Jr 
 
CO. HTM. PHII 
 
E PATH WAV OF" LITE 
 
The PaMiwag of Life 
 
 A BOOK FOR THE HOME, A BLESSED GUEST AT THE FIRESIDE. 
 
 DESTINED TO LEAD THE YOUNG AND THE OLD INTO PATHS OF HAPPINESS, 
 
 AND TO PREPARE THEM FOR A HOLY COMPANIONSHIP WITH 
 
 HIM WHOSE KINGDOM IS AS BOUNDLESS AS HIS LOVE. 
 
 f\ Series of /T\atel?less Essays, 
 
 ABOUNDING WITH BEAUTIFUL PRECEPTS, AND COUNSEL FROM A RICH EXPERIENCE, 
 . TEACHING HOW TO ATTAIN SUCCESS AND HONOR AMONG MEN, WITH 
 PRACTICAL LESSONS GLEANED FROM EXAMPLES 
 OF HISTORY IN PEACE AND WAR. 
 
 INCLUDING SKETCHES, INCIDENTS, AND THRILLING EPISODES IN THE LIVES OF MIGHTY MEN, 
 CELEBRATED WOMEN, AND THE HEROES OF MARTYRDOM, 
 
 WITH DESCRIPTIONS OF 
 
 THE MOST FAMOUS BATTLES IN THE WORLD'S HISTORY. ' 
 
 A COLLECTION OF GRAND AND SPLENDID THOUGHTS FOR FIRESIDE READING, SACRED 
 
 REFLECTION, AND THE ELEVATION AND HAPPINESS OF THE HOME 
 
 CIRCLE, LEADING TO HIGHER AND NOBLER LIVES. 
 
 REV. T. DEWITT TALMAGE, D. D., 
 
 fHB WO^IlD'S 1HOST BUOgUBtfT PREACHER AflD UlRITHP,. 
 
 MAGNIFICENTLY ILLUSTRATED WITH NEARLY THREE HUNDRED ENGRAV- 
 INGS FROM THE MASTERPIECES OF THE WORLD, AND 
 
 SUPERS COIiOP.Et) PliflTES. 
 
 B. F=. JOHNSON St CO,. 
 
 RICHMOND, iZK, 
 1559. 
 
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 • ••••• 
 
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 • . ••• :: ..:.•*. 
 
 Ti 
 
 Copyright, 1888, by H. S. Smith. 
 (ali< rights reserved.) 
 
 * ; ; ; * The 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. 
 
BLAZE of splendor is the pictorial part of this book, an art gallery on the 
 wing. You need not visit New York, or Dresden, or Berlin, or Rome 
 to see the masterpieces, for the best part of them is now, my reader, be- 
 tween your forefinger and thumb. The publishers of this book have 
 ransacked the earth for these three hundred and thirteen gems. No sub- 
 i _^§5^ fij\fl scription book ever published has had such beautiful pictures. Let me 
 open the door for these queens of art. 
 
 In that one marvellous picture see the world put down all its troubles 
 at Christ's feet, a brook emptying into an ocean. Behold on that other 
 page the representation of a cross all abloom with prayer, and the red 
 roses of childish health, and the white lilies of venerable locks, and 
 empty hands uplifted in supplication, and full hands stretched down in 
 supply, enough to induce all the world to cry out, " Let us pray ! " On 
 that other page see the lion of persecution and the face of Christian 
 martyrdom confront each other, while the piled-up tiers of the Colosseum 
 and the unseen galleries of the ages look down upon them. But, thank 
 God, that old lion and all the whelps emerging from that door at the side of the Colos- 
 seum have been slain by the Lion of. Judah's tribe. See on that other page how sym- 
 pathetically Christ treats a sick child, the anxious mother looking on. I warrant that 
 child got well, for what sickness could baffle such a Doctor? Behold on that other 
 page the three crosses, goodness in the centre, recklessness on one side, and penitence on the 
 other. Did ever a silent picture have so many voices of execration and worship, humiliation and 
 victory, crime and innocence, hell and heaven ? Was there ever such a centre to such a circum- 
 ference ? Of what crime had that victim on the middle cross been guilty that He should be made 
 the object of the mob's fury ? Guilty of only one crime, the crime of coming to save a world. O 
 my soul ! was there ever such a criminal, was there ever such a crime ! But I cannot walk with 
 you all round this Louvre, this Luxembourg, this Dusseldorf of paintings and engravings. 
 Having introduced you to the great artists I must let them take you the rest of the way. Thank 
 God, morning, noon and night, for pictures, instructive pictures, inspiring pictures ! 
 
 What a poor world this would be if it were not for pictures ! I refer to your memory and 
 mine when I ask if your knowledge of the Holy Scriptures has not been mightily augmented by 
 the wood-cuts or engravings in the old family Bible, out of which father and mother read, and 
 laid on the table in the old homestead when you were boys and girls. The Bible scenes which 
 we all carry in our minds were not gotten from the Bible typology, 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 enough, what I have carried in my mind of Jacob's ladder was exactly the Bible 
 engraving of Jacob's ladder ; and so with Samson carrying off the gates of Gaza ; Elisha restor- 
 
 MftdP.^Q 
 
ii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ing the Shunainite's son ; the massacre of the innocents ; Christ blessing little children ; the 
 Crucifixion and the Last Judgment. My idea of all these is that of 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 affluent. There is not a comfortable home that has not specimens of 
 wood-cut 01 steel engraving, if not of painting, and your whole family will feel the moral uplifting 
 or depression. Have nothing on your wall or in books that will familiarize the young with scenes 
 of cruelty 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 
 compared with it. We say that children are fond of pictures ; but notice any man when he takes 
 up a book, and you will s e .'_ chat 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 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 eyesight ! ' ' 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 your own dear children, who have gon< 
 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 humiliation 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 century, 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 of the year this is the best month, and of all the days of the 
 month this is the best day. 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 
 years 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 mechanism." He answered: "Warts, croup, marasmus, 
 
INTRODUCTION. iii 
 
 corns, bunions, gout and indigestion." I hoisted a window and caught one of the flying snow- 
 nakes 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 those crystal pave- 
 ments." He turned up his coat collar and said: "lam in a perfect chill; please 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 
 (jf the mountain hath set the streams into roystering laughter ? What harp of heaven gives the 
 pitch to the music of the south wind? There is enough wisdom to confound the earth and the 
 heavens in 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 beauty 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 glittering 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 
 Hitters, 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 Coro- 
 nation. 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, Expo- 
 sure 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 ! " 
 
 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 
 com ; I helped break the sod and run out the furrows. On a starlight 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 throw in an extra quart at my whinny, and to have Jane pat me on the nose 
 and say, ' Poor Charlie ! ' and to bound along with arched neck, and flaming eye, and clatteriii;.. 
 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 the>- wait for customers, rag-pickers who go around 
 with a dog-cart, soap-fat men that shake the streets with boisterous racket, day-laborers that break 
 the cobble-stones and put down their chunk of salt pork with an appetite that kings and courtiers 
 might envy. The largest number of complainers you shall find among those of us who have 
 
iv INTRODUCTION. v 
 
 lucrative professions, large stores, well-warmed houses, luxuriant wardrobes and plenty of attend- 
 ants. 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 ! " " Nc 
 shoes!" he constantly complained to himself, until one day he met a man who had no feet. 
 "Ah!" he said, "that man is worse off 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 blossoms on my peach orchard there was not one blossom that did not 
 beat Walter Scott's Marmion or John Milton's Paradise L,ost. In weeding out one patch of canta- 
 loupes 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 every snow-flake a psalm, and every honeysuckle a 
 censer, and every pond-lily is a gondola for eternal glories to sail in, and there are pyramids in 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 
 imperfections 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 criticism of the faults of 
 others. How much better, like the sun, to find light wherever we look, letting j>eople 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-day 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-grand- 
 mothers wore put up with high combs that we 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 lay 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 clergymen 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 
 family, " one silver-laced hat, one pair of silver shoe buckles, a coat made of fashionable silk, one 
 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 tha 
 old-fashioned sideboard ! 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 days 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-day and 
 keeping of late hours ! Why, did they not have their bees and sausage-stuffings 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 ! Washington 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 
 
INTRODUCTION. v 
 
 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 constitutions. 
 The other races seem shrinking away before the inarch 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 important 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 advance- 
 ment 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 ani- 
 mals, and climatology has discussed atmospheres, and geology has decided great questions 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 with which the 
 fields and bams of this whole laud 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 
 advancement to the arts, and given facilities to navigation, and helped settle disputed boundaries, 
 and surveyed dangerous coasts, and lifted upon the world the very grandest evidence of God's 
 power, and wisdom, and goodness. The stars that in their courses fought against Sisera have 
 been marshalled by the astronomer to fight for the practical interests of our humanity. Seventy 
 years ago there was but one reliable observatory in all the world, and that the observatory at 
 Greenwich. Now there are at least eighty 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 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 put to human observation 
 of Vesta, and Juno, and Ceres, and Pallas, unknown to other ages of the world, shpw 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 beauty, 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 glory of great tracts of land entirelv unknown in the last centurv. Into its wreath 
 
vi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 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 Long may 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 Expe- 
 dition on the southern extremity of South America, and Livingston and Stanley travelling 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 scriptural 
 customs still in existence, and Lieutenant Lynch, of our owu 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 
 world — all these only give us a feeble idea of what is being suffered and achieved for the great 
 cause of geographical discovery. 
 
 The progress of civil and religious liberty is another encouraging fact. God never intended 
 His children to be oppressed, and yet gigantic tyrannies and despotisms 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 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 country, but there never has been any peace 
 until within the last twenty years. It was war of pen and war of speech. Look at the Congres- 
 sional record of 1830, was that peace? The Congressional record of 1837, of 1846, 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 Massachusetts 
 against South Carolina ; it was New York against Virginia representation ; it was Charleston 
 Mercury against Albany Journal ; challenge, altercation and duel all over the land. Even at the 
 time when our Northern cities were in riot and bloodshed about the rendition 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 ? 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 Mis- 
 souri as a slave State. Was that peace? Presbyterian and Methodist churches, North and South, 
 split with a fracture that shook all Christendom 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, 
 
INTRODUCTION. vii 
 
 the mining, the manufacturing, 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, shel- 
 tering 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 enterprises, what wealth, what civilization you might 
 argue from the coal-fields ! What an advance from the time when, under King Edward, a man 
 was put to death for burning coal, and from the time when the House of Commons forbade the use 
 of what was 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 s 
 prophecy of a larger yield when we shall come on with longer trains and more miners and strongei 
 machinery to develop, to gather up, to transport and to employ all this treasure. Make this 
 calculation 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 may 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 thousand 
 square miles of iron, both stretching themselves up to full strength and height, tv/o black, world- 
 shaking giants ? 
 
 Lift 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 merchandise ! Build larger your galleries of art for 
 statues and pictures ! But remember that national wealth unsanctified is voluptuous waste, is 
 magnificent woe, is splendid rottenness, is gilded death. Woe to us for the wine vats if Drunken- 
 ness wallows in them ! Woe for the harvests if Greed sickles them ! Woe for the merchandise 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 publishing 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 of Life," is the assur- 
 ance 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 ! Let me have the pleasure of introducing you to 
 my readers. 
 
 Brooklyn, N. Y., November 9, 1888. 
 
-C*. 
 
 17-26 
 
 EASTER MORNING. 
 The Angels Of the Grass— John Bunyan, the dreamer— Sermon of the lily— 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 symbolism— Death of the flowers— Christ the rose and the lily— Emblems of 
 the Resurrection — Bursting the sepulchre door — Resurrection morn — The last sleep — The dead 
 aroused — The procession of immortals 
 
 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 — .jut 
 national distresses — The royalty of friendship — Job's troubles — Destruction of reputations — Faithful- 
 ness of the Marys and of Ruth — Darkness and dawn — The harvest field of God's mercy — Drinking 
 the gall -The scoffers at Noah— Persecutors of Christ — Little incidents that change lives — Marti*. 
 Luther — Female industry — Greatness from small beginnings ... 27-38 
 
 THE VALUE OF BEREAVEMENTS. 
 
 The Scourging of Jesus— Vinegar for the Dying 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 on the door — 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 . 39-48 
 
 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 — Apos- 
 tolic residences 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 Vic- 
 toria distributing the Crimean prizes — The final reward — Medals for bravery — A magnificent pageant 
 of Roman victors — Procession of the redeemed 
 
 49-60 
 
 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— 
 An 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 his- 
 tory — The robe of a Saviour's love —The rest that shall be ours — I am the resurrection (1-69 
 
 * TO YOUNG WOMEN. 
 
 The True Position of Woman — Man's better part — Drones that afflict society — Unhappy marriages — 
 The dove that married a vulture — The hand of the inebriate — Sacrifices to rum and war — Why so 
 many unmarried women — Masculine companionship not necessary to happiness — The science of self- 
 support — False dependence — Appropriate occupations — Female employments — How to reach the 
 top — Romantic 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, . . 70-81 
 
 (viii) 
 
CONTENTS. ix 
 
 TO THE WOMEN OF AMERICA. page 
 
 The Drunken JJabal — An insult to David — Abigail, the beautiful — The courtship of Nabal — A June 
 morning smiling on a March squall — An every-day tragedy — Mme. Roland, of history, and her sad 
 death — Lengthening the average of human life — Prayer in lordly castles — Great men as evangelists — 
 )ur literary companions — A 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 expurgated and 
 fumigated — An unclean foreign dignitary — The drunken bridegroom — A royal marriage — Cleopatra's 
 ruse to see Caesar — Behold the bridegroom 82-93 
 
 WOUNDED LOVE. 
 
 General .Teplltliah's Vow — His defeat of the Ammonites — Meeting with his daughter — A wave of sorrow 
 and the sting of regret —The sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter— Broken promises — Victims to false 
 vows — The sacredness of a promise — The family of furies — Exceptional cases — Marriage of Robert 
 Burns — The recreant captain — Betrothal a solemn act — Infamies of history — No excuse for making 
 mistakes — Insincerity — Divorce a last resort — Make the best of a bad bargain — Incompatibility — The 
 patience of Job — What a wife can do — A brave engineer — Death of Queen Elizabeth 94-108 
 
 DOMINION OF FASHION. 
 
 True Accomplishments — Sin of rudeness — Ancient Scythians — Value of a crest — Vanity in dress — Poor 
 butterflies — Revelations of high life — Physical disease, mental imbecility and spiritual withering — 
 Harvest of death — Tumbling into ruin — Shadows of gravestones upon finest silk — Tumult of the last 
 day — Fashion in church — Death of the vain man — A wandering star— Close of a life of fashion — 
 Death-beds of noted Christian women — Queen Elizabeth and King Ferdinand 109-115 
 
 TO THE FEMALE TEACHER. 
 
 Among- the Splendors of Ahasuerus' Palace — The gathered magnificence of Persia — The gleaming 
 glories of Shushan — The revelry of inebriated feasters — Queen Vashti and the Princesses of Persia — 
 Mandate of the King — Vashti's disobedience — Vashti the sacrifice— The glory of a true woman — The 
 great female heroes of history — A tribute to female teachers — Father is dead — Thrown on her own 
 resources — A teacher's life— A noble old school-marm — Anecdote of Scarron — Gcethe and Shakes- 
 peare's ideas of women— Heroines of the two great poets — Vashti the veiled— Great women of his- 
 tory — Women clothed in a hurricane of millinery — " Vashti has lost her veil " — The injustice of our 
 laws — Discriminations against women — Can't wait for female suffrage — Vashti, the outcast — Martyrs 
 to duty— Burning of the " Prairie Belle "—The scoffers at Galileo — Copernicus reviled — Martyrdom 
 of the reformers — The frozen crew on duty — An incident in the siege of Rome, 1 16-130 
 
 AHAB AND JEZEBEL. 
 
 Ahab Covets Naboth's Vineyard — Wicked Jezebel's advice — The stoning of Naboth — Elijah's prophecy — 
 Horrible fate of Ahab and his queen — The result of a wife's bad advice — The dogs devour Jezebel — 
 Wifely ambition— Illustrious examples of wifely devotion — Judith slays Holofernes — The wife of 
 Andrew Jackson — The mother of Washington — Pliny's guardian spirit — Testimonies to wifely 
 virtues— Thomas Carlyle and his neglected wife — The bulls and bears of Wall street — American 
 politics — Ruined by his wife's social ambition — Deborah's Shibboleth— In the teeth of public 
 opinion — Home influence on husbands — Great men who have left no descendants — The siege of 
 Troves — Execution of Joan d'Arc — Faithful wives' reward— Consecrated women, 131-144 
 
 POSITION IN LIFE. 
 
 An Important Qnestion — A popular error — Our joys ever increasing — Greenough, the artist, happy in 
 his poverty — Solomon's vexations— The metaphor of a grain of corn — Mistakes about happiness — 
 Little satisfaction in social position — Napoleon and Josephine — A fine prospect — A sad awakening 
 from a joyous dream — Observation of a rich English lord — Usefulness in home circles — Gathering 
 wrinkles — Bitter repentance— Ghastly memories — Personal charms of women — The hoof-marks of 
 time — Ac affecting scene in a hospital — -The wounded drummer boy's message — Abominable 
 fashions — The robe of righteousness — Good night to tears and poverty — Death of the orphan — Good 
 morning in heaven, 145-15* 
 
 GRANDMOTHER. 
 
 Timothy's Good Grandmother — Margaret, the mother of criminals — Good women whose tombstones 
 mark a gracious influence — Old times — -Women of the last century— Volney's opinion of American 
 women in 1796 — Depreciating our grandmothers — The march of improvement — Blessed grandmother 
 Lois — A picture gallery of wrinkled faces — Maternal influence — The ocean of eternity into which the 
 streams of life empty — Rolling on and forever — Reckoning the end of time — A beautiful tradition — 
 Honesty in our care of children — -Good examples — George Miiller, the philanthropist — A familiar 
 sight explained — Isabella Graham's letter to God — Seeking the beloved face in heaven — My grand- 
 mother — Respect for old age — The golden city, . . 157-167 
 
x CONTENTS. 
 
 SONGS. PAGB 
 
 The Song Echoes in our Hearts— Music in the household— The empty cradle — Bitter desolation— Death 
 
 of a child — The old man's song — The old meeting-house — The resurrected hymn — The night song 
 
 The night of trouble — "Jesus, Lover of My Soul "—Songs for the sick— For the desolate heart — For 
 the soldier in camp — All tongues in praise — The everlasting song — The harvest song — A sailor's 
 song — Millions of little ones before the throne — Sacrifice of the innocents — The great singers of his- 
 tory — The choir of heaven — Listening to the music of angels — Henry V. at Agincourt, 168-177 
 
 PROFANITY. 
 
 The Story of Job — His afflictions and vexations — Profanity everywhere — A traveller's memoranda — 
 Youthful sinners— No manliness in swearing — Where children learn to swear — How the habit 
 begins — The vocabulary of good and more expressive words — No excuse for using vile language — 
 Profanity on the increase — Kissing the book — Irreverence of the oath — How I overcame the habit — 
 Profanity accurses this life— A swearer struck dead — Blasphemers punished — Injustice to God — End 
 of sin and crime — A storm on the mountain — Stemming the tide — Destruction of the Israelites, . . 178-189 
 
 A FALLING STAR. 
 
 Attila, King of the Hnns— The star wormwood — Legend of the wounded heifer — The scourge of God — 
 Overrunning the east with 700,000 followers— A ttila's death — The brilliancy of his armor — Slain by 
 his bride — Buried in three coffins, of iron, silver and gold — The bitterness in our lives — Destruction 
 of great cities — -The end of Tyre and of ancient Thebes — Relics of former splendors — Why Babylon 
 fell — Incomparable magnificence — The land of dazzling beauty now a waste of desolation — Where 
 the nation's safety lies — Results of drunkenness and licentiousness — The falling star 190-197 
 
 JEALOUSY. 
 
 The Haggard, Furious and Diabolical Sin— Grief at the superiority of others— The first case of jeal- 
 ousy — Jealousy of Caligula — Spanish courtiers jealous of Columbus — Crimes of Dionysius — Jacob and 
 Esau— Antony against Cicero — Infamy of Tiberius — Jealousy of Napoleon — The Prodigal Son — 
 A passion that annoys the world — Jealousy of nations — Efforts to depreciate great men — Garfield's 
 death-bed — Jealousy in the clerical and all other professions — Like cutting a roasted ox — Dissecting 
 a character — Punishment of Albert Barnes — Some good counsel — The Duke of Danzig — A substi- 
 tute — How Jesus answered His accusers — Timothy Poland's poem 198-209 
 
 THE SOUL. 
 
 The World a Grand Property — Exquisite descriptions of God's beautiful creations— The heart of the 
 world a burning coal — Geologists and astronomers searching out God's secrets — Apples of ashes — 
 Troubles of great men — How to measure a man's property — The undertaker called in — The soul, its 
 delicacy, and not to be repaired — The value of a soul — The victor crowned — A great diamond — A pro- 
 cession of the ages — Story of an heroic sailor — Vicarious suffering, 210-219 
 
 AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 Solar Eclipse at the Destruction of Jernsalem— The archangels of malice — Destruction of the sun- 
 Terrible results — The world a glacier — Infidelity belongs to tragedy — The degradation of woman- 
 hood—The fury of a Clytemnestra — Women in Christianity and Paganism — The fear of punishment — 
 A voice crying, "There is no hell !" — Bible restraints — As the Infidels would have it — The army of 
 atheists — Hewing down the Cross — Desecration of sacred shrines — A nefarious plot — Obliteration of 
 
 freat works — The world a mad-house, a lazaretto and a pandemonium — Stand back from the chasm — 
 he sun that shot out like an electric spark from God's finger — Christianity to capture the world, . 220-231 
 
 MARVELS OF GENIUS. 
 Demolition of the Assyrian Host— The lame must do their duty— The blind poets, Homer, Ossian and 
 Milton — Prescott, the historian — Alexander Pope's infirmity — The afflictions of Demosthenes, Bacon, 
 Byron and Scott — Columbus and Ferguson — The great invalids — The deaf and dumb — Legend of St. 
 Modobert — The toilers, and the rejected of men— A lame old man — A good deed abundantly blessed — 
 The letter that was never posted — Emerging from difficulties — What workingmen have done — Great 
 engineering feats— Sabbath-school teachers— Saving a little child — The royal family— The dying 
 pilot — In the harbor 232-24; 
 
 DRUNKENNESS. 
 Saturday Afternoon Closing — How the poor man may become a capitalist — Expenditures for rum — A 
 dreadful showing — Effects of liquor on the system — Abstainers healthier than drinkers — A Russian 
 inspection — Saturday afternoons free but sober, . . • 243-245 
 
 GENERAL JOSHUA. 
 The Siege of Ai— Joshua's strategy — Capture of the city— About face and charge — Cheer for the triumphs 
 of Israel — Victorious retreat — What are you reading ? — -St. Bartholomew massacre— Execution of 
 Lady Jane Grey — Persecution of the Protestants — Jesus of the ages — Santa Anna's retreat — The 
 powers of darkness — Triumph of the wicked — Destruction of the wicked — Importance of taking 
 good aim — The bravery that confronts steel and bullet — Parade soldiers — Which side are you on ? . 246-255 
 
CONTENTS. xi 
 
 CONSTELLATIONS OF THE REDEEMED. page 
 
 Every Man has a Thousand Branches — The force of evil influence — How a community was changed by 
 good example — The swifr feet of prayer — An incident of the Mexican War — Prayer swifter than 
 electricity — George Miiller's efficacious prayer — How to pray — The resources of the Lord — Capture 
 of Gibraltar — Christian bombardment — Luminosity of the planets — A tour of redemption — Like the 
 stars — Graves of the unknown — The solar system likened to a company of children — Galaxy of 
 joy — Flight of worlds — Measuring the planets — A glory that never fades— Burial of the stars — 
 Cohorts tumbling out of heaven 256-267 
 
 HOW TO PROLONG LIFE. 
 
 Religion Associated with Sick Beds and Graveyards— The saving health of all nations— Remarkable 
 longevity — Mere dwarfs — Distinguished descendants of the African race — Curiosities of the body — 
 Paul in need o( au overcoat — Physical health — Body and soul Siamese twins— Dead from excite- 
 ment — Upholstery of the midnight heavens — The human body is God's -watch — Dissipations that 
 destroy health — Religion promotive of longevity— Byron his own Mazeppa — Poe putting the raven 
 in his soul — Napoleon killed by a snuff-box — Worry and trouble — God rich enough to provide for all 
 our wants — A beautiful sickness — A wound that was the badge of honor — Frederick Frelinghuysen — 
 Comforting assurances — A series of experiments — The sacrifice to accept — All things shall be given 
 to the righteous, 268-279 
 
 A SHIPWRECK. 
 
 A Memorable Storm on the Mediterranean — Shipwreck of Paul — Destruction of the vessel — Escape of 
 the crew — Thank God, all are here — The great Gospel ship — Creeds and articles of faith — The Andover 
 controversy — Take to the plank — Not only faith, but good works necessary to salvation — One who 
 doesn't believe in hell — Another who condemns revivals — Settling difficulties— Believe in something — 
 Nelson's blind eye — Vicarious suffering— Lost at sea trying to save others — Come in on the Cross — 
 Once a skeptic — Death-bed scenes, . 280-290 
 
 CHRISTMAS. 
 
 The Ages Cry for a Christ — The most poetic figure of the centuries — The coming of Christ — Man's cruelty 
 to animals — Jesus cradled among the speechless animals — A plea for humane treatment — The birth of 
 Christ — Honoring childhood— Not only a child, but an immortal — ;A recess in heaven — How a child 
 decided Waterloo — How a child decided Gettysburg — Science honored — Great men who are Chris- 
 tians — The fields honored — Distinguished men of American history — The mother — Artists whose 
 ideals are found in their mothers — The death of mother — We are coming — Calm land beyond the sea, 291-301 
 
 AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 1 1 the Temple of Dagon — Samson, the blind giant — Pulling down the temple upon his tormentors — 
 Sinful amusements — The world for God's own children — Proper recreation — Cultivation of the voice 
 and of music — Raising up the depressed soul — How Waterloo was won — The gymnasium com- 
 mended — Effects of food upon the body — Martin Luther mighty in mind and body — Parlor games 
 commended — Bounding health— Out-door sports — The pleasure and healthfulness of doing good — 
 Cheerful looks and words — Moravian missionaries — Result of sinful amusement — A wasted life — 
 Prophesying death 302-315 
 
 CHILDREN. 
 
 Judge Eli and His Two Bad Boys — Receipt of ill news — Death of the two sons and a fatal shock to Eli — 
 An all-conquering army — An incident of the war between Frederick II. and Maria Theresa — The boy 
 of to-day to be ruler of the future — A shield of insufferable splendor — Errors in the training of chil- 
 dren — John Milton's domestic blunders— The drudgery enforced on his daughters — A cruel father — 
 John O'Groat's eccentricity — The family scapegoat — Dangers of over-indulgence — Necessity of study- 
 ing a child's disposition — Adapting yourself to requirements — Godls hints to parents — Treasures in a 
 shattered casket — Religious restraint essential — Suppression of child '.sh sportfulness — Let them 
 romp — Study and play— The beauty of early piety — The dying mother's request, 3 l 6-33l 
 
 JESUS. 
 
 Are the Planets Inhabited 1 — Proofs that they are — A glimpse of heaven — Gardens in perpetual bloom — 
 What is death ? — The wealth of the prince — Solomon's riches -A fallen world — Christ's arrival on 
 earth — His great poverty — A chilling reception — Pompey's glory — Treading the wine-press alone — 
 Cleopatra's banquet — The grace of God — Story of the old Scotchman — Anecdote of Artaxerxes — The 
 seven wise men of Greece— An apothegm for each 332-340 
 
 CONCORD AND DISCORD. 
 
 Laying of the Corner-Stone — Svmphonies of nature— A musical portfolio — The harp-string broken — 
 Infirmities of society — A shipwreck of harmonies — Svmbolisms of nations — Fond of contention — 
 The Devil's sonata — A singular dream — Anecdote of Bach — Moral discord— The Dusseldorf jubilee — 
 The cost of war — Overture of the morning stars — Mozart's greatest composition — An instrument to 
 attune the world — The anvil chorus — Compass of the human voice — A new song — The Great Peace 
 Jubilee in Boston — A thrilling incident — Parepa Rosa's Star-Spangled Banner 34 I_ 35' 
 
xii CONTENTS. 
 
 FORBIDDEN HONEY. page 
 
 Ingenuity of the Honey Bee — Celebration of the bee in fable — Some wonderful facts — The forbidden 
 honey — Jonathan's disobedience — Pernicious literature — Corrupt influence of bad books — Filling life 
 with husks and cinders — Good books — The false honey of stimulants —Recipes for curing the drunken 
 habit— Ominous names of intoxicants— False security — Infatuation for strong drink -The gamester's 
 indulgence — Faro and card playing — Stock gambling — Victims of Wall street — Fatal accident — Seek 
 only the honey of heaven — The ambrosia of life — Fuueral of a Norse king - End of the Poet Shelley, 352-363 
 
 THE SECRET OF SUCCESS. 
 
 Nothing can Keep a Good Man Down — The success of Joseph — Chrysostom's brave answer to Eudoxia — 
 Monuments of the Christian religion — An unfair comparison — Persecutions bring victories — The fires 
 of the stake — Crime will out — Tne sale of Joseph — Saul's cupidity discovered — Easier to sin than to 
 escape the consequences — All events linked together — A small incident that defeated Napoleon's 
 Egyptian expedition — God's plans beyond our comprehension — Defeats and victories are twin 
 brothers — Anecdote of Dr. Kennedy — Every famine has a storehouse 364-371 
 
 ROYAL WOMANHOOD. 
 
 The Imperial Character of a Good Woman — The coronation of women — The widow's son — The ministers 
 of home — A hard death — The blessed home— Woman's heroism — Friends of the poor — Dangerous 
 fruit — God protects the charitable — Helen Chalmers among the poor — Soliciting charities — Tell your 
 troubles to your wife — A friend in every emergency — Woman's opportunity — Rest in heaven — 
 Winning the crown • . . . 372-382 
 
 EMPLOYMENTS IN HEAVEN. 
 
 Ezekiel'S Vision of Heaven - What are our departed friends doing ?— Effects of conversion — How to deter- 
 mine the occupations in heaven — Surfeited with good things — Continuing our trades and professions 
 — The celestial art gallery — The soul shall sing — Musical instruments of heaven — An anecdote of 
 Haydn — The church militant — The mathematics of heaven — Brave spirits who sought to reach the 
 North Pole — Astronomers and chemists in celestial inquiry — Authors in heaven — A wonderful place to 
 visit — Meeting with noted people — The Scotch Covenanters — A place of perpetual love — The tomb- 
 stone the starting-post — The cathedral bell of heaven — A dream of heaven — Home! Home! Home! . 383-357 
 
 DELUSIONS. 
 
 Divination to Find the Will of God — Two modes practised in Babylon — Oracles and Sibyls — The Delphic 
 oracle — An impostor in New York — Is Christianity a delusion ? — Anecdote of Admiral Farragut — 
 Swaying noble intellects — Testimonies of great men — The death-bed filled with happy anticipations 
 — "Mother, catch me, I am coming" — A sustaining belief — Last words of dying Christians — A 
 glorious delusion — The reclaimed drunkard — Some rich fools 398-406 
 
 BOOKS. 
 
 Paul in Ephesus — A big bonfire of bad books — A great agency for good or bad— The printing-press — 
 Pernicious literature filling our jails and poor-houses — The tree of life and of death — Books that are 
 good — Baleful novels — The truly great novelists — Moral and physical effect — A woman who devotes 
 her time to novels — Great evils from small causes — Torn by a leopard— Corrupting the imagination 
 — A terrible curse — The clock strikes midnight — A spectre of the night — Make a bonfire of bad books, 407-416 
 
 PILLARS OF SMOKE. 
 
 The Architecture of the Smoke — Beautiful comparisons — Martyrdoms and persecutions— Catholics and 
 Protestants alike practise inhumanities — Intolerance of both — Other persecutions — Horrible atrocities 
 in the name of religion — Groans of the martyrs — Has persecution ceased? — A complaint from the 
 theatres — A terrible vengeance — A beautiful symbol— The gates of the church — The smoke of peace 
 — Lincoln's wise proposition — The horrors of war — Down with Moloch— Burning of the world, . . 417-429 
 
 HEROES OF THE SEA. 
 Behold the Ships — Our war vessels — Memorable sea fights — The neglected sailor — The fight of Lepanto 
 — Battle of Actium — And of Salamis — Wonderful things accomplished during our late war— Deeds of 
 naval heroes — The ocean cemetery — From picturesque display to death— Sinking of the Weehawken 
 — Keep your flag flying — Four years of martyrdom — A review of three great conflicts — Epigrammatic 
 messages — Death of Farragut — Conversion of Admiral Foote 43°"439 
 
 WARS OF THE AGES. 
 Military Science Set forth in the Bible— Early weapons of warfare— Fighting from the backs of elephants 
 — Armed chariots — The noise of advancing hosts — Foreign nations jealous of us — A sacrifice for my 
 country — Contrast 1862 with 1888 — The " Star-Spangled Banner " and "Way Down South in Dixie " 
 — War contrasted with peace — The Statue of Liberty — The rivalry of commerce — Off for the war — 
 Thrilling scenes and heart-burnings — Thanksgiving day in camp — News from the battle — Harrowing 
 sobs and agonies — Glorious contrasts — The dove of peace — Progress in North and South — Buried 
 heroes — The number that have fallen in battle, 44° '45 2 
 
CONTENTS. xiii 
 
 A MIGHTY HUNTER. page 
 
 Hunting as a Sport — Formerly it was to destroy dangerous wild beasts — Nimrod, the mighty hunter — An 
 affecting story — Archers of olden times — Battles fought with the long bow — Arrows from wood of the 
 cross — In the armory of the Earl of Pembroke — The men who have bravely faced danger — The mon- 
 ster of intemperance — The Church of God — The Bengal tiger of drunkenness — Great tun of Heidel- 
 berg — A death bed repentance — A singular vision — Visited by the spirit of his dead mother — An 
 inexpressibly sad scene — Five acts of a tragedy — A grand hunt in the India jungles — Domitian's 
 skill as an archer — The sinner's death-trap — Roland the trumpeter — A marvellous tomb, 453-46) 
 
 FORGIVENESS. 
 
 Pillow of the Dying Day — Glorious sunset — Life's exasperations — Misrepresentations and persecutions — 
 An anecdote of Henderson — A faith cure — A boy whose vitals were eaten by a fox — Vindictiveness of 
 Nebuchadnezzar's son — Murder of the young princes — Shakespeare's genius — Magnanimity of Aris- 
 tippus — The duty — Ruins of Pompeii — A child's trustfulness in its father — A provider and defender — 
 Mohammed's idea of power — The clock of earthly existence — The sunset of earth is the sunrise of 
 heaven, 462-470 
 
 THE BLACK GIANT. 
 
 Easter Mornings of the World — The royal court of the Sabbaths— The black giant — Invading every 
 domicile with the pestilence of death — Christ the good Physician — The abolition of death — At a king's 
 banquet — Reconstruction of the body — Cremation may become necessary — God shall raise the dead — 
 Resurrection of seed life — Seeds from the mummy pits of Egypt — The apparent death and resurrec- 
 tion of Rev. Win. Tenneut — Evidence of a final resurrection — The Olympic games — Meeting of body 
 and soul — A cruel heathen — Emptied graves 471-480 
 
 PALACES OF SPLENDOR. 
 
 The Church of Notre Dame — Magnificent relics there preserved — Jewelled raiment of kings and queens — 
 The odors of Christ's garments — Exquisite comparisons — Ivory palaces — Solomon's splendors — Heal- 
 ing all ills —Claiming the flowers of earth for transplanting in the eternal garden — Open your gates 
 for a new soul to come in 481-487 
 
 • SECRET SOCIETIES. 
 
 " Discover not a Secret to Another " — Why Solomon gave this injunction — People who can't keep their 
 mouths closed — Gossip in Solomon's household — Effects of a secret divulged and of a secret kept — 
 Associations for goodly purposes commended— The necessity of secrecy — Resistance to monopoly — 
 Mary, Queen of Scots — Good accomplished by secret societies — Sacrificing the home — Ruined by 
 social excesses — The two roads — A rope that reaches to heaven 488-497 
 
 A STAIN ON THE ESCUTCHEON. 
 
 National Parties — Need of an Anti-Mormon policy — The great lazaretto in the West — Recruited from 
 foreign shores — The demand of the age — Extirpation bv the sword recommended — Bigamy on a 
 colossal scale — Inducing a laxity in the marital relation— Divorce made easy — Protect the emigrants — 
 Intermarriage of nationalities — -The Constitution and the Bible to be studied — A recognition of God — 
 Anarchy condemned — No dependence in political promises — Loyalty to God — The voice of prayer — 
 A handclasp round the world 498-5o8> 
 
 RESPONSIBILITY OF RULERS. 
 
 Baseness of Henry YIII. — The sinners of the world enthroned — Our land blessed with good men — David 
 reproved by Nathan — Incompetency of officials — Ignorance elevated to place — Drunkenness in the 
 halls of legislation — Slain by strong drink — Examples of the evils that have come upon our country 
 through intoxication — A cry from the land — God's indignation — Bribery and corruption — How bills 
 are passed — Revolution ahead — Your duty to your country — God save the United States ! .... 509-517 
 
 GOD'S CIRCLE. 
 
 The Universe Made on the Plan of a Circle — Shapes in nature — Greatness of the past — Noah's ark — 
 Centuries behind old artists — Relics from an exhumed English city — The world swinging in a circle 
 — Ezekiel's wheel — The mutations of time — Building of the pyramids — Effects of goodly influence 
 never destroyed — Thy sins will discover you — Disrespect to parents — A shocking illustration — Influ- 
 ence of Voltaire and Marat — A glad theory — Christ the centre of the circle 518-52; 
 
 A PURPOSELESS LIFE. 
 
 Idolatry of the Ancients — He feedeth on ashes — Lady Jane Grey and other unfortunates — The vanity of 
 riches — The voluptuaries of history — A wasted life — Infidelity — The hunger of restlessness — What is 
 wealth ? — Help cometh not from this world — Anecdote of a rich merchant — The faithful watch-dog — 
 The end of the world — The confiding murderer, 528-536 
 
 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 re- 
 claimed — 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 
 
 Lraui s 1 
 
h i MiAffl i MiM ii riiiiiliiii 
 
 IL4AJETMn©NS 
 
 " . ■,....- .....±.-y., V^lU I .'.P,.^, #fa l ' I j lll lJII, f ..MII I jl ll lK III HIII IIi pjl ' III I I MI 
 
 fiyffw i i | w"F g»g 
 
 i. Presentation Plate in Colors. 44. 
 
 2. Frontispiece, The Pathway of Life. 45. 
 
 (Colored Plate.) 46. 
 
 3. Cradled Amid Whispering Flowers, . . . PAGE 18 47. 
 
 4. A Gentle Wafting tp Immortal Life, .... 22 48. 
 
 5. Easter Morning 23 49. 
 
 6. "Rose of Sharon and Lily of the Valley," . . 24 50. 
 
 7. Morning of the Resurrection," 25 51. 
 
 8. Tail Piece 26 52. 
 
 9. Harvest Time, 28 53. 
 
 to. The Christian Martyr 29 54. 
 
 II. Mary Anointing the Feet of Jesus, 32 55. 
 
 :2. The Entombment, 33 56. 
 
 13. Luther at the Diet of Worms, 35 57. 
 
 14. A Victim to Unrequited Love 37 58. 
 
 15. Death of Miss Langdon, 40 59. 
 
 16. Dead for Our Transgressions 41 
 
 17. The Charge for Glory, .... 43 60. 
 
 18. The Angel's Whisper 45 61. 
 
 19. Perishableness 47 62. 
 
 20. Night's Swift Dragons 50 63. 
 
 21. America, 52 64. 
 
 22. A Dirge in the Desert, 53 65. 
 
 23. Landing of the Romans 54 66. 
 
 24. Kingdom of the Blessed 56 67. 
 
 25. Michael Hurling Lucifer cit of Heaven, . . 58 68. 
 
 26. The Last Dream 59 69. 
 
 27. Humble Fare Eaten in Sweet Content, ... 62 
 
 28. Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel 63 70. 
 
 29. "The World's Sorrows Laid at Jesus' 71. 
 
 Feet." (Colored Plate.) 64 72. 
 
 30. Napoleon's Retreat, 64 73. 
 
 31. Death of Queen Elizabeth 66 74. 
 
 32. Works of Christopher Wren, 67 75. 
 
 33. A Threshing Floor, 68 76. 
 
 34. Vagabond in the Drawing Room, 71 77. 
 
 35- Vagabond in the Street, 71 78. 
 
 36. The Parting — Apples of Ashes 73 79. 
 
 37. Milton Dictating Paradise Lost, 75 80. 
 
 38. A Romantic Girl, 77 81. 
 
 39. Idleness, 79 82. 
 
 40. "Woman, Behold Thy Son," 80 83. 
 
 41. Abigail Bringing Provisions to David 83 84. 
 
 42. Preparing the Bride 84 85. 
 
 43. Burns and Highland Mary 85 86. 
 
 (xiv) 
 
 Avarice and Love page 86 
 
 Wedded and Broken-Hearted 88 
 
 The Ducal Palace 90 
 
 Cleopatra Before Caesar, 92 
 
 Jephthah's Daughter 95 
 
 The Madness of Van der Goes, 97 
 
 A Broken Vow 99 
 
 Jane Waring Receiving Swift's Message, . . 101 
 
 The Step-Mother, 103 
 
 Match-Making in Early Days 104 
 
 Sick and Neglected, 106 
 
 The Rescue, 107 
 
 A Fair Scythian no 
 
 From a Dude to a Drunkard in 
 
 Head-Dress Fashions in Fifteenth Century, . 112 
 Shakespeare Supported by Comedy and 
 
 Tragedy, 113 
 
 In Memoriam of Sarah Comstock 1 14 
 
 The Feast of Ahasuerus, 117 
 
 Esther Receiving the Sceptre 118 
 
 Meeting of the School Trustees 120 
 
 The Lesson, 122 
 
 Mrs. Siddons as the Muse of Tragedy, . . . 124 
 
 Victims of the French Revolution, » . . . . 125 
 
 Vashti, the Outcast, 126 
 
 The Guardian Angel, 12? 
 
 Jesus the Healer op All Ills. (Colored 
 
 Plate.) 12b 
 
 Shushan, in the Time of Ahasuerus, . . . . I2r. 
 
 In Naboth's Vineyard, 13) 
 
 Judith 134 
 
 Calpurnia, 135 
 
 Luther in the Midst of his Family, 137 
 
 The Politician in Retirement, 138 
 
 The First Step 140 
 
 Execution of Joan d' Arc, 142 
 
 Catharine Assuming the Crown, 144 
 
 Little Mischief and his Teacher 145 
 
 Napoleon Divorcing Josephine, 147 
 
 A Broken Heart in a Gilded Palace 149 
 
 The Old Homestead, 150 
 
 The Empty Place, 151 
 
 Wounded for his Country, 153 
 
 Face and Form of Loveliness, 154 
 
 The Sea Beach Watchers, 156 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 XV 
 
 87. Grandmother, page 158 
 
 88. Talking over Old Times, 159 
 
 89. The Last Voyage, 160 
 
 90. Visiting the Sick, 161 
 
 91. The Guiding Angel 163 
 
 92. How Far Yet? 165 
 
 93. Grandmother in Heaven, 166 
 
 94. A Song without Words, 169 
 
 95. Slumber Song 170 
 
 96. Sung to Sleep 171 
 
 97. The Old Man's Song, 173 
 
 98. Destruction of the Babes, 175 
 
 99. Henry V. at Agiucourt, 176 
 
 100. A Young Man of the World 179 
 
 101. Tough Customers 181 
 
 102. A Cloud on his Brow, 183 
 
 103. The Secret of a Bad Habit 185 
 
 104. The Storm Child 188 
 
 105. Aurora 189 
 
 106. Attila, King of the Huns, 191 
 
 107. Siege of Aquileia, 192 
 
 108. Charioteers, 194 
 
 109. Nebuchadnezzar's Palace, 196 
 
 no. The Goddess of Justice, 197 
 
 Hi. The First Cradle 199 
 
 112. Joseph's Coat Brought to Jacob, 200 
 
 113. The Prodigal Son, 201 
 
 114. Death-Bed of Copernicus, 202 
 
 115. The Jealous Sisters, 205 
 
 116. The Jealous Child, 206 
 
 117. The Duel 207 
 
 118. Hard Times, 209 
 
 119. Tail Piece, 210 
 
 120. The Little Orphan's Dream, 212 
 
 131. Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow 214 
 
 122. The Reaper and the Flowers, 215 
 
 123. The Victor, 216 
 
 124. The Sailor's Return, 218 
 
 125. The Crown of Thorns, 219 
 
 126. Daedalus and Icarus, 221 
 
 127. Clytemnestra, 222 
 
 128. Noble Womanhood, 224 
 
 129. The Hour of Retribution, 226 
 
 130. Motherless, 227 
 
 131. Grief, 228 
 
 132. The Fall of Adam, 229 
 
 133. The Deluge, 230 
 
 134. Tail Piece, , 231 
 
 135. Fame, 233 
 
 136. Bringing Home the Lost Sheep 234 
 
 137. Feeding the Multitude 235 
 
 138. The Empty Saddle, 237 
 
 139. Reciting Incidents of his Valor 238 
 
 140. The Last Journey, 240 
 
 141. The Artist in the Palace, 241 
 
 142. Tail Piece, 242 
 
 143. Jolly Companions, 244 
 
 144. Daniel Refusing the King's Wine 245 
 
 145. In the Brave Days of Old, 247 
 
 146. Queen Elizabeth and the French Ambassadors, 248 
 147- Knox before the Court of Mary Stuart, . . . 250 
 
 90. 
 
 91. 
 92. 
 93- 
 94- 
 95- 
 96. 
 
 97- 
 yS. 
 
 99- 
 200. 
 201. 
 202. 
 203. 
 204. 
 205. 
 206. 
 207. 
 
 Scourging of Jesus pace 252 
 
 The Call of Matthew, 253 
 
 Tail Piece 255 
 
 Husbandly Sympathy, 257 
 
 Before Monterey, 258 
 
 The Voice of Prayer, 260 
 
 " Close the Hours with Prayer, " 261 
 
 The Three Angels, . . . 263 
 
 Blessed are the Pure in Heart 265 
 
 Niobe, 266 
 
 A Feast of Cherries 269 
 
 Health and Whispering Love, 272 
 
 Cleansing the Leper, 274 
 
 Reverence, 275 
 
 Peace, Be Still 277 
 
 The Angel of the Sepulchre 278 
 
 Tail Piece, 279 
 
 Crucified for the Sins of the World. 
 
 {Colored Plate.) 280 
 
 Paul Being Taken to Rome, 281 
 
 Paul Shipwrecked, 282 
 
 Saved on Pieces of the Ship, 283 
 
 The Sea Shall Give up the Dead, 284 
 
 A Young Hero 285 
 
 A Cry from the Sea 288 
 
 Ramsgate Pier Head, 289 
 
 The Sistine Madonna, 292 
 
 The Children's Pets, 293 
 
 An Interesting Story, 295 
 
 Jesus, the Carpenter's Son 297 
 
 The Young Farmer, 299 
 
 Mother, 300 
 
 Samson Serving the Philistines 303 
 
 Music in the Household 305 
 
 Highlanders at Waterloo 306 
 
 The Rural Dancing Master, 30S 
 
 Caught Tripping 309 
 
 The Queen's Shilling 311 
 
 Moravians at their Devotions, 312 
 
 Virginius Killing his Daughter, 314 
 
 Tail Piece, 315 
 
 The First Step '. 317 
 
 Maria Theresa and the Infant King, .... 318 
 
 Goddess of the Barnyard, 319 
 
 The Chimney Sweep, 320 
 
 The Reckless Pupil, 322 
 
 The Mischief-Maker 324 
 
 The Rival Grandfathers 326 
 
 "Our Father which Art in Heaven," .... 328 
 
 " Give us this Day our Daily Bread," .... 329 
 
 Early at the Cross, 330 
 
 The Ministering Angels, 333 
 
 Christ Teaching by the Seaside 335 
 
 Tower of London, 337 
 
 The Nestlings 339 
 
 The Trumpeter, 340 
 
 Morning of the World, 342 
 
 A Poem of Love, 343 
 
 The Genius of Fable, 344 
 
 The Boat Song 346 
 
 Workshop of a Philosopher, 348 
 
XVI 
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 208. Song of the Swan, page 350 
 
 209. At the Cross, 351 
 
 210. The Forbidden Book 354 
 
 2H. The Novel Reader, 355 
 
 212. After the Feast 357 
 
 213. The Gamesters, 358 
 
 214. Boadicea 360 
 
 215. Funeral Pyre, 362 
 
 216. Tail Piece, 363 
 
 217. The Philanthropy of Elizabeth Fry, .... 365 
 
 218. Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, 366 
 
 219. The Court Fool 3 6 7 
 
 220. A Gentleman of the Highway, 369 
 
 221. Execution of Lord Hastings, . 370 
 
 222. Tail Piece 371 
 
 223. The Queen of Sympathy 373 
 
 224. Warrior and Wounded Youth 374 
 
 225. Motherless, 376 
 
 226. The Widower 378 
 
 227. Confidence, 38J 
 
 228. Tail Piece 382 
 
 229. Silver and Gold, 384 
 
 230. The Holy Sign, 385 
 
 231. The Flower Gatherer, 386 
 
 232. Where the Woods Lift their Heads in Praise, 3S8 
 
 233. The Harvest of the Sea 390 
 
 234. Persecution oe Christians at Rome by 
 
 Nero. {Colored Plate.) ■ . . 392 
 
 235. The Huguenot, 393 
 
 236. The Forgiver of Sin, 395 
 
 237. The Sylvan Fields, 396 
 
 238. A Witch, 399 
 
 239. " Is it Nothing to You ?" 401 
 
 240. Safe while Jesus Watches, 403 
 
 241. Stoning of Stephen, 405 
 
 242. Tail Piece, 406 
 
 243. " What Shall My Daughter Read ?" 408 
 
 244. The Wayward Daughter, 410 
 
 245. Ulysses Taunting Polyphemus, 412 
 
 246. Ill Gotten Gains, 415 
 
 247. Tail Piece 416 
 
 248. Vatican Library, 418 
 
 249. Alva's Last Ride through Amsterdam, . . . 420 
 
 250. Martyrdom of St. Eulalia 422 
 
 251. The Christian Martyr, 424 
 
 252. At the Golden Gate 425 
 
 253. Bad News from the Sea 427 
 
 254. Crucifixion of St. Peter, 428 
 
 255. Ship Ahoy ! 431 
 
 256. Battle of Lepanto 432 
 
 257. Battle of Trafalgar 434 
 
 258. Cruisers after the Battle, 436 
 
 259. Crossing the Bar, 438 
 
 260. Siege of Tyre 441 
 
 261. Chivalry PAGE 442 
 
 262. War, : . . 444 
 
 263. The Soldier's Wife, 446 
 
 264. Peace 448 
 
 265. War for the Holy Land 450 
 
 266. Tail Piece 452 
 
 267. On the Trail, 454 
 
 268. A Modern Club Room, 456 
 
 269. The Two Roads 458 
 
 270. The Young Hunter, 460 
 
 271. Last Day of Sir Thomas More 463 
 
 272. The Young Princes in the Tower, 465 
 
 273. After the Battle of Bosworth, 467 
 
 274. Cromwell at the Deathbed of his Daughter, . 469 
 
 275. The Riot of Battle, 472 
 
 276. Capture of the Bastile, 474 
 
 277. Under the Greenwood Tree 476 
 
 278. The Angel of the Resurrection, 478 
 
 279. Catharine before the Ecclesiastical Court, . . 482 
 
 280. "He was Altogether Lovely," 484 
 
 281. Grotto in the Luxembourg Garden 485 
 
 282. "It is the Lord!" 486 
 
 283. Tail Piece 4S7 
 
 284. The Gossips, 489 
 
 285. Taking up a Collection 491 
 
 286. An Old-fashioned Home, 494 
 
 287. The Two Grandmothers 495 
 
 288. Tail Piece, 49S 
 
 2S9. A Mormon Wife Cast out, 500 
 
 290. The Emigrants 502 
 
 291. The Swine Herd 504 
 
 292. Trust in God 505 
 
 293. The Dream of Joy, 507 
 
 294. Death of Ananias 510 
 
 295. Christianity and the Dragon, 511 
 
 296. The Cross oe Prayer. (Colored Plate.') . 512 
 
 297. Onward, in the Name of Christ 513 
 
 298. Purified Through Fire, • 515 
 
 299. Decoration Day 516 
 
 300. The Circle of Peace, 519 
 
 301. The Family Circle, 520 
 
 302. The Curve, 522 
 
 303. The Circle Complete, 524 
 
 304. Last Toilet of Charlotte Corday, 525 
 
 305. Roman Amphitheatre, 526 
 
 306. Death Summons to Lady Jane Grey 529 
 
 307. The Tree is Known by its Fruits, 531 
 
 308. The Faithful Servant, 533 
 
 309. Home at Last 535 
 
 310. Tail Piece, 536 
 
 311. The Song of Miriam, 539 
 
 312. John in the Wilderness, 540 
 
 313. The Young Hopeful, . .- 542 
 
 314. Good-Night 544 
 
The Pathway of Life. 
 
 ©aster JHormng. 
 
 "the angels of the grass." 
 
 IBLICAL, 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. 
 
 Csesar 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 astronomy, 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 whis- 
 per of the white lips of the Eastern and of the red lips of the American lily. 
 
 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. 
 
 to). 
 
(i8) 
 
 A MOTHERS INFLUENCE. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 19 
 
 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, seems to address us, saying : " Consider the lilies, con- 
 sider the azalias, 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 sentimentalism, or with sophomoric vaporing, but for 
 grand and practical and everyday, 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 the sunshine, and God has apparelled 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 Avomen of worldly anxieties, take this message home with you. 
 How long has God taken care of you? Quarter of the journey 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 which 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 Luther 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 traveller and explorer, had his life saved by 
 a flower. He sank down in the desert to die, but seeing a flower near by, it 
 suggested God's merciful care, and he got up with new courage and travelled 
 on to safety. 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 asking me the question: What are flowers good for? I 
 respond, They are good for the bridal day. The bride must have them on her 
 
20 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 brow and she must have them in her hand. The marriage altar must be 
 covered with them. A wedding without flowers would be as inappropriate as 
 a wedding 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 wedded life before they have begun, arranges all for the best, so that 
 flowers in almost all cases are appropriate for the marriage day. The diver- 
 gences 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 anniversary 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 comes throb- 
 bing through the air ; and vanished faces reappear, and right hands are joined, 
 and a manly voice promises : " I will for better or for worse," and the wed- 
 ding 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. 
 
 What a contrast between a grave in a country church-yard, with the fence 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 21 
 
 broken down and the tombstone aslant, and the neighboring cattle browsing 
 amid the mullein stalks and the Canada thistle, and a June morning in Green- 
 wood, 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 embroi- 
 dered blanket. We want Old Mortality with his chisel to go through the 
 grave-yards 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 you 
 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 excursions and see the flowers which you have 
 planted in affectionate remembrance 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 gospel sermon or Christian deed to bring a sprig 
 of arbutus or a handful of China-asters. 
 
 It was left for modern times to spell respect for the departed and comfort 
 for the living in letters of floral gospel. Pillows of flowers meaning rest for 
 the pilgrim who has got to the end of his journey. Anchor of flowers, sug- 
 gesting 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 up 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 Scriptural flora? The 
 Bible is an arboretum, it is a divine conservatory, it is an herbarium of exqui- 
 site beauty. If you want to illustrate the brevity of the brightest human life, 
 you will quote from Job: "A man cometh forth as a flower and is cut down;" 
 
I 
 
 
 I 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 23 
 
 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 apostle: "As the flower of the grass, so he 
 passeth away." 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 ordi- 
 nance. 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 their 
 departing and as- 
 cending spirits. 
 
