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■ * 1 sJ ' '• > f' v - v , . BEY. DB. TAUIGE. BROOKLYN DIVINE'S DAY SERMON. SUN Suttfect: “Onr Need oT Cleansing.*» Text: “7/ / wtuk myadf vitk num waUr, and should J demise my hands in •alkali, yet shall thou pinnae me *» the ditch, .and mine own clothes shall abhor me.”— Job ix., 80, 81. Albert Barnes—honored be his name on earth and^n heaven—weont straight back to the ; original writing of my text, and translated .it as I have now quoted it, giving substantial jeasons for so doing. Although we know better, the ancients had an idea that in snow water there was a special power to cleanse, and that a garment washed and rinsed in it i would be as clean as clean could be; but if the plain snow water failed to do its work, 'then they would take lye or alkali and mixed it with oil, and under that preparation they felt that the last impurity would certainly be gone. Job, in my text, in moet forceful figure sets forth the idea that all his attempts to make himself pure before God were a dead failure, and that, unless we are abluted by something .better than earthly liquids and chemical preparations, we are loathsome and in the ditch. "If I wash myself with snow water, and should I cleanse my hands in alkali, yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me.” You are now sitting for your picture. I turn the camera obecura of God’s word full upon you, and I pray that the sunshine falling through the skylight may enable me to take you just as you are. Shall it be a flattering picture, or shall it be a true one? You say: "Let it be a true one.” The first profile that was ever taken was taken three hundred and thirty ‘.years before Christ, of Antigonus. He had a blind eye. and he compelled the art ist to take his profile so as to hide the defect in his vision. But since that inven tion, three hundred' and thirty years before • Christ, there have been a great many pro- . files. Shall I to-day give you a one-sided view of yourselves, a profile, or shall it be a full-length portrait, showing you just what- you are* If God will help me by His al mighty grace, I shall give you that last kind of a picture. When I first entered the ministry I used to write my sermons all out and read them, and. run my hand along the line lest I should lose my place. I have hundreds of those manu scripts. Shall I ever preach them? Never; for in those days I was somewhat over-mas tered with the idea I heard talked all around about, of the dignity of human nature, and I 1 adopted the idea,and I evolved it, and I illus trated it, and I argued it; but coming on in life, and having seen more of the world, and studied better my Bible, I find that that early teaching was faulty, and that there is no dig nity in human nature, until it is reconstructed by the grace of God. Talk about vessels {going to pieces on the Skerries, off Ireland! There never was such a shipwreck as in the Gihon and the Hiddekel, rivers of Eden, where our first parents foundered. Talk of a steamer going down with five hundred passengers on board! What is that to the shipwreck of fourteen hundred million souls? We are by nature a mass of uncleanness and putrefaction, from which it takes all the om nipotence and infinitude of God’s grace to extricate us. “ If I wash myself with snow water, and should I cleanse my hands in al kali, yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and my own clothes shall abhor me.” I remark, in the first place, that some peo ple try to cleanse their soul of sin in the snow water of fine apologies. Here is one man who says: "I am a sinner; I confess that; but I inherited this. My father was a sinner, my grandfather, my great-great-grandfather' and all the way back to Adam, and I couldn’t help myself.” My brother, have you not, every day in your life, add ed something to the original estate of sin that was bequeathed to you ? Are you not brave enough to confess that you have sometimes surrendered to sin, which you ought to have conquered? I ask you whether It is fair play to put upon our TJr which we ourselves are le? If your nature was i it, have you not some- itional twist? Will all »vo immortal ay: "I will try some- I will try the force That will be more will be if you try to gather up thaae contrasts and comparisons with others, and with these to wash out the sins of It will be an unsuccess- Such snow water will wash away a single stain of at souL But I hear some one i tfcteg better than that, of a good resolution, pungent, more more cleansing. The snow water has and now I will try the alkali of the good, strong resolution.” My dear brother, nave you anj* idea that a resolution about the future will liquidate the past? Sup pose I owed you five thousand dollars and I should come to you to-morrow and say: "Sir, I will never run in debt to you again; if I should live.thirty years, I will never run in debt to you again;” will you turn to me and say: "If you will not run in debt in the future, I will forgive you the five thousand dollars.” Will you do that? No! Nor will God. We have been running up a long soore of indebtedness with God. If for the future we should abstain from sin, that would be no defrayment of past indebtedness. Though you should live from this time forth pure as an archangel before the throne, that would not redeem the past. God,' in the Bible, distinctly declares that he "will require that which is past”—past opportunities, past neg lects, past wicked words, past impure im aginations, past everything. The past is a great cemetery, and every day is buried in it. And here is a long row of three hundred and sixty-five graves. They are the dead days of 1888. Here is a long row of three hundred and sixty-five more graves, and they are the dead days of 1887. And here is a long row of three hundred and six ty-five more graves, and they are the dead days of 1886. It is a vast cemetery of the past. But God will rouse them all up with resurrectionary blast, and as the prisoner stands face to face with juror and judge, so you and I will have to come up and look upon those departed days face to face, exult ing in their smile or cowering in their frown. "Murder will out,” is a proverb that stops too short. Every sin, however small, as well as great, will out. In hard times in England, years ago, it is authentically stated that a manufacturer was on the way, with a bag of money, to pay off his hands. A man infuriated with hunger met Him on the road, and took a rail