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About Schley County news. (Ellaville, Ga.) 1889-1939 | View Entire Issue (March 10, 1898)
jg bare arm of god. ItEV. p|{. TALM AGE’S SUNDAY discourse. George n. HeptrovtU Vreacbe* in the r«v- York Herald’s Columns on “An ‘^nomine , v r»itl»”-Kev. »r. Tslmage Trll* Al>« nt " The Bare Arm of God,” wuh " t h« return of Rev. George H, Hep to Sew York from his Armenian mis x , Herald closed its series of competi fiuasermoBS. „ hr Hfteou altogether having np m 1 in its columns on consecutive Hwu R e *r* Dr- Hepworth the resumes lending editorial his regular in oJsv sermon as Tlerald’s columns. The first one ts en .hA ;,“u Ennobling Faith,” and appears d -An How in MU T — r “Now fatth is the substance of things honed for, the evidence of things not seen."—-Hebrews, xi., 1. ti)n a bitterly cold day I was recently rid inc with a comrade through one of the most exquisite bits of scenery on the face the earth. We were toiling up the last ■«our of a mountain so high that the clouds would have rested on Us summit had there been any in the sky. But the heavens were cloudless, the sun shone in dazzling splen dor on the snow covered ridges which sur rounded us on all sides, and we seemed to have left our little globe behind us and to be on our way to another world. Naturally we talked of that Great Bo * d which was apparently not far distant. Conversation under such circumstances must needs be serious. One cannot be tri vial when lie works. Is looking It ou the grandest time when of God's great was a souls were in close relations' to each other; when inmost thoughts came to the lips and uttered themselves almost unconsciously, hs in soliloquy. spoke freely of loss he had My comrade a suffered A little child had been called from the family circle, had sped away iu the night and gone where no human eyes could follow her. With a broken heart, but still in somewhat stoical language, he re ferred to that vacant chair. “Gone! gone!” was his despairing exclamation. I listened to the story, and at its close quietly re- In marked: “Yes, gone, but not gone far! the brighter land you will see her again.” Then we lapsed into silence, a silence only broken by the sound of the horses’ iron shoes on the crisn and frozen snow. “If I could believe that,” he said after a little, “nine-tenths of the burden would be removed. But to feel that such farewells are forever, that is very hard,” and the strong man trembled with suppressed emo tion, while tears made it impossible to con tinue the compensation. I thought to myself that after all this world is of very little importance unless we have another world to look forward to. What makes the present life endurable is a firm and unshaken belief In another life. If love can die, then love is only prolonged agony: but the conviction that love can never die strengthens, broadens and en nobles the soul. It would bean act of unspeakable cruelty on the part of God to teach us howto love, to place us amid circumstances in which love develops all that is chivalrous and grand, and then tell us iu the supreme mo ment of parting to say goodby for time and eternity. The Lord’s Prayer would become an impossibility, nay, more than that, a grim sort of farce, and in his innermost depths a man would not only rebel, but lose his self-respect and his respect for the laws of the universe. It is clear that it would have been so much better to make him incapable of affection thau to annihi late the object of his affection, and bid him go hopeless home from the churchyard a despairing, creature. Faith can do so much for a man, is so necessary to hts spiritual and even to liis he physical well being, that if you take it away is in a worse plight than the animals of the fields and forests, for he appreciates his loss aud they do not. To be born a dog and to die a dog is one tiling, but to be born a man and then die like a dog is something which a just and omnipotent Creator will not ask of us. It is so unlike what we have learned of His methods that we are o.uite right in pronouncing such a state ment libellous. Your faith in Providence is the best of all your possessions. It is worth more to you than your fame, your social position or youi wealth—worth more than all else combined. Give me in my relations with God that mysterious something which the child has for its mother—a feeling that Ho knows who and what I am, that at my cafl He will come to me—that every day He leads me and every night protects tne—and there is very little more than I can ask or desire. I have the one best thing in the world, and therefore am content. Fhe plant that has sunshine and dew will blossom before tho frost comes, and with Goil, the sun of my soul, to