 Oh, yes ! flowers 
 are almost human. 
 Botanists tell us that 
 flowers breathe, they 
 take nourishment, 
 they eat, they drink. 
 They are sensitive. 
 They have their likes 
 and dislikes. They 
 sleep, they w ke. 
 They live in £ al- 
 lies. They havv L h-' 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 prosper, we spread abroad, we die, as the flower — as the 
 
 flower! 
 
 Change and decaj' on all around I see ; 
 O Thou who ehangest not, abide with 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, humble like the other. Like both, appropriate for the sad who want 
 
 EASTER MORNING. 
 
24 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 sympathizers, and for the rejoicing who want banqueters. Hovering over the 
 marriage ceremony like a wedding bell, or folded like a chaplet on the pulse- 
 less 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 in- 
 cense. The women car- 
 fe*2 ried spices to the tomb 
 of Christ, and they drop- 
 ped 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, 
 however architecturally grand the necropolis, however beautifully parterred the 
 family grounds, we want them all broken up by the Lord 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 fatigues — 
 it must come up. 
 
 "THE ROSE OF SHARON AND THE LILY OF THE VALLEYS." 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 25 
 
 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 
 beautiful 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 you with the thought 
 of resurrection. 
 
 When Lord Nel- 
 son was buried in 
 St. Paul's Cathedral 
 in London, the heart 
 of all England was 
 stirred. The proces- 
 sion passed on amid 
 the sobbing of a na- 
 tion. 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 Cathe- 
 dral, these thirty 
 trumpeters gave one 
 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 
 
 morning OF THE resurrection. — From a Painting by Rubens. 
 
 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, thunder- 
 ous reverberating and resurrectionary blast. Look ! Look ! They rise ! The 
 •dead! The dead! Some coming forth from the family vault; some from the 
 
26 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 city cemetery ; some from trie 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 assorting 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 nov, 
 for the procession of reconstructed humanity ! 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 
 the 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. 
 
Blessings in &fcbcrsitg. 
 
 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 he left for the poor who 
 
 might happen to come along that way. If there were 
 
 handfuls 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 beau- 
 tiful, should tan her cheeks and blister her hands in the har- 
 vest 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 sheaves. Ah, that was an eventful da}' ! 
 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 native 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 char- 
 acter. 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, and Dr. Young the better poet, and O'Connell the better 
 
 (27) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 29 
 
 orator, and Bishop Hall the better preacher, and Havelock the better soldier, 
 and Kitto the better encyclopaedist, 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 very brill 
 iant man: "Why is it that your pastor, so very brilliant, seems to have so 
 little heart and tenderness 
 in his sermons?" 
 
 "Well," he repli-d 
 " 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 ten- 
 derness 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 be- 
 reavement come to that 
 man, and he sits down at 
 an instrument, 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 tearf.u eye he looks at the dying child, and- 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN MARTYR. 
 
 In the early age of the Church, and particularly during the reign of Nero, the Christians of 
 Rome were thrown into an Amphitheatre with hungry tigeis and lions, to be devoured, while 
 others were subjected to even a more horrible fate. 
 
30 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 M. 
 
 says: "Oh, how this reminds me of my Charlie!" Trouble, the great educa- 
 tor. 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 Iiippocrene 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 Melita. God crowns His children amid 
 the howling of wild beasts and the chopping of blood-splashed guillotine and 
 the crackling fires of martyrdom. It took the persecutions of Marcus Aurelius 
 to develop Polycarp and Justin Martyr. It took the world's anathema to de- 
 velop Martin Luther. It took all the hostilities against the Scotch Coven- 
 anters 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 the desolate New Eng- 
 land 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 past national distresses 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, and she 
 got old and poor, she was not troubled 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 
 
^ 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 31 
 
 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 that pestered as Eliphaz, the 
 Temanite, and Bildad, the Shuhite, and Zophar, the Naamathite. 
 
 Life often seems to be a mere game, where the successful player pulls 
 down all the other men into his own lap. Let 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 building, which go down under some moral exposure, 
 as a vast temple is consumed by the touch of a sulphurous match. 
 
 In this world, so full of heartlessness and hypocrisy, 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 Hushai ; the Jews had such a friend in Mordecai, 
 who never forgot their cause ; Paul had such a friend in Onesiphorus, who 
 visited him in jail ; Christ had such a friend in 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 will 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 
 darkness 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 away from her father's house, to go 
 off with a poor old woman toward the land of Judah ! They won'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 Glory. 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 convic- 
 tion — 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 
 harvest-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." ' 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 33 
 
 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 
 
 THE ENTOMBMENT. 
 
 will come. On the tip-top of 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 them, nor any heat ; for the Lamb which 
 is in the midst of the throne shall lead them to living fountains of waters : 
 and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." 
 
 It was very hard for Noah to endure the scoffing of the people in his day, 
 3 
 
34 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 disappeared like the backs of sea-monsters, 
 and the elements, 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, hounded 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. 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 conies 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 celestial 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 inci- 
 dent with a thrill of unspeakable 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 meet- 
 ing — you did not think of it again for a long while ; 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 instru- 
 ment, 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. 
 
(35) 
 
36 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. • 
 
 It seemed to be a matter of no importance that Luther found a Bible in 
 a monastery ; 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 very 
 bad man by the name of Richard Baxter. He picked up the tract and read 
 it, and it was the means of his salvation. 
 
 In after-days that man wrote a book, called " The Call to the Uncon- 
 verted," that was the means of bringing a multitude to God, among others 
 Philip Doddridge. Philip Doddridge wrote a book, called " The Rise and 
 Progress of Religion," which has brought thousands and tens of thousands 
 into the kingdom of God, and among others the great Wilberforce. Wilber- 
 force wrote a book, called "A Practical View of Christianity," which was the 
 means of bringing a great multitude to Christ, among others Leigh Rich- 
 mond. Leigh Richmond wrote a tract, called " The Dairyman's Daughter," 
 which h;is been the means of the salvation of uncounted multitudes. And 
 that ti 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 industry. 
 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 societv, of course, have changed, and without the 
 hardships and exposure to which Ruth was subjected, every intelligent woman 
 will find something to do. 
 
 I know there is a sickly sentimentality on this subject. In some families 
 there are persons of no practical service to the household or community ; and 
 thongh 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 barley 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 house ; but when the sharp winter 
 of misfortune comes, what of these butterflies ? Persons under indulgent 
 
A VICTIM TO UNREQUITED LOVE. 
 
 (37) 
 
38 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 are so awkward, things so impolite, 
 They're elegantly pained from morning till night. 
 
 Through that gate of indolence how many men and women have marched^ 
 useless on earth, to a destroyed eternity ! Spiuola 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 
 l>e alleviated, so much darkness to be enlightened, and so many burdens to be 
 tarried, that there is any person who cannot find anything to 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 
 imid manuscript 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 physician, he 
 was waiting for the door of the sick room to open. Yet how many there are 
 in this day who say they are so busy they have no time for mental or spiri- 
 tual improvement ; the great duties of life cross the field like strong reapers- 
 and carry off all the hours, and there is only here and there a fragment left 
 chat is not worth gleaning. Ah, my friends, you could go into the busiest 
 day and busiest week of your life and find golden opportunities, which, gath- 
 ered, 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 few moments left worth the gleaning. Now, Ruth, to the 
 field ! May each one have a measure full and running over ! O you gleaners, 
 to the field ! And if there be in your household an aged one or a sick rela- 
 tive 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, bearing 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 ! 
 
- 
 
 5Ei)e lvalue of Bereavements. 
 
 SORROW SENT TO QUICKEN OUR APPRECIATION. 
 
 HE brigands of Jerusalem had done their work. It 
 was almost sundown, and Jesus was dying. Persons 
 in crucifixion often lingered on from day to day — 
 crying, begging, cursing; but Christ had been ex- 
 hausted by years of maltreatment. Pillowless, poorly 
 fed, flogged — as bent over and tied to a low post, His 
 bare back was 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 Jerusalem used to have a fund of money with 
 which they provided wine for those people who died in cruci- 
 fixion — 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 
 afterward 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 
 January, looking across their table, they see all their family present. Health 
 *-ubicund. Skies flamboyant. Days resilient. But in a great many cases there 
 are not so many sugars as acids. The annoyances, and the vexations, and the 
 
 (39) 
 
(4o) 
 
 death OF miss langdon. — From the Painting by Wm. Fred. Yeames. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 4i 
 
 disappointments 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, gnawing its strength away ; and there is a weak spot in every 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 
 by his first name, and addressed him as a servant, crying : " George, ring the 
 bell !" Miss Langdon, 
 honored all the world 
 over for her poetical ge- 
 nius, 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 
 painting is hung up for 
 a tavern sign. Hogarth 
 cannot sell his best paint- 
 ing, except through a 
 raffle. Andrew Delsart 
 makes the great fresco 
 in the Church of the An- 
 nunciation, 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 sympa- 
 thize 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 tmderstand the distress and the straits of those 
 
 DEAD FOR OUR TRANSGRESSIONS. 
 (From a handkerchief painttd by Gabriel Max.) 
 
 This picture has been regarded by many simple people as being of miraculous origin, a superstition 
 strengthened by a Irick 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. 
 
42 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 especial 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 with 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 cor- 
 diality will never come back. Now, I commend to all such the sympathy of a 
 betrayed 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 who have not 
 seen a well day for many years. By keeping out of draughts, and by care- 
 fully studying dietetics, you continue to this time; but oh, the headaches, and 
 the sideaches, 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 charac- 
 terized you, it is now only with great effort that you keep away from irrita- 
 bility and sharp retort. Difficulties 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 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. 
 
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 (43) 
 
44 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 THE VANITY OP WEALTH AND GENIUS. 
 
 There is also the sourness of poverty. Your income does not meet your 
 outgoings, and that always gives an honest man anxiety. There is no sign 
 of destitution about you — pleasant appearance and a cheerful home for you ; 
 but God only knows what a time you have had to manage your 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 you 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 you have lost your pocketbook, or some creditor has failed, and 
 you are thrown abeam end. Well, brother, you are in glorious company. 
 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 pronounced 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 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 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." Oh, it is too still now. You lost your patieuce 
 when the tops and the strings and the shells were left amid the floor, but oli t 
 you would be willing to have the trinkets scattered all over the floor again, 
 
- 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 45 
 
 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 
 
 THE ANGEL'S WHISPER. 
 
 bereavement. Christ knows what it is to go through the house missing a 
 familiar inmate. Christ knows what it is to see an unoccupied place at the 
 table. Were there not four of them — Mary, and Martha, and Christ, and 
 Lazarus ? 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 
 
46 ' THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 anticipa- 
 tion. I cannot say. 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 steeps of heaven ; 
 but I suppose we will have to go like the preceding 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 you say : " I don't want to break 
 out from my present associations. It is so chill} 7 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 by 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 world, of the beauty of which He was 
 more appreciative than we ever could be. He knows the exquisiteness of the 
 phosphorescence of the sea; He trod it. He knows the glories of the mid- 
 night heavens, for they were the spangled canopy of His wilderness pillow. 
 He knows about the lilies : He twisted them into His sermon. 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 icy or fiery martyr- 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 47 
 
 dom. While 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 
 
 perish ableness.— Painted by the Crown Princess of Germany. 
 
 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, 
 
48 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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, you may behold the glorious constellation of a 
 Saviour's mercy and a Saviour's love. Oh ! my 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 burdens. 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 try 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 
 disaster. 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. 
 
 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 sub- 
 ject 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 mercy 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 sun- 
 shine of this triumphant gospel. 
 
Christ's l&mgtiom on (Bartf). 
 
 THE DAY OF FINAL REWARD. 
 
 HERE persecutors used to let out the half-starved 
 lions to eat up Christians in the Colosseum at 
 Rome, there is now planted the figure of a cross. 
 And I rejoice to know that the transverse piece 
 of wood nailed to an upright piece has become 
 the symbol, not more of suffering than of vic- 
 tory. It is of Christ the Conqueror that I wish 
 to speak. As a kingly warrior, having sub- 
 ► \v^^^^b^^% ,/• k dued an empire, might divide the palaces, and 
 
 mansions, and cities, and valleys, and moun- 
 tains among his officers, so Christ is going to divide 
 up all the earth and all the heavens among His peo- 
 ple, 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 possibility is 
 that after a few more hundred brave lives are dashed out among the icebergs, 
 that great refrigerator, the polar region, will be given uprto 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 demon- 
 strated 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 fruit- 
 ful 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. Prof. Heer, of Zurich, says the 
 remains of flowers have been found in the Arctic, showing it was like Mexico 
 for climate, and it was found that the Arctic was the mother-region from which 
 all the flowers descended. Prof. Wallace says the remains of all styles of 
 animal life are found in the Arctic, including those animals that can live only 
 
 4 - (49) 
 
(50) 
 
 From the bas-relief by J. G. Lough. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 51 
 
 in warm climates. Now, that Arctic region which has been demonstrated, by 
 flora, and fauna, and geological argument, 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. 
 
 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 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 in a hundred years without artificial help, but is now through 
 such means one great garden, so all the unproductive parts of all the conti- 
 nents will be turned into harvest fields and orchards. A half dozen De Lesseps 
 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 healthiest of regions. The God who wastes 
 nothing, I think, means that this world, from pole to pole, has to come to per- 
 fection 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 many mock 
 terrors have threatened to dash it to pieces. As soon as the earth is com- 
 pleted 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 fulfilment of the New Testa- 
 ment 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 
 insufficiency. > 
 
 WHAT OF CERTAIN BUILDINGS ? 
 
 What, you say, will become of the expensive and elaborate buildings now 
 -devoted to debasing amusements ? They will become schools, art galleries, 
 
(53) 
 
 America.— From the group in marble by John Bell. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 53 
 
 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 Lord'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 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 a dirge in the African desert. — From a Painting by J. N. Neltleship. 
 
 of the States, but the remaining decency of our cities rose up and cancelled 
 the contracts and drove her back from our American stage, a woman fit for 
 neither continent. In the name of Almighty God I take these abominations 
 by the throat. If you think those offenses are to go on forever, you do not 
 know who the Lord is. God will not wait for the day of judgment. All 
 these 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 
 
54 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 
 
 LANDING pF THE ROMANS, UNDER C^fiSAR, IN BRITAIN, B. C. 55. 
 
 to be found on the banks of the Hudson, then Christ will divide up that con- 
 tinent 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 55 
 
 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 promise 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 
 commerce controlled by Christian merchants, and all the authority held by 
 Christian officials, and all the ships commanded by Christian captains, and all 
 the universities under the instruction of Christian professors ; Christian kings. 
 Christian presidents, Christian governors, Christian mayors, Christian common 
 councils. Yet, what a scouring out ! what an upturning ! what a demolition ! 
 what a resurrection must precede this new apportionment ! 
 
 I do not underrate the enemy. Julius Caesar 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 wori- 
 of the world's redemption is going on every minute. Never so many splendid 
 men 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 thousand ! Through the International Series of Sunday- 
 school Lessons 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 advan- 
 tage from that new apportionment." 
 
 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 pos- 
 session 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, and they shall never be driven out. Many of the victors from earth 
 have already got their palaces, and they are pointed out to those newly arrived. 
 Soon after our getting there we will ask to be shown the apostolic residences, 
 and ask where does Paul live, and John, and shown the patriarchal residences 
 
56 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 and shall say : " Where 
 does Abraham live, or 
 Jacob?" and shown the 
 martyr residences and 
 say: "Where does John 
 Huss live, and Ridley?" 
 We will want to see the 
 boulevards where the 
 chariots of conquerors 
 roll. I will want to see 
 the gardens where the 
 princes walk. We will 
 want to see Music Row, 
 hear Handel, and Haydn, 
 and Mozart, and Charles 
 Wesley, and Thomas 
 Hastings, and Bradbury 
 in their heavenly homes, 
 out of whose windows, 
 ever and anon, are rolling 
 some snatch of an earthly 
 oratorio or hymn trans- 
 ported with the composer. 
 We will want to see Re- 
 vival Terrace, where 
 Whitefield, and Nettleton, 
 and Pay son, 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 celes- 
 tial homes yet to be 
 awarded, when Christ to 
 you, and millions of 
 others, shall divide the 
 spoil. What do you want 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 57 
 
 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 your kindred back again ? Go out and meet your 
 father and mother without the staff or the s1,oop, 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 glory 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 for twenty years ; but she was strong in prayer, and she 
 prayed down revival after revival, and pentecost 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 kindness, 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 a crown to 
 the glorified invalid : 
 
 " No, not these ; they are not good enough. But in the jewelled vase at 
 the right-hand side of My throne there is one that I have been preparing for 
 her many a year, and for her every pang I have set an amethyst, and for her 
 
5» 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 S 
 
 MICHAEL HURLING LUCIFER OUT OF HEAVEN. 
 
 every good deed I have set a 
 pearl. Fetch it now and fulfil 
 the promise I gave her long ago 
 in the sick-room : ' Be thou faith- 
 ful unto death, and I will give 
 thee a crown.' " 
 
 But notice that there is only 
 one being in the universe who 
 can and will distribute the tro- 
 phies of earth and heaven. It 
 is the divine warrior, the com- 
 mander-in-chief of the centuries,, 
 the champion of the ages, the 
 universal conqueror, the Son of 
 God — Jesus. Have His friend- 
 ship, and you may defy alL 
 time and all eternity, but with- 
 out it you were a pauper, though 
 you had a universe at your 
 command. We are told in Reve- 
 lation that Jacob's twelve sons 
 were so honored as to have the 
 twelve gates of heaven named 
 after them — over one gate of 
 heaven Naphtali, over another 
 gate of heaven Issachar, over 
 another Dan, over another Gad r 
 over another Zebulun, 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 repen- 
 tant, believing, sworn, consecrated 
 and ransomed followers forever. 
 
 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 fill- 
 
The last dream. — From a Monument by J. Edwards. 
 
 (59) 
 
60 THE PATHWAY. OF LIFE. 
 
 filment of my text, divide the spoil. It was a great day,. when Queen Victoria, 
 in the midst of the Crimean war, distributed medals 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 or 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 Im- 
 perial eagle, and the Turkish medal with its representation of four flags — France, 
 Turkey, England and Sardinia — and beneath it a map of the Crimea spread 
 over a gun-wheel. 
 
 THE FINAL REWARD. 
 
 And what rewards are suggested to all readers of history 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 pre- 
 sence 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 pro- 
 cession were wild beasts from all lands, 1600 gladiators richly clad, wagon- 
 loads of crowns presented by conquered cities ; among the captives, Syrians, 
 Egyptians, Goths, Vandals, Sarmatians, Franks ; and Zenobia, the beautiful 
 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 procession 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 kingdoms of heaven and earth in procession, the 
 armies celestial on white horses, rumbling 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 cry "Halt" to the 
 procession. And not forgetting even the humblest 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. 
 
Stoeet OTontent. 
 
 HOW TO ATTAIN TRUE HAPPINESS. 
 
 I^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, Long 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 circum- 
 stances. 
 
 But the genuine American is not happy unless 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 they 
 are out of town; leaving the door-plate unscoured 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 I 
 My 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 Hebrews: "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 obscurity, 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 
 blessings. 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 appetite 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 Tuileries if with them we had been obliged to take his gout? "Oh," says 
 
 (61) 
 
62 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 with a sunset hung in loops of fire 
 in the heavens ? What is a cascade silent on a canvas compared with a cascade 
 t]iat makes the mountain tremble, its spray ascending like the departed spirit 
 
 THE HUMBLE FARE EATEN IN" SWEET CONTENT. 
 
 •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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 63 
 
 access to a gallery grander than the Louvre or the Luxemburg or the Vatican — 
 the royal gallery of the noonday heavens, the King's gallery of the mid- 
 night sky. 
 
 Yon see people happy 
 and miserable amid all 
 circumstances. In a fam- 
 ily 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 hospital- 
 ity freezing to death in 
 the cheerless parlor. I 
 stopped one day on Broad- 
 way at the head of Wail 
 street, at the foot of Trin- 
 ity Church, to see who 
 seemed the happiest 
 people passing. I judged 
 from their looks the hap- 
 piest people were not 
 those who went down in- 
 to 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 splen- 
 did equipage, for they 
 met a carriage finer than 
 theirc. The happiest per- 
 son in all that crowd, judging from the countenance, was the woman who sat 
 at the apple-stand knitting. X 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. 
 
 A PORTION OF THE CEILING OF THE SIXTINE CHAPEL. 
 
I 
 
 
 * 
 
 I 
 I 
 ■< 
 
 3 
 
 p 
 
 a 
 
 3 
 o 
 
 M 
 
 B 
 
 H 
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 B 
 
 5 
 K 
 
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 (64) 
 
THE WORLDS SORROWS LAID ATJESUS FEET 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 65 
 
 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 Ahithophel, one of the greatest lawyers of Bible times, through fear, 
 of dying, hangs himself. The wealthiest man, forty years ago, in New York, 
 when congratulated over his large estate, 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 minutes of thorough satisfaction. Napoleon I. said: 
 " I turn with disgust from the 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 disadvantageous circumstances, just after the Ocean Monarch had been 
 wrecked in the English Channel, a steamer was cruising along in the dark- 
 ness, when the captain heard a song, a sweet song, coining 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 Chris- 
 tian the scene will 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 presi- 
 dent, and the king, is still as the hand that hardened on the mechanic's ham- 
 mer or the manufacturer's wheel. It does not make any difference now 
 whether there is a plain stone above them from which the traveller 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. 
 5 
 
66 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 In that silent land there are no titles for great men, and there are no 
 rumblings of chariot wheels, and there is never heard the foot of the dance. 
 The Egyptian guano which is thrown on the fields in the East for the enrich- 
 ment 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 
 Egyptian guano. 
 
 have been called 
 
 DEATH OP QUEEN ELIZABETH, 160I. 
 (So passes the greatness ot this world). 
 
 but 
 
 about everything else, but agreeing m 
 passeth away." 
 
 But have all these dignitaries gone ? 
 have been in assemblages where I have 
 
 this 
 
 much worth now 
 of Caesar? Who 
 Who cares now 
 the Amphic- 
 or the laws of 
 
 Of how 
 is the crown 
 bids for it ? 
 anything about 
 tyonic council 
 Lycurgus ? Who trembles now 
 because Xerxes crossed the 
 Hellespont on abridge of boats? 
 Who fears because Nebuchad- 
 nezzar thunders at the gates of 
 Jerusalem ? Who cares now 
 whether or not Cleopatra mar- 
 ries Antony ? Who crouches 
 before Ferdinand, or Boniface, 
 or Alaric? Can Cromwell dis- 
 solve the English Parliament 
 now? Is William, Prince of 
 Orange, King of the Nether- 
 lands? No, no! However 
 much Elizabeth may love the 
 Russian crown, she must pass 
 it to Peter, and Peter to Catha- 
 rine, and Catharine to Paul, 
 and Paul to Alexander, and 
 Alexander to Nicholas. Leo- 
 pold puts the German sceptre 
 into the hand of Joseph, and 
 Philip comes down off the Span- 
 ish throne to let Ferdinand go 
 on. House of Aragon, house 
 of Hapsburg, house of Stuart, 
 house of Bourbon, quarrelling 
 "The fashion of this world 
 
 Can they not be called back? I 
 heard the roll called, and many 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 67 
 
 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 l" 
 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. Lips silent. Hands palsied. Sceptre, pen- 
 cil, pen, sword, put down forever. Why should we struggle for such baubles? 
 
 PRINCIPAL WORKS OF CHRISTOPHER WREN, WITH ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL RISING FROM THE BACKGROUND. 
 
 (From the Painting by C. JR. Cockerell.) 
 
 If your path had been smooth, you would have depended upon your own 
 surefootedness ; but God roughened that path, so you 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 righteous- 
 ness. " 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 tpe 
 
68 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 wind, and the golden 
 grain falls down at the 
 foot of the windmill. 
 After a while, the 
 straw, looking down 
 from the mow npon the 
 golden grain banked 
 up on either side the 
 floor, understands why 
 the farmer beats the 
 wheat-sheaf with the 
 flail. 
 
 Who are those be- 
 fore the throne ? The 
 answer came : " These 
 are they which came 
 out of great tribula- 
 tion, and have washed 
 their robes and made 
 them white in the blood 
 of the Lamb." 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 very 
 midst of the fla_. 2, 
 reached down and 
 picked up one of the 
 fagots that was con- 
 suming him, and kissed 
 it, and said: " Blessed 
 be God for the time 
 when I was bom for 
 this perferment." 
 They who suffer with 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 69 
 
 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 con- 
 tentment the human race is divided into two classes — these who scold and 
 those who get scolded. The carpenter wants to be anything but a car- 
 penter, and the mason anything but a mason, and the banker anything 
 but a banker, and the lawyer anything but a lawyer, and the minister any- 
 thing but a minister, and everybody would be happy if he were only some- 
 body else. The anemone wants to be a sunflower, and the apple orchards 
 throw down their blossoms because they are not 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 can- 
 not fret yourself up; you may fret yourself down. Amid all this grating of 
 tones I strike this string of the gospel harp : " Godliness with contentment 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 sum- 
 mer 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. 
 
3Eo ¥oung Cornell. 
 
 HOW TO FIGHT THE BATTLE OF LIFE ALONE. 
 
 • 
 
 OMAN is a mere adjunct to man, an appendix to the 
 masculine volume, an appendage, a sort of after- 
 thought, something thrown in to make things even 
 — that is the heresy entertained 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 porpoise 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 multi- 
 tudes 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 marriage 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 might be more 
 
 (70) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 7i 
 
 appropriately spread a table covered with apples of Sodom, which 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 wp in 
 the quiet of a dove-cote, and I will 
 bring the vulture to the same liking 
 by marrying him." So one day, 
 after the vulture had declared he 
 would give up his carnivorous 
 habits and cease longing for blood 
 
 Mp 
 
 
 
 THE VAGABOND IN THE STREET. 
 
 of flock and herd, at an altar of 
 rock covered with moss and lichen, 
 the twain were married, a bald- 
 headed eagle officiating, 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 filthy habits 
 if I married you?" "Yes," said 
 the vulture, " but if you don't like 
 my way you can leave," and with one angry stroke of beak and another 
 fierce clutch of claw the vulture left the dove eyeless, and wingless, and life- 
 
 If 
 
 
 THE VAGABOND IN THE DRAWING ROOM. 
 
72 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 less. 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 celibacy. 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 
 poisoned 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 marriage, 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 unaffianced 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 unassimilated 
 temper which you will not have to run, of the cares you will never have to 
 carry, 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 responsibilities of a household can seldom be. God has not 
 given you a hard lot as compared 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 probability 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 buildeth 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 that 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 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 a useful calling, 
 
(73) 
 
74 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 playing only for amusement, 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 saleswomen in stores," says another adviser. 
 But there they must compete with salesmen of long experience, or with men 
 who have served an apprenticeship 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 your daughters to my store, and I will do as well by them as pos- 
 sible." Very soon the question comes 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 father and mother say to their daughters : " Now, what would you 
 do for a livelihood 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 drama- 
 tist. I could render King Lear or Macbeth till your hair would rise on end, 
 or give you ' Sheridan's Ride ' or Dickens's ' Pickwick.' " Yes, that is a beau- 
 tiful art, but ever and anon, as now, there is an epidemic of dramatization 
 that makes hundreds 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 marvellous 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 75 
 
 following, into 
 she will enter : 
 
 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 
 many of which she has already entered, and all the others 
 Stenography, and you may 
 find her at nearly all the re- 
 portorial stands in our educa- 
 tional, political and religious 
 meetings. Savings banks, 
 the work clean and honor- 
 able, and who so great a 
 right to toil there ? for a 
 woman founded the first sav- 
 ings bank, Mrs. Priscilla 
 Wakefield. Copyists, and 
 there is hardly a professional 
 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 station- 
 ers and book-keepers, for which they are specially qualified by 
 patience and accuracy ; and in wood engraving, in which the 
 Cooper Institute has turned out so many qualified ; and telegra- 
 phy, for which she is specially prepared, as thousands of the 
 telegraphic offices 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 them, if they had the chance, read}' 
 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 they are specially 
 
 MILTON DICTATING "PARADISE LOST" TO HIS 
 
 daughters. — By W. Harvey. 
 
 
76 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 thorough, 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 brill- 
 iant 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. Witness all 
 those who have heard their mother pray. 
 
 O young women of America, as many of you will have to fight your own 
 battles alone, do not wait until 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 which there is a 
 surplus, and make a useful shoe. Expend the time in which you adorn a cigar 
 case in learning how to make a good, honest loaf of bread. Turn your atten- 
 tion 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, trigonometry, 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 estab- 
 lished beyond 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 Penny's book entitled " The Employments of Women," and 
 learn there are 500 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 positive apprenticeship by way of preparation, a prominent chemist adver- 
 tised that he would teach a class of women to become druggists and apothe- 
 caries 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, accord- 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 77 
 
 ing to the account of the authoress, do you suppose applied to become skilled 
 iu 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 
 
 a romantic girl.— From a Painting by G. Couriois. 
 
 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 
 
78 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 pastor 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 damnation. 
 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 defense 
 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 
 young 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 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 skilful 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 79 
 
 higher until there are only ten; and still higher in some particular 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 employer, but you will 
 eventually get no more compensation than you can make yourself worth. 
 
 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 
 
 IDLENESS. 
 
 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 you 
 afraid that they will do some of your work, and hence harm your prosperities? 
 
(8o) 
 
 'WOMAN, BEHOLD THY SON; BEHOLD THY MOTHER."— JOHN XIX. 26. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 8r 
 
 • 
 
 Remember 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 ioo 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. 
 
 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 way 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 quintillion 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 per- 
 sistency 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 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 
 an)' 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 defense, 
 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 fight- 
 ing the battle of life alone. All heaven is on your side. 
 6 
 
GEo tfje Momm of &merfca. 
 
 UNHAPPY MARRIAGES, AND HOW THEY MAY BE AVOIDED. 
 
 IBLE biography introduces to our notice a drunken 
 bloat owning a large property. 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 shearing a 
 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 maudlin 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 man- 
 sions lighted by swinging lamps of aromatic oil, and resounding with the 
 cheer of banqueters seated at tables laden with wines from the richest vine- 
 vards, 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 de- 
 bauchee 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 
 
 (82) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 
 
 83 
 
 might do worse, and may be I will make a sober man out of him, 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 for- 
 tune whose possessions were in Carmel ; and the man was very great, and he 
 had 3000 sheep and 1000 goats. 
 
 AN EVERYDAY 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 en- 
 graver 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 
 comforted : " 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 trag- 
 edy 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 poverty as a virtue and wealth 
 as a crime. I can take you through a thousand mansions where God is as 
 much worshipped 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 embroi- 
 deries, 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 centu- 
 
 ABIGAIL BRINGING PROVISIONS TO DAVID. 
 
s 4 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 ries. The whole 
 tendency of sin 
 is toward poverty, 
 and the whole 
 tendency of right- 
 eousness is to- 
 ward wealth. 
 Godliness is prof- 
 itable 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 sculp- 
 ture and of libra- 
 ries and pillared 
 magnificence, and 
 of parks and 
 fountains and 
 gardens in the 
 ownership of 
 good men and 
 women. The two 
 most lordly resi- 
 dences in which 
 I was ever a 
 guest had morn- 
 ing and evening 
 prayers, all the 
 employes pres- 
 ent, and all day 
 long there was an 
 air of cheerful 
 piety in the con- 
 versation and be- 
 havior. Lord 
 Radstock carried 
 the gospel to the 
 Russian nobility. 
 Lord Cavan and 
 Lord Cairns 
 spent their vaca- 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 S5 
 
 tion in evangelistic services. Lord 
 Congleton became missionary to 
 Bagdad. And the Christ who was 
 born in an Eastern caravansary has 
 again and again lived in a palace. 
 
 It is a grand thing to have 
 plenty of money, and horses that 
 don't compel you to take the dust 
 of every lumbering and lazy vehicle, 
 and books of history that give you 
 a glimpse of all the past, and 
 shelves of poetry to which you may 
 go and ask Milton, or Tennyson, or 
 Spenser, or Tom Moore, or Robert 
 Burns to step down and spend an 
 evening with you ; and other shelves 
 to which you may go while you feel 
 disgusted with the shams of the 
 world and ask Thackeray to ex- 
 press your chagrin, or Charles Dick- 
 ens to expose the Pecksnifnanism, 
 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 north-east wind 
 with thin apparel if you can afford 
 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 
 suggest not only wealth, but re- 
 ligion and generosity and philan- 
 thropy, such as Amos Lawrence, James Lennox, Peter Cooper, William E. 
 Dodge, Shaftesbury, Miss Wolfe and Mrs. Astor. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 87 
 
 If there be good moral character, accompanied by affluent circumstances, 
 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. 
 
 A PICTURE FROM LIFE. 
 
 A comfortable home, with nothing more than ordinary surroundings, but 
 . n attractive daughter carefully and Christianly reared. From the outside 
 world comes in a man with nothing but money — unless you count profanity 
 and selfishness 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 
 undred thousand dollars and very 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 
 sympathetic gladness, supposing that the craft containing the two has sailed 
 off 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. M}' voice is louder than yours. My fortune is greater 
 
88 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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, yo.u miserable wretch! " Can halls of mosaic, can long lines 
 
 WEDDED AND BROKEN-HEARTED. 
 
 of Etruscan bronze, or statuary by Palmer and Powers and Crawford and Chantry 
 and Canova, can galleries rich from the pencil of Bierstadt and Church and 
 Kenset and Cole and Cropsey, could violins played on by an Ole Bull or pianos 
 fingered by a Gottschalk, or solos warbled by a Sontag, could wardrobes like that 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 89 
 
 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 
 servitude. 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 upholstery. 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 surround- 
 ings 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 architec- 
 ture, 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 1 
 They, on a large scale, illustrate what on a smaller scale, may be seen in many 
 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 his fortune and 
 life, it was no alleviation that the old brute had possessions in Carmel, and 
 " was very 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. 
 
 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 
 
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THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 91 
 
 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 con> 
 mon 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 prin- 
 cesses 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 putrefaction, 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 bride- 
 groom's tongue was thick and his eye .glassy and his step a stagger, as he 
 clicked glasses with jolly comrades, 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, lest 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 banns ! 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 marry 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 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, 
 
9 2 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 any 
 hind, in order to your happiness. Celibacy has been honored by the best 
 
 Cleopatra before Cesar.— From the Painting by J. L. Gerome. 
 
 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 93 
 
 effieiiceci forever and forever, and the banns of that marriage the angels will 
 publish ia hosannas of rejoicing. 
 
 One of the most stirring passages in history with which I am acquainted 
 tells us how Cleopatra, the exiled queen of Egypt, won the sympathy 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 cne whose courage and beauty and brilliancy 
 are the astonishment of the ages. This exiled queen of Egypt told the story 
 of her sorrows, and he promised her that she should get back her throne in 
 Egypt and take the throne of wifely 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 when all the wrap- 
 pings 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. 
 
SSJountJcti 2Lobe. 
 
 THE BROKEN PROMISES OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 ENERAL JEPHTHAH, the commander-in-chief of the 
 Israelitish forces is buckling on the sword for the 
 extermination of the pestiferous Ammonites, and look- 
 ing 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 carcasses. Gen- 
 eral Jephthah, fresh from his victory, 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 may 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 Jephthah. 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 inno- 
 cent? 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 
 
 (94) 
 
jephthah's daughter bewailing her sacrifice.— From the Painting by W. Holman Hunt. 
 
 (95) 
 
96 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 master- 
 pieces, presents the scene. And Handel made it the last and climacteric work 
 of his life to put this pathetic and 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 Lord, 
 and I cannot go back." During two months amid the mountains, without 
 shelter, the maidens who would have been at the wedding ranged with Jeph- 
 thah'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 overmastering 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 betrothal 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 those wards and in those 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 promise of marriage is considered to have no solemnity or binding 
 force. -It was only made in fun. They may change their mind. The engage- 
 ment 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 
 Vansgressor, in the sight of God, a perjurer, and so the day of judgment will 
 
(<:) 
 
98 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 reveal it. The one has lied to the other ; and all liars shall have their place 
 in the lake that burnetii with fire and brimstone. 
 
 If a man or woman make a promise in the business world, is there any 
 obligation to fulfil it? If a man sign a note for $500, ought he to pay it? 
 If a contract be signed involving the building of a house or the furnishing of 
 a bill of goods, ought th,ey 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 you like that ? That, you say, would be 
 a fraud. So is 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 hasty 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 insurance of a lifetime happiness. But the sim- 
 ple 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 you 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 Burns with 
 all his faults well knew the force of a marital engagement. In obedience to 
 some rustic idea, he, standing on one side the brook 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 iinto the Lord thine oaths." 
 
 Suppose a ship captain offers his services to take a ship out to sea. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 99 
 
 After he gets a little way he comes alongside of a vessel with a more beautiful 
 flag, and which has perhaps a richer cargo and is bound for a more attractive 
 port. Suppose 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 
 
 A broken vow. — From the Painting by Ed. B. Jones. 
 
 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 
 
ioo THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 companion- 
 ship 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 haw: 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 engagement of 
 fourteen years, and the poetic stanzas he dedicated to their excellences 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 finding out all about the character and preferences and dislikes and 
 
llOl) 
 
io2 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 be any unsolved mystery about the person under con- 
 sideration 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 contro- 
 versy, and no one wanted to build there until that question was decided. 
 Afterward I understood the title was settled, and now buildings are going up 
 all over it. Do not build your happiness for this world on a character, mascu- 
 line 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 respec- 
 tability. 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 brim full of gallants and man milli- 
 ners 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 and bowing and scraping and whispering, and then return to 
 the club-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 pun- 
 ishment is apt to come upon them and they get paid in their own coin. I 
 could point you to a score whom society has let drop very 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 natur- 
 ally short-sighted when their eyes are so old in sin that they need the specta- 
 cles of a septuagenarian, an eye-glass about No. 8, and think they are bewitch- 
 ing in their stride and overpowering in their glances, although they are simply 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 103 
 
 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 despera- 
 tion of agony of cosmetics to get back to the attractiveness they had when they 
 used to brag how many masculine affections 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 pro- 
 
 after a divorce, the stepmother. — From a Painting by Haynes Williams. 
 
 nounced one, when they are two, or in diversity of tastes and likes and dis- 
 likes 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 Ameri- 
 can 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." 
 
io4 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 " I like music, and a piano sets my husband crazy." " I am fond of social life, 
 and my companion is a recluse." " I am trying to be good, and my 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 recog- 
 nizes them. But it must be the very last resort, and only after all reasonable 
 attempts at reclamation and adjustment 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 
 
 matchmaking in early days. — From the Painting by H. Helmick. 
 
 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 your own which the 
 other party in the marital alliance may have to suffer. You are in the same 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 105 
 
 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 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 and 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 
 family, and the closing paragraph of the Book of Job has such a jubilance that 
 I wonder people do not oftener read it: "So the Lord blessed the latter end of 
 Job more than his beginning : for he had 14,000 sheep, and 6000 camels, and 
 1000 yoke 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 heiress of whole kingdoms beyond the sky? 
 
 Immerse yourself in some kind of outside usefulness, something that will 
 enlist your prayers, your sympathies, your hand, your needle, your voice. Get 
 your heart on fire with love to God and the disctithrallment of the human race, 
 and the troubles of your home will be blotted out in the glory of your conse- 
 crated 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 hus- 
 band? And if you cannot save hfin you can help in the grander, mightier 
 
io6 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 enterprise of helping save the world. Out of the awful mistake of your mar- 
 riage 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. 
 
 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 
 
 SICK AND NEGLECTED. 
 
 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 
 
i 
 
 (I07> 
 
108 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 engi- 
 neer. 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 work- 
 men had ropes fastened around their bodies, and were let down amid the wild 
 surges that beat the wall. Everything 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 wall." 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 sorrow, 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 
 treachery 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 ! 
 
 In that effort you will forget or be helped to bear your own trials, and in 
 a little while God will take you up out of your disturbed and harrowing con- 
 jugal 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 signalled 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! 
 
dominion of jFasIjicm. 
 
 THE RESULTS OF TRYING TO LEAD A FASHIONABLE 
 
 LIFE. 
 
 true accomplishments of life are productive of effemi- 
 nacy or enervation. Good manners and a respect for 
 the tastes of others are indispensable. The good Book 
 speaks favorably of those who are a "peculiar" 
 people; but that does not sanction the behavior of 
 queer people. There is no excuse, under any cir- 
 cumstances, for not being and acting the lady or 
 gentleman. Rudeness is sin. We have no words too 
 ardent to express our admiration for the refinements 
 of society. There is no law, moral or divine, to forbid 
 elegance of demeanor, or ornaments of gold, or gems for 
 the person, artistic display. 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 Scythians, wear tiger-skins and take one 
 wild leap back into midnight barbarism. As Christianity 
 advances there will be better apparel, higher styles of 
 architecture, 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 intima- 
 tions 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., LL.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 disappoint- 
 
 (109) 
 
no 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 raent. Somebody will criticise their appearance, or surpass them in brilliancy, 
 or will receive more attention. Oh, the jealousy, and distraction, and heart 
 
 A fair scythian. — From the Painting by Hon. Jno. Collier. 
 
 burnings of those who move in this' bewildered maze! Poor butterflies! Bright 
 wings do not always bring happiness. "She that liveth in pleasure is dead 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 in 
 
 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, under- 
 neath, 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 splendid 
 drawing-rooms, brooding over the slights and offenses of luxurious life. The 
 oitterness of life 
 seems not so un- 
 fitting 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. Ap- 
 parel insufficient 
 lo 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 indolence are the instruments by which this unreal lifa 
 pushes its disciples into valetudinarianism and the grave. Along the walks 
 of prosperous life Death goes a-mowing — and such harvests as are reaped ! 
 Materia Medica has been exhausted to find curatives for those physiological 
 
 FROM A DUDE TO A DRUNKARD AND VOLUPTUARY. 
 
112 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 devastations. Dropsies, cancers, consumptions, gout and almost every infirmity 
 in all the realm of pathology have been the penalties paid. To counteract 
 
 FASHIONS OF HEAD DRESS AMONG DIFFERENT NATIONS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 the damage Pharmacy has gone forth with medicament, panacea, elixir, embro- 
 cation, salve and cataplasm. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 113 
 
 A wardrobe is the rock upon which many a soul has been riven. The 
 excitement of a luxurious life has been the vortex that has swallowed up more 
 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 travellers to 
 destruction are not all clothed in rags. Ou 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 fruitfulness 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 Egyptians. Shadow of gravestones upon finest silk! Worm- 
 
 Shakespeare supported by tragedy and comedy.— From the Painting by Halliday. 
 
 wood squeezed into impearled 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 under the cracking of a burning world — what wvl 
 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 immediately I" 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 
 8 
 
U4 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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?" 
 
 But 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 ex- 
 pired 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 be- 
 friended 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 
 
 i.v memoriam of sarah comstock. — Terra Cotta by T. N. McLean. to the Otner Slue Ol 
 
 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 harpers with their harps 
 and trumpeters 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, 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 115 
 
 with fiery downfall and shriek: "Wandering star — for whom is reserved the 
 blackness of darkness forever!" 
 
 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 yet 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, say- 
 ing, 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 
 vomen, who in less resounding spheres have lived not for themselves, but for 
 Jod 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 waved 
 her jewelled 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 evan- 
 gelized, 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! 
 
&o tfje jpemale STeactjer. 
 
 A LESSON FROM AHASUERUS'S 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 bird and beast, and scenes of 
 prowess and conquest. The walls are hung 
 with shields and emblazoned until it seems 
 that the whole round of splendors is ex- 
 hausted. Each arch is a mighty leap of archi- 
 tectural achievement. Golden stars, shining down 
 on glowing 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 sub- 
 merged. These for carousal, where kings drink down a 
 kingdom at one swallow. Amazing spectacle! Light of 
 silver dripping down over stairs of ivory on shields of 
 gold. Floors of stained marble, sunset red and night 
 black, and inlaid with gleaming pearl. Why, it seems as if a heavenly 
 vision of amethyst, and jacinth, and topaz, and chrysoprasus 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 into the light, the spray struck through with rainbows falling 
 in crystalline baptism upon flowering shrubs, then rolling down through chan- 
 nels of marble, and widening out here and there into pools swirling with the 
 
 (116) 
 
THE FEAST OF AHASUERUS. 
 
 (ii7) 
 
n8 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 finny tribes of foreign aquariums, bordered with scarlet anemonies, 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 apples and dates, and figs, and oranges, and pomegranates. 
 Melons tastefully twined with leaves of acacia. The bright waters of Eulaeus 
 filling the urns, and sweating outside the rim in flashing beads amid the trace- 
 ries. 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, and the revelry breaks cut 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. 
 
 In another part of the pal- 
 ace, Queen Vashti is entertain- 
 ing the princesses of Persia at 
 a banquet. Drunken Ahasuerus 
 says to his servants: "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 servants imme- 
 diately 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. 
 esther receiving the sceptre from ahasuerus. Yet here was a mandate that 
 
 &o one dare dispute, demanding that Vashti come in unveiled, before the mul- 
 titude. However, there was in Vashti's soul a principle more regal than Aha- 
 suerus, 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, Vashti the silent. Though 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 119 
 
 her place was surrendered to Esther, yet she lives clothed in more royal 
 raiment than any earthly king could provide, with a 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 the rustle of 
 her robes ! See the blaze of her jewels ! And yet it is not necessary to have 
 palace and regal robe in order to be queenly. When I see a woman with stout 
 faith in God, putting her foot upon all meanness and selfishness and godless dis- 
 play, 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 Scot- 
 land; or Elizabeth, of England; or Margaret, of France; or Catharine, of Russia, 
 compared with the worth of some of our Christian mothers, many of them gone 
 into glory ? 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 demonstra- 
 tion of unselfish patriotism ? Or of Abigail, who rescued the herds and flocks 
 of her husband ? Or of Ruth, who toiled under a tropical sun for poor, old, 
 helpless Naomi ? Or of Mrs. Adoniram Judson, who kindled the lights of sal- 
 vation 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 footsteps heard along dark lane, and in 
 government hospital, and in almshouse corridor, 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 1 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 appli- 
 cants, because of their especial intellectual and moral endowments. There are 
 m none of your homes women more worthy. These persons, some of them, 
 come out from affluent homes, choosing teaching as a useful profession ; others, 
 finding that 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 
 
120 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 
 
 MEETING OF THE TRUSTEES OF A BACK SETTLEMENT SCHOOL— EXAMINING THE TEACHER.— By Robert Harris. 
 
 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 intractable children, the suppression of their vices and the development of 
 their excellences, the management of rewards and punishments, the sending of 
 so many bars of soap and fine tooth combs on benignant ministry, the breaking 
 of so many wild colts for the harness of life, sends her home at night weak, 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 121 
 
 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 way. 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 women. Father may be dead, but there are enough 
 brothers left to demand and see that they 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 desti- 
 tute 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 tribulation, 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 notary what he 
 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 immortality celestial. And they shall reign forever and ever. 
 
 GOETHE AND SHAKESPEARE'S IDEAS OF WOMEN. 
 
 Oh! the opportunity which every woman has of being a queen. The 
 longer I live 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 parent- 
 age, 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 tarnished ; and his Baroness and his Countess, and there is seldom a 
 womanly character in all his voluminous writings that would be worthy of 
 
132) 
 
 From the Statue by Mario Roggi. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 123 
 
 residence in a respectable coal cellar, yet pictured and dramatized and embla- 
 zoned till all the literary world is compelled to see. No, no. Give me Wil- 
 liam Shakespeare's idea of woman, and I see it in Desdemona, and Cordelia, 
 and Rosalind, and Imogen, and Helena, and Hermione, and Viola, 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 Lady Macbeth only a dark background to bring out the supreme loveliness 
 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 uncovered, 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 appoints 
 to most womanly natures a retiring and unobtrusive 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 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 Lord 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 Samuel, 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 Lois 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 hurricane 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 insignificant, and thinking the offices of wife, mother, 
 and daughter of no importance, and trying to force her way on up into con- 
 -picuity, I say, "Ah! what a pity; Vashti has lost her veil." When I see a 
 
124 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 rodo- 
 montade, 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 mis- 
 interpret what I say 
 into a depreciation 
 of the work of those 
 glorious and divinely 
 called women who 
 will not be under- 
 stood till after they 
 are dead ; women like 
 Susan B. Anthony, 
 who are giving their 
 life for the better- 
 ment of the condi- 
 tion of their sex. 
 Those of you who 
 think that women 
 have, under the laws 
 of this country, an 
 equal chance with 
 men, are ignorant of 
 the laws. A gentle- 
 man 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 efforts, 
 
 MRS. siddons as the muse of tragedy. —From Painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds. 
 
 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 to- 
 gether, 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 bod}', that 
 
victims OF the French revolution.— Painted by Paul Svedonesky. 
 
 ("5) 
 
126 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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. 
 
 Now, that is a specimen of the unjust laws in all States concerning 
 womanhood. 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 gallant 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 
 
 VASHTI, THE OUTCAST. 
 
 does come, but so far as you can touch ballot-boxes, and legislatures, and 
 congresses, begin the reformation; but until justice is done to the sex by 
 the laws of all the States, let women 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 me 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 acquaint- 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 127 
 
 anceship. 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 Lapithae. The house full of outrage, and 
 cruelty and abomination, while trudging forth from the palace gate are Vashti 
 and her children. O Ahasuerus, that you should stand in a home, by a 
 dissipated life destroying 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 should 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 off, 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 verses 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. 
 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. 
 
128 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 I want yon to look at Vashti the silent. You do not hear any outcry 
 from this woman as she goes forth from the palace gate. From the very 
 dignity of her nature you 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 philoso- 
 pher, confident in his 
 newly-discovered prin- 
 ciple, waited for the 
 coming of more intelli- 
 gent generations, will- 
 ing that men should 
 laugh at the lightning 
 rod and cotton gin and 
 steamboat — waiting for 
 long years through the 
 scoffing of philosophi- 
 cal schools, in grand and 
 magnificent silence. 
 Galileo, condemned by 
 mathematicians, and 
 monks, and cardinals; 
 caricatured every- 
 where, yet waiting and 
 watching with his tele- 
 scope to see the coming 
 up of stellar re-enforce- 
 ments, when the stars 
 in their courses would 
 fight for the Copernican 
 system ; then sitting 
 down in complete blind- 
 ness and deafness to 
 wait for the coming on 
 of the generations who 
 would build his monu- 
 ment and bow at his 
 grave. The reformer, 
 execrated by his contemporaries, fastened in a pillory, the slow fires of public 
 contempt burning under him, ground under the cylinders of the printing 
 press, yet calmly waiting for the day when purity of soul and heroism of char- 
 acter will get the sanction of earth and the plaudits of heaven. Affliction, 
 enduring without any complaint the sharpness of the pang, and the violence 
 
 THE GUARDIAN ANGEL. 
 
(129) 
 
i 3 o THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 soothe the pang, and hush 
 the storm, and release the captive. A wife abused, persecuted, ard a per- 
 petual exile from every earthly comfort — waiting, waiting, until the Lord 
 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 answer- 
 ing not a word, drinking the gall, bearing the cross, in prospect of the raptur- 
 ous 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." 
 
 An Arctic explorer found a ship floating helplessly about among the ice- 
 bergs, 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 
 were frozen in their places. That was awful, but magnificent. All the Arctic 
 blasts and all the icebergs could not drive thejn 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. Travellers visiting Mount iEtna, 
 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 brace- 
 lets 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 you be enabled to 
 imitate the example of Rachael, and Hannah, and Abigail, and Deborah, and 
 Mary, and Vashti. 
 
&f)ab anb Jrjfbel. 
 
 THE POWER OF A WIFE OVER HER HUSBAND, AND HOW 
 IT SHOULD BE EMPLOYED. 
 
 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 why he should be called into 
 the presence of his Majesty, comes iu a little downcast in 
 his modesty and with very obsequious manner bows to the 
 king. The king says: "Naboth, I want to trade vine- 
 yards 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 himself 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 
 signature. She stamped her husband's name on a proclamation, which resulted 
 in getting Naboth tried for treason against the king, and two perjured wit- 
 
 (131) 
 
(132) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 133 
 
 » 
 
 nesses swore their souls away with the life of Naboth, and he was stoned to 
 death and his property came to the crown, and so Jezebel got for her husband 
 and herself the kitchen garden. 
 
 But while 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 
 dripping 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 struggling 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 himself 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 husband 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 you never before 
 lead 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 important that every wife have her ambition, an elevated, righteous and 
 divinely approved ambition. 
 
J34 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 JUDITH. 
 
 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 un- 
 worthy tendencies. While in the 
 case of Jezebel we have an illus- 
 tration of wifely ambition em- 
 ployed in the wrong direction, 
 society and history are full of 
 instances of wifely ambition glor- 
 iously triumphant in right di- 
 rections. 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. Wash- 
 ington, who broke the chain that 
 held America in foreign vassal- 
 age, wore for forty years a chain 
 around his own neck, that chain 
 holding the miniature likeness 
 of her who had been his great- 
 est inspiration, whether among 
 the snows at Valley Forge or 
 amid the honors of the presi- 
 dential chair. Pliny's pen was 
 driven through all its poetic and 
 
> 
 
 -- 
 N 
 
 s 
 
 5> 
 
 I 
 
136 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 historical dominions by his wife, Calpurnia, who sang his stanzas to the 
 sound of flute and sat among audiences enraptured 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 carry, 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 
 which God has given to me, the greatest of all in my eyes is to have lighted 
 on Maria Motley." 
 
 Martin Luther says of his wife: "I would not exchange my poverty with 
 her for all the riches of Crcesus without her." 
 
 Isabella, of Spain, by her superior faith 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 years 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 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." 
 
 O 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 
 
I 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 H 
 
i38 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 in all the world, because it is so uncertain about your getting it, and so inse- 
 cure a possession after you 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 
 
 THE POLITICIAN IN RETIREMENT. 
 
 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 139 
 
 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 poli- 
 tics, but would afterwards have given all she possessed to get him out. 
 
 RUINED BY HIS WIFE'S SOCIAL AMBITION. 
 
 I 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 they 
 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 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 asso- 
 ciation. He lost his morals as well as his mouey. He broke up not only 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 only child. 
 
 But suppose now there be in our homes, as, thank God, there are in hund- 
 reds of homes represented by the readers of this book, on the wifely throne one 
 who says not only by her words, but more powerfully by her actions : " My 
 husband, our destinies are united. Let us see where industry, honesty, 
 common sense and faith in God will put us. I am with you in all your 
 enterprises. I cannot be with you in person as you go to your daily business, 
 but I will be with you in my prayers. Let us see what we can achieve by 
 having God in our hearts, and God in our lives, and God in our home. Be on 
 the side of everything good. Go ahead and do your best, and though every- 
 thing should turn out different from what- we have calculated, you may 
 always count on two who are going to help you, and God 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 coining 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 
 
(140) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 141 
 
 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. 
 
 Some of us could tell of what influence upon us has been a wifely ambition 
 consecrated 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 my 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, until 
 the Commissioner of Police considered it his duty to take his place in our 
 Sabbath services with forty officers scattered through the house for the preser- 
 vation 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?" 
 
 And though sometimes it seemed as if I was going out against 900 iron 
 chariots, I went ahead, cheered by 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 husbands to annex Naboth's vineyard to your palace of success, whether 
 right or wrong, lest the dogs that come out to destroy Naboth come out also 
 to devour you. Righteousness will pay best in life, will pay best in death, 
 will pay best in the judgment, will pay best through all eterpity. 
 
 HOME INFLUENCE ON HUSBANDS. 
 
 In our efforts to have the mother of every household appreciate her influ- 
 ence over her children we are apt to forget the wife's influence over the hus- 
 band. 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 tal- 
 ented 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 Cow- 
 per, 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 Reynolds, 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 
 to give up attacking the castle at Troyes because it was so heavily garrisoned. 
 