with a nail in it from a paling fence and struck him down, and the nail entering the skull instantly slew him. Thirty years after that the murderer went back to that place. He passed into the grave yard, where the sexton was digging a grave, and while he stood there the spade of the sexton turned up a skull, and, lo! the murderer saw a nail protruding from the back part of the skull; and as the sex ton turned the skull it seemed with hol low eyes to glare on the murderer; and he, first petrified with horror, stood in silence, but soon cried out. "Guilty! guilty! O God!” The mystery of the crime was over. The man was tried and executed. My friends, all the un pardoned sins of our lives, though we may think they are buried out of sight d gone into a mere skeleton of am memory, will turn up in the cemetei 5ry itn know a devout hemous parentage, (whose father was a i whose mother was The hereditary tide t there is such a thing it that I have a cor- i why I should yield ! of our soul can never ow water of such in- ’ some one: "If I have been through my com ics and my associates; ey taught me to drink, le gambling hell. They ae house of sin. They I do not believe it. God he power to destroy you or 'royed he is self destroyed, i so. Why did you not break If they had tried to steal would have knocked them [ tried to purloin your gold tauld have riddled them rhen they tried to steal your ryou placidly submitted to it. Iwshave a cup of fire to drink; fur cup into it. In this matter rery man for himself. That are not fully responsible for ove by the fact that you still f them. You cannot get off by Though you gather up all ies; though there were a great i,' though they should come down [>rce of the melting snows from icy could not wash out one stain aortal soul. ler, some persons apologize for t>y saying: "We are a great deal some people. You see people all it us that are a great deal worse You stand up Columnar in your Y, and look down upon those who are s in their habits and crimes. What ay brother? If I failed through reck- i and wicked imprudence for ten thou- t>liars, is the matter alleviated at all le fact that somebody else has for one hundred thousand dollars, f somebody else for two hundred id dollars? Oh, no. If I have Igia, shall I refuse medical attend- because my neighbor has virulent lid fever? The fact that his disease rorse than mine—does that cure mine? through my foolhardiness, leap off into , does it break the fall to know others leap off- a higher cliff into darkness? When the Hudson river 1 train went through the bridge at Spuyten did it alleviate the matter at all that of two or three people being hurt lere were seventy-five mangled and crushed? tecause others are depraved, is that any ex- ' cuse for my depravity? Am I better than they? Perhaps they worse temptations than I have had. Per haps their surroundings in life were more overpowering. Perhaps, O Tn«.n If you had been under the same stress of temptation, instead of sitting here to-day, you would have been looking through the oars of a penitentiary. Perhaps O woman, if you haa been under the same power of temptation, instead of sitting here to-day, you would be tramping the street, the laugh ing stock of men and the grief of the angels of God, dungeoned, body, mind and soul, in the blackness of despair. Ah, do not let us solace ourselves with the thought that other people are worse than we. Perhaps in the future, when our fortunes may change, un less God prevents it, we may be worse than they are. Many a man after thirty years, after forty years, after fifty years, after sixty years, has gone to pieces on the sand bars. Oh! instead of wasting our time in hypercriticism about others, let us ask ourselves the questions, Where do we stand ? What are our sins ? What are our deficits? What are our penis? ‘What our hopes ? Let each one say to himself: "Wbere will I be ? Shall I range in summery fields, or grind in the mills or a great night? Where? Wbere?” Some winter moi snow bank in aome heavenly and as the sun glints it the luster is almost insufferable, and it seems as if God had wrapped the earth in a shroud with white plaits woven in looms celestial. And you say: "Was there ever nything so pure as the snow, so oeauniui as tne snow But you brought a pail of that snow and put it upon the stove and melted it; and you found that there was a sediment at the bottom, and every drop of that snow water was riled; and you found that the snow bank had gathered up the impurity of the field, and that after all it was not fit to wash in. And so I say it of the past and glower upon us wit! their misdoings. I say all our unpardoned sins. Oh, have you acne the preposterous thing of supposing that good resolutions for the future will wipe out the past? Good re solutions, though they may be pungent and caustic as alkali, nave no power to neutralize a sin, have no power to wash away a transgression. It wants some thing more than earthly chemistry to do this. Yea, yea. though “I wash myself with snow water, and should I cleanse my hands in alkali, yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shaU abhor me.” You see from the last part of this text that Job’s idea of sin was very different from that of Eugene Bue, or George Sand, or M. J. Michelet, or of any of the bundreds of writers who have done up iniquity in mezzotint, and garlanded tho wine cup with eg lantine and rosemary, and made the path of the libertine end in bowers of ea se instead of on the hot flagging of eternal torture. You se^-that Job thinks that sin is not a flowery parterre; that it is not a table land of fine prospects; that it is not music, dulcimer, violoncello, castanet and Pandean pipes, all making music together. No. He says it is a ditch, long, deep, loathsome, stenchful, and we are all plunged into it, and there we waUow and sink and —* ■av guage. It< -i/ropriety and robes are saturated in the slime and a , and our soul, covered over with transgression^ hates its covering, and the covering hates the soul until we are plunged into the ditch, and our own clothes abhor us. I know that some modern religionists cari cature sorrow for sin, and they make out an easier path than the "pilgrim’s progress” that John Bunyan dreamed of. The road they travel does not stop where John’s did, at the city of Destruction, but at the gate of the university; and I am very certain that it will not come out where John’s did, under the shining ramparts of the celestial city. No repentance, no