shine on tne, I shall not only blossom into noble thoughts, y but bear the fruit of good deeds. man becomes a miracle worker from the moment when he is conscious of God’s presence and love. Life may be hard, but at the same time it is glorious. Even sick ness and death are the ouly miry spots wnieh load to tlie eternal upland. There m a repose In the soul, a vigor, an enthu siasm and a power of endurance which nothing else in this wide world cau give. tell me how to doubt—that is, how to eut loose from iny trust in Providence—and ^ ether tell hand, me how confirm to be miserable. belief in God, On the in oie ministration my of His angels, in the pos -} ’titty of a continuous, and unbroken jmmmuniention my life more beautiful with heaven, than words and you make can ex n esa ' As long as I dread the future, my l .„ eeent is leaden; if I of the fu ‘ am sure r ’’ > an ‘l know that my dear ones will me there with undimiuished love, my * r ® ll Hke the which the * e rain cloud on oun , shines and makes a rainbow. take from me what you will, but leave ‘ my faith, „ for it is my only real posses else will pass like a dream—a 17, asaTlt dream., but still a dream. To-day wMi'* . to-morrow to I may be poor. I am p.j ” )a y,to-morrow I may belli, But u remains with me, is closer to my im' , jkan lieer the closest friendship, and gives It i7ln'r , all w,1 ®n I I walk keep in throughout darkness, etern-. can not r » ’ ° 1,e °f which death can on i,:, "‘’’'I 110 prophecy of a better home Uri Kb when this earthly home is broken it ‘ \ g 0o, l who has given that gift, and taffto 7 ^” and ,ed - doubt utMr is heil. 1 -" ,t George II. Hepwoetji. ‘ t he bare arm of cod.” l>r. Tal ma S n TCIl* What, It Will Ac compli gli. Lol ‘‘Flie Lord hath made bare His v vr| . n.”—Lsaiah ill., 10 . of l »u? s ^ rt ' tes our breath to read tliH Itnil awav iie R9 of ni n,etap,,or f « Br iu Y- There tBst; is such bold- lriust *.llvh f in Y 0i,e . ^outage to preach from Isaiah, the it. l >ro P ,ef . is sounufng the oiu• 1 Bnr planet redeemed, and cries ,,,,, wJ* 1<,,rd » nr® • bath made bare His bt.’y that U overwhelming wuggestivenes,. bod!' A gura of soeech. ‘the hare of -Dte arm people ;J f Palestine to this Jay wear much hindering apparel and “? *7 Vhen “ they want to run a special race special burden, or tight a special battle they put nil the outside apparel, us in our 1U .‘ lU pro P° sws 11 spueial exer tion he puts off his coat and rolls his sleeves. Walk through foundries un machine our our o. shops, our mines, our factories au you will find that most of the toilers ha < e their coats off ami their sleeves rolled up. “Isaiah sawthat there must be a tremen dous amount of work done before ibis world becomes what it ought to be uud he foresees it all accomplished, uud accom plished by the Almighty; not usweordi narUy think of Him. but by the Almighty w th the sleeve °f His robe rolled buck to His shoulder. “Nothing more impresses me in the Bible than the ease with which God does most things. There is such a reserve of power. He has more thunderbolts thau He has ever flung; more light than He has ever distributed; which more blue than that with he has overarched the sky; more green than that with which He has emer aliled the grass; more crimson thau that with which He has burnished the sunsets. I say it with reverence—from all that I cau see, God has never half tried. "My text makes it plain that the rectifi cation of this world is a stupendous under taking. It takes more power to make this world over again than it took to make it at first. A word was only necessary for the first creation, but for the new creation the unsleeved and unhindered forearm of the Almighty, The reason of that I can under stand. In the shipyards of Liverpool, or Glasgow, or New York, a great vessel Is constructed. The architect draws out the plan, the length of the beam, the capacity of tonnage, the rotation of wheel or screw, the cabin, the masts and atl the appoint ments of this great palace of the deep. The architect finishes his work without any perplexity, and the carpenters and artisans toil on the craft so mauy hours a day, each one doing his part, until, with flags flying and thousands of people cheering on the docks, the vessel is launched. But out on the sea that vessel breaks her shaft and is limping slowly along toward harbor, when Caribbean whirlwinds, those mighty iiuut ers of the deep, looking out for prey of ships, surround that wounded vessel and Kmr loose and every spar is down, und every wave sweeps over the hurricane deck as she parts amldship. Would it not require vessels off the rocks and reconstruct it than it required originally which to build her? Aye! “Our world, started out with all the flags of