(I 4 2) 
 
 EXECUTION OF JOAN OF ARC. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 143 
 
 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 husband. 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 i You cannot drive him 
 there. You cannot nag him there; but you can coax him there. That is 
 God's 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 prognostication. Her husband and her sons 
 and daughters, who all, like her, live for this world, will have about the same 
 destiny for the body 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 hus- 
 band come in, and see your children come in, if they have not preceded you. 
 Glorified Christian wife ! Pick up any crown you choose from off the King's 
 foot-stool 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 by 2000 
 sleighs laden with the first people of Russia, the whole length of 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 
 
144 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 blaze of the pyrotechnics. At the palace the luxuries of kingdoms were gath- 
 ered 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. But 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 their earthly existence into the warm and illumined 
 
 CATHARINE, OF RUSSIA, ASSUMING THE CROWN. 
 
 palaces of heaven. With the King Himself and all the potentates, yourself 
 robed and crowned, you will sit at a table compared with which all the feasts 
 at Kenilworth and St. Cloud and the Alhambra were a beggar's crust. And 
 the platter of one royal satisfaction touched at the centre shall disappear, only 
 to make room for a gracious viand, and the golden plate of one royal satisfac- 
 tion, touched at the centre, shall disappear, only to make room for the coming 
 of some richer and grander regalement. 
 
position tn itife. 
 
 WHAT CAN MAKE WOMEN HAFPY, AND WHAT OFTEN MAKES THEM 
 
 MISERABLE. 
 
 ^ECENTLY 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 r.nswer was: "The road to hap- 
 piness 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 happy. You have had a great 
 many recipes by which it is proposed to give you satisfaction — 
 solid satisfaction. At times you 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 
 days 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 many of the young people that the most miserable time you are ever to 
 have is just now. As you advance in life, as you come out into the world 
 and have your head and heart all full of gcod, honest, practical Christian 
 work, then you will know what it is to begin to be happy. There are those 
 who would have us believe that life is chasing thistle-down and grasping 
 bubbles. We have not found it so. To many of us it has been discovering 
 liamonds larger than the Kohinoor, and I think that our joy will continue to 
 .ncrease 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 
 10 (1451 
 
14* 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 to be a very cheerful thing, and uot the dark 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." 
 
 I know that 
 Solomon said some 
 very dolorous 
 things about this 
 world, and three 
 times declared: 
 " Vanity of vani- 
 ties, all is vanity." 
 I suppose it was a 
 reference to those 
 times in his career 
 when his 700 wives 
 almost pestered the 
 life out of him. 
 But I would rather 
 turn to the descrip- 
 tion he gave after 
 his conversion, 
 when he says in 
 another place: 
 "Her ways are 
 ways of pleasant- 
 ness, and all her 
 paths are peace." 
 
 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. 
 
 EARLY TROUBLES.— LITTLE MISCHIEF AND HIS TEACHER.— By H. Helntick. 
 
 You plant one grain of corn 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 of Christian principle in a youthful soul 
 develop into a large crop of gladness on earth and to a harvest of eternal 
 joy in heaven ? Hear me, then, while I discourse upon some of the mistakes 
 which young people make in regard to happiness, and point out to the young 
 women what I consider to be the source of complete satisfaction. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 147 
 
 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 
 
 NAPOI.EON ANNOUNCING TO JOSEPHINE HER DIVORCEMENT. 
 
 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 
 
148 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 the simoom 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 you have looked up at the great house, 
 and covet a life under those arches, when, perhaps, at that very moment, 
 within that house, there may 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 pros- 
 pects ; 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 the 
 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 
 discontent began to cast here and there its shadows. Cruelties and unkind- 
 nesses changed all those splendid trappings into a hollow mockery. The plat- 
 ters 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 repdle 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 everlasting despair. Oh, how many 
 rivalries and unhappinesses among those who seek in social life their chief 
 happiness ! It matters not how fine you have things : there are other people 
 who have it finer. Taking out your watch to tell the hour of the day, some 
 one will correct your time-piece by pulling out a watch more richly chased and 
 jewelled. 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 your wall a picture 
 by Copley, and before night you 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 yon 
 the ten thousandth part of a grain of solid satisfaction. The English lord, 
 moving in the very 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. 
 
a broken heart in a Gilded palace.— From a Painting by L. Stocks. 
 
 (i49) 
 
*5Q 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 USEFULNESS IN HOME CIRCLES. 
 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 you now dwell 
 will become extinct. The parents will be gone, the property will be turned 
 over into other possession, you yourself 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 to- 
 ward 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 unhal- 
 lowed by 
 Christian and 
 sisterly influ- 
 ences; if you 
 allowed the 
 
 the old homestead. younger sis- 
 
 ters of your 
 family to come up without feeling that there had been a Christian example set 
 them on your part, there will 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 everything you can 
 think of as connected with that home. All these things will rouse up agoniz- 
 ing 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 gathering 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 151 
 
 a parent's coffin-lid 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 lpvelier 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 
 
 THE EMPTY PLACE. 
 "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away ; blessed be the name of the Lord." 
 
 of your birth, you had been struck 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 
 
152 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 a good time for a young woman when she is in her father's house. How 
 careful they are of her welfare. How watchful those parents of all her inter- 
 ests. 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 young 
 woman's soul who, in that dark hout, has nothing but regretful recollections. 
 
 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 despise, or affect to despise, beauty in others. When God gives 
 it He gives it as a blessing and as a means of usefulness. The Bible sets 
 before us the portraits of Sarah and Rebecca, and Abishag, Absiiiom's sister, 
 and Job's daughters, and says: "They were fair to look upon." By out-door 
 exercise, and skilful arrangement 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 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 disappointment 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 compas- 
 sion, 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 soldiers came to Philadelphia one night, and 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 '53 
 
 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 dishevelled 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 ! " 
 
 wounded for his country. — From the Painting by Seymour Lucas. 
 
 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 com- 
 fort 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 comfort her. But I would like to have you to tell her 
 
154 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 how much I suffered — yes, I would like you to do that, for she would feel so 
 for me. Hold my hand while I die." 
 
 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 beautiful ; and if any rough man in all that ward had insulted her, 
 
 some wounded soldier 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 eccen- 
 tric 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 honey- 
 suckles have their fashion of ear-drop, 
 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 ele- 
 gancies and fashions of this world, 
 especially if they make reasonable de- 
 mands upon us ; but the discipleship 
 and worship of fashion is death to 
 the body, 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 
 marvellous 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 : " Be- 
 cause the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with stretched-forth necks 
 
 FACE AND FORM OF LOVELINESS. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 155 
 
 and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making 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-riugs, 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 get- 
 ting 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 your 
 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 darkness. 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 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 exceed- 
 ing white, so as no fuller on earth could whiten it. I come to you, young 
 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 very 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 ship- 
 wrecked 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 strug- 
 gles, and doubts." She replied: "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, you would tell the young people that religion, 
 will make them happy. 'O death, where is thy sting?' Mr. Talmage, 1 
 
1.56 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 wonder if this is not the blis 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 1 
 Good night! good night!" 
 
 For her it was good night to tears, good night to poverty, good night to 
 death ; but when the sun rose again it was good morning. The light of 
 
 WATCHING FOR THE HUSBAND AND FATHER THAT WILL COME NO MORE. 
 
 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 morning ! Her sun rising. Her palm waving. 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 grave- 
 yard 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 1 
 
• <Krantmiotf)er. 
 
 THE BLESSED INFLUENCE OF DEVOUT OLD AGE. 
 
 N a love letter which Paul, the old minister, wrote to Timothy, the 
 
 young minister, '■he family record is brought out. Paul practically 
 
 says : " 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 a medicine. And if the wine then had 
 
 been Q .s much adulterated with logwood and strychnine as our modern wines, 
 
 he would not have prescribed any. 
 
 But Timothy, not strong physically, 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 prayer 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 100 years ago, and of how many hundreds of crimi- 
 nals her descendants furnished for the penitentiaries and the gallows, and how 
 many hundreds of thousands of dollars they cost this country in their arraign- 
 ment and prison 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 ioo 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 
 arj more alive for good in the nineteenth century than they were before, as the 
 good women of this nineteenth century will be more alive for good in the 
 twentieth century than now. Mark you, I have no idea that the grandmothers 
 were any better than their granddaughters. You cannot get very old people to 
 talk much about how things were when they were boys and girls. They have 
 
 (157) 
 
i58 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 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. 
 
 GRANDMOTHER. 
 
 THE WOMEN OF THE LAST CENTURY. 
 
 A celebrated Frenchman by the name of Volney, visited this country 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 dissipation of modern society and 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 i59 
 
 how womanly health goes down under it, but it was worse a hundred years ago, 
 for the chaplain of a French regiment in our Revolutionary War wrote in 1782, 
 in his book of American women, saying : " They are tall and well proportioned, 
 their features are generally regular, their complexions are generally fair and 
 without color. At twenty years of age the women have no longer the freshness 
 
 talking over old times. — By Ed. Schulz Briesen. 
 
 of youth. At thirty or forty they are decrepit." In 181 2, a foreign consul 
 wrote a book entitled "A Sketch of the United States at the Commencement of 
 the Present Century," and he says of the women of those times : "At the age 
 cf thirty all their charms have disappeared." One glance at the portraits of 
 
i6o 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 
 K 
 O 
 < 
 
 o 
 
 < 
 A 
 
 w 
 i 
 P 
 
 the women a hun- 
 dred 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 improve- 
 ment on the old- 
 time saddle-bag s,. 
 than the women of 
 our day are an im- 
 provement on the 
 women of the last 
 century. 
 
 But still, notwith- 
 standing that those 
 times were so much 
 worse than ours,, 
 there was a glorious 
 race of godly women, 
 seventy and a hun- 
 dred years ago, who- 
 held the world back 
 from sin and lifted 
 it toward virtue, and 
 without their exalted 
 and sanctified influ- 
 ence before this the 
 last good influence 
 would have perished 
 from the earth. In- 
 deed, all over this 
 land there are seated 
 to-day — not so much 
 in churches, for 
 many of them are 
 too feeble to come — a. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 161 
 
 
 great many aged grandmothers. They sometimes feel 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 themselves 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 youngsters of the house- 
 hold 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 supernatural. 
 They feel they are almost 
 through with the journey of 
 life, and read the old book more 
 than they used to, hardly know- 
 ing which most they enjoy, the 
 Old Testament or the New, and 
 often stop and dwell tearfully 
 over the family record half way 
 between. 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 dis- 
 advantage of being the youngest child of the family. The elder members only 
 have that benediction. 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 grand- 
 children 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, 
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 VISITING THE SICK AND DESTITUTE. 
 
162 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 prisons, 
 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 influence upon one nursery. You have been thinking of the importance 
 of getting these 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 appre- 
 ciate 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 centu- 
 ries, 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 mul- 
 tiplied 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 for- 
 ever. 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 influ- 
 ence 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, 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 X63 
 
 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 de- 
 scend 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. 
 
 If a mother tell a child he is not 
 good, some bugaboo 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 state- 
 ment of the Holy Bible in a child's 
 presence, 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 champion blas- 
 phemer. But, on the other hand, if a mother walking with a child see a suffer- 
 
 THE 
 
 "GUIDING ANGEL" 
 From the Sculpture by L. A. Malempre. 
 
1 64 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 ing one by the wayside 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 it lessons of 
 a Saviour's example, of the importance of truth and the horror of a lie, 
 and the virtues of industry 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. 
 
 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 Com- 
 mandments, 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 generations : " Visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the third 
 and fourth generations of them that hate me." 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 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 exhortations. We stand in corners of the vestry and whisper over 
 the matter and say : " How is this, such great piety in sons and daughters of 
 such parental worldliness and sin ?" I will explain it to you if you will fetch 
 me the old family Bible containing the full record. Let some septuagenarian 
 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-grandmother, who had enough 
 religion to saturate a century. 
 
 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 minis- 
 ter of Brooklyn Heights, his name never spoken among intelligent Americans 
 without suggesting two things — eloquence and evangelism. In the same tomb 
 sleeps his grandmother, Isabella Graham, who was the chief inspiration of his 
 ministry. You are not surprised at the poetry and pathos and pulpit power of 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 165 
 
 the grandson when you read of the faith and devotion of his wonderful ances- 
 tress. When you read this letter in which she poured out her widowed soul in 
 longing for a sou's salvation, you will not wonder that succeeding generations 
 have been blessed : 
 
 New York, May 20th, 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." 
 
 how far yet?— From the Painting by Ariz. 
 
 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 ordi- 
 nances 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 me, "Leave 
 hy 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. 
 
i66 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 With such a grandmother, would you not have a right to expect a George 
 W. Bethune? and all the thousands converted throi;gh his ministry may date 
 :he saving power back to Isabella Graham. 
 
 GRANDMOTHER IN HEAVEN. 
 
 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 167 
 
 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 celestial health, the wrinkles blooming into 
 carnation roses, and her step like the roe on the mountains. Yes, I must 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 laud 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 you can. Go home 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 would 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 influences that have come down from 
 good mothers all the way back. Timothy, don't forget your mother Eunice, 
 and don't forget your grandmother Lois. And hand down to others this 
 patrimony of blessing. Pass along the coronets. Make religion an heirloom 
 from generation to generation. Mothers of America, consecrate 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 influence 
 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 
 daughter by saying: "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 further and say: It is a hard world for men. But for all women 
 and men who trust 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 sky ? 
 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 Egypt, 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. 
 
Songs. 
 
 SONGS FOR YOUNG AND OLD, FOR AFFLICTION AND 
 DEATH. HARMONY ON EARTH AND IN HEAVEN. 
 
 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 song 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 cul- 
 ture and example. Hold before your little ones the pure life of Jesus ; let 
 that name be the word that shall exorcise 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 per- 
 haps 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. 
 
 (168) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 169 
 
 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, 
 with laughing 
 blue 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 Shep- 
 herd will take that 
 lamb safely any- 
 how, whether you 
 have been faithful 
 or unfaithful, but 
 would it not have 
 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-b}^, 
 sang her hymn, 
 turned her face to 
 the wall, said her 
 little prayer, and 
 then swung off in- 
 
 1 ,, a song without words. — Front the Painting by C. burton Barber. 
 
 to eternal peace." 
 
 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 
 
170 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 calm looks, and the folded hands, and sweet departure, methinks it would be 
 grand and beautiful as one of heaven's great doxologies ! 
 
 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 schottisch or a glee ; but 
 her grandmother 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 grand- 
 
 SLUMBER SONG. 
 
 father 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 country meeting-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 reminds him of the 
 revival scene in which he participated, and of the radiant faces that long since 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 171 
 
 went to dust, and of the gray-haired minister leaning over 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 sang that new tune ; nobody seems to 
 
 SUNG TO SLEEP. 
 
 know it." " Bless you, 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 : Jesu » 
 
172 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 who wiped away their tears ; Jesus, who stood by them when all else failed ; 
 Jesus, in whose 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 which 
 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 minister, used to put 
 a plaid across his bed on cold nights, and some one asked him why he put 
 that there. He said, " Oh, sometimes in the night I want to sing the praise 
 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." Songs in the night ! Night of 
 trouble has come down upon many of you. Commercial 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 : 
 
 Jesus, lover of my soul, 
 
 Let me 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 nignt Songs in the night ! For 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 pour out the soothing anodyne, or utter one cheer- 
 ful word — yet songs in the night ! For the poor, who freeze in the winter's 
 cold, and swelter in the summer's heat, and munch the hard crusts that bleed 
 the sore gums, and shiver under blankets that cannot any longer be patched, 
 and tremble because rent day is come and they may be set out on the side- 
 walk, and looking into the starved 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 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 desolation, with pale cheek 
 and lustreless eye. Yet songs in the night ! For the soldier in the field 
 
(173) 
 
i 7 4 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 my 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 cathe- 
 dral. 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 factory 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 
 hoarse 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 sacramental 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 nursed 
 Him, the cattle that fed beside Him, the angels that woke up the shep- 
 herds, 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 hungry thousand who broke 
 the bread as it blossomed into larger loaves — that miracle by which a boy with 
 five loaves and two fishes became the sutler for a whole army. We sing His 
 sorrows — His stone-bruised feet, His aching heart, His mountain loneliness, His 
 desert hunger, His 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 or.t, 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 l 75 
 
 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 everlasting gates, and let the sheaves come in ! Angels shout all through 
 the heavens, and multitudes come down the hills, crying: "Harvest home! 
 harvest 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. The)' 
 were voyagers once, 
 and thought they could 
 never get to shore, and 
 before they could get 
 things snug and trim the cyclone struck them. Biit 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 preach- 
 ing about them ; these waded in Siloam ; these were victims of Herod's massa- 
 cre ; these were thrown to crocodiles or into the fire ; these came up from 
 Christian homes, and these were foundlings on the cit}- commons — children 
 
 DESTRUCTION OF THE BABES. 
 
176 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 everywhere in all that laud ; children in the towers, children on the seas of 
 glass, children on the battlements. Ah ! if yon 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 sing- 
 ers and composers of all 
 ages will be there to 
 join in that song. 
 Thomas Hastings will 
 be there. Lowell Mason 
 will be there. Brad- 
 bury will be there. 
 Beethoven and Mozart 
 will be there. They 
 who sounded the cym- 
 bals and the trumpets 
 in the ancient temples 
 will be there. The 40,- 
 000 harpers that stood 
 at the ancient dedica- 
 tion will be there. The 
 200 singers that as- 
 sisted on that day will 
 be there. Patriarchs 
 who lived amidst thresh- 
 ing-floors, shepherds 
 who watched amidst 
 Chaldean hills, prophets 
 who walked with long 
 beards and coarse ap- 
 parel, pronouncing woe 
 against ancient abomi- 
 nations, 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 
 
 HENRY V. AT THE BATTLE OF AC.INCOURT. 
 
. THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 177 
 
 to assemble and rehearse for the following Sabbath, and she said : " How 
 strangely sweet the choir rehearses to-night ; they have been rehearsing 
 there for an hour." 
 
 " No," said some one about her ; " the choir is not rehearsing >fc#<hight." 
 
 "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 tremen- 
 dous 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 hundreds of 
 players upon 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, ana fr>' , "_ cae 
 North and from the South, "a great multitude that no man can rcubeiy' 
 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 thunderiugs, they shall cry: "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, may 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 ! " 
 12 
 
Irofan'ttg. 
 
 THE VULGARITY OF A VILE HABIT,. AND STARTLING INCIDENTS 
 OF ITS SWIFT PUNISHMENT. 
 
 it 
 
 * STORY oriental and marvellous 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 th£ matter now? 
 
 " Oh," says the messenger, " a foraging party of Sabeans have 
 fallen upon the oxen and the asses and destroyed them and butch- 
 ered 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 mat- 
 ter 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 tuber- 
 cles, eyelashes fall out, nostrils excoriated, voice destroyed, intolerable exhala- 
 tions 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 con- 
 solation, 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!" 
 
 (178) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 179 
 
 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 bereave- 
 ment more excruciating. But judging from the profanity abroad in our day, 
 you might come to the conclusion that there was some great advantage to be 
 reaped from the habit or custom. 
 
 A youno man of the world. — Front the Painting by H. Helmick. 
 
 Blasphemy is all abroad. You hear it in every direction. The drayman 
 swearing at his cart, the sewing girl imprecating the tangled skein, the account- 
 ant cursing the long line of troublesome figures. Swearing at the store, swear- 
 ing 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 the Almighty in the low restaurant clear up to the reckless " O 
 Lord !" of a glittering drawing-room ; and the one is as much blasphemy as 
 the other. 
 
180 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 darkness, in the day of physical anguish, in the day of bereave- 
 ment ; but I am speaking 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 two 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 comparatively 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 remem- 
 brance, and that the day will come when all our crimes of speech, if unre- 
 pented 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 young people think 
 it manly to swear. Little children, hardly able to walk straight on the street, 
 yet have enough distinctness to let you 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 gracefully 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 young 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 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. 
 
* 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 181 
 
 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 you not know, O father, that your child is aware of the fact that 
 you swear? He overheard you in the next room, or some one has informed him 
 
 tough customers. — From the Painting by J. G. Brown. 
 
 of your habit. He is practising 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 generations after generations curse the Lord. 
 The crime is also fostered by master mechanics, boss carpenters, those 
 
i8a THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 you 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 year 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 which may be perfectly harmless to imprecation and profanity, 
 is not a very large transition. It is "My stars!" and "Mercy on me!" and 
 "Good gracious!" and " By George ! " and "By Jove!" and you go on with that 
 a little while, and then you swear. These words, perfectly harmless in them- 
 selves, are next door to imprecation and blasphemy. A profuse use of by- words 
 always ends in profanity. The habit is creeping up into the highest styles 
 of society. Women have no patience with flat and unvarnished profanity. 
 They will order a man out of the parlor indulging in blasphemy, and yet you 
 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 every degree of energy. Are you 
 happy, Noah Webster will give you a thousand words with which to express 
 your exhilaration. Are you righteously indignant, there are whole armories 
 in the vocabulary, righteous vocabulary — whole armies of denunciation, and 
 scorn, and sarcasm, and irony, and caricature, and wrath. You express your- 
 self against some meanness or hypocrisy in all the oaths that ever smoked ti ■ 
 from the pit, and I will come right on after you and give you a thousandfold 
 more emphasis of denunciation 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 183 
 
 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 impreca- 
 tions so that 
 you are not 
 stirred and 
 moved as you 
 ought to be by 
 profanities 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 reck- 
 lessness and 
 thoughtlessness 
 are fostering 
 the crime of 
 perj ury ? Make 
 the name of 
 God a foot-ball 
 in the com- 
 munity, and it 
 has no power 
 when in court 
 room and in leg- 
 islative 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 
 
 A CLOUD ON HIS BROW, A CURSE IN HIS HEART. 
 
i8 4 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 to a man: "How is it possible for you to sell these goods so very cheap? 
 I can't understand it." 
 
 "Ah !" he replies, with a twinkle 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 unac- 
 countable 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 pro- 
 fanity. 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 which 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 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 was in the delirium of a fever. He had for many years lived a most 
 upright life and was honored in all the community, but when he came into 
 the delirium of this fever 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." 
 
 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 direc- 
 tion ? 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 185 
 
 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 profan- 
 ity 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 vil- 
 
 TEIAING THE SECRET OF A BAD HABIT. 
 
 iage 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. 
 
1 86 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 is 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 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 right down through the leaves of God's book of remembrance. It 
 is no exceptional 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 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 burnetii 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. 
 
i 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 187 
 
 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 be bettered. The world by the power of Christ's gospel is going to be saved, 
 and this crime, this iniquity, and all the other iniquities will vanish before the 
 rising of the sun of righteousness upon the nation. 
 
 / 
 
 END OF SIN AND CRIME. 
 
 There was one day in New England memorable for storm and dark- 
 ness. I believe I never saw another such evening. The clouds which had 
 been gathering all day unlimbered their batteries. The Housatonic, which 
 flows quietly, save as the paddles of pleasure parties rattle 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 
 
i88 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 night. Its mantle was torn with the lightnings, and into its locks were twisted 
 the leaves of uprooted oaks and the shreds 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 
 Lord. 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 
 
 m- - i j Oaw 
 
 THE STORM CHII.D SCREAMING AI.ONG THE BEACH. 
 
 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 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- 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 189 
 
 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, the swift- 
 fingered winds on the white 
 keys of the foam play the 
 grand march of Israel deliv- 
 ered, and the awful dirge of 
 Egyptian overthrow. So 
 we go forth ; and stretch 
 Out 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 riderless charger. 
 
a jfallmg Star. 
 
 ATTILA, THE SCOURGE, AND NATIONS THAT HAVE PERISHED. 
 
 >ANY commentators, like Patrick and Lowth, Thomas Scott, 
 Matthew Henry, Albert Barnes, agree irr 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 
 everything he touched. We have studied the Star of 
 Bethlehem, and the Morning Star of the Revelation, 
 and the Star of Peace, but my present subject 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 herdsman 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 hea- 
 vens, and against the edges of this sword the heifer had been 
 cut. The herdsman pulled up that sword and presented 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. 
 
 (190) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 **j 
 
 attila'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 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-enforc- 
 ing armies marched in to help against Attila, the Scourge of God. The most 
 
 ATTILA, KING OF THE HUNS. 
 
 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 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 assassinatiou, his followers bewailed him not with tears, but with blood, 
 
192 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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, 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 
 
 SIEGE OF AQUII.EIA. 
 
 'in believing him to be the star Wormwood. As the regions he devastated were 
 parts most opulent with fountains and streams and rivers, you see how graphic 
 is this reference in Revelation : " 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 peren- 
 nial distillation of acrid experiences. Yea, there are some whose whole work is 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 193 
 
 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 falling 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 cara- 
 vans to her fairs ; all seas cleft into foam by the keels of her laden merchant- 
 men ; 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 Chil- 
 mad. 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 processions 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 spread the lair of wild beasts in her royal 
 sepulchres, and taught the miserable cottagers of to-day to build huts in the 
 courts of her temples, and sent desolation and ruin skulking behind the 
 obelisks and dodging among the sarcophagi 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 tears of all ages ? Let the mummies 
 break their long silence and come up to shiver in the desolation, and point to 
 fallen gates and shattered statues and defaced sculpture, responding : " Thebes 
 built not one temple to God. Thebes hated righteousness and loved sin. 
 Thebes was a star, but she turned to wormwood and has fallen." 
 
 13 
 
(194) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 195 
 
 WHY BABYLON FELL. 
 
 Babylon, with her 250 towers and her brazen gates and her embattled walls, 
 the splendor of the earth gathered within her palaces, her hanging gardens 
 built by Nebuchadnezzar 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 playing, 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, 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 waves 
 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 hardy 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 continue to advance until Christ shall come again. But be not 
 
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 (196) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 197 
 
 deceived ! Our only safety is in 
 righteousness toward God and jus- 
 tice toward man. If we forget the 
 goodness of the Lord to this land ; 
 if the political corruption which has 
 poisoned the fountains of public vir- 
 tue and beslimed the high places of 
 authority, making free government 
 at times a hissing and a by-word in 
 all the earth ; if the drunkenness 
 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 na- 
 tional and State capitols will fall 
 more disastrously than when Sam- 
 son pulled down Dagon ; and future 
 historians will record upon the page 
 bedewed with generous 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. 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 struggling and oppressed peo- 
 ple looked out from dungeon bars 
 with tears and greims and cries of 
 untold agony, the scorn of those 
 and the woe of these uniting in the 
 exclamation, " Look yonder i there 
 fell a great star from heaven, burn- 
 ing as it were a lamp, and it fell 
 upon the third part of the rivers and upon the fountains of waters ; and the 
 uame of the star is called Wormwood ! " 
 
 THE GODDESS OF JUSTICE. 
 
Jralousg. 
 
 A DIABOLICAL SIN THAT SETS ONE-HALF THE WORLD 
 AGAINST THE OTHER. 
 
 HERE is an old sin, haggard, furious, monstrous and 
 diabolical, that has for ages walked and crawled the 
 earth. It combines all that is obnoxious in the races, 
 human, quadrupedal, 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 blas- 
 phemes, 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 and 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 hands 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 waterfall, down came the blow of the first assassi- 
 nation, which has had its echo in all the fratricides, matricides, uxoricides, 
 
 ('93) 
 
- 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 199 
 
 homicides, infanticides 
 and regicides 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 from the brow of 
 Cinciunatus, and took the 
 embroidered collar from 
 the neck of Torquatus, 
 and had Ptolemseus killed 
 because of his purple robe, 
 which attracted too much 
 attention. After Colum- 
 bus had placed America 
 as a gem in the Spanish 
 crown, jealousy set on 
 the Spanish courtiers to 
 depreciate his achieve- 
 ment, and aroused ani- 
 mosities till the great 
 discoverer had his heart 
 broken. Urged on by 
 this bad passion, Diony- 
 sius flayed Plato because 
 he was wiser than him- 
 self, and Philoxenus be- 
 cause 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. 
 
 CAIN AND ABEL, ROCKED IN THE FIRST CRADLE. 
 
(200) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 20I 
 
 Tiberius exiled an architect be- 
 cause 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 puts it 
 when it says : " Saul eyed David." 
 It seems to take possession 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 miserable 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 Fred- 
 erick the Great was forgetting 
 him and putting his literary ad- 
 miration 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 jeal- 
 ousy 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 
 stationed 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 
 
 THE PRODIGAL SON. 
 
202 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 heard of giving roast veal to such a profligate?" Ay, that passion rose up 
 and under the darkest cloud that ever shadowed the earth, 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-bbd of Copernicus. — From the Painting by E. Blair Leighton. 
 
 A PASSION THAT ANNOYS THE WORLD. 
 
 That passion, of jealousy, livid, hungry, unbalked, rages on, and it now 
 pierces the earth like a fiery diameter and encircles it like a fiery circum- 
 ference. It wants both hemispheres. It wants the heavens. It would, if it 
 could, capture the palace of God, and dethrone Jehovah, and chain the Al- 
 mighty in eternal exile, and after the demolition of the universe would cry: 
 "Satisfied at last, here I am, alone, the undisputed and everlasting I, me, 
 mine, myself V That passion keeps all Europe perturbed. Nations jealous of 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 203 
 
 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 department 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 commercial decapitation. 
 
 Remember that envy dwells more 011 small defects of character than on 
 great forces ; makes more of the fact that Domitian amused himself by trans- 
 fixing 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. 
 
 Look 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 their 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 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." 
 
 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 
 
204 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 igno- 
 rant of the case, they were sure the treatment practised 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 people 
 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 
 denominations a great many young clergymen 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 sen 
 sationalism. 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 molded ; or if a denomination without bishops, some of 
 the older men with nothing more than their own natural heaviness and theo- 
 logical 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 jealousy 
 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. 
 
 LIKE CUTTING A ROASTED OX. 
 
 But in the 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, and pulling out a rib there, and sawing off a beefsteak 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 205 
 
 yonder, and having a high time; so most of the denominations of Christians 
 keep on hand a barbecue in which some minister is roasted while the Church 
 
 THE JEALOUS SISTERS OF LAZARUS. 
 
 "But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from 
 
 her." — Luke x. 42. 
 
 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 
 
2o6 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 plaintiffs of this world or the demons of the nether world most enjoy it. 
 Albert Barnes, than whom no man has accomplished 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 pretended offense being 
 
 that he did not be- 
 lieve in a limited 
 atonement, but the 
 real offense the fact 
 that all the men 
 who tried him put 
 together would not 
 equal one Albert 
 Barnes. 
 
 Yes ; amid all 
 professions and bus- 
 iness, and occupa- 
 tions, and trades, 
 and amid all circles 
 needs to be heard 
 what God says in 
 regard to envy and 
 jealousy, which, 
 though not exactly 
 the same, are twins : 
 "Envy is the rot- 
 tenness of the 
 bone;" "Where 
 envy and strife is, 
 there is confusion 
 and every evil 
 work;" "Jealousy 
 is the rage of man." 
 That which has 
 downed kings and 
 emperors, and apos- 
 tles, and reformers, 
 and ministers of 
 religion, and thous- 
 ands of good men 
 and women, is too 
 
 mighty for you to contend against unaided. The evil has so many roots of 
 such infinite convolution that nothing but the energy of omnipotence can pull 
 it out. 
 
 the jealous child. — From a Painting by F. G. Cotman. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 207 
 
 Away with the accursed, stenchful, blackening, damning crime of jealousy. 
 Allow it to stay and it will eat up and carry off all the religion you 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. 
 
 jealous lovers — the duel. — From a Painting by N. Sicard. 
 
 Speak well of everybody. 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 you and all your rivals. God has 
 given you a work to do. Go ahead and do it. Mind your own business. In 
 all circles, in all businesses, in all professions there is room for straightfor- 
 ward successes. Jealousy entertained will not only bedwarf your soul, but it 
 will flatten your skull, bemean your eye, put pinchedness of look about your 
 nostril, give a bad curl to the lip, and expel from your face the divine image 
 in whch you were created. When you hear a man or woman abused, drive 
 
2o8 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 in on the defendant's side. Watch for excellences in others rather than for 
 defects, morning-glories instead of nightshade. If some one is more beautiful 
 than you, thank God that you 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 posi- 
 tion, 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, in luxurious apartments, was visited by a plain 
 friend, and to keep his friend from jealousy the Duke said: "You can have 
 all I have if you will stand twenty paces off and let me shoot at you ioo 
 times." 
 
 "No, no," said his friend. 
 
 " Well," said the Duke, " to gain all my honors I faced on the battle-field 
 more than a thousand gunshots fired not more than ten paces off." 
 
 A minister of small congregation complained to a minister of large con- 
 gregation about the sparseness of his attendants. "Ah," said the one of large 
 audience, " 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. See- 
 ing others benevolent, let us resolve on giving larger percentage of our means 
 for charity. 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 sym- 
 pathy 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 compli- 
 ment, for people are never jealous of a failure. Until your work is done, you 
 are invulnerable. 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 intoxicants ? 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 assassination ? Yet He answered not a word. But so 
 far from demolishing either His mission or His good name, after near nine- 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 ?,oc 
 
 teen 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 whet; They wrote over the 
 cross His accusation in three languages — Hebrew, Greek and Latin — not real- 
 izing that they were by that act introducing Him to all nations, since Hebre\ 
 is the holiest language, and Greek the wisest of tongues, and Latin the widesi 
 spoken. 
 
 You are net the first man who had his fault < looked at through a micro- 
 scope and his virtues through the wrong end of a telescope. Pharaoh had 
 the chief butler and baker eniungeoned, and tradition says that all the butler 
 
 hard times. — From the Painting by Hubert Herkomer. 
 
 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 aboir 
 what you do right, but the same God will take care of you who provided fo. 
 Merlin, the Christian martyr, when hidden from his pursuers in a hay-mow 
 in Paris, and 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 car 
 feel that, though a thousand people may have wronged us, we have wrongec 
 14 
 
:ro 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 uo one; or having made envious and jealous attack on others, we have 
 repented of the sin and as far as possible made reparation. The good resolution 
 of Timothy Poland in his quaint but exquisite hymn, entitled " Most Any 
 Day," we might unanimously adopt : 
 
 We'll keep all right and good within, 
 Our work will then be free from sin ; 
 Upright we'll walk through thick and thin 
 
 Straight on our way. 
 Deal just with all ; the prize we'll win 
 
 Most any day 
 
 When He who made all things just right 
 Shall call us hence to realms of light, 
 Be it morn or noon or e'en or night, 
 
 We will obey ; 
 We'll be prepared to take our flight 
 
 Most any day. 
 
 Our lamps we'll fill brim full of oil 
 
 That's good and pure, that would not spoil, 
 
 And keep them burning all the while 
 
 To light our way ; 
 Our work all done, we'll quit the soil 
 
 Most any day. 
 
&f)e &oul. 
 
 ITS VALUE COMPARED WITH WORLDLY POSSESSIONS. 
 
 -pf 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 dew drops are God's thoughts in pearl. 
 
 This world is God's child — a wayward child, indeed; it has 
 
 wandered off through the heavens. But about 1888 years 
 
 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 lost 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 worlds 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 which 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 shavings. You want me to take this world, for which 
 you can give no possible insurance. 
 
 (211) 
 
(2121 
 
 THE I.ITTI.E ORPHAN'S DREAM. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 213 
 
 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 
 disappeared. 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: 
 41 That house is on fire now in the basement," you could not get any insur- 
 ance upon it. Yet you talk about this world as though it were a safe invest- 
 ment, 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 with 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 Lord 
 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 joy, 
 
 Heard every trump of fame ; 
 
 Drank early, deeply drank, 
 
 Drank draughts which common millions might 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 with 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 a while, he finds that it is Thackeray in the mirror. Oh, 
 yes, this world is a cheat. Talking 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 Asia ? Who ever gained a city ? Talk 
 
214 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 direc- 
 tion, and three miles in another direction." 
 
 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 
 
 napoleon's retreat from Moscow. — Painted by Adolphe Yvon. 
 
 he will measure five feet nine inches one way, and two and a half feet the 
 other way. 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 executors 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 215 
 
 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 with- 
 out seeing the comparative value. The 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, you 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. 
 Judgment, without any racket, lifting its 
 scales ; memory, without any noise, bringing 
 down ail its treasures; conscience taking its 
 judgment-seat without any excitement; 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 instru- 
 ment that no human hand can touch it. 
 You break a bone, and with splinters and 
 bandages the surgeon sets it ; the eye be- 
 comes inflamed, the apothecary's wash cools 
 it ; but a soul off the track, unbalanced, no 
 human power can readjust it. With one 
 sweep of its wing it circles the universe, 
 and overvaults 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 
 
 / 
 
 \i 
 
 1 
 
(216) 
 
 THE VICTOR. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 217 
 
 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 
 elouds, out of the sea, out of flowers, out of ten thousand things ; and yet all 
 the joy it has here does not test its capacity. 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 
 flowers is the spirit being wafted away 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 amethystine walls 
 of heaven will not the jasmine 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 ? 
 
 Christ is glorious to our souls now, but how much grander our apprecia- 
 tion 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 
 imperilled 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 
 
2lS 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 wake the song of jubilee, and all heaven will then break forth into: 
 "Hosanna! hosanna! hosanna! Worthy is the Lamb that was slain." 
 
 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 very valuable, or the 
 government would not have paid $200,000 for it." I want to see what my 
 
 THE SAILOR'S RETURN. 
 
 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 deepest 
 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 ? 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 219 
 
 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. No ; it is a perpetual song. If the ages of heaven marched in e 
 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 STORY OF AN HEROIC SAILOR. 
 
 I was reading of a sailor who had iust got ashore, and was telling about 
 his last experience at sea. He said : 
 
 " The last time I crossed the ocean 
 we had a terrific time. After we had 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 aud 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 pass- 
 engers 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 uufallen 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." 
 
 THE CROWN OF THORNS. 
 
Agnosticism. 
 
 THE FEAR OF PUNISHMENT, AND THE RESULT OF CHRISTIAN 
 
 CIVILIZATION. 
 
 SOLAR eclipse was prophesied to take place about the time 
 of the destruction of ancient Jerusalem. Josephus, the 
 historian, says that the prophecy was literally fulfilled, 
 and about that time there were strange appearances 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 blasphemy 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 lumi- 
 nary 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 the mountains of ashes and the valleys of ashes and the 
 chasms of ashes. An extinguished sun. A dead sun. A buried sun. Let all 
 worlds wail at the stupendous obsequies. 
 
 Of course, 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, Californian geysers cease to smoke, and the ice of hailstorms remains 
 unmelted in their crater. All the flowers have breathed their last breath. Ships 
 with sailors frozen at the mast, and helmsmen frozen at the wheel, and passen- 
 gers frozen in the cabin ; all nations dying, first at the north and then at the 
 
 (220) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 221 
 
 south. Child frosted and dead in the cradle. Octogenarian frosted and dead 
 at the hearth. Workman with frozen hand on the hammer and frozen foot on 
 the shuttle. Winter from sea to sea. All-congeaiing winter. Perpetual winter. 
 Globe of frig- 
 idity. Hemis- 
 phere 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 
 yet not pene- 
 trate beyond 
 the universal 
 congelation. 
 The earth and 
 ice-floe grind- 
 ing against 
 other ice-floes. 
 The arch- 
 angels 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 
 
 daedalus and his son Icarus.— From a Painting by Van Dyck. 
 
 Icarus fled on wings to escape the fury of Minos, but his flight was so high that the sun melted the wax unon 
 his wings and he fell into the sea. 
 
 destruction of the sun in the natural heavens would be to our physical 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 
 
222 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 people who rejoice to hear Christianity caricatured, and to hear Christ assailed 
 with quibble and quirk and misrepresentation and badinage and harlequinade. 
 
 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 
 
 successful, they will accom- 
 ,plish. There are those in all 
 our communities who would 
 like to see the Christian re- 
 ligion overthrown, and who 
 say the world would be better 
 without it. I want to show 
 you what is the end of this 
 road, and what is the terminus 
 of this crusade, and what 
 this world will be when athe- 
 ism and infidelity have tri- 
 umphed 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 unutter- 
 able degradation of woman- 
 hood, converting women into 
 slaves or creating in her the 
 fury of a Clytemnestra. I 
 will prove it by facts and 
 arguments which no honest 
 man will dispute. In all com- 
 munities and cities and States 
 and nations where the Chris- 
 tian religion has been domi- 
 nant woman's condition has 
 been ameliorated and im- 
 proved, and she is deferred to 
 and honored in a thousand 
 things, and every 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 city of 
 this country than the schools and seminaries for our young ladies. You 
 know that while woman may suffer injustice in England and the United 
 
 clytemnestra— From a Painting by /no. Collier. 
 
 In Grecian Legends the daughter of Leda and King of Sparta. She slew her hus- 
 band in a bath, also his paramour Cassandra. She in turn was slain by Orestes. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 223 
 
 States, she has more of her rights in Christendom than she has anywhere 
 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 Hindostan. 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 lawful ground for divorce a woman's beginning to 
 eat before her husband has finished his meal. What mean those white bun- 
 dles 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 condi- 
 tion that I speak of would woman go if Christian influences were withdrawn 
 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 
 any lower because there is no lower depth. And yet, notwithstanding the 
 fact that the only salvation of woman from degradation and woe is the Chris- 
 tian 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 Chris- 
 tianity. I make no remark in regard to those persons. I make no remark 
 in regard to them. In the silence of your own 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 away the idea of retribution and punish- 
 ment from society, and it will begin very soon to disintegrate ; and take away 
 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 
 
224 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 
 
 NOBLE WOMANHOOD. 
 
 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 225 
 
 it is merely a coward's whistling to keep his courage up. I have seer, men 
 flaunt their immoralities in the face of the community, and I have heard them 
 defy the judgment-day and scoff at the idea of any future consequence of their 
 sin; but when they came to die they shrieked until you could hear them for 
 nearly two blocks, and in the summer night the neighbors got up to put the 
 windows down because they could not endure the horror. 
 
 I would not want to see a rail train with five hundred Christian people on 
 board go down through a draw-bridge into a watery grave. I would not want 
 to 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 something at such a time so indescribable in the coun- 
 tenance. I just looked in upon it for a minute or two, but the clutch of his 
 fist was so diabolic, and the strength of voice was so unnatural, I could not 
 endure it. " There is no hell, there is no hell, there is no hell !" the man 
 had said for sixty 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 mightiest restraints to-day against theft, immorality, against libertinism, 
 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 retribution 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 iafidelity got the victory, and 
 suppose they marshalled 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 
 ,\ave been standing there so long deluding the people with consolation in their 
 bereavements and sorrows. All those churches ought to be extirpated ; the}- 
 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 
 
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THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 227 
 
 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 with 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 mar- 
 bles, or swearing on the commons. Away with them ! Forward, march ! ye 
 great army of infidels and atheists, and next of all they will attack Christian 
 
 MOTHERLESS. 
 
 asylum"-— the institutions 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. For- 
 ward, march ! ye 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 
 graveyards and the cemeteries of the earth. Pull down the sculpture above 
 
228 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 Greenwood's gate, for it means the resurrection. Tear away at the entrance 
 of Laurel Hill the figure 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." 
 
 GRIEF. 
 
 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 of Him who lives 
 lorever and ever. They would take down from their high place the Father, 
 the Son, the Holy Ghost. " Down with them ! " they say. " Down with Him 
 from 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 PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 229 
 
 A NEFARIOUS PLOT. 
 
 A world without a head, a universe without a king. Orphan constella- 
 tions. 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 Hotten- 
 tot 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, 
 3'ou Sandwich Islands, 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 bar- 
 barism into civilization. 
 Obliterate all the work 
 of Dr. Duff 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 cf no use. Send home the medical 
 missionaries who are doctoring the bodies as well as the souls of the dying 
 nations. Go home, London Missionary Society. Go home, American Board 
 of Foreign Missions. Go home, ye Moravians, and relinquish back into dark- 
 ness, 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 Lon- 
 don; 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, an- 
 other a lazaretto, the other a pandemonium. These infidel bands of music have 
 only just begun their concert — yea, they have only been stringing their instru- 
 ments. I here put before you their whole programme, from beginning unto 
 
 THE FALL Or ADAM. 
 
230 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 
 Jeads. 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 practise 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 appro- 
 priate for the funeral 
 sermon will be that found 
 He shall be buried with the burial of an ass." 
 
 THE DELUGE. 
 
 in the book of Jeremiah xxii. 19 
 
 THE SAME SUN. 
 
 A thousand voices come up to me as I write, saying: "Do you 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 noonday 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, 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 beauti- 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 231 
 
 ful 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 specula- 
 tion until they are shadowed under their own vaporing; but the Lord 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 are going to take all America for God. Both of them to- 
 gether 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 righteous- 
 ness will prevail universally. 
 
JHatbrls of (grntus. 
 
 ,/>v£ttH* MEN DISTINGUISHED IN HISTORY WHO BEGAN LIFE IN 
 
 !///^P^ t ^>^; / y^|J--- x POVERTY AND AFFLICTION. 
 
 E have in the thirty-third chapter of Isaiah a com- 
 mand given, or rather implied, that the " lame take 
 the prey." It also, and more directly, perhaps, pre- 
 dicts the utter demolition of the Assyrian host. Not 
 only robust men should go forth and gather the spoils 
 of conquest, but even men crippled of arm and crippled 
 of foot should go out and capture much that was 
 valuable. Their physical disadvantages should not hin- 
 der 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 disadvan- 
 tages, 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 of 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 won- 
 derful 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 sicknesses, 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 historians and heroes of the world had 
 
 (232) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 
 
 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 worldly success, 
 and amid the huzza of 
 nations and centuries " the 
 lame took the prey." 
 
 You know that a vast 
 multitude of these men 
 started under the disad- 
 vantage of obscure parent- 
 age. Columbus, the son 
 of the weaver. Ferguson, 
 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 direc- 
 tions, is more true in spirit- 
 ual and religious direc- 
 tions, and I proceed to 
 prove it. 
 
 There are in all com- 
 munities many invalids. 
 They never knew a well 
 day. They adhere to their 
 occupations, but they go 
 panting along the streets 
 with exhaustions, and at 
 eventi me they lie down on 
 the lounge with achings 
 beyond all medicament. 
 They have tried all pre- 
 scriptions ; they have gone 
 through all the cures which 
 were proclaimed infallible, 
 and they have come now 
 to surrender to perpetual 
 
234 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 ailments. They consider they are among many disadvantages, and when they 
 see those who are buoyant 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 knowl- 
 edge of the Bible, who are in nearest intimacy with Jesus Christ, who have the most 
 glowing experiences of the truth, 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 and 
 you run your fingers 
 over the raised letters, 
 and you say : " Why, 
 I never could get any 
 information in this 
 way. What a slow, 
 lumbrous way of read- 
 ing ! God help the 
 blind." 
 
 And yet I find 
 among that class of 
 persons, among the 
 blind, the deaf and the 
 dumb, the most thor- 
 ough 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 or 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 
 
 BRINGING HOME THE LOST SHEEP 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 235 
 
 sublime sentence in answer : " When the song of the angels shall burst upon 
 our 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 congre- 
 gations. 
 
 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 cul- 
 tured ear went down 
 into discord, these 
 afflicted ones cried un- 
 to the Lord in their 
 trouble, and he made 
 their sorrows their ad- 
 vantage, 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 sympathetic 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 infirmi- 
 ties, so they are hindered from doing a continuous day's work. A city mis- 
 sionary 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 
 
 FEEDING THE MULTITUDE. 
 
236 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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. 
 
 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 Lord has been 
 a good Lord to me. I have buried all my children. The Lord gave them, 
 and the Lord had a right to take them away. Blessed be His name. I was 
 very sick, and I had no money, and my neighbors came in and took care of 
 me, and I wanted nothing. I suffer a great deal with pain, but then I have 
 so many mercies left. The Lord 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 morning. 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 they 
 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 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 
 
the empty saddle. — From the Painting by S. E. Waller. 
 
 (237) 
 
2 3 8 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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. 
 
 RECITING INCIDENTS OF HIS VALOR. 
 
 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 
 workmen 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 PATHWAY OF LIFE. 239 
 
 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, ind read about 
 the battle while warming ourselves at the camp-fires, or on furh. gh at home, 
 our feet upon an ottoman, we sagging back into an arm-chair. 
 
 As you 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. 
 
 Oh, my friends ! why do you not go to work and preach this gospel ? You 
 say, " I have no pulpit." You have. It may be 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 unanimous 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 distributors, 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? 
 
240 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 An engineer on a locomotive going across the Western prairies da}' 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, know- 
 ing 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 
 
 the last journey. — From the Painting by Edwin L. Weeks. 
 
 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 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 snatch- 
 
3 
 
 > 
 
 r 
 
 5" 
 
 
 16 
 
 (241) 
 
242 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 ing the little ones from under the wheels of temptation and sin — snatching 
 them from under thundering rail-trains of eternal disaster, bringing them up 
 into respectability 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 equip- 
 ages. But who is the Lord's royal family ? Some of them may serve you 
 in the household, some 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 want to stop, 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. 
 
Otunfcnmess. 
 
 THE DEEP DAMNATION THAT CURSES AND IMPOVER- 
 ISHES MILLIONS — THE SLAVERY OF THE POOR. 
 
 (j HE only argument that can be made against the Satur- 
 day afternoon closing is that this weekly vacation 
 may be turned into wassail. Better have no Satur- 
 day afternoon free, from now until the day of your 
 death, if the liquor saloon adds you to its disciple- 
 ship. The rum business is pouring its vitriolic and 
 damnable liquids down the throats of hundreds of 
 thousands of laborers, and while the ordinary strikes are 
 ruinous both *o employers and employes, I proclaim 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 who 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 $1,500,000,000 for rum. Of course, the work- 
 ing-classes do a great deal of this expenditure. Careful sta- 
 tistics show that the wage-earning classes of Great Britain 
 expend in liquor ^100,000,000 or $500,000,000 a year. Sit 
 down now and calculate, O workingman ! how much you 
 have expended in these directions. Add it all up. Add up what your 
 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 
 working-man'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 Bngland 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 difference, 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 nearly all the members got sick or worn out. Out 
 of 652 members only two went through undamaged ; they were teetotalers. 
 
 (243/ 
 
(244) 
 
 jolly companions.— From the Painting by Ed. Grutzner. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 245 
 
 Better be like Daniel, who refused the king's wine because, though a 
 young man, he was wise enough to know that intoxicants, or stimulants, 
 if you prefer, weaken both mind 
 and body, and are always hurtful 
 to tba brain and damnation to 
 the soul. 
 
 When an army goes out to 
 the battle the soldier who has 
 water or coffee in his canteen 
 marches easier and fights bet- 
 ter than the soldier who has 
 whiskey in his canteen. Rum 
 helps a man to fight when he 
 has only one contestant, and 
 that at the street-corner. But 
 when he goes forth to maintain 
 some great battle for God and 
 his country, he wants no rum 
 about him. When the Rus- 
 sians go to war a corporal 
 passes along the line and smells 
 the breath of every soldier. If 
 there be in his breath a taint 
 of intoxicating liquor, the man 
 is sent back to the barracks. 
 Why? He cannot endure fa- 
 tigue. 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 indul- 
 gences they will 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. 
 
(general Josijua. 
 
 THE CAPTURE OF AI, AND THE GREAT BATTLES WHICH ARE FOUGHT FOR GLORY 
 
 AND FOR LIFE. 
 
 iNE 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 
 by name than any other city in the ages, spelled with 
 two letters — A, I — Ai. Joshua and his men wanted to 
 ^Mpi||g|g|Rgnfc^ take it. How to do it is the question. On a former 
 A^]l])G>^ ^Vi\^i^ 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 com- 
 mand on the north side of Ai. There is the old city slumbering in its 
 sin. To-morrow will be the battle. Look ! the morning already begins to tip 
 the hills." 
 
 The military officers of Ai look out in the morning very 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, 
 «in infuriated torrent, and their cry is : " Come — we'll make quick work with 
 Joshua and his troops !" No sooner had these people of Ai come out against 
 
 • (246) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 247 
 
 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 cour- 
 age failing him ? 
 
 " ABOUT FACE — CHARGE." 
 
 The retreat is beaten and the Iraelites are flying, throwing blankets and 
 canteens on every side under this worse than Bull Run defeat. And you 
 ought to hear the soldiers of Ai cheer, and cheer, and cheer. But they 
 huzza too 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 bur- 
 nished spear, glittering 
 in the sun like a shaft 
 of doom, and points it 
 toward the city, and 
 when the men up yon- 
 der 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 divi- 
 sion that was in am- 
 bush. 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 Ail 
 Cheer for the triumphs of Israel ! 
 
 IN THE BRAVE DAYS OF OLD. 
 
(243) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 249 
 
 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 compan- 
 ions 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 converted infidel. He is so strong now in his faith in the 
 gospel he says he can read anything. What are you 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 
 foolhardy expedition in the presence of mighty and overwhelming temptations, 
 and the men of Ai made a morning meal of them. So also there is such a 
 thing as victorious retreat in the religious world. Thousand of times the king- 
 dom of Christ has seemed to fall back. When the blood of the Scotch Cove- 
 nanters gave a deeper dye to the heather of the Highlands; when the Vaudois 
 of France chose extermination rather than make an unchristian surrender; 
 when on St. Bartholomew's Day mounted assassins rode through the streets of 
 Paris, crying: "Kill! Blood-letting is good in August! Kill! Death to the 
 Huguenots ! Kill !" when Lady Jane Grey's head rolled from the executioner's 
 block ; when Calvin was imprisoned in the castle ; when John Knox died for the 
 truth; when John Bunyan lay rotting 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." 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 marshalling a continent for the Christianization of the 
 world. The Church of Christ falling back from Piedmont, falling back f.0111 
 Rue St. Jacques, falling back from St. Denis, falling back from Wurtemburg 
 castles, falling back from the Brussels market place, yet all the time triumph- 
 ing. Notwithstanding all the shocking reverses which the Church of Christ 
 suffers, what do we see to day ? Three thousand missionaries of the cross on 
 

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THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 251 
 
 heathen ground ; sixty thousand ministers of Jesur 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 au 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 glory to perdition. He descended 
 iuto 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 Lord God Almighty ! 
 
 But let not the powers of darkuess 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 dark- 
 ness 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. 
 
2S2 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 THE TRIUMPH OF THE WICKED. 
 
 The triumph of the wicked is short, 
 panic ? There is nothing so uncontrollable. 
 
 Did you ever see an army in a 
 If you had stood at Long Bridge, 
 Washington, during 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 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-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 con- 
 quest to conquest, but after a while dis- 
 aster rolled back upon them and they 
 were divided into three parts : Misfor- 
 tune 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 build- 
 ing 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 galleries and churches. The stores in which fraudulent 
 men do business, the splendid banking institutions where the president and 
 cashier put all their property 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 ! 
 
 SCOURGING OF JESUS. 
 
(253) 
 
2 54 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 Come up Hildebrand, and Henry II., and Robert Robespierre, and with blis- 
 tering 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 stratagem 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 when 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 be- 
 cause 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 target. Many are called by Christ, 
 as was Matthew, but few leave their tithe-gathering, or their worldly engage- 
 ments to follow Him who gave His life for the world. In our pulpit and pews, 
 and Sunday-schools and prayer-meetings, we want to get a reputation for say- 
 ing 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 liberality, 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 righteousness ; 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, marching up from one side and 
 the glorified of heaven marching down from the other side, the last battle- 
 ment 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 
 aud 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 cov- 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 255 
 
 ered with the earth plowed up by whizzing bullets and bursting shelL, half 
 the regiment cut to pieces, and yet the commander crying : " Forward, march !" 
 Then it requires old-fashioned valor. My 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 communion, when they have on their best clothes of Christian 
 profession ; but put them out in the great battle of life, at the first sharp- 
 shooting of skepticism they dodge, they fall back, they break ranks. We con- 
 front 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 ambus- 
 cades. 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 ? 
 
Constellations of tfjr Bctrrrmrtr. 
 