pardon. If you do not, my brother, feel that you are down in the ditch, what do you want of Christ to lift you out? If you have no appreciation of the fact that you are astray, what do you want of him who came to seek and save that which was lost? Yonder Is the City of Paris, the swiftest of the Inmans, coming across the Atlantic. The wind is abaft, so that she has not only her engines at work, but all sails up. I am on board the Umbria of the Cunard line. The boat davits are sv.uhg around The boat is lowered. I get into it with a red flag and cross over to where the City of Paris is coming and I wave the flag. The captain looks off from the bridge and says • “ What do you want ? ” I reply : " I come take some of your passengers across o the other vessel; I think they will be safer and happier there.” The captain would look down with indignation and say: ‘ ‘Get out of the way, or I will run you down.” And then I would back oars, amidst the jeering of two or three hundred people looking over the taffrail. But the Umbria and the City of Paris meet under different circumstances after a while. The City of Paris is coming out of a cyclone; the life boats are smashed; the bulwarks gone; the vessel rapidly going down. The boatswain gives his last whistle of despairing com mand. The passengers run up and down the deck, and some pray, and all make a great outcry. The captain says: "You nave about fifteen minutes now to prepare for the next world.” “No hope!” sounds from stem to stern and from the ratlines» down to the cabin. I see the distress. I am let down by the side of the Umbria. I push off as fast as I can toward the sink ing City of Paris. Before I come up people are leaping into the water in their anxiety to get to the boat, and when I have swung up under the side of the City of Paris, the frenzied passengers rush through the gang way until the officers, with ax and clubs and pistols, try to keep back the crowd, each waiting his turn to come next. There is but one life boat, and they all want to get into it, and the cry is: "Me next! me next!” You see the application; before I make it. As long as a man going- on in his sin feels that all is well, that be is! —min? out at a beautiful port, and has all sail set,he wants no Christ,be wants no help, he •wants no rescue; but if under the flash of God’s convicting spirit he shall see that by reason of sin he is dismasted and water logged, and going down into the trough of the sea where he cannot live, how soon he puts the sea glass to his eye and sweeps the horizon, and at the first sign of help cries out: “I want to be saved. I want to be saved now. I want to be saved forever.” No sense of danger, no applica tion for rescue. Oh, that God’s eternal spirit would flash upon us a sense of our sinfulness! The Bible tells the story in letters of fire, but we get used to it. We joke about sin. We inake merry over it. What is sin? Is it a trifling thing? Sin is a vampire that is sucking out the life blood of your immortal nature. Sin? It is a Bastile that no earthly key ever unlocked. Sin? It is expatriation from God and heaven. Sin? It is grand larceny against the Al mighty, for the Bible asks the question: "W ill a man rob God?” answering it in the affirmative. This Gospel is a writ of reple vin to recover property unlawfully detained from God. In the Shetland Islands there is a man with leprosy. The hollow of the foot has swollen until it is flat on the ground. The joints begin to fall away. The ankle thickens until it looks like the foot of a wild beast. A stare unnatural comes to the eye. The nostril is constricted. The voice drops to an almost inaudible hoarseness. Tubercles blotch the whole body, and from them there comes an exudation that is unbearable to the be holder. That is leprosy, and we have all got it unless cleased by the grace of God. See Leviticus. See II Kings. See Mark. See Luke. See fifty Bible allusions and confir mations. The Bible is not complimentary in its lan- ioes qot speak mincingly about It does not talk apologetically. There is no vermilion in its style. It does not cover np oar transgressions with bloom ing metaphor. It does not sing about them in weak falsetto; bat It thunders oat': "The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” "Every one has gone back. He has altogether become filthy. He is abominable and filthy, and drinketh in in iquity like water.” And then the Lord Jesus Christ flings down at oar feet this hu miliating catalogue: "Oat of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornication, murders, thens, blasphemy.” There is a text for your rational ists to preach from. the dignity of human nature! There is an element of your science of man that the anthropologist never has had the courage yet to touch; and the Bible, in all tne ins and oats of the most forceful style, sets forth onr natural pollution, and represents inionity as a fright- fpl thing, as an exhausting thing, as a loath some thing. It is not a mere bemiring of the feet, it is not a mere befooling of the hands; it is going down, head and ears under, in a ditch, until our clothes abhor ns. My brethren, shall we stay down where sin thruste os? I shall not if you do. We can- ■ not afford to. I have to-day to tell you that there is something purer than snow water, something more pungent than alkali, and that is the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanseth from all sin. Ay, the river of sal vat/on, bright, crystalline and heaven born, rushes through this audience with bil lowy tide strong enough to wash your sins completely and forever away. Oh, Jesus, let the dam mat holds it back now break, and the floods of salvation roll over us. Lat the water and the blood. From thy side a healing flood. Be of sin the double core. Save from wrath and make me pure. Let us get down on both knees and bathe in that blood of mercy. Ay, strike out with both hands and try to swim to the other shore of this river of God’s grace. To you is the word of this salvation sent. Take this largess of the divine bounty. Though you have gone down in the deepest ditch of libidinous desire and corrupt be havior, though you have sworn all blasphem ies until there is not one sinful word left for you to speak, though you have been 'sub merged by the transgressions of a lifetime, though you are so far down in your sin that no earthly help can touch your case— the Lord Jesus Christ bends over you to-day, and offers you his right hand, pro posing to lift