Edenie foliage and with tho chant of Paradisaical bowers has been six ty centuries pounding in the skerries of sin and sorrow, aud to get her out and off, and to get her on the right way again, will re quire more of omnipotence than it required to build her and launch her. So I am not surprised that, though in the drydock of one word our world was made, it will take the unsleeved arm of God to lift her from tho rocks and put her on the right course again. It is evident from my text, and its comparison with other texts, that it would not be so great an undertaking to make a whole constellation of worlds, and a whole galaxy or worms, an a a wnoxe astronomy of worlds, and swing them in their right orbits, as to take this wounded world, this stranded world, this' bankrupt world, this destroyed world, and make it as good as when it started. “But I have no time to specify the mani fold evils that challenge Christianity. And I think I have seen in some Christians, and read in some newspapers, and heard from some pulpits, a disheartenment, as though Christianity were so worsted that it is hardly worth while to attempt to win this world of God, and that all Christian work would collapse, and that it is no use for you to teach u Sabbath class,to distribute tracts, or exhort in prayer meeting or proach ground. ia a pulpit, as Satan is gaining To rebuke that pessimism, the Gospel of Smash-up, I preach this sermon, showing that you are on tb* Winning side. Go out to-day Is 1 that our m munition’is ’‘ not exhausted; that all which has been ae complished has been only the skirmishing before the great Armageddon; that not more than one of the thousand fountains of beauty in the King’s Park has begun to play; that not more than one brigade by of the innumerable hosts to ha marshaled the Elder on the White Horse has yet taken the field; that what God has done yet has bean with arm folded in flowing robe but that the time is coming when lie will rise from his throne, and throw off that robe, and come out of the palaces of eternity, and come down the stairs of heaven with all-conquering step, and halt in the pres ence of expectant nations, and flashing his omniscient eyes across the work to be done will put back the sleeve of his right arm to the shoulder, and roll it up there, and for the world’s Anal and complete rescue make bare his his arm. Who can doubt the result when according to my text Jehovah does his best; when the last reserve force of Omnipotence takes the field; when the lastswoidof Eternal Might leaps from its scabbard! m “Do you know what decided the battle of Sedan? The hills a thousand feet high. Eleven hundred cannon on the hills. Ar tillery on the heights of Givonne, and twelve Gennun batteries ou the heights of La Moncello. The Crown Prince of Sax ony watched the scene from the heights ofMairy. Between a quarter to 6 o’clock in the morning and 1 o’clock in the after noon of September «, 1870. the hills dropped the shells that shattered the French host in the valley. The French Emperor and the 83,000 of his army cap tured by the hills. At tho close of that battle of Sedan the Emperor sat broken hearted in a poor woman’s cottage, and when she said in sympathy,‘What can I do for you?’ he replied, ‘Nothing, except pull down those blinds so that they cau not stare at me!’ Sedan decided by tho bills. So In tills conflict now raging be tween holiness and sin ‘our eyes are unto the hills.’ Down here iu the valleys of earth we must be valiant soldiers of the cross but the Commander of our host walks the heights, and views the scene far better than we can in the valleys, and at the right day aud the right hour all heaven will open its batteries on our side and the commander of the hosts of sin ’with all his followers, will surren der and it will take eternity to fully celebrate the universal victory through Lord Jesus Christ. ‘Our eyes are unto our certain to bo accom the hills.’ It Is so looks down plished that Isaiah, iu my text, through the field-glass of prophecy and speaks of it as already accompBshed and I take my stand where the prophet took Ills stand, and look at it as all done. Bee. Those cities without a tear? Look! Those continents without a pang! Behead! Ihose hemispheres without a sin! Why, those deserts—Arabian desert. American Jesert, and Great gardens Sahara where desert-are God walks al in n i " the , *“ cool te< J into atmosphere that encircles of the day. The All tne our globe floating not one groan. dimpled with rivers ", and lakes and oceans of t the not not oue tall!.