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0. II IS It Vblll PREPAIED ESPECIALLY FOE AND OLD. t YOUNG mht: "Hold Taut to the Blhlr" Le ftou Drawn From th Swonl of Kleaznr Ar fie Grasped Hi Wmpon So Should U Cleave to the Old Gospel. Tkxt: "And hi bund elave unto the word.'" II Samuel xsiii., 10. What a jrlorlous thinj? to pre.ieh the Mosoel! Soiiij supfiO.ee that because I kave resided a 1'xed patorat I will teao to preaeii. No, no. I expect to 1 -reach more than I ever have. If the ,ori will, four times an much, though In manifold places. I -would not dare to halt with such opportunity to declare the truth through the ear to audience and to th eye through the printing fires?. And her we have a tirrin them put before by the prophet. A" great general of King David was Elenzar, the hero of the text. The Philis tines opened battl" itgain-t him. and his troops retreated. The oowards fled. Kleazar and three of his comrades went into the battle niid swept the field, for four men with God ori their hide are Ktronger than a v.hcle regiment with God against then;. "Fall lack!" fhouted the commander of the Philistine array. The ory ran nlor:g the host, "Fall "back!" Eleazar, having swept the field, throws himself on th ground to rest, but the mus cles and sinews of his hand hail been so lung b nt around the hilt of his sword that the hilt was imbedded in the. flesh, and the gold wire of tho hilt had broken through the f kin of the palm of the hand, and he eould not drop this sword which ho had no gallantly wielded. "His hand elav unto the sword.'' That is what I call magnificent lighting for the Lord God of Israel. And we want more of it. I propose to show you how Eleazar took hold of the sword and how the sword took hold of Eleazar. I look at Eleazar's hand, und I come to the conclusion that ho took the sword with a very tight grip. The cowards who lied had no trouble in drop ping their swords. As they, tly over the rocks I hear their swords clanging in every direction. It is easy enough for them to drop their swords, but Elea.ar's hand clave unto the vord. In this Christian conflict we want a tighter grip of the Gospel weap ons, a tighter grasp of the two edged swoid of the truth. It makes me sick to see these Christian people who hold only a part of the truth and let the rest of tho truth go, so that the Philistines, seeing the loosened gnt-p, wrench the whole sword away froLi them. The only safe thiug for us to do is to put our thumb on tho book of Genesis and sweep our hand around the book until the New Testament comes into the palm and keep on sweeping our hand around the book until the tips of the lingers clutch at the words "In tlj- b ginning God created the heavens an 1 the earth.'" I like an infi del a gierit dal better than 1 do one cf these iiamhy pamhy Christians who hold a pari of the truth and let the re.-t go. Jy miraole ,r,d pr served this p,ibl ju'-t as it is and it is a Damascus blade. Tile sever est test to v. I'.ieii a .-vurd ';ui he put in a tword faetory ic to wind the blade around a gun b;;rrel like a ribbon, and then when the sword is b't loos;. it Mies hack to its own hhape. i-'o the sword of God's truth has been fuliv te.-ted, and It is l ent this wav and that way and v.r. .'.nd this way and that way, but it always c eivs back to its own b'na; e. '1 Idnk of it! A book written neatly nineteen centuries ago, and some ot fc thousands of ars ago, and yet i:i our ti've tlu average sale of this bo k is more thaa '' JK, ) e-pleH every week and more than 1 .Ueit'O ) copies a year! i say now tlia: a hoed; whieh is divin-dy inspired and divin'dy ke;.t and divinely scattered is a weapon worth holding a tight grip of. liishop Colenso will come along an 1 try to wrench oa of your hand the live books of Moses, and trau.