 THE SPLENDORS OF THE HEAVENS COMPARED WITH 
 THE GLORY OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 
 
 VERY man has a thousand roots and a thousand 
 branches. His roots reach down through all the 
 earth ; his branches spread through all the heavens. 
 He speaks with voice, with eye, with hand, with 
 foot. His silence often is thunder, and his life is 
 an anthem or a doxology. There is no such thing 
 as negative influence. We are all positive in the 
 place we occupy, making the world better or making 
 it worse, on the Lord's side or on the devil's, making 
 up reasons for our blessedness or banishment, and 
 we have already done a mighty work in peopling 
 heaven or hell. I hear people tell of what they are going to do. 
 A man who has burned down a city might as well talk of 
 some evil that he expects to do, or a man who has saved an em- 
 pire might as well talk of some good that he expects to do. 
 By the force of your evil influence you have already consumed 
 infinite values, or you have, by the power of a right influence, 
 won whole kingdoms for God. 
 
 It would be absurd for me by elaborate argument to prove 
 that the world is off the track. You might as well stand at the foot of an 
 embankment, amid the wreck of a capsized rail-train, proving by elaborate argu- 
 ment that something is out of order. Adam tumbled over the embankment sixty 
 centuries ago, and the whole race, in one long train, has gone on t ambling in 
 the same direction. Crash ! crash ! The only question now is, by what leverage 
 can the crushed thing be lifted ? By what hammer may the fragments be 
 reconstructed ? 
 
 I want to show you how we may turn many to righteousness, and what 
 will be our future pay for so doing. 
 
 We may turn them by the charm of a right example. A child, coming 
 from a filthy home, was taught at school to wash its face. It went home so much 
 improved in appearance that its mother washed her face. And when the father 
 of the household came home and saw the improvement in domestic appearance, 
 he washed his face. The neighbors happening in saw the change, and tried the 
 same experiment until all that street was purified, and the next street copied 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 ^57 
 
 its example, and the whole city felt the result of one schoolboy washing his 
 face. That is a fable by which we set forth that the best way to get the world 
 washed of its sins and pollution is to have our own heart and life cleansed and 
 purified. A man with grace in his heart, and Christian cheerfulness in his face, 
 and holy consistency in his behavior, is a perpetual sermon ; and the sermon 
 differs from others in that it has but one head, and the longer it runs the better. 
 There are honest men who walk down Wall street, making the teeth of iniquity 
 chatter. There are happy men who go into a sick-room, and, by a look, help 
 the broken bone to knit, and the excited nerves drop to calm beating. There 
 are pure men whose presence silences the tongue of uncleanness. The mightiest 
 agent of good on earth is a consistent Christian. I like the Bible folded between 
 lids of cloth, or calfskin, 
 or morocco, but I like it bet- 
 ter when, in the shape of a 
 man, it goes out into the 
 world — a Bible illustrated. 
 Courage is beautiful to 
 read about ; but rather 
 would I see a man with all 
 the world against him 
 confident as though all 
 the world were for him. 
 Patience is beautiful to 
 read about; but rather 
 would I see a buffeted 
 soul calmly waiting for the 
 time of deliverance. Faith 
 is beautiful to read about ; 
 but rather would I find a man in the midnight walking straight on as though he 
 saw everything. Oh, how many souls have been turned to God by the charm of a 
 bright example ! 
 
 THE SWIFT FEET OF PRAYER. 
 
 When, in the Mexican War, the troops were wavering, a General rose in 
 his stirrups and dashed into the enemy's lines, shouting, " Men, follow !" They, 
 seeing his courage and disposition, dashed on after him and gained the vic- 
 tory. What men want to rally them for God is an example to lead them. 
 All your commands to others to advance amount to nothing so long as yor 
 stay behind. To affect them aright, you need to start for heaven yourself, 
 looking back only to give the stirring cry of " Men, follow !" 
 
 Again, we may turn many to righteousness by prayer. There is no such 
 detective as prayer, for no one can hide away from it. It puts its hand on 
 the shoulder of a man ten thousand miles off. It alights on a ship mid-Atlan- 
 tic. The little child cannot understand the law of electricity, or how the 
 i7 
 
 HUSBANDLY SYMPATHY. 
 

 
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 (258) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 259 
 
 telegraphic operator, by touching the instrument here, may dart a message 
 under the sea to another continent ; nor can we, with- our small intellects, 
 understand how the touch of a Christian's prayer shall instantly strike a soul 
 on the other side of the earth. You take ship and go to some other country, 
 and get there at eleven o'clock in the morning. You telegraph to New York, 
 and the message gets here at six o'clock in the same morning. In other 
 words, it seems to arrive here five hours before it started. Like that is prayer. 
 God says: "Before they call I will hear." To overtake a loved one on the 
 road you may spur up a lathered steed until he shall outrace the one that 
 brought the news to Ghent, but a prayer shall catch it at one gallop. A boy 
 running away from home may take the midnight train from the country vil- 
 lage and reach the seaport in time to gain the ship that sails on the morrow, 
 but a mother's prayer will be on the deck to meet him, and in the hammock 
 before he swings into it, and at the capstan before he winds the rope around 
 it, and on the sea against the sky, as the vessel plows on toward it. There 
 is a mightiness in prayer. George Muller prayed a company of poor boys 
 together, and then he prayed up an asylum in which they might be sheltered. 
 He turned his face toward Edinburgh and prayed, and there came a thousand 
 pounds. He turned his face toward London and prayed, and there came a 
 thousand pounds. He turned his face toward Dublin and prayed, and there 
 came a thousand pounds. The breath of Elijah's prayer blew all the clouds 
 off the sky, and it was dry weather. The breath of Elijah's prayer blew all 
 the clouds together, and it was wet weather. Prayer, in Daniel's time, walked 
 the cave as a lion-tamer. It reached up, and took the sun by its golden bit 
 and stopped it. We have all yet to try the full power of prayer. The time 
 will come when the American Church will pray with its face toward the West, 
 and all the prairies and inland cities will surrender to God ; and will pray 
 with face toward the sea, and all the islands and ships will become Christian. 
 Parents who have wayward sons will get down on their knees and say, 
 " Lord, send my boy home," and the boy in Canton shall get right up from 
 the gaming-table, and go down to the wharf to find out which ship starts first 
 for America. 
 
 HOW TO PRAY. 
 
 Not one of us yet knows how to pray. All we have done has only been 
 pottering and guessing and experimenting. A boy gets hold of his father's 
 saw and hammer and tries to make something, but it is a poor affair. The 
 father comes and takes the same saw and hammer and builds the house or 
 the ship. In the childhood of our Christian faith we make but poor work with 
 these weapons of prayer, but when we come to the stature of men in Christ 
 Jesus, then, under these implements, the temple of God will rise, and the 
 world's redemption will be launched. God cares not for the length of our 
 prayer, or the number of our prayers, or the beauty of our prayers, or the 
 place of our prayers; but it is the faith in them that tells — believing that 
 
26o 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 prayer soars higher than the lark ever sang, plunges deeper than diving-bell 
 ever sank, darts quicker than lightning ever flashed. Though we have used 
 only the back of this weapon instead of the edge, what marvels have been 
 wrought ! If saved, we are all the captives of some earnest prayer. Would 
 God that, in desire for the rescue of souls, we might in prayer lay hold of 
 the resources of the Lord Omnipotent. 
 
 THE VOICE OF PRAYER. 
 
 We may turn many to righteousness by Christian admonition. Do not 
 wait until you can make a formal speech. Address the one next to you. Just 
 one sentence may do the work, just one question, just one look. The formal 
 talk that begins with a sigh and ends with a canting snuffle is not what is 
 wanted, but the heart-throb of a man in dead earnest. There is not a soul on 
 earth that you may not bring to God if you rightly go at it. They said 
 Gibraltar could not be taken. It is a rock 1600 feet high and three miles 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 ?6i 
 
 long. But the English and Dutch did take it. Artillery, and sappers and 
 miners, and fleets pouring out volleys of death, and thousands of men, reckless 
 of danger, can do anything. The stoutest heart of sin, though it be rock, and 
 surrounded by an ocean of transgression, under Christian bombardment, may 
 be made to hoist the flag of redemption. 
 
 But is all this admonition, and prayer, and Christian work for nothing? 
 The Bible promises to all the faithful eternal lustre. " They that turn many 
 to righteousness shall shine as the stars forever." 
 
 "When the grave household 'round his hall repair, 
 Warned by a bell, and close the hours with prayer." 
 
 As stars the redeemed have a borrowed light. What makes Mars, and 
 Venus, and Jupiter so luminous ? When the sun throws down his torch in 
 the heavens the stars pick up the scattered brands and hold them in proces- 
 sion as the queen of the night advances ; so all Christian workers standing 
 around the throne will shine in the light borrowed from the Sun of Righteous- 
 
2 62 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 ness — Jesus in their faces, Jesus in their songs, Jesus in their triumph. Christ 
 left heaven once for a tour of redemption on earth, yet the glorified ones knew 
 He would come back again. But let Him abdicate His throne, and go away 
 to stay forever, the music would stop, the congregation disperse, the temples of 
 God be darkened, the rivers of light stagnate, and every chariot would become 
 a hearse, and every bell would toll, and there would not be room on the hill- 
 sides to bury the dead of the great metropolis, for there would be pestilence 
 in heaven. But Jesus lives, and so all the redeemed live with Him. He shall 
 recognize them as His comrades in earthly toil, and remember what they did 
 for the honor of His name and for the spread of His kingdom. All their 
 prayers and tears and work will rise before Him as He looks into their faces, 
 and He will divide His kingdom with them ; His peace, their peace ; His 
 holiness, their holiness; His joy, their joy. The glory of the central throne 
 reflected from the surrounding thrones, the last spot of sin struck from the 
 Christian orb, and the entire nature atremble and aflash with light, they shall 
 shine as the stars forever and ever. 
 
 LIKE THE STARS. 
 
 Christian workers shall be like the stars in the fact that they have a 
 light independent of each other. Look up at the' night, and see each world 
 show its distinct glory. It is not like the conflagration, in which you cannot 
 tell where one flame stops and another begins. Neptune, Herschel, and Mer- 
 cury are as distinct as if each one of them were the only star ; so our indi- 
 vidualism will not be lost in heaven. A great multitude — yet each one as 
 observable, as distinctly recognized, as greatly celebrated, as if in all the space, 
 from gate to gate, and from hill to hill, he were the only inhabitant ; no 
 mixing up — no mob — no indiscriminate rush, each Christian standing illustri- 
 ous — all the story of earthly achievement adhering to each one ; his self- 
 denials, and pains, and services, and victories published. Before men went 
 out to the last war the orators told them that they would all be remembered 
 by their country, and their names are commemorated in poetry and song ; but 
 go to the graveyard in Richmond, and you will find there 6000 graves, over 
 each one of which is the inscription, " Unknown." The world does not 
 remember its heroes, but there wi\l be no unrecognized Christian worker in 
 heaven. Each one known by all, grandly known; known by acclamation; all 
 the past story of work for God gleaming in cheek, and brow, and foot, and palm. 
 They shall shine with distinct light as the stars, forever and ever. 
 
 Christian workers shall shine like the stars in clusters. In looking up, 
 you find the worlds in family circles. Brothers and sisters — they take hold of 
 each other's hands and dance in groups. Orion in a group. The Pleiades in 
 a group. The solar system is only a company of children, with bright faces, 
 gathered around one great fire-place. The worlds do not straggle off. They go 
 in squadrons and fleets, sailing through immensity. 
 
\ 
 
 THE ANGELS — LIFE, DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 (263) 
 
264 TH E PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 So Christian workers in heaven will dwell in neighborhoods and clusters. 
 I am sure that some people I will like in heaven a great deal better than 
 others. Yonder is- a constellation of stately Christians. They live on earth by 
 rigid rule. They never laugh. They walked every hour, anxious lest they 
 should lose their dignity. But they loved God ; and yonder they shine in brilliant 
 constellation. Yet I shall not long to get into that particular group. Yonder 
 is a constellation of small-hearted Christians — asteroids in the eternal astro- 
 nomy. While some souls go up from Christian battle, and blaze like Mars, 
 these asteroids dart a feeble ray like Vesta. Yonder is a constellation of 
 martyrs, of apostles, of patriarchs. Our souls, as they go up to heaveu, will 
 seek out the most congenial society. Yonder is a constellation almost merry 
 with the play of light. On earth they were full of sympathies and songs, and 
 tears, and raptures, and congratulations. When they prayed, their words took 
 fire ; when they sang, the tune could not hold them ; when they wept over a 
 world's woes, they sobbed as if heart-broken ; when they worked for Christ, 
 they flamed with enthusiasm. Yonder they are — circle of light ! Constellation 
 of joy! Galaxy of fire! Oh, that you and I, by that grace which can transform 
 the worst into the best, might at last sail in the wake of that fleet, and wheel 
 in that glorious group, as the stars, forever and ever. 
 
 FLIGHT OF WORLDS. 
 
 Christian workers will shine like the stars in swiftness of motion. The 
 worlds do not stop to shine. There are no fixed stars save as to relative posi- 
 tion. The star most thoroughly fixed flies thousands of miles a minute. The 
 astronomer, using his telescope for an Alpine stock, leaps from world-crag to 
 world-crag, and finds no star standing still. The chamois hunter has to fly to 
 catch his prey, but not so swift is his game as that which the scientist (rieo 
 to shoot through the tower of observatory. Like petrels, mid-Atlantic, that 
 seem to come from no shore, and be bound to no landing-place — flying, flying — 
 so these great flocks of worlds rest not as they go — wing and wing — age after 
 age — forever and ever. The eagle hastens to its pre}', but we shall in speed 
 beat the eagles. You have noticed the velocity of the swift horse under whose 
 feet the miles slip like a smooth ribbon, and as he passes the four hoofs strike 
 the earth in such quick beat, your pulses take the same vibration. But all 
 these things are not swift in comparison with the motion of which I speak. 
 The moon moves 54,000 miles in a day. Yonder, Neptune flashes on 11,000 
 miles in an hour. Yonder, Mercury goes 109,000 miles in an hour. So, like 
 the stars, the Christian worker shall shine in swiftness of motion. You hear 
 now of father, or mother, or child sick 1000 miles away, and it takes you two 
 days to get to them. You hear of some case of suffering that demands your 
 immediate attention, but it takes you an hour to get there. Oh, the joy when 
 you shall take starry speed, and be equal to 100,000 miles an hour. Having 
 on earth got used to Christian work, you wi]). not quit when death strikes you. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 265 
 
 You will only take on more velocity. There is a dying child in London, and 
 its spirit must be taken up to God : you are there in an instant to do it. 
 There is a young man in New York to be arrested from going into that gate 
 of sin : you are there in an instant to arrest him. All space open before you, 
 with nothing to hinder you in mission of light, and love, and joy, you shall 
 shine in swiftness of motion as the stars, forever and ever. 
 
 Christian workers, like the stars, shall shine in magnitude. The most 
 illiterate man knows that these things in the sky, looking like gilt buttons, 
 are great masses of matter. To weigh them, one would think that it would 
 require scales with a pillar hundreds of thousands of miles high, and chains 
 hundreds of thousands of miles long, and at the bottom of the chains basins on 
 
 blessed are the pure in heart.— From a Painting by Rubens. 
 
 either side hundreds of thousands of miles wide, and that then Omnipotence 
 alone could put the mountains into the scales and the hills into the balance. 
 But puny man has been equal to the undertaking, and has set a little balance 
 on his geometry, and weighed world against world. Yes, he has pulled out his 
 measuring line and announced that Herschel is 36,000 miles in diameter,- 
 Saturn 79,000 miles in diameter, and Jupiter 89,000 miles in diameter, and that 
 the smallest pearl on the beach of heaven is immense beyond all imagination. 
 So all they who have toiled for Christ on earth shall rise up to a magnitude 
 
NIOBE. 
 
 Niobe was the wife of Arophion, King of Thebes, whose pride in her children provoked Diana and Apollo to slay them. HeY 
 grief was so ereat that poets represent her as being turned into stone. 
 (266) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 267 
 
 of privilege, and a magnitude of strength, and a magnitude of holiness, and a 
 magnitude of joy ; and the weakest saint in glory become greater than all we 
 can now imagine of an archangel. 
 
 A GLORY THAT NEVER FADES. 
 
 It doth not yet appear what we shall be. Wisdom that shall know every- 
 thing; wealth that shall possess everything; strength that shall do everything; 
 glory that shall circumscribe everything! We shall not be like a taper set in 
 a sick man's window, or a bundle of sticks kindled on the beach to warm a 
 shivering crew ; but you must take the diameter and the circumference of the 
 world if you would get any idea of the greatness of our estate when we shall 
 shine as the stars, forever and ever. 
 
 Lastly, and coming to this point my mind almost breaks down under the 
 contemplation — like the stars, all Christian workers shall shine in duration. 
 The same stars that look down upon us looked down upon the Chaldean shep- 
 herds. The meteor that I saw flashing across the sky the other night, I 
 wonder if it was not the same one that pointed down to where Jesus lay in the 
 manger, and if, having pointed out His birthplace, it has ever since been 
 wandering through the heavens, watching to see how the world would treat 
 Him. When Adam awoke in the garden in the cool of the day, he- saw coin- 
 ing out through the dusk of the evening the same worlds that greet us now. 
 
 The star at which the mariner looks to-night was the light by which the 
 ships of Tarshish were guided across the Mediterranean and the Venetian flotilla 
 found its way into Lepanto. Their armor Is as bright to-night as when, in 
 ancient battle, the stars in their courses fought against Sisera. To the ancients 
 the stars were symbols of eternity. But here the figure entirely breaks 
 down — not in defeat, but in the majesties of the judgment. The stars shall not 
 shine forever. The Bible says they shall fall like autumnal leaves. It is almost 
 impossible for a man to take in a courser going a mile in three minutes ; but 
 God shall take in the worlds, flying a hundred thousand miles an hour, by 
 one pull of his little finger. As, when the factory band slips at night-fall from 
 the main wheel, all the smaller wheels slacken their speed, and with slower and 
 slower motion they turn until they come to a full stop, so this great machinery 
 of the universe, wheel within wheel, making revolution of appalling speed, shall 
 by the touch of God's hand slip the band of present law and slacken and stop. 
 That is what will be the matter with the mountains. The chariots in which 
 they ride shall halt so suddenly that the kings shall be thrown out. Star after 
 star shall be carried out to burial amid funeral torches and burning worlds. 
 But the Christian workers shall never quit their thrones — they shall reign for- 
 ever and ever. If, by some invasion from hell, the attempt were made to carry 
 them off into captivity from heaven, the redeemed, on white horses of victory, 
 would ride down the foe, and all the steep of the sky would resound with the 
 crash of the overwhelmed cohorts tumbled headlong out of heaven. 
 
good 
 
 $oto to prolong Hife. 
 
 PRACTICAL HINTS AND EXAMPLES BY WHICH OUR DAYS 
 MAY BE BOTH LENGTHENED AND BLESSED. 
 
 the mistake of its friends religion has been chiefly 
 associated with sick beds and graveyards. The 
 whole subject to many people is odorous with 
 chlorine and carbolic acid. There are people who 
 cannot pronounce the word religion without hear- 
 ing in it the clipping chisel of the tombstone cutter. 
 It is high time that this thing were changed, and 
 that religion, instead of being represented as a 
 hearse to carry out the dead, should be represented 
 as a chariot in which the living are to triumph. 
 
 Religion, so far from subtracting from one's 
 a glorious addition. It is sanative, curative, hygienic, 
 for the eyes, good for the cars, good for the spleen, 
 good for the digestion, good for the nerves, good for the 
 muscles. When David prayed that religion might be domi- 
 nant, he did not speak of it as a mild sickness, or an emacia- 
 tion, or an attack of moral and spiritual cramp ; he spoke of 
 it as "the saving health of all nations"; while God promises 
 longevity to the pious, saying: "With long life will I satisfy 
 him." 
 
 The fact is that men and women die too soon. It is high 
 time that religion joined the hand of medical science in 
 attempting to improve human longevity. Adam lived 930 years. Methuselah 
 lived 969 years. As late in the history of the world as Vespasian there were 
 at one time in his empire forty-five people 135 years old. So far down as the 
 sixteenth century, Peter Zartan died at 185 years of age. I do not say that 
 religion will ever take the race back to antediluvian longevity, but I do say 
 the length of human life will be greatly improved. 
 
 MERE DWARFS. 
 
 It is said in Isaiah : " The child shall die a hundred years old." Now, if 
 according to Scripture the child is to be a hundred years old, may not the 
 men and women reach to 300, and 400 and 500 ? The fact is that we are 
 mere dwarfs and skeletons compared with some of the generations that are to 
 
 (268) 
 

 H 
 
 i 
 
 SI 
 
 (269) 
 
a 7 o THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 come. Take the African race. They have been under bondage for centuries. 
 Give them a chance and they develop a Frederick Douglass or a Toussaint 
 L/Overture. And if the white race shall be brought from under the serfdom 
 of sin, what shall be the body ? What shall be the soul ? Religion has only 
 just touched our world. Give it fall power for a few centuries, and who can 
 tell what will be the strength of man and the beauty of women, and the 
 longevity of all. 
 
 My design is to show that practical religion is the friend of long life. ] 
 prove it, first, from the fact that it makes the care of our health a positive 
 Christian duty. Whether we shall keep early or late hours, whether we shall 
 take food digestible or indigestible, whether there shall be thorough or incom- 
 plete mastication, are questions very often deferred to the realm of whimsicality; 
 but the Christian man lifts this whole problem of health into the accountable 
 and the divine. He says : " God has* given me this body, and he has called it 
 the temple of the Holy Ghost, and to deface its altars or mar it walls or 
 crumble its pillars is a God-defying sacrilege." He sees God's calligraphy in 
 every page — anatomical and physiological. He says : " God has given me a 
 wonderful body for noble purposes." 
 
 That arm with thirty-two curious bones wielded by forty-six curious mus- 
 cles, and all under the brain's telegraphy; 350 pounds of blood rushing through 
 the heart every hour, the heart in twenty-four hours beating 100,000 times, 
 during the twenty-four hours overcoming resistances amounting to 224,000,000 
 pounds of weight, during the same time the lungs taking in fifty-seven hogs- 
 heads of air, and all this mechanism not more mighty than delicate and 
 easily disturbed and demolished. 
 
 The Christian man says to himself: "If I hurt my nerves, if I hurt my 
 brain, if I hurt any of my physical faculties, I insult God and call for dire 
 retribution." Why did God tell the Levites not to offer to Him in sacrifice 
 animals imperfect and diseased ? He meant to tell us in all the ages that we 
 are to offer to God our very best physical condition, and a man who, through 
 irregular or gluttonous eating, ruins his health, is not offering to God such a 
 sacrifice. Why did Paul write for his cloak at Troas ? Why should such a 
 great man as Paul be anxious about a thing so insignificant as an overcoat? 
 It was because he knew that with pneumonia and rheumatism he would not be 
 worth half as much to God and the Church as with respiration easy and foot 
 free. 
 
 PHYSICAL HEALTH. 
 An intelligent Christian man would consider it an absurdity to kneel down 
 at night and pray and ask God's protection while at the same time he kept 
 the windows of his bed-room tight shut against fresh air. He would just as 
 soon think of going out on the bridge between New York and Brooklyn, leap- 
 ing off and then praying to God to keep him from getting hurt. Just as long 
 as .you defer this whole subject of physical health to the realm of whimsicality 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 27: 
 
 or to the pastry cook, or to the butcher, or to the baker, or to the apothecary, 
 or to the clothier, you are not acting like a Christian. Take care of all your 
 physical forces — nervous, muscular, bone, brain, cellular tissue — for all you 
 must be brought to judgment. 
 
 Smoking your nervous system into fidgets, burning out the coating of your 
 stomach with wine, logwooded and strychnined, walking with thin shoes to 
 make your feet look delicate, pinched at the waist until you are nigh cut in 
 two, and neither part worth anything, groaning about sick headache and pal- 
 pitation of the heart, which you think came from God, when they came from 
 your own folly. When the doorkeeper of Congress fell dead from excessive 
 joy because Burgoyne had surrendered at Saratoga, and Philip the Fifth, of 
 Spain, dropped dead at the news of his country's defeat in battle, and Cardinal 
 Wolsey expired as a result of Henry the Eighth's anathema, it was demon- 
 strated that the body and soul are Siamese twins, and when you thrill the one 
 with joy or sorrow you thrill the other. We might as well recognize the tre- 
 mendous fact that there are two mighty fortresses in the human body, the 
 heart and the liver : the heart the fortress of all the graces, the liver the fort- 
 ress of all the furies. 
 
 What right has any man or woman to deface the temple of the Holy 
 Ghost ? What is the ear ? Why, it is the whispering gallery of the human 
 soul. What is the eye ? It is the observatory God constructed, its telescope 
 sweeping the heavens. What is the hand ? An instrument so wonderful that 
 when the Earl of Bridgewater bequeathed in his will $40,000 for treatises to be 
 written on the wisdom, power and goodness of God, Sir Charles Bell, the great 
 English anatomist and surgeon, found his greatest illustration in the construc- 
 tion of the human hand, devoting his whole book to that subject. So wonderful 
 are these bodies that God names his own attributes after different parts of them. 
 His omniscience — it is God's eye. His omnipresence — it is God's ear. His om- 
 nipotence — it is God's arm. The upholstery of the midnight heavens — it is the 
 work of God's fingers. His life-giving power — it is the breath of the Almighty. 
 His dominion — " The government shall be upon his shoulders." A body 
 so divinely honored and so divinely constructed — let us be careful not to 
 abuse it. 
 
 When it becomes a Christian duty to take care of our health, is not the 
 whole tendency toward longevity ? If I toss my watch about recklessly and 
 drop it on the pavement and wind it up any time of day or night I happen to 
 think of it, and often let it run down, while you are careful with your watch 
 and never abuse it, and wind it up just at the same hour every night and 
 put it in a place where it will not suffer from the violent changes of atmo- 
 sphere, which watch will last the longer? Common sense answers. Now, the 
 human body is God's watch. You see the hands of the watch, you see the- 
 face of the watch, but the beating of the heart is the ticking of the watch 
 Oh, be careful and do not let it run down ! 
 
(272) 
 
 THB BLOOM OF HEALTH AND THE WHISPER OF LOVE. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 273 
 
 DISSIPATIONS THAT DESTROY HEALTH. 
 
 Practical religion is a friend of longevity in the fact that it is a protest 
 against dissipations which injure and destroy the health. Bad men and women 
 live a very 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 
 chat alighted 011 the bust above his chamber door was delirium tremens — 
 
 Only this and nothing more. 
 
 Napoleon Bonaparte lived only just beyond mid-life, and died at St. 
 Helena, and one of his doctors said that his disease was induced by exces- 
 sive 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 indulgences ! 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, pro- 
 fessors 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 any- 
 thing 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 capac- 
 ity 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 defenses and equipoise of religion. You have no more natural 
 resistance than hundreds of people who* lie in the cemeteries to-day, 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." 
 18 
 
274 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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. Industrious he will be, but never worrying, because God is man- 
 aging 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 thfe 
 controlling stock in thirty of the best monetary institutions of New York : 
 whenever you are in trouble call on me and I will help you ; you can have my 
 money and you can have my influence ; here is my hand in pledge for it." 
 
 How much would 
 3'ou worry about busi- 
 ness? Why, you 
 would say: "I'll do 
 the best I can, and 
 then I'll depend on 
 my friend's gener- 
 osity for the rest." 
 
 Now, more than 
 that is promised to 
 every Christian busi- 
 ness man. God says 
 to him : " I own New 
 York, and London, 
 and St. Petersburg, 
 
 and Pekin ; and Australia 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 ? 
 
 "Oh," you say, "here is a man who asked God for a blessing in a certain 
 enterprise, and he lost $5000 in it. Explain that." I will. Yonder is a factor}', 
 and one wheel is going north and the other wheel is going south, and one 
 wheel plays laterally and the other plays 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?" 
 
 THE HEADING HAND — CLEANSING THE LEPER. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 275 
 
 " Well," 
 
 he said, "I made them go 
 they produce the right result. You go 
 we are turning out in this es- 
 tablishment 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 beautiful result ; and while 
 I am standing there looking at 
 the exquisite fabric an old Scrip- 
 ture passage comes into my 
 mind : "All things work to- 
 gether 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 
 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 ?" uncov- 
 ered 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. I have 
 seen an old missionary, worn- 
 out with the malaria of African 
 jungles, who looked more radiant 
 to me than a rubicund gymnast. 
 
 in opposite directions on purpose, and 
 
 down-stair's and examine the carpets 
 
 reverence.— After the Sculpture of C. B. Birch. 
 
 I have seen a mother, after a six weeks' watch- 
 ing over a family of children down with the scarlet fever, with a glory around 
 
V 6 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 Chris- 
 tian 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 dart 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 livdd 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 
 corroding 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 a 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. 
 
 Experiment First : When you go out of this world it does not make any 
 difference whether you have been good or bad, or whether you believe truth 
 or error, you will go straight to glory. 
 
 " 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 comfort in that experiment." 
 
 Experiment Second : When you leave this world you will go into an 
 intermediate state, where you can get converted and prepared for heaven. 
 
 " Impossible," you say ; " as the tree falleth so it must lie, and I cannot 
 postpone to an intermediate state reformation which ought to have been effected 
 in this state." 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 277 
 
 Experiment Third : There is no future world ; 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," you 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 the grave I only get started, and that I shall go on forever; 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 toward 
 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 bloodshedding, 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." 
 
 PEACE BE STIIA. 
 
278 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 ^eaven, and planting one column 
 of its colors on one side the eternal hili, and planting the other column of 
 
 THE ANGEL OF THE SEPULCHRE. 
 
 its colors on the other side the eternal hill, it rose upward and upward, " and 
 behold there was a rainbow 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 279 
 
 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 crystal, and the sea of glass mingled with fire. Do 
 you want music ? There is the oratorio of the Creation led on hy 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 archangel, with swinging baton, controls 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 the sepulchre. I open the door 
 on the other side the sepulchre. You have been accustomed to walk in the 
 wet grass on the top of the grave. I show you the tinder side of the grave ; 
 the bottom has fallen out and the long ropes with which the pall-bearers let 
 dowu your dead, let them clear through into heaven. 
 
& §f)tptorcdt. 
 
 ^^%jR REACHING THE GOLDEN SHORE ON FRAGMENTS OF WRECK. 
 
 °EVER off Goodwin Sands, or the Skerries, or Cape Hat- 
 teras was a ship in worse predicament than in the 
 Mediterranean hurricane was the grain ship, on which 
 276 passengers 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 com- 
 pletely demoralized, an old missionary took command 
 of the vessel. He was small, crooked-backed and sore- 
 eyed, according to tradition. It was Paul, the only 
 unscared man aboard. He was no more afraid of a 
 Euroclydon tossing the Mediterranean 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 
 ? 4 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 with 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 might 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 star- 
 board, 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 amidships, and into a thousand fragments the vessel, and into the 
 
 faSo) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 281 
 
 waves 276 mortals 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 
 
 paul being taken away from prison To Rome. — From a Painting by Bomat. 
 
 learned to swim, or they were wounded by the falling of the mast, or the ner- 
 vous shock was too great for them. And others had been weakened by the 
 long sea-sickness. 
 
282 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 arid children ! Hold on there ! 
 Almost ashore, keep up your courage ! Remember what Paul told you. 
 There, the receding 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 grey 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, stand- 
 ing and sitting around 
 the blaze, the passen- 
 gers 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 swim- 
 mer, or even two miles are not. But I cannot stop thinking about those on 
 
 PAUL'S SHIPWRECK. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 283 
 
 broken pieces of the ship. The great gospel ship is the finest vessel of the 
 universe, and can carry 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. 
 
 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 en- 
 couraged 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 hetero- 
 dox and go to heaven. The man who, in ^^P 
 the deep affection of his heart accepts Christ 
 is saved, and the man who does not accept 
 
 . ' r SAVED ON BROKEN PIECES OF THE SHIP. 
 
 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 j^ou are 
 instantly 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 outspread 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 
 everything. 
 
 I am talking with a man thoughtful about his soul who has lately 
 travelled through New England and passed the night at Andover. He says 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 
 
284 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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, 
 
 The SEA shah give up THE dead. — From a Bas-relief by Flaxman. 
 
 and all the joys of time and eternity 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 cen- 
 turies been interpreted another way." 
 
 TAKE TO THE PLANK. 
 
 You say : " I do not like Princeton theology, or New Haven theology, or 
 Andover theology." 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 285 
 
 I do not ask you on board any of these great men-of-war, their port- 
 holes filled with the great siege-guns of ecclesiastical battle. But I do ask 
 you to take the one plank of the gospel that you do believe in and strike out 
 for the pearl-strung beach of heaven. 
 
 Says some other man: "I would attend to religion if I was quite sure 
 about the doctrine of election and free agency, but that mixes me all up." 
 
 A YOUNG HERO. 
 
 Those things used to bother me, but I have no more perplexity about them r 
 for I say to myself: "If I love Christ and live a good, honest, useful life, I 
 am elected to be saved; and if I do not love Christ and live a bad life, I 
 will be damned, and all the theological seminaries of the universe cannot 
 make it any different." 
 
286 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 I floundered a long while in the sea of sin and doubt, an<? it was a* 
 rough as the Mediterranean on the fourteenth night, when they threw the 
 grain overboard, but I saw there was mercy for a sinner, and that plank I 
 took, and I have been warming myself by the bright fire on the shore for 
 three decades. 
 
 doesn't believe in a hell. 
 
 Whije I am talking to another man about his soul he tells me : " I do 
 -not become a Christian because I do not believe there is any hell at all." 
 
 Ah ! don't you ? Do all the people, of all beliefs and no beliefs at all, 
 of good morals and bad morals, go straight to a happy heaven ? Do the holy 
 and the debauched have the same destination ? At midnight in a hallway the 
 owner of a house and a burglar meet each other, and they both fire, and 
 both are wounded, but the burglar died in five minutes and the owner of the 
 house lives a week after ; will the burglar be at the gate of heaven waiting 
 when the house-owner comes in ? Will the debauchee and the libertine go 
 right in among the families of heaven ? I wonder if Herod is playing on the 
 banks of the river of life with the children he massacred. I wonder if Charles 
 Guiteau or John Wilkes Booth are up there shooting at a mark. I do 
 not now controvert it, although I must say that for such a miserable heaven 
 I have no admiration. But the Bible does not say, " Believe in perdition and 
 be saved." Because all are saved, according to your theory, that ought not to 
 keep you from loving and serving Christ. Do not refuse to come ashore 
 because all the others, according to your theory, are going to get ashore. You 
 may have a different theory about chemistry, about astronomy, about the 
 atmosphere, from that which others adopt, but you are not therefore hindered 
 from action. Because your theory of light is different from others, do not 
 refuse to open your eyes. Because your theory of air is different you do not 
 refuse to breathe. Because your theory about the stellar system is different, 
 you do not refuse to acknowledge the North Star. Why should the fact that 
 your theological theories are different hinder you from acting upon what you 
 know ? If you have not a whole ship fashioned in the theological dry docks 
 to bring you to wharfage, you have at least a plank. 
 
 don't believe in revivals. 
 
 "But I don't believe in revivals!" 
 
 Then go to your room, and all alone with your door locked, give your 
 heart to God, and join some church where the thermometer never gets higher 
 than fifty in the shade. 
 
 "But I do not believe in baptism!" 
 
 Come in without it, and settle that matter afterward. 
 
 "But there are so many inconsistent Christians!" 
 
 Then ccme in and show them by a good example how professors ought to ac* 
 
 " But I don't believe in the Old Testament!" 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 287 
 
 Then come in on the New. 
 
 "But I don't like the Book of Romans!" 
 
 Then come in on Matthew or Luke. Refusing to come to Christ, whom 
 you admit to be the Saviour of the lost, because you cannot admit other things 
 you are like a man out there in that Mediterranean tempest, and tossed in the 
 Melita breakers, refusing to come ashore until he can mend the pieces of the 
 broken ship. I hear him say : 
 
 "I won't go in on any of these planks until I know in what part of the 
 ship they belong. When I can get the windlass in the right place, and the 
 sails set, and that keel-piece where it belongs, and that floor timber right, and 
 these ropes untangled, I will go ashore. I am an old sailor and know all 
 about ships for forty years, and as soon as I can get the vessel afloat in good 
 shape I will come in." 
 
 A man drifting by on a piece of wood overhears him and says: 
 
 "You will drown before you get that ship reconstructed. Better do as I am 
 doing. I know nothing about ships, and never saw one before I came on board 
 this, and I cannot swim a stroke, but I am going ashore on this shivered 
 timber." 
 
 SETTLING DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 You may get all your difficulties settled, as Garibaldi, the magnetic Ital- 
 ian, got his gardens made. When the war between Austria and Sardinia broke 
 out he was living at Caprera, a very rough and uncultured island home. But 
 he went forth with his sword to achieve the liberation of Naples and Sicily, 
 and gave 9,000,000 people free government under Victor Emanuel. Garibaldi, 
 after being absent two years from Caprera, returned, and, when he approached 
 it, he found that his home had, by Victor Emanuel, as a surprise, been Edenized. 
 Trimmed shrubbery had taken the place of thorny thickets, gardens the place of 
 barrenness, and the old rookery in which he once lived had given way to a 
 picturesque mansion, where he lived in comfort the rest of his days. And I tell 
 you if you will come and enlist under the banner of our Victor Emanuel, and 
 follow Him through thick and thin, and fight His battles, and endure His 
 sacrifices, you will find after a while that He has changed your heart from a jungle 
 of thorny skepticisms into a garden all abloom with luxuriant joy that you have 
 never dreamt of; from a tangled Caprera of sadness into a paradise of God! 
 
 BELIEVE IN SOMETHING. 
 
 I do not know how your theological system went to pieces. It may be that 
 your parents started you with only one plank, and you believed little or nothing. 
 Or they may have been too rigid and severe in religious discipline and cracked 
 you over the head with a psalm-book. It may be that some partner in busi- 
 ness, who was a member of an evangelical church, played on you a trick that 
 disgusted you with religion. It may be that you have associates who have talked 
 .against Christianity in your presence until you are "all at sea," and you dwell 
 
(»8S) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 289 
 
 more on things that you do not believe than on things you do believe. You are 
 in one respect like Lord Nelson, when a signal was lifted that he wished to dis- 
 regard and he put his sea-glass to his blind eye and said : " I really do not see 
 the signal." 
 
 If you can believe nothing else, you certainly believe in vicarious suffer- 
 ing, for you see it almost every day in some shape. Some time ago the steam- 
 ship Knickerbocker, of the Cromwell Line, running between New Orleans and 
 New York was in great storms, and the captain and crew saw the schooner Mary 
 D. Cranmer, of Philadelphia, in distress. The weather cold, the waves moun- 
 tain high, the first officer of the steamship and four men put out in a lifeboat 
 to save the crew of the schooner, and reached the vessel and towed it out of 
 danger, the wind shifting so that the schooner was saved. But the five men 
 of the steamship coming back, their boat capsized, yet righted again and 
 
 RAMSGATE PIER-HEAD. 
 
 came on, the sailors coated with ice. The boat capsized again, and three 
 times upset and was righted, and a line was thrown the poor fellows, but 
 their hands and arms were frozen so they could not grasp it, and a great 
 wave rolled over them, and they went down, never to rise till the sea gives 
 up its dead. Appreciate that heroism and self-sacrifice of the brave fellows 
 we all can, and can we not appreciate the Christ who put out in a more 
 biting cold and into a more overwhelming surge to bring us out of infinite 
 peril into everlasting safety ? The wave of human hate rolled over Him from 
 one side, and the wave of hellish fury rolled over Him on the other side. Oh, 
 the thickness of the night and the thunder of the tempest into which Christ 
 plunged for our rescue! 
 19 
 
29 o THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 COME IN ON THE CROSS. 
 
 Come in on that one narrow beam, the beam of the cross. Let all else 
 go, and cling to that. Put that under you, and with the earnestness of a 
 swimmer struggling for his life, put out for shore. There is a great warm 
 fire of welcome already built, and already many who were as far out as you 
 are, are standing in its genial and heavenly glow. The angels of God's 
 rescue are wading out into the surf to clutch your hand, and they know how 
 exhausted you are, and all the redeemed prodigals of heaven are on the beach 
 with new white robes to clothe all those who come in on broken pieces of 
 the ship. 
 
 My sympathies are for such all the more because I was naturally skepti- 
 cal, disposed to question everything about this life and the next, and was in 
 danger of being further out at sea than any of the 276 in the Mediterranean 
 breakers, and I was sometimes the annoyance of my theological professor 
 because I asked so many questions. But I came in on a plank. I knew 
 Christ was the Saviour of sinners, and that I was a sinner, and I got ashore, 
 and I do not propose to go out on that sea again. I have not for thirty 
 minutes discussed the controverted points of theology in thirty years. And 
 during the rest of my life I do not propose to discuss them for thirty seconds. 
 
 I would rather, in a mud-scow, try to weather the worst cyclone that ever 
 swept up from the Caribbean than risk my immortal soul in useless and peril- 
 ous discussion, in which some of my brethren in the ministry are indulging. 
 They remind me of a company of sailors standing on Ramsgate pier-head, 
 from which the life-boats are usually launched, and coolly discussing the dif- 
 ferent styles of oar-locks and how deep a boat ought to set in the water, while 
 a hurricane is in full blast, and there are three steamers, crowded with pas- 
 sengers, going to pieces in the offing. An old tar, the muscles of his face 
 working with nervous excitement, cries out : 
 
 " This is no time to discuss such things. Man the life-boat ! Who will 
 volunteer? Out with her into the surf! Pull, my lads, pull for the wreck I 
 Ha ! ha ! Now we have them ! Lift them in and lay them down on the bot- 
 tom of the boat. Jack, you try to bring them to. Put these flannels around 
 their hands and feet, and I will pull for the shore. God help me! There! 
 Landed! Huzza!" » 
 
 From many a death-bed I have seen the hands thrown up in deploration 
 something like this: "My life has been wasted. I had good mental faculties, 
 and fine social position, and great opportunity, but through worldliness and 
 neglect all has gone to waste save these few remaining hours. I now accept 
 of Christ, and shall enter heaven through His mercy ; but alas ! alas ! that when 
 I might have entered the haven of eternal rest with a full cargo, and been 
 greeted by the waving hands of a multitude in whose salvation I had borne 
 a blessed part, I must confess I now enter the harbor of heaven on broken 
 pieces of the ship!" 
 
(Kfjttstmas. 
 
 MOTHERHOOD, BABYHOOD, SCIENCE AND THE FIELDS 
 OF GOD. 
 
 'OW painfully and wearily one thousand years of the 
 world's existence rolled along, and no Christ. 
 Two thousand years, and no Christ. Three 
 thousand years, and no Christ. Four thousand 
 years, and no Christ. " Give us a Christ," had 
 cried Assyrian and Persian and Chaldean and 
 Egyptian civilizations, but the lips of the earth 
 and the lips of the sky made no answer. The 
 world had already been affluent of genius. Among 
 poets had appeared Homer and Thespis and 
 Aristophanes and Sophocles and Euripides and 
 Alexis ^Eschylus, yet no Christ to be the most 
 poetic figure of the centuries. Among historians 
 had appeared Herodotus and Xenophon and 
 Thucydides, but no Christ from whom all his- 
 tory was to date backward and forward — B. C. and A. D. Among conquerors 
 Camillus and Manlius, and Regulus, and Hannibal, and Scipio, and Pompey, 
 and Caesar, yet no Christ who was to be conqueror of earth and heaven. 
 
 But the slow century, and the slow year, and the slow month, and the slow 
 hour at last arrived. The world had had matins or concerts in the morning 
 and vespers or concerts in the evening, but now it is to have a concert at mid- 
 night. The black window-shutters of a December night were thrown open, and 
 some of the best singers of the world stood there, and, putting back the 
 drapery of cloud, chanted a peace anthem, until all the echoes of hill and val- 
 ley applauded and encored the hallelujah chorus. 
 
 At last the world has a Christ, and just the Christ it needs. Come, let 
 us go into that Christmas scene as though we had never before worshipped at 
 the manger. Here is a Madonna worth looking at. I wonder not that the 
 most frequent name in all lands and in all Christian centuries is Mary. And 
 there are Marys in palaces and Marys in cabins, and though German and 
 French and Italian and Spanish and English pronounce it differently they are 
 all namesakes of the one whom we find on a bed of straw with her pale face 
 against the soft cheek of Christ in the night of the nativity. All the great 
 
 (291) 
 
292 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 painters have tried on canvas to present Mary and her Child, and the incidents 
 of that most famous night of the world's history. Raphael in three different 
 masterpieces celebrated them. Tintoretto and Ghirlandajo surpassed themselves 
 in the Adoration of the Magi. Correggio needed to do nothing more than his 
 Madonna to become immortal. The Madonna of the Lily, by Leonardo da 
 Vinci, will kindle the admiration of all ages.' Murillo never won greater 
 triumph by his pencil than in his presentation of the Holy Family. But all 
 the galleries of Dresden are forgotten when I think of the small room of that 
 gallery containing the Sistine Madonna. Yet all of them were copies of St. 
 Matthew's Madonna, and Luke's Madonna, the inspired Madonna of the Old 
 Book, which He had put into our hands when we were infants, and that we 
 hope to have under our heads when we die. 
 
 man's cruelty to animals. 
 
 Behold, in the first place, that on the first night of Christ's life God 
 
 honored the brute creation. You cannot get 
 into that Bethlehem barn without going past 
 the camels, the mules, the dogs, the oxen. 
 The brutes of that stable heard the first cry 
 of the infant Lord. Some of the old painters 
 represent the oxen and camels kneeling that 
 night before the new-born Babe. And well 
 might they kneel. Have you ever thought 
 that Christ came among other things to 
 alleviate ■ the sufferings of the brute creation ? 
 Was it not appropriate that He should during 
 the first few days and nights of His life 
 on earth be surrounded by the dumb beasts 
 whose moan and plaint and bellowing have 
 for ages been a prayer to God for the arrest- 
 ing of their tortures and the righting of their 
 
 THE SISTINE MADONNA. 
 
 wrongs ? It did not merely " happen so " 
 that the unintelligent creatures of God should have been that night in close 
 neighborhood. Not a kennel in all the centuries, not a bird's nest, not a 
 worn-out horse on tow-path, not a herd freezing in the poorly-built cow-pen, 
 not a freight car in summer time bringing the beeves to market without 
 water through a thousand miles of agony, not a surgeon's room witnessing 
 the struggles of fox, or rabbit, or pigeon, or dog in the horrors of vivisection 
 but has an interest in the fact that Christ was born in a stable surrounded 
 by brutes. He remembers that night, and the prayer He heard in their pitiful 
 moan He will answer in the punishment of those who maltreat the dumb 
 brutes. They surely have as much right in this world as we have. 
 
 In the first chapter of Genesis you may see that they were placed on the 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 293 
 
 earth before man was — the fish and fowl the fifth day, and the quadruped the 
 morning of the sixth da)-, and man not until the alternoon of that day. The 
 whale, the eagle, the lion, and all the lesser creatures of their kind were prede- 
 cessors of the human family. They have the world by right of possession. 
 They have also paid rent for the places they occupied. What an army of 
 defense all over the land are the faithful watch dogs. And who can tell what 
 the world owes to horse, and camel, and ox for transportation ? And robin and 
 lark have, by the cantatas with which they have filled orchard and forest, more 
 
 THE CHILDREN'S PETS. 
 
 than paid for the few grains the)' have picked up for their sustenance. When 
 you abuse any creature of God you strike its Creator, and you insult the Christ 
 who, though He might have been welcomed into life by princes, and taken His 
 first infantile slumber amid Tyrian plush, and canopied couches, and rippling 
 waters from royal aqueducts dripping into basins of ivory and pearl, chose to be 
 born on a level with a cow's horn, or a camel's hoof, or a dog's nostril, that 
 He might be the alleviation of brutal suffering as well as the Redeemer of man. 
 Standing then, as I imagine now I do, in that Bethlehem night, with an 
 infant Christ on the one side and the speechless creatures of God on the 
 
294 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 other, I cry, Look out how you strike the rowel into that horse's side. Take 
 off that curbed bit from that bleeding mouth. Remove that saddle from that 
 raw back. Shoot not for fun that bird that is too small for food. Forget not 
 to put water into the cage of that canary. Throw out some crumbs to those 
 birds caught too far north in the winter's inclemency. Arrest that man who is 
 making one horse draw a load heavy enough for' three. Rush in upon that 
 scene where boys are torturing a cat or transfixing a butterfly or grasshopper. 
 Drive not off that old robin, for her nest is a mother's cradle, and under her 
 wing there may be three or four prima donnas of the sky in training. And in 
 your families and in your schools teach the coming generation more mercy 
 than the present generation has ever shown, and in this marvellous Bible 
 picture of the nativity, while you point out to them the angel, show them also 
 the camel, and while they hear the celestial chant let them also hear the cow's 
 moan. No more did Christ show interest in the botanical world than when He 
 said, " Consider the lilies," than He showed sympathy for the ornithological 
 when He said, "Behold the fowls of the air," and the quadrupedal world when 
 He allowed Himself to be called in one place a lion and in another place a lamb. 
 Meanwhile, may the Christ of the Bethlehem cattle-pen have mercy on the 
 suffering stock-yards that are preparing diseased and fevered meat for our 
 American households. 
 
 THE BIRTH OF CHRIST. 
 
 Behold also in this Bible scene how on that Christmas night God honored 
 childhood. Christ might have made His first visit to our world in a cloud, as 
 He will descend on His next visit in a cloud. In what a chariot of illumined 
 vapor He might have rolled down the sky, escorted by mounted cavalry, with 
 lightning of drawn sword. Elijah had a carriage of fire to take him up, why 
 not Jesus a carriage of fire to bring Him down ? Or over the arched bridge of 
 a rainbow the Lord might have descended. Or Christ might have had His 
 mortality built up on earth out of the dust of a garden, as was Adam, in full 
 manhood at the start, without the introductory feebleness of infancy. No, no f 
 Childhood was to be honored by that advent. He must have a child's light 
 limbs, and a child's dimpled hand, and a child's beaming eye, and a child^s- 
 flaxen hair, and babyhood was to be honored for all time to come, and a. 
 cradle was to mean more than a grave. Mighty God ! May the reflection of 
 that one Child's face be seen in all infantile faces. Enough have those fathers 
 and mothers on hand if they have a child in the house. A throne, a crown, a 
 sceptre, a kingdom under charge. Be careful how you strike him across the 
 head, jarring the brain. What you say to him will be centennial and millen- 
 nial, and one hundred years and one thousand years will not stop the echo- 
 and re-echo. Do not say, " It is only a child." Rather say, " It is only an 
 immortal." It is only a masterpiece of Jehovah. It is only a being that shall 
 outlive the -sun and moon and stars and ages quadrillennial. God has infinite 
 resources and He can give presents of great value, but when He wants to give 
 
I 
 
 
 
 s 
 
 ir 
 
 is 
 
 (295) 
 
296 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 the richest possible gift to a household He looks around all the worlds and all 
 the universe, and then gives a child. The greatest present that God ever gave 
 our world He gave about 1888 years ago, and He gave it on a Christmas night, 
 and it was of such value that Heaven adjourned for a recess and came down 
 and broke through the clouds to look at it. Yea, in all ages God has honored 
 childhood. He makes almost every picture a failure, unless there be a child 
 either playing on the floor, or looking rnrough the window, or seated on the 
 lap gazing into the face of its mother. It was a child in Naaman's kitchen 
 that told the great Syrian warrior where he might go and get cured of the 
 leprosy, which at his seventh plunge in the Jordan, was left at the bottom of 
 the river. It was to the cradle of leaves in which a child was laid rocked by 
 the Nile that God called the attention of history. It was a sick child that 
 evoked Christ's curative sympathies. It was a child that Christ set in the 
 midst of the squabbling disciples to teach the lesson of humility. We are 
 informed that wolf, and leopard, and lion shall be yet so domesticated that a 
 little child shall lead them. A child decided Waterloo, showing the army of 
 Blucher how they could take a short cut through the fields when, if the old 
 road had been followed, the Prussian General would have come up too late to 
 save the destinies of Europe. It was a child that decided Gettysburg, he 
 1 laving overheard two Confederate Generals in a conversation in which they 
 decided to march for Gettysburg instead of Harrisburg, and this, reported to 
 Governor Curtin, the Federal forces started to meet their opponents at Gettysburg. 
 And the child of to-day is to decide all the great battles, make all the laws, 
 settle all the destinies and usher in the worldjs salvation or destruction. Men, 
 women, nations, all earth and all heaven, behold the child ! Is there any 
 velvet so soft as a child's cheek ? Is there any sky so blue as a child's eye ? 
 Is there any music so sweet as the child's voice? Is there any plume so wavy 
 as a child's hair ? 
 
 SCIENCE HONORED. 
 Notice also that in this Bible night-scene God honored science. Who are 
 the three wise men kneeling before the divine Infant? Not boors, not ignora- 
 muses, but Caspar, Belthasar and Melchior, men who knew all that was to be 
 known. They were the Isaac Newtons and Herschels and Faraday s of their 
 time. Their alchemy was the forerunner of our sublime chemistry, their 
 astrology the mother of our magnificent astronomy. They had studied stars, 
 studied metals, studied physiology, studied everything. And when I see these 
 scientists bowing before the beautiful Babe I see the prophecy of the time when 
 all the telescopes and microscopes, and all the Leyden jars, and all the electric 
 batteries, and all the observatories, and all the universities shall bow to Jesus. 
 It is much that way already. Where is the college that does not have morning 
 prayers, thus bowing at the manger? Who have been the greatest physicians? 
 Omitting the names of the living, lest we should be invidious, have we not Jiad 
 among them Christian men like our own Joseph C. Hutchinson, and Rush, 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 297 
 
 and Valentine Mott, and Abercrombie, and Aoernethy? Who have been our 
 greatest scientists? Joseph Henry, who lived and died in the faith of the gospel, 
 and Agassiz, who, standing with his students among the hills, took off his hat 
 
 JESUS, the carpenter's son.— From the Painting by J. E. Millais. 
 
 and said : " Young gentlemen, before we study these rocks, let us pray for 
 wisdom to the God who made the rocks." To-day the greatest doctors and 
 lawyers of Brooklyn and New York, and of all this land, and of all lands, 
 
298 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 revere the Christian religion, and are not ashamed to say so before juries and 
 legislatures and senates. All geology will yet bow before the Rock of Ages. 
 All botany will yet worship the Rose of Sharon. All astronomy will yet recog-. 
 nize the Star of Bethlehem. And physiology and anatomy will join hands and 
 say : " We must, by the help of God, get the human race up to the perfect 
 nerve, and perfect muscle, and perfect brain, and perfect form of that perfect 
 Child before whom nigh 2000 years ago Caspar, and Belthasar, and Melchior 
 bent their tired knees in worship. 
 
 Behold also in that first Christmas night that God honored the fields. Come 
 in, shepherd boys, to Bethlehem and see the Child. " No," they say ; " we are 
 not dressed good enough to come in." "Yes, you are ; come in." Sure enough, 
 the storms, and the night dew, and the brambles have made rough work with 
 their apparel, but none have a better right to come in. They were the first 
 to hear the music of that Christmas night. The first announcement of a Saviour's 
 birth was made to those men in the fields. There were wiseacres that night 
 in Bethlehem and Jerusalem snoring in deep sleep, and there were salaried 
 officers of government, who, hearing of it afterward, may have thought that 
 they ought to have had the first news of such a great event. Some one dis- 
 mounting from a swift camel at their door and knocking until at some sentinel's 
 question, " Who comes there ?" the great ones of the palace might have been 
 told of the celestial -arrival. No ; the shepherds heard the first two bars of the 
 music, the first in the major key and the last in the subdued minor: "Glory 
 be to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men." 
 
 THE FIELDS HONORED. 
 