* falling tear. tear. The The climates earth have dropped out of them the rigo s the cold and the blasts of tbeheaL and of Let us change the it: is universal spring. Let ___ it more be called old world’s name, no with the earth, as when it was reeking scarleted overytning pestiferous battle-fields arm maiovotent. with and gashed with matic graves, with gardens, hut now and so changed, so aro so resonant with song, and so rubescont with beauty, let us mill It Immanuel's Land, or let us call It Beulah, or Millennial Gardens, or Paradise Regained, or Heavenl Hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent reignetb! Hallelu jah, for the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of Christl” Subscribe for thlf paper and keep posted on affair* In reneral. SAUNDERS GETS TWO YEARS. Kxpraa* Bobber Plead* Gailty to Charge of Stealing $4,000. L. L. Saunders, who robbed the Southern Express company of $4,000 at Social Circle, Ga., about a year ago, was taken into court at Monroe and pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years in the penitentiary. It will be recalled that Saunders was a railway route agent and occu pied the same car with the express agent, a young man named Butt. In the express car was a package con taining $4,000, aud consigned to an Atlanta bank. When Social Circle was reached Butt left his car, the safe of which was unlocked. In his absence Saunders took the package. Suspicion for a time was directed tow-ard Butt, whose char acter was so high, however, that he was not arrested. Detectives of \ the n 'express exnress company onmimnv ^shadowed , Saunders for nearlj’ About a year, $3,500 of the money was mys teriously TC limed to the company two hree months ___ ago, aud soon after wards Saunders was arrested in Cin cinnati. h f>- Wen ‘i> u hi ", n 81 ght has been giving him trouble and on consultation of physicians it was decided that 1 16 would lose his eye sight if he were kept in jail any longer. He was carried before Judge Huch ius, pleaded guilty and was given the sentence of two years. Much sympa thy for him is expressed and an effort to obtain his pardon will be made. MAY BUY FOREIGN SHIPS. 1’reBident Directs Navy Department to Open Negotiations. A special to The New York Herald from Washington says: Fully realizing the importance of preparations for any emergency, the president has directed the navy department to open negotia tions looking to the purchase abroad of warships. This fact is now for the first time made public. It probably would not have transpired at this juncture but for the excitement caused by the statement published that Spain had purchased or was negotiating for war ships being built by the Elswick com pany of England, for Brazil, and for other ships under construction, Eight b men-of-war which are practi cally .. completed , , . . foreign , . shipyards ,. . in have been offered for sale in the United States. The president has given consideration to the advisability of placing an option on them, The navy department has been care fully watching the construction of ships abroad through the eyes of its naval attaches at London, Paris, St. Petersburg, Berlin,Vienna and Rome. This surveillance has been maintained for two month®, but more especially since the Maine disaster. LUETGERT IN PENITENTIARY. Sausageinaker Gave Way to Tears AVlien Prison Gates Closed Upon Him* Adolph L. Luetgert was taken from the Chicago jail Saturday to the peni tentiary at Joliet, to which he was sentenced recently for the term of his natural life. Ho was followed by the cheers of many of the jail prisoners, who shouted their good wishes after him. He seemed at first to be glad of his re lease from jail aud laughed aud joked on his way to the train. When Joliet was reached, however, he broke down when the prison gates closed upon him. He sat in the war den’s office with tears rolling down his face, unable to t ay a word. SILVER QUESTION AGAIN. Fight For Its Restoration to be, Made In Congress. A Washington special says: The silver question is to be at once reopen ed in congress, and a fight in the inter est of silver restoration is to be made in the most practical introduced way. in tho A bill is to be senate providing for the coinage of the seigniorage in the silver bullion which is now stored in the vaults of the treasury. The bill will call for the coinage of 3,344,025 standard silver dollars, as a matter of course at the present existing ratio of IG to 1. The bill has been drawn by Senators Bacon, of Georgia, and Martin, of Vir ginia. It is based on figures fur nished by the treasury department at the instance of Senator Bacon and in response to a resolution introduced by him which the senate adopted on Feb ruary 16th. Keep abreast of the time* and en« courage home enterprises by keeping „p „„r .option I. »a PaP- » jou arc not on our boo s now, sen your name at once. ) A DAY OF PLEASURE WITH THE “INNOCENTS AT HOME.” WILLIAM