you up,first making you whiter than snow, and then raising you to glories that never die. “Billy,” said a Christian bootblack to another, ‘"when we come up to heaven it won’t make any difference that we’ve been bootblacks here, for we shall get in, not somehow or other, but, Billy, we shall get straight through the gate.” Oh, if you only knew how full aad free and tender is the offer of Christ, this day, you would all take Him without one single exception; and if all the doors of this house were locked save one, and you were compelled to make egress by only one door, and I stood there and questioned you, and the Gospel of Christ had made the right impres sion upon your heart to-day, you would an swer me as you went on, one and all: "Jesus is mine, and I am His!” Oh, that this might be the hour when you would receive Him! It is not a Gospel merely for footpads and vagrants and buc caneers; it is for the highly polished and the educated and the refined as well. "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the king dom of God.” Whatever may be your associations, and whatever your world ly refinements, I must tell you, as before God I expect to answer in the last day, that if you are not changed by the grace of God, you are still down in the ditch of sin, in the ditch of sorrow, in the ditch of condemnation; a ditch that empties into a deeper ditch, the ditch of the lost. But blessed be God for the lifting, cleansing, illustrating power of His Gospel. The voice of free grace cries. Escape to the moun- tain; For all that believe, Christ has opened a fountain. Hallelujah! to the Lamb who has bought us our pardon: We’ll praise him again when we pass over Jordan. BELIGIOUS BEADING. KH BLOTTED OCT. "I will forgive their iniquity, and I will member their sin no more,” Jer. 31:34. even I am He that blotteth oat thy transgressions for Mine own sake, and will not remember thy sing,” Isa 43.25. I was sitting alone in sflenee, For my heart was hushed and sad, As I thought that my conscience pointed To the records my Father had Then it seemed that hesoftly whispered— "I have blotted the records, child, And the page of the book is open Stainless and undeflled. ’ But I feared, for the tempter told me Seme sins had so deep a dye That a trace of the righteous record 8till stood in the court on high. Bo again mv Father whispered— “I have blotted the records all. Not a lingering stain remaining, Where my holy glances fall.” Then I thought that the dead were rising, I thought the last day had come, I thought that I stood and trembled, Fearful, anl cowed, and dumb. And the awful book was opened— But tbe jui'ge in the silence read, *T have blotted out thy transgressions^” In a moment my terror fleet Oh! since He has kindly whispered, I surely may trust His word. And rest in the blessed message My listening ears have heard. Bo I will not think of the record, For the record has passe d and gone, ’Tis blotted out now and forever, And the page from the volume torn. —William Luff. ■rwz experiments at reforesting Italy are in the highest degree interesting to Americans. When it seemed de sirable to cultivate a forest, it was rohesJ doneJit the joint expense of the Gov- of worldly proression| eminent, the nrovince and thn com- bomination. ernment, the province and the com' munity immediately interested. Twen ty-two thousand acres have been re forested, while plans are prepared for covering an area of 261,000 acres. The estimate is that in all over 500,000 acres must and will be planted for public safety at a round cost of $1^,000,000. This enterprise and ex pense has been made necessary by the reckless destruction of original forests on the monntain slopes. It is full of warning to our people, that so far is not heeded, and probably will not be heeded, until agriculture is perma nently damaged beyond recovery in half a century or more. This js now a question of prime importance to the American people. A new child’s periodical is to be started. It is doubtful if a great amount of money is ever made in these enterprises. When it is made, it is made under difficulties. A periodical for adults keeps for many years its list of readers, if it is a good one. A peri odical for juvenile readers must of necessity be constantly changing its constituency. Every year a set of readers outgrow it, and another must be added to take their places—a work not often accomplished without con siderable effort. The Youth's Com panion, which has so- large a circula tion, has attained this by taking on a scope beyond what is implied in its name. Tbe paper has been long a paper for adults fully as much as for children. They are laughing over a blunder of a United States examining surgeon in Caribou, Me. He was examining for deafness an applicant for a pension, and to test the man’s left ear, held a watch at some distance and asked him if he could hear it tick. The answer was “No,” and the same reply was giv en to repeated questions as the watch was brought gradually nearer. “Put him down totally deaf in the left ear,” tho surgeon said, and, holding the watch away from the man’s right ear, the same question was asked. To his surprise the answer was the same. It then occurred to the surgeon to exam ine his watch, and he found that it had stopped. The examination was begun all over again. THE FREE GIFT. We need not attempt the explanation of Christ’s p wer to overcome our w -aknesses and subjugate our wills; it is sufficient to know that He can do all this for the be liever because it is of grace. That power by which we become tbe sons of God at conver sion is not merited in any sense by us; it comes as a free gift. In the subsequent life of the Christ an, even to the eud, all that he receives is unmerited. He con boast of noth ing. He who thinks that he can indicate the secret grounds of righteousness, upon which he may claim anything for himself, is wholly astray. If he should mink at any time that he is deserving, becaus; of earnestness in Christ’s work, he at once depreciates the gift of grace. In that hour be builds upon a sandy foundation. Who w 11 care to fix limits to this power which is who ly a gift? Who will say, ‘T de spair of deliverance from my weakness,” when we know that deliverence is not through finite strength, but of infinite grace? Well may. we wonder how omnipotent strength can be proffered to every one who will receive, even to those who have nothing to recomm nd them to divine regard. Lo k around. Behold the multitude of witnesses ready to own the excellency of th s plan of salvation. Take, for example, those who have been in bondage to timidity. Grace fr m God only could set them at liberty. He has spoken, and now all is changed. That “fear of man which bringeth a snare” is gone; that diffidence which is very often the manifestation of self or pride has given place to h ly boldness; lhat hesitating tone in spiritual matters has risen to clear and em phatic utterance. What spiritual progress would there be among God’s people were all to accept fully this “eternal life” that is declared to be "without money and without price! Think, also, of the many who are being comforted amid their earthly sorrows. Does it not enhance the consolation to remember that it is bestowed as a favor, not through personal merit? Our heavenly Father is say ing: "I know your need; I witness your tears; I will not wait: I cannot leave you comfortless.”