- s will come along and try to wrench out of your hand the miraelt nil I Ker.an will come along and try to wrench out of your hand tho entire lile of the Lord Jeus Christ, and your associates in the o".lce or the factory or the banking house w ill try to wrench out of your hard the entire Iht-le, but in the strength f the Lord God of Israel and with Eleazar's grip held on to it. You give up the Bible, you K'ive up :::y prrt of it, and you give up par don and ea.-e and life in henveu. Do net bo ashamed, young man. to have the world know that you are a friend of the Eil le. This book is t lie friend of. all that is good, and it i tho sworn enemy of all that is bad. An eloquent writer recently gives an incident of a very bad man who stood itiaeHof a Western prison. This crimi nal had gone through all styles of crime, and lie was there waiting fur th gallows. The convict standing there at the window of the cell, this writer says, "looked out and declare. 1, T am an infidel.' He sai l that t, ull the men and women nnd chil dren who happened to be gathered there, 'I an; an inMdel." " And the eloquent writer says, "Every man and woman there be lieved him.'' And the writer goes on to sav. "If lie had stood there saying. T arc a Christian.' every man and wo'xau would l:a v ?aid. "lie i- a liar" " Th'.s liiMe i the sworn enemy of nil that i wr ng, and it is the friend of all that i gocd. ():i, hold ou it! Do not take art of it and throw the rest away. Hold on t aii of it. There are so many people now who do not know. You ask them if the scu'i is immortal, and they sav: "I guess it h; I r.oa't know. Perhaps it is; perhaps it isn't." Is the Bible true? Well, perha It 19, and perhaps It isn't. Threaps it rr.ny te, Ugurativoly, aud perhaps It may i rTtlr a;J tirj-l'arj i uijy HOT It at ail,' They despise what they call the apostolic cred, but if their own creed were written out :t would rea 1 like this: "Ibelieve In nothing, the maker of heaven and irtb, zzxi :n nothing which it hath sent, which nothing was born of nothing and which nothing was dead and buried and descend ed into nothing and rose from, nothing and ascended to nothing and now sitteth at the right L-and of nothing, from wlLch it will come tojudge nothing. I be lieve lathe, hcly agno&tic churoh and in the communion of nothingarians and in the forgiveness of nothing and t!i9re9ur-rtcti'-n of nothing and in the Hfethat never shall be. Amen!" That is the creed of tens cf thousands of people in this day. If vcu have a mind to adopt such a theory, I w'il not. "I believe in God, the Father Al mighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ and in the holy catholic church and in the communion of saints and In the iif everlasting. Amen!" Oh, when I see Eleanar taking such a stout grip of the sword in the battle against sia and for righteousness, I come to the con clusion that we ought to take a stouter grip of God's eternal truth the sword of righteousness. As I look at Eleazar's hand I also notice his spirit of self forgetfulness. He did not notice that the hilt of the sword was eating through the palm of his hand. He did not know it hurt him. As he went out into the conflict he was so anxious for the victory ho forgot himself, and that hilt might go never so deeply into the palm of his hand, it could not disturb him. "His hand.elave unto tne sword." Oh, my brothers and sisters, let us go into the Christian conflict with the spirit of self abnegation. "Who ares whether ice world praises us or de nounces us'.' What ilj we care for misrep resentation or abuse or persecution in a conflict like tuis? T,ef us forget ourselves. That man who is afraid of getting his hand hurt will never kill a Philistine. Who car?s whether you get hurt or not if you i get the victory? Oh. how many Christians there are who are all the lime worrying about the way the world treats them! They are so tired, and they are so abused, and they are so tempted, when Eleazar did not think whether he had a hand or an arm or a foot. All he wanted was victory. We see liow men forget themselves in worl lly achievement. We have often seen men wno, in crier to achieve worldly suc cess, will