Hope Republican, Volume 2, Number 29, Hope, Bartholomew County, 9 November 1893 — Page 2

HOPE REPUBLICAN. Bv Jat C. Smith. HOPE INDIANA Fifty-two “favorite sons” of the great Keystone State are members of the present Congress. Six of them are United States Senators. Two Senators and twenty-eight Representatives make up the delegation of Pennsylvania. The others are serving constituencies in twelve States and one Territory. The gold fields in the British colonies of South Africa are booming. The reports from the new Eldorado are marvelous. The wealth of the country in diamonds, gold, silver, copper and coal is seemingly inexhaustible. Future developments it is believed will far exceed the products of the- past, which have been fabulous. A fortune is said to await the man who will invent a cheap and harmless coloring matter that will give a pink tint to butter. A New York firm now sends butter to a faroff island of the sea, but is compelled to first color it pink, as the natives refuse to buy any other color. The “dyestuff” now used is a French preparation, and is very expensive. A cheap substitute is badly needed in order that the traffic may be extended and the profits increased.

The roof of the new National Library at Washington is to be capped with a dome that wjll rival the great white dome of the capitol. Unlike that famous structure, however, this dome is to b&gilded. More gold will be used on this dome than on any gilded dome in the world. There are> some 10,000 square feet to be covered. The dome is now covered with a shroud of canvas under which the workmen are carrying on the tedious task of applying the gold leaf. Sis weeks of good weather will be needed to complete the work. The gold leaf is being made from pure gold by a Baltimore gold boater especially for this contract. The movement to raise a fund for the Duke of Veragua is said to have been a failure. There does not seem to have been any great and irrepressible desire on the part of the great body of the American people to give away their honest or dishonest dollars to a man who had squandered his ancestral estate in an attempt to popularize the Spanish national pas time of bull-baiting at the French capital. The “Dook” is doubtless a very nice man, but it is bighty improbable that he will ever have to "saw wood for a living. With our starving thousands of unemployed workingmen, it would seem that the surplus wealth of our great millionaires might be better employed than in helping to swell a gift fund to a titled aristocrat who owes his financial embarassments to his own folly and barbarian tastes, and the information that the snobbish attempt to bestow such wealth in that way has failed will be received with gratification by the majority of people. The frantic efforts of tradesmen of all departments of business, as a rule, are considered essential to success, the intense competition of the day having produced a feverish haste and nervous tension which are denominated “business enterprise.” Occasionally, however, we hear of a merchant of the old school who still survives and scorns the aid of modern innovations to hold his trade or attract new traffic. He is generally an “old' settler” who “was there first,” and often the the financial and social mogul of the village or town he thrives in. Such men are admirable characters in their way, and though “Young America” denounces them as “old fogy” and talks about “first-class funerals” before the town can catch up with the procession, the “old man” moves on in the even tenor of his way, holding his old friends and as a rule gaining the respect of new comers. This peculiarity of character seldom survives in large cities, the rush and drive of the multitude seldom stopping to weigh the merits or pass upon the failings of business, men. The New York Sun, however, has discovered such a man in that city. ‘He deals An old furniture. His store