. So Becomes to the lowliest, and says: "I will rest you;’’ "Do not think of being either worthy or unworthy;” "You have only to think of me and of my help;” "My grace is sufficient without any prepara tion on your part.” Oh, the matchless gift! Ob, how this thought is amplified in St. Paul’s epistles! He tells ns that victory in the dying hour is given to us. And tbe open window in- the Apocalypse discloses the celestial multitude,' having t heir golden harps aiTatfuned" to tils'ifiei'bJy of grace. TEMPERANCE. Why call it a bar? Say, whence it derirsd name for a depot of spirits of evfl? * friend of virtue a, a Wan the name by i contrived. Or, like the thing named did it come from tbe devil? TO tell you what it means—’tis a bar to al And^^oonstant promoter of everything evil; ’Tis a bar to all virtue—that’s well under stood— A bar to the right and a fort for the devil. ’Tis a i bar wealtl to all industry, prudence and 1th, A bar to reflection, t A bar to clear thought health, A bar to good conscience, to prayer and to piety. a bar to sobriety; tit and a bar to sound ■ of children to school, iving them good educa- A bar to the i To clot tion; A bar to the observance of every good rule, A bar to the welfare of family and nation. A bar to the hallowed enjoyment of home, A bar to the holiest earthly fruition; A bar that forbids its frequenters to come To the goal and rewards of a virtuous am bition. A STEAMER CUT DOW. The Polynesian Sinks the Cyn thia in the St. Lawrence. A bar to integrity, ieudship and To honor and fame,. peace and connubial frii love. To the purest delights the* on eaith we may olai»n | A bar to salvation and heaven above! —Chicago Sun. HIGHLY CREDITABuTtO THE STUDENTS. It has long been the custom at Colombia College for toe Sophomores, when they have finished their college mathematical course, to celebrate the event by a bout of beer-drink ing, and by providing free beer for the rest of the college. Last year the class of ’90, much to their credit, voted to dispense with the beer. The question came up again re cently with the present Sophomore class, when a motion to celebrate their "annual triumph” without beer was carried by a class vote of 26 to 23. It is greatly to be hoped that no future class of Sophomores will return to the injurious beer-drinking usage. That for two successive years it has been voted down is highly creditable to the young men of Co lumbia, and a hopeful sign of the times in connection with college life.—National Ad vocate. A citizen of Carthage, Mo., has in his possession an original price list of slaves, the property of Jeff Davis’ brother before the war. The list em braces 106 names of both sexes, rang ing from infants to the aged patri arch. Babies are quoted at $100, children of twelve years $600, able- bodied women $800, and thirty farm hands at $1,100. A man 50 years of age was worth but $600, while an old blind woman was set down at zero. Husband and wife are quoted separ ately. The document is queer reading to the present generation. SABBATH COMMUNION. Do we sometimes find it difficult to with draw ourselves from worldly affairs and fix our thoughts upon eternal interests? Under such circumstances there is no surer way of relief than to select some portion of the Holy Scripture, making this the theme of earnest study. It is not best to wa t for the impulse of feeling before beginning the exercise. Open the Bible at any page. Remember that every passage contains within itself a sacred deposit of truth. More than i his, consider that tbe divine Word possesses for the sin cere soul a self-revealing energy, a power of interpretation, as well 4* < f application to the conscience, . Divine revelat on is infinite ly superior to all human composition in this particular. • It was on a Sabbath morning, after a week of unusual distraction, that a Christian man sought to free himself from engrossing cares. He realized the importance of laying aside these burdens before engaging in the public services of God’s bouse. He found nimself utterly at the mercy of intruding worldly thoughts. The spirit that rules in all marts of trade would rush in unbidden. He knew very well that to yield himself to this clamor from without in the early morn ing hours of the Sabbath would mar the sa cred privileges of the entire day. Finally, without any unu ual religious emotion, but chiefly from a convict!, n of duty, he opened his Bible, as was his habit, before attending church. His eyes rested on these words: “It is by the Lord’s mercies that we are not oop- sunied, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in Him. The Lord is good unto them lhat wait for Him. to the soul that seeketh Him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lcrd.” His attention was arrested by the delight ful melody of these verses. It was not long before the compassion of hi - Heavenly Father began to dawn upon him in a new way. With fi sense of great indebtedndss, his heart grew warm in love toward God. It was im possible that the worldly spirit should hence forth displace the devotional, having rained through the living Word the knowledge of Divine things. We live in a lime when the Christian is often sorely tried. Questions of public finance, questions relating to civil policy and the right method of removing great social evils, will likely invade his hours of devo tion. No ordinary means will avail He needs supernatural assistance. The spell binding mm to earth cannot be broken, only as the eternal principles of righteousness are revealed; and then not in mere intellectual perceptions, but in the powerful unfoldings of truth in his soul.