INTERESTED IN ft BOOKLET Whlch Eulogize* Stonewall Jackson and Giro* Him Front ltank a* a Tactician Among World’* General*. Yesterday . , was a , long aud , , happy day at our house, for a lot of the graud children came early and Rome of the neighbors’ little girls found out they were here. They always find out, and so they came over and joined the pro cession and it was an unbroken frolic all the day lone. The little ones brought their dolls along, for tho ma ternal instinct begins early. They made playhouses under the trees and played mumblepeg with my two knives, and rode in the hall and ve randah on the tricycle and dressed up in all the fine old clothes my wife could find in the trunks and closets, and paraded upstiars and downstairs and outdoors with their trains drag ging after them, and they played going to call and receiving calls. When the dinner bell rang they all came running and it took all my time to wait on them, and their grandma got out every good thing she had in the house, and about the middle of the afternoon they wanted to give a little party and had to have more cake and crackers and pie. Some of the little ones got hold of some chalk and colored crayons and marked all over the verandah and tried to make pictures of dogs and horses and monkeys on the walls, and then they called for scissors and fash ion books and cut out dolls and ladies and other pictures and scattered them all over the room. They got hold of my mucilage bottle and pasted things all about aud even ventured to my lit tle table to write letters while I was working in the garden, and all their grandma said was, “you had better watch out, your grandpa is coining.” I’m going to lick ’em sometime when she is not about. But in due time they had to go home, for “The day was done and the darkness Fell from the wings of night. Our own girls went visiting after supper and my wife and I were alone and not a sound was heard in all the house save the ticking of the clock up on the mantel. The contrast was so great that it was impressive and we felt lonesome and almost sad. Each of us had our corner and table and lamp and tried to read the war news, but our old eyes were tired and we gazed upon the fire and ruminated. For some time we had been in silent, serious reverie about those little,happy children and breathing a prayer that they might always be happy and that no calamity or affliction might befall them, and then our minds turned ty our absent boys, who are scattered far aud wide, from New York to Mexico, and we breathed another prayer for their health and happiness and their return to us some of these days—yes, some of these days before we die they will come, we know, but it may he to a funeral instead of a feast. We were ruminating about all this in silence, when suddenly my wife seemed startled and whispered, “I heard a footfall at the window. There is somebody there.” Before I could answer, the sweet, sad strains of min strel music began low and soft and the violins and guitar played to the fitting song of “Old Folks at Home.” The minstrels had reconnoitered and found that only we were at home. They gave us but one song and were gone—but these little episodes sweeten the passing hours and comfort us in our golden age. Forty-nine years ago today we were wedded. It is like re versing a telescope to look hack to that day and time, when the glow of youth and health and beauty was upon my Creole maiden’s cheeks,when gems adorned her raven hair, when the evening light was on her brow and pearls upon her breast as she stood beside me at the marriage altar. It is like looking through a kaleidoscope to recall the days and weeks and months and yearn that have intervened since— a kaleidoscope that at every turn of the sands of time presents another picture of life, its joys and sorrows, its trials and its blessings. What changes, what surprises, and in the midst of it all a war—a long and horrid war that always looms up before our memories and eclipses all that wa9 before or after. But on the whole, the lines have fallen to us in pleasant places and we have had more joy than sorrow, more comfort than distress. God gave us five children before the war and five more came after, and we are thankful that only we, the parents of them, shared and suffered all the long anxiety and they knew it not. God grant that neither they nor their chil dren shall be so tried, so troubled, so “ I",, £5 weeks and the weeks months. But we endured it all and thousands of others endured and suffered more. What is it that man and wife cannot endure when their children are at , stake? Tho poet says: “They who joy would win— Hu d share It. Happlnes* v;aa horn a twin ’* And it is the same with grief and affliction. I have