forget all physical fatigue and nil annoyance and all obstacle. Just after the battle of Yorkiown in the American Revolution a musician, wounded, was told he must have his limbs amputated, and they were about to fasten him to the surgeon's table. for it was long before the merciful discovery of anaesthetics. He s'id: "Xo; don't fasten me to that tabic. Get me a violin." A violin was brought to him, and ho said, "Now, go to work as I b'gin to play," and for forty minutes, during the awful pangs ef amputation, lie moved not a muscle nor dropped a note, while ho phfyed some sweet tune, oh, j? it Lot strange that with tho music of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and with this errand mrrch of tho church mi litant on the way to become tho church triumphant, we catmot forget ourselves and forget all pang and all sorrow and all 1 ers ecution and all perturbation? We know what men accompltsTi under worldly opposition. Men do notshrink back lor antagonism or for hardship. You have admired Tre-cott's "Conquest of Mexico," a- brilliant and beautiful a history as was ever written, but some of you may not know under what disadvantages it was v.-titten that "Conquest of Mexico" for Pre.seort was totally blind, and he had two I h. ers of Wvjod parallel to each other fast- 1 t i. I 1 11'. 1 - 1 1 , i f.jcu, .i in iotaiiy i.'iinu, v, itn uis pen re- tween those pieces of wood, ho wrote the troko against one piece of wood telling how far the pen must go In one way, the stroke against the other piece of wood tell ing how far tiie pen must go the other war. Oh, how much men will endure for worldly knowledge and for wordiv success, and vet how ilttl ; we endure fr Js;;s Christ! How manv Christians there are that go around paying. ' Oh, my hand: oh, my hand, my hurt hand! Don't you see there is blood on the sword?" while E'.eaz.ir. with t he hiit im bed, led in the flesh of his right hand, does not know- it. Must I be carried, to the t'kies On llowory beds of ea.o. While others fought to win the prizo Or sailed through bloody seas? Wiiat have we suffered in comparison with those who expired with suffocation or were 1 urued or were chopped to pieces for the truth's sake? We talk of the persecution of olden times. There is just as much per secution going on now in various wavs. In lsi:), in Madagascar, eighteen n:ea were put to death for Christ's sake. They were to be hurled over the rocks, and before they were hurled over the rocks, in order to make their death tho more dreadful in an ticipation, they were put in baskets and swung to and fro over the precipice that they might see how many hundred feet thev wouid 'nave to be dashed down, and while thy were -winging in these baskets over the rocks they sang: Jesus, lover of my -out. Let n-.? to Thy bosoai !ly. Y':ise th- bill ws near me roi. While the tempe-t still is hig'a. Then they were dash 1 down to death. O a. iww much ...th ir I:av eniur -1 for Chri-r. and how little we entire ;or Christ: We want to ride to heaven ia a Pullman .-'.ee'.ing ear, cur feet on soft insb. thi bed made ur earh . so we ca i s.eep all the way. the black porter of death io . ake us up only in time to enter th golden city. We want all the surgeons to fix our hand up. Let them bring on nil thi lint and all the bandages and ail th- salve. iS U fcDi is hurt, while Eleazar does not know his hand i hurt. "His haul clave unto the sword." A I look at Eleazar's hand I come to the conclusion that he has done a great deal of hard bitting. I am not surprised when I see that these four men Eleaz.ar and nis three companions drove back the army of Philistines that Eleazar's sword clave to his hand, forevery time hestruck an enemy with one end of the sword the other end of the sword wounded him. When he took hold of the sword, the sword took hold of him. Oh, we have found an enemy who cannot be conquered by resewater and soft speeches. It must be sharp stroke and straight thrust. There is intemperance, and there