks as it goes off. They are like a clumsy comrade who goes along with skillful hunters; at the very moment he ought to be most quiet he is cracking an alder or falling over a log, and frightening away the ^ame. Truman Osborne, one of the evangelists who went through this countr^^ some years ago, had a wonderful art in the right direction. He came to my father's house one day, and while we were all seated in the room, he said: " Mr. Talmage, are all your children Christians?" Father said: " Yes, all but De "Witt." Then Truman Osborne looked down into the fire-place, and began to tell a story of a storm that came on the mountains, and all the sheep were in the fold; but there was one lamb outside that perished in the storm. Had he looked me in the eye, I should have been angered when he told me that story; but he looked into the fire-place, and it was so pathetically and beautifully done that I never found any peace until I was sure I was inside the fold, where the other sheep are. (460) THE PATHWAY OF UFE. 461 ARCHERS OF OLDEN TIMES. The archers of old times studied their art. They were very precise in the matter. The old books gave special directions as to how the archer should go and as to what an archer should do. He must stand erect and firm, his left foot a little in advance of his right foot. With his left hand he must take hold of the bow in the middle, and then with the three fingers and the thumb of his right hand he should lay hold of the arrow and affix it to the string — so precise was the direction given. But how clumsy we are about religious work. How little skill and care we exercise ! How often our arrows miss the mark ! Oh, that we might leara the art of doing good and become " mighty hunters before the lyord !" In the first place, if you want to be effectual in doing good, you must be very sure of your weapon. There was something very fascinating about the archery of olden times. Perhaps you do not know what they could do with the bow and arrow. Why the chief battles fought by the English Plantagenets were with the long bow. They would take the arrow of polished wood, feather it with the plume of a bird, and then it would fly from the bow-string of plaited silk. The broad fields of Agincourt, and Sol way Moss, and Neville's Cross, heard the loud thrum of the archer's bow-string. Now, my Christian readers, we have a mightier weapon than that. It is the arrow of the gospel; it is a sharp arrow; it is a straight arrow; it is feathered from the wing of the dove of God's Spirit; it flies from a bow made out of the wood of the cross. As far as I can estimate or calculate, it has brought down 400,000,000- souls. Paul knew how to bring the notch of that arrow on to that bow-string, and its whir was heard through the Corinthian theatres, and through the court- room, until the knees of Felix knocked together. It was that arrow that stuck in lyUther's heart when he cried out: " Oh, my sins ! Oh, my sins !" If it strike a man in the head, it kills his skepticism; if it strike him in the heel, it will turn his step; if it strike him in the heart, he throws up his hands, as did one of old when wounded in the battle, crying: " O Galilean, Thou hast conquered." In the armory of the Earl of Pembroke, there are old corselets which show that the arrows of the English used to go through the breastplate, through the body of the warrior, and out through the backplate. What a symbol of that gospel which is sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and body, and of the joints and marrow. If you want to succeed in gospel hunting you must have courage. If the hunter stand with trembling hand or shoulder that flinches with fear, instead of his taking the catamount, the catamount takes him. What would become of the Greenlander if, when out hunting for the bear, he should stand shivering with terror on an iceberg ? What would have become of Du Chaillu and lyivingstone in the African thicket with a faint heart and a weak knee ? When a panther 462 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. comes within twenty paces of you, and has its eye on you, and it has squatted for the fearful spring, " Steady there." THE MONSTER OF INTEMPERANCE. Courage, O ye spiritual hunters ! There are great monsters of iniquity prowl- ing all around about the community. Shall w^e not, in the strength of God, go forth and combat them ? We not only need more heart, but more backbone. What is the Church of God that it should fear to look in the eye any transgression ? There is the Bengal tiger of drunkenness that prowls around, and instead of attacking it, how many of us hide under the church pew or the communion table ? There is so much invested in it we are afraid to assault it — millions of dollars in barrels, in vats, in spigots, in cork-screws, in gin palaces with marble floors, and Italian-top tables, and chased ice-coolers; and in the strychnine, and the logwood, and the tartaric acid, and the nux vomica, that go to make up our "pure" American drinks. I looked with wondering eyes on the " Heidelberg tun." It is the great liquor vat of Germany, which is said to hold 800 hogsheads of wine, and only three times in 100 years has it been filled. But as I stood and looked at it I said to myself: " That is nothing — 800 hogsheads. Why, our American \'at holds 4,500,000 barrels of strong drinks, and we keep 300,000 men with nothing to do but to see that it is filled." Oh ! to attack this great monster of intemperance, and the kindred monsters of fraud and uncleanness, requires you to rally all your Christian courage. Through the press, through the pulpit, through the platform, you must assault it. Would to God th^t all our American Christians would band together for holy Christian reform. Oh, how many good men are being led astray by this monster of iniquity, this giant curse of the age and of civilization, this destroyer of home, this blaster of hope, this vicegerent of Satan. I could give you the historj'^ in a minute of one of the best friends I ever had. Outside of my own family I never had a better friend. He welcomed me to my home at the West. He was of splendid personal appearance, but he had an ardor of soul and a warmth of affection that made me love him like a brother. I saw men coming out of the saloons and gambling hells, and they surrounded my friend and they took him at the weak point, his social nature, and I saw him going down, and I had a fair talk with him — for I never yet saw a man you could not talk with on the subject of his habits, if you talk with him in the right way. I said to him: " Why don't you give up your bad habits and become a Christian ?" I remember now just how he looked, leaning over his counter, as he replied: " I wish I could. Oh, sir, I should like to be a Christian, but I have gone so far astray I can't get back." So the time went on. After a while the daj' of sickness came. I was summoned to his sick bed. I hastened. It took me but a very few moments to THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 463 get there. I was surprised as I went in. I saw him in his ordinary dress, fully cressed, lying on top of the bed. I gave him my hand, and he seized it convul- sively and said: " Oh, how glad I am to see you ! Sit down there." I sat down and he said: " Mr. Talmage, just where you sit now my mother sat last night. vShe has been dead twenty years. Now, I don't want you to think I am out of my A MODERN CLUB-ROOM. mind, or that I am superstitious; but, sir, she sat there last night just as certainly as you sit there now — the same cap and apron and spectacles. It was ni}- old mother— she sat there. ' ' Then he turned to his wafe and said: ' ' I wish you would take these strings off the bed; somebody is wrapping strings around me all the time. I wish you would stop that annoyance." She said: "There is nothing 464 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. here." Then I saw it was delirium. He said: "Just where you sit now my mother sat, and she said: ' Roswell, I wish you would do better — I wish you would* do better.' I said: ' Mother, I wish I could do better; I try to do better, but I can't. Mother, you used to help me; why can't you help me now?' And, sir, I got out of bed, for it was a reality, and I went to her, and threw my arms around her neck, and I said: ' Mother, I will do better, but you must help; I can't do this alone.' " I knelt down and prayed. That night his soul went to the Lord that made it. Arrangements were made for the obsequies. The question was raised whether they should bring him to the church. Somebody said: " You cannot bring such a dissolute man as that into the church. ' ' I said: ' ' You will bring him in church ; he stood by me when he was alive, and I will stand by him when he is dead. Bring him." As I stood in the pulpit and saw them carrying the body up the aisle, I felt as if I could weep tears of blood. On one side of the pulpit sat his little cliild of eight 3'ears, a sweet, beautiful little girl that I have seen him hug convulsively in his better moments. He put on her all jewels, all diamonds, and gave her all pictures and toys, and then he would go away as if hounded by an evil spirit, to his cups and the house of shame — a fool to the correction of the stocks. She looked up wonderingly. She knew not what it all meant. She was not old enough to understand the sorrow of an orphan child. On the other side of the pulpit sat the men who had ruined him; they were the men who had poured the wormwood into the orphan's cup; they were the men who had bound him hand and foot. I knew them. How did they seem to feel ? Did they weep? No. Did they say, "What a pity that so generous a man should be destroyed ?' ' No. Did they sigh repentingly over what they had done ? No; they sat there, looking as vultures look at the carcass of a lamb whose heart they had ripped out. So they sat and looked at the coffin lid, and I told them the judgment of God upon those who had destroyed their fellows. Did they reform ? I was told they were in the places of iniquity that night after my friend was laid in Oakwood Cemetery, and they blasphemed and they drank. Oh, how merciless men are, especially after they have destroyed you. Do not look to men for com- fort or help. Look to God. But there is a man who will not reform. He says: ' ' I won' t reform. ' ' Well, then, how many acts are there in a tragedy? I believe five. Act I. — A young man starting off from home. Parents and sisters weeping to have him go. Wagon rising over the hill. Farewell kiss flung back. Ring the bell and let the curtain fall. Act II. — The marriage altar. Full organ. Bright lights. Long white veil ti ailing through the aisle. Prayer and congratulation, and exclamation of " How well she looks ! " THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 465 Act III. — A woman waiting for staggering steps. Old garments stuck into the broken window pane. Marks of hardship on the face, The biting of the nails of bloodless fingers. Neglect, and cruelty, and despair , Ring the bell and let the curtain drop. Act IV. — Three graves in a dark place — grave of the child that died for lack of medicine, grave of the wife that died of a broken heart, grave of the man that died of dissipation. Oh ! what a blast- ed heath with three graves! Plenty of weeds, but no flowers. Ring the bell and let the curtain drop. Act v.— A de- stroyed soul's eternity. No light; no music; no hope; anguish coiling its serpents around the heart; blackness of dark- ness forever. But I cannot look any longer. Woe ! woe ! I close my eyes to this last act of the tragedy. Quick ! quick ! ring the bell and let the curtain drop. "Rejoice, O the two roads. young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth; but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judg- ment." "There is a way that seemeth right to a man, but the end thereof is death." Be thou a mighty hunter against such ravening beasts of iniquity. I think it was in 1793 that there went out from Lucknow, India, under the sovereign, the greatest hunting party that was ever projected. There were 10,000 30 466 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. armed men in that hunting party. There were camels, and horses, and elephants. On some, princes rode, and royal ladies, under exquisite housing, and 500 coolies waited upon the train, and the desolate places of India were invaded by this excur- sion, and the rhinoceros, and deer, and elephant, fell under the stroke of the sabre and bullet. After a while the party brought back trophies worth 50,000 rupees. Laving left the wilderness of India ghastly with the slain bodies of wild beasts. Would to God that instead of here and there a straggler going out to fight cliese great monsters of iniquity in our country, the million membership of our churches would band together and hew in train these great crimes that make the land frightful with their roar, and are fattening upon the bodies and souls of immor- tal men. Who is ready for such a party as that ? Who will be a mighty hunter for the Lord ? If Mithridates liked hunting so well that for seven years he never went in- doors, what enthusiasm ought we to have who are hunting for immortal souls ? If Domitian practiced archery until he could stand a boy down in the Roman amphitheatre, with a hand out, the fingers outstretched, and then the king could shoot an arrow between the fingers without wounding them, to what drill and what practice ought not we subject ourselves in order to become spiritual archers and ' ' mighty hunters before the Lord ! ' ' But let me say you will never work any better than you pray. The old archers took the bow, put one end of it down beside the foot, elevated the other end, and it was the rule that the bow should be just the size of the archer; if it was just his size then he would go into the battle with confidence. Let me say that your power to project good in the world will correspond exactly to your own spiritual stature. THE SINNER'S DEATH LEAP. There is a forest in Germany, a place they call the " Deer Leap " — two crags about eighteen yards apart, between a fearful chasm. This is called the " Deer Leap," because once a hunter was on the track of a deer; it came to one of these crags; there was no escape for it from the pursuit of the hunter, and in utter despair it gathered itself up, and in the death agony attempted to jump across. Of course it fell, and was dashed to death on the rocks far beneath. Here is a path to heaven. It is plain; it is safe. Jesus marks it out for every man to walk in. But here is a man who says, " I won't walk in that path; I will take my own way . ' ' He comes up until he confronts the chasm that divides his soul from heaven. Now his last hour has come, and he resolves that he will leap that chasm, from the heights of earth to the heights of heaven. Stand back now and give him full swing, for no soul ever did that successfully. Let him try. Jump ! Jump ! He misses the mark and goes down, depth below depth, " destroyed without remedy." THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 467 Men ! angels ! devils ! what shall we call that place of awful catastrophe ? L,et it be known forever as " The Sinner's Death Leap." It is said that when Charlemagne's host was overpowered by three armies of the Saracens in the Pass of Roncesvalles, his warrior, Roland, in terrible earnest- ness, seized a trumpet, and blew it with such terrific effect that the opposing army- reeled back with terror; but at the third blast of the trumpet it broke in two. I see your soul fiercely assailed by all the powers of earth and hell. I put the mightier trumpet of the gospel to my lips, and I blow it three times. Blast First — " Whosoever will, let him come." Blast Second — " Seek ye the Lord while He may be found." Blast third — " Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation." Does not the host of your sins fall back ? But the trumpet does not, like that of Roland, break in two. As it was handed down to us from the lips of our fathers, we hand it down to the lips of our children, and tell them to sound it when we are dead, that all the generations of men may know that our God is a pardoning God, a sympathetic God, a loving God; and that more to Him than the anthems of heaven is the joy of seeing the wanderer return. Dr. Prime, in his book of wonderful interest, entitled " Around the World," describes a tomb in India of marvelous architecture. Twenty thousand men were twenty-two years in erecting that and the building around it. Standing at ^hat tomb, if you speak or sing, after you have ceased you hear the echo coming from a height of 150 feet. It is not like other echoes. The sound is drawn out in sweet prolongation, as though the angels of God were chanting on the wing. How many souls of my readers, in the tomb of sin, will lift up the voice of penitence and prayer? If now they would cry unto God, the echo would drop from afar — not struck from the marble cupola of an earthly mausoleum; but sounding back from the warm hearts of angels, flying with the news; for there is joy among the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. THE EVILS OF A MALEVOLENT DISPOSITION, AND HOW TO CORRECT THEM. Y^'f^HAT a pillow embroidered of all colors hath the dying da}^ ! The cradle of clouds from which the sun rises is beautiful enough, but it is surpassed by the many-colored mausoleum in which at evening it is buried. Sunset among the moun- tains ! It almost takes one's breath away to recall the scene. ^ The long shadows stretching over the plain make the glory ^V^'**^/ of the departing light, on the tip-top crags and struck aslant through the foliage, the more conspicuous. Saffron and gold, purple and crimson commingled. All the castles of cloud in conflagration. Burning Moscows on the sky. Hanging gardens of roses at their deepest blush. Banners of vapor, red as if from carnage, in the battle of elements. The hunter among the Adirondacks and the Swiss villager among the Alps know what is a sunset among the mountains. After a storm at sea the rolling grandeur into which the sun goes down to bathe at nightfall is something to make weird and splendid dreams out of for a lifetime. Alexander Smith in his poem compares the sunset to " the barren beach of hell," but this wonderful spectacle of nature makes me think of the burnished wall of heaven. Paul in prison writing remembers some of the gorgeous sunsets among the mountains of Asia Minor, and how he had often seen the towers of Damascus blaze in the close of the Oriental days, and he flashes out that memory when he says: " Let not the sun go down upon your wrath." LIFE'S EXASPERATIONS. Sublime and all-suggestive duty for people then and people now. Forgive- ness before sundown. He who never feels the throb of indignation is imbecile. He who can walk among the injustices of the world, inflicted upon himself and others, without flush of cheek, or flash of eye, or agitation of nature, is either in sympathy with wrong or semi-idiotic. When Ananias, the high-priest, ordered the constables of the court-room to smite Paul in the mouth, Paul fired up and said: " God shall smite thee, thou whited wall." It all depends on what you are mad at and how long the feeling lasts whether anger is right or wrong. Life is full of exasperations. Saiil after David, vSuccoth after Gideon, Korah after Moses, the Pasquins after Augustus, the Pharisees after (468) THE I.AST DAY OF SIR THOMAS MOORE. — From the painting by J. R. Herbert. sir Thomas Moore, born in I^ondon, 1480, on becoming of age obtained a seat in Parliament, brought first into prominent notice by opposing subsidy demand of Henry VII. He was knighted in 1515, became Treasurer of the Exchequer in 1520, and in 1524 was chosen Speaker of the House of Commons. He became Chancellor in 15^0, during which time he was such a strong Catholic partisan that he opposed the divorce of Henry VIII. from Catharine of Aragon, for which he was sent to the Tower, where he languished awhile, and was then brought to the block. He is charged by some with having persecuted Protestants, though Erasmus testifies to the con- trary. During his imprisonment and to the last, his daughter spent much of her time in the dungeon with him. (469) 470 THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. Christ, Henry VHI. after Sir Thomas More, and every one has had his pursuers, and we are swindled, or belied, or misrepresented, or persecuted, or in some way wronged, and the danger is that healthful indignation shall become baleful spite, and that our feelings settle down into a prolonged outpouring of temper dis- pleasing to God and ruinous to ourselves. Other things being equal, the man who preserves good temper will come out ahead. An old essayist says the cele- brated John Henderson, of Bristol, England, was at a dining party where political excitement ran high and the debate got angry, and while Henderson was speaking, his opponent, unable to answer his argument, dashed a glass of wine in his face, when the speaker deliberately wiped the liquid from his face and said: " This, sir, is a digression; now, if you please, for the main argument." While worldly philosophy could help but very few to such equipoise of spirit, the grace of God could help any man to such a triumph, " Impossible," you say, " I would have left the table in anger or have knocked the man down." A FAITH CURE. But I have come to believe that nothing is impossible if God helps, since what I saw at Beth-Shan Faith-Cure in London, England, two summers ago. While the religious service was going on. Rev. Dr. Boardman, glorious man ! since gone to his heavenly rest, was telling the sick people present that Christ was there as of old to heal all diseases, and that, if they would only believe, their sickness would depart. I saw a woman near me, with hand and arm twisted of rheiunatism, and her wrist was fiery with inflammation, and it looked like those cases of chronic rheumatism which we have all seen and sympathized with, cases beyond all human healing. At the preacher's reiteration of the words: " Will you believe? Do you believe? Do you believe now ?" I heard this poor woman say with an emphasis which sounded through the building, " I do believe." And then she laid her twisted arm and hand out as straight as your arm and hand, or mine. If I had seen one rise from the dead I would not have been much more thrilled. Since then I believe that God will do anything in answer to our prayer and in answer to our faith, and He can heal our bodies, and if our soul is all twisted, and misshapen of revenge, and hate, and inflamed with sinful proclivity He can straighten that also and make it well and clean. A boy in Sparta, having stolen a fox, kept him under his coat, and though the fox was gnawing his vitals, he submitted to it rather than expose his misdeed. Many a man with a smiling face has under his jacket an animosity that is gnaw- ing away the strength of his body and the integrity of his soul. Better get rid of that hidden fox as soon as possible. There are hundreds of domestic circles where that which is most needed is the spirit of forgiveness. Brothers apart, and sisters apart, and parents and children apart. Solomon says a brother oflfended is harder THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. 