 Ah, yes ; the fields were honored. The old shepherds with plaid and crook 
 have for the most part vanished, but we have grazing — our United States pasture 
 fields and prairies contain about 45,000,000 sheep — and all their keepers ought 
 to follow the shepherds who were first told of the holy birth, and all those 
 who toil in fields, all vine-dressers, all orchardists, all husbandmen. Not only 
 that Christmas night, but all up and down the world's history God has been 
 honoring the fields. Nearly all the messiahs of reform, and literature, and elo- 
 quence, and law, and benevolence, have come from the fields. Washington from 
 the fields. Jefferson from the fields. The Presidential martyrs, Garfield and 
 Lincoln, from the fields. Henry Clay from the fields. Daniel Webster from 
 the fields. Martin Luther from the fields. And before this world is right the 
 overflowing populations of our crowded cities will have to take to the fields. 
 Instead of ten merchants in rivalry as to who shall sell that one apple, we want 
 at least eight of them to go out and raise apples. Instead of ten merchants 
 desiring to sell that one bushel of wheat, we want at least eight of them to go 
 out and raise wheat. The world wants now more hard hands, more bronzed 
 cheeks, more muscular arms. To the fields ! God honored them when He woke 
 up the shepherds by the midnight anthem, and He will, while the world lasts,. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 299 
 
 continue to honor the fields. When the shepherd's crook was that famous 
 night stood against the wall of the Bethlehem khan, it was a prophecy of the 
 time when thresher's flail, and farmer's plow, and woodman's axe, and ox's 
 yoke, and sheaf-binder's rake shall surrender to the God who made the country 
 as man made the town. 
 
 THE MOTHER. 
 
 Behold also that on that Christmas night God honored motherhood. Two 
 angels on their wings might have brought an infant Saviour to Bethlehem with- 
 
 The young farmer. — From (he Painting by J. C. Ibbetson. 
 
 out Mary's being there at all. When the villagers, on the morning of De- 
 cember 2^, awoke, by divine arrangement and in some unexplained way, the 
 child Jesus might have been found in some comfortable cradle of the village. 
 But no, no ! Motherhood for all time was to be consecrated, and one of 
 the tenderest relations was to be the maternal relation, and one of the sweet- 
 est words " Mother." In all ages God has honored good motherhood. John 
 Wesley had a good mother; St. Bernard had a good mother; Samuel Budgeft 
 a good mother; Doddridge a good mother; Walter Scott a good mother; Ben- 
 
3°° 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 jamin West a good mother. In a great audience, most of whom were Chris- 
 tians I asked that all those who had been blessed of Christian mothers arise, 
 and almost the entire assembly stood up. Don't you see how important it is 
 
 mother. — From the Painting by G. D. Leslie. 
 
 that all motherhood be consecrated? Why did Titian, the Italian artist, when 
 he sketched the Madonna, make it an Italian face? Why did Rubens, the 
 •German artist, in his Madonna, make it a German face? Why did Joshua 
 Reynolds, the English artist, in his Madonna make it an English face? 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 301 
 
 Why did Murillo, the Spanish artist, in his Madonna, make it a Spanish face? 
 I never heard, but I think they took their own mothers as the type of Mary, 
 the mother of Christ. When you hear some one in sermon or oration speak 
 in the abstract of a good, faithful, honest mother your eyes fill up with tears, 
 while you say to yourself, that was my mother. The first word a child utters 
 is apt to be "Mother," and the old man in his dying dream calls, "Mother! 
 Mother ! " It matters not whether she was brought up in the surrounding of a 
 city, and in affluent home, and was dressed appropriately with reference to the 
 demands of modern life, or whether she wore the old-time cap, and great 
 round spectacles, and apron of her own make, and knit your socks with her 
 own needles, seated by the broad fire-place, with great black log ablaze on a 
 winter night. It matters not how many wrinkles crossed and recrossed her 
 face, or how much her shoulders stooped with the burdens of a long life, if 
 you painted a Madonna hers would be the face. What a gentle hand she had 
 when we were sick, and what a voice to soothe pain, and was there any one 
 who could so fill up a room with peace, and purity, and light ? And what a 
 sad day that was when we came home and she could greet us not, for her lips 
 were forever still. Come back, mother, this Christmas day, and take your old 
 place, and as ten, or twenty, or fifty years ago, come and open the old Bible 
 you used to read, and kneel in the same place where you used to pray, and 
 look upon us as of old when you wished us a Merry Christmas or a Happy 
 New Year. But no ! That would not be fair to call you back. You had 
 troubles enough, and aches enough, and bereavements enough while you were 
 here. Tarry by the throne, mother, till we join you there, your prayers all 
 answered, and in the eternal homestead of our God we shall again keep Christ- 
 mas jubilee together. But speak from your thrones, all you glorified mothers, 
 and say to all these, your sons and daughters, words of love, words of warning, 
 words of cheer. They need your voice, for they have travelled far and with 
 many a heart-break since you left them, and you do well to call from the 
 heights of heaven to the valleys of the earth. Hail, enthroned ancestry ! We 
 are coming. Keep a place for us right beside you at the banquet. 
 
 Slow-footed years ! More swiftly run 
 Into the gold of that unsetting sun. 
 Homesick we are for thee, 
 Calm land beyond the sea. 
 
Amusements. 
 
 RECREATION FOR THE BODY GIVES PEACE TO THE SOUE. 
 
 the Temple of Dagon there were 3000 people assem- 
 bled. They had come to make sport of eyeless Samson. 
 They were all ready for the entertainment. They be- 
 gan to clap and pound, impatient for the amusement to 
 begin, and they cried : " Fetch him out, fetch him out I" 
 Yonder I see the blind old giant coming, led by the 
 hand of a child into the very midst of the temple. At 
 his first appearance there goes up a shout of laughter 
 and derision. The blind old giant pretends he is tired, 
 and wants to rest himself against the pillars of the 
 house; so he says to the lad who leads him: "Show 
 me where the main pillars are." The lad does so. 
 Then the strong man puts his right hand on one pillar 
 and his left hand on another pillar, and, with the 
 mightiest push that mortal ever made, throws himself 
 forward until the whole house comes down in thunder- 
 ous crash, grinding the audience like grapes in a wine- 
 press. "And so it came to pass, when their hearts 
 were merry, that they said: 'Call for Samson, that he 
 may make us sport.' And they called for Samson out 
 of the prison-house, and he made them sport." 
 
 In other words : There are amusements that are destructive, and bring 
 down disaster and death upon the heads of those who practise them. While 
 they laugh and cheer, they die. The 3000 who perished that day in Gaza are 
 as nothing when compared to the tens of thousands who have been destroyed 
 by sinful amusements. 
 
 But there is a lawful use of the world as well as an unlawful abuse of it, 
 and the difference between the man Christian and the man unchristian is that 
 in the former case the man masters the world, while in the latter case the 
 world masters him. For whom did God make this grand and beautiful world ? 
 For whom this wonderful expenditure of color, this gracefulness of line, this 
 mosaic of the ground, this fresco of the sky, this glowing fruitage of orchard 
 and vineyard > this full orchestra of the tempest, in which the tree branches 
 flute, and the winds trumpet, and the thunders drum, and all the splendors of 
 earth and sky come clashing their cymbals ? For whom did God spring the 
 
 (302) 
 
(3°3) 
 
3 o 4 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 arched bridge of colors resting upon buttresses of broken storm-cloud? For 
 whom did He gather the upholstery of fire around the window of the setting 
 sun ? For all men ; but more especially for His own dear children. 
 
 THE WORLD FOR GOD'S OWN CHILDREN. 
 
 If you build a large mansion and spread a great feast aftet it to celebrate 
 the completion of the structure, do you allow strangers to come in and occupy 
 the place while you thrust your own children in the kitchen, or the barn, or the 
 fields? Oh, no. You say, "I am very glad to see strangers in my mansion, 
 but my own sons and daughters shall have the first right there." Now, God 
 has built this grand mansion of a world, and He has spread a glorious feast in 
 it ; and while those who are strangers to His grace may come in, I think that 
 God especially intends to give the advantage to His own children, those who 
 are the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty, those who through grace 
 can look up and say, "Abba, Father." You cannot make me believe that 
 God gives more advantages to the world than He gives to the Church bought 
 by His own blood. If, therefore, people of the world have looked with dolorous 
 sympathy upon those who make profession of religion, and have said, " Those 
 new converts are going down into a privation and into hardship. Why did not 
 they tarry a little longer in the world, and have some of its enjoyments an' 1 
 amusements and recreations?" I say to such men of the world, "You are 
 greatly mistaken," and before I get through I will show that those peo.ple who 
 stay out of the kingdom of God have the hardships and self-denials, while 
 those who come in have the joys and the satisfactions. 
 
 In the name of the King of heaven and earth, I serve a writ of ejectment 
 upon all the sinful and polluted who have squatted on the domain of earthly 
 pleasure as though it belonged to them, while I claim, in behalf of the good, 
 and the pure, and the true, the eternal inheritance which God has given them. 
 Hitherto Christian philanthropists, clerical and lay, have busied themselves 
 chiefly in denouncing sinful recreations, but I feel we have no right to stand 
 before men and women in whose hearts there is a desire for recreation amounting 
 to positive necessity, denouncing this and that and the other thing, when we do 
 not propose to give them something better. I propose therefore to lay before 
 you some of the recreations which are not only innocent, but positively help- 
 ful and advantageous. 
 
 In the first place, I commend, among indoor recreations, music, vocal and 
 instrumental. Among the first things created was the bird, so that the earth 
 might have music at the start. This world which began with so sweet a sere- 
 nade, is finally to be demolished amidst the ringing blast of the archangel's 
 trumpet, so that as there was music at the start, there shall be music at the 
 close. While this heavenly art has often been dragged into the uses of super- 
 stition and dissipation, we all know it may be the means of high moral culture. 
 Oh, it is a grand thing to have our children brought up amidst the sound of 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 305 
 
 cultured voices and amidst the melody of musical instruments. There is in this 
 art an indescribable fascination for the household. Let all those families who 
 have the means to afford it, have flute or harp, or piano or organ. As soon 
 as the hand is large enough to compass the keys, teach it how to pick out the 
 melody. Let all our young men try this heavenly art upon their nature. 
 Those who have gone into it fully have found in it illimitable recreation and 
 
 MUSIC IN THE HOUSEHOLD. 
 
 amusement. Dark days, stormy nights, seasons of sickness, business disasters, 
 will do little toward depressing the soul which can gallop off over musical keys 
 or soar in jubilant lay. It will cure pain. It will rest fatigue. It will quell 
 passion. It will revive health. It will reclaim dissipation. It will strengthen 
 the immortal soul. In the battle of Waterloo, Wellington saw that the High- 
 landers were falling back. He said : " What is the matter there ? " He was 
 told that the band of music had ceased playing, and he called up the pipers 
 20 
 
306 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 and ordered them to strike an inspiring air; and no sooner did they strike 
 the air than the Highlanders were rallied and helped to win the day. Oh, ye 
 who have been routed in conflicts of life, try by the force of music to rally 
 your scattered battalions. 
 
 MUSICAL ENTERTAINMENTS SHOULD- BE PATRONIZED. 
 I am glad to know that in our great cities there is hardly a night in 
 which there are not concerts, where, with the best musical instruments and 
 the sweetest voices, people may find entertainment. Patronize such entertain- 
 ments when they are afforded you. Buy season tickets if you can, for the 
 Philharmonic and the Handel and Haydn societies. Feel that the $1.50 or $2 
 that you spend for the purpose of hearing an artist play or sing is a profit- 
 
 The Highlanders AT WATERLOO, — From the Painting by Robert Gibb. 
 
 able investment. Let your Steinway Halls and your Academies of Music roar 
 with the acclamation of appreciative audiences assembled at the concert or the 
 oratorio. 
 
 Still further, I commend as worthy of their support the gymnasium. 
 This institution is gaining in favor every year, and I know of nothing more 
 free from dissipation or more calculated ±0 recuperate the physical and mental 
 energies. While there are a good many people who have employed this insti- 
 tution, there is a vast number who are ignorant of its excellence. There are 
 men with cramped chests and weak sides and despondent sprits, who, through 
 the gymnasium, might be roused up to exuberance and exhilaration of life. 
 There are many Christian people despondent from year to year, who might, 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 307 
 
 through such an institution, be benefited in their spiritual relations. There 
 are Christian people who seem to think that it is a good sign to be poorly ; 
 and because Richard Baxter and Robert Hall were invalids, they think that 
 by the same sickliness they may come to the same grandeur of character. I 
 want to tell the Christian people of this country and all countries, that God 
 will hold you responsible for your invalidism if it is your fault, and when 
 through right exercise and prudence you might be athletic and well. The 
 effect of the body upon the soul you acknowledge. Put a man of mild dispo- 
 sition upon the animal diet of which the Indian partakes and in a little while 
 his blood will change its chemical proportions. It will become like unto the 
 blood of the lion, or the tiger, or the bear, while his disposition will change, 
 and become fierce, cruel and unrelenting. The body has powerful effect upon 
 the soul. 
 
 There are good people whose ideas of heaven are all shut out with clouds 
 of tobacco smoke. There are people who dare to shatter the physical vase in 
 which God has put the jewel of eternity. There are men with great hearts 
 and intellects in bodies worn out by their own neglects — magnificent machinery, 
 capable of propelling a Great Eastern across the Atlantic, yet fastened in a 
 rickety North River propeller. Martin Luther was so mighty for God, first, 
 because he had a noble soul, and secondly, because he had a muscular develop- 
 ment which would have enabled him to thrash any five of his persecutors, if 
 it had been Christian so to do. Physical development which merely shows 
 itself in fabulous lifting, or in perilous rope-walking, or in pugilistic encounter, 
 excites only our contempt ; but we confess to great admiration for the man 
 who has a great soul in an athletic body, every nerve, muscle and bone of 
 which is consecrated to right uses. Oh, it seems to me outrageous that men, 
 through neglect, should allow their physical health to go down beyond repair. 
 A ship which ought, with all sail set and every man at his post, to be carry- 
 ing a rich cargo for eternity, employing all its men in stopping up leakages. 
 When you may, through the gymnasium, work off your spleen and your 
 querulousness and one-half of your physical and mental ailments, do not turn 
 your back upon such a grand medicament. 
 
 PARLOR GAMES COMMENDED. 
 
 Still further : I commend to you a large class of parlor games and recrea- 
 tions. There is a way of making our homes a hundred-fold more attractive 
 than they are now. Those parents cannot expect to keep their children away 
 from outside dissipation unless they make the domestic circle brighter than 
 anything they can find outside of it. Do not, then, sit in your home surly 
 and unsympathetic, and with a half-condemnatory look, because of the sportful- 
 ness of your children. You were young once yourself; let your children be 
 young. Because your eyes are dim and your ankles are stiff, do not denounce 
 sportfulness in those upon whose eyes there is the first lustre, and in whose 
 
(308) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 3oy 
 
 foot there is the bounding joy of robust health. I thank God that in our 
 drawing rooms and in our parlors there are innumerable games and sports 
 which have not upon them the least taint of iniquity. Light up all your 
 homes with innocent hilarities. Do not sit down with the rheumatism, wonder- 
 ing how children can go on so. Rather thank God that their hearts are so 
 light, and their laughter is so free, and that their cheeks are so ruddy, and 
 that their expectations are so radiant. The night will come soon enough, and 
 the heart-break and the pang and the desolation — it will come soon enough for 
 
 caught tripping. — From the Painting by A. W. Bayes. 
 
 the dear children. But when the storm actually clouds the sky, it will be time 
 enough for you to haul out your reef tackles. Carry, then, into your homes 
 not only the innocent sports and games which are the inventions of our own 
 day, but the games which come down with the sportfulness of all the past 
 ages — chess, and charades, and tableaux, and battledore, and calisthenics, and lawn- 
 tennis, and all those amusements which the young people of our homes know 
 so well how to contrive. Then there will be the parlor socialities — groups of 
 people assembled in your homes, with wit and mimicry and joviality, filling 
 
3IO THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 the room with joy from the door to the mantel, and from the carpet to the 
 ceiling. Oh, is there any exhilaration like a score of genial souls in one 
 room, each one adding a contribution of his own individual merriment to the 
 aggregation of general hilarity. 
 
 Suppose you want to go abroad in the city, then you will find the panorama 
 and the art gallery, and exquisite collections Of pictures. You will find the 
 Metropolitan Museum and the Historical Society rooms full of rare curiosities, 
 and scores of places which can stand plainly the test of what is right and 
 wrong in amusements. You will find the lecturing hall, which has been hon- 
 ored by the names of Agassiz in natural history, Doremus in chemistry, Boyn- 
 ton in geology, Mitchell in astronomy, and scores and hundreds of men who 
 have poured their wit and genius and ingenuity through that particular chan- 
 nel upon the hearts and consciences and imaginations of men, setting this 
 country fifty years farther in advance than it would have been without the 
 
 lecture platform. 
 
 OUT-DOOR SPORTS. 
 
 I rejoice in the popularization of out-door sports. I hail the croquet ground, 
 and the fisherman's rod, and the sportsman's gun. In our cities life is so un- 
 healthy and unnatural that when the census taker represents a city as having 
 400,000 inhabitants, there are only 200,000, since it takes about two men to 
 amount to only one man, so depleting and unnerving and exhausting is this 
 metropolitan life. We want more fresh air, more sunlight, more of the abandon 
 of field sports. I cry out for it in behalf of the Church of God, as well as in 
 behalf of secular interests. I wish that every winter our ponds, and our 
 rivers, and our Capitoline grounds might be all aquake with the heel and the 
 shout of the swift skater. I wish that when the warm weather comes, the 
 graceful oar might dip the stream, and the eveningtide be resonant with boat- 
 man's song, the bright prow splitting the crystalline billow. We shall have 
 the smooth and grassy lawn, and we will call out people of all occupations and 
 professions and ask them to join in the ball-player's sport. You will come back 
 from these out-door exercises and recreations with strength in your arm, and 
 color in your cheek, and a flash in your eye, and courage in your heart. In 
 this great battle that is opening against the kingdom of darkness we want not 
 only a consecrated soul, but a strong arm and stout lungs and mighty muscles. 
 I bless God that there are so many recreations that have not on them any taint 
 of iniquity; recreations in which we may engage for the strengthening of th- 
 body, for the clearing of the intellect, for the illumination of the soul. 
 
 There is still another form of recreation which I commend to you, and 
 that is the pleasure of doing good. I have seen young men, weak, and cross, 
 and sour, and repelling in their disposition, who by one heavenly touch have 
 wakened up and become blessed and buoyant, the ground under their feet and 
 the sky over their heads breaking forth into music. " Oh," says some young 
 man in the house to-day, " I should like that recreation above all others, but 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 3" 
 
 I have not the means." My dear brothers, let us take an account of stock 
 this morning. You have a large estate, if you only realize it — two hands, 
 two feet. You will have, perhaps, during the next year, at least ten dollars 
 for charitable contribution. You will have 2500 cheerful looks if you want to 
 employ them. You will have 5000 pleasant words, if you waut to speak them. 
 Now, what an amount that is to start with ! 
 
 You go out to-morrow morning, and you see a case of real destitution by 
 the wayside. You give him two cents. The blind man hears the pennies 
 rattle in his hat, and he says : " Thank you, sir ; God bless you." You pass 
 down the street, trying to look indifferent, but you feel from the very depths 
 of your soul a profound satisfaction that you made that man happy. You go 
 
 the queen's shilling. — From the Painting by Phil Morris. 
 
 on still farther, and find a poor boy with a wheelbarrow, trying to get it up 
 on the curbstone. He fails in the attempt. You say: "Stand back, my lad, 
 let me try." You push it up on the curbstone for him and pass on. He 
 wonders who that well-dressed man was that helped him. You did a kindness 
 to the boy, but you did a great joy to your own soul. You will not get over 
 it all the week. 
 
 CHEERFUL LOOKS. 
 
 On the street you will see a sick man passing along. "Ah," you 
 say, " what can I do to make this man happy ? He certainly does not want 
 money ; he is not poor, but he is sick." Give him one of those 2500 cheerful 
 looks that you have garnered up for the whole year. Look joy and hopeful- 
 ness into his soul. It will thrill him through, and there will be a reaction upon 
 
(31-2) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 313 
 
 your own soul. Going a little farther on you will come to the store of a 
 friend who is embarrassed in business matters. You will go in and say : 
 " What a fine store you have. I think business will brighten up, and you 
 will have more custom after a while. I think there is coming a great pros- 
 perity to all the country. Good morning." You pass out. You have helped 
 that young man, and you have helped yourself. And that night you go 
 home ; you sit by the fire, you talk a little, you sing a little, you laugh a 
 little ; you say : " I really don't know what is the matter with me. I never 
 felt so splendidly in my life." I will tell what is the matter with you. You 
 spent only two cents out of the ten dollars ; you have contributed one out of 
 2500 cheerful looks ; you have given ten, fifteen or twenty of the 5000 plea- 
 sant words you are going to speak during the year ; you have, with your own 
 hands, helped the boy with the wheelbarrow, and you feel in body, mind and 
 soul the thrill of that recreation. Which do you think was the happier — 
 Colonel Gardiner, who sat with his elbow on a table spread with all extrava- 
 gant viands, looking off at a dog on the rug, saying, " How I would like to 
 change places with him ; I be the dog and he be Colonel Gardiner ; " or those 
 two Moravian missionaries who wanted to go into the lazaretto for the sake 
 of attending the sick, and they were told : " If you go in there you will never 
 come out. We never allow any one to come out, for he would bring the con- 
 tagion"? 
 
 Then they made their wills and went in, first to help the sick and then 
 to die. Which was the happier, Colonel Gardiner, or the Moravian missionaries 
 dying for others ? Was it all sacrifice when the missionaries wanted to bring 
 the gospel to the negroes at the Barbadoes, and, being denied the privilege, 
 sold themselves into slavery, standing side by side, and lying side by side 
 down in the very ditch of suffering, in order that they might bring those men 
 up to life and God and heaven ? Oh, there is a thrill in the joy of doing 
 good! It is the most magnificent recreation to which a man ever puts his 
 hand, or his head or his heart. 
 
 THE RESULT OF SINFUL AMUSEMENT. 
 
 But, furthermore, I want to impress upon you that mere secular enter- 
 tainments are not a fit foundation for your soul to build on. I was reading 
 of a woman who had gone all the rounds of sinful amusement, and she came 
 to die. She said: "I will die to-night at six o'clock." "Oh," they said, "I 
 guess not; you don't seem to be sick." "I shall die at six o'clock, and my 
 soul will be lost, I know it will be lost; I have sinned away my day of grace." 
 The noon came. They desired to seek religious counsel. 
 
 "Oh," she said, "it is of no use. My day is gone. I have been all the 
 rounds of worldly pleasure, and it is too late. I shall die to-night at six 
 o'clock." The day wore away, and it came to four o'clock, and to five o'clock, 
 and she cried out at five o'clock, "Destroyed spirits, ye shall not have me yet; 
 
(314) 
 
 virginius killing his daughter.— From the Sculpture by P. McDowell. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 t 
 
 3*5 
 
 it is not six, it is not six." The moments went by, and the shadows began to 
 gather, and the clock struck six; and while it was striking her soul went out. 
 What hour God will call for us I do not know — whether six o'clock to-night, 
 or three o'clock in the afternoon, or at one o'clock, or at this moment. Sitting 
 where you are, falling forward, or standing where you are, dropping down 
 where would you go to ? 
 
 But our hour for adjourning is hastening, and the last hour of our life 
 will soon be here, and from that hour we will review our trials and lost op- 
 portunities. It will be a solemn hour. If from our death-pillow we have to 
 look back and see a life spent in sinful amusement, there will be a dart that 
 will strike through our soul sharper than the dagger with which Virginius 
 slew his child. The memory of the past will make us quake like Macbeth. 
 The iniquities and rioting through which we have passed will come upon us 
 weird and skeleton as Meg Merrilles. Death, the old Shylock, will demand and 
 take the remaining pound of flesh and the remaining drop of blood ; and upon 
 our last opportunity for repentance, and our last chance for heaven, the curtain 
 will forever drop. 
 
Cfytoren. 
 
 COUNSEL UPON PARENTAL DUTY AND RESPON- 
 SIBILITY — SEVERITY AND OVER-INDULGENCE. 
 
 GOOD man was Judge Eli, 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 nonagenarian 
 puts his hand behind his ear, and listens, 
 and cries : " What meaneth the noise of this tu- 
 mult ?" An excited messenger, all out of breath 
 with the speed, said to him : " Our army is de- 
 feated. 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 back- 
 ward 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 by a great army, 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, 
 storehouses, factories and halls of legislation, all our shipping, all our wealth, 
 and all our honors. They will take possession of all authority, from the 
 
 (316)* 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 3i7 
 
 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 day 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. Whether they shall take possession of everything fo. 
 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 
 
 Thb first step. — From the Painting by Frank Pen/old. 
 
 and teachers have all prepared the preface of every young life under theii 
 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 discussing what is the best mode of educating children. Before this 
 question almost every other dwindles into insignificance, while dependent upon 
 its proper solution is the welfare of government and ages eternal. Macaulay 
 t'*lls of the war which Frederick II. made against Queen Maria Theresa. And 
 one day she appeared before the august Diet wearing mourning for her father, 
 
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 (318 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 319 
 
 and held up in her arms before them her child, the Archduke. 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 boy 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 defense, his education, 
 and his sublime destiny. 
 
 If a parent, you will remem- 
 ber when you were aroused to 
 these great responsibilities, and 
 when you found that you 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 ben- 
 ediction, or to smite it with a 
 curse. 
 
 In Ariosto's great poem there 
 is a character called Ruggiero, 
 who has 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 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 severity or too great leniency 
 
 THE GODDESS OF THE BARNYARD. 
 
32o 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 of family government. Between parental tyranny and ruinous laxativeness of 
 discipline there is a medium. Sometimes the father errs on one side and the 
 mother on the other side. Good family government is all-important. Anarchy 
 and misrule 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 auger, 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 
 
 the chimney sweep. — From the Painting by F. D. Hardy. 
 
 laws and regulations, parents have sometimes carried themselves with gren* 
 rigor. John Howard, who was merciful to the prisons and lazarettos, was mere: 
 less 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 321 
 
 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 
 of 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 have 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 thump- 
 ing, and stamping, 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 practised. 
 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 tradi- 
 tion 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." 
 
 THE FAMILY SCAPEGOAT. 
 
 Jn 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 
 misunderstandings and suspicions. If things get wrong in the culinary depart- 
 ment, in comes the mother and says, angrily: "Where is George?" If busi- 
 ness 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 north-east storm. He curses the day in which 
 he was born. Safer tht child in an ark of bulrushes on the Nile, among 
 crocodiles, than in an elegant mansion, amid such domestic Gorgons. A mothei 
 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 '■ ■ X,-J^,!i-H' >.■■ -i 
 
 (322) 
 
 THE reckless pupil. — Frnm the Painting by W. Schutze. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 323 
 
 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 boy, 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 leni- 
 ency. 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, not- 
 withstanding 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 you 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 allows the child to grow up without ever having learned the great duty 
 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, Hophni 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 skilful hand to adjust these checks and balances. 
 The rigidity of government 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 Bucephalus with reins of gossamer. 
 
(324) 
 
 THE MISCHIEF MAKER. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 325 
 
 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 demon- 
 strated 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 profligate into a flaming evangel. 
 
 The third error prevalent in the training of children is the one-sided 
 development 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. 
 
 TREASURES IN A SHATTERED CASKET. 
 
 How do you suppose all those treasures of knowledge the 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 La Place, but 
 no physical force to sustain him in the shock of earthly conflicts. From this 
 infinite blunder of parents 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 marshalled 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 
 
(326) 
 
 INDULGENCE — THE RIVAL GRANDFATHERS. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 327 
 
 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 denunciations, assaulting the best men of his time ; and Blount, and 
 Spinoza, and Bolingbroke leading their hosts of followers into the all-consum- 
 ing 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 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, warehouses 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 sup- 
 pression of childish sportfulness. The most triumphant death of any child 
 that I ever knew Avas that of Scoville Haynes McCollum. A few days before 
 that he was at my house in Syracuse, 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. In- 
 stead 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 ! 
 
3 2S 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 sur- 
 plus 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 
 >n moping and grumbling I prophesy a life of utter inanition an! 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 the}' 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 educa- 
 tion in the schools of our country that 
 is deathful to the teachers who have tc 
 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 home study except 
 music ought to be required of them. 
 Six hours of study 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 coniplete a scale. You 
 can look back upon your own life and remember what mighty impressions 
 were made upon you at five or six years of age. Oh, that child does not sit 
 60 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 you long afterward you find he understood all about 
 ivhat you were saying. You think the child does not appreciate that beautiful 
 :loud, but its most delicate lines are reflected into the very depths of the 
 youthful nature, and a score of years from now you will see the shadow of 
 rhat cloud in the tastes and refinements developed. The song with which you 
 
 "OUR J-ATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN.' 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 329 
 
 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 Christian. 
 
 THE BEAUTY OF EARLY PIETY. 
 
 The present generations of men will pass off very much as they are now. 
 Although the gospel is offered them, the general rule is that drunkards die 
 druukards, thieves die thieves, libertines die libertines. Therefore, to the youth 
 we 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 Cookman was converted 
 at ten years of age At Carlisle, Pa., 
 during the progress of a religious meet- 
 ing 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 : " Pre- 
 cious Saviour, thou art saving others, 
 oh, will thou not save me?" A Presby- 
 terian elder knelt 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 overpow- 
 ered by the huzzas of the tens of thou- 
 sands 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 mid- 
 night of their lives horrid with a long howl of ruin, or whether from j'our 
 family altars shall come the Christian, the reformers, the teachers, the minis- 
 ters of Christ, the comforters of the troubled, the healers of the sick, the 
 enacters of good laws, the founders of charitable institutions, and a great many 
 
 'GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. 
 
33° 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 who shall in the humbler spheres of toil and usefulness serve God and the 
 best interests of the human race. 
 
 EARLY AT THE CROSS. 
 
 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 your duty. We must not forget that it is not so much what we teach 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 331 
 
 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 travellers in certain conditions of the 
 atmosphere see themselves copied on a gigantic scale in the clouds. At first 
 the travellers 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 @ur 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 importance 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 the same rapturous song, 
 illustrations, while the eternal ages last, of what a faithful 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 stubbornness 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. 
 
Jrsus. 
 
 A DESCRIPTION OF CHRIST'S SACRIFICES AND THE* MARVELLOUS MAGNIFICENCE 
 
 OF HEAVEN. 
 
 T is absurd to suppose that all the worlds which on a 
 cold winter's night make the heavens one great glit- 
 ter are inhabitautless. Philosophers 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 ourselves. 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 somewhere, vast beyond imagination, and that it 
 is the headquarters of the universe, and the metropolis of im- 
 mensity, and has a population in numbers vast beyond all sta- 
 tistics, 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 head- 
 ache, or a sideache, or a heartache. There had not been a funeral in the 
 memory of the oldest inhabitant. 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 citi- 
 zens. All the people there 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 definition, though to study the 
 
 (332) 
 
(333) 
 
J3 4 TH E PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 question there were silence in heaven for half an hour. The Prince of whom 
 I spoke had honors, emoluments, acclamations, such as no other Prince, celes- 
 tial 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 worshippers 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 
 when John described Him, He took white palfrey, with what prance of foot, and 
 arch of neck, and roll of mane, and gleam of eye, is only dimly suggested in 
 the Apocalypse. 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 : " Let 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 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 million- 
 aire, but the quadrillionaire of heaven. To describe His celestial surroundings 
 the Bible uses all colors, gathering them in rainbow over the throne and set- 
 ting 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 grey of chrysoprasus, and flame of jacinth. All the 
 loveliness of landscape in foliage, and river and fill, and all enchantment aqua- 
 marine, the sea of glass mingled with fire as the sun sinks in the Mediter- 
 ranean. 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 adora- 
 tion, rich in power, rich in worship, rich in holiness, rich as God. 
 
336 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 centrifugal 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, com- 
 panions cherubic, 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 ! " 
 
 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 this 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 the skies not a torch 
 flared, not a trumpet blew, not a plume fluttered. All the music and the pomp 
 were overhead. Our world opened for 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 Balthasar and old Melchior. To know how poor He was, examine 
 all the records of real estate in all that Oriental country and see what vine- 
 yard, 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 
 le ise 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 which fie slept. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 337 
 
 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 travelling 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 your 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, 
 
 TOWER OF LONDON. 
 
 when Pompey, 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 musi 
 put His lips to the bucket of the well by the roadside after He had begged fo; 
 a drink. Poor ? Born in another man's barn and eating at another man's table, 
 and cruising the lake in another man's fishing-smack, and buried in another 
 man's mausoleum. Four inspired authors wrote His biography, and innumera- 
 ble 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 
 
 22 
 
338 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 Him Sabbath-breaker, wine-bibber, traitor, blasphemer, and ransacked the dic- 
 tionary 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 w,ere 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 pro- 
 vided for, better off", better sheltered. • Ay, the brute creation has a home on 
 «»arth, which Christ had not. 
 
 If on windy days the raven 
 
 Gambol like a dancing skiff, 
 Not the less he loves his haven 
 
 On the bosom of the cliff. 
 If almost with eagle pinion 
 
 O'er the Alps the chamois roam, 
 Yet he has some small dominion 
 
 Which, no doubt, he calls his home. 
 
 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 uni- 
 verse 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 harassment 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 : 
 ;l 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." 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 339 
 
 Yes, blood-bought readers, grace to live by and grace to die by. Grace 
 that 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 
 
 TEE NESTLINGS. 
 
 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 bag- 
 pipes of the Scotch regiments. The night that the old Scotch soldier died, a 
 
34 o THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 young man, somewhat reckless but kind-hearted, got a company of musicians 
 to come and play under the old soldier's window, and among the 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 com- 
 ing 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 country. 
 
 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 
 commanded 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 elabor- 
 ate masonry, not an ice castle like that which 
 Empress Elizabeth, of Russia, over a hundred 
 years ago ordered constrvicted, 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 wel- 
 come. A religion of warmth and inspira- 
 tion, and light and cheer ; something we 
 the trumpeter. can ta k e j nto our h ea rts, 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 chiefly 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, " Suretyship 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." 
 
(Ccmcortr atiti j!3iscottr. 
 
 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 history 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 sanc- 
 tity. We remember some venerable man who pre- 
 sided, wielding the trowel or hammer. We re- 
 member also the music, as the choir stood on the 
 scattered stones and timber 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, contralto 
 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 cere- 
 mony than any 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 mountains for pillars, and 
 sky for frescoed ceiling, and flowering fields for floor, and sunrise and mid- 
 night 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 
 
 (340 
 
342 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 whole 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 a 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 philanthropists 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 atmosphere in colli- 
 sion, disordered eye and noonday light 
 in quarrel, rheumatic limb and damp 
 weather in 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 respira- 
 tion, and regular pulsation, and supple 
 limb, and prime digestion, and steady 
 nerves, you find a hundred who have to be 
 very careful because this, or that, or the 
 other physical function is disordered. 
 The human intellect out of tune: The judgment wrongly swerved, 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 courts, 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 the 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 stamp- 
 ing the pedals. 
 
 THE MORNING OF THE WORLD. 
 
A POEM OF I.OVE. 
 
 (343) 
 
344 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 On all sides there is a perpetual shipwreck of harmonies. Nations in dis- 
 cord : 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, 
 .he 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- 
 
 The genius of fable — the winged dragon. — From the Painting by Gustave Moreau. 
 
 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 growl- 
 ing bear, and in the world's heraldry a favorite figure is the dragon, which is a 
 ■winged serpent, ferocious and deathful. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 345 
 
 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 grocerymen think of the sugars of the grocerymen 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 minis- 
 ters 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 we close the service witn: 
 
 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 by a discord that shakes the earth. 
 
 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 key of D, and that the cormorant is a basso in 
 the winged choir, yet sportsman's gun and the autumnal blast often leave 
 them ruffled and bleeding, or dead in meadow or forest. Paul was right, foi 
 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 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 demo- 
 niac phantasy, are grand march of doom, are allegro of perdition. 
 
346 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 
 appreciate disagreement of sound. Many have no capacity to detect a defect of 
 musical execution, and, though there were in one bar as many offenses against 
 harmony as could crowd in between the lower F of the bass and the higher G 
 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 harrow- 
 ing dissonance. While an amateur was performing on a piano and had just 
 struck the wrong chord, John Sebastian Bach, the immortal composer, entered 
 
 'A, r/'" 
 
 THE BOAT SONG. 
 
 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 keys and changed the painful inhar- 
 mony 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 what sin is. It seems to me that sin is getting 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 347 
 
 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, with flute, and comet-a-piston, and 
 trumpet, and violoncello, and hautboy, and trombone, and all the wind and 
 stringed instruments that ever gathered in a Dusseldorf jubilee, should resolve 
 that they would play 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 aud 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 Cri- 
 mean 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 
 bones, and death agonies, and destroyed cities, and plowed graves, and crushed 
 hearts, 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' J 
 greatest overture was composed one night when he was several times over- 
 powered 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 over- 
 ture 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, internationality to be attuned, hemispheres 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 cor- 
 respond, 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 
 
348 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 audiences are raptured with Schumann'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 sere- 
 naded the earth 
 with: "Glory to 
 God in the high- 
 est, 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 danger- 
 ous unless con- 
 trolled, but love 
 moves us more 
 
 Hieronymus, a Oerman 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 retirement he made mightily than 
 hundreds of holy figures in which one or both these animals were invariably prominent. - 
 
 fear. 
 Lest we start too far off and get lost in generalities, we had better begin 
 with ourselves — get our own hearts and life in harmony with the eternal 
 
 WORKSHOP OF A PHILOSOPHER OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 349 
 
 Christ. Oh, for His almighty spirit to attune us, to chord our will with His 
 will, to modulate 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 melli- 
 fluous. 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 between 
 labor and capital, the operatives of scores of years in their beautiful homes 
 near by the mansions of the manufacturers whose invention and Christian 
 behavior made the great enterprise. 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 Ch6rus," composed by 
 Verdi, a tune played 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, yard 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 very good, or most excellent. So, also, commercial 
 life will be attuned, and their 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 cotton, and sellers will not have 
 to charge honest people more than the right price because others will not pay, 
 and goods will come to you corresponding with the sample by which you pur- 
 chased them, and coffee will not be chickoried, and sugar will not be sanded, 
 and milk will not be chalked, and adulteration of food will be a state's prison 
 offense. 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 century the singers called the Fischer Brothers reached 
 
 the lowest bass ever recorded, and the highest note ever trilled was by La Bas- 
 tardella, 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 
 \n homes, and concert halls and churches tends toward this consummation. 
 
35° 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 many tunes, or 
 it is one tune with the variations, so some of the songs of the redeemed may 
 have playing through them the songs of earth ; and how thrilling, as coming 
 
 THE SONG OF THE SWAN. 
 
 through the great anthem of the saved, accompanied by harpers with theil 
 harps and trumpeters with their trumpets, we should hear some of the strains 
 of "Antioch," and " Mount Pisgah," and " Coronation." and " Lenox," and 
 "St. Martin's," and "Fountain," and "Ariel," and "Old Hundred." Ho« 
 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 1869, a 
 great national peace jubilee was held in Boston, and, as an elder of my 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 35i 
 
 church had been honored by the selection of some of his music to be ren- 
 dered on that occasion, I accompanied him to the jubilee. Forty thousand 
 people sat and stood in the great Colosseum erected for that purpose. Thous- 
 ands of wind and stringed instruments. Twelve thousand trained voices. The 
 masterpieces of all ages rendered, hour after hour, and day after day — Han- 
 del's "Judas Maccabaeus," Sphor's " Last Judgment," Beethoven's "Mount of 
 Olives," "Haydn's "Creation," Mendelssohn's "Elijah," Meyerbeer's "Corona- 
 tion 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 
 their awful bars of a harmony that astounded 
 all nations. Sometimes I bowed my head 
 and wept. Sometimes I stood up in the en- 
 chantment, 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 equalled on earth until the 
 archangelic voice proclaims that time shall 
 be no longer, rose above all other sounds in 
 her rendering of our national air, the Star- 
 Spangled Banner. It was too much for ; 
 
 mortal, and quite enough for an immortal, to hear, and while some fainted, one 
 womanly 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 
 instruments 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 ot the world's corner-stone, " the morning stars sang together." 
 
 »/(&«, 
 
 AT THE CROSS. 
 
jForttDtini pjoneg. 
 
 BAD LITERATURE, STOGK GAMBLING, CARD PLAYING, 
 FARO AND STRONG DRINK. 
 
 ARVELXOUSL/V ingenious in architecture is the 
 honey-bee, a Christopher Wren among insects, a ge- 
 ometer drawing hexagons and pentagons, a free- 
 booter robbing the fields of pollen and aroma, 
 a wondrous creature of God, whose biography, 
 written by Huber and Swammerdam, is an enchant- 
 ment for any lover of nature. Virgil celebrated 
 the bee in his fable of Aristaeus, and Moses, and 
 Samuel, and David, and Solomon, and Jeremiah, 
 and Ezekiel, and St. John used the delicacies of bee manu- 
 facture as a 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 honey-comb is a palace 
 such as no one but God could plan, and the honey-bee con- 
 struct ; cells sometimes a dormitory, and sometimes a store- 
 house, 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 wall. If an accident happen they put up buttresses or extra beams to 
 remedy the damage. When, about 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 every- 
 where the bees had arranged for their own protection, and built before theii 
 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 you 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 foul 
 degrees, and they must die unless they leave their heated apartments, and 
 Ihey follow the mother bee and alight on the branch of a tree, and cling to 
 
 (352, 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 353 
 
 each other and hold on until a committee of two or three have explored the 
 region and found the hollow 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 manufacture 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 woods 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 profu- 
 sion 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 for- 
 bidden honey — by which I mean temptation — delicious and attractive, but 
 damaging and destructive. 
 
 Literature, 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 conies 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. Every book 
 in which sin triumphs over virtue, or in which a glamour is thrown over dis- 
 sipation, or which leaves you at its last line with less respect for the marriage 
 institution, and less abhorrence 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 forbid 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 mis- 
 improved lifetime: "I did but taste a little honey with the rod that was in 
 my hand, and, lo, I must die." 
 23 
 
(354) 
 
 the forbidden book.— From the Painting by M. Karel Ooms. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 355 
 
 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 ferry gates, and in hotel parlors, and conjugal perjuries are among the 
 damnable results. When a woman, young or old, gets her head thoroughly 
 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 bewitchingly 
 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 styles 
 of literature just as charming that 
 will elevate and purify, and ennoble, 
 and Christianize while they please. 
 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 which is debauching 
 to body, mind and soul. Go to some 
 intelligent men or women, and ask 
 for a list of books that will be 
 strengthening to your mental and 
 moral condition. Life 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 independ- 
 ence of character that will qualify 
 her to build her own home and maintain 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 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 
 
 THE NOVEI, READER. 
 
356 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 Lamps 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 authoresses from 
 whose pens 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, be- 
 cause 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 multitudes 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 whiskey. They not only like it, but it is an all-con- 
 suming 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 inspir- 
 ing, the most rapturous thing that ever thrilled mortal or immortal." 
 
 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 additional shot or bullet each day, that displaced so much liquor. 
 Bullet after bullet added day 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 357 
 
 any one ever was cured in that 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 iu the house of God. 
 
 drunk — after the feast, "your little bill, sir." — From the Painting by F. Dadd. 
 
 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 in 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 
 
353 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 " Old Crow," mightly 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, thrust- 
 ing 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; 
 
 The gamesters. — From the Painting of A. Paoletti. 
 
 though his statue in the hall crashed into fragments at his feet, and a scroll 
 containing the names of the conspirators was thrust into his hands, yet walk- 
 ing 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 crash- 
 ing, 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 assassination. In propor- 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 359 
 
 tion 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 consti- 
 tution, 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 tempta- 
 tions delicious but destructive. I have crossed the ocean eight times, and 
 always one of the best rooms has, from morning till late at night, been x 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 possibili- 
 ties. 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 preparation of food that he could 
 take without stopping the game, namely, a slice of beef between two slices o r 
 bread, which was named after Lord Sandwich. It is absurd for those of us 
 who have never felt the fascination of the wager to speak slightingly of the 
 temptation. It has slain a multitude of intellectual and moral giants, men and 
 women, stronger than you 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. They 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 sanctioned the mighty evil by passing a law for its 
 defense 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 consciences, but I will tell you that cards are in my mind so asso- 
 ciated with the temporal and eternal damnation of splendid young men, that 
 
30O 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 BOADICEA. 
 Boadicea was an Anglo, or British, heroine, queen of the Iceni. 
 
 Having been basely and 
 
 harshly treated by the Romans, she headed an insurrection, which destroyed several Roman 
 settlements 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. 
 
 I should no sooner say to 
 my family, " Come, let us 
 have a game of cards ;" than 
 I would go into a me- 
 nagerie and say, "Come, 
 let us have a game of 
 rattlesnakes," or into a 
 cemetery, 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 influ- 
 ence, 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 you 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 catas- 
 trophe at the last. 
 
 Stock gambling comes 
 into the same catalogue. 
 It must be very exhilar- 
 ating to go into Wall street, 
 New York, or State street, 
 Boston, or Third street, 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 361 
 
 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 ignoramus if you do not know that it is 
 just as legitimate to deal in stocks as to deal in coffee, 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 substance : " I have there 
 the value of $150,000." His home is to-day penniless. What was the matter? 
 Wall street. Of the vast majority 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, 500 unknown men sink 
 with them. The great steamer goes down and all the little boats are swallowed 
 in the same engulfment. Like Boadicea of old, who, in wreaking her vengeance, 
 brought destruction on thousands of innocents, and lastly upon her own head. 
 
 Gambling is gambling, whether in stocks or breadstuff's or dice or race- 
 track betting. Exhilaration at the start, and a raving brain, and a shattered 
 nervous system, and a sacrificed property, and a destroyed soul at the last. 
 Young man, buy no lottery tickets, purchase no prize packages, bet on no base 
 ball games or yacht racing, have no faith in luck, answer no mysterious circu- 
 lars proposing 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 inex- 
 tricable. The best honey 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 
 dangerous 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 
 towards 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 
 
sacrificial pyre and burning THE body of a norse king.— From the Painting by Wm. Lindenschmuit. 
 
 During the reigns of the old Norse Kings it was a cu?tom, though seldom observed, when the king died, his brxly was placed on a large 
 funeral pyre, to which were bound several of his prominent captives, and the whole consumed amid demonstrations of grief from his subjects. 
 Occasional self-sacrifices of the Queen were also made at the same time, as represented in the illustration. 
 
 (362) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 363 
 
 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," says God to the recreant. Here is honey gath- 
 ered 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 you 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 Lord is gracious. Be happy now and 
 happy forever. For those who take a different course the honey will turn 
 to gall. 
 
 For many 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 boat, which was twenty-four feet long, he was coming towards 
 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 sea-shore 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 ever- 
 lasting 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." 
 
&f)e &rcret of Success. 
 
 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 thous- 
 and worlds. . There are men con- 
 stantly 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 inno- 
 cent and trustworthy man, and, released from close confinement, he became 
 a general superintendent, of prison affairs. Wherever Joseph was placed — 
 whether a servant in the house of Potiphar or a prisoner in the penitentiary 
 — he became the first man \\ very where, 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 no- 
 bility 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 com- 
 pelled to honor in their hearts, though they ,-uay not eulogize with their lips, 
 a Christian firm in persecution, cheerful in poverty, trustful in losses, trium- 
 phant in death. 
 
 I find Christian men in all professions and occupations, and I find them 
 
 (364) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 
 
 365 
 
 respected and honored, and successful. John Frederick Oberlin alleviating 
 ignorance and distress ; John Howard passing from dungeon to lazaretto, with 
 healing for the body and the soul ; Elizabeth Fry coming to the profligate of 
 Newgate Prison to shake down their obduracy, as the angel came to the prison 
 at Philippi, 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 welfare of the race, are monuments of the Christian 
 religion that shall not crumble while the world lasts. 
 
 ELIZABETH FRY PLEADING FOR THE PARDON OF CONVERTED CRIMINALS. 
 
 (From the Painting by Entile lVauters.) 
 
 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 Raphaels and the Michael Augelos. It is most unfair and 
 dishonest to take the ignominious failures in Christian profession instead of the 
 glorious successes. 
 
366 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 rapidly. 
 No good man was ever more vilely maltreated than John Wesley. His fol- 
 lowers were hooted at and maligned and called by every detestable name that 
 infernal ingenuity could invent, but the hotter 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 Presbyterian- 
 ism. It was persecution which 
 gave our own land first to civil 
 liberty and afterwards to relig- 
 ious freedom. Yea, I may go 
 further back and say it was per- 
 secution that gave the world the 
 great salvation of the gospel. 
 The ribald mockery, the hun- 
 gering and thirsting, the unjust 
 trial and ignominious death, 
 where all the force of hell's 
 fury was hurled against the 
 cross, were the introduction of 
 that religion which is yet to be 
 the earth's deliverance from guilt 
 and suffering, and her everlast- 
 ing 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 im- 
 plements 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. 
 Long, long ago had these brothers sold Joseph into Egypt. They had sup- 
 
 THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. SEBASTIAN. 
 
 {From the Painting by Antonio Pollainolo.) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 367 
 
 pressed 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 de- 
 stroy 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 to 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 com- 
 mission, when in the dis- 
 tance the sheep began to 
 bleat and the oxen to 
 bellow. The secret was 
 out, and Samuel said to 
 the blushing and con- 
 founded 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 
 f ime the sheep will bleat 
 .md the oxen will bel- the court fool. 
 
 low. Achan cannot steal 
 
 the Babylonish garment without getting stoned to death. Look 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 
 
3 6S THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 shoe that answered to the print in the sand, some false keys found in posses- 
 sion, some bloody knife that whispered of the deed, and the public indignation 
 and the anathema of outraged 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 Helve- 
 tians, 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 iniquity. 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 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. 
 Whitefield 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 thicket 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 un- 
 guarded moment it will slip off the lip, or some slight occasion may for a 
 moment set ajar this door of hell that you wanted to keep closed. But suppose 
 that in this life you hide it, and }'ou get along with that transgression burn- 
 ing 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 judg- 
 ment, 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 very 
 day, the very 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 you 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 Calvary, and thus up to heaven. 
 There is a relation between the smallest insect that hums in the summer air 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 369 
 
 and the archangel on his throne. God can trace a direct ancestral 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 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 furthest 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 
 
 a gentleman of The highway.— From the Painting by S. E. Waller. 
 
 ball containing letters was thrown back, and so communication was opened 
 with the outside world, and Sidney Smith escaped in time to defeat Bonaparte's 
 Egyptian expedition. What a small accident 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. 
 
 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 
 
 24 
 
37° 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 whole direction 
 of your life was changed by something which at the time seemed to you a 
 trifle, while some occurrence which seemed tremendous affected you but little. 
 The Rev. Dr. Kennedy, of Basking Ridge, New Jersey, went into his pulpit 
 
 EXECUTION OF LORD HASTINGS. 
 
 one Sabbath, and by a strange freak of memory forgot his subject au5 forgot 
 his text, and in great embarrassment rose before his audience and announced 
 the circumstance and declared himself 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 37- 
 
 revival that resulted in churches still standing and in the conversioiv of a 
 large number of men who entered the gospel ministry, who have brought 
 their thousands to the kingdom of God. 
 
 Finally, learn from this subject that in every famine there is a store-house. 
 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, glory be 
 to God,' there is a great store-house. 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 with such suddenness and 
 strength that it requires the most gigantic determination to quell the disturb- 
 ance. Your courage quakes at the thought of the future. Oh ! why will you 
 tarry amid the blastings of the famine when such a glorious store-house is 
 open in God's mercy ? 
 
ffiogal MomanfjootJ. 
 
 ANGELS OF MERCY THAT FEED THE POOR, COMFORT IN ADVER- 
 SITY 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 royal 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 coro- 
 nation 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 — 
 ^^j| 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 stumb- 
 ling 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 hands on his temples and crying out : " Oh, 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." 
 
 (372) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 373 
 
 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 
 
 »*»1 *b£ : : ':■ : ".'. ' .*.; :;••-■''.-;•; '.. . 
 
 the queen of sympathy. — From the Painting by Alexander Cabonel. 
 
 for fear they will catch the contagion. How roughly they turn you in bed. 
 How loudly they talk. How you long for the ministries of home. I knew 
 
*74 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 .vyAKKI 
 
 ,1 
 
 -_• *»,. - *#>' • 
 
 WARRIOR AND WOUNDED YOUTH 
 
 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 away 
 from home. By express 
 train the wife and daugh- 
 ter 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 mid- 
 night ; 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 thit look into ours 
 may be very plain ; but 
 who ":ares for that ? Lov- 
 ing hands to bathe the 
 temples. Loving voices 
 So speak good cheer. Lov- 
 ing lips to read the com- 
 forting promises of Jesus. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 375 
 
 In our last dreadful war men cast the cannon; men fashioned the musketry; 
 men cried 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 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, 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 howitzer. Women did their 
 work with socks, and slippers, and bandages, and warm drinks, and Scripture 
 texts, and gentle strokings of the hot temples, and stories of that land where 
 they 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. 
 Which of these directors of banks would know how many yards 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, 
 «.nd it falls like the fruit of a tree in the East, which fruit comes down so 
 
37 6 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 sor- 
 rows of the place, and puts so quietly the donation on the table, that all the 
 family 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 
 
 MOTHERLESS. 
 
 whence she seems to have come down. O Christian young 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. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 377 
 
 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 you 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 chapel of Helen Chalmers, the daughter of the celebrated Dr. Chalmers, 
 in the most abandoned part of the city of Edinburgh, and I said to her as 
 I looked around upon the fearful surroundings of that place : " Do you come 
 here nights to hold a service?" "Oh, yes," she said. "Can it be possible 
 that you never meet with an insult while performing this Christian errand ?" 
 " Never," she said, " never." That young woman who has her father by her 
 side walking down the street, an armed police at each corner, is not so well 
 defended as that Christian woman who goes forth on gospel work into the 
 haunts of iniquity carrying the Bibles and bread. God, with the arm of His 
 wrath omnipotent would tear to pieces any one who should offer her indignity. 
 He would smite him with lightnings, and drown him with floods, and swallow 
 him with earthquakes, and damn him with eternal indignation. Some one 
 said : " I dislike very much to see that Christian woman teaching those bad 
 boys in the mission school. I am afraid to have her instruct them." " So," 
 said another man, " I am afraid, too." Said the first : " I am afraid they 
 will use vile language before they leave the place." " Ah," said the other 
 man, " I am not afraid of that. What I am afraid of is that, if any of those 
 boys should use a bad word in that presence, the other boys would tear him 
 to pieces and kill him on the spot." That woman is the best sheltered who is 
 sheltered by the Lord God Almighty, and you need never fear going anywhere 
 where God tells you to go. 
 
 SOLICITING CHARITIES. 
 
 It seems as if the Lord had ordained woman for an especial work in the 
 solicitation of charities. Backed up by barrels in which there is no flour, and 
 by stoves in which there is no fire, and by wardrobes in which there are no 
 clothes, a woman is irresistible; passing on her errand, God says to her: "You 
 go into that bank, or store, or shop, and get the money." She goes in and gets 
 it. The man is hard-fisted, but she gets it. She could not help but get it. 
 It is decreed from eternity she should get it. No need of your turning your 
 back and pretending you don't hear ; you do hear. There is no need of your 
 saying you are begged to death. There is no need of your wasting your time, 
 
(378) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 379 
 
 and you might as well submit first as last. You had better right away take 
 down your check-book, mark the number of the check, fill up the blank, sign 
 your name, and hand it to her. There is no need of wasting time. Those 
 poor children on the back street have been hungry long enough. That sick 
 man must have some farina. That consumptive must have something to ease 
 his cough. I meet this delegate of a relief society coming out of the store of 
 such a hard-fisted man, and I say: "Did you get the money?" "Of course," 
 she says, "I got the money; that is what I went for. The Lord told me 
 to go in and get it, and He never sends me on a fool's errand." 
 
 I have also to tell you that it is a woman's specific right to comfort 
 under the stress of dire disaster. She is called the weaker vessel ; but all 
 profane as well as sacred history attests that when the crisis comes she is 
 better prepared than man to meet the emergency. How often you have seen 
 a woman who seemed to be a disciple of frivolity and indolence, who under 
 one stroke of calamity changed to a heroine. 
 
 TELL YOUR WIFE. 
 