is fraud, and there is gambling, and there is lust, and there are 10.000 bat talions of iniquity, armed Philistine in lquitv. How are they to be captured and overthrown? Soft sermons in morocco cases laid down in front of an exquisite au dience will not do it. You have got to call things by their right name. You have got to expel "from our churches Christians who eat the sacrement on Sunday and devour widow's houses all the week. We have got to etop our indignation against the Hittites and the Jenusites and the Gir gashites and let those poor wretches go and apply our indignation to the mod ern transgressions which need b dragged out and slain. Ahabs here, Herods here, Jezebels here, the massacre of the Infants here. Strike for God so hard that while you slay the sin the sword will adhere to your own hand. I tell you, my friends, we want a few John Knoxes aud John Wesleys in the Christian church to day. The whole tendency is to rellne on Christiau work. We keep cu reilning on it until wo send apologetic word to iniquity we ;ire about to capture it. And we must go with sword silver chased aud presented by the ladies, and we must ride cn white palfrey under embroidered hous ing, putting the spurs in only just enougi to make the charger dauce gracefully, and then we must seAd a missive, delicate as a wedding card, to ask the old black giant of sin i" he will not surrender. Women saved by the grace of God and on glorious mission sent, detained from Sabbath classes be cause their new hat is not done. Churches that shook our cities with great revivals sending around to ask some demonstrative worshiper if he will not please to say "Amen" and "halleluiah"' a little softer. It seems as if in our churches we wanted a baptism of cologne and balm of a thousand flowers when wo actually need a baptism of lire from tho Lord God of Pentecost. But we are so afraid somebody wiil criti cise our sermons cr criticise our prayers or criticise our religious work that our anxiety for the world's redemption is lost in the fear wo will get our hand hurt, while Eleazar went into the eonflct, "and ids hand clave unto the sword." But I see in the next place what a hard thing it was for Eleazar to get his hand and his sword parted. The muscles and the sinews had been so long grasped around the sword he could not drop it when he proposed to drop it, and his three com rades, I suppose, came up and tried to help hb;n, an;; they bathed tho back part of his hand, hoping the sinews and muscles would relax. But no. "His hand clave unto tho sword." Then they tried to pull open the lingers and to pull back the thumb, but no sooner were they pulled bade than they closed again, "and his hand ciave unto tho sword." But after awhile thev were suc cessful, and then they noticed that the curve in tie? palm of tho hand corresponded exactly with the curvo of the hilt. "His hand clave unto the sword." You and I Lave seen it manv a time. There are in the United States to-day mj;);y aged ministers of the Gope',. They are too feeble now to preach. Iri the church records the word standing opposite their name is "emeritus." or tho words are "a minister without charge."' Tin y were a heroic race. They had small salaries and but few books, and they swam spring freshets to meet their appointments, but they .nq iu their 'eiy a mighty work for Gid. Thev to.k off more or the heads of Philistine iniquity than yon con 1 1 count from noon to sunuown. You put that old minister of tne Gospel now into a praver meetin- or occasioual pulpit cr a si de room where there is some one to be comforted and it is the same old ring to his voice aud the same old story of pardon and pf a v? and i nriSc and heaven. His hand has .- Jon-c.-;tehe i the sword in Christian eonfit-t he cannot drop it. "His hand clave cnto the f-v.crd. ' Tiie Vz-at and Two Kmpprnrs to Mret. -here will be a meeting of the Czar, the German Emptor and Emperor Francis eose; h at Scierneviee, Itussia, upon theoc-ea.