is chaos. No pretensions to style or even cleanliness. Prefers to buy x-ather than sell anything that pleases him. Hates to exhibit goods. His prices are high. Yet he is locally famous, does a large business, and his trade extends to cities hundreds of miles distant. “Long may he live and prosper.” Columbian concessionaries nearly wrecked the Exposition at its inception by shameless extortion, and much of the uncertainty as to the final outcome of the enterprise that prevailed in the early summer was due to this cause. These outrages happily were to a great extent removed, and the public finally became aware that it was within the possibilities to visit Jackson Park without being metaphorically if not actually “held up.” The Columbian Exposition concessionaries have received the magnificent revenue of $4,000,000 from concessions at the Fair—the Ferris wheel, intramural railroad, roller chairs, restaurants, various villages, pop-corn, soda water, etc. The people having privileges paid from 20 to 50 per cent of “'eir profits into the general fund. D ubtless tfie management were sw He:l on the x-ound up to some mit the same as the genei’al public, but x’easonable people who visited the Fair during the summer and fall must concede that the prices charged for necessaries were low considering the time and place. Visitors to Chicago from almost any part of Indiana, if they have confined their expenditures to actual necessities, have made an investment and acquired information and inspiration that would be cheap at ten times the money. This expenditure has not been an extravagance in the case of the great majority, but rather a solid acquisition that will yield a rich return that should only cease with life itself. Last winter an oyster that had in some unknown manner lost its life in a bowl of church festival oyster soup precipitated a miniature riot in a Hoosier rural community, and the victim (the rioter, that is.) was landed in jail befox’e he x-ecovered from his “surprise” at the unusual spectacle that temporarily unsettled his reason. Noxv comes the startling information from Missouri that trouble has been brewing for five years in a church in Callaway county as to the price that should be chai’ged for a dish of ice cream at the festivals and socials given by the ladies of the cbngi-egation. The cream question became a leading issue, and involved the entii’e membership. A serious feud was the result. Three members x’esigned. One elder was removed. The case was carried to the Presbytery, appealed to the Synod, and further appealed to the General Assembly. In the latter body it was thrown out, 70 to 71. The question was referred back to the Missouri Presbytary, and a committee was appointed to visit,the church. The price of ice cream in the meantime has become involved in a dense cloud of uncertainty. Church socials are declared off. The community is at daggei’s’ points. The outlook for oyster soup, with or without oysters, is bad for the coming winter. The exchequer of the Ladies’ Aid Society is empty. There is a prevailing air of gloom and discontent, and a firm conviction in the minds of saint and sinner that the world is out of joint, and that if we are not “on the stroke of the midnight hour,” and on the brink of everlasting destruction, we ought to be. With questions so vast and momentous claiming the entire attention of our best citizens, and rending into non-cohesive fragments the very foundations of good morals, and of society itself, the outlook for tariff reform and the growth of an undivided public sentiment in the more trivial issues of free coinage or the repeal of the Sherman bill become more than ever an “ignus fatuous” that will still elude the grasp of political reformers or Papal emissaries, and will make the “star-eyed goddess bow her head in shame and wring her hands in despair. “And now abideth faith, hope and charity, these three. But the greatest of these is charity. ” One of the candidates for Governor of Virginia wants pretty long odds. “Give me the women and the [drummers,” he says, “and I’ll beat I creation.”

TAmfl«miTu& Dr. Talmage Speaks About Candidates and Characters. Tl»« Ten Commandments the True Tost of Fitness lor Official Position. Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn last Sunday. Text—Exodus xx, 18; “And all the people saw the thunderings and the lightnings and the noise of the trumpet and the mountain smoking.” He said: On the eve of elections in the sixty counties of this State, and in all the counties of most of the United States, while there are many hundreds of nominees to office, it is appropriate and important that I preach this before election sermon. My text informs you that the lightnings and earthquakes united their forces to wreck a mountain of Arabia Petraea in olden time, and travelers today find heaps of porphyry and greenstone rocks, bowl der against bowlder, the remains of the first law library, written, noton parchment or papyrus, but on shattered slabs of granite. The cornerstones of all morality, of all wise law, of all righteous jurisprudence, of all good government are the two tablets of stone on which are written the ten commandments. All Roman law, all French law, all English law, all American law that is worth anything, all common law, civil law, criminal, martial law, law of all nations were rocked in the cradle of the twentieth chapter of Exodus. And it would be well in these times of great political agitation if the newspapers would print the decalogue some day in place of the able editorial. The fact is that some people suppose that the law has passed out of existence, and some are not aware of some of the passages of that law, and others say this or that is of the more importance, when no one has any right to make such an assertion. These laws are the pillars of society, and if you remove one pillar you damage the whole structure. Many questions are before the people in the coining elections all over the land, but I shall try to show you that the most important thing to be settled about all these candidates is their personal, moral character. The decalogue forbids idolatry, image making, profanity, maltreatment of parents, Sabbath desecration, murder, theft, incontinence, lying and covetousness. That is the decalogue by which you and I will have to be tried, and by the same decalogue you and I must try candidates for office. Most certainly are we not to take the statement of red hot partisanship as to the real character of any man. From nearly all the great cities of this land I receive daily or weekly newspapers, sent to me regularly and in compliment, so I see both sides—I see all sides—and it is most entertaining and my regular amusement to read the opposite statements. The one statement says the man is an angel and the other says he is a devil; and I split the difference and I find him half way between. I warn you also against the mistake which many are making and always do make of applying a different standard of character for those in prominent position from the standard they apply fo 1 ’ ordinary persons. However much a man may have or however high the position he gets, he has no special liberty given him in, the interpretation of the ten commandments. A great sinner is no more to be excused than a small sinner. Do not charge illustrious defection to eccentricity or chop off the ten commandments to suit especial cases. The right is everlastingly right and the wrong is everlastingly wrong. If any man nominated for any office in this city or State differs from the decalogue do not fix up the decalogue but fix him up. The law must stand whatever else must fall. I call your attention also to the fact that you are all aware of—that the breaking of any one commandment makes it the more easy to break all of them—and the philosophy is plain. Any kind of sin weakens the conscience, and if the conscience is weakened that opens the door for all kinds of transgression. If, for instance, a man go into this political campaign wielding scurrility as his chief weapon and he believes everything bad about a man and believes nothing good, how long before that man himself will gel over the moral depression? Neither in time nor eternity. And then, when you investigate a man on such subjects, you must go to the whole length of investigation and find out whether or not he has repented. He may have been on his knees before God and implored the divine forgWeness, and he may have implored the forgiveness of society' and the forgiveness of the world. Although if a man commit that sin at thirty or .thirty-five years of age, there is not one case out of a thou-