471 to be won than a strong city. Are there not enough sacred memories of j'our childhood to bring you together? The Rabbins recount how that Nebuchad- nezzar's son had such a spite against his father that after he was dead he had his THE YOUNG PRINCES IN THE TOWER. — From the Painting by Paul Dclaroche. The princes were Edward V. and Richard, Duke of York, sons of Edward IV.; being ir. rightful succession to the throne of England, they were secretly murdered in the Tower by their unnatural uncle, who, upon assuming the crown, took the title Richard III. father burned to ashes, aud then put the ashes into four sacks and tied them to four eagles' necks which flew away in opposite directions. And there are now 472 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. domestic antipathies that seem forever to have scattered all parental memories to the four winds of heaven. How far the eagles fly with those sacred ashes ! The hour of sundown makes to that family no practical suggestion. Thomas Carlyle, in his biography of Frederick the Great, says the old king was told by the con- fessor he must be at peace with his enemies if he wanted to enter heaven. Then he said to his wife, the queen: " Write to your brother after I am dead that I for- give him." Roloff, the confessor, said: "Her Majesty had better write to him immediately." " No," said the king, " after I am dead; that will be safer." So he let the sun of his earthly existence go down upon his wrath. Richard the III. was so angered by a taunt that the young princes stood between him and the throne, that he ordered them murdered though they were his nephews, and spent the rest of his days deploring the act. Oh, my reader, associate the sunset with your magnanimous, out-and-out, unlimited renunciation of all hatreds and forgiveness of all foes. I admit it is the most difficult of all graces to practice, and at the start you may make a complete failure, but keep on in the attempt to practice it. Shakespeare wrote ten plays before he reached Hamlet, and seventeen before he reached Merchant of Venice, and twenty-eight plays before he reached Macbeth. And gradually you will come from the easier graces to the most difficult. Beside that, it is not a matter of per- sonal determination so much as the laying hold of the almighty arm of God, who will help us to do anything we ought to do. Remember that in all personal con- troversies the one least to blame will have to take the first step at pacification, if it be ever effective. The contest between JSschines and Aristippus resounds through history, but Aristippus, who was least to blame, went to ^schines and said: ' ' Shall we not agree to be friends before we make ourselves the laughing stock of the whole country?" And ^schines said, "Thou are a far better man than I, for I began the quarrel; but thou hast been the first in healing breach." And they were always friends afterwards. So let the one of you that is least to blame take the first step toward conciliation. The one most in the wrong will never take it. How different was the termination of the feud between Richard III. and Henry VII., that was carried on for years at frightful loss, though the former had no shadow of right for continuing it. The evil at last comes upon all evil, doers as it did to Richard. Oh, it makes one feel splendidly to be able, by God's help, to practice unlimited forgiveness. It improves one's body and soul. It will make you measure three or four more inches around the chest and improve your respiration so that you can take a deeper and longer breath. It improves the countenance by scattering the gloom and brightening the forehead, and loosening the pinched look about the nostril and lip, and makes you somewhat like God Himself THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. 473 THE DUTY. He is omnipotence, and we cannot copy that. He is independent of all the universe, and we cannot copy that. He is creative, and we cannot copy that. LORD STANLEY BRINGING THE CROWN OF RICHARD TO RICHMOND AFTER THE BATTLE OF BOSWORTH. The battle of Bosworth was fought August 22, 1485, between Richard III. and the Earl of Richmond fafter- wards Henry VII. 1. In thi? decisive contest the former lost both his crown and life, which terminated a long-continued struggle for supremacy between the rival houses of York and Lancaster. 474 'THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. He is omnipresent, and we cannot copy that. But He forgives with a broad sweep all faults, and all neglects, and all insults, and all wrong- doing; and in that we may copy Him with mighty success. Go, harness that sublime action of your soul to an autumnal sunset, the hour when the gate of heaven opens to let the day pass into the eternities, and some of the glories escape this way through the brief open- ing. We talk about the Italian sunsets, and sunset amid the Apennines, and sun- set amid the Cordilleras. But I will tell you how you may see a grander sunset than any mere lover of nature ever beheld; that is by flinging into it all your hatreds and animosities, and let the horses of fire trample them, and the chariots of fire roll over them, and the spearmen of fire stab them, and the beach of fire con- sume them, and the billows of fire overwhelm them. The sublimest thing God does is the sunset. The sublimest thing you can do is forgiveness. Along the glowing banks of this coming eventide let the divine and the human be concurrent. Hardly anything affects me so much, in the uncovering of ancient Pompeii, as the account of the soldier who, after the city had for many centuries been covered with the ashes and scoriae of Vesuvius, was found standing in his place on guard, hand on spear and helmet on head. Others fled at the awful sub- mergement, but the explorer, 1700 years after, found the body of that brave fellow in right position. And it will be a grand thing if, when our last moment comes, we are found in right position toward the world, as well as in right posi- tion toward God, on guard and unfrightened by the ashes from the mountain of death. I do not suppose that I am any more of a coward than most people, but I declare to you that I would not dare to sleep one night if there were any being in all the earth with whom I would not gladly shake hands, lest, during the night hours, my spirit dismissed to other realms, I should, because of my unforgiving spirit, be denied divine forgiveness. " But," you say, ' ' I have more than I can bear; too much is put upon me and I am not to blame if I am somewhat revengeful and unrelenting." Then I think of the little child at the moving of some goods from a store. The father was putting some rolls of goods on the child's arm, package after package, and some one said: "That child is being overloaded, and so much ought not to be put upon her," when the child responded : " Father knows how much I can carry," and God, our Father, will not allow too much imposition on His children. In the day of eternity it will be found you had not one annoyance too nlan3^ not one exasperation too many, not one outrage too many. Your heavenly Father knows how much you can carry. When Mme. Sontag began her musical career she was hissed ofi" the stage at Vienna by the friends of her rival, Amelia Steininger, who had already begun to decline through her dissipation. Years passed on, and one day Mme. Sontag, in her glory, was riding through the streets of Berlin, when she saw a little child (475) 476 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. leading a blind woman, and she said: "Come here, my little child, come here. Who is that you are leading by the hand ?' ' And the little child replied: ' ' That's my mother; that's Amelia Steininger. She used to be a great singer, but she lost her voice and she cried so much about it that she lost her eyesight. " " Give my love to her," said Mnie. Sontag, "and tell her an old acquaintance will call on her this afternoon." The next week in Berlin a vast assemblage gathered at a benefit for that poor blind woman, and it was said that Mme. Sontag sang that night as she had never sung before. And .she took a skilled oculist, who in vain tried to give eyesight to the poor blind woman. Until the day of Amelia Steininger's death, Mme. Sontag took care of her, and her daughter after her. That was what the queen of song did for her enemy. But, oh, hear a more thrilling story still. Blind immortal, poor and lost, thou, who, when the world and Christ were rivals for thy heart, didst hiss thy lyord away — Christ comes now to give thee sight, to give thee a home, to give thee heaven. With more than a Sontag' s generosity He comes now to meet your need. With more than a Sontag' s music He comes to plead for thy deliverance. A PROVIDER AND DEFENDER. We should not let the sun go down on our wrath, because it is of little importance what the world says of you. or does to you when you have the aflSuent God of the sunset as your provider and defender. People talk as though it were a fixed spectacle of nature and always the same. But no one ever saw two sun- sets alike; and if the world has existed 6000 years there have been about 2,190,- 000 sunsets; each of them as distinct from all the other pictures in the gallery of the sky as Titian's "Last Supper," Rubens' "Descent from the Cross," Raphael's "Transfiguration" and Michael Angelo's "Last Judgment" are distinct from each other. If that God, of such infinite resources that He can put on the wall of the sky each night more than the Louvre, and the Luxembourg, and the Vatican, and the Dresden, and Venetian galleries all in one, is my God and your God, our provider and protector, what is the use of our worrying about any human antagonism ? If we are misinterpreted, the God of the many-colored sunset can put the right color on our action. If He can afford to hang such masterpieces over the outside wall of heaven and have them obliterated in an hour, He must be very rich in resources and can put us through in safety. If all the garniture of the western heavens at eventide is but the upholstry of one of the windows of our future home, what small business for us to be chasing enemies ! Mohammed said: " The sword is the key of heaven and hell; a drop of blood shed is better than fasting, and wounds in the day of judgment are resplendent as OI.IVER CROMWELL AT THE DEATH-BED OF HIS DAUGHTER. Oliver Cromwell, son of a baronet, was elected to the brief Parliament of 162S, and, by encouraging the Puritan sentiment, he became a member of the Long Parliament, and also secured the more influential position of lieutenant-general of the House, by which he brought a large force of the military under his arm, and was able to crush all opposition by making the army predominant over Parliament. Heat length brought Charles I to the block, and on the i6th of December, 1653, took the title of Lord Protector, thus becoming virtually King of Britain. The death of his daughter Elizabeth so affected him that his strong heart broke, and one month after, on September 3, 1658, being the anniversaries of his two greatest victories, at Dunbar and Worcester, he followed her to the grave. (477) 478 THK PATHWAY OF I^IFE. vermilion, and odoriferous as musk." The same sentiment was echoed by Crom- well, but the death of his daughter changed his opinion, and my readers, in the last day we will all find just the opposite to be true, and that the sword never unlocks heaven, and that He who heals wounds is greater than he who makes them, and that on the same ring are two keys: God's forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of enemies, and those two keys unlock Paradise. THE CLOCK OF EARTHLY EXISTENCE. And now I wish for all of you a beautiful sunset in j'our earthly existence. With some of you it has been a long day of trouble, and with others of you it will be far from calm. When the sun rose at six o'clock it was the morning of youth, and a fair day was prophesied, but by the time noonday of mid-life had come and the clock of your earthly existence had struck twelve, cloud racks gathered and 'tempest bellowed in the track of tempest. But as the evening of old age approaches I pray God the skies may brighten and the clouds be piled up into pillars as of celestial temples to which 3'ou go, or move as with mounted cohorts come to take you home. And as you sink out of sight below the horizon may there be a radiance of Christian example lingering long after you are gone, and on the heavens be written in letters of sapphire, and on the waters in letters of opal, and on the hills in letters of emerald: " Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself, for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended." So shall the sunset of earth become the sunrise of heaven, EVIDENCES AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF A FINAL RESURRECTION. jBOUT 1853 Easter mornings have wakened the earth. In France for three centuries the almanacs made the year begin at Easter, until Charles IX. made the year begin at January i. In the Tower of London there is a royal pay-roll of Edward I., on which there is an entry of eighteen pence for 400 colored and pictured Easter eggs, with which the people sported. In Russia, slaves were fed and alms were distributed on Easter. Ecclesiastical councils met at Pontus, at Gaul, at Rome, at Achaia, to decide the particular day, and after a controversy, more animated than gracious, decided it, and now through all Christendom, in some way, the first Sunday after the full moon which happens upon or next after March ?. i , is filled with Easter rejoicing. The Royal Court of the Sabbaths is made up of fifty-two. Fifty -one ^ ^ are princes in the royal household, but Easter is queen. She wears a richer ^ diadem and sways a more jeweled sceptre, and in her smile nations are irradiated. She seems to step out of the snowbank rather than the con- servatory, come out of the North instead of the South, out of the Arctic rather than the Tropics, dismounting from the icy equinox, but welcome this queenty day, holding high up in her right hand the wrenched-oflf bolt of Christ's sepulchre, and holding high up in her left hand the key to all the cemeteries in Christendom. It is an exciting thing to see an army routed and flying. They run each other down. They scatter everything valuable in the track. Unwheeled artil- lery, hoof of horse on breast of wounded and dying man. You have read of the French falling back from Sedan, or Napoleon's track of 90,000 corpses in the snowbanks of Russia, or of the retreat of our own armies from Manassas, or of the five kings tumbling over the rocks of Beth-horon with their armies, while the hail-storms of heaven and the swords of Joshua's host struck them with their fury. THE BLACK GIANT. But there is a worse discomfiture. It seems that a black giant proposed to conquer the earth. He gathered for his host all the aches, and pains, and (479) 48o THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. malarias, and cancers, and distempers, and epidemics of the ages. He marched them down, drilling them in the northeast wind and amid the slush of tempests. He threw up barricades of grave-mounds. He pitched tent of charnel house. Some of the troops marched with slow tread commanded by consumption, some in double-quick, commanded by pneumonias. Some he took by long besiegement of evil habit, and some by one stroke of the battle-axe of casualty. With bony hand he pounded at the door of hospitals and sick-rooms, and won all the victories in all the great battlefields of all the five continents. Forward, march, the con- queror of conquerors, and all the generals, and commanders-in-chief, and all presidents, and kings, and sultans, and czars drop under the feet of his war- charger. But one Christmas night his Antagonist was born. As most of the plagues, and sicknesses, and despotisms come out of the East, it was appropriate that the new Conqueror should come out of the same quarter. Power is given Him to awaken all the fallen of all the centuries and of all lands, and marshal them against the black giant. Fields have already been won, but the last day of the world's existence will see the decisive battle. When Christ shall lead forth His two brigades, the brigade of the risen dead, and the brigade of the celestial host, the black giant will fall back, and the brigade from the riven sepulchres will take him from beneath, and the brigade of descending immortals will take him from above, and death shall be swallowed up in victory. The old braggart that threatened the conquest and demolition of the planet has lost his throne, has lost his sceptre, has lost his palace, has lost his prestige, and the one word written over all the gates of mausoleum, and catacomb, and necropolis; on cenotaph and sarcophagus, on the lonely khan of the Arctic explorer and on the catafalque of great cathedral; written in capitals of azalea and calla- lily, written in musical cadence, written in doxology of great assemblages; written on the sculptured door of the family vault, is "Victory." Coronal word, emban- nered word. Apocalyptic word, chief word of the triumphal arch under which conquerors return. THE ABOLITION OF DEATH. The Bastile was a formidable fortress of wrong for a long time, but the common people at last laid siege to and took it, and emptied its dungeons. Victory ! Word shouted at Culloden, and Balaklava, and Blenheim, at Megiddo and Solferino, at Marathon, where the Athenians drove back the Medes; at Poictiers, where Charles Martel broke the ranks of the Saracens; at Salamis, where Themistocles in the great sea-fight confounded the Persians, and at the door of the eastern cavern of chiseled rock, where Christ came out through a recess and throttled the King of Terrors, and put him back in the niche from which the (48 1) 482 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. Celestial Conqueror had just emerged. Aha ! when the jaws of the eastern mauso- leum took down the black giant, " Death was swallowed up in victory." I pro- claim the abolition of death" The old antagonist is driven back into mythology, with all the lore about Stygian ferry and Charon with oar and boat. Melrose Abbey and Kenil worth Castle are no more in ruins than is the sepulchre. We shall have no more to do with death than we have with the cloak-room at a Governor's or President's levee. We stop at such cloak-room and leave in charge of a servant our overcoat, our overshoes, our outward apparel, that we may not be impeded in the brilliant round of the drawing-room. Well, my readers, when we go out of this world we are going to a King's ban- quet and to a reception of monarchs, and at the door of the tomb we leave the cloak of flesh and the wrappings with which we meet the storms of this world. At the close of an earthly reception, under the brush and broom of the porter, the coat or hat may be handed to us better than when we resigned it, and the cloak of humanity will finally be returned to us improved, and brightened, and purified, and glorified. You and I do not want our bodies returned as they are now. We want to get rid of all their weaknesses, and all their susceptibilities to fatigue, and all their slowness of locomotion. They will be put through a chemistry of soil, and heat, and cold, and changing seasons, out of which God will reconstruct them as much better than they are now as the body of the rosiest and healthiest child that bounds over the lawn at Prospect Park is better than the sickliest patient in Bellevue Hospital. But as to our soul, we will cross right over, not waiting for obsequies, independ- ent of obituary, into a state in every way better, with wider room and velocities beyond computation; the dullest of us into companionship with the very best spirits in their very best mood, in the ver}^ parlor of the universe, the four walls burnished, and paneled, and pictured, and glorified with all the. splendors that the infinite God in all the ages has been able to invent. Victory ! This view of course makes it of but little importance whether we are cremated or sepultured. If the latter is dust to dust, the former is ashes to ashes. If any prefer incineration let them have it without caricature. The world may become so crowded that cremation may be universally adopted by law as well as by general consent. Many of the mightiest and best spirits have gone through this process. Thousands and tens of thousands of God's children have been cremated — P. P. Bliss and wife, the evangelistic singers, cremated by accident at Ashtabula bridge; John Rogers, cremated by persecution; Latimer and Ridley, cremated at Oxford; Pothinus and Blandina, a slave, and Alexander, a physician, and their com- rades, cremated at the order of Marcus Aurelius — at least 100,000 of Christ's THE VII.I.AGE; PHYSICIAN.