—The Christian Ad vocate. Have you ever done anything for Christ that has scarred your heart or your body? "If a man keep my saying, he shall never ree death;” when we come to die, our eyes will so really see Jesus Himself that we shall not see death.—F. R. Havergal. Those who live in the love of Christ should never be melancholy, lor they have a thous and sources of jnv of which others know nothing.—Mrs. Ellis. God has lent us the earth for our life; it is a great entail. It belongs as much to them who are to come after us, and whose names are already written in the book of creation, as to us; and we have no right by anything that we do or neglect to involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits wh ch it was in our power to bequeath.—John Ruskin. DEATH TO THE MIND. Alcohol is death to the mind. The brain, the organ of the mind, is the first to feel its power. This organ which nature protects by a strong wall of Done, delicately lined, is par ticularly susceptible to alcoholic influences. The brain is the center of the nervous system, which ramifies every part of the body. Al cohol assaults the nervous system, shatters and destroys it. No man can have steady nerves and indulge the constant use of alco holic beverages. The drunkard reels and staggers and falls into the gutter because his nerves fail him. For the work of life we need steady nerves. When the nerves are healthful tne hand is steady, the step is quick and the power of endurance—other things being equal—is at its maximum. But the use of alcohol, long continued, indurates the substance of the brain, cooks it. hardens it. About seven per cent, of the brain is albumen, and next to water, is its largest constituent element. You can test the effect of alcohol upon albumen by a simple experiment. Take the white of an egg, which is almost pure al bumen, put it into a glass and pour upon it an ounce of pure alcohol, and note the effect. In a moment yon can lift the whole mass out of the alcohol upon the point of you pencil. What hafl happened? Why, the albumen has been indurated, cooked, hardened. Some thing similar happens to the brain of a hard drinker. A celebrated anatomist has stated that he could detect the brain of a drunkard in the darkest room with the first stroke of the scalpel. The attack of alcohol upon the brain is so direct that it is sometimes found in its pore state in the brain cavity after death. Some yean ago a London sot drank a quart of gin upon a wager, which caused his death in a few nours. An examination of his brain revealed alcoholic deposit so pure that when touched with a match it. burned with a Biue flamer The use of alcohol lessens the activity of the brain, produces stupidity, dementia, delirium tremens and a horrible death. What is more dreadful than death from delirium .tremens?—Dr. Felix L. Os wald, SIGNIFICANT FIGURES. In 1880 there were 3152 places in the United States where liquors, distilled, malt and vinous, were manufactured. These manu factories had an invested capital of $118,- 037,729; they employed 33,698 persons; they paid in wages $15,078,579; they used material to the value of $85,921,374, and their manu factured products were estimated at $144,291,- 241. In the same year (1880) there were 20,303 places where agricultural implements, boots ' acludin! Eight Men From the Grew of the Cynthia Lose Their .Lives. The Donaldson line steamship Cynthia, bound from Glasgow for Montreal, was ran into by the steamer Polynesian and sank, just after daylight, a few miles below Montreal, Canada, and eight persons were drowned within one hundred yards of shore and help. Hie steamer Polynesian had the mails and a cabin fall of passengers aboard. The two steamers arrived in sight of each other near Pointe anx Trembles, ten miles be low Montreal, about 4:10. Through some mis understanding the Polynesian attempted to i am’ - a ke] heading directly for the Cynl lision followed a minute latter. Both vessels had stopped their engines. The Cynthia was struck a lew feet abaft her stern on the star board tide and ripped open as if she were made of cardboard. The Cynthia by the force of the current backed off the bow of the Polynesian, and the latter,.finding herself clear, started np her engines again, and without as much as a 1 or an inc The Cynt i’s pilot, upon getting dear, at tempted to ran her into the shore, only two hundred yards distant, but before two-thirds of the distance had been made the steamer began to settle. Fifteen men who got into a lifeboat were thrown into the water by the fall of a mass of rigging. All of the crew bat Perron and two seamen took to the rigging. The three remained on the quarter deck over the screw. In the meantime John McYey, a Scotch man, and about the only English-speaking person among over a hundred who stood on the shore watching tbe boat's crew strag gling for their lives put off in a punt. He reached the stern and told Per ron and the two seamen to get into bis boat, bat they told him to first rescue the pilot, who >vas unable to swim and was drift ing away on a plank. He did so. Then he tamed to get tne other three men, just in time to see the Cynthia’s forward deck burst np with a loud explosion, and the stern fly into the air and then sink. Ferron never was seen again. His com panions were rescued. Most of the others on board jumped, while several of them were carried down with the steamer. Low was killed while drinking his coffee in the forecastle forward, the collision debris crash ing him to death. Both the Cynthia’s pilot and Captain Tay lor lay the blame upon the Polynesian. The crew of the Cynthia say that if the Polynesian had stopped or lowered a boat the loss of life on the Cynthia would only have been, that of Low. The crew in their wet clothes and exhausted con dition were compelled to walk the ten miles to Montreal, the French Canadian conductor of the horse car refuting to carry them fox nothing, or to take the Captain’s watch as se curity for the $1.50 worth of fares because it was wet. THE CONGO BAILBOAD. It Will Cost $5,000,000, and Ground Will be Broken This Fall. The engineers who have been making the surveys and preparing the plans for the Congo railroad in Africa, around the cataracts have completed their work. At a special meeting of the Royal Geographical Society they have made known the under which the road will They say that it will take $5,000, the road, equip it with rolling