sand where lie ever repeals, you, must in our investigation see if it is i possible that the one case investigated may not have been the exception. But do not chop off the seventh commandment to suit the case. Do not change Fairbanks scale to suit what you are weighing with it. Do not cut off a yardstick to suit the dry goods you are measuring. Let the law stand and never tamper with it. Above all, I charge you do not join in the cry that 1 have heard — for fifteen, twenty' years I have heard it. If you make that charge, you are a foul mouthed scandaler of the human race. You are a leper. Make room for that leper! When a man, by pen or type or tongue, utters such a slander on the human race that there is no such thing as purity, I know right away that that man himself is a walking lazaretto, a reeking ulcer, and is fit for no society bettor than that of devils damned. We may enlarge our charities in such a case, but in no such case let us shave off the ten commandments. Let them stand as the everlasting defense of society and of the church of God. The committing of one sin opens the door for the commission of other sins. You see it every day'. Those embezzlers, those bank cashiers absconding as soon as they are brought to justice, develop the fact that they are in all kinds of sin. No exception to the rule. They all kept bad company, they nearly all gambled, they all went to places where they ought not. Wffiy? The commission of the one sin opened the gate for all the other Sins. Sins go in flocks, in droves and in herds. You open the door for one sin, that invites in all the miserable segregation. Some of the campaign orators this autumn —some of them —bombarding the suffering candidates all the week, will think no wrong in Sabbath breaking. All week hurling the eighth commandment at one candidate, the seventh commandment at another candidate and the ninth commandment at still another, what are they doing with the fourth commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy?” Breaking it. Is not the fourth commandment as important as the eighth, as the seventh, as the ninth? Some of these political campaign orators, as I have seen them reported in other years, and as I have heard it in regard to them, bombarding the suffering candidates all the week, yet tossing the name of God from their lips recklessly, guilty of profanity—what are they doing with the third commandment? Is not the third commandment, which says. “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain” —is not the third commandment as important as the other seven? Oh, yes, we find in all departments men are hurling their indignation against sins perhaps to which they are not particularly tempted —hurling it against. iniquity toward which they are not particularly drawn. I have this book for my authority when I say that the man who swears or the man who breaks the Sabbath is as culpable before God as those candidates who break other commandments. What right have you and I to select which commandments we will keep and which we will break? Better not try to measure the thunderbolts of the Almighty, saying this has less blaze, this has less momentum. Better not handle the guns, better not experiment much with the divine ammunition. 1 bring up the oandidaaes for ward and township, and city and State office. I bring them up, and I tr\' them by this decalogue. Of course they are imperfect. We are all imperfect. We say things we ought not to say: we do things we ought not to do. We have all been wrong; we have all done wrong. But I shall find out one of the candidates who comes, in my estimation, nearest to obedience of the ten commandments, and 1 will vote for him, and you will ; vote for him unless you love God | less than your party —then you will 1 not.