— /v ■om original Painting by P. Scoppetta. (483) 484 THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. disciples cremated — and there can be no doubt about the resurrection of their bodies. If the world lasts as much longer as it has already been built, there perhaps may be no room for the large acreage set apart for the resting-places, but that time has not come. Plenty of room yet, and the race need not pass that bridge of fire until it comes to it. The most of us prefer the old way. But whether out of natural disintegration or cremation we shall get that luminous, buoyant, gladsome, transcendent, magnificent, inexplicable structure called the resurrection body; you will have it, I will have it. I say to you to-day, as Paul said to Agrippa: " Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead." The far-up cloud, higher than the hawk flies, higher than the eagle flies, what is it made of? Drops of water from the Hudson, other drops from the East River, other drops from a stagnant pool out on Newark flats — up yonder there, and embodied in a cloud, and the sun kindles it. If God can make such a lus- trous cloud out of water drops, many of them soiled and impure, and fetched from miles away, can He not transport the fragments of the human body from the earth, and out of them build a radiant body ? Cannot God, who owns all the material out of which bones and muscle and flesh are made, set them up again if they have fallen ? If a manufacturer of telescopes drops a telescope on the floor, and it breaks, can he not mend it again so you can see through it ? And if God drops the human eye into the dust, the eye which he originally fashioned, can He not restore it ? Ay, if the manufacturer of the telescope, by a change of the glass and a change of focus, can make a better glass than that which was originally constructed, and actually improve it, do you not think the fashioner of the human eye may improve its sight and multiply the natural eye by the thousand-fold addi- tional forces of the resurrection eye ? Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead ? Things all around us suggest it. The blossoming woods, where love delights to make his bower, are re-clothed in beauty with every spring. Out of what grew all these flowers ? ' Out of the mould and the earth. Resurrected ! Resurrected ! The radiant butterfly, where did it come from ? The loathsome caterpillar. That albatross that smites the tempest with its wing, where did it come from ? A senseless shell. SEED-LIFE RESURRECTED. Near Bergerac, France, in a Celtic tomb under a block, were found flower seed that had been buried 2000 years. The explorer took the flower seed and planted it, and it came up; it bloomed in bluebell and heliotrope. Two thousand years ago buried, yet resurrected ! THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 485 A traveler says he found in a mummy -pit in Egypt garden peas that had been buried there 3000 years ago. He brought them out, and on the fourth of June, ROLLING AWAY THE STONE FROM THE GRAVE OF LAZARUS. 1844, he planted them, and in thirty days they sprang up. Buried 3000 years, yet resurrected ! Where did all this silk come from — the silk that adorns your persons and your 486 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. homes ? In the hollow of a staff a Greek missionar}^ brought from China to Europe the progenitors of those worms that now supply the silk markets of many nations. The pageantry of bannered host and the luxurious articles of commercial emporium blazing out from the silk worms. And who shall be surprised if out of this insig- nificant earthly body, this insignificant earthly life, our bodies unfold into some- thing worthy of the coming eternities. Put silver into nitric acid and it dissolves. Is the silver gone forever ? No. Put in some pieces of copper and the silver reappears. If one force dissoh-es, another force organizes. The insects flew and the worms crawled last autumn feebler and feebler, and then stopped. They have taken no food, they want none. They lay dormant and insensible, but soon the south wind will blow the resurrection trumpet, and the air and the earth will be full of them. Do you not think that God can do as much for our bodies as He does for the wasps and the spiders and the snails ? This morning at 4.30 o'clock there was a resurrection. Out of the night the day. Every year there is a resurrection in all our gardens. Why not some day a resurrection amid all the graves ? Ever and anon there are instances of men and women entranced. A trance is death followed by resurrection after a few days; total suspension of mental power and voluntary action. Rev. William Tennent, a great evangelist of the last generation, of whom Dr. Archibald Alexander, a man far from being sentimental, wrote in most eulogistic terms — Rev. William Tennent seemed to die. His spirit departed. People came in day after day and said: "He is dead; he is dead." But the soul that fled returned, and William Tennent lived to write out the expe- riences of what he had seen while his soul had gone. It may be found some time that what is called suspended animation or comatose state is brief death, giving the soul an excursion into the next world, from which it comes back, a furlough of a few hours granted from the conflict of life to which it must return. EVIDENCE OF A FINAL RESURRECTION. Does not this waking up of men from trance, and this waking up of insects from winter lifelessness, and this waking up of grains buried 3000 years ago, make it easier for you to believe that your body and mine after the vacation of the grave shall rouse and rally, though there be 3000 years between our last breath and the sounding of the archangelic reveille ? Physiologists tell us that while the most of our bodies are built with such wonderful economy that we can spare nothing, and the loss of a finger is a hinder- ment, and the injury of a toe-joint makes us lame, still that we have two or three useless physical organs, and no anatomist or physiologist has ever been able to tell what they are good for. They are no doubt the foundation of the resurrection THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 487 body, worth nothing to us in this state, to be indispensabl}' valuable in the next state. The Olympic games were instituted for the purpose of developing every organ and sinew of the body but even these did not discover the uses of the spleen; which gives us the most pain. The Jewish rabbis had only a hint of this suggestion when they said that in the human frame there was a small bone which they said was to be the basis of the resurrection body. Perhaps that ma^^ have been a delusion. But this thing is certain, the Christian scientists of our day have foiuid out that there are two or three superfluities of body that are something gloriously suggestive of another state. I called at a friend's house one summer day. I found the yard all piled up with the rubbish of carpenter and mason's work. The door was off. The plumbers had torn up the floor. The roof was being lifted in cupola. All the pictures were gone, and the paper-hangers were doing their work. All the modern improvements were being introduced into that dwelling. There was not a room in the house fit to live in at that time, although a month before when I visited that house everything was so beautiful I could not have suggested an improvement. My friend had gone with his family to the Holy lyand, expecting to come back at the end of six months, when the building was to be done. And, oh ! what was his joy when, at the end of six months, he returned and the old house was enlarged and improved and glorified. That is your body. It looks well now — all the rooms filled with health, and we could hardly make a suggestion. But after a while your soul will go to the Holy Land, and while you are gone the old house of your tabernacle will be entirely reconstructed from cellar to attic, and every ner^-e, and muscle, and bone, and tissue, and artery must be hauled over, and the old structure will be burnished and adorned and raised and cupolaed and enlarged, and all the improvements of heaven introduced, and you will move into it on resurrection day. For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. MEETING OF BODY AND SOUL. Oh, what a da}' when body and soul meet again ! They are very fond of each other. Did your body ever have pain and your soul not pity it ! Or your body have a joy and your soul not re-echo it? Or, changing the question, did 3^our soul ever have any trouble and your body not sympathize with it ? grow- ing wan and weak under the depressing influence. Or, did your soul ever have a gladness but your body celebrated it with kindled eye and cheek and elastic step ? Surely God never intended two such good friends to be very long- separated. THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. And so when the world's last Easter morning shall come the soul will descend, crying, "Where is my body?" And the body will ascend, saying, " Where is my soul ?" And the Lord of the resurrection will bring them together, and it will be a perfect soul in a perfect body, introduced by a perfect Christ into a perfect heaven. A cruel heathen warrior heard Mr. Moffat, the missionary, preach about the resurrection, and he said to the missionary: ' ' Will my father rise in the last day ?' ' " Yes," said the missionary. " Will all the dead in battle rise?" said the cruel chieftain. "Yes," said the missionary. " Then," said the warrior, " let me hear no more about the resurrection day. There can be no resurrection; there shall be no resurrection. I have slain thou- sands in battle. Will they rise ?" Ah, there will be more to rise on that day than those want to see whose crimes have never been repented of. But for all others who allowed Christ to be their pardon and their life and their resurrection it will be a day of victory. The thunders of the last day will be the salvo that greets you into harbor. The lightnings will be only the torches of triumphal procession marching down to escort you home. Where is death ? What have we to do with death ? As your re-united body and soul swing off from this planet on that last day you will see deep gashes all up and down the hills, deep gashes all through the valleys, and they will be the emptied graves, they will be the abandoned sepulchres, and then, for the first time, you will appreciate the full exhilaration of the words, " He will swallow up death in victory." '^ixl'aci^^ i:ft Splji^ntr^r^ THE AROMA THAT CLUNG TO CHRIST'S GARMENTS LIKENED UNTO HIS SWEET LIFE. MONG the grand adornments of the city of Paris is the Church of Notre Dame, with its great towers, and elaborated rose- windows, and sculpturing of the last judgment, with the trumpeting angels and rising dead; its battlements of quatre- foil; its sacristy, with ribbed ceiling and statues of saints. But there was nothing in all that building which more vividly appealed to my plain republican tastes than the costly vest- ments which laid in oaken presses — robes that had been embroidered with gold, and been worn by popes and archbishops on great occa- sions. There was a robe that had been worn by Pius VII. at the crowning of the first Napoleon, There was also a vestment that had been worn at the baptism of Napoleon II. As our guide opened the oaken presses and brought out these vestments of fabulous cost, and lifted them up, the fragrance of the pungent aromatics in which they had been preserved filled the place with a sweetness that was almost oppressive. Nothing that had been done in stone more vividly impressed me than these things that had been done in cloth, and embroidery, and perfume. But here, my readers, I open the drawer of a verse in Psalms, which reads, " All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces." I look upon the kingly robes of Christ, and as I lift them, flashing with eternal jewels, the whole house is filled with the aroma of these garments, which smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia out of the ivory palaces. The King steps forth. His robes rustle and blaze as He advances. His pomp, and power, and glor>' overmaster the spectator. More brilliant is He than Queen Vashti moving amid the Persian princes; than Marie Antoinette on the day when lyouis XVI. put upon her the necklace of eight hundred diamonds; than Catharine when she appeared before her ecclesiastical judges; than Anne Boleyn the day when Henry VIII. welcomed her to his palace; all beauty and all pomp forgotten, while we stand in the presence of this imperial glory. King of Zion, King of earth, King of heaven. King forever ! His garments, not worn out, not dust-bedraggled; but radiant, and jeweled, and redolent. It seems as if they must have been pressed a hundred years amid the flowers of heaven. The (489) 490 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. wardrobes from which they have been taken must have been sweet with clusters of caraphire, and frankincense, and all manner of precious wood. Do you not inhale the odors ? Ay, ay. They smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces. THE ODORS OF CHRIST'S GARMENTS. Your first curiosity is to know why the robes of Christ are odorous with myrrh. This was a bright-leafed Abyssinian plant. It was trifoliate. The Greeks, Egyptians, Romans and Jews bought and sold it at a high price. The first present that was ever given to Christ was a sprig of myrrh, thrown on His infantile bed in Bethlehem, and the last gift that Christ ever had was myrrh pressed into the cup of His cru- cifixion. The natives would take a stone and bruise the tree, and then it would exude a gum that would saturate all the ground beneath. This gum was used for purposes of merchandise. One piece of it no larger than a chestnut would whelm a whole room with odors. It was put in closets, in chests, in drawers, in rooms, and its perfume adhered almost interminably to anything that was anywhere near it. So when I read that Christ's garments smell of myrrh, I immediately conclude the exquisite sweetness of Jesus. I know that to many He is only like any historical person: another John Howard; another fiendish Oberland; another Confucius; a grand subject for a painting; an heroic theme for a poem; a beautiful form for a statue; but to those who have heard His voice, and felt His pardon, and received His benediction. He is music, and light, and warmth, and thrill, and eternal fragrance. Sweet as a friend sticking to you when all else betray. lyifting you up while others tr^' to push you GROTTO IN TH]i LUXivMBOURG GARDENS. (491) 492 THE PATHWAY OF I^IFK. down. Not so much like morning-glories, that bloom only when the sun is coming up, nor like " four-o' clocks," that bloom only when the sun is going down, but like myrrh, perpetually aromatic — the same morning, noon, and night — yesterday, to-day, forever. It seems as if we cannot wear Him out. We put on Him all our burdens, and afflict Him with all our griefs, and set Him foremost in all our battles, and yet He is ready to lift, and to sympathize, and to help. We have so imposed upon Him that one would think in eternal affront He would quit our soul; and yet He addresses us with the same tenderness, dawns upon us wuth the same smile, pities us with the same compassion. There is no name like His for us. It is more imperial than Caesar's, more musical than Beethoven's, more conquering than Charlemagne's, more eloquent than Cicero's. It throbs with all life. It weeps with all pathos. It groans with all pain. It stoops with all con- descension. It breathes with all perfume. Who like Jesus to set a broken bone, to pity a homeless orphan, to nurse a sick man, to take a prodigal back without any scolding, to illumine a cemetery all plowed with graves, to make a queen unto God out of the lost w^oman of the street, to catch the tears of human sorrow in a lachrymatory that shall never be broken? Who has such an eye to see our need, such a lip to kiss away our sorrow, such a hand to snatch us out of the fire, such a foot to trample our enemies, such a heart to embrace all our necessities? I struggle for some metaphor with which to express Him. He is not like the bursting forth of a full orchestra: that is too loud. He is not like the sea when lashed to rage by the tempest: that is too boisterous. Oh ! that you all knew His sweetness. How soon you would turn from your novels. If the philosopher leaped out of his bath in a frenzy of joy, and clapped his hands, and rushed through the streets, because he had found the solution of a mathematical problem, how will you feel leaping from the fountain of a Saviour's mercy and pardon, washed clean and made white as snow, when the question has been solved: "How can my soul be saved?" Naked, frost-bitten, storm-lashed soul, let Jesus throw around thee the " garments that smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces." IVORY PALACES. You know, or if you do not know, I will tell you now, that some of the pal- aces of olden time were adorned with ivory. Ahab and Solomon had their homes furnished with it. The tusks of African and Asiatic elephants were twisted into all manners of shapes, and there were stairs of ivory, and chairs of ivory, and tables of ivory, and floors of ivory, and pillars of ivory, and windows of ivor>^ and fountains that dropped into basins of ivory, and rooms that had ceilings of ivory. Oh ! white and overmastering beauty. Green tree-branches sweeping the white curbs. Tapestry trailing the snowy floors. Brackets of light flashing on the; XRANSFiGURATiON. — >Frc?w the great Raphael PaiuHtig. (493) 494 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. the lustrous surroundings. Silvery music rippling to the beach of the arches. The mere thought of it almost stuns my brain, and you sa}^ ' ' Oh, if I could only have walked over such floors ! If I could have thrown myself in such a chair ! If I could have heard the drip and dash of those fountains !" You shall have something better than that if you only let Christ introduce you. From that place He came, and to that place He proposes to transport you, for His " garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces." Oh, what a place heaven must be ! The grotto of the Luxembourg or the Tuilleries of the French, the Windsor Castle of the English, the Spanish Alham- bra, the Russian Kremlin, dungeons compared with it ! Not so many castles on IT IS THE LORD. — From the Painting by Audlcy IMackzuorth. either side the Rhine as on both sides of the river of God the ivory palaces ! One for the angels, insufferably