interest on the investment of construction, which is The total Jouttk of 264 the hesrfof na to thr village of Staatey Tool. In the first fifteen miles between Matadi and Palaballa are found the only difficulties of construction, which are occasioned by the rocky and rolling nature of the land. The rest of the route is laid along the plateau be hind the hills that skirt the left bank of the Congo, and is exceptionally favorable for % railroad building. Only three important bridges will be re quired. One of them will be 330 feet long over the Inkissi River, and the others wifi each be 250 feet long over the rivers Mpozo and Kwilu. It is expected that ground will be broken this fall. ag custom work and re- including rubber goods, iblishments employed THE MECCA OF MALT AND RUM. These are hard times for saloon keepers— outside of New York State. There’s the Saloon Keepers’ Association of Cincinnati for instance, which has resolved that its members must keep open on Sunday, and that it will fine them $10 each if they don’t. And Philadelphia fines them if they do. If they don’t like it, they may come to New York. There are still a few, a very few, choice comers here which are not occupied by saloons, and the people of the State seemed, when last heard from at the polls, to think that we haven’t saloons enough. The $10 may be made payable to the police.—J) York Press. .... ■New and shoes, inc! pairing, but not were made. These estal a capital of $118,658,333, about the same as the liquor business; they employed 178,219 persons; they paid in wages $67,711,736; they used material to the value of $154,073,- 915; and their manufactured products was worth $276,028,389. By making a comparison we find that $118,000,000 employed in the manufacture of intoxicating liquors gave employment to 33,608 persons against 178,219, when employed in the manufacture of agricultural instru ments, boots and shoes. The same sum in vested in the former paid to labor $15,078,- 579 against $67,711,736 when employed in the latter. The same sum employed in the’for mer bought of the farmers and other pro ducers of material in the United States, ma terials to the value of $85,921,374 against $154,073,915 worth of materials, when en- gaged in the latter. So we see that $118,- 000.000 employed in the manufacture of agri cultural implements, boots and shoes, em ployed five and one-third times as many persons, paid four and one-half times as much in wages, and bought of the farmers and other producers about twice as much material, and its manufactured products were worth twice as much money as the same amount of capital invested in the manufacture of liquors. And betides the for mer was distributed to 20,000 localities, while the liquor industry was confined to 3000 localities, mostly large cities. Tested in this way, the liquor industry can not stand a comparison with that of the manu facture of agricultural implements, boots and shoes. TEMPERANCE NEWS AND NOTES. Rhode Island has a local W. C. T. U. for every ten square miles of territory. It is probable that the next National W. C. T. U. Convention will be held in Chicago. Out of 125,000 deaths annually in Bel gium, at least 15,000 are caused by strong Estimated on the basis of the population in 1880 the loss to the people of Pennsylvania from the liquor traffic amounts every year to the enormous sum of $76,102,267—more than forty times the revenue from high license in 1888 under the Brooks law. Estimated on the basis of the population in 1880, the loss to tbe people of Pennsyl vania from the liquor traffic amounts every year to the enormous sum of $76,102,267— more than forty times the revenue from high license in 1888 under the Brooks law. The Northwestern Life Insurance Com pany, of Milwaukee, has decided to refuse a life insurance policy to any lager-beer brewer or to any man employed m a lager-beer brewery, stating that the business is injured by the shortened lives of men who drink lager-beer. By exact experiment, science has shown that a moderate drinker, who took only two wine glassfuls of sherry at lunch, and three at dinner, the glass containing two ounces ol alcohol, would raise the beats of the heart to 6000 extra in the twenty-four hours. This was equal to lifting an extra weight of seven tons one foot high. Mr. S. A. Kean, the Chicago banker, who has for years demonstrated the fact that con scientious Christianity is practicable in busi ness life, has on more than one occasion also proven that a sumptuous banquet can be S ven without wine. The annual spread of e firm to its clerks and friends, m which Mr. and Mrs. Kean, the night watchman and his wife held equal place, was lately given in the parlors of tbe Palmer House with good cheer and no drunkenness. The Palm Lea/, published at Bombay, says that the Maharajah of the State of Baroda and his entire court are total abstainers and do all in their power to discourage the drink ing habits of the people, bat that the British Oopresissscxt is znn’rlng xicraem difficult. great THE LABOB WOBLP. Coke is depressed. Pittsburg iron is twenty-five cents lower. An eight-hour league has been organized. The building trades strike in Berlin is ex tending. Great distress prevails among the work ingmen in Italy. Maine farmers are complaining of the scarcity of farm help. Philadelphia has 182 carpet factories, employing 17,800 hands. Tesre are 20,000 cigarmakers of both sexes in New York city. The operators claim that they cannot com pete with machine-mined coal. The average German laborer does not ex pend more than $15 every year in clothes. In Germauv, the army was called upon to force the striking miners back to their work. In the Northwest farm laborers are holding mass-meetings in the fields to discuss the wage question. Over five thousand hard-working women in New York and Brooklyn support tick or lazy husbands. Skilled carpenters In Japan earn forty cents a day, and some exceptionally good men forty-five cents. ? Pennsylvania now has a law for the in spection of factories in the interest of chil dren and women workers. On the South Australian railways engineers who run their trains for two years without accident receive a present of $50. The Pattern Makers’ League of North America, at their meeting in Pittsburg, agreed to abolish all piece work. The seventeenth annual convention of the Journeymen Horsesboers’ National Union has been held at St. Paul, Minn. The manufacturing industries of Sweden are represented by upward of 3000 