 Oh, what a great mistake those business men make who never tell their 
 business troubles to their wives ! There comes some great loss to their store, 
 or some of their companions in business play them a sad trick, and they carry 
 the burden all alone. He is asked in the household again and again, "What 
 is the matter?" but he believes it a sort of Christian duty to keep all that 
 trouble within his own soul. Oh, sir, your first duty was to tell your wife 
 all about it. She, perhaps, might not have disentangled your 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 you 
 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 hastened home. You told your wife all about the 
 affair. What did she say ? Did she play the butterfly ? Did she talk about 
 the silks, and the ribbons, and the fashions ? No. She came up to the emer- 
 gency. 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 without 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 you brought her, ten, twenty or thirty years ago. You said : 
 
(38o) 
 
 CONFIDENCE. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 381 
 
 " 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 your 
 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 bravery and courage are demanded of woman as was exhibited by 
 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 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 while. 
 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 greatest 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 ! Mary, Christ's mother, in 
 heaven ; Elizabeth Fry in heaven ; Charlotte Elizabeth in heaven ; the mother 
 of Augustine in heaven ; the Countess of Huntingdon, who sold her splendid 
 jewels to build chapels, in heaven, while a great many others who have never 
 been heard ot 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 glass 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 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 midnight for the coming of staggering steps. No more rough blows 
 
382 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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, whenever you have a pang of body op soul He puts 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 congratulation : " 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!" 
 
Employments in $$rabrn. 
 
 OCCUPATIONS IN THE CELESTIAL WORLD NOT DIFFERENT 
 FROM THOSE ON EARTH. 
 
 (ZEKIEL, 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 con- 
 demned to dig by the order of Nebuchadnezzar — this 
 royal canal, in the Bible called the river of Chebar, 
 the illustrious exile had visions of heaven. Indeed, it 
 is almost always 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 com- 
 pelled 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 year, 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, you 
 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 tc 
 become sanguine in temperament. You never knew a man sanguine in tern 
 perament to become phlegmatic in temperament. Conversion plants new prin- 
 ciples 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 eradicate the prominent characteristics of the temperament 
 neither will death eradicate them. 
 
 (383) 
 
silver and gold. — From the Painting by Arthur Hughes. 
 
 (384) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 3*5 
 
 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. 
 Vou are to subtract 
 irom them all earth- 
 ly grossness and 
 add all earthly good- 
 ness, 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 coiild 
 not stand it if they 
 got there if it 
 should turn out to 
 be the rigid and 
 formal place some 
 pious people photo- 
 graph it. 
 
 We like to go 
 to church, but we 
 would not want to 
 stay there till next 
 Christmas. We 
 like to hear the 
 Hallelujah Chorus, 
 but we would not 
 want to hear it all 
 the time for fifty 
 centuries. It might 
 be on some great 
 occasion it would be 
 possibly comfort- 
 able to wear a crown 
 of gold weighing 
 several pounds, but 
 it would be an afflic- 
 tion to wear such a 
 25 
 
 THE HOf.Y SIGN. 
 
 It is said that when Constantine was opposing the Christian religion, at ihe moment of engaging in bailie 
 with his brother-in-law, Maxentius, lie perceived ihe shadow of a cross in the sky over which were written the 
 words, In hoc signo vinces— ** With this sipn you will conquer." He gained the battle and immediatrry 
 adopted and established Christianity in the Roman Empire. 
 
?86 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 crown forever. In other words, we run the descriptions of heaven into the 
 ground while we make that which was intended as especial and celebrative 
 to be the exclusive employment 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 must, 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 that there will be at 
 least as many different em- 
 ployments in the celestial 
 world as there are employ- 
 ments 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 earth- 
 ly occupation. 
 
 In the first place, I re- 
 mark 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 pleas- 
 ure amid pictures and statu- 
 ary, 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 rainbows and the spring mornings are woven ? 
 
 Are you so obtuse as to suppose that because the painter drops his easel, 
 and the sculptor Ins chisel, and the engraver his knife, that therefore that 
 taste, ' ,r hich he was enlarging and intensifying for forty or fifty years, is 
 
 THE FLOWER GATHERER. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 387 
 
 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 iarger liberties and into wider circumference. They are 
 at their old business yet, but without the fatigues, without the limitations, 
 ivithout the hindrances of the terrestrial studio. 
 
 THE CELESTIAL ART GALLERY. 
 
 Raphael could now improve upon his masterpiece of Michael, the arch- ' 
 angel, 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-mms 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 sepul- 
 chre, and that Turner and Holman, Hunt and Rembrandt, and Titian, and 
 Paul Veronese, if they exercised saving faith in the Christ whom they por- 
 trayed upon the canvas, are painters yet, but their strength of faculty multi- 
 plied ten thousand-fold. The reason that God took away their eye and their 
 hand, and their brain was that He might give them something more limber, 
 more wieldly, more skilful, more multi pliant. 
 
 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 say : " I am glad they have gone up to higher artistic 
 opportunity and appreciation." Our friends who found so much joy in the 
 fine arts on earth are now luxuriating in Louvres and Luxembourgs 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 ithose of earth would have 
 Seen taken up by the earthly emigrants. Surely the Christian at death does 
 :ot 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 ready 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 you close 
 the piano and unstring the harp for two years, because the fingers that used 
 
388 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 to play on them are still. You must remember that they have better instru- 
 ments 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 mountains, 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 sur- 
 prised 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." His- 
 
 WHERE THE WOODS LIFT THEIR HEADS IN PRAISE. 
 
 tory 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 orchestra as in benediction. 
 
 Haydn was right when he waved his 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 tond of music here are now at the headquarters 
 of harmony. I think that the grand old church tunes that died when your 
 grandfathers died have gone with them to heaven. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 389 
 
 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 blood- 
 less battle. There are hundreds of people born soldiers. They cannot help it. 
 f hey 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, oar Christian friends, 
 who had natural and powerful military -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." Elisha 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 ; they volunteered right away. There 
 must needs be in heaven soldiers with a soldierly spirit. There are grand 
 parade days 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 con- 
 querors. There must be crusades ever being fitted out for some part of God's 
 •tominions — battles, bloodless, groanless, painless. Angels of evil to be fought 
 down and fought back. Other rebellious worlds td 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 
 Christian 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 buoyant and cour- 
 ageous, 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 much 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 mili- 
 tary spirits before the throne — Joshua, and Caleb, and Gideon, and David, and 
 Samson, and the hundreds 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 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 
 
39° 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 
 with geometry." What are they doing now? They are busy with figures yet. 
 
 THE harvest of the SEA.— From the Painting by G. Clausen. 
 
 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 PATHWAY OF LIFE. 391 
 
 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 used 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 multi- 
 tudes on earth who had a passion for metaphysics sanctified by the grace of God ? 
 No difficulty in guessing. Metaphysics, glorious metaphysics, everlasting 
 metaphysics. 
 
 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 Long no more trying to free 
 blockaded 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 volumes of the universe open before them — geologic, ornithologic, con- 
 chologic, botanic, astronomic, philosophic. No more need of Leyden-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 
 history 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. 
 
 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. Her- 
 schel 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. 
 
i9 2 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 ignor- 
 ance call spiritualistic manifestations. All that matter cleared up. Agassiz 
 standing amid his student explorers down in Brazil coming across some 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 humnfing-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 Him- 
 self bow. The chain of law long enough to wind around the immensities of 
 infinity 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 skilful doctors had said he must die. 
 Perhaps Abercrombie touched him — Abercrombie who, after many years' doctor- 
 ing the bodies and the souls of people in Scotland, went up to God in 1844. 
 Perhaps Abercrombie touched him. 
 
 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 skilful 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 medica- 
 ment. 
 
 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 
 
(393) 
 
394 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 particularly 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 Hainan, 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 Beth- 
 lehem 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 Hugue- 
 nots 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 sufferings 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 only to go over and ask Whitefield, and Wesley, and Livingston, and 
 Fletcher, and Nettleton, and Finney. Oh ! what a place to visit in. 
 
 If 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 Uruit 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 congregations. 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 whom I have administered in the gospel, and to the mill- 
 ions of souls to whom, through the kindness of the printing-press, I am per- 
 mitted 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 Life." 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 
 usefulness 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. 
 
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396 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 consequently. 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 
 
 IN SYLVAN FIET.DS. 
 
 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. Worshippers 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, 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 397 
 
 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 
 lay down on the lounge to rest. The children said, " Play more." Children 
 always want to play more. And, half asleep and half awake, I seemed to 
 dream this dream : It seemed to rue 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 workingman'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, seek- 
 ing 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 different 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 innumerable 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. 
 
delusions 
 
 WITCHCRAFTS, ORACLES, AND FOOLISH DEVICES TO DELUDE 
 
 THE CREDULOUS. 
 
 HERE 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 .vorld loves to be hoodwinked. 
 In the latter part of the last century, Johanna Southcote came 
 forth, pretending to nave divine power, made prophecies, had 
 chapels built, m her honor, and 100,000 disciples came forth to 
 follov. ner. About five years before the birth of Christ,' Apol- 
 lonius was born, 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 multitudes 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 ~ould read them any way you 
 wanted to read them. A genera 1 going iorth to battle consulted the Delphic 
 Oracle, and he wanted fcc find out whether he was' going to be safe in the 
 battle or killed : :n the Dattle, and the answer came forth from the Delphic 
 Oracle in sucn 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 message from the Delphic Oracle to the 
 general was: "Go forth, return 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 the people. The priests of those auguries, by the flight of 
 
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4 oo THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 birds, or by the intonation 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 sibylline books afterward purchased by Tar- 
 quin the Proud. So late as the year 1829. a man arose in New York, pre- 
 tending 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 delusions 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 Christian religion. That delusion has to-day 200,000,000 dupes. It pro- 
 poses 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 Govern- 
 ment, 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 ? r 
 
 " ' Well,' I said, ' father, I am going to follow the sea.' 
 
 " ' 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 ? ' 
 
"is IT nothing To you, all ye That pass by?"— lam. i. 12.— From the Painting by Frank Dicksee. 
 26 (401) 
 
4 o2 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 " ' 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 
 overpowers 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 Lost." Who 
 wrote "Paradise 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 manuscript 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, enlsaved by this delusion, so that he says : " The book 
 worth all other books put together is the Bible." Benjamin Rush, the lead- 
 ing 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 Brew- 
 ster, at the pronunciation of whose name every 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 Sab- 
 bath, and often, at the invitation of the rector, reads the prayers to the people. 
 Oh, if those mighty 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 403 
 
 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 
 
 the flood— safe while jesus watches.— From the 
 
 E. Millais. 
 
 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! 
 
4 o4 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 The soul is only a superior part of the body, and when the body disintegrates 
 the soul disintegrates. Annihilation, vacancy, everlasting blank, obliteration. 
 Why not present all that beautiful doctrine to the dying, instead of coming 
 with this hoax, this swindle o f the Christian religion, and filling the dying 
 man with anticipations 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 ! " 
 
 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 yen 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 405 
 
 sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be unto God, who giveth us 
 the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 O my Lord, my God, what a delusion, what a glorious delusion ! Sub- 
 merge 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 
 
 STONING OF STEPHEN. 
 
 follows : " On my way here to-night I met a man who asked me where I was 
 going. I said : ' I am going to prayer-meeting.' He said : ' There are a good 
 many religions, and I think the most of them aire delusions ; as to the Christian 
 religion, 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 everybody 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 could not keep me out of that place ; but God has 
 
4 o6 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 changed my heart, and the Lord Jesus Christ has destroyed my thirst for 
 strong drink, and there is my 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 re- 
 sponsibility. Don't bother me about your religion. Here I have the two 
 worlds before me — this one and the next. I have chosen this. Go away from 
 me, God and angels, and all thoughts of the future ! " 
 
 SOME RICH FOOLS. 
 
 But where is Croesus, and Cleopatra, and ^Esopus, 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 your eyes it would not 
 make you wink twice. Ah, my readers, then very certainly your comforts of 
 surrounding 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 aud to me it will either be midnoon or midnight. 
 
Boofcs. 
 
 GOOD FATHER AND MOTHER, WHAT SHALL YOUR 
 CHILDREN READ? 
 
 AUL once stirred up Ephesus 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 wit'i their arms full of Ephe- 
 
 sian literature, and tossing it ; ito 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 thes^ 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 insuffer- 
 able 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 
 influence 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. 
 
 (407) 
 
Uo8) 
 
4 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 409 
 
 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 for- 
 ever 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 depart- 
 ments. 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 ava- 
 lanche of horror and despair. 
 
 The London plague was nothing to it. That counted its victims by thou- 
 sands, but this modern pest has already shovelled 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 news- 
 papers of this land in the last twenty years. 
 
 Now, it is amid such circumstances that I put a question of overmastering 
 importance to you 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 wicked- 
 ness of men has filled with pollution 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 intelligent 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 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 
 
4io 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 of poetry. The world can never pay the debt which it owes to such fictitious 
 writers as Hawthorne and McKenzie, and Landor and Hunt, and Arthur and 
 Marion Harland. and others whose names are familiar to all. The follies of 
 
 the wayward daughter. — From the Painting by H. Hilmick. 
 
 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 Wal- 
 ter Scott. Cooper's novels are healthfully redolent with the breath of the sea- 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIF^. 411 
 
 weed, 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 cari- 
 caturing the pretenders to gentility and high blood. Dickens has built his 
 own monument in his books, which are an everlasting plea for the poor, and 
 the anathema of injustice. 
 
 Now, I say, books like these, read at right times, and read in right pro 
 portion 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 newspapers. 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 tL.2 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 then up in a pyramid of 
 literature, and then I shall bring 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. Life 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 fantastic and extravagant thing. How poorly prepared are that 
 young man and woman for the duties of to-day who spent last night wading 
 through brilliant passages descriptive of magnificent knavery and wickedness ! 
 
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THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 413 
 
 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 dishevelled, countenance vacant, cheeks pale, hands trembling, bursting 
 into tears at midnight over the fate of some unfortunate lover ; in the day- 
 time, 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 
 i plainer after having wandered through a romance all night long in tessellated 
 halls of castles. And your industrious companion will be more unattractive 
 than ever now that you 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 unfitted 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 generally 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 beau- 
 tiful. 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 ! 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 with- 
 out reading it ? " 
 
4 i4 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 There is always something suspicious about a bad book. I never knew an 
 exception — something suspicious in the index or style of illustration. This 
 venomous reptile almost always carries a warning rattle. 
 
 I charge you to stand off from all those books which corrupt the imagina- 
 tion 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 righteous- 
 ness, 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, 
 anyhow. 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 
 desperadoes, 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 murderers of souls. I tell you, though you may escape in 
 this world, you 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 howl 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. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 4i5 
 
 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 
 
 ill-gotten gains. — From the Painting by Q. Matsys. 
 
 " four," and the rosy dawn soon after begins to look through the lattice upon th« 
 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 
 
4 i6 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 hand through the oars of the prison, and smite her head, rubbing it back as 
 though to push the scalp from the skull, shrieking : " My brain ! My brain ! ,y 
 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 
 voyage, 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" molded 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 anything 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. 
 
pilars of £mofce. 
 
 SYMBOLISM OF MARTYRDOM, OF PEACEFUL PURSUIT 
 AND A BURNING WORLD. 
 
 ONDROUS 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 
 ii\§lvM/)^^^^^'^Of have begun ; or see it ascending from the chim- 
 
 » b^ -jP» neys of the city, telling of the homes fed, the 
 
 MsaaM t factories turning out valuable fabric, the print- 
 
 ing-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 affluence of shape, and color, and suggestive- 
 ness, 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 Luxembourg, 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 
 trying to do right. For centuries the heavens have been black with the smoke 
 of martyrdom. If set side by side you could girdle the earth with the fires of 
 persecution. Rowland Taylor burned at Hadleigh ; Latimer burned at Oxford; 
 27 (417) 
 
4lS 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 John Rogers burned at Smithfield ; John Hooper burned at Gloucester; John 
 Huss burned at Constance ; Lawrence Saunders, burned at Coventry ; Joan of 
 
 VATICAN UDRARY. 
 
 Arc, burned at Rouen. Protestants have sometimes pointed at Catholics as 
 persecutors, but both Protestant and Catholic have practised infamous cruelties. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 419 
 
 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 Maryland : " In the 
 land which Catholics had opened to Protestants mass might not be said pub- 
 licly ; no Catholic priest or bishop might utter his faith in a voice of persua- 
 sion ; no Catholic might teach the young. 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 
 permitted to reside in Ireland were required to be registered, and were 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 transportation 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 persecu- 
 tion and cruelty took possession of that sect. Then see the Catholics after the 
 Huguenots. 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 con- 
 sumed. 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 massa- 
 cred, and 700,000 more of them died from banishment and exposure. Witness 
 the sufferings of the Waldenses, of the Albigenses, of the Nestorians. Wit- 
 ness 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 hun- 
 dreds of thousands, but by the millions must we count 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." 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 a 
 
 (420^ 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 421 
 
 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 she that cometh up out of the 
 wilderness like pillars of smoke ?" 
 
 HAS PERSECUTION CEASED? 
 
 Has persecution ceased? Ask that young man who is trying 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-playing, 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 rep' -ter 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 char- 
 acter an easy time now, but for consecrated behavior, grimace and caricature. 
 For the body, thanks to the God of free America, there are now no swords or 
 fiery stakes, but for the souls of thousands 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. 
 
martyrdom of ST. eulawa. — Front the Painting by J. IV. Waterhouse. 
 
 Eulalia was a young Christian, whose zeal caused her death during the persecutions of the Christian* in Rome. Her body wai 
 exposed in the Roman Forum, where it was soon covered, however, by a miraculous faU of sno» 
 
 (422) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 423 
 
 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 Lord, 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 beau- 
 tiful 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 neigh- 
 borhoods, 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 
 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 sui- 
 cides, 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 
 
424 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 / 
 
 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 beau- 
 tiful, her convocations are beautiful, her work is beautiful. All kings and 
 
 the christian martyr. — Front the Painting by Paul Delaroche. 
 
 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 she 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 float- 
 
at the golden gate. — From the Painting by Val. Prinsep. 
 
 (425) 
 
426 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 ing in black wrath from the conflagration of homesteads, or sulphurous from 
 blazing batteries, but sweet as a burning grove of cinnamon or jungle of sassa- 
 fras, or the odors of a temple censer. 
 
 Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, per- 
 fumed 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," says : " Nothing calmer than smoke but nothing more start- 
 ling. 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. 
 
 A distinguished gentleman of the late war told me 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 
 controversies without wholesale butchery. 
 
 THE HORRORS OF WAR. 
 
 The Church of God will yet become the arbiter of nations. If the world 
 would allow it, it would to-day step in between Germany and France and settle 
 the trouble 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 shooting 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 
 
BAD NEWS FROM THE SEA. 
 
 (427) 
 
428 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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. 
 
 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 other innocent Christians. 
 
 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. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 429 
 
 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 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 will write in 
 letters of jet and gold 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. 
 
 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 burn- 
 ing and eating 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 Stromboli, 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, an ^ 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 you have taken Christ 
 as your Saviour. Secure heaven as your eternal home, you 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, undismayed, shalt o'er the ruins smile, 
 And light thy torch at nature's funeral pile. 
 
heroes of tfje g>ca. 
 
 A TRIBUTE TO OUR WAR FLEETS AND THE BRAVH SAII, 
 ORS WHO 'BANNED THEM. 
 
 pONG 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 Lake Galilee, how 
 much more appropriate in an age which has launched 
 from the dry docks, for purposes of peace, the Ari- 
 zona, of the Guion Line ; the City of New York, of 
 ^^> the Inman Line ; the Egypt, of the National Line ; 
 the Germanic, of the White Star Line ; the Circassia, 
 of the Anchor Line ; the Etruria, of the Cunard Line, 
 and the Gre%t 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 Dunder- 
 berg, and those which have already been buried in the deep, 
 like the Monitor, the Housatonic, the Weehawken, and the 
 Tecumseh, the tempests ever since sounding a volley over their water sepul- 
 chres, 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 century, 
 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, teaching 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 Southfield, the Sassacus, the 
 Mattabesett, the Whitehead, the Commodore Hull, the Louisiana, the Minne- 
 sota 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 
 
 (430) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 43* 
 
 one other escaping ; and, as I see the flagship Hartford, and the Richmond, 
 and the Monongahela, with other gunboats, sweep past 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 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, 
 
 SHIP AHOY 
 
 commanders, captains, pilots, gunners, boatswains, sail-makers, 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 Let all land-lubbers go ashore. 
 Full speed now ! Four bells. 
 
 Never since the sea fight of Lepanto, where 300 royal galleys, manned by 
 50,000 warriors, at sunrise, September 6, 1571, met 250 royal galleys, manned 
 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 ; yea, since the day when 
 
432 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 American navy in 1861. There were about 200 available 
 seamen in all the naval stations and receiving ships, and here and there an 
 
 BATTLE OF I.EPANTO. 
 
 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, Cum- 
 berland, 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 impossibility. But the work was done, done: 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 433 
 
 almost immediately, done thoroughly, and done with a speed and consummate 
 skill that eclipsed all the history of naval architecture. What brilliant achieve- 
 ments 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 roady 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 land. But where those 
 are who went down in the war 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 you find their graves for a national decoration ? Nothing but the 
 archangel's trumpet shall reach their lowly bed. A few of them have been 
 gathered into naval cemeteries of the laud, 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 ? 
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THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 435 
 
 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 destroyed furni- 
 ture, steering-wheel broken, smoke-stack crushed, a 100-pound Whitworth rifle 
 shot having left its mark from port to starboard, the shrouds rent away, lad- 
 ders 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 you are dead to put upon your graves a wreath of recogni- 
 tion, 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 our thanks ! Take the benediction of our churches. 
 Accept the hospitalities of the nation. If we had our way we would get you 
 not only a pension, but a home and a princely wardrobe, and an equipage, and 
 a banquet while you live, and after your departure a catafalque, and a mauso- 
 leum of sculptured marble, with a model of the ship in which you won the day. 
 It is 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 you were to the government 
 there is a flag-ship sailing ahead of you of which Christ is the Admiral, and He 
 watches from the shrouds, and the heavens are the blue ensign, and He leads 
 you toward the harbor, and all the broadsides of earth and hell cannot damage 
 you, and ye, whose garments were once red with your own blood, shall have a 
 robe washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb. 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 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, 
 
436 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 difficult 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 gur- 
 gled 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 
 your 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 un- 
 truth. It does forget. 
 Witness how the veterans 
 sometimes had to turn 
 the hand-organs on the 
 street to get their fami- 
 lies a living. Witness 
 how ruthlessly some of 
 them have been turned 
 out of office that some 
 bloat of a politician might 
 take their place. Wit- 
 ness 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 
 
 CRUISERS AFTER THE BATTLE. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 437 
 
 the ascending and descending missiles of death, and your ship quaked under 
 the recoil of the ioo-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 everlast- 
 ing 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 fhe Russian navy. To bring before the 
 American 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, 1812 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. That is the Delaware, an old Revolutionary craft, commanded 
 by Commodore Decatur. Yonder goes the Constitution, Commodore Hull com- 
 manding. There is the Chesapeake, commanded by Captain Lawrence, whose 
 ■dying words were: "Don't give up the ship," and the Niagara, of 1812, com- 
 manded 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 Dupont commanding ; yonder the flagship 
 Minnesota, Admiral Goldsborough commanding; yonder the flagship Phila- 
 delphia, Admiral Dahlgren commanding ; 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 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 
 ithe naval service during our late war are now in the afternoon or evening of life, 
 
43§ 
 
 THE PATHWAY 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 cow- 
 ardly 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 oat at sea, followed the chaplain with religious exhortation. In early life 
 
 crossing THE bar. - From the Painting by Hamilton Macallum. 
 
 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: "Henceforth, 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. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 439 
 
 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 
 f Old hearts of oak, 
 
 Farragut, Farragut, 
 
 Thunderbolt stroke ! 
 
 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. Shall 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 you, 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 his 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 fray ; 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." 
 
Mats of tfje &grs. 
 
 ANCIENT WARRIORS IN ARMED PANOPLY, AND THE STRIFE OF 
 BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER. — THE GREAT REBELLION. 
 
 ILITARY science in the Bible is set forth in a very 
 interesting manner. In olden times all the men between 
 twenty and fifty years of age were enrolled in the army, 
 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 they fainted. 
 
 EARLY WEAPONS OF WARFARE. 
 
 The army was in three divisions — the centre, and right and 
 left wings. The weapons of defense were helmet, shield, breast- 
 plate, buckler. The weapons of offense were sword, spear, 
 javelin, arrow, catapult — which was merely a bow swung by 
 machinery, shooting arrows at vast distances; great arrows, one 
 arrow as large as several men could lift, and ballista, which 
 was a sling swung by machinery, hurling great rocks and large 
 pieces of lead to 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 
 marching 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 
 fortress 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 wanted to use an arrow he would put his arm over his 
 
 (440) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 441 
 
 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 equilibrium. 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 forty men 
 would stand in a 
 movable tower on the 
 back of an elephant, 
 the elephant made 
 drunk with wine, and 
 then headed toward the 
 enemy, and what with 
 the heavy feet and the 
 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 
 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, em- 
 broidered with a man ; 
 tribe of Dan, embroid- 
 ered with cherubim. The noise of the host as they moved on was over- 
 whelming. 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 years you are not to couclude that these armies of olden 
 
 SIEGE OF TYRE. 
 
(442) 
 
 chivai.ry.— From the Painting by Frank Dicksee. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 443 
 
 times were uncontrollable mobs. I could quote you four or five passages 
 of Scripture 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. 
 Undrilled 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 slavery, 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 possibility 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 lis a wrestle. During our Civil W T ar 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 1812, 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 generation on the stage 
 of action will say : " My country will care for my family as they did in the 
 soldiers' asylums for the orphans in the Civil War, and my country will honor 
 my dust as it honors those who preceded me in patriotic sacrifice, and once a 
 year at any rate, on Decoration Day, I shall be resurrected into the remem- 
 brance of those for whom I died. Here I go, for God and my country." 
 
 If foreign foe should ever come, all sectional animosities would be oblit- 
 erated. Here go our regiments into battle, side by side, 15th New York 
 Volunteers, 10th Alabama Cavalry, 14th Pennsylvania Riflemen, 10th Massa- 
 chusetts Artillery, 7th South Carolina Sharpshooters. I have no faith in the 
 cry : " No North, no South, no East, no West." Let all four sections keep 
 their peculiarities and their preferences, each doing its own work and not 
 interfering with each other ; each of the four carrying 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 sec- 
 tional 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 Down South in Dixie." The Northern people were " mudsills" and the 
 
(444) 
 
 war.— From the Painllng by Jas. Drummond. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 445 
 
 Southern people were " white trash." The more Southern people were killed in 
 battle, the better the North liked it. The more Northern people killed in 
 battle, the better the South liked it. For four years the head of Abraham 
 Lincoln or Jefferson Davis would have been worth a million dollars, if delivered 
 on either side 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 marshalled all their earthly hostilities, but tried to leach 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 years 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 prayer, 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 way. 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 Exhibition, held two years ago, 
 every Northern State was represented. A thousand-fold khidlier 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. Brigadier-Generals in the Southern Confederacy 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 
 
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 (446) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 447 
 
 to come in. Instead of war antipathies, when yon could not cross the line 
 between the contestants without fighting yonr way with keen steel, or getting 
 through by passes carefully scrutinized at every step by bayonets, you need 
 only 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 years 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 sympathy ? 
 
 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 you left 
 home ! Father and mother crying, sisters crying, you 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-by kiss 
 which they thought, and you thought, might be forever? Then the homesick- 
 ness as you paced the river bank on a starlight night on picket duty, and the 
 sly tears which you wiped off when you heard a group at the camp-fire sing- 
 ing 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, your 
 heart ached. Home-sickness which 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 Russians, 
 because you appear to have a strong dislike of them. 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 
 
(448) 
 
 peace. — From the Painting by James Drummond. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 449 
 
 news. Speak, swamps of the Chickahominy, and midnight lagoons and fire- 
 rafts of the Mississippi, and gunboats before Vicksburg, and weeks of Antietam, 
 and tell to all the mountains, and valleys, and rivers, and lakes of North a^id 
 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-day. 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 confidence. Oh ! now I see whom those letters were for, the letters you, 
 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 you be teased 
 by your comrades. God spared you to get back, and though the old people 
 have gone you have a home of your own construction, and you 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 by officers 
 who considered the names of God and Christ of no use except to swear by. 
 Sometimes the drum-head the pulpit, and you standing in heat or cold, all the 
 surroundings 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 where 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 displaying the Promised Land. 
 
 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 bushelsj 1888, the wheat will be about 500,000,000 
 bushels; 1862, Pacific coast five weeks from the Atlantic; 1888, for three 
 reasons — Union Pacific, Southern Pacific and Northern Pacific — only seven days 
 29 
 
(45o) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 451 
 
 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 Emanuel and Garibaldi leading on the 
 armies of the Italians; Tamerlane and Ghengis Khan followed by the armies 
 of Asia; Gustavus Adolphus, and Ptolemy Philopater, and Xerxes, and Alex- 
 ander, 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 wars ; 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 
 judgment, the cavalrymen, the artillerymen, the spearmen, the infantry, the 
 sharpshooters, 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 
 
452 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 countries. Let the earth be especially balanced to bear their tread. Forward! 
 Forward I Let the orchestra of the heavenly galleries play the grand march, 
 joined by 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 when 
 Joshua halted astronomy above Gibeon and Ajalon till the last man surrendered 
 to Garnet Wolseley at Tel-el-Kebir. Nations, companies, battalions, ages, cen- 
 turies and the universe! Forward in the grand review of the judgment! For- 
 ward ! Gracious and eternal God ! On that day may it be found that we are 
 all marching in the right regiment 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 ! " 
 
& Wgf)tfi punter. 
 
 MORAL ILLUSTRATIONS TAKEN FROM THE CHASE. 
 
 SHUNTING is a sport in 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 breech-loader, 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 with 
 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 the arrow with great success 
 practising 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 skilful 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 game. 
 
 Truman Osborne, one of the evangelists who went through this country 
 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 
 
 (453) 
 
(454) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 455 
 
 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. 
 
 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 learn the art of doing good and become " mighty 
 hunters before the Lord ! " 
 
 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 Solway Moss, and Neville's 
 Cross, heard the loud thrum of the archers 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 Luther's heart when he cried out : " Oh, my 
 sins ! Oh, my sins ! " If it strike a man in the head, it kills his skepticism j 
 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 corslets which show 
 that the arrows of the English used to go through the breastplate, through th& 
 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 
 
456 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 his taking the catamount, the catamount takes him. What would become of the 
 Greenlander if, when out hunting for the bear, he shou 1 d stand shivering with 
 terror on an iceberg ? What would have become of Du Chaillu and Livingstone 
 in the African thicket with a faint heart and a weak knee? When a panther 
 comes within twenty paces of you, and it 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 
 prowling all around about the community. Shall we not, in the strength of 
 
 A MODERN CLUB-ROOM. 
 
 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 strych- 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 457 
 
 nine, 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 "Heidel- 
 berg tun." It is the great liquor vat of Germany, which is said to hold 800 hogs- 
 heads 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 vat 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 mon- 
 sters 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 that 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 history 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 day of sickness came. I was 
 summoned to his sick bed. I hastened. It took me but a very few 
 moments to get there. I was surprised as I went in. I saw him in his ordin- 
 ary dress, fully dressed, lying on top of the bed. I gave him my hand, and 
 he seized it convulsively 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. She has been dead twenty years. Now, I don't want 
 you to think I am out of my 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 my old mother — she sat there." Then he turned 
 to his wife 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 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, 
 1 Mother, I wish I could do better ; I try to do better, but I can't. Mother, 
 
45§ 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 carry- 
 ing the body up the aisle, 
 I felt as if I could weep 
 tears of blood. 
 
 On one side of the 
 pulpit sat his little child 
 of eight years, a sweet, 
 beautiful little girl that I 
 have seen him hug convul- 
 sively 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 wondering- 
 ly. 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 at 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 
 
 THE TWO ROADS. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 459 
 
 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 comfort 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 
 trailing through the aisle. Prayer and congratulation, and exclamation of " How 
 well she looks ! " 
 
 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 blasted heath with three 
 graves ! Plenty of weeds, but no flowers. Ring the bell and let the curtain drop. 
 
 Act V. — A destroyed soul's eternity. No light ; no music ; no hope ; 
 anguish coiling its serpents around the heart; blackness of darkness 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 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 judgment." "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 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 excursion, 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, having 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 
 these great monsters of iniquity in our country, the million membership of our 
 churches would band together and hew in twain these great crimes that make 
 the land frightful with their roar, and are fattening upon the bodies and souls 
 of immortal men. Who is ready for such a party as that ? Who will be a mighty 
 hunter for the Lord ? 
 
460 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 practised 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 
 
 the young hunter.— his first vos..—From the Painting by J. Fluggen. 
 
 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 461 
 
 "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." Men ! angels ! devils ! what shall we call that place 
 of awful catastrophe ? Let 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 
 earnestness, 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 
 thut 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 marvellous architecture. Twenty thousand men 
 were twenty-two years in erecting that and the building around it. Standing 
 at that 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. 
 
jforgtbeness. 
 
 THE EVILS OF A MALEVOLENT DISPOSITION, AND HOW TO 
 
 CORRECT THEM. 
 
 JHAT a pillow embroidered of all colors hath the dying 
 day! The cradle of clouds from which the sun 
 rises is beautiful enougb, but it is surpassed by 
 the many-colored mausoleum in which at evening 
 it is buried. Sunset among the mountains! It 
 almost takes one's breath away to recall the 
 scene. The long shadows stretching over the 
 plain make the glory of the departing light, on 
 the tip-top crags and struck aslant through the 
 foliage, the more conspicuous, Saffron and gold, purple and crim- 
 son commingled. All the castles of ckmd in conflagration. Burn- 
 ing. 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 sun- 
 sets 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. For- 
 giveness 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. Saul after 
 
 (462) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 463 
 
 David, Succoth after Gideon, Korah after Moses, the Pasquins after Augustus, 
 the Pharisees after Christ, Henry VIII. after Sir Thomas More, and every 
 one has had his pursuers, and we are swindled, or belied, or misrepresented, 
 
 the last day OF sir Thomas more. — From the Painting by J. R. Herbert. 
 
 Sir Thomas More, born in London, 1480, on becoming of age obtained a seat in Parliament, brought first into prominent notice by opposing sub- 
 sidy demand of Henry VII. Was knighted in 1515, became treasurer of the exchequer in r52o, and in 1523 was chosen speaker of the House of Com- 
 mons. He became Chancellor in 1530, 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 a while, and was then brought to the block. He is charged by some 
 with having persecuted Protestants, though Erasmus testifies to the contrary. During his imprisonment and to the last, his daughter spent much of 
 her time in the dungeon with him. 
 
 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 
 
464 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 a prolonged outpouring of temper displeasing 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 celebrated 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 digres- 
 sion ; 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 rheumatism^ 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 mis- 
 deed. Many a man with a smiling face has under his jacket an animosity that 
 is gnawing 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 
 offended is harder to be won than a strong city. Are there not enough sacred 
 memories of your childhood to bring you together? The Rabbins recount how 
 that Nebuchadnezzar's son had such a spite against his father that after he was 
 dead he had his father burned to ashes, and then put the ashes into four sacks 
 and tied them to four eagles' necks which flew away in opposite directions. And 
 
'THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 465 
 
 there are now 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 confessor 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 forgive him." Roloff, the confessor, said : " Her Majesty 
 
 The young princes in THE TOWER.— From the Painting by Paul Delaroche. 
 
 The princes were Edward V. and Richard, Duke of York, sons of Edward IV.; being in 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. 
 
 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. Edward 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. 
 30 
 
4 66 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 practise, and at the start you may make a com- 
 plete failure, but keep on in the attempt to practise 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 personal 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 controversies the one least to blame will have to take the first 
 step at pacification, if it be ever effective. The contest between ^Eschines and 
 Aristippus resounds through history, but Aristippus, who was least to blame, 
 went to ^Eschines and said : " Shall we not agree to be friends before we make 
 ourselves the laughing stock of the whole country?" And ^Eschines said, 
 " Thou art a far better man than I, for I began the quarrel ; but thou hast 
 been the first in healing the breach." And they were always friends afterwards. 
 So let the one of you that is least to blame take the first step toward concili- 
 ation. 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 practise 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 scatter- 
 ing the gloom and brightening the forehead, and loosening the pinched look 
 about the nostril and lip, and makes you somewhat like God- Himself. 
 
 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. 
 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 opening. We talk about the Italian sunsets, and sun- 
 set amid the Apennines, and sunset 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 consume them, and the 
 billows of fire overwhelm them. The sublimest thing God does is the sunset. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 467 
 
 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 Pom- 
 peii, as the account of the soldier who, after the city had for many centuries 
 been covered with the ashes and scorias of Vesuvius, was found standing in 
 
 LORD STANLEY BRINGING THE CROWN OP RICHARD TO RICHMOND, AFTER THE BATTLE OF BOSWORTH. 
 
 The battle of Bosworth was fought August 22d, 1485, between Richard III. and the Ear! of Richmond (afterwards Henry VII) In this decisive con* 
 trst the former lost both his crown and life, which terminated a long-continued struggle for supremacy between the rival houses of York and Lancaster. 
 
 his place on guard, hand on spear and helmet on head. Others fled at the 
 awful submergement, 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 position 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 
 
4 68 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 impo- 
 sition on His children. In the day of eternity it will be found you had not 
 one annoyance too many, 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 off 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 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 Mme. 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 
 Lord 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 
 affluent 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 sunsets alike ; and if the world has existed 6000 years there have been 
 about 2,190,00x3 sunsets; each of them as distinct from all the other pictures in 
 
OLIVER CROMWELL AT THE DEATH BED OP HIS DAUGHTER. 
 
 Oliver Cromwell, son of a baronet, was elected to the brief Parliament of 1628. 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, bv which he brought a large 
 force of the military under his arm, and was able to crush all opposition by making the armv predominant over Parliament. He at length 
 brought Charles I. to the block, and on the 16th of December, 1653, took the title of Lord Protector, thus becoming virtually King of Britain. 
 The d ath of his daughter Elizabeth so affected him that his strong heart broke, and one month after, on September 3d, 1658, being the anni- 
 versaries of his two greatest victories, at Dunbar ani Worcester, he followed her to the grave. 
 
 (469) 
 
47 o THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 Luxem- 
 bourg, 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 worry- 
 ing 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 obliter- 
 ated 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 
 upholstery 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 resplen- 
 dent as vermilion, and odoriferous as musk." The same sentiment was echoed 
 by Cromwell, 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 these two keys unlock Paradise. 
 
 THE CLOCK OF EARTHLY EXISTENCE. 
 
 And now I wish for all of you a beautiful sunset in your earthly exist- 
 ence. 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 you 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. 
 
£f)C Blacfc ffifant. 
 
 EVIDENCES AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF A FINAL 
 RESURRECTION. 
 
 f BOUT 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 1. 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 contro- 
 versy, 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 21, 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 jewelled sceptre, and 
 in her smile nations are irradiated. She seems to step out of the 
 snowbank rather than the conservatory, come out of the north in- 
 stead of the south, out of the Arctic rather than the Tropics, dis- 
 mounting from the icy equinox, but welcome this queenly day, holding high 
 up in her right hand the wrenched-off 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 snow banks 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 
 malarias, and cancers, and distempers, and epidemics of the ages. He marched 
 
 (471) 
 
472 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 
 
 THE RIOT OK BATTLE. 
 
 of casualty. With bony hand he pounded at the door of hospitals and sick- 
 rooms, and won all the victories in all the great battle-fields of all the five conti- 
 nents. Forward, march, the conqueror 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. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 473 
 
 But one Christmas night his Antagonist was born. As most of the 
 plagues, and sicknesses, and despotisms come out of the East, it was appro- 
 priate that the new Conqueror should come out of the same quarter. Power is 
 given Him to awaken all the fallen or 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 cata- 
 comb, and necropolis ; on cenotaph and sarcophagus, on the lonely khan of 
 the Arctic explorer and on the catafalque of great cathedral ; written in capi- 
 tals 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, embannered 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 Cullodeu, 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 chiselled rock, where Christ came out through a 
 recess and throttled the King of Terrors, and put him back in the niche from 
 which the Celestial Conqueror had just emerged. Aha! when the jaws of the 
 eastern mausoleum took down the black giant, " Death was swallowed up in 
 victory." I proclaim 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 Kenilworth 
 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 Presi- 
 dent'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 
 banquet 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 
 
(474) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 475 
 
 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 recon- 
 struct 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 sickest patient in Bellevue Hospital. 
 
 But as to our soul, we will cross right over, not waiting for obsequies, 
 independent 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 very parlor of the universe, 
 the four walls burnished, and panelled, 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 cre- 
 mated 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 physi- 
 cian, and their comrades, cremated at the order of Marcus Aurelius — at least 
 100,000 of Christ's 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 
 
476 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 stich a lustrous 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, 
 
 under THE greenwood tree. — From the Painting by Adrien Moreau. 
 
 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 manufac- 
 turer of the telescope, by a change of the glass and a change of focus, can 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 477 
 
 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 additional 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 mold 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 3ergerac, 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 thous- 
 and years ago buried, yet resurrected ! 
 
 A traveller 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 4th of 
 June, 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 homes ? In the hollow of a staff a Greek missiona^ 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 insignificant earthly body, this insignificant earthly life, 
 our bodies unfold into something 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 dis- 
 solves, 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 dor- 
 mant and insensible, but soon the south wind will blow the resurrection trum- 
 pet, 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 senti- 
 
(478) 
 
 THE ANGEL OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 479 
 
 mental, 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 experiences 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 in- 
 sects 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 vaca- 
 tion 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 
 hinderment, 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 founda- 
 tion of the resurrection body, worth nothing to us in this state, to be indispen- 
 sably 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 may have been a delusion. But 
 this thing is certain, the Christian scientists of our day have found out that 
 there are two or three superfluities of body that are something gloriously sug- 
 gestive 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 Land, 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 
 
480 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 nerve, 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 day 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 sovl not re-echo it ? Or, changing the question, did 
 your 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. 
 
 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 thousands 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." 
 
19alacrs of ^plmoor. 
 
 THE AROMA THAT CLUNG TO CHRIST'S GARMENTS 
 LIKENED UNTO HIS SWEET LIFE. 
 
 'iMONG 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 quatrefoil ; its sacristy, with 
 
 ribbed ceiling and statues of saints. But there was 
 
 Uflj^Uy* j nothing in all that building which more vividly 
 
 gWC, appealed to my plain republican tastes than the 
 
 '/ * ' costly vestments which laid in oaken presses — robes 
 
 that had been embroidered with gold, and been worn 
 
 by popes and archbishops on great occasions. 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 glory overmaster the spectator. More brilliant is He 
 
 than Queen Vashti moving amid the Persian princes ; than Marie Antoinette 
 
 on the day when Louis XVI. put upon her the necklace of eight hundred 
 
 diamonds; than Catharine when she appeared before her ecclesiastical judges; 
 
 than Anne Boleyn the da'y 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 jewelled, and 
 
 redolent. It seems as if they must have been pressed a hundred years amid 
 
 31 (481, 
 
( 4 82) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 483 
 
 the flowers of heaven. The wardrobes from which they have been taken must 
 have been sweet with clusters of camphire, 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 crucifixion. 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 ihat 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 per- 
 son : 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. 
 Lifting you up while others try to push you down. Not so much like morn- 
 ing-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 
 with 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 condescension. 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 woman 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, 
 
'he was 
 
 altogether lovely. "—From the great Painting by Leonardo da Vinci. 
 
 (484) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 4*5 
 
 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 aud 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 palaces of olden time 
 were adorned with ivory. 
 Ahab and Solomon had 
 their homes furnished 
 with it. The tusks of 
 African and Asiatic ele- 
 phants 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 
 ivory, 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 lustrous surroundings. Silvery music rippling to the 
 beach of the arches. The mere thought of it almost stuns my brain, and you 
 say, " 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 foun- 
 tains!" 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 
 
 GROTTO IN THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS. 
 
486 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 Tuileries 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 
 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 ivory, some whom 
 
 IT is the lord. — From the Painting by Audley Mackworth. 
 
 we knew and loved on earth. Yes, I know them. There are father and mother, 
 not eighty-two years 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 you — 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 you 
 stooc? holding your dying child when Jesus passed by in the room, and the little 
 me sprang out to greet Him. That is all. Your Christian dead did not go 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 487 
 
 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 hallelu- 
 jahs. 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 company. 
 
Secret ^ortfttes. 
 
 Solomon's gossipy household and the good and 
 EVIL of secret organizations. 
 
 "HAT is the moral effect of Free Masonry, Odd Fellow- 
 ship, Knights of Labor, Greek Alphabet, and other 
 societies? "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 dis- 
 posed 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 disparaging of you my first duty is not to tell you. 
 But if I tell you what 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. 
 
 Solomon 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 
 
 (488) 
 
(489) 
 
490 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 and wives, between employers and employes, between rulers and subjects, 
 until 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 may, 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 hill- 
 side, 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. 
 Innumerable tendrils climb their hearts, and blossom all the way up, and the 
 fowls of heaven sing in the branches. In consequeuce of this tendency, we 
 find men coming 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 'every active community is divided into associations 
 of artists, of merchants, of book-binders, of carpenters, of masons, of plasterers, 
 of shipwrights, of plumbers. Do you cry out against it? Then you cry out 
 against a tendency divinely implanted. 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 revelry, 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 defense of the rights of any 
 class against oppression, the improvement of the mind, the enlargement of the 
 heart, the advancement of art, the defense 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 righ over wrong 
 should publish to all the world our intentions. The general of any army 
 
(49i; 
 
492 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 never sends to the opposing troops information of the coming attack. Shall 
 we who 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 Lord 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 
 here has been so much violent discussion, I have only words of praise for 
 dose associations which have for their object the maintenance of right against 
 ,/rong, 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 live- 
 lihood. 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 exist- 
 ence is a necessity, and their legitimate sphere distinctly pointed out by the 
 providence of God. Such organizations are trying to dismiss from their asso- 
 ciation all members in favor of anarchy and social chaos. They will gradually 
 ease anything like tyranny over their members, and will forbid violent inter- 
 erence with any man's work, whether he belongs to their union or is outside 
 _jf it, and will declare their disgust with any such rule as that passed in Eng- 
 land by the Manchester Bricklayers' Association, which says any man found 
 running or working beyond a regular speed shall be fined two shilling six 
 pence for the first offense, five shillings for the second, ten shillings for the 
 third, and if still persisting, shall be dealt with as the committee think proper. 
 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 493 
 
 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 Mary, Queen of Scotts, 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 
 suffering. 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 fruits 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 stay 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 hvisband who nervously and foolishly looks 
 upon all evening absence as an assault on domesticity. 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 husband'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 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. 
 
(494) 
 
 AN 0I,D-FASHIONED HOME. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 495 
 
 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 charita- 
 ble institutions. 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 clergy- 
 man, for the sake of the feelings of the family, on the funeral day will talk 
 in religious generalities. 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 coffin, will send their wives to utter words of sympa- 
 thy, 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," you 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 every day know of commercial establishments going to ruin 
 through the social excess of one or two members, their fortune beaten to death 
 with ball players' 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 pota- 
 tions 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 
 
(496) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 497 
 
 religious obligation ? Now, if I should take a thousand name's 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 travellers 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 Belshaz- 
 zarean wassail or the chalice of Christian 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 bet- 
 ting, 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 trying 
 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 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 some- 
 times 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' watching, lay unconscious in the next room. Then the returned 
 32 
 
49« 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 father comes up-stairs, and he sees the cradle gone and the windows up, and 
 says : " What is the matter ? " 
 
 On the judgment day 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 rope-maker 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 day — 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 beautiful 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. 
 
& &tam on tfjr iSsrutrf)ron. 
 
 THE NATIONAL HONOR BROUGHT 
 
 MORMONISM. 
 
 INTO DISGRACE BY 
 
 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 extermi- 
 nation. God and civilization demand of the political 
 parties of this day a plank anti-Mormonistic. It is 
 high time that the nation stopped playing with this 
 cancer. All the plasters of political quacks only aggra- 
 vate 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 uncontroll- 
 able mirth at our national impotency. Shipload after 
 shipload of Mormons are regurgitated at your Castle 
 Garden, and hundreds and thousands of them are being 
 sent on to the great moral 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 Swe- 
 den, 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 Mor- 
 mons 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 ? Letting 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 genera- 
 
 (499) 
 
5°° 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 tion to leave the following generation ! A vast acreage of sweltering putrefac- 
 tion, of lowest beastliness, of suffocating stench, all the time becoming more 
 and more malodorous, and rotten, and damnable. We want some great politi- 
 cal party, in some strong and unmistakable plank, to declare that it will extir- 
 pate heroically and immediately this great harem of the American continent. 
 We want some President of the United States to come in on such an anti- 
 Mormouistic platform, and in his opening message to Congress ask for an 
 appropriation for military expedition, and then put such a man as was Phil 
 Sheridan in his lightning stirrups, heading his horse westward, and in one 
 
 A MORMON'S WIPE CAST OUT. 
 
 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. Relig- 
 ious 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. 
 Polygamy must go free. What has been the effect, my readers ? It has 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 501 
 
 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 of the marriage relation. Divorce by the wholesale. 
 Concubinage in high circles. Libertinism, 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 commit adultery ! " Advertisements in newspapers saying, " Divorce 
 legally and quietly effected. Can pay in instalments!" Some of the New 
 York lawyers giving their entire time to domestic separations — suborning wit- 
 nesses, giving advice as to how many months it is necessary to be out of the 
 city, inducing suspicious 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 some- 
 times the question of divorce is taken into consideration in the wedding 
 solemnities, and people promise fidelity till death do them part, and say after- 
 ward softly, " perhaps," " may be," " I rather think so." All over this land 
 more and more marriages in fun. 
 
 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 Mor- 
 monistic ulcer, and burn out with caustic 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 Mormonism the evil will be extir- 
 pated, 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 
 intelligent helpfulness for the great foreign populations which have come among 
 us. It is too late now to discuss whether we had better let them come. 
 They are here. They 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 con- 
 tinue to come as long as this country is the best place to live in. You might 
 
(502) 
 
 THE EMIGRANTS. 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 503 
 
 as well pass a law prohibiting summer bees from alighting on a field of blos- 
 soming 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 Germany, working them- 
 selves to death on small wages on the other side 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 
 intermarrying 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 nation- 
 alities 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 
 million of foreigners who came in one year, and the six hundred thousand 
 who came in another year, and the eigbt 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 introduce 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 com- 
 manded 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, and a 
 chapter on the spirit of our Government. Let there be such a book on every 
 shelf of every free library 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 citizenship. There are thousands of foreigners in this land who need 
 
5°4 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 ' 
 
 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 ac- 
 knowledge God. Let 
 there be no favoring of 
 sects. Let Trinitarian 
 and Unitarian, Jew and 
 Gentile, Protestant and 
 Roman Catholic, be alike 
 in the sight of the law — 
 every man free to wor- 
 ship 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 pros- 
 perity 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 com- 
 mon honesty, or any 
 kind of government, pre- 
 ferring anarchy. Your 
 every platform is an in- 
 sult to them. You ought 
 not to regard a man who 
 does' not believe in God 
 
 THE swine herd.— From the Painting by W. E. Lockhart. 
 
 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, 
 a:id let the chairman of the committee on resolutions in your national conven- 
 tion take a pen full of ink, and with bold hand head the document with one 
 
TRUST IN GOD. 
 
 (505) 
 
5 c6 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 significant. "Whereas," acknowledging the goodness 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 subject 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 meau by reform ? 
 See what the Republican party did in 1876 in Louisiana and what the Demo- 
 cratic 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 tax- 
 payers 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 you 
 want is more of God in your pronunciamentoes. Without Him reform is retro- 
 gression, and gain is loss, and victory is defeat. 
 
 LOYALTY TO GOD. 
 
 This country belongs to God, and we ought in every possible way to 
 acknowledge 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 he 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 — until this hour, our country has been bounded on 
 the north, and south, and east, a,nd west by the goodness of God. The Huguenots 
 took possession of the Carolinas in the name of God ; William Penn settled 
 Philadelphia in the name of God ; the Hollanders took possession of New York 
 in the name of God ; the Pilgrim Fathers settled New England in the name 
 of God. Preceding the first gun of Bnnker Hill, at the voice of prayer all 
 heads uncovered. In the War of 18 12 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 encampment; you had better go and join 
 them." Prayer at Valley Forge, prayer at Monmouth, prayer at Atlanta, prayer 
 at South Mountain, prayer at Gettysburg. 
 
 " Oh," says some infidel, " the Northern people prayed on one side, and 
 
-.<-- ■■ 
 
 THE DREAM OF JOY. 
 
 (507) 
 
508 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 the Southern people prayed on the other side, and so it didn't amount to any- 
 thing." 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 and 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 ploughs 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 
 Abraham 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 Mason 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 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 institu- 
 tions in the days that are to come. Oh, when all the rivers which empty into 
 the Atlantic and Pacific seas shall pull on factory 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 occu- 
 pied 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-con- 
 tinent 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." 
 
UrgponsfttHtp of Eulrrs. 
 
 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 Wilberforee 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 dissolute French court or corrupt con- 
 gressional delegation puts a premium upon iniquity. Many 
 e 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 
 authority as this land. There is not a session of Legislature, or Con- 
 gress, 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 member 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 unprom- 
 ising. 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 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 
 
 (5°9) 
 
5"> 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 we wake up some big sinner. If we keep back the truth, what will \v« 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 qualifica- 
 tion, 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 medi- 
 
 THE DEATH OF ANANIAS. 
 
 cal 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 PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 si J 
 
 the same thing. We have had 
 men in our Legislatures who 
 knew not whether to vote yes 
 or no until they had seen the 
 wink 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 nomi- 
 nated in grog-shops and hur- 
 rahed for by the rabble, the 
 men elected not able to read 
 their own commissions. And 
 judges of courts who have 
 given sentence to criminals in 
 such inaccuracy of phraseology 
 that the criminal at the bar 
 has been more amused at the 
 stupidity of the bench than 
 alarmed at the prospect of his 
 own punishment. I arraign 
 incompetency 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 intemperance. There 
 has been a great improvement 
 in this direction. The senators 
 who were more celebrated for 
 their drunkenness 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. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE DRAGON OF INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 (From the Statue by Miss Gram.) 
 
6*2 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 
 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 whiskey ! 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 by 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 attorneys, 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 Fredericksburg ? As you go to Richmond 
 yen see them. Drunkenness in the saddle. So again and again in the courts 
 

 COPYRIGHTED 1&&& 
 
 the: cross of prayer 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 S x 3 
 
 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 
 this libertine ride past in his 
 $5000 equipage, but clutch by 
 the neck that poor sinner 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 in- 
 iquity ! If you 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 Har- 
 risburg, and you have not been 
 to Trenton, and you have not 
 been to Washington. The whole 
 land cries out against the in- 
 iquity. But the two political 
 parties are silent lest they lose 
 votes, and many of the news- 
 papers are silent lest they lose 
 subscribers, 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 deliv- 
 ered. The nation sweats great 
 drops of blood. It is crucified, 
 not between two thieves, but 
 between a thousand, while na- 
 tions pass by wagging their 
 heads, and saying: "Aha! 
 Aha ! " 
 
 3j 
 
 ONWARD, IN THE NAME OF CHRIST. 
 
5 T4 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 institu- 
 tions. 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 bribery, 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 Chan- 
 cellor 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 you 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 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 favor of voting away these thousands or millions of dollars 
 will say 'Ay.'" y Ay! Ay! Ay! Ay!" "The ays have it." 
 