bright, winged, fire-eyed, tempest-charioted; one for the martyrs, with blood-red robes, from under the altar; one for the King, the steps of His palace the crowns of the church militant; one for the singers, who lead the one hundred and forty and four thousand; one for you, ransomed from sin; one for me, plucked from the burning. Oh, the ivory palaces ! As I write it seems to me as if the windows of those palaces were illumined for some great victory, and I look and see climbing the stairs of ivory, and walking on floors of ivory, and looking from the windows of ivor}-, some whom we knew THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 495 and loved on earth. Yes, I know them. There are father and mother, not eighty- two 3'ears and seventy-nine years, as when they left us, but blithe and young as when on their marriage day. And there are brothers and sisters, merrier than when we used to romp across the meadows together. The cough gone. The cancer cured. The erysipelas healed. The heart-break over. Oh, how fair they are in the ivory palaces ! And your dear little children that went out from 3'ou — Christ did not let one of them drop as he lifted them. He did not wrench them from you. No. They went as from one they loved well to One whom they loved better. If I should take your little child and press its soft face against my rough •cheek, I might keep it a little while; but when you, the mother, came along, it would struggle to go with you. And so 3^ou stood holding your dying child when Jesus passed by in the room, and the little one sprang out to greet Him. That is all. Your Christian dead did not go down into the dust, and the gravel, and the mud. Though it rained all that funeral day, and the water came up to the wheel's hub as you drove out to the cemetery, it made no difference to them, for they stepped from the home here to the home there, right into the ivory palaces. All is well with them. All is well. While writing this discourse as I got to about this point, there was a knock at my door, and I received a telegram from a very dear ministerial friend. It read: ' ' My wife just died. Funeral next Sunday. Will you be one of the pall bearers ?' ' I telegraphed immediately: " I will." Who could hold back at such a time? I knew I could carry my part of the burden. It is not a dead weight that you lift when you carry a Christian out. Jesus makes the bed up soft with velvet promises, and He says: " Put her down there very gently. Put that head, which will never ache again, on this pillow of hallelujahs. Send up word that the procession is •coming. Ring the bells. Ring ! Open your gates, ye ivory palaces !" And so your loved ones are there. They are just as certainly there, having died in Christ, as that you are here. There is only one thing more they want. Indeed, there is one thing in heaven they have not got. They want it. What is it? Your com- pany. Jjet^JTJei Si3rir|]eilj^3$> SOLOMON'S GOSSIPY HOUSEHOLD AND THE GOOD AND EVIL OF SECRET ORGANIZATIONS. Tf^ifKfir^Wll^y fQ^.y^'f-^'^mf' HAT is the moral effect of Free Masonry, Odd Fellowship, % '\^JV ^ ^<^ Knights of Labor, Greek' Alphabet, and other societies ? A^ 'S^lxtyf^i^f^ \ "Discover not a secret to another," says Solomon, and he had good reasons for laying such an injunction, for in his time, as in all subsequent periods of the world, there were people too much disposed to tell all they knew. It was blab, blab, blab; physicians revealing the case of their patients, lawyers exposing the private affairs of their clients, neighbors advertising the faults of the next-door residents, pretended friends betraying confidences. One-half of the trouble of every community comes from the fact that so many people have not capacity to keep their mouths shut. When I hear something dis- paraging of you my first duty is not to tell you. But if I tell you w^hat somebody has said against you, and then go out and tell everybody else what I told you, and they go out and tell others what I told them that I told you, and we all go out, some to hunt up the originator of the story and others to hunt it down, we shall get the whole community talking about what you did do and what you did not do, and there will be as many scalps taken as though a band of Modocs had swept upon a helpless village. We have two ears but only one tongue, a physiological suggestion that we ought to hear a good deal more than we tell. Let us join a conspiracy that we will tell each other all the good and nothing of the ill, and then there will not be such awful need of sermons on Solomon's words: "Discover not a secret to another. ' ' GOSSIP IN SOLOMON'S HOUSEHOLD. vSolomon had a very large domestic circle. In his earlier days he had very confused notions about monogamy and polygamy, and his multitudinous associates in the matrimonial state kept him too well informed as to what was going on in Jerusalem. They gathered up all the privacies of the city and poured them into his ear, and his family became a sorosis or female debating society of 700, discussing day after day all the difficulties between husbands and wives, between employers (496) THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 497 and employes, between rulers and subjects, tnitil Solomon deplores volubility about affairs that do not belong to us and extols the virtue of secretiveness. By the power of a secret divulged, families, churches, neighborhoods, nations fly apart. By the power of a secret kept, great charities, socialities, reformatory movements and Christian enterprises may be advanced. Men are gregarious — cattle in herds, fish in schools, birds in flocks, men in social circles. You ma}^, by the discharge of a gun, scatter a flock of quails, or by the plunge of the anchor send apart the denizens of the sea, but they will gather themselves together again. If you, by some new power, could break the associations in which men now stand, they would again adhere. God meant it so. He has gathered all the flowers and shrubs into associations. You may plant one forget-me-not or heart 's-ease alone, away off upon the hillside, but it will soon hunt up some other forget-me-not or heart's-ease. Plants love company. You will find them talking to each other in the dew. A galaxy of stars is only a mutual life insurance company. You sometimes see a man with no outbranchings of sympathy. His nature is cold and hard like a ship's mast ice-glazed, which the most agile sailor could never climb. Others have a thousand roots and a thousand branches. Innumer- able tendrils climb their hearts, and blossom all the way up, and the fowls of heaven sing in the branches. In consequence of this tendency, we find men com- ing together in tribes, in communities, in churches, in societies. Some gather together to cultivate the arts, some to plan for the welfare of the State, some to discuss religious themes, some to kindle their mirth, some to advance their crafts. So ever>^ active community is divided into associations of artists, of merchants, of bookbinders, of carpenters, of masons, of plasterers, of shipwrights, of plumbers. Do you cry out against it ? Then you cry out against a tendency divinely im- planted. Your tirades would accomplish no more than if you should preach to a busy ant-hill or bee-hive a long sermon against secret societies. Here we find the oft-discussed question whether associations that do their work with closed doors, and admit their members by pass- words, and greet each other with a secret grip, are right or wrong. I answer that it depends entirely on the nature of the object for which they meet. Is it to pass the hours in revelr3% wassail, blasphemy and obscene talk, or to plot trouble to the State, or to debauch the innocent, then I say, with an emphasis that no man can mistake, No ! But is the object the defence of the rights of any class against oppression, the improve- ment of the mind, the enlargement of the heart, the advancement of art, the defence of the government, the extirpation of crime or the kindling of a pure- hearted sociality, then I say, with just as much emphasis, Yes ! There is no need that we who plan for the conquest of right over wrong should publish to all the world our intentions. The general of any army never sends to the opposing troops information of the coming attack. Shall we who 32 498 THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. have enlisted in the cause of God and humanity expose our plans to the enemy ? No ! we will in secret plot the ruin of all the enterprises of Satan and his cohorts. When they expect us by day we will fall upon them by night. While they are strengthening their left wing we will double up their right. By a plan of battle formed in secret conclave we will come suddenly upon them, crying: " The sword of the lyord and of Gideon. ' ' The victory would have been gained long ago if all professed soldiers of Christ had done their duty, but many in the ranks are like the Christian who sings loudest, with book before his eyes while the collection is being taken up. Their eyes are engrossed with the secrecy of their selfishness. Secrecy of plot and execution are wrong only when the object and ends are nefarious. Every family is a secret society, every business firm and every banking and insurance institution. Those men who have no capacity to keep a secret are unfit for positions of trust anywhere. There are thousands of men whose vital need is culturing a capacity to keep a secret. Men talk too much, and women too. There is a time to keep silence as well as a time to speak. Although not belonging to any of the great secret societies about which there has been so much violent discussion, I have only words of praise for those asso- ciations which have for their object the maintenance of right against wrong, or the reclamation of inebriates, or like the score of mutual benefit societies called by different names, that provide temporary relief for widows and orphans and for men incapacitated by sickness or accident from earning a livelihood. Had it not been for the large number of secret labor organizations in this country, monopoly would long ago have, under its ponderous wheels, ground the laboring classes into an intolerable servitude. RESISTANCE TO MONOPOLY. The men who want the whole earth to themselves would have got it before this had it not been for the banding together of great secret organizations. And, while we deplore many things that have been done by them, their existence is a necessity, and their legitimate sphere distinctly pointed out by the providence of God. Such organizations are trying to dismiss from their association all mem- bers in favor of anarchy and social chaos. They will gradually cease anything like tyranny over their members, and will forbid violent interference with any man's work, whether he belongs to their union or is outside of it, and will declare their disgust with any such rule as that passed in England by the Man- chester Bricklayers' Association, which says any man found running or working beyond a regular speed shall be fined two shillings six pence for the first offence, five .shillings for the second, ten shillings for the third, and if still persisting, shall be dealt with as the committee think proper. (499) 500 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. There are secret societies in our colleges that have letters of the Greek alphabet for their nomenclature, and their members are at the very front in scholarship and irreproachable in morals, while there are others the scene of carousal, and they gamble, and they drink, and they graduate knowing a hundred times more about sin than they do of geometry and Sophocles. In other words, secret societies, like individuals, are good or bad, are the means of moral health or of temporal and eternal damnation. All good people recognize the vice of slandering an individual, but many do not see the sin of slandering an organization. It was a disposition to slander and intrigue against the government that led Mar>', Queen of Scots, to the scaffold, and if all who have been equally as guilty had been as severely punished the roll of victims would have been immensely large. But secret societies have done incalculable good. One of these gave for the relief of the sick in 1873, in this country, $1,490,274. Some of these societies have poured a very heaven of sunshine and benediction into the home of suffer- ing. Several of them are founded on fidelity to good citizenship and the Bible. I have never taken one of their degrees. They might give me the grip a thousand times, and I would not recognize it. I am ignorant of their pass-words, and I must judge entirely from the outside. But Christ has given us a rule by which we may judge not only all individuals, but all societies, secret and open. "By their fniits ye shall know them." Bad societies make bad men. Good societies make good men. A bad man will not stay in a good society. A good man will not stav in a bad society. Then try all secret societies by two or three rules. Test the first ! Their influence on home, if you have a home. That wife soon loses her influence over her husband who nervously and foolishly looks upon all evening absence as an assault on domesticitj'. How are the great enterprises of reform, and art, and literature, and beneficence and public weal to be carried on if every man is to have his world bounded on one side by his front doorstep, and on the other side by his back window, knowing nothing higher than his own attic or lower than his own cellar? That wife who becomes jealous of her hus- band's attention to art, or literature, or religion, or charity is breaking her own sceptre of conjugal power. But let no man sacrifice home life to secret society life, as many do. I can point out to you a great many names of men who are guilty of this sacrilege. They are as genial as angels at the society room, and as ugly as sin at home. They are generous on all subjects of wine suppers, yachts and fast horses, but they are stingy about the wives' dresses and the children's shoes. That man has made that which might be a healthful influence a usurper of his affections, and he has married it, and he is guilty of moral bigamy. Under this process, the ' THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 501 wife, whatever her features, becomes uninteresting and homely. He becomes critical of her, does not like the dress, does not like the way she arranges her hair, is amazed that he ever was so unromantic as to offer her hand and heart. SACRIFICING THE HOME. There are secret societies where membership always involves domestic ship- wreck. Tell me that a man has joined a certain kind, and tell me nothing more about him for ten years, and I will write his history if he be still alive. The man is a wine-guzzler, his wife broken-hearted or prematurely old, his fortune gone or reduced, and his home a mere name in the directory. Here are six secular nights in the week. "What shall I do with them?" Says the father and the husband: "I will give four of these nights to the improvement and entertainment of my family, either at home or in good neighborhood. I will devote one to charitable institu- tions. I will devote one to my lodge. ' ' I congratulate you. Here is a man who says: ' ' Out of the six secular nights of the week I will devote five to lodges and clubs and associations and one to the home, which night I will spend in scowling like a March squall, wishing I was out spending it as I have spent the other five, ' ' That man's obituary is written. Not one out of 10,000 that ever gets so far on the wrong road ever stops. Gradually his health will fail through late hours, and through too much stimulants he will be first-rate prey for erysipelas and rheumatism of the heart. The doctor coming in will at a glance see it is not only present disease he must fight, but years of fast living. The clergyman, for the sake of the feelings of the family, on the funeral day will talk in religious gen- eralities. The men who got his yacht in the eternal rapids will not be at the obsequies. They have pressing engagements that day. They will send flowers to the cofiin, will send their wives to utter words of sympathy, but they will have engagements elsewhere. They never come. Bring me mallet and chisel, and I will cut on the tombstone that man's epitaph: " Blessed are the dead who died in the Lord." " No," you say, " that would not be appropriate." " Let me die the death of the righteous and let my last end be like his." " No," 3'ou say, " that would not be appropriate." "Then give me the mallet and the chisel, and I will cut an honest epitaph: * Here lies the victim of dissipating associations ! ' " RUINED BY SOCIAL EXCESS. You and I everj^ day know of commercial establishments going to ruin through the social excess of one or two members, their fortune beaten to death 502 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. with ball-player's bat, or cut amidship with the prow of the regatta, or going down under the swift hoofs of the fast horses, or drowned in the large potations of cognac or Monongahela. That secret society was the Loch Earn. Their business was the Ville de Havre. They struck and the Ville de Havre went under. The third test by which you may know whether the society to which you belong is good or bad is this: What is its effect on your sense of moral and reli- gious obligation ? Now, if I should take a thousand names in our city and put them on a roll, and then I should lay that roll in a drawer, and a hundred years from now some one should take that roll and call it from A to Z, there would not one of them answer. I say that any society that makes me forget that fact is bad society. When I go to Chicago I am sometimes perplexed at Buffalo, as I suppose many travelers are, as to whether it is better to take the Lake Shore route or the Michigan Central, equally expeditious and equally safe, getting to their destination at the same time. But suppose that I hear that on one route the track is torn up, the bridges are down and the switches are unlocked, it will not take me a great while to decide which road to take. Now, here are two roads in the future — the Christian and the unchristian, the safe and the unsafe. Any institution or any association that confuses my ideas in regard to that fact is a bad institution and a bad association. I had prayers before I joined that society; did I have them afterward? I attended the house of God before I connected myself with that union; do I absent myself from religious influences ? Which would you rather have in your hand when you come to die — a pack of cards or a Bible ? Which would you rather have pressed to your lips in the closing moment — the cup of Belshazzarean wassail or the chalice of Chris- tian communion ? Who would you rather have for your pall-bearers— the elders of a Christian church or the companions whose conversation was full of slang and innuendo ? Who would you rather have for your eternal companions — those men who spend their evenings betting, gambling, swearing, carousing, and telling vile stories, or your little child, that bright girl whom the Lord took ? Oh, you would not have been away so much nights, would you, if you had known she was going away so soon ? Dear me, your house has never been the same place since. Your wife has never brightened up, she has never got over it. She never will get over it. How long the evenings are with no one to put to bed and no one to whom to tell the beautiful Bible stories. A ROPE THAT REACHES HEAVEN. What a pity it is that you cannot spend more evenings at home in tr>nng to help her bear that sorrow. You can never drown that grief in the wine cup. You can never break away from the little arms that used to be flung around your (503) 504 THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. neck when she used to say: " Papa, do stay with me to-night. Do stay with me to-night." You will never be able to wipe away from your lips the dying kiss of your little girl. The fascination of a bad secret society is so great that sometimes a man has turned his back on his home when his child was dying of scarlet fever. He went away. Before he got back at midnight the eyes had been closed, the undertaker had done his work, and the wife, worn out with three weeks' watch- ing, lay unconscious in the next room. Then the returned father comes up-stairs, and he sees the cradle gone and the windows up, and sa5's: "What is the matter ?' ' On the day of judgment he will find out what was the matter. Oh, man astray, God help you ! I am going to make a very stout rope. You know that sometimes a ropemaker will take very small threads and wind them together until after a while they become a ship cable. And I am going to take some very small, delicate threads and wind them together until they make a very stout rope. I will take all the memories of the marriage daj^ — a