Herodotus said that Nitocris. the : daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, was so ! fascinated with her beautiful village | of Aadericca that she had the river i above Babylon changed so it wound I this way and wound that, and ! curved this way and curved that, and though you sailed on it for three days every day you would be in sight of that exquisite village. Now, 1 do not care which way you sail in morals or which way you sail in life if ' you only sail in sight of this beautiI ful group of divine commandments, j Although they may sometimes seem to be a little angular, I do not care which way you sail, if you sail in sight of them you will never run aground, and you will never bo shipwrecked. Society needs toning up on all these subjects. Let not ladies and gentlemen in this nineteenth century revise the ten commandments, but let them in society and at the polls put to the front those who come the nearest to this God-lifted standard. On the

iiXftb xacsdaymorciRg of fSovcmbor read the twentieth chapter of Exodus at family prayers. The moral or immoral character of the officers elected will add 75 per cent, unto or subtract 75 per cent, from the public morals. You and I can not afford to have bad officials. The young men of thiscountry can not afford to have bad officials. The commercial, the moral, the artistic, the agricultural, the manufacturing, the religious interests of this counury can not afford to have bad officials and if you, on. looking over the whole field, can not find men who in your estimation come within reasonable distance of obedience of the decalogue stay at home and do not vote all. As near as I can tell the most important thing now to be done is to. have about forty million copies of the Sinaitic decalogue printed and scattered throughout the land. It was a terrible waste when the Alexandrian library was destroyed, and the books were taken to heat 4,000 baths for the citizens of Alexandria. It was very expensive heat. But without any harm to the decalogue you could with it heat 100,000 baths of moral purification for the American people.

I say we want a tonic —a mighty tonic, a corrective, an all powerful corrective —and Moses in the text, with steady hand, notwithstanding the jarring mountains, and the full orchestra of the tempest, and the blazing of the air,. pours out ten drops—no more no less —which our people need to take for their moral convalescence. But I shall not leave you under the discouragement of the ten commandments, because we have all offended. There is another mountain in sight, and while one mountain, thunders the other answers in thunder, and while Mount Sinai with lightning Jfrites doom, the othermountain with lightning writes mercy. The only way you will ever spike the guns of the decalogue isby the spikes of the cross. The only rock that will ever stop the Sinaitie upheavals is the Rock of Ages. Mount Calvary is higher than Mount Sinai. Moultrie s silenced Sumter, and against the mountain of the law I put the mountain of the cross. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die,” booms one until the earth jars under the cannonade. “Save them from going down to the pit. I have found a ransom,” pleads the other, until earth and heaven and hell tremble under the reverbation. And Moses, who commands the one, surrendersto Christ, who commands the other. Aristotle says that Mount Etna, erupted one day and poured torrents of scoria upon the villages at the base, but that the mountain divided its flame and made a lane of safety for all those who came to rescue their aged parents. And this volcanic Sinai divides its fury for all those whom Christ has come to rescue from the red ruin on both sides. Standing as I do to-day, half-way between the two mountains — the mountain of the Exodus and the mountain of the nineteenth of John. —all my terror comes into supernatural calm, for the uproar of the one mountain subsides into quiet and comes down into so deep a silence that I can hear the other mountain speak—aye, I can hear it whisper, “The blood, the blood, the blood that cleanseth from all sin.”

Oh, if you could see that, boat of gospel rescue coming this day you would feel as John Gilmore in his book. “The Storm Warriors,” says that a ship’s crew felt on the Kentish Knock sands,off the coast of England, when they were being beaten, to pieces and they all felt they must die! They had given up all hope, and every moment washed off another plank from the wreck, and they said, “We must die; we must die!’ 1 But after they saw a Ramsgate lifeboat coming through the breakers for them, and the man standing highest up on the wreck said- “Can itbe ? It is, it is, it is,it is! Thank God. It is aRamsgate lifeboat! It is, it is, it is, it is!” And the old Jack Tar, describing that lifeboat to his comrades after begot ashore, said, “Oh. my lads, what a beauty it did seem coming through the breakers that awful day 1 ” My God. through the mercy of JesusChrist, take us all off the miserable wreck of our sin into ,he beautiful lifeboat of the gospel: MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. Ireland is larger than Scotland br 1.J00 square miles. There are ten distinct parliaments in the British Empire. Princess College may institute a medical school this year. A locomotive, requires fuel and labor to the value of *3,0110 in the course of a year. A pear that weighs ovci thirty ounces is on exhibition at a di-id-store in Atlanta, Ga. K German soldiers now cam- sh ter tents that, in case of necessity, can be used as boats in crossin" deepstreams. K