 REVOLUTION 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 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 machinery. 
 While in this country it is becoming harder and harder for the great mass of 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 5i5 
 
 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 peace- 
 ful 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 ilself in favor of the great mass of the people as well as 
 in favor of the Lord, the time will come when the Church as an institution 
 
 PURIFIED THROUGH FIRE. 
 
 will be extinct, and Christ will go down again to the beach, and choose tweU ; 
 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 powei 
 luring the last war, when men said, " Now you give me this contract f.bove 
 •'very other applicant, and you shall have ten per cent, of all I make 03' it. 
 You pass these broken-down cavalry horses as good, and you shall ha e five 
 thousand dollars as a bonus." " Bonus" is the word. And so they sei t down 
 to your fathers, and brothers, and sons, rice that was worm-eaten, and bi ;ad that 
 
5i6 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 was mouldy, 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 
 
 DECORATION DAY. 
 
 to swamp three monarchies. 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 517 
 
 parties ; but you 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 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 you 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 men who love God and hate rum. 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. Let 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 news- 
 paper gentleman asked me a few weeks ago what I thought of revivals. I 
 said I thought so 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 when 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! 
 
(Boti's (Circle. 
 
 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 thou- 
 sands 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 geom- 
 etry is the circle. There are in the natural world straight 
 lines, angles, parallelograms, diagonals, quadrangles ; but 
 these evidently are not God's favorites. Almost every- 
 where 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 periphery. An ellipse is a cir- 
 cle pressed only a little too hard at the sides. Giant's Cause- 
 way 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 molding-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 molding- 
 room, but I do say, out of a great many 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 
 Architect 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 
 
 (518) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 5i9 
 
 of Noah's ark. A ship-carpenter gives that as his opinion. Although so much 
 derided by small wits, that ship of Noah's time beat the Etruria and the Ger- 
 manic, of which we boast so much. Where is the ship on the sea to-day that 
 could outride a deluge in which the heaven and the earth were wrecked, land- 
 ing all the passengers in safety, two of each kind of living creatures, thou- 
 sands 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 centuries, and after the Downings and the Mitch- 
 ells 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 centuries be able to make something equal 
 to the east window of York Minster, which was built in 1290. We are six 
 
 THE CIRCLE OV PEACE. 
 
 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, per- 
 haps after the advance of centuries, mortar equal to that which I saw in 
 the wall of an exhumed English city, 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 old times. Babylon, five times the size of 
 London. 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 
 
520 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 
 
 will come back to the styles of pottery known so long ago as the days ol 
 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. 
 
 THE FAMILY 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 
 commentators 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 521 
 
 ■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 ; but come back to us they will as certainly 
 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 window? 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 MUTATIONS OF TIME. 
 
 But it is sometimes the case that this circle sweeps through a century 
 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 lim- 
 ited 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, 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 : 
 11 Let God come back and conduct the affairs of the world." Every step — mon- 
 archy, 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 curve 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 afford to work so slowly as that, cannot God, in 
 the building of the eternities, afford to -"'ait ? 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. 
 
522 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 But it is often the case that the rebound is quicker, and the circle is 
 sooner completed. You resolve that you will do what 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-meet- 
 ing. 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 you ?" 
 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 you." 
 He says : " Don't you 
 remember, thirty years 
 ago, giving a letter of 
 introduction to a young 
 man — a letter of intro- 
 duction to a prominent 
 man. That was my first 
 step toward a fortune; but I have retired from business now, and am giving 
 my time to philanthropies 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 
 
 THK CURVE. 
 
 merchant ? " " Yes, I do." He says : " I am the 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 523 
 
 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 your 
 *wn 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 Latimer 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 twelve shillings, six pence. That was a cheap fire, considering 
 all the circumstances ; 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, starting other circles, convoluting, over-running, circumscribing, 
 over-arching all heaven. 
 
 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 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 very soon. His steps are shorter and shorter. He is going to stop. But 
 God has an account to settle with you 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 the same stoi-y twice, and your children will wonder if 
 you are going to live forever, 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 
 
524 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 ANP 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 only 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 
 o f 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 influence, 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, 
 widening through hell ; until at last the accumulated influence of his bad 
 
 TUB CIRCLE COMPLETE. 
 
THK PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 525 
 
 life, in fiery surge ol 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 lay in his bath 
 struggling, with 
 a dagger in his 
 heart, a victim 
 of outraged jus- 
 tice, for the crimes 
 he had perpe- 
 trated. No one 
 can tell how these 
 two bad men's in- 
 fluence girdled 
 the earth, save 
 the One who is 
 seated on the cir- 
 cle of the world — 
 the Lord Al- 
 mighty. 
 
 "Well, now," 
 people say, "this 
 is in some re- 
 spects 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 com- 
 mitted will come 
 back to us fills 
 us with affright." 
 My brother, I 
 have to tell you 
 God can 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 
 
 THE last toilet of charlottb corday. — From the Painting by E. M. Ward. 
 
 Charlotte Corday, born in Normandy, France, 1768, was the daughter of the poet Corneille. She possessed a 
 bright mind, and during the persecutions of the Girondists she became so inflamed with anger at the persecutor!, th^t 
 she thought to end the atrocities by assassinating the master spirit, Marat. She accordingly went to Paris, and 
 contrived to procure an audience with Marat as he was in his bath. Here she gave him the names of persons which 
 she claimed to deserve his vengeance, and as he was writing them down she plunged a dagger into his heart. For 
 this act she was guillotined July 17th, 1793. 
 
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 (526) 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 527 
 
 you take your position behiud the cross, and the wheel strikes the cross 
 and it is shattered forever. The sins fly off from the circle into the perpen- 
 dicular, 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, 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 says about the city of Heaven. He says 
 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 many 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 rivalry. 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 glory, 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 -.v-e 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 1 
 
 On Christ, the solid rock, I stand; 
 All other ground is shifting sand. 
 
 5> 
 
 .....v.. _ . . 
 
& ^Purposeless Jitfe. 
 
 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. The world spreads a great feast and invites the 
 race to sit at it. Platters are heaped up. Chalices are full. 
 Garlands wreathe the wall. The guests sit 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 
 apothegmatically 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 
 ashes." 
 
 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 successful. 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 Henrys, ask the Marys, ask the Louises, 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 Taus- 
 saud's Museum about the queenly necks it has dissevered. Ask the Tower of 
 London and its headsman's block. Ask the Tuileries, and Henry VIII. , and 
 Cardinal Woolsey 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 only moderately successful may not testify. All 
 the 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. 
 
 (528) 
 
34 
 
 (529) 
 
53 o THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 the soul, he cries : 
 "Go away from me! Go away from me;" not satisfied until the man has got 
 outside the door. Come up, ye millionaire's, 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 tooth- 
 less 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 paradisiacally. 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 uucleannesses 
 and graceful despair and glittering damnation. Stand up, Alcibiades, and 
 Aaron Burr, and Lord Byron, 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 transcen- 
 dentalism, 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 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.- 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 53i 
 
 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 contemplate .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 in- 
 fidels who have passed out 
 of this world into the 
 eternal world — get up now 
 and tell what you think of 
 all your grandiloquent de- 
 rision at our holy religion. 
 What do you think now 
 of all your sarcasm at holy 
 things ? They come shriek- 
 ing up from the lost world 
 to the graveyards where 
 their bodies were entombed, 
 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 some- 
 times comes across you? 
 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 ner- 
 vousness. Your friends call it the fidgets. I call it hunger — deep, grind- 
 ing, unappeasable hunger. It starts with us when we are born, and goes 
 on with us until the Lord God Himself appeases it. It is seeking and delving, 
 and striving, and planning to get something we cannot get. Wealth sa)'S : 
 "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 n5t in me." Where then 
 is it ? On the banks of what stream ? Slumbering in what grotto ? March- 
 
 THE TREE IS KNOWN BY ITS FRUITS. 
 
532 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 ing 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 satis- 
 faction. Solomon described it when he compared it to cedar houses, and 
 golden chairs, and bounding reindeer, and day-break, 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, and while they were seated at the table, in the presence of the 
 guests, the merchant had a fire 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 congratu- 
 lated himself, and all the guests congratulated the king. There was gone at 
 last the final evidence of his indebtedness. 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 con- 
 sumed 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 laying hold of his soul. He had faith in the Crucified One, and his 
 faith won for him an immediate entrance into Paradise. 
 
 Oh, to have all the sins of our past forgiven, and to have all possible 
 security 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 anxiety whether he go this summer or next summer — whether he be 
 carried out through the snowbanks or through the daisies. Like a faithful watch- 
 dog 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 
 
THB FAITHFUL SERVANT. 
 
 (533) 
 
534 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 day-break. 
 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 break- 
 ing 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 the 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 re- 
 spond : "Ashes ! " while all the infinite space will echo and re-echo : "Ashes ! 
 Ashes ! Ashes ! " God forbid that we should choose 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 rele- 
 gate to the future that which God and angels, and churches militant and 
 triumphant declare 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 will 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 story ; 
 and the gardener said: "I will make a pledge of confidence with you. Eat 
 
HOME, AT JCAST. 
 
 (535) 
 
536 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 this peach and that will be a pledge that I will be your protector to the last." 
 But, oh, the sorrow 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 deliverance. I have made you the promise of eternal life, and you shall 
 have it. Escape now for thy life." And now I act merely as the Lord'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 housed 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 hel- 
 met and crash down through the insufficient mail. In this tremendous exi- 
 gency of your immortal spirit beware, lest you prefer ashes to bread. 
 
J5mall 2Tf)mgs. 
 
 TRIFLING INCIDENTS PRODUCE MIGHTY RESULTS, AND 
 MAKE THE HEROES AND HEROINES OF EARTH. 
 
 AMASCUS is a city of white and glistening archi- 
 tecture, sometimes called the "eye of the East;" 
 sometimes called " a pearl surrounded by em- 
 eralds;" at one time distinguished for swords 
 of the best material called Damascus blades, 
 and upholstery of richest fabrics called dam- 
 asks. A horseman by the name of Saul, 
 riding toward this city, had been thrown from 
 the 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 days, and, I 
 think, so permanently injured his eyesight 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 Damascus till the city was 
 shaken to its foundations. 
 
 The mayor 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 wall, 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 house-door. 
 
 EVADING THE MOB. 
 
 Sometimes on the street incognito he passes through a crowd of clinched 
 fists and sometimes he secretes himself on the house-top. At last the infu- 
 
 ,537) 
 
538 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 riated 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 blasphemy, 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 city 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 iuto 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 cautiously, slowly but surely, 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 see, 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. 
 
 An English ship stopped at Pitcairn Island, and right in the midst of 
 surrounding cannibalism and squalor the passengers discovered a Christian 
 colony of churches and schools and beautiful homes, and the highest style of 
 
(539) 
 
54o 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 religion and civilization. For fifty years no missionary and no Christian influ- 
 ence had landed there. Why this oasis of light amid a desert of heathendom ? 
 Sixty years before a ship had met disaster, and one of the 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 un- 
 til the rough and 
 vicious population 
 were evangelized, and 
 a church was started, 
 and an enlightened 
 commonwealth estab- 
 lished, and the world's 
 history has no more 
 brilliant page than that 
 which tells of the trans- 
 formation of a nation 
 by one book. It did 
 not seem of much im- 
 portance 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 magni- 
 tude. 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 evangelization of a mul- 
 titude. 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 eter- 
 nities — eternity past rippling against his shoulders, eternity to come touch- 
 ing 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 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 541 
 
 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 A'. 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 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 Liverpool. 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 continuance 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 generally 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 
 \hrough the wheat, the sweat rolling from his chin bedewing every step of the 
 way, and then sitting down under the cherry tree at noon thinking to him- 
 self: "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, 
 
542 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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, saying if they want anything in the night just to knock on 
 
 the young hopefui,. — Prom a Painting by Prof. Montegazza. 
 
 the wall. And then, all alone, father and mother talk over the gracious influ- 
 ences of the day and say: "Well, it was worth all we went through to educate 
 that boy. It was a hard pull, but we held on till the work was done. Tl e 
 world may not know it, but, mother, we held the rope, didn't we?" 
 
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 543 
 
 And the voice, tremulous with joyful emotion, responded : " Yes, father, we 
 held the rope. I feel my work is done. Now, Lord, 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 
 aow. I want to see what that fellow is going on 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 
 collegiate 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 Somerville 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 laud 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 
 }f this life, but they still hold the rope. 
 
 NOTHING INSIGNIFICANT. 
 
 Henceforth think of nothing as insignificant. A little thing may decide 
 your all. A Cuuarder 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' c 
 officer, deceived by that distracted compass, put the ship 200 miles off her right 
 course, and suddenly the man on the lookout cried : " Land ho !" and the ship 
 was halted within a few yards of her demolition on Nantucket shoals. A six- 
 penny nail came near wrecking 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 by 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. 
 
 Nothing unimportant in your life or mine. Three naughts placed on the 
 
544 
 
 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. 
 
 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 be 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 Lord Jesus 
 Christ, of whom the 
 whole f a m i 1 y in 
 heaven and earth is 
 named, that He would 
 grant you, according 
 to the riches of His 
 glory, to be strength- 
 ened 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 compre- 
 hend 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 fulness of 
 God. . . . Unto 
 Him be glory in the 
 church by Christ 
 Jesus throughout all 
 ages, world without 
 end. Amen." 
 
 • 
 
 \\ . 
 
 ■ c ^s j 
 
 \ ■ 
 
 In 
 
 / ' 
 
 
 GOOD-NIGHT. 
 
Note. — In presenting the following pages, descriptive of the colored plates and engravings 
 contained in this book, the publishers desire to say that the addition has been made at consid- 
 erable expense, but that they feel more than compensated by the satisfaction it will give the 
 purchasers of the work. Many of the pictures relate to historical incidents not fully set forth in 
 the text, and which deserve to be handled more fully ; others describe celebrated paintings and 
 statuary, the beauties of which do not appear to the casual observer (some can, indeed, be studied 
 a number of times, each examination developing features before unnoticed), but which may be 
 seen more clearly after reading the descriptions. The page on which each picture may be found 
 is indicated at the beginning of the paragraph describing it. Each engraving should be carefully 
 studied at the time the description is read, in order to understand thoroughly the thought intended 
 to be conveyed, as well as to be able to appreciate the skill of the artist or sculptor in its execution. 
 
 The World's Sorrows Laid at Jesus' Feet. {Colored Plate}) — What a 
 grand conception, what a masterly array of scenic effect ! Surely the hand of 
 an angel guided the artist's touch and enabled him to depict in such a striking 
 manner the many trials with which "The Pathway of Life" abounds. When a 
 grief comes, when the heart is torn with a mighty sorrow, when the whole 
 world seems shrouded in a gray mist of despair, and the sympathy of friends 
 only opens wider the rent in the bleeding heart, then the weary soul turns to 
 Christ and we drop on our knees and cry, " Lord, let Thy hand support, Thy 
 arm sustain." Have you been called upon to part with a child, your first-born T 
 the one that you loved better than life itself? Have you lost a wife, or a 
 husband, without whom the fragrance of life seemed lost forever ? If so, this 
 picture must appeal to the tenderest memories that your heart knows. When 
 we can smooth . the dying pillow of wife or husband, bathe the heated brow 
 and moisten the feverish lips with cool water, even then Death finds us rebellious 
 at his coming ; but when a husband is slain in battle and brought home 
 mangled and blood-stained to the family which he left a few short hours 
 before, full of life and strength and confident of victor}*, then it is that the 
 stroke falls like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, and nothing but an abiding 
 faith in the One that works all things well can reconcile us to what seems a 
 cruel and wanton bereavement. In this picture w - e read a lesson of patience 
 and hope which makes it easier to bear the cares and sorrows of life. 
 
 Nero's Persecution of the Christians. {Colored Plate}) — The soul is 
 filled with horror when we contemplate the atrocious barbarity displayed by 
 Nero in his persecution of the Christians. No other character in the history 
 of the world is so justly abhorred. It was during his reign that Christ was 
 crucified. How strange that a picture like this, resplendent with bright colors 
 and so graceful in its outlines, should represent so much suffering, and such 
 wanton cruelty. Around a race-course are seen men, women and children 
 
 35 (545) 
 
546 APPENDIX. 
 
 chained to posts, their lower limbs wrapped in straw smeared in tar, where they 
 are burned for the amusement of the heartless Romans. In the centre is a gray- 
 headed follower of the Saviour, surrounded by a group of kneeling Christians. 
 Their doom is certain, but they do not flinch. There is no pleading for mercy, 
 no wild frenzy of despair. They feel that a glorious reward awaits them, and 
 that to die such a death is the greatest privilege accorded to the followers of 
 Christ. For His sake they suffer these things. Already the half-starved beasts 
 of prey are entering the amphitheatre ; a huge lion pauses and sniffs the air 
 before the fatal spring ; behind him, crowded onward by his hungry followers, is 
 that most terrible of all animals, the tiger. Thank God, we are spared the 
 necessity of witnessing what follows. How thankful we should be that in our 
 day and time such spectacles are impossible. Christianity was then in its infancy 
 and struggling for existence. Nero and his court employed all the terrors of 
 the jungle and exercised the most devilish ingenuity in devising tortures in 
 order to prevent the spread of Christianity ; but the little germ has increased 
 and multiplied, until its influence extends around the globe, and has raised a 
 bulwark of charity and justice and tolerance that renders the humblest wor- 
 shipper more secure at his family altar than was Nero surrounded by his legions 
 of armed soldiers. 
 
 Jesus the Healer of all Ills. {Colored Plate.) — A beautiful picture, illus- 
 trating the tender compassion which the Saviour ever had for the sick, the 
 fatherless, and the helpless. The incident, so grandly treated by the artist, 
 occurred at one of the gates of Jerusalem. A young Jewish widow, unable to find 
 employment in her native village, wanders to the holy city, taking her little one 
 with her. On the way it is taken ill. All day she has listened to its pitiful 
 wail, unable to do anything for its relief, as her means have been exhausted 
 with the long journey and she has nothing wherewith to purchase medicine. 
 With a mother's anxiety she notes the progress of the - fever which rages 
 through the throbbing veins. The little eyes, which have smiled upon her 
 with the thousand witching expressions of childish love, merriment and roguish- 
 ness, are now bright with the fire of the delirium, and the pretty lips, so often 
 raised for the ever- ready kiss of maternal love, are now tremulous with suffering. 
 With despairing eyes and breaking heart she watches the breath grow fainter 
 and fainter, and her soul calls out in agony to the all-merciful Father to give 
 her strength to bear her trouble. Her cry is not in vain. It reaches the ear 
 of Jesus of Nazareth, the Great Physician, whose healing balm alone can restore 
 the bleeding heart and crushed soul. He has wandered outside the city in the 
 cool of the evening for an hour's silent communion with His heavenly Father. 
 His soul responds to the first cry of distress, and in a moment He is beside 
 the little sufferer. As the mother gazes on the calm, beautiful and sympathetic 
 face of Jesus, a great peace fills her soul. Instinctively she looks to Him, 
 though a stranger, for the aid she has sought in vain. Tenderly the Master's 
 hand is laid upon the unconscious babe, and what a wonderful change takes 
 place. The pulse once more bounds with life and health, the sunken cheeks 
 regain their accustomed roundness as if by magic, and glow again with the 
 bloom of health. What joy for the mother ! What a different aspect everything 
 has for her. The air, so stifling a few moments ago, now seems refreshing, 
 and her heart swells with gratitude as she realizes the miracle wrought for her 
 
APPENDIX. 547 
 
 benefit. Although penniless and a stranger in a strange city, she has no fear 
 for the future. For has not God defended her, and cannot she call to Him 
 again for help ? Thus it is with the Christian. No matter how great the 
 affliction, how keen the anguish or how overwhelming the disgrace which our 
 sins have brought upon us, the hand of a loving and pitying Saviour is 
 extended to buoy us up and carry us through the da 1 " 1 waters, if we will only 
 speak His name and cast our burden at His feet. 
 
 The Cross of Prayer. {Colored Plate.) — The Lord's prayer is beautifully 
 set forth in this magnificent allegorical cross, executed in the richest colors 
 known to art. At the bottom we see a devout Christian family kneeling in 
 prayer to " Our Father Which art in Heaven." They have begun life aright. 
 No matter how their bark may be tossed on the stormy sea, they will in the end 
 find a haven of peace and rest. Just above this a young mother kneels with 
 her children at the feet of Jesus, thus teaching them early lessons of obedience 
 and trust. The Saviour's hands are outstretched to bless them, while a dove, 
 emblematic of innocence, ascends towards heaven. At the top of the page is the 
 next sentence of the prayer, showing a Christian family into which the Angel of 
 Death has come, taking two of the little ones to heaven, where they watch 
 with tender love the devotions of the dear ones left behind. " Thy Will be 
 Done on Earth as it is in Heaven." At the left of the cross, the prayer for 
 daily bread is answered by a heavenly messenger. At the right is beautifully 
 illustrated the prayer, " Forgive us our Trespasses as we Forgive those who 
 Trespass against us." An Angel stands with open book and blots out from the 
 heavenly record entries of sin and trespasses that appear against us, in pro- 
 portion as we forgive those who have wronged us. What a beautiful lesson is 
 herein contained. The greater the number of trespasses against us by our 
 fellow-men, the greater our claim for consideration and pardon, when our own 
 record is open before us at the final judgment, if we have freely forgiven those 
 who have sinned against us. But most impressive of all is the central illustra- 
 tion, representing the final appeal for deliverance from evil. When lured by 
 the temper and ready to fall, if we but call on Christ for aid, how ready are 
 His hands to snatch us from evil, and how quickly He will dispatch an angel 
 Avith a flaming sword to hurl the wicked one to the spirits of darkness, whose 
 hands are extended to receive him. Thus we learn that Christ alone is able 
 to sustain us when beset by the temptations thrown about our pathway by the 
 emissaries of Satan, and that the only way of escape is to cling to His strong 
 arm for protection. 
 
 Christ on Calvary. {Colored Plate.) — Mihail Munkacsy, the celebrated 
 French artist, was born at Muncaco in 1846. He has executed a large number 
 of fine paintings, most of them selling for from $3000 to $8000. His most 
 celebrated productions are " Christ before Pilate " and " Christ on Calvary," both 
 of which were purchased by Mr. John Wanamaker, a Philadelphia merchant, 
 at a cost of over $100,000 each. Munkacsy resides at Paris, and his pictures 
 command a ready sale. His " Last Days of Mozart " was purchased by R. A. 
 Alger, of Detroit, for $50,000. He presented it to the Detroit Museum. Un- 
 doubtedly his greatest work is " Christ on Calvary." It is an immense picture, 
 nineteen feet in height by twenty-five feet in length, and represents the scene at 
 
548 APPENDIX. 
 
 the crucifixion, where Christ has just expired. The sky is black and illuminated 
 with lightning. The expression on the faces of the departing crowd, fleeing with 
 terror from the awful scene, indicates the conviction that has forced itself upon them 
 that they have indeed slain the Son of God. Mary, the mother of Jesus, kneels at 
 the foot of the cross and presses her hands upon His feet in a paroxysm of grief. 
 Her sister kneels near the left and covers her face with her hands to shut out 
 the dreadful sight ; while Mary Magdalene, every lineament of her face betray- 
 ing the storm of grief and despair which sweeps over her soul, turns her eyes 
 towards the crucified Saviour with unspeakable pity, as if she would lift Him from 
 the cross and comfort Him in His agony. In front of the cross stands Judas, 
 whose attitude betrays his full consciousness of the horrible crime he has com- 
 mitted. The figures are striking, perhaps none more remarkable than that of the 
 Centurion, who stands somewhat in the background, his hands outstretched and 
 his eyes turned toward the cross. He was the first convert to Christianity 
 after the crucifixion, and the picture represents him at the moment of his con- 
 version, when he exclaimed, " Surely this was a righteous man." What wonder 
 that the sun hid its face, that the earth shook, and that the dead came forth 
 from their graves. It was fitting that the heaven should put on mourning, 
 and that the earth should groan in sympathy. 
 
 The Pathway of Life. [Colored Plate?) — A sweet picture, that appeals 
 strongly to the best sentiments of the human heart. A bright little boy stands 
 upon the threshold of life with foot uplifted and hand outstretched, ready to 
 begin the journey, and happy in anticipation of the beautiful and wonderful 
 things he expects to see. To him all is bright and promising ; no thought of 
 evil crosses his mind ; his imagination clothes everything with rainbow hues. 
 He does not know that every rose has its thorn, every pleasure its corresponding 
 grief. With such an enchanting prospect before him, he is eager to be off. 
 But the path is narrow, and on either side are yawning precipices, rushing tor- 
 rents, seething whirlpools, and bottomless quicksands, which threaten to engulf 
 him at every step ; while numerous and enticing by-paths seek to lure him from 
 the narrow way that alone leads to safety and honor. But a good angel points out 
 the snares and pitfalls that threaten his destruction ; the counsels of a Christian 
 mother have taken root in his heart, and her saint-like face will go before him 
 on his journey, a guiding star whose gleam cannot be extinguished, no matter 
 how hard the storms of temptation may beat upon him. Oh, that all mothers 
 could realize the importance of this safeguard, so easily reared in youth, when 
 the heart is innocent and the mind ready to receive impressions. The influence 
 of a mother's tender love will make itself felt long after she is in her grave. 
 Even though a child may for a time forsake the paths of virtue, the recollection 
 of a mother's gentle love will often serve to turn the erring feet in the right 
 direction. 
 
 A Gentle Wafting to Immortal Life. (Page 22.) — This illustration is a 
 reproduction of Mr. Miller's masterpiece of marble sculpture, one of the finest 
 pieces in the world. The subject and execution is of exceeding beauty, repre- 
 senting, as it does, a child's voyage across the deep waters of death into the 
 bright harbor of celestial light and love. The sentiment is one that touches, 
 as with fingers of moving sorrow, every bereaved heart and brings tears to the 
 
APPENDIX. 549 
 
 eyes of mothers and fathers out of whose bosoms God has plucked the fairest 
 flowers of babyhood for a transplanting in the eternal gardens. How the bark 
 moves on bearing its precious cargo of an innocent soul ; how the sail fills 
 with the whispering winds and sweet perfumes that blow towards the land of 
 sunshine that lies behind the mountain of the hereafter. How sweetly sleeps 
 the little babe, soul-conscious of the delightful journey that draws toward an 
 end, so rapturous the welcome music of heavenly choristers floating across the 
 still waters and wafted back again like echoes striking between the shores of 
 earth and heaven. The eyes that sparkled with light and love are closed for- 
 ever, the prattling lips are silent, and the little hands are folded upon the 
 breast that throbs no more in response to the cares of affection. A broken- 
 hearted mother has placed a lily in the little waxen fingers, because her dar- 
 ling loved flowers, and a mother's anguish has bathed the little silent face with 
 burning tears of hopeless grief. But how different would be her feelings if she 
 could look upward with spiritual vision and see her little one entering upon 
 the life immortal. The light of heaveu shines down upon the beautiful face, 
 and angel's wings seem to fan the curling locks as the new-born soul 
 takes its flight toward its celestial home. The little eyes are opened wide in 
 wonder at the beautiful things that are coming into view, while the soul thrills 
 with delight at the sounds of sweet music and tender voices of loving angels. 
 Earth is lost, but heaven is gained, and when the stricken mother shall have 
 reached the end of her earthly pilgrimage, soft little hands will reach down 
 and help her over the dark river, and her first view of heaven will be the 
 bright little face that she loved so well on earth, made glorious in the light 
 of a Saviour's love. 
 
 Mary Anointing the Feet of Jesus. (Page 32.) — Peter Paul Reubens was 
 a Flemish painter, born at Siegen. Germany, June 29th, 1577; died in Antwerp, 
 May 30th, 1640. In 1608 he was appointed Court painter by the archduke at 
 Antwerp. In 1620 he was commissioned by Maria de Medici to decorate the 
 galleries of the Luxembourg Palace with paintings representing events in her 
 career. While engaged in this work he made the acquaintance of the Duke of 
 Buckingham, who purchased his entire collection of works of art for 100,000 
 florins. He lived in an elegant mansion, and his prestige as a courtier and 
 artist brought to- his studio people from all parts of Europe. He was a hard 
 worker, and the paintings executed by himself, in whole or in part, amounted to 
 about 1800. Estimating the number of years he was engaged in the work, he must 
 have turned out about one each week. His posthumous collection of works of 
 art, including 319 pictures, is said to have produced ^25,000. His works com- 
 prise history, portraits, landscapes, animals, fruit and flower pieces. Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds says that " lions and horses were perhaps never properly represented 
 except by him." His delineations of animal life were always vigorous. The 
 great merit of his representations of the human form was probably due to the 
 fact that he did not attempt to idealize, but alwaj^s took living women for his 
 Madonnas, Magdalenes and female saints. In this picture Reubens has given 
 us a forcible representation of the scene at the table in Bethany, when Mary, 
 the sister of Lazarus, anointed the Saviour's feet with ointment of spikenard 
 and wiped them with her hair. How strongly the expression of each counte- 
 nance is marked. Judas is grieved over the loss of the money which the oint- 
 
550 APPENDIX. 
 
 ment would have brought if sold, and disapprobation is shown on every face, 
 save that of Christ, who says, " Let her alone ; against the day of my burying 
 hath she kept this." 
 
 Luther at the Diet of Worms. (Page 35.) — Martin Luther was the leader 
 of the German Reformation. Educated at Erfurt, he was early impressed with 
 the vanity of the world and entered the Augustinian Convent at that place. 
 He subjected himself to the most rigid penances and mortifications of the flesh, 
 thus seriously undermining his health. For the first time having access to com- 
 plete copies of the Scriptures, he read them eagerly, and here was born Lutheran 
 Protestantism and the evangelical doctrine of justification by faith without the 
 works of the law. Boldly attacking and denouncing the errors and corruptions 
 of the church, he called down upon himself the Papal bull of excommunication, 
 which he promptly submitted to the flames, uttering his famous words, " As 
 thou hast troubled the holy one of the Lord, may the eternal fire trouble and 
 consume thee." Then came the summons by the German Emperor, Charles 
 V., before the Diet of Worms. This picture represents the undaunted bearing of 
 Luther on that memorable occasion. The fate of the Protestant religion then hung 
 in the balance. Would Luther falter and the cause be lost, or postponed indefi- 
 nitely? His life was in danger, and to speak his mind seemed like uttering 
 his own death sentence. Few expected him to escape with his life. Confronted 
 with the brilliant assemblage of the Emperor, the princes and nobility of the empire, 
 the dignitaries of the church and an immense concourse of spectators, his life 
 hanging upon a thread, and a full recantation being demanded, nothing but 
 divine inspiration could have nerved him for the trial and enabled him to make 
 his famous declaration, " Unless I shall be refuted and convinced by testimonies 
 of the Holy Scriptures I cannot and will not recant anything, since I believe 
 neither the Pope nor the Councils, both having often erred and contradicted 
 themselves." Thank God, the cause of the Reformation was safe. The Diet, awed 
 by his eloquence and unable to answer his arguments, and fearing the wrath of 
 the people, who were thoroughly aroused, allowed the dauntless man to escape. 
 
 A Victim to Unrequited Love. (Page 37.) — A picture that speaks more 
 eloquently than volumes, of the awful consequences of trifling with the affec- 
 tions of one who seeks a lady's hand. After months, perhaps years, of 
 alternating hope and fear; at one moment raised to a perfect heaven of bliss 
 by the smiles of the sweet enchantress, and the next plunged into maddening 
 uncertainty by her indifference, possibly with a rival more favored by fortune 
 and who seems to make greater progress in the conquest of the lady's heart, 
 the youth rushes madly from her presence, with ominous mutterings on his lips 
 and a wild look in his eye that drives the blood from her heart and makes 
 her faint with terror. What would she give if he would return and recall the 
 hasty words he has uttered. She mentally acknowledges that she is in the wrong, 
 and for a moment contemplates following him and making amends for past 
 caprices. But no, she will not humble herself. He is heated now with anger; 
 but when he has had time to reflect, he will be sorry and come back again 
 with an apology on his lips and crave her pardon, making himself more than 
 ever her slave. She enjoys the contemplation of his humility, and pictures to 
 herself the satisfaction she will . have in standing before him in the role of 
 
APPENDIX. 551 
 
 injured innocence, listening to his abject apologies and explanations, coupled 
 with promises of future devotion. But hours pass by and he does not return. 
 The sun sinks to rest in the darkened west, and rises in splendor on the morrow ; 
 but it does not herald his coming. Annoyance gives way to misgiving and she 
 becomes restless. Will he never come again ? Something terrible must have 
 happened, or he would never stay away so long. Every moment she finds 
 herself at the window, looking down the path which he has so often trod. At 
 last, she can stand the strain no longer, and a note is dispatched to his home 
 by a trusty messenger, who returns with the startling information that he has 
 not been there for two days. What terrible misgivings now fill her heart. She 
 no longer tries to conceal the interest she has in him, but with tearful eyes 
 pleads with her parents and friends that search may be made immediately. 
 She even leads the party that is quickly raised. Evening draws on and still 
 no trace of the missing lover. She pauses in the leafy forest, her brain reeling 
 with despair. Suddenly she remembers that she has not been to the falls — 
 their old trysting place — where once, in a passion, he threatened to throw him- 
 self into the raging waters. She turns her horse and hastens to the spot. 
 With trembling hand she reins her steed by the water's edge and gazes about 
 her. What makes her eyes dilate and causes her to clutch convulsively at the 
 saddle ? A hat lies on the ground, its black plume trailing in the rushing 
 water. In a moment her horse's hoofs clatter over the rocks, as she descends 
 below the falls. But the way is rocky, and presently horse and rider can 
 proceed 110 further. . She dismounts and clambers over the slippery stones, 
 bruising her hands and soiling her garments ; the briars tear her arms and face, 
 and catch in her hair, but she is not conscious of pain. She mounts a huge 
 rock, and there before her is the object of her search, lying at full length 
 between the broken masses of stone, his face white and set, his fair hair washed 
 by the restless water, which ripples and purls and murmurs as it sings its way 
 to the sea. 
 
 Death of Miss Langdon. (Page 40.) — Letitia Elizabeth Langdon was an 
 English authoress, born in Old Brompton, a suburb of London, in 1802. She 
 began to write at the age of thirteen and soon became a general contributor to the 
 "Literary Gazette." For fifteen years she was a very prolific writer and supported 
 her family by her pen. She published six poetical works, also four novels. In Jan- 
 uary, 1838, she was married to George Maclean, Governor of Cape Coast Castle, 
 in West Africa, and soon afterward sailed with him to her new home. In a few 
 months after her arrival there she died from an overdose of prussic acid, which 
 she was accustomed to take in small quantities for hysteric affections, and was 
 discovered lying dead upon the floor of her chamber. The publishers make 
 this explanation as there seems to be a division of opinion as to the statement 
 that she committed suicide. The author speaks of her as Miss Langdon, as 
 her reputation was gained while writing under that name, and before her marriage. 
 
 The Angel's Whisper. (Page 45.) — A noble piece of statuary in the Vati- 
 can at Rome, the sculptor nameless ; but the work of his hands has caused 
 many a thoughtless person to pause and gaze with tender heart and moistening 
 eyes. In the soul of every observer is awakened thoughts of the dreamy past, 
 when he was an innocent child rocked in his cradle by a patient and gentle 
 
55 2 APPENDIX. 
 
 mother, who has long since passed away. Sweet memories, vows and broken 
 promises, all come rushing back ixpon him as he views the marvellous work of 
 the artist's trained hand. What is the angel saying to the sleeping little one ? 
 Is it a message from fairy land, or a reminder of* the counsels imparted before 
 leaving the heavenly laboratory ? Perhaps the celestial visitor whispers of temp- 
 tations that are near and snares skilfully laid by Satan to entangle the little 
 feet ; or maybe she is filling the young soul with dreams of future great- 
 ness among men, or striving to inspire consecration to the Master, as she 
 causes to pass before the dreamy eyes visions of ' future labors in missionary 
 fields. At any rate we may be sure that the words uttered are for the good of 
 the little dreamer. 
 
 Night's Swift Dragons Cut the Clouds Full Fast. (Page 50.)— John 
 Graham Lough, English sculptor, born at Greenhead, Northumberland, in 1804, 
 died July 9th, 1876. He was the son of a small farmer and taught himself 
 drawing and modelling. He afterwards studied in Italy. Among his most 
 famous works are a bas-relief of "The Death of Turnus," and a model of the 
 colossal statue of Milo, executed in marble for the Duke of Wellington ; also 
 statues of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. In this magnificent and inimit- 
 able creation of genius he has represented Night as a beautiful mother, her 
 eyes half closed in slumber, resting upon the backs of two swift-moving dragons. 
 On her arm reclines an infant, its senses, too, wrapped in balmy sleep. Her 
 steeds are controlled and guided by an angel. She is descending to hold 
 her nightly court on earth, the sun reluctantly retiring before her. As we look, the 
 shadows deepen, the stars peep out one by one, and the new moon rises in the 
 East ; the nightingale tunes his voice in the shadowy trees ; the voices of ani- 
 mate nature, silent through the heated hours of the day, break forth in sweet 
 cadences that throb and pulsate on the grateful ear in a thousand indescribable 
 yet harmonious sounds. Listen, and you may hear the soft notes of the cuckoo, 
 the shrill rasp of the katydid, the faint drone of the beetle, the merry notes of 
 the cricket, and the harsh croak of the marsh-frog, followed by countless sounds 
 familiar to us from infancy, yet which the most experienced rustic or scholarly 
 savant would be unable to associate with the insects, birds or reptiles producing 
 them. The air is redolent with the perfume of flowers; every breeze wafts the 
 sweetness to our trembling senses, and we dririk in deep inspirations of pure 
 delicious air which our lungs know not in the sultry hours of" the day. How 
 we welcome the Goddess of Night and pay homage at her royal throne. Her 
 laws are few and simple; obeyed, they bring health, happiness and long life; 
 neglected, sickness, suffering and death. 
 
 America. (Page 52.) — John Bell, the designer of this beautiful piece of 
 statuary, English sculptor and author, born in Norfolk, 1800. He designed and 
 executed statues of Lord Falkland and Sir Robert Walpole for the new House of 
 Parliament; also the Wellington Monument for Guildhall. His best known artistic 
 works are " The Eagle Slayer," " Dorothea," " The Babes in the Wood," and "An- 
 dromeda." He was awarded a medal by the Society of Arts in 1856. He was noted 
 for his originality, departing entirely from the stereotyped lines followed by other 
 artists. He published several works. Probably his most famous piece of statuary 
 is that in Hyde Park, known as " The United States Directing the Progress of 
 
APPENDIX. 553 
 
 America." Each figure in the group is distinctively American. The lordly 
 buffalo, which roams our Western plains and makes the earth tremble with his 
 mighty tread, is symbolical of irresistible power ; the wand in the hands of the 
 foremost figure indicates that "Westward the Star of Empire Takes Its Way ;" on 
 the shield borne upon the arm of the central figure is seen a beaver, typical of 
 industry and perseverance ; while the eagle, the national bird, is suggestive of 
 alertness, keenness, strength and the ability to look out for ourselves. The re- 
 maining figure in the group, seated on a bear-skin, holds in his hands an Indian 
 club, around which coils a rattlesnake — an American institution about which 
 even the most recent and rebellious arrival at Castle Garden has learned and 
 is willing to leave unmolested. 
 
 Landing of the Romans, under Caesar, in Britain, B. C. 55. (Page 
 54.) — This illustration gives us an excellent idea of the condition of Britain at 
 the time of the Roman invasion, under Caesar. The Romans came in well- 
 built ships, protected by shields and armed with short swords ; while the Britons 
 opposed them, half-naked and armed with clubs and stones. But little is known 
 of the island before the conquest by the Romans, as the people were ignorant 
 and uncivilized, and no means of recording events were known, so that the early 
 history of Britain comes to us only through tradition. 
 
 Michael Hurling Lucifer out of Heaven. (Page 58.) — A noble piece of 
 statuary, executed in the highest style of art and showing the fearful combat 
 which took place between the Archangel Michael and Satan, when the latter 
 was cast into the bottomless pit, with a third part of the inhabitants of heaven, 
 who had conspired against their God. 
 
 The Last Dream. (Page 59.) — What an appropriate design for a monu- 
 ment. It would be difficult to conceive anything more exquisitely beautiful. 
 Rest, which comes from gentle sleep, invigorates the wearied body, refreshes the 
 fatigued mind, and relaxes the overtaxed nerves ; so the artist has chosen the 
 attitude of sleep to illustrate his thought. After weeks of sickness and pain, 
 the tired body sinks to rest ; the eyes closed forever, and, with the Bible, the 
 solace of her weary hours of affliction, pressed fondly to her bosom, she lies 
 calmly and peacefully dreaming. Angels hover over her, their faces radiant with 
 joy, whispering, "Another Death on Earth, Another Birth in Heaven !" See, 
 they beckon her away, pointing upward to the world of light and joy, whose 
 portals are open to receive her. 
 
 A Portion of the Ceiling of the Sixtine Chapel. (Page 63.) — The Six- 
 tine Chapel is a part of the Vatican at Rome, the palace of the popes. The 
 Vatican palace, one of the most magnificent in the world, is not one continuous 
 building but has grown up through successive ages ; only a small portion of 
 the present edifice was built before 1447. The renovation of the old palace, 
 begun by Nicholas V., was completed by Alexander VI. in 1503. The whole 
 palace covers a space of 1151 by 767 feet, and has 200 staircases, 20 courts, 
 and 4422 rooms. The Sala Regin, or grand audience hall for the reception of 
 ambassadors, was built by Antonia di Sangallo. The Sixtine Chapel opens 
 into this hall. The ceiling is magnificently frescoed by Perugino, Ghirlandaio, 
 
554 APPENDIX. 
 
 and others, representing passages in the lives of Christ and Moses. The work 
 is grand, and countless thousands of visitors from all countries of the globe 
 have gazed in speechless admiration at the wonderfully executed scenes. The 
 Garden of Eden ; Eve tempted by the Serpent and in turn compassing the fall 
 of Adam ; the angel driving them forth weeping and penitent from their beautiful 
 Paradise — all these and a host of equally engrossing representations cover the 
 ceiling with a rainbow of color. The chapel is also rich in paintings from the 
 brushes of the most celebrated masters, among them Michael Angelo's first 
 masterpiece in painting — " The Last Judgment." 
 
 Principal Works of Christopher "Wren, with St. Paul's Cathedral 
 Rising in the Background. (Page 67.) — Sir Christopher Wren, the English 
 architect, born at East Knoyle, Wiltshire, October 20th, 1632, died at Hampton 
 Court, February 25th, 1723. He graduated at Oxford in 1650. He made 
 rapid progress as an inventor and scientist, and became associated with a body 
 of scientific men whose meetings laid the foundation of the Royal Society. 
 He designed the chapel of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and was in the same 
 year commissioned to survey St. Paul's Cathedral with a view of restoring or 
 rebuilding it, so as to adapt the whole structure to the celebrated Corinthian 
 portico added to it by Inigo Jones. He designed and erected many magnificent 
 buildings, the first in importance being the new Cathedral of St. Paul, in the 
 form of a Latin cross. Thirty-five years were consumed in its erection, the 
 last stone being laid June 21st, 1675. The interior decoration designed by him 
 was not completed until within the last ten years. He designed fifty-three 
 churches in London, fifty of which were intended to replace those destroyed by 
 the great fire in 1666. His works include the Royal Exchange, the Custom 
 House, the Monument, and Temple Bar, all in London ; the hospitals at Green- 
 wich and Chelsea ; extensive additions to the palace of St. James at Hampton 
 Court ; the west front and towers of Westminster Abbey ; the palace at Win- 
 chester for Charles II. ; the gateway tower of Christ College, Oxford, and the 
 Shaldonian Theatre and Ashmalean Museum, in the same city ; besides various 
 college chapels and other buildings for the two universities. At eighty-six 
 years of age he was removed from the office of Surveyor General by George 
 I., a position which he had held for forty-nine years. He was elected president 
 of the Royal Society in 1680, and appointed Comptroller of the works in 
 Windsor Castle in 1684. He was knighted by Charles II., at Whitehall, in 
 1674, and for many years represented several boroughs in Parliament. He 
 was buried in the crypt of St. Paul's and a black marble slab marks his tomb. 
 The engraving gives an excellent idea of the magnitude of the work accom- 
 plished by this wonderful man. 
 
 The Parting. (Page 73.) — An illustration representing the final parting 
 between a husband and wife; it is one of the saddest scenes in human ex- 
 istence ; either would prefer death to this unhappy parting. For years they 
 have lived together and their lives have been blended into one, so that the 
 parting is like the severance of soul and spirit. They have learned by bitter 
 experience, as the years have gone by, that they are not suited to one another, 
 and finally, in a moment of discord or passion, the silken cord has broken and 
 they separate forever. Let us hope that in the world to come, when they can 
 
APPENDIX. 555 
 
 see things plainer than they do in this life, they may be united again and 
 happy for all eternity ; but this is only hope, for it is probable that unhappy 
 marriages, resulting from unsuited dispositions, will not result in union or 
 happiness either here or hereafter. 
 
 Idleness. (Page 79.) — This picture is so striking that it seems hardly to 
 need comment. We are all more or less familiar with the character which it 
 depicts — a girl whose days are spent in idleness, dreaming of things that can 
 never come to pass, or reading unwholesome books, while her mother toils in 
 the kitchen. Her life is purposeless ; a dead weight for her father and brothers 
 to carry with them ; she is a misery to herself and friends ; she is shunned by 
 all sensible young men, and finally becomes a cross, peevish, irritable old 
 maid, if she is so fortunate to escape the temptations so likely to ensnare one 
 whose moral senses are rendered blunt by reading the questionable exploits of 
 the heroes and heroines of the modern novel — the curse of our homes ; the 
 thing that ruins more young men and young women than all other evils com- 
 bined — the foe that all true mothers will fight more uncompromisingly than 
 the adder itself. The listless attitude and dreamy eye all point out the rock 
 on which her life boat bids fair to go to pieces. 
 
 Burns and Highland Mary. (Page 85.) — Robert Burns, the nightingale 
 of poetry, was born at Ayr, Scotland, January 25th, 1759, and died at Dum- 
 fries, July 21st, 1796. . His parents were of the poorest class, but succeeded in 
 giving him the rudiments of education. Every moment between the driving 
 of the plough and other farm work was devoted to study. His library was limited, 
 being confined to the Bible, Mason's " Collection of Prose and Verse," " The 
 Life of Hannibal," and the history of Sir William Wallace. Late in life he made 
 the attempt to learn French and Latin, but was unsuccessful. He was a poor 
 farmer and unable to take upon himself the expense of a family. In 1786 he 
 published an edition of his poems, 600 copies. He at once sprang into popu- 
 larity, went to Edinburgh, and for a year was feted and admired by persons 
 of rank. He returned home with X5°°> tne P r °ht of a second edition, which 
 he issued during the year. He at once married Jean Armour, with whom he 
 had already made a written contract of marriage, good in Scottish law. Sought 
 for by people of all classes, he was dined and wined until he established habits of 
 intemperance, which, together with exposure and disappointment of his hopes of 
 promotion, undermined his constitution and he died in his 37th year. During 
 his illness his house was thronged with people of rank, and his funeral was 
 attended by a great multitude. The centenary of his birthday, in 1859, was 
 celebrated in almost every village of Scotland, England, the United States, the 
 British colonies and India ; and the anniversary of his birth is celebrated by 
 Scotchmen all over the world. The poetry of Burns is unexcelled in pathos 
 and tender passion, and stirs up the deepest and purest emotions of the human 
 heart. " The Cotter's Saturday Night," the sweetest of pastorals, and " John 
 Barleycorn," full of pathos and humor, are among his best known works. He 
 wrote innumerable love songs, some of them the finest in the language, all 
 relating to real heroines. The sculptor has given us a splendid representation 
 of Burns and Highland Mary, one of his ideals of female beauty. 
 
556 APPENDIX. 
 
 Avarice and Love. (Page 86.) — This illustration is one that needs a care- 
 ful study. A rich and avaricious old man desires to wed a beautiful young 
 girl, who is also loved by a handsome young man who possesses but little of 
 this world's goods. She has in her hand the money-bag of the old miser, but 
 her eyes are turned toward the handsome young man who stands in the back- 
 ground. She is hesitating what she shall do. Too many young girls have 
 hesitated just like her, at the wrong time. The wisest thing she could do 
 would be to throw the money out of the window,, scorn the insulting proposi- 
 tions of the old miser, and give her hand where her heart has already doubt- 
 less been bestowed. If she should decide to accept gold rather than love, she 
 will make the greatest mistake in her life. The gold would soon become 
 valueless in her eyes and she would long for love, even if it were accompanied 
 by nothing more than a crust of bread. The only way in which riches can 
 be truly enjoyed is for them to be won by the mutual effort of husband and wife; 
 then they have a common interest in what they have acquired as well as a com- 
 mon enjoyment. Let us hope that this beautiful young girl discarded the 
 offer of the old miser, and that she and her true lover were mated and went 
 together down the " Pathway of Life," happy themselves, and helping to make 
 all others with whom they associated happy. 
 
 The Ducal Palace. (Page 90.) — The artist here gives us a glimpse of 
 the splendor surrounding the nobility of England. Most of the ducal palaces 
 are situated in magnificent grounds, the beauties of which cannot be realized 
 except by actual observation. But, surrounded as they are with everything 
 that the imagination can conceive or art devise to render life attractive, the 
 inmates of these luxurious homes are not always happy, as Dr. Talmage so 
 truly says in the pages of this book, and the duchess often sighs for the peaceful 
 and restful home of the peasant. The title of duke is synonymous with prince, 
 and is the highest dignity in the peerage. The duke is styled " His Grace " 
 and "Our Right Trusty and Right Entirely Beloved Cousin and Counsellor." 
 The best known duke of Great Britain at present is the Prince of Wales, Duke 
 of Cornwall and of Rothsay. There are in Great Britain now twenty-one Eng- 
 lish, eight Scottish and two Irish dukes. 
 
 Cleopatra Before Caesar. (Page 92.)— Jean Leon Gerome, French artist, 
 born in Vesoul, May nth, 1824. He studied in Paris and obtained several 
 medals, and in 1855 received the decoration of the Legion of Honor. One of 
 his most famous works is " The Virgin, The Infant Jesus and St. John." His 
 masterpiece is " The Age of Augustus and the Birth of Jesus Christ." One of his 
 pictures, "The Gladiators," was purchased by A. T. Stewart, the merchant prince 
 of New York, for 80,000 francs. " Cleopatra Brought to Caesar in a Basket," 
 is one of his best works and is given here for its historical value. She was the 
 last queen of Egypt. She inherited the throne jointly with her brother Ptolemy, 
 who intrigued against her and she was driven from the throne at Alexandria 
 in the year 49. Just at this time Caesar landed at Alexandria after defeating 
 Pompey. He was well aware of the beauty of the young queen and perhaps 
 prejudiced in her favor, at least he took her brother prisoner and proposed to 
 settle the dispute between them. Cleopatra disbanded her army and determined 
 to seek Caesar in person. An attendant wrapped her in a piece of carpet and 
 
APPENDIX. 557 
 
 brought her into Caesar's presence. He fell in love with her at sight, and she 
 became his wife. The picture represents Cleopatra as she appeared before Caesar 
 for the first time, to his profound amazement and admiration. After the assassina- 
 tion of Caesar, Mark Antony became Cleopatra's lover. After his defeat by 
 Octavius he was informed that Cleopatra had committed suicide, and in his grief" 
 he endeavored to take his own life. Severely wounded, he was taken to Cleopatra 
 and died in her arms. She then placed an asp in her own bosom and expired. 
 
 Jane Waring Receives Notice of Dean Swift's Perfidy. (Page 101.) — 
 How can we find words strong enough to condemn the duplicity and treachery 
 of Dean Swift in his shameless treatment of Jane Waring and Hester Van- 
 bomright ? Swift's friends claim Miss Waring declined his offer of marriage 
 because of her own ill health and Swift's insufficient income ; but the fact of 
 their engagement was well known. Even his staunchest defenders do not 
 attempt to palliate his actions towards Miss Vanbomright. Although secretly 
 married to Esther Johnson, he continued his attentions to Miss Vanbomright, 
 and when she, harassed and driven almost to distraction by the statements 
 coming to her ears regarding Swift's intimacy with Miss Johnson, wrote to the 
 latter for information as to the nature of her connection with Swift, he came 
 into her presence in a passion, dashed the letter on the table and departed 
 without a word. The shock was such that she died within a few weeks. Thus 
 the great English prelate, a man whose life was supposed to be devoted to the 
 service of Christ, wrought untold misery to one trusting heart, and broke 
 another. Although absolutely dictating the opinions of the English nation and 
 ranking among the foremost writers and thinkers of his time, his conduct in 
 this matter brought upon him the just censure of the civilized world. 
 
 After a Divorce, the Stepmother. (Page 103.) — How eloquently this 
 picture speaks of the change that has taken place in the family. The mother, 
 whose voice has for many years sounded daily in the spacious rooms of the 
 old home, is now banished from the presence of her children, who are assembled 
 to welcome (?) their new mother — she who has alienated the affections of the 
 father and caused him to raise an insuperable barrier between his children and 
 the mother who has bore them. He seems all unconscious of the ruin he has 
 wrought, and the downcast, humiliated and despondent look of his children is 
 unnoticed as he basks in the smiles of her whose face should blush with shame 
 at the thought of entering a home under such conditions. The elder son, his 
 mother's pride and joy, pauses obediently before the usurper, well knowing his 
 father's iron will, which brooks no hesitation. Behind him are the daughters, 
 waiting their turn to be presented and striving bravely to look a welcome which 
 they do not feel ; how their hearts ache and how gladly would they flee from 
 the presence of their father's chosen consort as from a pestilence. The younger 
 brother, not so experienced in deception and diplomacy, turns away from her 
 instinctively and throws his arms around the old nurse's neck, who strives to 
 re-assure him and whispers to him not to forget to greet the lady as " Mamma ; " 
 but the word chokes him, and he glances over his shoulder in an appealing 
 way that goes straight to the heart of the beholder. Dr. Talmage's denuncia- 
 tion of the evils of divorce is none too strong, backed as it is by the divine 
 command, " What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." 
 
558 APPENDIX. 
 
 Sick and Neglected. (Page 106.) — Volumes filled with the richest word- 
 painting of the literary artist could not more feelingly describe the depth of 
 misery portrayed in this illustration. Sick and neglected, the mother lies on 
 her lowly couch, her hands clasped feebly around the neck of her famishing 
 boy, who gazes intently into her wan face, his heart almost bursting because 
 of his helplessness and inability to render her aid ; his poor gaunt body bears 
 testimony of the privation and suffering through which he has passed. Instinc- 
 tively he realizes that he shall soon be left to fight the battle of life alone. 
 But not long ; hunger, neglect, want of proper medicine, exposure and cold will 
 soon do their work, and, buoyed up no longer by the patient, loving smile of 
 his angelic mother, and the magnetic influence of her sweet voice, he will lay 
 down the burden of life and join her in the heavenly realms where sorrow and 
 distress can never come. What a field for noble-hearted men and women — the 
 seeking out of these unfortunate ones and ministering to their needs and 
 bringing them back to health, or at least to smooth their pathway to the grave. 
 
 The Rescue. (Page 107.) — A picture so life-like that it seems unnecessary 
 to say anything in explanation. The floating mast, the life-boat, the ship in 
 the distance, all speak in unmistakable language of the vessel that has gone 
 down beneath the surging waves, bearing with her many precious souls. The 
 devotion of the mother to her offspring, sung by poets of all nations and in all 
 languages, is beautifully illustrated by the artist. Without thought of herself, 
 she lifts the precious one high above her head, that it may be saved by the 
 strong arms outstretched to receive it; but the rescuer thinks of the mother 
 also, and grasps her wrist firmly as he reaches for the babe. 
 
 Judith. (Page 134.) — This is a remarkably well executed piece of statuary 
 in the palace of the Luxembourg, the sculptor's name not appearing in con- 
 nection with it, Judith was the daughter of Merari, of the tribe of Reuben, 
 celebrated for her heroism and the brilliancy of the plot by which she out- 
 witted Holofernes, the Assyrian general, who was at the time besieging her 
 native city, Bethulia. She went forth richly clad, visited the camp of the enemy, 
 and by her charms succeeded in fascinating Holofernes. When alone with him 
 in his tent, he being intoxicated, she cut off his head with a falchion and bore 
 it into the city. The Assyrians, panic-stricken at the loss of their general, 
 were easily put to rout by the Israelites. Judith lived to the age of one 
 hundred and five years. 
 