thread of laughter, a thread of light, a thread of music, a thread of banqueting, a thread of congratulation, and I twist them together and I have one strand. Then I take a thread of the hour of the first advent in your house, a thread of the darkness that preceded, and a thread of the light that followed, and a thread of the beauti- ful scarf that little child used to wear when she bounded out at eventide to greet you, and then a thread of the beautiful dress in which you laid her away for the resurrection; and then I twist all these threads together, and I have- another strand. Then I take a thread of the scarlet robe of a suffering Christ, and a thread of the white raiment of your loved ones before the throne, and a string of the harp seraphic, and I twist them all together, and I have a third strand. " Oh," you say, " either strand is enough to hold fast a world !" No; I will take these strands and I will twist them together, and one end of that rope I will fasten, not to the communion table, for it shall be removed; not to a pillar of the organ, for that will crumble in the ages; but I wind it round and round the cross of a sympathizing Christ, and, having fastened one end of the rope to the cross, I throw the other end to you. Lay hold of it ! Pull for your life ! Pull for heaven. ^ Siitm i5r£ il>^ Sr^sirwtirl^is^crn^ THE NATIONAL HONOR BROUGHT INTO DISGRACE BY MORMON ISM. IN the world there have been hundreds of political parties. They did their work. They lost their prestige. They expired. Their names are forgotten. Enough for me to declare what I believe God and civilization demand of the two political parties of this day, or their extermination. God and civilization demand of the political parties of this day a plank anti-Mormonistic. It is high time that the nation stopped plajdng with this cancer. All the plasters of political quacks only aggravate it, and nothing but the surgery of the sword will cure it. All the congressional laws on this subject have been notorious failures. Meanwhile the great monster sits between the two mountains — the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas — sits in defiance and mockery, sometimes holding its sides with uncontrollable mirth at our national impotenc5^ Shipload af'"er shipload of Mormons are regurgitated at your Castle Garden, and hundreds and thousands of them are being sent on to the great moral v/ lazaretto of the West. Others are on the way, and the Atlantic is heaving toward us the great surges of foreign libertinism. This moment the emissaries of that organized lust are busy in Norway, and Sweden, and England, and Ireland, and Scotland, and Germany, breaking up homes, and with infernal cords drawing the population this way, a population which will be dumped as carrion on the American territories. American crime, with its long rake stretched across other continents, is heaping up on this land great windrows of abomination. Worse and worse. Four hundred Mormons coming into our port in one day, 600 in another day, 800 in another day. THE DEMAND OF THE AGE. Are we so cowardly and selfish in this generation that we are going to bequeath to the following generations this great evil ? L,etting it go on until our children come to the front and we are safely entrenched under the mound of our own sepulchres, leaving our children through all their active life to wonder why we postponed this evil for their extirpation when we might have destroyed it with a hundred-fold less exposure. What a legacy for this generation to leave the (505) 5o6 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. following generation ! A vast acreage of sweltering putrefaction, of lowest beastliness, of suffocating stench, all the time becoming more and more mal- odorous, and rotten, and damnable. We want some great political party, in some strong and unmistakable plank, to declare that it will extirpate heroically and immediately this great harem of the American continent. We want some Presi- dent of the United States to come in on such an anti-Mormonistic platform, and in his opening message to Congress ask for an appropriation for military expedi- tion, and then put such a man as was Phil Sheridan in his lightning stirrups, heading his horse westward, and in one year Mormonism will be extirpated and national decency vindicated. Compelling Mormonistic chiefs to take oath of allegiance will not do it, for they have declared in open assembly that perjury in their cause is commendable. Religious tracts on purity amount to nothing. They will not read them. Anything shorter than bayonets and anything softer than bullets will never do that work. Every day you open a paper and you see in the State of New York some bigamist arrested and punished. What you prohibit on a small scale for a State you allow on a large scale for a nation. Bigamy must be put down, pol3'gamy must go free. What has been the effect, my readers ? It has demoralized this whole nation. That carbuncle on the back of the nation has sickened all the nerves, and muscles, and arteries, and veins, and limbs of the body politic. I account in that way for many of the loose ideas abroad on all sides on the subject ©f the marriage relation. Divorce by the wholesale. Concubinage in high circles. L,ibertinism, if gloved and patent-leathered, admitted into high circles. INDUCING A LAXITY IN THE MARITAL RELATION. The malaria of Salt Lake City has smitten the nation with moral typhoid. The bad influence has well-nigh spiked that gun of Sinai which needs to thunder over the New England hills, over the savannas of the South and over the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas clear to the Pacific coast, ' ' Thou shalt not com- mit adultery!" Advertisements in newspapers saying, "Divorce legally and quietly effected. Can pay in installments!" Some of the New York lawyers giving their entire time to domestic separations — suborning witnesses, giving advice as to how many months it is necessary to be out of the city, inducing sus- picious complications, sending detective sleuth-hounds on the track of good citizens, until the honest lawyers of these cities were compelled a little while ago to make outcry against the bemeaning of their honorable profession. Looser and looser ideas on the subject of marriage, until sometimes the question of divorce is taken into consideration in the wedding solemnities, and people promise fidelity till death do them part, and say afterward softly, " perhaps," " may be," "I rather think so." All over this land more and more marriages in fun. THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 507 We do not want divorce made more easy in this country; we want it made more hard, so that people will be more cautious in their affiancing, and you will understand that if you marry a brute of a husband or a fool of a wife, you will have to stand it. Ah ! my readers, there will be no toning up on this subject, there will be no moral health in the United States on the subject of the marriage relation until this nation shall slough off this Mormonistic ulcer, and burn out with caustic _^ «&4.i^£r A MORMON'S WIFE CAST OUT. of gunpowder this wound which has been so long feculent and ichorous and deathful. If you are under the delusion that by mild laws passed against Mor- raonism the evil will be extirpated, you are making an awful mistake. The sooner you get over it the better. God and civilization demand of both political parties now a plank anti-Mormonistic. Again, there is demanded of the political parties in this day, a plank of intel- ligent helpfulness for the great foreign populations which have come among us^ 5o8 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. It is too late now to discuss whether we had better let them come. They are here. The}' are coming this moment through the Narrows, they are coming this moment through the gates of Castle Garden, they are this moment taking the first full inhalation of the free air of America, and they will continue to come as long as this country is the best place to live in. You might as well pass a law prohibiting summer bees from alighting on a field of blossoming buckwheat, you might as well prohibit the stags of the mountains from coming down to the deer lick, as to prohibit the hunger-bitten nations of Europe from coming to this land of bread; as to prohibit the people of England, Ireland, Scotland, Norway, Sweden, and Ger- many, working themselves to death on small wages on the other side of the sea, from coming to this land, where there are the largest compensations under the sun. Why did God spread out the prairies of Dakota, and roll the precious ore into Colorado ? It was that all the earth might come and plow, and come and dig. Just as long as the centrifugal force of foreign despotisms throw them off, just so long will the centripetal force of American institutions draw them here. INTERMARRIAGE OF NATIONALITIES. And that is what is going to make this the mightiest nation of the earth. Intermarriage of nationalities. Not circle intermarrying circle, and nation inter- marr>'ing nation, but is going to be Italian and Norwegian, Russian and Celt, Scotch and French, English and American. The American of a hundred years from now is to be different from the American of to-day. German brain, Irish wit, French civility, Scotch firmness, English loyalty, Italian aesthetics packed into one man, and he an American. It is this intermarriage of nationalities that is going to make the American race the mightiest race of the ages. Now, I say, in God's name let them come. But what are we doing for the moral and intellectual culture of the half mill- ion of foreigners who came in one year, and the six hundred thousand who came in another year, and the eight hundred thousand who came in another year, and the million who came into our various American ports. What are we doing for them ? Well, we are doing a great deal for them. We steal their baggage as soon as they get ashore ! We send them up to a boarding-house where the least they lose is their money. We swindle them within ten minutes after they get ashore. We are doing a great deal for them ! But what are we doing to intro- duce them into the duties of good citizenship ? Many of them never saw a ballot- box, many of them never heard of the Constitution of the United States, many of them have no acquaintance with our laws. Now, I say, let the Government of the United States, so commanded by some political party, give to every immigrant who lands here a volume in good type and well bound for long usage — a volume ■containing the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. 509 and a chapter on the spirit of our government. Let there be such a book on every shelf of ever>" free Hbrary in America. While the American Bible Society puts into the right hand of every immigrant a copy of the Holy Scriptures, let the Government of the United States, so commanded by some political party, put into the left hand of every immigrant a volume instructing him in the duties of good DECORATION DAY. citizenship. There are thousands of foreigners in this land who need to learn that the ballot-box is not a footstool, but a throne; not something to put your foot on, but something to bow before. Again, it is demanded of the political parties of this day that they have a plank that shall acknowledge God. Let there be no favoring of sects. Let Trini- tarian and Unitarian, Jew and Gentile, Protestant and Roman Catholic, be alike 5IO THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. in the sight of the law — every man free to worship in his own way — but let no political party think it can do its duty, unless it acknowledges that God who built this continent, and revealed it at the right time to the discoverer, and who has ■established a prosperity which has been given to no other people. "Oh," says ■some one, "there are people in this country who do not believe in God, and it would be an insult to them." Well, there are people in this country who do not believe in common decency, or common honesty, or any kind of government, pre- ferring anarchy. Your every platform is an insult to them. You ought not to regard a man who does not believe in God any more than you should regard a man who refuses to believe in common decency. God is the only source of good :government. Why not, then, say so, and let the chairman of the committee on resolutions in your national convention take a pen full of ink, and with bold hand head the document with one significant ' ' Whereas, ' ' acknowledging the good- ness of God in the past, and begging His kindness and protection for the future. For the lack of recognition of God in your political platforms they amount to nothing. They both make loud declaration about civil service reform, and it has been a failure. If you can take now in your cool moments the declaration made by the Democratic party in Cincinnati in 1880, and the declaration made by the Republican party in Chicago in 1880, and read those two declarations on the sub- ject of civil service reform, and then think of what has transpired, and control your mirth, you have more self-control than I have. My child asks me what is civil service reform, and I tell him, as near as I can understand, it is that when the Republican party get the government of a State they are to turn out the Democrats, and when the Democrats get the supremacy in the State they are to turn out the Republicans. Your platforms cry out for reform, and promise reform, if they are only kept in power, or may obtain power. How much do they mean by reform ? See what the Republican party did in 1876 in L,ouisiana and what the Democratic party did three or four years after in the gubernatorial election in Maine ! Credit Mobilier of eleven years ago. River and Harbor Bill, by which the taxpayers of the United States were swindled out of fifty millions of dollars — in both infamies the two parties shoulder to shoulder, and side to side. What 5'ou want is more of God in your pronunciamentoes. Without Him reform is retrogression, and gain is loss, and victory is defeat. LOYALTY TO GOD. This country belongs to God, and we ought in every possible way to acknowl- edge it. From the moment that, on an October morning, in 1492, Columbus looked over the side of the ship, and saw the carved staff which made him think lie was near an inhabited country, and saw also a thorn and a cluster of berries — "type of our history ever since, the piercing sorrows and the cluster of national joys THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 511 — until this hour, our country has been bounded on the north, and south, and east, and west by the goodness of God. The Huguenots took possession of the CaroHnas in the name of God; WilHam Penn settled Philadelphia in the name of God; the Hollanders took possession of New York in the name of God; the Pil- grim Fathers settled New England in the name of God. Preceding the first gun of Bunker Hill, at the voice of prayer all heads uncovered. In the War of 1812 an officer came to General Jackson and said: " There is an unusual noise in the camp; it ought to be stopped." General Jackson said: "What is the noise?" The officer said: " It is the voices of prayer and praise." And the General said: ' ' God forbid that prayer and praise should be an unusual noise in the encamp- ment; you had better go and join them." Prayer at Valley Forge, prayer at Mon- mouth, prayer at Atlanta, prayer at South Mountain, prayer at Gettysburg. " Oh," says some infidel, " the Northern people prayed on one side, and the Southern people prayed on the other side, and so it dida't amount to anything." And I have heard good Christian people confounded with the infidel statement, when it is as plain to me as my right hand. Yes, the Northern people prayed in one way, and the Southern people prayed in another way, and God answered in His own way, giving to the North the re- establishment of the government, and giving to the South larger opportunities, larger than she had ever anticipated, the harnessing of her rivers in great manufacturing interests, until the "Mobile," and the "Tallapoosa," and the " Chattahooche," are Southern Merrimacs, and the uncovering of great mines of coal and iron, of which the world knew nothing, and opening before her opportunities of wealth which will give ninety-nine per cent more of affluence than she ever possessed. And, instead of the black hands of American slaves emancipated, there are the more industrious black hands of the coal and iron industries of the South which will achieve for her fabulous and unimagined wealth. And there are domes of white blossoms where spread the white tent, And there are plows in the track where the war wagon went, And there are songs where they lifted up Rachel's lament. Oh, you are a stupid man if you do not understand how God answered Abra- ham Lincoln's prayer in the White House, and Stonewall Jackson's prayer in the saddle, and answered all the prayers of all the cathedrals on both sides of MasoH and Dixon's Line. God's country all the way past. God's country now. A HAND-CLASP ROUND THE WORLD. Put His name in your pronunciamentoes, put His name on your ensigns, put His name on your city and State and national enterprises, put His name in your hearts. To most of us this country was the cradle, and to most of us it will be the 512 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. grave. We want the same glorious privileges which we enjoy to go down to our children. We cannot sleep well the last sleep, nor will the pillow of dust be easy to our heads until we are assured that the God of our American institutions in the past, will be the God of our American institutions in the days that are to come. Oh, when all the rivers which empty into the Atlantic and Pacific seas shall pull on fac- tory bands, when all the great mines of gold, and silver, and iron, and coal shall be laid bare for the nation, when the last swamp shall be reclaimed, and the last jungle cleared, and the last American desert Edenized, and from sea to sea the continent shall be occupied by more than twelve hundred million souls, may it be found that moral and religious influences were multiplied in more rapid ratio than the population. And then there shall be four doxologies coming from north, and south, and east, and west — four doxologies rolling toward each other and meeting mid-continent with such dash of holy joy that they shall mount to the throne. And Heaven's high arch resound again With " peace on earth, good will to men." itBp^ix^xhxlii^ i5tC '^xxlitt^^ THE WRONGS AND ABUSES OF PUBLIC TRUSTS. =ELDOM do the morals of a nation rise higher than the virtue of the rulers. Henry VIII. makes impurity popular and national. William Wilberforce gives moral tone to a whole empire. Sin bestarred and epauletted makes crime respectable and brings it to canonization. Malarias arise from the swamp and float upward, but moral distempers descend from the mountain to the plain. The slums only disgust men with the bestiality of crime, but dis- solute French court or corrupt congressional delegation puts a premium upon iniquity. Many of the sins of the world are only royal exiles. They had a throne once, but they have been turned out, and they come down now to be entertained by the humble and the insignificant. There is not a land on earth which has so many moral men in author- ity as this land. There is not a session of Legislature, or Congress, or Cabinet, but in it are thoroughly Christian men — men whose hands would consume a bribe, whose cheek has never been flushed with intoxication, whose tongue has never been smitten of blasphemy or stung of a lie; men whose speeches in behalf of the right and against the wrong remind us of the old Scotch Covenanters, and the defiant challenge of Martin Luther, and the red lightning of Micah and Habakkuk. These times are not half as bad as the times that are gone. I judge so from the fact that Aaron Burr, a man stuffed with iniquity until he could hold no more, the debaucher of the debauched, was a mem- ber of the Legislature, then Attorney-General, then a Senator of the United States, then Vice-President, and then at last coming within one vote of the highest position in this nation. I judge it from the fact that more than half a century ago the Governor of New York disbanded the Legislature because it was too corrupt to sit in council. There is a tendency in our time to extol the past to the disadvantage of the present, and I suppose that sixty years from now there may be persons who will represent some of us as angels, although now things are so unpromising. But the iniquity of the past is no excuse for the public wickedness of to-day, and so I unroll the scroll. Those who are in editorial chairs and in pulpits may not hold 33 (513) 514 'THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. back the truth. King David must