had Home most delicious reading lately. It is the address delivered by Dr. Hunter McGuire ou January 22nd last past at the St. Den j H hotel, in New York, at the eighth annual banquet of the Confederate vet erans’ camp of New York city. It must be, I know, the most beautiful and thrilling tribute to 8tonewal! Jaokson ev er written or spoken by any man. Dr. McGuire was Jackson’s medical director aud most confident ial friend ami has told in this address more touching incidents connected with the great general’s military ca reer than I have ever found and they are beautifully, charmingly told. Every page of this little booklet is adorned with them. It is not often that medical men indulge in biograph ical literature, but Dr. McGuire is certainly a man of rare culture. I read this address aloud to my wife and daughters last, evening and at times I could not read. I had to pause and wait for my heart to be still and my voice to come back to me. These al ways tell me when what I read is in spired. How did our heavts burn within us as I read, and how was our patriotism revived and set aglow with a new fire. Even on the first, page he awakens ns from that lethargy which time and current events bring over the best of patriots, for he says: “It was with a swelling heart that T recently heard some of the first sol diers and military students of England declare that within the past 200 years the English speaking race has pro duced but fiyo soldiers of the first ran k—Mar 1 borough, Wash i n gton, Wel lington, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. I heard them declare that Jackson’s campaign in the Shenandoah valley was the finest specimen of strat egy and tactics of which the world has any record; that in this series of marches and battles there was never a blunder and that this campaign was superior to either of those made by Napoleon in Italy. One British offi cer who teaches strategy in a great European college,told me that he used this campaign as a model and dwelt upon it for months in his lectures and that it was taught in all military schools of Germany and Van Moltke declered it was without a rival in the world’s history. “Indeed,” he added, “Jackson seems to me to have been inspired.” Another British soldier of high rank and a trained student of war told me that for its numbers the army of northern Virginia had more force and power tha# any other army that ever existed. Well, that is enough for a starter a starter of the blood in the patriot’s veins. Sometimes I feel like I would he .proud to have been horn a Virgin, ian, where these great soldiers lived —Washington, Lee and Jackson—and where Jefforson and Madison and Mon roe and Patrick Henry and John Mar shall lived. I wisli that every,old soldier aud every young man in this southern land could read this splendid address. I fear that it is too long for a single issue of The Constitution, for it is near 7,000 words, but nothing better could occupy its columns. It reads like a romance and if there are any young men in Georgia who are in clined to make sport of the war the perusal of this address will make them feel ashamed that they ever entertain ed such unpatriotic feelings. Wc have heard of a “young man’s party” as hostile to any further political honor to' the veterans, but sure ly this camiot be true, for what young man yan be found who would so dishonor the mother who bore him or the father or uncle or kinsman who fought or fell in the late war? No. Rather let every young Georgian echo the sentiment of Henry Grady when he said at the New Eng land banquet: “The south has nothing to take back. In my native town is a monument that crowns its central hill—a plain white sha t. Deep cut into its shining side is a name dear to me above the names of men—that of a brave and simple man who died in brave and simple faith. Not for a!! the glories of New England would l exchange the heritage he left me in his soldier death. To the foot of that monument I shall send my children’s children to reverence him who enno bled their name with his heroic blood.” That is patriotism—pure and sim ple.—B ill Arp in Atlanta Constitution. COMPLICATIONS IN KLONDIKE. British Flag On American Soil Creating Disturbance*. Five steamers arrived at Seattle from Alaska Thursday. The most im portant news brought down was a con firmation of previous reports that a Canadian official has raised the British flag on what is regarded as American soil, shoremen and trouble at Skaguay with long who objected to Indians unloading freight from steamers. Tho presence of United States troops alone prevented serious trouble. It is feared serious trouble will grow out of the Canadian attempt to collect duty on the summits of White, and Chilkoot passes