 The Politician in Retirement. (Page 138.) — How well this picture 
 reveals the evils sometimes resulting from political life. Drinking the health 
 of the aspirant for political honors ; drinking with " the boys " to insure their 
 votes ; drinking toasts at the reception of the victorious candidate ; drinking 
 with everybody before the election, and a great deal more afterwards — all this 
 has fixed a habit which the politician cannot shake off, and in the retirement 
 of his own home he turns to the wine bottle for the excitement which he 
 found in politics. A few more years and he will fill a drunkard's grave. 
 
 The First Step in a Home Unvexed by Ambition. (Page 140.) — In 
 the home represented in this picture we- see no costly furniture, no grand piano 
 
APPENDIX. 559 
 
 or stately pictures ; yet how pleasant and contented the expression of every 
 face. No business cares or political ambitions to vex the father ; no question 
 of fine display in dress, or trouble with unruly servants to occupy the thoughts 
 of the mother. They see the first tottering steps of the little one, and feel 
 the exquisite joy which it brings to the heart of the parent to know that the 
 first-born can walk. How different this scene from that in the home of the 
 rich, where the children are put to bed by their nurses, their brains stupefied 
 with paregoric or laudanum, while father and mother are at the opera or 
 attending some fashionable reception. 
 
 Execution of Joan of Arc. (Page 142.) — Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans, 
 was a French heroine, born in 141 1, at Domremy, in Lorraine. She was burned 
 at the stake May 31st, 143 1. Born of poor parents, she received no education. 
 Her imagination was active and she imbibed largely the superstitions entertained 
 by the people of her native place. In 1430, when the English were gaining 
 ground every day against the French, she became impressed with the belief 
 that she was to be the deliverer of her country, saying that she heard "voices" 
 and had visions commanding her to lead the troops. This being entirely con- 
 trary to the teachings of the Church, she was deemed a sorceress or witch. 
 By some it was thought more than probable that her clear mind saw the ad- 
 vantage to be gained by working on the credulity of the people, and that she 
 claimed supernatural aid in order to draw about her more closely the ignorant 
 and superstitious and arouse the enthusiasm which was necessary to carry 
 them on to victory. With this thought before her, she insisted on being taken 
 to Chinon, where Charles V. held his court. She singled out the King from 
 among a crowd of courtiers from whom he was undistinguished, and at once 
 secured his favor. A suit of armor was made for her, and, armed with a sword, 
 which she had described as. buried in the church of St. Catharine, at Fierlois, 
 where it was actually found, she put herself at the head of 10,000 troops, com- 
 manded by royal officers, and attacked the English who were besieging Orleans, 
 routing them completely. Many victories followed, and in three months, Charles 
 was crowned king at Rheims, with the Maid of Orleans standing by his side. 
 Her mission was now accomplished. She was persuaded to remain with the 
 army, however, but her victories were over. She was taken prisoner May the 
 10th, by the English, who were furious by reason of the defeats sustained 
 since her connection with the French army. After her trial, which was nothing 
 but a farce, she was condemned and was burned at the stake amid the lamen- 
 tations of the people and the jeers and curses of the English. The French 
 king took no steps to avenge her death, and not until ten years afterwards 
 did he reverse the decision of her judges and pronounce her a martyr. 
 
 Early Troubles — Little Mischief and His Teacher. (Page 146.) — This 
 picture takes us back to the time when we attended the village school, and 
 reminds us of half-learned lessons and well-earned floggings. Young Mischief 
 has evidently been "kept in" by his teacher as a punishment for some violation 
 of school discipline, or, perchance, to learn an unusually refractory lesson ; but 
 the dominie, finding the time hang heavily on his hands, has recourse to his 
 flute, much to the edification and entertainment of the culprit, who forgets his 
 imprisonment, and also the lesson, in listening to the melody which the 
 
560 APPENDIX. 
 
 school-master's nimble fingers call forth. Thus what was intended as a punish- 
 ment becomes a real reward, and the school-master unwittingly opens the way 
 for future transgressions. 
 
 Sung to Sleep. (Page 171.) — How soothing and restful the influence of 
 song. In this picture the artist represents an old man and a little girl who 
 have fallen asleep while listening to the sweet strains of a mother's voice. 
 Old age and infancy thus pay homage to the Goddess of Song. We are lulled 
 to slumber in our cradles by the voice of mother, and when the hair is sil- 
 vered and the eyes grow dim with age, the dear voices of children and grand- 
 children carry our memories back to the lullaby of the nursery. 
 
 A Young Man of the World. (Page 179.) — The figures in this picture 
 almost tell their own tale. The young man of the world is a new arrival at 
 the village inn, and a welcome one, too, judging from the alacrity with which 
 the women folk hasten to serve him. They evidently anticipate a liberal cus- 
 tomer, who will spend his money freely. While one takes down a mug for his 
 beer, another brushes a chair with her apron, neither taking her eyes from his 
 face. Even the fat gentleman at the table momentarily breaks the fascinating 
 spell of the pot of ale before him and turns to look at the new comer. 
 
 Cain and Abel Rocked in the First Cradle. (Page 199.) — This engrav- 
 ing is a reproduction from a steel print representing one of the most famous 
 pieces of statuary in the world, now in the galleries of Luxembourg, the 
 property of the French nation, which sets an inestimable value upon it. The 
 sculptor's conception is at once bold and grand, while the execution falls 
 scarcely short of the marvellous. The subject is Eve cast out of Eden, in 
 whose arms are cradled the first offerings of human love — Cain and Abel. 
 Frpm a glorious state and beatific condition, the mother of mankind is now pen- 
 sive in her contemplation of the loss of Eden, and sorrowing with a bitter 
 repentance for the act that brought upon the world an inheritance of woe and 
 death. But in that fair was the birth of maternal love, and though the soul be 
 bowed with grief for a lost estate, her heart beats with the rapture of mother- 
 hood as she cradles her offspring in lap and arms, a downy bed for babes 
 fashioned by God's own hands. What a contrast between the faces of the two 
 babes as they lie in their mother's arms. A glance is sufficient to enable one 
 to distinguish between them. Already Satan's influence is shown in the face 
 of Cain. His features are distorted by a scowl, and he draws his head away 
 from Abel in a fretful way ; you almost seem to hear his peevish complaint. 
 Observe how Abel nestles at his brother's side. His head inclines lovingly 
 towards Cain's cheek and his arm rests confidingly on his knee. How little 
 the mother thinks that the hand of the one shall so soon be raised against the 
 other, and that she shall lose both, one returning to the God who gave it life, 
 and one going forth as a wanderer upon the face of the earth, contemned and 
 shunned by all mankind. 
 
 Death-bed of Copernicus. (Page 202.) — All honor to Nikalaus Copernicus, 
 the Polish or German astronomer, to whom we are indebted for our present 
 system of the universe, and the explanation of planetary motions upon a more 
 
APPENDIX. * 561 
 
 rational principle than the old Ptolemaic theory. He was born at Thorn, in 
 Prussia, February 19, 1473 (after the annexation of that town to Poland, which 
 gave rise to Poland's claiming him as her son) ; died at Frankenburg, May 
 24, 1542. He received the rudiments of a classical and scientific education at 
 his father's house ; after which he studied medicine at the University of Cracow, 
 also devoted himself to mathematics and astronomy. Subsequently, he spent 
 several years in Italy studying astronomy. Having examined all the systems 
 of the universe extant at that time, he became convinced that " the sun and 
 stars are stationary, and that the moon alone revolves about the Earth ; also, 
 that the Earth is a planet whose orbit is between Venus and Mars ; and that 
 the planets revolve about the sun, the apparent revolution of the heavens being 
 caused by the rotation of the Earth on its axis. He was, of course, violently 
 assailed by the contemporary astronomers and scientists whose pet theories 
 were thus demolished. He published six books setting forth his discoveries 
 and elaborating his theory, the first volume of Which was placed in his hands 
 the very day of his death. Monuments were raised to his memory at Cracow 
 in 1822, at Thorn in 1853, and a colossal statue, by Thorwaldsen, at Warsaw, 
 in 1829. 
 
 Hard Times. (Page 209.) — Hubert Herkomer, the artist, was born at 
 Waal, Bavaria, in 1849. In 1857 his father settled in Southampton, England. 
 He studied in Southampton, South Kensington and Munich. He has been 
 particularly successful in the class of pictures illustrated by the accompanying 
 engraving, probably because of the hardship through which he passed in his 
 early artistic life, coupled with ill health. After going to London he met with 
 greater success. There he became connected with The Graphic, in which 
 appeared his " Chelsea Pensioners," considered his masterpiece. His " Reading 
 War News," painted in Normandy during the Franco-German war, attracted 
 great attention and increased his popularity. " Hard Times " appeals to the 
 sympathies of every one who examines it carefully. How many times have we 
 witnessed this scene in real life, in the rural districts at the close of a long 
 day in the harvest field. The weary laborer has turned toward the farm-house- 
 with his heavy tools, resting a moment at the field gate, while his humble 
 partner nurses her babe by the road-side, on her arm the cloth containing the 
 dishes from which they ate the mid-day meal. The little boy fatigued with 
 following the reapers, or chasing the squirrels and butterflies along the fences 
 or among the trees, has fallen asleep, his head resting on his tired mother's 
 knee. But night draws on apace, and they must hasten homeward ; so we leave 
 them trudging down the dusty road, the father to do his accustomed chores and 
 the mother to prepare the evening meal ; for her task does not end with the 
 setting of the sun, but long after the lamps are lighted and the rest of the 
 family are asleep, she will be employed in the thousand little tasks which none 
 can understand save those who have known the trials and the hardships of 
 life as a farmer's wife. 
 
 Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow. (Page 214.) — Here we have a fine 
 
 reproduction of the great historical painting representing the heroism of the 
 
 French troops during their retreat from Moscow under Napoleon, November 
 
 19th, 181 2. One can with difficulty realize the great suffering and hardships 
 
 36 
 
5 6 2 APPENDIX. 
 
 endured by the retreating army. In a hostile country, heavily laden with arms 
 and accoutrements, drenched with rain, followed by snow and sleet, harassed 
 on all sides by the Cossacks, the dispirited French were easily thrown into 
 disorder, and the army began a retreat which, for horror and suffering, is 
 unequalled in the history of the world. Napoleon's bull-dog tenacity and 
 obstinacy cost France, in this one expedition, the lives of 257,000 men, besides 
 the loss of 193,000, who were made prisoners by the Russians. 
 
 The Reaper and the Flowers. (Page 215.) — The chisel of the sculptor 
 has not been employed in vain to give life to that beautiful conception of 
 Longfellow, " The Reaper and the Flowers." The angel of death bears away 
 in his arms a household flower, whose perfume has for a few short years made 
 fragrant the lives of its fond parents ; but as they follow him with straining 
 eyes and tearful pleadings, he compassionately points upward to the heavenly 
 realms, whither he is bearing their darling, and comforts them with the 
 assurance that the Master hath need of it, and that in good time they shall 
 see it again. Thus the marble is made to shadow forth the lesson of trustful 
 obedience contained in the touching verses of the inspired poet. 
 
 The Hour of Retribution — Last Day of a Condemned Criminal. (Page 
 226.) — This picture is a copy of one of Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier's master- 
 pieces, representing the last moments of a condemned criminal. His hard and 
 cruel face is the true index of his character. Even now, when he is at the 
 verge of the grave, his thoughts are of vengeance against the law and those 
 who have brought him to justice, rather than of repentance for his crimes. He 
 does not consider his own injustice to those who have been the victims of his 
 selfishness and hate. He thinks only of himself and his fancied wrongs. In 
 his rage he has thrown the Bible, which some sympathizing friend has given 
 him, upon the floor, and glares like a caged beast upon the crowd about him. 
 He has no kind word or soothing advice for his broken-hearted wife. Even 
 his little child, who is too young to understand what it all means, and weeps 
 because she doesn't know what else to do, receives no encouraging caress or 
 kind word ; and if she remembers this scene at all, it will be to remember 
 that her father was not good to her. How terrible is the destiny of the man 
 who lives for himself only, and thinks of nothing but his own selfish enjoy- 
 ment. Such a life, even when it does not lead to crime, is sure to end in 
 disappointment and anguish. We are always happier when we live for others 
 as well as ourselves. Meissonier was born in Lyons in 18 13. He studied in 
 Paris. His paintings have a great reputation, and are of exquisite finish and 
 delicacy. One, "A Charge of Cavalry," executed in 1869, sold for 150,000 
 francs. It is in a private gallery in Cincinnati. 
 
 Fame. (Page 233.) — A bold creation of the sculptor. " Fame " — that which 
 inspires the soldier on the field of battle, supports the explorer on his weary wan- 
 derings across the trackless deserts and pathless forests, the anticipation of which 
 is food for the famishing inventor, rest for the struggling author, and hope for 
 the well-nigh defeated statesman — is here represented as a beautiful maiden, 
 whose out-stretched wings are typical of her soaring nature, seated with a 
 wreath in her hand, ready to crown the aspirant for her favor, and watching 
 
APPENDIX. 563 
 
 his struggles with earnest eyes. Yet how unstable is her nature, and how 
 soon her smiling face may be turned toward another. 
 
 The Empty Saddle. (Page 237.) — A sad story is told by this picture. 
 It is the usual result of false notions of honor. Two youug men had 
 quarrelled about some trivial matters and have settled their differences in a 
 duel. The empty saddle tells the tale for one of them, and his " friend," who 
 accompanied him to the " field of honor," but who was too cowardly to give 
 him good advice, now hangs his head in grief and shame in the presence of 
 the heart-broken mother and sisters. Let us be thankful that this barbarous 
 and cowardly custom has almost entirely disappeared before the progress of 
 civilization and education. Good books have started a state of society that 
 renders it impossible for one man to murder another in the name of honor. 
 
 The Artist Albrecht Durer, in the Palace of the Hapsburg. (Page 241.) 
 — Albrecht Durer was' a German painter and engraver, born in Nuremburg, 
 May 20th, 147 1 ; died April 6th, 1538. He studied with Wohlgemuth four 
 years, and afterwards travelled through Germany, the Low Countries, and 
 Italy. He enjoyed the friendship of many learned men and was greatly 
 honored by the people of his native town. He held the position of Court 
 painter under Maximilian I. and Charles V., the engraving representing him 
 as thus occupied. He was undoubtedly the greatest German painter, and with 
 his death the excellence to which he had raised art in that country, departed. 
 Raphael had the highest admiration for his genius, and, it is said, sent him a 
 drawing executed by his own hand. A bronze statue was erected to his memory 
 at Nuremburg in 1840. His most famous works are, " The Knight, Death, 
 and the Devil," " Christ taken from the Cross," " The Adoration of the Magi," 
 "Assumption of the Virgin," etc. 
 
 Before Monterey. (Page 258.) — Monterey is a city of Mexico, capital of the 
 state of Nuevo Leon, 450 miles northwest of the City of Mexico. It was a strong 
 military post during the war between the United States and Mexico, held by 
 the Mexican general Ampudia with 10,000 troops. General Taylor, with 6600 
 men attacked it September 19th, 1846; it capitulated on the 24th, after a spirited 
 resistance. General William O. Butler led the charge, and his gallant action 
 in springing forward at a critical moment with the words " Follow me !" encouraged 
 the wavering troops and won the day ; he was severely wounded. For his 
 gallantry on this occasion a sword was voted him by Congress. 
 
 Niobe. (Page 266.) — Niobe, a character in Grecian mythology, daughter of 
 Tantalus, King of Lydia, by a nymph. She was the mother of six sons and six 
 daughters, by her husband Ampion, King of Thebes. Among Grecian women it 
 was deemed an honor to have a numerous offspring, and Niobe boastfully pro- 
 claimed herself superior to Latona, who was the mother of but two children. Apollo 
 and Diana, incensed by the slur thus cast upon their mother, slew all the 
 children of Niobe, who in her grief wept herself to stone. 
 
 The Bloom of Health and the Whisper of Love. (Page 272.) — How 
 exquisitely the painter has drawn his interpretation of the sentiment expressed 
 
564 APPENDIX. 
 
 in this sketch. A maiden fair to look upon is wandering along a woodland 
 path beside a swiftly-flowing stream. Her attitude, the expression of her face, 
 the far-away look in her eye, all indicate that some one is expected to meet 
 her. Who that some one is can readily be imagined, even without the assist- 
 ance of Cupid, who so silently approaches and whispers iu her listening ear. 
 Let us hope that naught he may say to her will prove untrue, and that the 
 one for whom she waits may be worthy of her confidence. 
 
 A Cry from the Sea. (Page 288.) — Have you ever lived near the sea and 
 heard the roar of the billows, the crash of the thunder, and felt the keen blast 
 of the tempest as it rushed shrieking over the vast expanse of waters ? Have 
 you listened to the booming of the minute gun from the stranded vessel or 
 watched the brave rescuers as they plunged through the seething surf with the 
 gallant life boat ? If so, then you can appreciate this painting. What heroism 
 is displayed by the father as he hastens to the rescue, his wife bidding him 
 " God-speed " on his mission of mercy. Perhaps the little boy in the backgroud, 
 who cries, he scarcely knows why, unless it is because he sees his mother weep, 
 may go fatherless to bed to-night. 
 
 An Interesting Story. (Page 295.) — This is a picture for the little people, 
 and it is one that they will understand and appreciate too, as it represents a 
 scene familiar to most of them. A little girl with a book in her hand is 
 reading a very entertaining story, judging from the rapt attention with which 
 her auditors listen. The expression on each face clearly indicates the emotions 
 called forth by the subject-matter. The playthings are for the time forgotten 
 in the all-absorbing adventures of the hero. Even Fido ceases his gambols, 
 represses the roguish bark expressive of his enjoyment of the romp he has 
 been having with his companions, and listens sedately to the words of the 
 young reader. Not that he exactly understands their import or feels a very 
 lively interest in the fate of the hero of the story ; but the hush that falls 
 upon the group, tells him that some new entertainment has been found, and 
 that his antics, as a source of amusement, are at a discount ; and he is too 
 well-bred to obtrude. In this respect he puts to shame many of his human 
 friends, who have not learned, or perhaps have forgotten, that it is bad man- 
 ners to interrupt one who is reading. The only unappreciative spectator is the 
 chubby little fellow in the high chair, who, oblivious of the perilous encounters 
 and hair-breadth escapes which rivet the attention of his playmates and fill 
 their eyes with wonder, sleeps contentedly, his mind soaring away in visions 
 of impossible jumping jacks, inordinately large sticks of candy, and limitless 
 quantities of the good things of babyhood. 
 
 Mother. (Page 300.) — This picture is a beautiful illustration of the bond 
 of sympathy which should connect mother and daughter — confidence. What 
 more natural than that a young girl should seek her mother's sympathy and 
 advice when trouble comes. Mother's voice has been music to her ear since 
 memory first dawned ; her hand has rocked the cradle, rested upon her head 
 as she lisped her first prayer, and smoothed her pillow during the weary hours 
 of sickness. She can be trusted, and into her ear is poured the secret that no 
 one else may know. Whether it be an offer of marriage, or an intimation of 
 
APPENDIX. 565 
 
 a broken vow, mother will know best how to advise. She is the sheet anchor, 
 the harbor, the refuge to every child. Her constancy is not to be shaken, her 
 love cannot be chilled. From the cradle to the grave, she is the ministering 
 angel, the first to reward, the last to condemn, the one that never deserts. 
 She is indeed a rainbow of promise, one end bathed in the sunshine of the 
 morning of life, the other lost in the shadows of the grave. 
 
 Samson, as Servant to the Philistines. (Page 303.) — This picture repre- 
 sents a subject so well known that even children are familiar with it. What 
 a lesson to all disobedient people, young and old. Samson, who was wonder- 
 fully favored of God, and through Divine grace possessed the strength of 
 legions of men, is brought to the miserable and humiliating necessity of per- 
 forming the services of a menial for the Philistines, who stand by and gloat 
 over his sufferings. All his troubles were brought upon himself by reason of 
 disobeying God's commands, the consequences of which are so clearly set 
 forth by Dr. Talmage in the pages of this intensely interesting book. 
 
 Music in the Household. (Page 305.) — A pleasing picture, well calculated 
 to create an interest in family music. What more refining or captivating than 
 the practice of music in the family circle, when our sisters lend the charm of 
 their presence, and their sweet voices accompany the flute, the cornet, or the 
 violin; or when the subtle touch of their delicate fingers calls forth the richest 
 harmony from the violoncello, the harp, or the guitar. How many young men 
 could be snatched from the haunts of iniquity by the bewitching music of 
 their sisters, if parents would but realize the influence which the heavenly art 
 holds over the heart of man and encourage its cultivation in the minds of 
 their children. Many a sensitive, music-loving boy, finding his home lacking 
 in the melody for which his soul yearns, seeks it on the street or finds it in 
 the saloon or bagnio. Oh, why should mothers and sisters allow the saloon 
 keeper a monopoly of the art that could be so easily and effectively employed 
 to keep sons and brothers at home. The rumseller well knows the power of 
 music and employs it to entice to his den the youth of our land. Why not 
 fight him with his own weapons and make the music of our homes so deli- 
 ciously beautiful, so immensely superior to that of the grog shop, that our 
 young men would no longer be attracted and entertained by the devil's musi- 
 cians, and thus remove one stumbling block from their path. 
 
 The Rural Dancing Master. (Page 308.) — Surely the artist must have 
 been a witness of some such scene as this or he never could have produced it 
 with such fidelity. The dancing master minutely describes the movements 
 about to be executed, while the rustic swain makes a mental memorandum of 
 it, his interest and enthusiasm plainly showing in his countenance. His partner 
 is equally interested, although a sense of modesty causes her to be led forward 
 with seeming reluctance. All the figures are now in repose ; but what a trans- 
 formation will take place when the bow is drawn across the strings and the 
 rafters are made to ring with the merry notes of the violin, the most soul- 
 stirring of all musical instruments. Then all will be life and animation ; Ruth 
 will forget her bashfulness and bare feet, and Tom his heavy shoes and awkward 
 appearance. 
 
566 APPENDIX. 
 
 Virginius Killing his Daughter. (Page 314.) — This picture, reproduced 
 from a steel print of a famous piece of sculpture, illustrates one of the most 
 thrilling acts that have been preserved in Roman history. The story, briefly 
 told is as follows : Appius Claudius was a Roman Decemvir — one of the ten 
 judges — B. C. 451. He was a patrician of Sabine descent, whose family had 
 long been noted for cruelty to the plebeians. While the army of Rome was 
 absent fighting the Sabines and ^qui, Claudius fell in love with Virginia, 
 the beautiful daughter of Lucius Virginius, who was absent as captain in the 
 Roman legion, having left his daughter in care o'f Icilius. To secure posses- 
 sion of the girl, Claudius induced a client, Marcus Claudius, possibly a kinsman, 
 to swear before the tribunal of Decemvirs that Virginia was the daughter of 
 one of his female slaves, taken secretly by the childless wife of Virginius and 
 falsely claimed her parentage. Virginia was accordingly brought before the 
 Decemvir, who decided that she should follow her master. This judgment so 
 incited the people that an outbreak was on the point of occurring when Appius 
 Claudius ordered that she be brought to his own house, promising a final inquiry 
 into the case on the morrow. Word was dispatched to Virginius, who quickly 
 returned, and with Icilius and his friend, Numitorius, was present at the open- 
 ing of the tribunal. The three gave testimony touching the parentage of 
 Virginia, notwithstanding which Claudius reaffirmed his former judgment and 
 commanded that she be delivered to Marcus. Knowing the order to be irre- 
 vocable, and fully realizing the infamous designs that Appius had upon his 
 daughter, Virginius seized a knife from a butcher who was standing near and 
 stabbed her to death before the horrified eyes of the court spectators. Virginius, 
 followed by his two friends, fled to the army and appealed to their comrades 
 for vengeance. A cry also went up against the tyrant from the citizens. 
 Rome was on the point of being attacked by the incensed army, when the 
 Decemvirs resigned and Claudius was thrown into prison, where he was soon 
 after strangled by order of the tribunes. 
 
 The Mischief Maker. (Page 324.) — This picture is a copy of the famous 
 painting by E. Stieler, a contemporary artist, justly celebrated for his humor- 
 ous works. It portrays the misfortunes frequently attendant upon the early 
 struggles of genius. In a spirit of revenge and retaliation the youthful artist 
 has made a striking reproduction of the village school-master's classic features 
 on the blackboard, to the great amusement of the scholars. No doubt his 
 success elicited their hilarious approbation, so much so as to bring the dominie 
 to the scene. How fleeting are the honors of this world! How quickly the 
 triumph of the victor passes away ! Who could detect in the tearful and 
 crestfallen boy the defiant and laughing hero of an hour ago. Happily, at 
 this critical moment, the village parson appears upon the scene. The master 
 feelingly sets forth the crime of the irreverent offender and asks counsel as to 
 what would be adequate punishment for such a crime. But the parson has an 
 eye for the ludicrous, and the picture on the blackboard, true to life, appeals 
 to his sense of humor. He looks from the pedagogue to the portrait, and 
 from the portrait to the pedagogue, and strokes his chin and smiles. He 
 recognizes the budding genius in the sketch before him, which should receive 
 encouragement and culture. No doubt he will prevail upon the master to 
 treat the offence as leniently as possible, as the culprit has already been 
 
APPENDIX. 567 
 
 badly scared and humiliated, and we heartily second him in his efforts towards 
 an amicable adjustment of the difficulty. 
 
 The Nestlings. (Page 339.) — The fancy of the artist has drawn a beautiful 
 design for our eyes to feast upon and a great lesson for our hearts to contem- 
 plate. A Christian mother is represented as seated with a nest in her lap in 
 which are her little ones, all ready and eager to spread their wings and soar 
 forth into the unknown world. One by one, she lets them go — one to be a 
 missionary and spread the Word of God among the heathen nations of the earth ; 
 another to become a teacher in a Christian college ; this one to be a doctor, 
 and carry into the homes of the rich and poor, relief from suffering and pain ; 
 the fourth becomes a publisher, and throughout the length and breadth of the 
 land people bless the day that his books found a place in their household ; 
 another takes up the burden of life as a statesman and, by his integrity and 
 courage in standing up for the right, he sets an example for the world to follow. 
 To whom is the credit due ? Verily to the mother whose Christian teaching 
 started the little feet aright and whose saint-like face acted like a beacon light 
 to them when tossed on the stormy sea of temptation. 
 
 The Court Fool. (Page 367.) — The fool, or jester, was a character employed 
 by many kings and princes in the seventeenth century for the amusement of 
 themselves and their courts. Some of them were entitled to the appellation by 
 reason of what Nature had gratuitously done for them ; others were quick-witted 
 poets ; some of them had considerable influence and privileges. Angely, the 
 titular fool of Louis XIII., of France, by his cynical pleasantry became one of 
 the most formidable personages at court. 
 
 Motherless. (Page 376.) — How sadly strikes the word into our hearts and 
 makes them gush with sympathy. The picture represents a little orphan, a 
 waif in tatters, the piece of a wreck floating about upon the ocean of life, an 
 aimless wanderer crying up and down the world for a mother that can utter 
 no answering word. Perhaps she is looking out of the pearly gates for some 
 one that will give shelter to her orphan child. How the old grandmother 
 pities the uncovered head, and the homeless, bare and tired feet. Though 
 poor be their condition, this family will not refuse shelter to one of God's own, 
 and the mother who weeps in heaven shall dry her eyes with joy, for her 
 child has found a home. This picture is from a great painting in the Royal 
 Gallery, London, but the artist's name is unknown. 
 
 The Widower. (Page 378.) — This is another picture that speaks for itself. 
 Few can realize the awful emptiness of a home from which the mother has been 
 borne to the grave ; no matter if the father and children are left, the absence 
 of the mother leaves a void which nothing can fill. How fondly the father 
 clasps in his arms the form of the sick child, realizing his helplessness ; while 
 the elder daughter stands by, vainly endeavoring to repress the sobs which will 
 find vent ; on the floor, the baby plays unheeded, laughing and crowing with 
 innocent glee, all unconscious of the sorrow and anxiety which bow down father 
 and sister. Mother gone, a child sick and needing her gentle care, babes 
 neglected, house in disorder — what more pitiful scene can be depicted on canvas? 
 
5 68 APPENDIX. 
 
 We turn away from it with sad hearts, knowing too well that it is enacted each 
 day somewhere in the world about us. 
 
 A Witch. (Page 399.) — What horrible recollections this scene calls forth. 
 A score of people, their hearts filled with cowardly superstition, clamor at the 
 door of a defenceless old woman and demand her life for an imaginary offence. 
 There is no sympathy depicted on any countenance. Her withered cheek no 
 longer glows with the bloom of youth ; her eye is dull and sparkles not as it 
 did in days gone by, when the people were wont to gather around her, acknowl- 
 edging the magnetic influence of her many charms. Then a breath of suspi- 
 cion against her fair name would have aroused a score of sturdy defenders ; but 
 there is nothing in the faded cheek, or silvered hair, or the shrunken form, to 
 excite the spirit of chivalry in the breasts of accusing invaders of her hitherto 
 peaceful home. On a barrel is perched a raven, that bird of evil omen ever 
 associated with hobgoblins and witches. True, it has been a companion and 
 friend ; its hoarse notes have greeted her when she arose in the morning, and 
 followed her to her hard couch at night. Now the discordant croakings with 
 which it announces its disapproval of their intrusion are construed by the excited 
 people to be an evidence of the old woman's guilt. The strong-armed smith 
 points with outstretched hand to the young woman in the foreground, over 
 whom the witch is supposed to have cast her spell ; the horseshoe over the door, 
 placed there by the old woman's trembling hands, can no longer protect her, 
 but, on the contrary, is seized upon as another evidence of her guilt. The 
 reader vainly hopes that she will prove her innocence. Ignorance and super- 
 stition have found a new victim, and we draw a curtain over the dreadful scene 
 with devout thanks to God that the bright sun of Christianity has rolled aside 
 the mists of delusion, and that such scenes are no longer possible in civilized 
 countries. 
 
 The Flood — Safe While Jesus Watches. (Page 403.) — A striking pic- 
 ture truly, and a faithful copy of a painting by John Everett Millais, the 
 English artist, born in Southampton, June 8th, 1829. When nine years old 
 he gained a gold medal from the Society of Arts. In 1847 he won a gold 
 medal for the best oil picture, the subject being, "The Tribe of Benjamin 
 Seizing the Daughters of Shiloh." He married the former wife of John 
 Ruskin, who had procured a divorce in Scotland. His pictures are noted for 
 their simplicity and faithful reproduction of nature. The subject is treated in 
 a most effective and original manner that catches immediately the attention 
 and sympathy of the beholder. It is innocence cradled by destroying waters. 
 All about is desolation by submergement ; homes invaded and every living 
 thing driven out ; in the hasty flight a sleeping child has been abandoned, but 
 God watches, and as the waters rush through the deserted house, there is borne 
 out upon the flood a hapless little soul, that wakes to the lullaby of the roving 
 tide. As the cradle sweeps beneath overhanging boughs, the babe cooes and 
 prattles to the swift moving waters, while the house-cat watches with more 
 consciousness of danger the swirls and threatening obstructions that may 
 convert the cradle into a coffin. But Jesus pilots that frail shallop, and, what- 
 ever the end He will be there to take the dimpled hands in His. This picture 
 brings forcibly to mind the recent horror in the romantic valley of the Conemaugh. 
 
APPENDIX. 569 
 
 From the Pennsylvania railroad tower a cradle was seen floating on the raging 
 waters ; in it a little babe fast asleep. It was beyond the power of man to 
 secure the little one and it floated away in the darkness. 
 
 Ill-Gotten Gains. (Page 415.) — Few stronger pictures have been painted 
 than the one from which the accompanying illustration is a reproduction. The 
 faces are marvellously expressive, and wherever we might see them, or under 
 what circumstances or attitude, we would instinctively say to ourselves, " What 
 miserly countenances." Note the curl in the lip of one, and the craven, hard 
 visage of the other, more intent upon his grasp of a coin than of the pen with 
 which he reluctantly makes an entry. The picture is a homily on human 
 greed and evil passions. The artist, Quintin Matsys, was a Flemish painter, 
 born in Louvain about 1460. He was brought up as a blacksmith, but falling 
 in love with the daughter of an artist he threw aside his leather apron and 
 abandoned the forge for the easel in order to gain her hand. " The Misers " 
 is one of his best known pictures, and is in Windsor Castle. Another is the 
 great altar-piece in the Museum at Antwerp, devoted to incidents in the history 
 of John the Baptist, and St. John the Evangelist. Queen Elizabeth is said to 
 have offered 64,000 florins for it. Sir Joshua Reynolds says that some of the 
 heads executed by Matsys are not exceeded even by Raphael himself. 
 
 Alva's Last Ride through Amsterdam. (Page 420.) — Who has not heard 
 of the ravages of the Duke of Alva in the Low Countries ? For three hun- 
 dred years he has been held up as the embodiment of all that is heartless, 
 cruel and malicious. Probably no other man since the beginning of time has 
 so much to account for in the way of wholesale cruelty and murder. He 
 was a Spanish statesman and general, born in 1508 and died 1582. Philip of 
 Spain having determined on the invasion of the Netherlands, 10,000 veterans 
 were placed under the command of the Duke of Alva, and the expedition 
 embarked at Carthagena, May 10th, 1567. Alva established himself at Brussels 
 and at once proceeded in his work of vengeance. He set up "The Council of 
 Troubles," better known as " The Council of Blood." It was well named, as 
 during his six years' reign in the Netherlands blood flowed like water. His 
 first act was to behead Counts Egmont and Horn, two idols of the people, in 
 the great square of Brussels, June 5th, 1568. At this time William Keij, of Breda, 
 a renowned painter, was engaged to execute a portrait of Alva. While employed 
 in this work, in fact in putting the finishing touches on the portrait, Keij over- 
 heard a few words which revealed to him the impending fate of Egmont and 
 Horn. . His soul sickened, and with throbbing brain he went to his home at 
 the end of the sitting, unable to banish from his memory the pitiless glare of 
 those glittering gray eyes. What fears for himself and family must have filled 
 his heart and strained it beyond the power of human endurance. The next day, 
 Whitsun eve, the portrait painter died — the same day that Egmont's head rolled in 
 the market place of Brussels. Then followed the execution of other leaders of 
 prominence by the wholesale, burnings at the stake, and tortures and horrors that 
 make the blood run cold. The mere breathing of a suspicion against any one, 
 especially if wealthy, secured his execution and the confiscation of his property. 
 Alva had promised to enrich the treasury of Philip by a golden river a yard 
 deep, drawn from the confiscated property of heretics. Infuriated by the slay- 
 
57 c APPENDIX. 
 
 ing of the Duke of Aremberg, who was in command of the Spanish troops at 
 the battle of Heiligerlee, where they were defeated by Count Louis of Nassau, 
 Alva caused to be executed eighteen nobles. William of Orange raised an army 
 and endeavored to drive Alva from the country. The latter avoided an engage- 
 ment, and although the Prince changed his encampment twenty-nine times, he 
 always found the Duke in his rear. Alva's manceuvering in this campaign was 
 a masterpiece of military tactics and worthy of a better cause. At last the 
 Prince was compelled to give up the campaign and Alva celebrated the withdrawal 
 of the opposing forces by erecting a colossal bronze statue of himself in the , 
 citadel at Antwerp. Although he had boasted of turning into Philip's treasury 
 an avalanche of gold, and while his confiscations were simply enormous, in the 
 six years of his rule twenty-five millions of money were sent to him from Spain,, 
 and he left the Netherlands without a dollar in the treasury. When his suc- 
 cessor arrived, in 1573, Alva advised that every city in the Netherlands should 
 be burnt to the ground. He boasted that during his six years' reign he had 
 caused eighteen thousand persons to be executed, to say nothing of the thousands 
 who perished in battle, siege and merciless slaughter. Every conceivable mode 
 of torture was employed in his persecutions of the victims of his royal master's 
 vengeance. At Harlem three hundred citizens, tied two and two, back to back, 
 were thrown into the lake, and five hundred more in the same manner were 
 drowned in the river Yssel. All these horrors, and thousands of outrages which 
 are better left unrecorded, the Duke of Alva inflicted on the Protestants in his- 
 zeal for the cause of the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 At the Golden Gate. (Page 425.) — Valentine C. Prinsep, an English painter 
 of considerable reputation, born in India, February 14th, 1836. His works are- 
 celebrated for their vigor, brilliant color and fidelity to nature. " News from 
 Abroad," " Miriam Watching the Infant Moses," " The Venetian Lover " and 
 the " Death of Cleopatra," are among his best known works. In this picture we 
 have a glimpse of the Golden Gate, but it is shut. What has this young woman 
 done that the beautiful portals are barred against her ? 
 
 Bad News from the Sea. (Page 427.)— Here is a fisher village on the 
 New England coast, a corner of the world where the meddling rush of wheels 
 and the trail of the electric spark are strangers. Here is the old post-office, 
 with its grime and rot, its antique and decrepit, weather-beaten and unstable 
 sides and roof that clasp hands for mutual succor, that lean upon each other's 
 infirmities, joining forces to resist the enfeebling ravages of time. But what 
 tales it may tell ! Oh, the letters of sunshine and shadow that have, rested, 
 for a brief time in its musty boxes. The artist, in the accompanying picture, 
 has chosen to represent the effects of a letter that came laden with shadows. 
 See the young wife and the consoling mother. Away off at sea disaster has 
 come down upon a ship like some fell fiend from the sky ; the lightning strove 
 to cleave, and the winds to bury, and the wild waves to crush. How the 
 sailors battled; but man's strength may not prevail against the re-enforced 
 powers of air and sea, so the ship went down, and on the waves rode naught 
 but fragments of the wreck, messengers that shall tell what none were left to. 
 speak. 
 
APPENDIX. 571 
 
 Siege of Tvre. (Page 441.) — Tyre, the principal city of Phoenicia, was 
 founded, according to Herodotus, about 2800 years before Christ. In the eighth 
 century before Christ it withstood a siege of five years by the Assyrians under 
 Sargon, but about the seventh century was captured by them and continued in 
 their power until the destruction, of the Assyrian monarchy by Pharaoh Necho, 
 whom it acknowledged as suzerain. Tyre withstood a siege of thirteen years 
 by Nebuchadnezzar, who defeated Necho, but the city was finally overcome. 
 Alexander the Great took the city after a siege of seven months, its downfall 
 being accomplished by treachery, and it was reduced to ashes, a part of the 
 inhabitants being slain and the rest sold as slaves. 
 
 Chivalry. (Page 442.) — This picture recalls the days when a man was his 
 own judge, jury and executioner. If a neighboring king swept down on the 
 castle of the prince during his absence and carried away his wife and daughters, 
 he could not appeal to the strong arm of the law for redress, but must needs 
 call around him hurriedly his knights and vassals, take down his sword, and, 
 mounting the fleetest horses at his command, dash madly over mountain and 
 plain, through forest and stream, until he overtook the marauder, and, by 
 superior strength and skill, put him to death and rescued his household treasures. 
 
 The War of the Holy Land. (Page 450.) — The illustration on this page 
 represents the Crusade, or war for the recovery of the Holy Land. Palestine 
 was overrun by the Saracens under Caliph Omar, who effected a conquest of 
 the country and captured Jerusalem A. D. 1637. The Land of the Holy Sepul- 
 chre and Church of the Resurrection continued in uninterrupted possession 
 of the Mussulmans for upwards of four hundred years. In 1093 Peter the 
 Hermit undertook a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where the oppressions which he 
 witnessed and experienced awoke his indignation and determined him to arouse 
 the people of Christendom to undertake a war for the liberation of the Holy 
 Sepulchre. He accordingly returned, and encouraged by Pope Urban II., went 
 through Italy and France inciting the people to take up arms and wrest the 
 Holy Land from the infidels. An immense army was speedily raised and under 
 the leadership of Peter it marched for the Holy Land. A part of it separated 
 from the rest, under the leadership of "Walter the Penniless, and was destroyed 
 in Bulgaria. The principal division reached no further than Nice, where it was 
 defeated by the Moslems. Subsequently Peter the Hermit was associated in an 
 expedition with Godfrey, of Bouillon. While the Crusaders were besieged in 
 Antioch, Peter deserted, but was captured by Tancred and brought back. He 
 preached a sermon to the Crusaders on the Mount of Olives on the Conquest 
 of Jerusalem. He afterwards returned to Europe and founded the Abbey of 
 Neufmontier, near Hur, where he died in n 15. No less than eight crusades 
 were attempted, making an almost continuous war from 1096 to 1271, in which 
 nearly 2,000,000 persons are believed to have perished. 
 
 On the Trail. (Page 454.) — What a spectacle is here presented. A party 
 of lords and ladies, with blaring horns and yelling hounds, go racing across the 
 country in pursuit of a helpless hare or fox — one of God's creatures, which He 
 has made to live and enjoy its short life, but which man is unwilling to leave 
 unmolested. It is not sought as food, but merely for the pleasure of watching 
 
572 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 his frantic endeavors to escape the teeth of the hounds, and to see it torn and 
 mangled by them. And the ladies will pet and praise them for their share in 
 the cruel sport. 
 
 The Young Princes in the Tower. (Page 465.) — This picture, from a 
 painting by Paul Delaroche, is valuable for the interest in history which it is 
 sure to awaken in children. Their childish sympathy goes out at once to the 
 fatherless princes and they are certain to wish to know and read more about 
 them. This interest in history once excited may lead to a desire for knowledge 
 that will change the whole current of a child's life. Many eminent clergymen, 
 statesmen, scholars, and in fact most men who have achieved great success in 
 any position in life, owe it to the influence thrown about them by good books 
 during their early years. These historical pictures are special features of 
 " The Pathway of Life," and make it of priceless value in the household where 
 children are to be trained for the battle of life. Delaroche was a justly cele- 
 brated French painter, born in Paris in 1797, and died there in 1856. One of 
 his works, " The Assassination of the Duke of Guise," was purchased by the 
 Duke of Orleans for 52,000 francs. His greatest work is his fresco of the 
 hemicycle in the School of Fine Arts, representing the illustrious masters of 
 art of all ages. It contains seventy-four life-sized figures full of force and 
 expression, and it cost the artist four years of incessant labor. In 1855 the 
 picture was much injured by fire, and the anxiety and labor of restoring it 
 hastened the artist's death. 
 
 Capture of the Bastile. (Page 474.) — Few historical buildings are sur- 
 rounded with memories so fraught with horror as the Bastile, erected by Charles 
 V. in 1369, at Paris, and used as the citadel and state prison. It was situated 
 at the gate of St. Antoine and had eight immense round towers, connected with 
 massive masonry, the whole surrounded by a wide moat. Around the moat or 
 ditch was a high wall with wooden galleries, guarded by sentinels. The adminis- 
 tration of the Bastile was vested in a governor with several subordinates. 
 One hundred men composed the garrison. Cells were situated in all the towers, 
 the walls of which were twelve feet thick at the top and thirty to forty feet at 
 the base. Three iron gratings secured the small aperture in the wall, leading 
 to each cell, the bars being an inch thick and so arranged that the unobstructed 
 openings were only two inches square. The dungeons were nineteen feet below 
 the level of the court yard and five feet below the level of the ditch, with which 
 they connected by a narrow loop-hole — the only opening. As this ditch carried 
 off the sewerage of the prison, the odors were insufferable. The state paid 
 liberally for the maintenance of the state prisoners, but owing to the abuses 
 of the governor, they were miserably fed, a few sous being expended per diem, 
 when the allowance for each prisoner was ample, in many cases as much as 
 twenty-five francs. The annals of history may be ransacked in vain for instances 
 of penal cruelty parallel to those inflicted upon the unfortunate inmates of the 
 Bastile, many of whom were put there without accusation or trial, cut off from 
 all communication with friends, their final fate often unknown to the world. 
 Within its walls died Charles de Gontaut, marshal of France. Marshal Richelieu, 
 Voltaire and Latude were among its illustrious prisoners. Here also was con- 
 fined that victim of Louis XIV., the Man in the Iron Mask, whose identity is 
 
APPENDIX. 573 
 
 even now shrouded in mystery. On the occasion described by the engraving, 
 the infuriated mob razed the massive towers to the ground and filled its noisome 
 dungeons with the copings of its battlements. Among the persons found in 
 the cells was the Count de Solage, who had been a prisoner since his eleventh 
 year; also Tavernier, who had for thirty years suffered untold miseries within 
 its gloomy walls. When brought into the light, he appeared bewildered, as 
 one awakened from a dream. 
 
 Queen Catharine, of Aragon, Denies the Right of the Ecclesiastical 
 Court to Adjudge her Cause. (Page 482.) — Another great historical picture, 
 illustrating the corruptions of court life. Henry's reason for wishing a divorce 
 from Catharine were twofold. She had been his brother's wife, and his marriage 
 with her was bitterly opposed, especially by Archbishop Warham, on the ground 
 of their relationship. Henry was superstitious even to fanaticism. During the 
 nine years of their union the Queen had twice miscarried, two sons died imme- 
 diately after birth, and a third was still-born. The Princess Mary was the 
 only child that lived. In event of Henry's death without an heir there would 
 ensue an immediate contest for the succession between the Houses of York and 
 Tudor. Henry felt that his repeated misfortunes and failure to have living 
 male issue were punishments for having married his brother's wife. - This was 
 strengthened by the question of the legitimacy of the Princess Mary, raised 
 by the French Convoy, her marriage with a French Prince having been spoken 
 of as probable. There is no doubt, however, that Henry's real reason for wishing 
 to put away his wife was his attachment for Anne Boleyn, which had begun 
 some years before the agitation of the divorce question. In spite of the oppo- 
 sition of the Pope and the condemnation of the people generally, Henry married 
 Anne, and only three years later discarded her for Jane Seymour. The story 
 of Henry VIII. and his six wives forms an interesting portion of English 
 history, as showing the corruption of court life under Catholic favor, which 
 can be pleasantly contrasted with that of the present day under Protestant 
 influence. 
 
 Taking up a Collection. (Page 491.) — This illustration is perhaps the 
 most expressive in this gallery of famous pictures. The faces are a study and 
 show how intimately the artist was acquainted with human nature. The central 
 figures are so true to life. that they appear like familiar faces which we try to 
 recall. Usually they are perhaps not fond of song, but now, with the contri- 
 bution-box in such alarming proximity, their souls are wrapped up in the hymn 
 which echoes through the church, and they appear in blissful ignorance of its 
 approach. The deacon knows this and smiles grimly as he pauses before them. 
 What a trying moment ! Will they see him and respond to the silent appeal 
 of the rather empty box ? We find ourselves on the point of nudging the old 
 gentleman with the spectacles, forgetting that it is only a picture. But even 
 more expressive is the face of the sturdy figure to the right as he fumbles in 
 his pocket. His acuteness of touch is evidently put to a severe test in his 
 efforts to select the smallest coin available, and the look in his eye indicates 
 a nicety of calculation that will prevent the calamity of contributing a $20 gold 
 piece when a very small penny is intended. 
 
574 APPENDIX. 
 
 The Grandmothers — Capital and Labor. (Page 496.) — How well this pic- 
 ture illustrates the relationship between labor and capital. Labor must ever 
 dance for the amusement of capital, and while the rich look on and enjoy the 
 sport, with strong arms they hold back their children who would gladly take 
 part in the amusements of the sons and daughters of working men. Yet they are 
 mutually dependent ; without labor the wealth of the capitalist would avail 
 nothing. The mills would cease, the factories be stopped, and his wealth would 
 lie idle and rust away. It could not be spent, as -there would be no food pro- 
 duced, nothing manufactured for which it could be expended, and the millionaire 
 would soon be reduced to the necessity of toiling in the field to provide himself 
 with food ; while without capital, labor would be idle — no money coming in 
 with which to provide the necessities of life, pay rents o* buy medicine for the sick. 
 
 Christianity and the Dragon of Intemperance. (Page 511.) — This mag- 
 nificent statue, by Miss Grant, truly portrays the attitude of intemperance toward 
 mankind — that of a hideous dragon which seeks to destroy both body and soul, 
 and indicates the only true way of battling with it, namely, by Christianity and the 
 Cross. Who is safe from the snares of the tempter save those whose hearts daily 
 ascend heavenward in the incense of prayer ? The figure at whose feet the monster 
 cringes stands firm in the consciousness of strength received from 011 high. 
 Then let us train the little ones not to be lulled into fancied security and to 
 rely on their individual power of resistance, but to cling to the cross and keep 
 constantly on the alert for danger. 
 
 Onward, in the Name of Christ. (Page 513.) — The striking, life-like 
 statue was erected in honor of Agustiuo, the Maid of Saragossa, who distinguished 
 herself by her heroic actions during the siege of that place by the French in 
 1809. She participated in the severest encounters, and, on one occasion, snatched 
 a match from the hands of a dying artilleryman and discharged the piece at the 
 invaders ; she was made a lieutenant in the Spanish army and received several 
 decorations. Lord Byron has made her famous in his " Childe Harold." She 
 died at Cueta, Spain, in June, 1857, at a great age. 
 
 The Family Circle. (Page 520.) — This picture brings vividly to mind the 
 scenes of boyhood days, when the family used to gather in the old sitting-room 
 at home and listen to grandpa's stories or watch father's silhouette pictures on 
 the wall, brought into clear relief by the bright candle-light. What antics the 
 rabbits and dogs indulged in, and how wildly the birds flapped their wings, and 
 what mysterious gyrations the donkey's head executed, being minus a body, to 
 say nothing of tail and legs. And how the entertainment was sometimes varied 
 by exhibitions not on the programme. For instance, when brother Tom, sup- 
 posing us all absorbed in the exhibition on the wall, kissed the parson's daugh- 
 ter, not thinking that the light was behind them ; and when Tabbie, the staid 
 house-cat, made a very inhospitable and uncalled for assault on the deacon's 
 dog, her tail as it appeared on the wall, having swollen to alarming proportions. 
 No wonder that we slept soundly and that our digestive apparatuses performed 
 their functions with marvellous ease and accuracy ; an evening spent in the 
 family circle was sufficient to drive dyspepsia to the verge of despair and send 
 him off with the pouts for a month to come. 
 
APPENDIX. 575 
 
 The Circle Complete. (Page 524.) — A small picture, yet one containing a 
 world of meaning. These old people have journeyed through life together, 
 sharing its joys, sorrows, triumphs and defeats, and now, in the winter of old 
 age, they draw nearer to each other ; their hearts steadfast and true as in the 
 spring-time of life. They look back over their past lives and contemplate with 
 satisfaction the good they have done. The time is near for their departure to the 
 evergreen shore, and they look forward to it with trembling eagerness. Many 
 of their children have gone before ; friends have left their side never to return ; 
 father and mother await theru with outstretched arms ; verily they have more 
 friends there than here — more ties to be renewed than severed — and, best 
 of all, Christ is looking for them, He in whom the}' have trusted so long, who 
 has buoyed them up through the crushing agony of separation from children 
 and friends, and with whom they will soon dwell " beside the still waters." Let 
 us all so live that our end will be like this, full of peace and joy. 
 
 The Last Toilet of Charlotte Corday. (Page 525.) — Another picture to 
 awaken in the hearts of young people a desire for information . which should be 
 cultivated and strengthened in every possible way. Ward is a celebrated English 
 painter, born in London in 18 16. His works are numerous and of great merit. 
 He is especially successful in historical representations. He painted eight pic- 
 tures for the corridors of the House of Commons. He studied in Rome, where 
 he gained a silver medal from the Academy of St. Luke in 1838. 
 
 The Roman Theatre and Race-Course. (Page 526.) — Amusements among 
 the Romans were cultivated equally with the exciting and more stirring arts of 
 war. Indeed, the one was subsidiary to the other, each having its purpose of 
 firing the public heart and stimulating to deeds of heroism. The Great Amphi- 
 theatre was established not only to seat a crowd willing to be amused by horse, 
 foot and chariot races, but also to afford a vantage view of contests of a more 
 thrilling nature. It was here that the wildest events sometimes transpired that 
 set the great audience to thundering their prolonged applause. Soldiers, cap- 
 tives, in whom the • martial spirit predominated, and who were glad of every 
 occasion to measure arms with formidable or famed adversaries, often engaged in 
 bloody encounters in this arena, fighting with short swords at an arm's length, 
 and hewing through coats of mail until blood and desperate wounds would end 
 the battle. It was in such terrible scenes as these that the Romans found their 
 greatest amusements, and by which the Roman youths were made wildly ambi- 
 tious to engage in war, so that every Roman became a soldier. 
 
 The Faithful Servant. (Page 533.) — This illustration, representing a lost 
 child asleep with the chill of approaching death, is one of pity-compelling influ- 
 ence, exciting compassion alike for the freezing child and the faithful dog that 
 stands before the merciless blasts of dashing sleets and cutting wind, calling 
 for help, pleading for succor. But the Good Shepherd cares for His sheep, and 
 He will hear the watch-dog's signal sounding above the storm, and He will climb 
 the mountain side, cleave a pathway through snow and towering rocks, and wrap 
 about the cold form of this lost angel a mantle warm with His love, and press 
 to the chill lips a stimulant of sympathy that will revive and wake the lost child ; 
 and the storm will cease, the clouds will blow past, and the sun will pour out 
 splendors, for the Sun of Righteousness so cometh in the hour of greatest need. 
 
576 APPENDIX. 
 
 Home at Last. (Page 535.) — This touching picture calls to mind memo- 
 ries of the past, when the dear mother, who has long since passed to her eternal 
 rest, used to come home from market, tired and foot-sore with the ejaculation, 
 thankfully uttered, "Home at Last!" The old lady in the picture has evidently 
 been away from home all day, and on her return the house cat meets her with 
 tail erect, purring a welcome to the humble home, while the geese follow her 
 with noisy clamor, anticipating their evening allowance of corn. All are glad 
 to see her, and she is glad to be at home again. ( 
 
 The Song of Miriam. (Page 539.) — This admirable engraving represents 
 the most joyful occasion in Israelitish history. We seem to almost hear the 
 shouts of exultation and the hymns of praise offerings floating up from Miriam 
 and her choristers in honor of their escape from a bondage oppressive as it was 
 long. The august Moses and his eloquent brother Aaron are performing that 
 miraculous act which resulted in the destruction of Pharaoh's hosts and the salva- 
 tion of the Jews, whose yokes were lifted by the Omnipotent arm that finally 
 punishes the wrongs and rewards the virtues of all the children of men. The 
 rich robes of Miriam represent the perfection attained by the Egyptians in the 
 art of weavings, for history, as written in the relics uncovered from buried cities 
 of Egypt, gives us to know that nearly all the arts with which we are now familiar 
 were quite as well understood by the ancient Egyptians. 
 
 The Young Hopeful. (Page 542.) — How fades the glories of this world 
 before the mutations of time ! Here we have a reproduction of Montegazzo's 
 great picture, representing the presentation of the infant Dauphin of France to 
 the Court of Louis XIV. A great event was the birth of this child, with the 
 glory of rulership before him, a nation ready to fall at his infant feet. But the 
 changes of time brought more than its share to this poor baby, whose little feet 
 were destined to wear out the floor of a prison cell rather than tread the soft velvet 
 of a throne-room, and whose brow was to bear a felon brand rather than wear a 
 golden crown ; whose wrists became abraded by iron gyves instead of decorated 
 with circlets of diamonds. What a lesson of the mutability of human affairs ! 
 the hopes, prospects, ambitions; for saith the preacher truly, "All is vanity." 
 The only sure hope, the only true prospect, the only safe ambition,, is that which 
 looketh upward, ay, heavenward. 
 
 Good-Night. (Page 544.) — This is indeed a fitting picture for the last page 
 of this grand book. As your friend goes forth into the storm and darkness, 
 you stand with lantern held high in the air, hoping to cast a glimmer of light 
 that will guide his footsteps in the right path. May the lessons and counsels 
 of this book be a light unto your feet as you journey along " The Pathway of 
 Life," and enable you to keep in the narrow path that will bring you out safe on 
 the shores of eternity, with the beautiful city before you, and the boatman ready 
 to ferry you to the land where there will be no more darkness, no more tempta- 
 tions, no more sorrow and pain. 
 
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