be made to feel the reproof of Nathan, and Felix must tremble before Paul, and Ananias must receive the punishment of liars, and we may not walk with muffled feet lest we wake up some big sinner. If we keep back the truth, what will we do in the day when the Lord rises up in judgment and we are tried not only for what we have said, but for what we have declined to say ? INCOMPETENCY OF OFFICIALS. In unrolling the scroll of public wickedness, I first find incompetency for office. If a man struggle for an official position for which he has no qualification, and win that position, he commits a crime against God and against society. It is no sin for me to be ignorant of medical science; but if, ignorant of medical science, I set myself up among professional men and trifle with the lives of people, then the charlatanism becomes positive knavery. It is no sin for me to be ignorant of machinery; but if, knowing nothing about it, I attempt to take a steamer across to Southampton and through darkness and storm I hold the lives of hundreds of passengers, then all who are slain by that shipwreck may hold me accountable. But what shall I say of those who attempt to doctor our institutions without qualification and who attempt to engineer our political affairs across the rough and stormy sea, having no qualification ? We had at one time in the Congress of the United States men who put one tariff upon linseed oil and another tariff upon flaxseed oil, not knowing they were the same thing. We have had men in our Legislatures who knew not whether to vote yes or no until they had seen the wnik of the leader. Polished civilians acquainted with all our institutions run over in a stampede for office by men who have not the first qualification. And so there have been school commissioners sometimes nominated in grog-shops and hurrahed for hy the rabble, the men elected not able to read their own commissions. And judges of courts who have given sentence to criminals in such inaccurac\' of phraseology that the criminal at the bar has been more amused at the stupidity of the bench then alarmed at the prospect of his own punishment. I arraign incom- petency for office as one of the great crimes of this day in public places. I unroll still further the scroll of public wickedness, and I come to intemper- ance. There has been a great improvement in this direction. The senators who "were more celebrated for their drvmkenness than for their statesmanship are dead or •compelled to stay at home. I very well remember that there went from the State of New York at one time, and from the State of Delaware, and from the State of Illinois, and from other States men who were notorious everywhere as inebriates. The day is past. The grog-shop under the national Capitol, to which our rulers used to go to get inspiration before they spoke upon the great moral and financial and commercial interests of the country, has been disbanded; but I am told even now under the national Capitol there are places where our rulers can get some THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 515 very strong lemonade. But there has been a vast improvement. At one time I went to Washington, to the door of the House of Representatives, and sent in my card to an old friend. I had not seen him for many years, and the last time I saw him he was conspicuous for his integrity and uprightness; but that day when he came out to greet me he was staggering drunk. DRUNKARDS IN OUR LEGISLATURES. The temptation to intemperance in public places is simply terrific. How often there have been men in public places who have disgraced the nation. Of the men who were prominent in political circles twenty-five or thirty years ago, how few died respectable deaths. Those who died of delirium tremens or kindred diseases were in the majority. The doctor fixed up the case very well, and in his report of it said it was gout, or it was rheumatism, or it was obstruction of the liver, or it was exhaustion from patriotic services, but God knew and we all knew it was whisky ! That which smote the villain in the dark alley, smote down the great orator and the great legislator. The one you wrapped in a rough cloth, and pushed into a rough coffin, and carried out in a box wagon, and let him down into a pauper's grave without a prayer or a benediction. Around the other gathered the pomp of the land; and lordly men walked with uncovered heads beside the hearse tossing with plumes on the way to a grave to be adorned with a white marble shaft, all four sides covered with eulogium. The one man was killed by logwood rum at two cents a glass, the other by a beverage three dollars a bottle. I write both their epitaphs. I write the one epitaph with my lead-pencil on the shingle over the pauper's grave; I write the other epitaph with chisel, cutting on the white marble of the senator: " Slain by strong drink." You know as well as I that again and again dissipation has been no hindrance to office in this country. Did we not at one time have a Secretary of the United States carried home dead drunk ? Did we not have a Vice-President sworn in so intoxicated the whole land hid its head in shame ? Have we not in other times had men in the Congress of the nation by day making pleas in behalf of the interests of the country, and bj^ night illustrating what Solomon said: " He goeth after her straightway as an ox to the slaughter and as a fool to the correction of the stocks, until a dart strikes through his liver. ' ' Judges and jurors and attor- neys, sometimes trying important causes by day, and by night carousing together in iniquity. What was it that defeated the armies sometimes in the late war ? Drunkenness in the saddle. What mean those graves on the heights of Fredericks- burg? As you go to Richmond you see them. Drunkenness in the saddle. So again and again in the courts we have had demonstration of the fact that impurity walks under the chandeliers of the mansion and drowses on damask upholstery. Iniquity permitted to run unchallenged if it only be affluent. Stand back and let 5i6 THE PATHWAY OF UFE. this libertine ride past in his $5000 equipage, but clutch by the neck that poor sin- ner who transgresses on a small scale, and fetch him up to the police court, and give him a ride in the city van. Down with small villainy ! Hurrah for grand iniquity ! If 5^ou have not noticed that intemperance is one of the crimes in public places to-day, you have not been to Albany, and you have not been to Harrisburg, and you have not been to Trenton, and you have not been to Washington. The whole land cries out against the iniquity. But the two political parties are silent lest they lose votes, and many of the newspapers are silent lest they lose subscrib- ers, and many of the pulpits are silent because there are offenders in the pews. Meanwhile God's indignation gathers like the flashings around a threatening cloud just before the swoop of a tornado. The whole land cries out to be delivered. The nation sweats great drops of blood. It is crucified, not between two thieves, but between a thousand, while nations pass by wagging their heads, and saying: "Aha! Aha !" BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION. I unroll the scroll of public iniquity and I come to bribery — bribery^ by money, bribery by proffered office. Do not charge it upon American institutions. It is a sin we got from the other side the water. Francis Bacon, the thinker of his century, Francis Bacon, of whom it was said when men heard him speak they were only fearful that he would stop, Francis Bacon, with all his castles and all his emoluments, destroyed by briber>^ fined $200,000, or what is equal to our $200,000, and hurled into London Tower, and his only excuse was he said all his predecessors had done the same thing. Lord Chancellor Macclesfield destroyed by bribery. Lord Chancellor Waterbury destroyed by bribery. Benedict Arnold selling the fort in the Highlands for $31,575. For this sin Georgy betrayed Hungary, and Ahithophel forsook David, and Judas kissed Christ. And it is abroad in our land. You know in many of the Legislatures of this country- it has been impossible to get a bill through unless it had financial consideration. The question has been asked softly, sometimes very softly asked, in regard to a bill: " Is there any money in it?" and the lobbies of the Legislatures and the National Capitol have been crowded with railroad men and manufacturers and contractors, and the iniquity has become so great that sometimes reformers and philanthropists have been laughed out of Harrisburg, and Albany, and Trenton, and Washington because they came empty-handed. " You vote for this bill and I'll vote for that bill." "You favor that monopoly of a moneyed institution and I'll favor the other monopoly of another institution." And here is a bill that is going to be very hard to get through the Legislature, and you will call some friends together at a midnight banquet, and while they are intoxicated j^ou will have them promise to vote your way. Here are $5000 for prudent distribution in this direction, and here are $1000 for prudent distribution in that direction. Now, we are within THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 51' four votes of having enough. You give $5000 to that intelligent member from Westchester, and you give $2000 to that stupid member from Ulster, and now we are within two votes of having it. Give $500 to this member who will be sick and stay at home and $300 to this member who will go to see his great aunt languishing in her last sickness. Now the day has come for the passing of the bill. The Speaker's gavel strikes. "Senators, are you ready for the question? All in PURIFIED THROUGH FIRE. favor of voting away these thousands or millions of dollars will say ' Ay. ' ' ' " Ay ! Ay ! Ay ! Ay !" " The ays have it. ' ' RESOLUTION AHEAD. Some of the finest houses of our cities were built out of money paid for votes in the Legislatures. Five hundred small wheels in political machinery with cogs reaching into one great centre wheel, and that wheel has a tire of railroad iron 5i8 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. and a crank to it on which Satan puts his hand and turns the centre wheel, and that turns the five hundred other wheels of political machiner}-. While in this country it is becoming harder and harder for the great mass of the people to get a living, there are too many men in this country who have their two millions, and their ten millions, and their twenty millions, and carry the legislators in one pocket and the Congress of the United States in the other. And there is trouble ahead. Revolution. I pray God it may be peaceful revolution and at the ballot- box. The time must come in this country when men shall be sent into public position who cannot be purchased. I do not want the union of Church and State, but I declare that if the Church of God does not show itself in favor of the great mass of the people as well as in favor of the L,ord, the time will come when the Church as an institution will be extinct, and Christ w^ill go down again to the beach, and choose twelve plain, honest fishermen to come up into the apostleship of a new dispensation of righteousness, manward and Godward. Bribery is cursing this land. The evil started with its greatest power during the last war, when men said, " Now you give me this contract above every other applicant, and you shall have ten per cent of all I make by it. You pass these broken-down cavalry horses as good, and you shall have five thousand dollars as a bonus." "Bonus" is the word. And so they sent down to your fathers, and brothers, and sons, rice that was worm-eaten, and bread that was mould}^ and meat that was rank, and blankets that were shoddy, and cavalry horses that stumbled in the charge, and tents that sifted the rain into exhausted faces. But it was all right. They got the bonus. I never so much believed in a republican form of government as I do to-day, for the simple reason that any other style of government would have been consumed long ago. There have been swindles enacted in this nation within the last thirty years enough to swamp three monar- chies. The Democratic party filled its cup of iniquity before it went out of power before the war. Then the Republican party came along, and its opportunities through the contracts were greater, and so it filled its cup of iniquity a little sooner, and there they lie to-day, the Democratic party and the Republican party, side by side, great loathsome carcasses of iniquity, each one worse than the other. Tens of thousands of good citizens in all the parties; but 5^ou know as well as I do that party organization in this country is utterly, utterly corrupt. YOUR DUTY TO YOUR COUNTRY. Now, if there were nothing for you and for me to do in this matter I would not present this subject. There are several things for us to do. First, stand aloof from political office unless you have your moral principles thoroughly settled. Do not go into this blaze of temptation unless you are fireproof. Hundreds of respectable men have been destroyed for this life and the life to come because they THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 519 had not moral principle to stand office. You go into some office of authority without moral principle, and before you get through you will lie, and }ou will swear, and you will gamble, and you will steal. Another thing for you to do is to be faithful at the ballot-box. Do not stand on your dignity and say, " I'll not go where the rabble are." If need be, put on your old clothes and just push yourself through amid the unwashed, and vote. Vote for vicn ivho love God and hate mm. You cannot say, you ought not to say, " I have nothing to do with this matter." Then you will insult the graves of your fathers who died for the establishment of the government and will insult the graves of your children who may live to feel the results of your negligence. lyCt us have Decoration Day for the brave who died for liberty, but let us also have praise-giving, honor and encouragement for those who are still fighting for the establishing and perpetuation of honesty in our government. The wife may not sorrow so greatly for the sire who dies for his country, as the nation may grieve for the acts of those that seek to destroy the bulwarks of national integrity. Evangelize the people. Get the hearts of the people right, and they will vote right. I know there are a great many good people who think that God ought to be recognized in the Constitution, and they are making a move in that direction. I am most anxious that God shall be in the hearts of the people. Get their hearts right, and then they will vote right. If there be fifty million people in this country, then at least a fifty-millionth part of the responsibility rests on you. What we want is a great revival of religion reaching from sea to sea, and it is going to come. A newspaper gentle- man asked me a few weeks ago what I thought of revivals. I said I thought scv much of them I never put my faith in anything else. We want thousands in a day, hundreds of thousands in a day, nations in a day. Get all the people evangelized, brought under Christianized influences. These great evils that we now so much deplore will be banished from the land. And remember that we are at last to be judged, not as nations, but as individuals — in that day w^hen empires and republics shall alike go down and we shall have to give account for ourselves, for what we have done and for what we have neglected to do — in that day when the earth itself will be a heap of ashes scattered in the blast of the nostrils of the Lord God Almighty. God save the United States of America ! THE GOOD AND EVIL INFLUENCES IN MEN. OD made the universe on the plan of a circle. While yet people thought that the world was flat, and thousands of years before they found out that it was round, Isaiah intimated the shape of it, God sitting upon the circle of the earth. The most beautiful figure in all geometry is the circle. There are in the natural world straight lines, angles, parallelograms, diag- onals, quadrangles; but these evidently are not God's favor- ites. Almost everj^where you find Him geometrizing you find the circle dominant — if not the circle then the curve, which is a circle that died young. If it had lived long enough it would have been a full orb, a per- iphery. An ellipse is a circle pressed only a little too hard at the sides. Giant's Causeway in Ireland shows what God thinks of mathematics. There are many thousand columns of rocks — octagonal, hexagonal, pentagonal. These rocks seem to have been made by rule and by compass. Every artist has his moulding-room, where he may make fifty shapes, but he chooses one shape as preferable to all the others. I will not say that the Giant's Causeway was the world's moulding-room, but I do say, out of a great may figures, God seems to have selected the circle as the best. The stars in a circle, the moon in a circle, the sun in a circle, the universe in a circle, and the throne of God the centre of that circle. When men build churches they ought to imitate the idea of the great Archi- tect and put the audience in a circle, knowing that the tides of emotion roll more easily that way than in straight lines. Six thousand years ago God flung this world out of His right hand; but He did not throw it out in a straight line, but curvilinear, with a lease of love holding it so as to bring it back again. The world started from His hand pure and Edenic. It has been rolling on through regions of moral ice and distemper. How long it will roll, God only knows; but it will in due time make a complete circuit and come back to the place where it started — the hand of God — pure and Edenic. GREATNESS OF THE PAST. The history of the world goes in a circle. Why is it the shipping in our day is improving so rapidly ? It is because men are imitating the old model of Noah's ark. A .ship-carpenter gives that as his opinion . Although so much derided by (520) THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 521 small wits, that ship of Noah's time beat the " Etruria " aud the " Germanic," of which we boast so much. Where is the ship on the sea to-day that could outride a deluge in which the heaven aud the earth were wrecked, landing all the passengers SHADOW PICTURES. in safety, two of each kind of living creatures, thousands of species. Pomology will go on with its achievements until after many centuries the world will have plums and pears equal to the Paradisaical. The art of gardening will grow for 522 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. centuries, and after the Downings and the Mitchells of the world have done their best, in the far future the art of gardening will come up to the arborescence of the year .1. If the makers of colored glass go on improving they may in some cen- turies be able to make something equal to the east window of York Minster, which was built in 1290. We are six centuries behind those artists, but the world must keep on toiling until it has made the complete circuit and come up to the skill of those very men. If the world continues to improve in masonry we shall have after a while, perhaps after the advance of centuries, mortar equal to that which I saw in the wall of an exhumed English cit}-, built in the time of the Romans, 1600 years ago — that mortar to-day is as good as the day in which it was made, having outlasted the brick and the stone. I say, after hundreds of years, masonry may advance to that point. If the world stands long enough we may have a city as large as they had in olden times. Babylon, five times the size of Eondon. You go into the potteries of England and you find them making cups and vases after the style of the cups and vases exhumed from Pompeii. The world is not going back. Oh, no ! But it is swinging in a circle, and will come back to the styles of pottery known so long ago as the da3^s of Pompeii. The world must keep on progressing until it makes the complete circuit. The curve is in the right direction. The curve will keep on until it becomes a circle. What is true in the material universe is true in God's moral government and spiritual arrangement. That is the meaning of Ezekiel's wheel. All commen- tators agree in saying that the wheel means God's providence. But a wheel is of no use unless it turn, and if it turn it turns around, and if it turn around it moves in a circle. What then ? Are we parts of a great iron machine, whirled around whether we will or not, the victims of inexorable fate ? No ? So far from that, I shall show you that we ourselves start the circle of good or bad actions, and that it will surely come around to us, unless by divine intervention it be hindered. Those bad or good actions may make the circuit of many years; bvit come back to us they will as certainh' as that God sits on