works, affording employment to about 74,200 hands. Two thousand workmen are at present employed on a new hotel in Tokio, Japan. Over 7000 bamboo poles are used in the scaf folding. The laborers and mechanics of England and Europe work an average from twelve to twenty-four hours more per week than the laborers and mechanics of America. A million copies of the Declaration of Principles of the K. of L. in the French language are to be distributed among the working people in Paris during the Universal Exposition. In London female typesetters are making it hard for the men. Some of the offices prefer the women, as they get them cheaoer, and say they can pick up type as fast as the men, but do not set so clean. The building trades strike at Pittsburg, which involved nearly five thousand men, has been settled in favor of the strikers, and work resumed On all the large buildings in course of erection. Citizens of Sioux City, Iowa, guarantee $75,0(J0 to the National Railroad Conductors, provided the association makes its permanent home there. The offer has been accepted, and a §200,000 building will be erected. The street car drivers who have been on a strike in Vienna, and who have finally suc cumbed, average about sixty cents in wages tor a day beginning at 7 in the morning and ending at midnight or 1 o’clock a. M. The Standard Oil Company : Philadelphia for 200 boll dogs, which will be used to guard the Standard tanks in the Ohio field against tramps. Numerous fires have been caused by fire from the pipes of tramps, and the bulldogs are to keep them away. The Treasury Department has disbursed $11,380,000 on account of pensions, thereby exhausting the appropriation for the current fiscal year, amounting to $81,750,000. PEARLS OP THOUGHT. Don’t repeat mistake i. • Never try to outshine, but to pleased Never press a favor where it seems un desired. Never intrude ill-health, pains, losses or misfortunes. Have order, system, regularity, and also promptness. A man of honor respects his word a# he does his bond. Do not meddle with business yow know nothing about. A multiplicity of vegetables leaves no elbow-room for the turkey. The host is a king supreme; a dis loyal gue»t an abomination. Guide your tongue deftly at the table •—the teeth need no directing. Help others when you can, but never give what you cannot afford because it is fashionable. Learn to say No. No necessity for snapping it out dog fashion, but say it firmly and respectfully. When there is love in the heart, there are rainbows in the eyes, covering every black cloud with gorgeous hues. If you have a place of business, be found there when wanted. No man can get rich by sitting around stoves in sa loons. The reasoning power is the corner stone to the intellectual building, giv ing grace and strength to the whole structure. A most ridiculous habit among some young people is the cultivation of melancholy as an interesting accom plishment. * Good temper is like a sunny day,- it sheds a brightness over everything; it is the sweetener of toil, and the soother of disquietude. The Future of Alaska. The Sitka Alaskan contains a very in teresting account of the discovery of a vein of coal on the shore of Yukutai bay, and about two miles from the beach. The vein has been prospected and found to dip at an angle of forty-five degrees. Forty sacks of the coal were taken out of a five-foot vein, which widened as the work proceeded, and the outcroppings of the vein were found at a distance of 900 feet from the discovery shaft, and again at a mile and a quarter, the indications being that the main vein is continuous. e gold mines of Alaska are yield- cellent returns. Very little is em, Vqjry little is known* are actual tunn^hs proposi- not merely stock-jfcibbing es; but the'output of the preqjous is steadily increasing, and mines are being explored and opened' every year. It will not be at all strange if Alaska soon takes high rank as one of of the gold producing Territories of the United States. Frequent allusion has been made to the salmon fisheries of Alaska, and it is enough to say that canneries are being and have been established at different places, and that their business compares very favorably with that done anywhere on the coast. Taking these matters into considera tion, together with the other resources of the Territory, it will be seen that the Seward purchase was not a mistake, and that Alaska bids fair to become a very valuable piece of property. This is es pecially the case if coal is found there in quantities to warrant working, and so situated that it can be conveyed to tide water cheaply and conveniently. A man died in British Columbia a few days ago whose wealth was estimated at some $10,000,000, and it all came from his ownership in a coal mine, and the peo ple of this State were his best customers for his coal.—San Francisco Chronicle. A Tract of Gold Nuggets. One of the oldest and most respected citizens of El Paso, Texas, is Price Cooper, who lives in the ancient Pueblo of Ysleta, acd has several times held local cfficcs in the county, the last of which was Inspector of Hides and Anu mala. He has lived nearly all his life on the border, and has led the most ro mantic kind of life. He haa recently revealed an incident in his history which is most interesting. —^ He was once captured by the Apaches, who held him as a close prisoner in one of their camps, about 50 miles south of Janos, in the Sierra Madre, near the di viding line, between the Mexican states' of Sonora and .Chihuahua. While there, he says, he saw the Apaches always have an abundance of coarse gold and nug-i gets, which they traded off to the Mexicans for such supplies and ammunition as they needed. One day he was taken along out of the camp, some seven or eight miles through an exceedingly rough country, to a wild gulch, where coarse gold was found in abundance in the gravel and sand of the dry creek bottom. He assisted his captors in col lecting quite a quantity of it. Shortly afterward he succeeded in making his escaph. This was many years agj, but he says that he still has a general remembrance of where the gulch i*. Until the last band of host ilea under Geronimo were captured by General Miles, it was im possible to travel through'that section of country; but now that it is perfectly safe, the old man thinks of making up a party to start from El Paso and make a trip ol re-discovery. Quite a number of people a$e willing to accompany him.-«• Globe-Democrat. . & ■ :.« * va