-i n c. a great hunting party next au- on Torpedo Rone. So injurious is life on a torpedo boat that a year's continuous service will mentally and physically incapacitate a man. This assertion is made on the authority of Lord Charles Heresford, rut that the strain on any one serving on these craft is very great is shown by he fact that to one month's servicr be British naval regulations allow on week off. Austria is endeavoring to mitigate tho hardship of service or. hesfe boats, and life on one built fo: che Austrian ravy and tried cn the Thames recently va. demonstrated to t pleasanter than cn those of tht Ecfllab To Car Constipation Forcvsy, Take Cascarets Candy Cmtbartia ir 0.. If a C. C fil to cure, drugtfiste refima cvl He who lives by his wits is the nflsriK. 44 He Who Pursues Two Hares Catches Neither f Said a tuett kn&wn young man about town, "I tried for years to burn the candle 9t both ends, in the pursuit of pleasure while trying to attend to business. My blood, stomach and kidneys got into a wretched state and it seemed that I could not carry the burden any longer. But now my rheumatism has gon, rv.v courage has returned, and all on kin-out x of that marvel, Hood's Sirsaparilla, w::ic; has made me a picture of health. v,w I'm in for business pure nnd simple. ' Mip Disease-"I had running ton s f ight years on my bins. I was confined my bed ;t times and rt others use.d i run ) Hood's Sarsaparilla cured my hip and u tvt me perm-mem health." Oi.i'ie J. An, m i. 13 Dudley Street, Dayton, Ohio. Indigestion T uowbave; ciMarie lite, eat well, sleep w-ll ami ir.y iyspesi.i nl indiestiou havf iet ue. 1 tte 'V.tsop, I took liood's Sarsaparill.i which entirely rnred me. I am Haicasce Master on the H O. liailroad." ThojIas Cole, 119 Carr .t, Sandusky, Ohio. fwod6 SaMaha'i'p Hood'a Pi'.l rare liver the ::on-lrrftaMi:y the only cathartic to take v itli H oU's tSarsir:.!. THE COOPER MARBLE WORKS. EstaMlshed oO Years. 159-163 Bank St., - NORFOLK, V'A. Largest Slock in the South! Lo.v prices lo. prices quoted on Mom:mert Gravestones Etc., in larbb i Granite .delivered at any Southeri pp nr. rite for Illustrated i'xUlox. -NO. 1, It. IS t . ; ;f ;,. ;;,. niotley. BENCH CHALLENGE WATER-PROOF . . . SSHOE POLESH 9 tor shine, polish an li.h finish mmim. . anv km.wii i.!;sh.-vf r offeree on U,e mark. t. ri:n walk In water. If youliKe, wit'umt wctMnsr vouriwt. S v-e.-al inuVr.'tit colors e,-,i, ie in.-ek- it desir.-.J; .irs in hUoitly. Plain prmte.l formula and dirvctl .n f ir niatnnir nt seaie.l.im o,.'!tir, other va''l.'e f.,nr.. Hlwt in" A's,r"e Siv-r Hate. Pu.fr Pi-h. U -e -din ' nf-ilynrrT stamps t.r.i str.-. t,-t cf IF TOO Qlig. "iHKU HELP. Ycu cannot do this unless vou nTi i"rtn1 th'm wJ know imw to altr in thi'ir reqnirt ir.'-: t; ui-l von -annot spoml years aud dollars l.-a u n,: uv ft psrieiicc, cu you must buy tae kn jwlk-,l- a?i'i.rti by otherii. We oJTei tins to you fur only ceiU- YOU WANT THCM TO PAY THEIR OWN WAY even If you merely tep tuem a d!rpro??. In or der to handle 1 owls j.ellcl .u.ly. you )w: kne oinetliin' aV.ti- it:-rr. ',( m,Pt lUii wfint flliiiS a tKKik y.nx tto cx,.r,ciice I r.! IK of a rrucM.ai j-.ultrv ru...r fcrlwrtiyJCt tv.T.tj-v- t-rs. It wa wrtt-n hy a man who t ut il his n,iiil. and tlnif, arc ir our to msii-ip a fne cewior Cbioken rapine not as a Vat"e. M buslnes-,u.l u ,-,, wm I h;- twt.ni-m TL" k'-vouJTn we rnonyChicW annually. IrT ,t VUr towU earl1 dollars for you. Tw ii. piV4,JouJnu"t b tl to detect tronWota H tlll t r lb .ThU book t&rto J Vn i V 1 lStect cur iwwe; to rnr frf.nl lr forfa,?; which fowl, tovcf choul.i In P ' Md vcrythlnr, lud-e l, 7i -cm i-ostDaiu for twenty-fte cenu Li tUun Book Publishint? House 134 Loas.d &t N. V. City. Chickens Earn Money. tor 25' ",4stamrtrl,.;iUlll,,J,jrfV .,(,Pj vinthe expert jf a j,r:i 'r. ;:rv Kar-ot an amature, butaaw orkrrf ior collars and r , . riri.. Fl 7 a:8 fr Flteai,.P. wtira fOWli tn Ha r. , ' nui.it- f . rpJn?; everrthir.? re- PrBLLSHINO CO "77 " 1