the circle of the earth. Jezebel, the worst woman of the Bible, slew Naboth because she wanted his vineyard. While the dogs were eating the body of Naboth, Elisha, the prophet, put down his compass and marked a circle from those dogs clear around to the dogs that should eat the body of Jezebel, the murderess. "Impossible," the people said; " that will never happen." Who is that being flung out of the palace win- dow? Jezebel. A few hours after they came around, hoping to bury her. They find only the palms of her hands and the skull. The dogs that devoured Jezebel, and the dogs that devoured Naboth ! Oh ! what a swift, what an awful circuit ! THE TATHWAY OF LIFE. THE MUTATIONS OF TIME. 525 But it is sometimes the case that this circle sweeps through a centurj' or through many centuries. The world started as a theocracy for government ; that is, God was President and Emperor of the world. People got tired of a theocracy. They said: " We don't want God directly interfering with the affairs of the world; give us a monarchy." The world had a monarchy. From a monarchy it is going to have a limited monarchy. After a while the limited monarchy will be given up, and the republican form of government will be everywhere dominant and recognized. Then the world will get tired of the republican form of government, THE CIRCLE OF PEACE. and it will have an anarchy, which is no government at all. And then, all nations finding out that man is not capable of righteously governing man, will cry- out again for a theocracy, and say: " Eet God come back and conduct the affairs of the world." Every step — monarchy, limited monarchy, republicanism, anarchy, only different steps between the first theocracy and the last theocracy, or segments of the great circle of the earth on which God sits. But do not become impatient because you cannot see the cur\'e of events, and therefore conclude that God's government is going to break down. History tells us that in the making of the pyramids it took 2000 men two years to drag one great stone from the quarry and put it into the pyramids. Well, now, if men, short-lived, can afibrd to work so slowly as that, cannot God, in the building of 524 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. the eternities, afford to wait? What though God should take 10,000 years to draw a circle? Shall we take our little watch, which we have to wind up every night lest it run down, and hold it up beside the clock of eternal ages? If, according to the Bible, 1000 years are in God's sight as a day, then, according to that calculation, the 6000 years of the world's existence has been only to God as from Monday to Saturday. But it is often the case that the rebound is quicker, and the circle is sooner com- pleted. You resolve that you wnll do w^hat good you can. In one week you put a word of counsel in the heart of a Sabbath-school child. During the same week you give a letter of introduction to a young man struggling in business. During the same week you made an exhortation in a prayer-meeting. It is all gone; you will never hear of it perhaps, you think. A few years after a man comes to you and says: "You don't know me, do j^ou?" You say: "No, I don't remember ever to have seen you." " Why," he says, " I was in the Sabbath-school class of which you were the teacher. One Sunday you invited me to Christ. I accepted the offer. You see that church with two towers, yonder?" "Yes," you say. He says: "That is where I preach." Or, " Do you see that Governor's house ? That is where I live. ' ' One day a man comes to you and says: ' ' Good-morning." You look at him and say: " Why, you have the advantage of me; I cannot place 3'ou." He says; " Don't you remember, thirty years ago, giving a letter of intro- duction to a young man — a letter of introduction to a prominent merchant?" " Yes, I do." He says: " I am the man. That was my first step toward a for- tune; but I have retired from business now, and am giving my time to philan- thropies and public interests. Come up to my country place and see me." Or a man comes to you and says: " I want to introduce myself to you. I went into a prayer-meeting some years ago. I sat back near the door. You arose to make an exhortation. That talk changed the course of my life, and if I ever get to heaven, I will owe my salvation to you." In only ten, twenty, or thirty years, the circle swept out and swept back again to j^our own grateful heart. But sometimes it is a wider circle and does not return for a great while. I saw a bill of expenses for burning Eatimer and Ridley. The bill of expenses says: One load of fir fagots, three shillings, four pence; cartage of four loads of wood, two shillings; a post, one shilling, four pence; two chains, three shillings, four pence; two staples, six pence; four laborers, two .shillings, eight pence; total of tw^elve shillings, six pence. That was a cheap fire, considering all the circum- stances; but it kindled a light which shone all around the world and around the martyr spirit; and out from that burning rolled the circle, wider and wider, start- ing other circles, convoluting, over-running, circumscribing, over-arching all heaven. THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 525 THY SINS WILL DISCOVER YOU. But what is true of the good is just as true of the bad. You utter a slander against your neighbor. It has gone forth from your teeth. It will never come back, you think. You have done the man all the mischief you can. You rejoice to see him wince. You say: "Didn't I give it to him?" That word has gone out, that slanderous word, on its poisonous and blasted way. You think it will never do you any harm. But I am watching that word, and I see it beginning to curve, and it curves around, and it is aiming at your heart. You had better dodge it. You cannot dodge it. It rolls into your bosom, and after it rolls in a word of FAST FALLS THE EVEN TIDE. an old book, which says: "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." You maltreat an aged parent. You begrudge him the room in your house. You are impatient of his whimsicalities and garrulity. It makes you mad to hear him tell the same story twice. You give him food he cannot masticate. You wish he was away. You wonder if he is going to live forever. He will be gone ver}^ soon. His steps are shorter and shorter. He is going to stop. But God has an account to settle with 5^ou on that subject. After a while your eye will be dim and your gait will halt, and the sound of the grinding will be slow, and you will tell 526 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. the same story twice, and your children will wonder if you are going to live for- ever, and wonder if you will never be taken away. They called you " father" once; now they call you "the old man." If you live a few years longer they will call you ' ' the old chap. ' ' What are those rough words with which your children are accosting you ? They are the echo of the very words you used in the ear of your old father forty years ago. What is that which you are trying to chew, but find it unmasticable, and your jaws ache as you surrender the attempt ? Perhaps it may be the gristle which you gave to your father for his breakfast forty years ago. A gentleman passing along the street saw a son dragging his father by the hair of his head. The gentleman, outraged at this brutal conduct, was about to punish the offender, when the old man arose and said: " Don't hurt him; it's all right; forty years ago this morning I dragged out my father by the hair of his head." Other sins may be adjourned to the next world, but maltreatment of parents is punished in this. INFLUENCE OF VOLTAIRE AND MARAT. The circle turns quickly, very quickly. Oh, what a stupendous thought that the good and the evil we start come back to us ! Do you know that the judgment day will be onl}^ the point at which the circle joins — the good and the bad we have done coming back to us, unless divine intervention hinders — coming back to us, welcome of delight or curse of condemnation ? Oh, I would like to see Paul, the invalid missionary, at the moment when his influence comes to full orb — his influ- ence rolling out through Antioch, through Cyprus, through Lystra, through Corinth, through Athens, through Asia, through Europe, through America, through the first century, through five centuries, through twenty centuries, through all the succeeding centuries, through earth, through heaven, and, at last, the wave of influence having made full circuit, strikes his great soul ! Oh, then I would like to see him ! No one can tell the wide sweep of the circle of his influ- ence, save the One who is seated on the circle of the earth. I should not want to see the countenance of Voltaire when his influence comes to full orb. When the fatal hemorrhage seized him at eighty-three years of age his influence did not cease. The most brilliant man of his century, he had used all his faculties for assaulting Christianity; his bad influence widening through France, widening out through Germany, widening through all Europe, widening through America, widening through the years that have gone by since he died, widening through earth, widen- ing through hell; until at last the accumulated influence of his bad life, in fiery surge of omnipotent wrath, will beat against his destroyed spirit, and at that moment it will be enough to make the black hair of eternal darkness turn white with horror. Nor would I want to see the countenance of Marat as he la}^ in his bath struggling, with a dagger in his heart, a victim of outraged justice, for the DAY DREAMS. — Painting by L. Karger. (527) 528 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. crimes he had perpetrated. No one can tell how these two bad men's influence girdled the earth, save the One who is seated on the circle of the world — the Lord Almighty. " Well, now," people say, " this is in some respects a very glad theory^, and in others a very sad one; we would like to have all the good we have ever done come back to us, but the thought that all the sins we have ever committed will come back to us fills us with affright. ' ' My brother, I have to tell you God can TIIK SOXO OF THK SWAN. break that circle and will do so at your call. I can bring twenty passages of Scripture to prove that when God for Christ's sake forgives man, the sins of his past life never come back. The wheel may roll on and roll on, but you take your position behind the cross, and the wheel strikes the cross and it is shattered forever. The sins fly off from the circle into the perpendicular, falling at right angles with complete oblivion. Forgiven ! forgiven ! The meanest thing a man can do is, after some difficulty has been settled, to bring it up again; and God will not be so mean as that. God's memory is mighty enough to hold all the events of the ages. THE PATHWAY OF lylFK. 529 but there is one thing that is sure to slip His memory, one thing He is sure to forget, and that is pardoned transgression. But let not the reader make the mistake of thinking that this doctrine of the circle stops with this life; it rolls on through heaven. You might quote in opposition to me what Saint John saj-s about the city of heaven. He saj-s it " lieth four square." That does seem to militate against this idea, but you know there is many a square house that has a family circle facing each other and in a circle moving, and this is so in regard to heaven. Saint John says: "I heard the voice of man}- angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders. ' ' And again he says: " There was a rainbow round about the throne." The two former instances a circle; the last either a circle or a semi-circle. The seats facing each other, the angels facing each other, the men facing each other. The Romans had an amphitheatre where men met in peaceful rivalry to win earthly glory, but heaven has an amphitheatre of perpetual glory in which there is no rivalr>\ Circumference of patriarch and prophet and apostle. Circumference of Scotch covenanters and Theban legion and Albigenses. Circumference of the good of all ages. Periphery' of splendor unimagined and indescribable. But every circumference must have a centre, and what is the centre of this heavenly circumference ? Christ. His all the glor}', His all the praise, His all the crowns. All heaven wreathed into a garland round about Him. Take off the imperial sandal from His foot, and behold the scar of the spike. Lift the coronet of dominion from His brow, and see where the lacerations of the briars. Come closer, all heaven. Narrow the circle around His great heart. O Christ, the Saviour. O Christ, the man ! O Christ, the God ! Keep Thy throne for- ever, seated on the circle of the earth, seated on the circle of the heaven ! On Christ, the soHd rock, I stand; All other ground is shifting sand. 34 THE NEED OF AN AIM, FORTIFIED BY AMBITION. '^ SAIAH gives a description of the idolatry and worldliness of people in his time, and of a very prevalent style of diet in our time. j^^ The world spreads a great feast and invites the race to sit at it. Platters are heaped up. Chalices are full. Gar- lands wreathe the wall. The guest sits down amid out- bursts of hilarity. They take the fruit and it turns into ashes. They uplift the tankards and their contents prove to be gall. They touch the garlands and they scatter into dust. I do not know any passage of Scripture which so apothegm atically sets forth the unsatisfactory nature Of this world for eye, and tongue, and lip, and heart as this particular passage, describing the votary of the world, when it says: " He feedeth on a.shes." I shall not take the estimate by those whose life has been a failure. A. man may despise the world simply because he cannot win it. Having failed, in his chagrin he may decry that which he would like to have had as his bride. I shall, therefore, take only the testimony of those who have been magnificently success- ful. In the first place, I shall ask the kings of the earth to stand up and give testimony, telling of the long story of sleepless nights, and poisoned cups, and threatened invasion, and dreaded rebellion. Ask the Georges, ask the Henr>'S, ask the Marys, ask the L,ouises, ask the Catharines, ask the Lady Jane Greys, whether they found the throne a safe seat, and the crown a pleasant covering. Ask the French guillotine in Madame Taussaud's Museum about the queenly necks it has dissevered. Ask the Tower of London and its headsman's block. Ask the Tuilleries, and Henry VIII., and Cardinal Wolsey to rise out of the dust, and say what they think of worldly honors. Ghastly with the first and the second death, they rise up with eyeless sockets and grinning skeletons, and stagger forth unable at first to speak at all, but afterward hoarsely whispering: " Ashes ! Ashes!" THE VANITY OF RICHES. I call up also a group of commercial adepts to give testimony; and here again, those who have been onlj' moderately successful may not testifs'. All the (530) A FAITHFUL SERVANT. 532 THE PATHWAY OF I^IFE. witnesses must be millionaires. What a grand thing it must be to own a railroad, to control a bank, to possess all the houses on one street, to have vast investments tumbling in upon you day after day, whether you work or not. No; no. William B. Astor, a few days before his death, sits in his office in New York, grieving almost until he is sick, because rents have gone down. A. T. Stewart finds his last days full of foreboding and doubt. When a Christian man proposes to talk to him about the matters of his soul, he cries: " Go away from me ! Go away from me;" not satisfied until the man has got outside the door. Come up, ye millionaires, from various cemeteries and graveyards, and tell us now what you think of banks, and mills, and factories, and counting-houses, and marble palaces, and presidential banquets. They stagger forth and lean against the cold slab of the tomb, mouthing with toothless gums and gesticulating with fleshless hands and shivering with the chill of sepulchral dampness, while they cry out: "Ashes !" I must call up now, also, a group of sinful pleasurists, and here again I will not take the testimony of those who had the more ordinary gratifications of life. Their pleasures are pyramidal. They bloomed paradisaically. If they drank wine, it must be the best that was ever pressed from the vineyards of Hockheimer. If they listened to music, it must be costliest opera, with renowned prima donna. If they sinned, they chased polished uncleannesses and graceful despair and glit- tering damnation. Stand up, Alcibiades, and Aaron Burr, and I^ord Bj-ron, and Queen Elizabeth — what think you now of midnight revel, and sinful carnival, and damask curtained abomination ? Answer ! The color goes out of the cheek, the dregs serpent-twisted in the bottom of the wine cup, the bright lights quenched in blackness of darkness, they jingle together the broken glasses, and rend the faded silks, and shut the door of the deserted banqueting-hall, while they cry: "A wasted life." A WASTED LIFE.. There are a great many who try to feed their soul on infidelity mixed with truth. They say the Bible has good things in it, but it is not inspired. They say Christ was a good man, but He was not inspired, and their religion is made up of ten degrees of humanitarianism, and ten degrees of transcendentalism, and ten degrees of egotism, with one degree of gospel truth, and on a poor, miserable cud they make their immortal soul chew, while the meadows of God's word are green and luxuriant with well-watered pastures. Did you ever see a happy infidel ? Did you ever meet a placid skeptic ? Did you ever find a contented atheist ? Not one. From the days of Gibbon and Voltaire down, not one. They quarrel about God. They quarrel about the Bible. They quarrel about each other. They quarrel with themselves. They take all the divine teachings and gather them together, and under them they put the fires of their own wit, and scorn, and sarcasm, and then they dance in the light of that blaze, and they scratch amid THE PATHWAY OF UFE. 533 the rubbish for something with which to help them in the days of trouble, and something to comfort them in the days of death, finding for their distraught and destroyed souls, nothing. Voltaire declared: " This globe seems to me more like a collection of carcasses than of men. I wish I had never been born." Hume says: " I am like a man who has run on rocks and quicksands, and yet I contem- plate putting out on the sea in the same leaky and weather-beaten craft." Chesterfield says: ' ' I have been behind the scenes, and I have noticed the clumsy pulleys and the dirty ropes by which all the scene is managed, and I have seen and smelt the tallow candles which throw the illumination on the stage, and I am tired and sick. " Get up, then, Francis Newport, and Hume, and Voltaire, and Tom Paine, and all the infidels who have passed out of this world into the eternal world — get up now and tell what you think of all your grandiloquent derision at our holy religion. What do you think now of all 5^our sarcasm at holy things ? They come shrieking up from the lost world to the graveyards where their bodies were en- tombed, and point down to the white dust of dissolution, and cry: ' ' A wasted life." Oh, what a mistake for an immortal soul. What is that unrest that sometimes comes across 3'ou? Why is it that, surrounded by friends, and even the luxuries of life, you wish you were somewhere else, or had something you have not yet gained ? The world calls it ambition. The physicians call it nervousness. Your friends call it the fidgets. I call it hunger — deep, grinding, unappeasable hunger. It starts with us when we are born, and goes on with us until the Lord God Him- self appeases it. It is seeking and delving, and striving, and planning to get some- thing we cannot get. Wealth says: " It is not in me." Science says: " It is not in me." Worldly applause says: "It is not in me." Sinful indulgence says: " It is not in me." Where then is it? On the banks of what stream ? Slumber- ing in what grotto ? Marching in what contest ? Expiring on what pillow ? Tell me, for this winged and immortal spirit, is there nothing ? In communion with God, and everlasting trust of Him, is complete satisfac- tion. Solomon described it when he compared it to cedar houses, and golden chairs, and bounding reindeer, and daybreak, and imperial couch; to saffron, to calamus, to white teeth, and hands heavy with gold rings, and towers of ivory and ornamental figures; but Christ calls it bread ! O famished, yet immortal soul, why not come and get it? Until our sins are pardoned, there is no rest. We know not at what moment the hounds may bay at us. We are in a castle and know not what hour it may be besieged; but when the soothing voice of Christ comes across our perturbation, it is hushed forever. HELP COMETH NOT FROM THIS WORLD. A merchant in Antwerp loaned Charles V. a vast sum of money, taking for it a bond. One day this Antwerp merchant invited Charles V. to dine with him, 534 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. and while they were seated at the table, in the presence of the guests, the merchant had a lire built on a platter in the centre of the table. Then he took the bond which the king had given him for the vast sum of money, and held it in the blaze until it was consumed, and the king con- gratulated himself, and all the guests con- gratulated the king. There was gone at last the final evidence of his indebt- edness. Mortgaged to God, we owe a debt we can never pay; but God invites us to the gospel feast, and in the fires of crucifixion agony He puts the last record of our indebtedness, and it is consumed forever. It was so in the case of the dying thief expiring in dark despair, with the judgment to come staring him in the face, and the terrors of hell lay- ing hold of his soul. He had faith in the Crucified One, and his faith won for him an immediate en- trance into Paradise. ■ Oh, to have all the sins of our past forgiven, and to have all possible securit}' for the future— is not that enough to make a man happy ? What makes that old Christian so placid ? Most of his family lie in the village cemetery. His health is undermined. His cough will not let him sleep at night. From the day he came to town and he was a clerk, until this the day of his old age, it has been a hard fight for bread. Yet how happy he looks. Why ? It is because he feels that the same God who watched him when he lay in his mother's arms is watching him in the time of old age, and unto God he has committed all his dead, expecting after a while to see them again. He has no "^"p^^ THE PATHWAY OF I.IFE. 535 anxiety whether he go this summer or next summer — whether he be earned out through the snowbanks or through the daisies. lyike a faithful watchdog facing the cutting winds and snows of winter, as he stands beside a lost and freezing child, calling with the voice of pity for help, but will not abandon his charge. So waits honored old age, with face bared to the storms of this earth, faithful to his Creator, and sounding the watch-cry for lost sinners. Fifty years ago he learned that all this world could give was ashes, and he reached up and took the fruits of eternal life. You see his face is very white now. The crimson currents of life seem to have departed from it; but under that extreme whiteness of the old man's face is the flash of the daybreak. There is only one word in all our language that can describe his feelings, and that is the word that slipped off the angel's harp above Bethlehem — peace ! And so there are hundreds of souls who have felt this Almighty comfort. Their reputation was pursued; their health shattered; their home was almost if not quite broken up; their fortune gone. Why do they not sit down and give it up. Ah, they have no disposition to do that. They are saying while I speak: "It is my Father that mixes this bitter cup, and I will cheerfully drink it. Everything will be explained after a while. I shall not always be under the harrow. There is something that makes me think I am almost home. God will yet wipe away all tears from my eyes." So say these bereft parents. So say these motherless children. So say a great many others. THE END OF THE WORLD. Now, am I not right in trying to persuade all to give up ashes, and take bread, to give up the unsatisfactory things of this world, and take the glorious things of God and eternity? Why, if you kept this world as long as it lasts, you would have, after a while, to give it up. There will be a great fire breaking out from the sides of the hills; there will be falling flame and ascending flame, and in it the. earth will be whelmed. Fires burning from within, out; fires burning from above, down; this earth will be a furnace, and then it will be a living coal, and then it will be an expiring ember, and thick clouds of smoke will lessen and lessen until there will be only a faint vapor curling up from the ruins, and then the very last spark of the earth will go out. And I see two angels meeting each other over the gray pile, and as one flits past it, he cries: "Ashes!" and the other, as he sweeps down the immensity, will respond: " Ashes !" while all the infinite space will echo and re-echo: "Ashes! Ashes! Ashes!" God forbid that we should choo.se such a mean portion . My fear is, not that you will not see the superiority of Christ to this world, but my fear is, that through some dreadful infatuation, you will relegate to the future that which God and angels, and churches militant and triumphant declare 536 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. that you ought to do now. I do not say that you will go out of this world by the stroke of a horse's hoof, or that you wall fall through a hatchway, or that a plank may slip from an insecure scaffolding and dash your life out, or that a bolt may fall on you from an August thunder-storm; but I do say that, in the vast majority of cases, your departure from the world will be wonderfully quick; and I want you to start on the right road before that crisis arrives. A Spaniard, in a burst of temper, slew a Moor. Then the Spaniard leaped over a high wall and met a gardener, and told him the whole storj^; and the gar- dener said: " I will make a pledge of confidence with you. Eat this peach and that wull be a pledge that I will be 3'our protector to the last." But, oh, the .sor- row and surprise of the gardener when he found out that it was his own son that had been slain ! Then he came to the Spaniard and said to him: "You were cruel, you ought to die, you slew my .son, and yet I took a pledge with you, and I must keep my promise;" and so he took the Spaniard to the stables and brought out the swiftest horse. The Spaniard sprang upon it and put many miles between him and the scene of crime, and perfect escape was effected. We have, by our sins, slain the Son of God. Is there any possibility of our rescue ? Oh ! yes. God the Father says to us: ' ' You had no business, by your sin, to slay My Son, Jesus; you ought to die, but I have promised you deliver- ance. I have made you the promise of eternal life, and you shall have it. Escape now for your life. " And now I act merely as the I^ord's groom, and I bring you out to the King's stables, and I tell you to be quick and mount, and away. In this plain you perish, but hou.sed in God you live. O you pursued and almost overtaken one, put on more speed. Fly ! Fly ! lest the black horse outrun the white horse, and the battle-axe shiver the helmet and crash down through the insufficient mail. In this tremendous exigency of your immortal spirit beware, lest you prefer ashes to bread. •ttx^U ®l7m03SJ^ TRIFLING INCIDENTS PRODUCE MIGHTY RESULTS, MAKE THE HEROES AND HEROINES OF EARTH. Damascus is a city of white and glistening architec- ture, sometimes called the "eye of the East;" sometimes called " a pearl surrounded by emeralds;" at one time distinguished by swords of the best material called Damascus blades, and upholstery of richest fabrics called damasks. A horseman by the name of Saul, riding toward this city, had been thrown from his saddle. The horse had dropped under a flash from the sky, which at the same time was so bright it blinded the rider for many daj^s, and, I think, so permanently injured his ej-esight that this defect of vision became the thorn in the flesh he afterwards speaks of. He started for Damascus to butcher Christians, but after that hard fall from his horse he was a changed man and preached Christ in Damas- cus till the city was shaken to its foundations. The ma)^or gives authority for his arrest, and the popular cry is: "Kill him ! Kill him !" The city is surrounded by a high wall, -and the gates are watched by the police lest the Cilician preacher escape. Many of the houses are built on the \\all, and their balconies project clear over and hover above the gardens outside. It was customary to lower baskets out of these balconies, and pull up fruits and flowers from the gardens. To this day visitors at the monastery of Mount Sinai are lifted and let down in baskets. Detectives prowl around from house to house looking for Paul, but his friends hid him, now in one place, now in another. He is no coward, as fifty incidents in his life demonstrate. But he feels his work is not done yet, and so he evades assassination. " Is that preacher here?" the foaming mob shout at one house-door. "Is that fanatic here?" the police shout at another liouse-door= EVADING THE MOB. vSometimes on the street incognito he passes through a crowd of clinched fists and sometimes he secrets himself on the house-top. At last the infuriated ^.537) 538 THE PATHWAY OF I,IFE. populace get on sure track of him. They have positive evidence that he is in the house of one of the Christians, the balcony of whose home reaches over the wall. ' ' Here he is ! Here he is ! " The vociferation, and blaspheni}', and howling of the pursuers are at the front door. They break in. " Fetch out that gospelizer and let us hang his head on the cit}' gate. Where is he?" The emergency was terrible. Providentially there was a good stout basket in the house. Paul's friends fasten a rope to the basket. Paul steps into it. The basket is lifted to the edge of the balcony on the wall, and then, while Paul holds on to the rope with both hands, his friends lower away carefully and cau- tiously, slowly but surel}^ further down and further down, until the basket strikes the earth and the apostle steps out, and afoot and alone starts on that famous missionary tour, the story of which has astonished earth and heaven. Appropriate entry in Paul's diary of travels: " Through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall." Did ever ship of many thousand tons, crossing the sea, have such an important passenger as had once a boat of leaves; from taffrail to stern only three or four feet, the vessel made waterproof by a coat of bitumen, and floating on the Nile with the infant law-giver of the Jews on board ? What if some crocodile should crunch it ! What if some of the cattle wading in for a drink should sink it ! Vessels of war sometimes carry forty guns, looking through the port-holes, ready to open battle. But that tiny craft on the Nile seems to be armed with all the guns of thunder that bombarded Sinai at the law-giving. On how fragile a craft sailed how much of historical importance ! AN INCIDENT IN JOHN WESLEY'S LIFE. The parsonage at Epworth, England, is on fire in the night, and the father rushed through the hallway for the rescue of his children. Seven children are out and safe on the ground, but one remains in the consuming building. That one wakes, and finding his bed on fire and the building crumbling, comes to the window, and two peasants make a ladder of their bodies, one peasant standing on the shoulder of the other, and down the human ladder the boy descends — ^John Wesley. If you would know how much depended on that ladder of peasants ask the millions of Methodists on both sides of the sea. Ask their mission stations all round the world. Ask their hundreds of thousands already ascended to join their founder, who would have perished but for the living stairs of peasants* shoulders. A gUIVER FULL OF CHILDREN. (539) 540 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. An English ship stopped at Pitcairn Island, and right in the midst of sur- rounding cannibalism and squalor the passengers discovered a Christian colony of churches and schools and beautiful homes, and the highest style of religion and civilization. For fifty years no missionary and no Christian influence had landed there. Why this oasis of light amid a desert of heathendom ? Sixty years before a ship had met disaster, and one of her sailors, unable to save anything else, went to his trunk and took out a Bible which his mother had placed there, and swam ashore, the Bible held in his teeth. The book was read on all sides until the rough and vicious population were evangelized, and a church was started, and an enlightened commonwealth established, aud the world's history has no more brilliant page than that which tells of the transformation of a nation by one book. It did not seem of much importance whether the sailor continued to hold the book in his teeth or let it fall in the breakers, but upon what small circumstance depended what mighty results ! Practical inference: There are no insignificances in our lives. The most minute thing is part of a magnitude. Infinity is made up of infinitesimals. Great things an aggregation of small things. Bethlehem manger pulling on a star in the eastern sky. One book in a drenched sailor's mouth the evangeliza- tion of a multitude. One boat of papyrus on the Nile freighted with events for all ages. The fate of Christendom in a basket let down from a window on the wall. The song of a Miriam rejoicing over the triumph of the Lord that echoes down the ages. What you do do well. If you make a rope make it strong and true, for you know not how much may depend on your workmanship. If you fashion a boat, let it be waterproof, for you know not who may sail in it. If you put a Bible in the trunk of your boy as he goes from home, let it be placed there with your prayers, for it may have a mission as far-reaching as the book which the sailor carried in his teeth to the Pitcairn beach. The plainest man's life is an island between two eternities — eternity past rippling against his shoulders, eternity to come touching his brow. The casual, the accidental, that which merely happened so, are parts of a great plan, and the rope that lets the fugitive apostle from the Damascus wall is the cable that holds to its mooring the ship of the Church in the northeast storm of the centuries. IN A STORM AT SEA. Once for thirty-six hours we expected every moment to go to the bottom of the ocean. The waves struck through the skylights and rushed down into the hold of the ship and hissed against the boilers. It was an awful time, but by the blessing of God and the faithfulness of the men in charge we came out of the cyclone and we arrived at home. Each one before leaving the ship thanked THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 541 Captain Andrews. I do not think there was a man or woman that went off that ship without thanking Captain Andrews, and when years after I heard of his death I was impelled to write a letter of condolence to his family in Eiverpool. Everybody recognized the goodness, the courage, the kindness of Captain Andrews, but it occurs to me now that we never thanked the engineer. He stood away down in the darkness amid the hissing furnaces doing his whole duty. Nobody thanked the engineer, but God recognized his heroism and his continu- ance and his fidelity, and there will be just as high reward for the engineer, who worked out of sight, as for the captain who stood on the bridge of the ship in the midst of the howling tempest. There are said to be about 69,000 ministers of religion in this country. About 50,000 I warrant came from early homes which had to struggle for the necessaries of life. The sons of rich bankers and merchants generall)^ become bankers and merchants. The most of those who become ministers are the sons of those who had terrific struggle to get their every -day bread. The collegiate and theological education of that son took every luxury from the parental table for eight years. The other children were more scantily apparelled. The son at college every little while got a bundle from home. In it were the socks that mother had knit, sitting up late at night, her sight not as good as once it was. And there also were some delicacies from the sister's hand for the voracious appetite of a hungry student. The father swung the heavy cradle through the wheat, the sweat rolling fron^ his chin bedewing every step of the way, and then sitting down under the cherry tree at noon thinking to himself: " I am fearfully tired, but it will pay if I can once see that boy through college, and if I can know that he will be preaching the gospel after I am dead." Another John in the desert and wilderness of sin. The younger children want to know why they can't have this and that, as others do, and the mother says: "Be patient, my children, until your brother graduates, and then you shall have more luxuries, but we must see that boy through." SUCCESS AT LAST. The years go by and the son has been ordained and is preaching the glorious gospel, and a great revival comes, and souls by scores and hundreds accept the gospel from the lips of that young preacher, and father and mother, quite old now, are visiting the son at the village parsonage, and at the close of a Sabbath of mighty blessing, father and mother retire to their room, the son lighting the way and asking them if he can do anything to make them more comfortable, sa3-ing if they want anything in the night just to knock on the wall. And then, all alone, father and mother talk over the gracious influences of the day and say: " Well, it was worth all we went through to educate that bo5\ It was a hard pull, but we held on till the work was done. The world ma)^ not know it, but, mother, we held the rope, didn't we?" 542 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. And the voice, tremulous with joyful emotion, responded: "Yes, father, we held the rope. I feel my work is done. Now, Eord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation." ' ' Pshaw ! ' ' says the father, ' ' I never felt so much like living in my life as now. I want to see what that fellow is going to do, he has begun so well." Something occurs to me quite personal. I was the youngest of a large family of children. My parents were neither rich nor poor; four of the sons wanted col- legiate education, and four obtained it, but not without great home-struggle. We never heard the old people say once that they were denying themselves to effect this, but I remember now that my parents always looked tired. I think they never got rested till they lay down in the Somer\nlle Cemetery. Mother would sit down in the evening and say: " Well, I don't know what makes me feel so tired. ' ' Father would fall immediately to sleep, seated in the old wood rocking-chair, overcome with the day's fatigues. One of the four brothers, after preaching the gospel for about fifty years, entered upon his heavenly rest. Another of the four is now on the other side the earth, a missionary of the cross. Two of us are in this land in the holy ministry, and I think all of us are willing to acknowledge our obligation to the old folks at home. About twenty-one years ago the one, and about twenty-three years ago the other, put down the burdens of this life, but thej^ still hold the rope. NOTHING INSIGNIFICANT. Henceforth think of nothing as insignificant. A little thing may decide your all. A Cunarder put out from England for New York. It was well equipped, but in putting up a stove in the pilot box a nail was driven too near the compass. You know how that nail would affect the compass. The ship's officer, deceived by that distracted compass, put the ship 200 miles off her right course, and suddenly the man on the lookout cried : ' ' Eand ho ! " and the ship was halted within a few yards of her demolition on Nantucket shoals. A six-penny nail came near wreck- ing a Cunarder. Small ropes hold mighty destinies. A minister seated in Boston at his table, lacking a word, puts his hand behind his head and tilts back his chair to think, and the ceiling falls and crushes the table, and would have crushed him. A minister in Jamaica at night, by the light of an insect called the candle fly, is kept from stepping over a precipice 100 feet. F. W. Robertson, the celebrated English clergyman, said that he entered the ministry from a train of circumstances started b)' the barking of a dog. Had the wind blown one way on a certain day, the Spanish Inquisition would have been established in England ; but it blew the other way, and that dropped the accursed institution, with 75,000 tons of shipping, to the bottom of the sea, or flung the splintered logs on the rocks. HOME AT LAST. (54- 544 THE PATHWAY OF I^IFE. Nothing unimportant in your life or mine. Three naughts placed on the right side of the figure one make a thousand, and six naughts on the right side of the figure one a million, and our nothingness placed on the right side may b*^ augmentation illimitable. All the ages of time and eternity affected by the basket let down from a Damascus balcony. And now, dear reader, we know of no better conclusion to this volume than the prayer of the Apostle Paul, when he says: " I bow my knees unto the Father of our L,ord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God. * * * Unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen." Wi^ DATE DUE m ^> *l* i:iP.!.«^:'s{^ 1 1012 01002 6237