Gospel Herald, 1860-06-23

              AID.
Devoted to Ohrietianitj^, Morality, the In.tere.sts of SabTnath. Schools, Social Improveinent, TeiTiperance, Educatioii, and. General Ne-wrg.
"BEHOLD,   I   BRING   YOU   GOOD   TIDINGS   OP   GREAT   JOY  ....   ON   EARTH   PEACE,   GOOD   WILL   TOWARD   MEN.'
VOL. 17.
DA.YTON, O., SATURDAY, JUNE 23,1860.
NO.8.
SELECT POETRY.
Death, the King of Terrors.
SKLEOTJSn B5f   II. I'EOST.
Death, it is the king of terrors,
And a terror to all kings; Oft it tills our inintla with horror,
Telling us of frightful things. Land of darkness, shades of silence.
Gloomy vaults where prisoners lie. Many thousands have t ean conquered,
Y«u, alas I must shortly die.
Dont you see how unexpected,
In my chariot I do ride; Convulsion, fits, with p,ain, and sickness,
Are my weapons by my aide; Deaf am I to all entreaties.
When commissioned I must go. With mortal paleness on my featnres.
Thus I give the fatal blow.
Nor did you hear I spared any. Children, husbands, nor their wives;
Not was I ever bribed by money, . Medicine ooul^ not save their lives;
There they lio without distinction. Thus I boast my thousands slain.
Nor can they without peirmission. Ever hope to rise again.
Slop, 0, death don't boast of victory,
Methinks I hear what faith can gay: Aboiit one Jesus on Mount Calvary,
Who died and in the grave did lay; View him rising, hear him saying.
Stern death, I have conquered yon. Though your looks are so dismaying,'
Yet ray saints will conquer too.
There the wicked cease from troubling.
There the weary are at rest,   , There the saints shall oease from crying,
There they are forever blest; Free from sickness, free from sorrow,
Free from every anxious care; Come, 0 come, my blessed Saviour,
Fain my spirit would be there.
ORIGINALITIES.
WHUtn for tha (fotpeUUrald.
Duty of Ministers and Churches,
No. 3.
BY  H.  SIMONTON.
Those denominations who continue to treat their ministers thus, by forcing them to spend one-half o,t their time in labor lo support themselves and their families, cannot continue to pros¬ per—they must fall back. It is our most deliberate opinion, that they iWght as well make their arrangements to close up business, for the Lord will liave, but little, if any thing, for them to dp; they must, meet His call on them, and filHhe liberal bill of raveaied truth, made out for them, or they will be urged out of the field, and others will take their places, who will do the work in due and proper time, and do it according to order.
Perhaps some people may think and say that this is all a wild imagination of a money-loving mind, but it is not ?o; it is a reality^ne that is urging itself upon the Christian consideration of all good men ; and the sooner they permit themselves to see and feel its due claims on them the bettor it will be for them. The time has come for nien to act like full grown men, in Chirst, and not like children of this world, whose God is the mighty dollar. Good principles will not fill the place of g.ood actions. There must be right action on tho part of the Church.
We may hold the best of religious .sentiments ; our Church doctrines may ^U^ be sound; they may all be In accordance with the revealed will of
God. Should this be all true to tho letter, it will not save us. If we wish our sentiments to sustain aud save us, we must live and support them, in all their claims on us. We hold that a good and glorious work has been done within the last sixty years by the mis¬ sion of the Christian Church; but there is much for us to do to complete the good begun work; and should we conclude to arrest the work in its unfin¬ ished condition, we may lose all.
We can remember when men ploughed the ground with the old- fashioned plough, and then used the brush of a tree to put the seed into the gi'ouhd, because they could do no better; but that day is gone by. Our fathers—many of them—lived in log cabins, and covered their out-buildings with straw, and lived without many of the necessary comforts of life, that we have. They did the best they could; they did well, at the time and under the peculiar circumstances un¬ der which they were forced to live, in a new country. We say they did well— they performed a noble work, and we loved them, and will embalm their memory, and bind it to our hearts.
Our fathers were poor, and hence the Church was poor, compared with her condition at this time. Many of us remember well those days that tried men's souls. Many of us went to school but little; there were but few schools; our fathers were poor, and we had to work. And while we write these lines, we feel the wa,nt of the light that children now have; but be¬ cause we had to live in poverty, and destitute of a high order of intellectu¬ al culture, it is no reason why our children should not attend our best in¬ stitutions of learning, and become fine soholars—well-informed men and wo¬ men.
And now, wns it not for the ardent desire we have, that our children should occupy the advance ground of our fathers, and us, we would not ox- pose our lack of intellectual culture to the view of a more cultivated class of minds; but we hope men can under¬ stand us, and excuse our imperfec¬ tions,and appreciate our good motives. We love the truth better than we love gold and silver; and feeling, that as a Christian people, wo are not doing all we should, and are able to do, to sus¬ tain and advance it, we feel it our du¬ ty to call the attention of the Church to an obligation that she must attend to, or suffer.
We may be censured for writing thus pointedly. Well, we are willing to receive it when we are found de¬ fending truth. It will not require a very wise man to tell from what por¬ tion of the church it will be most like¬ ly to come. It will not come from that class who have been born again, whose souls have been regenerated by the saving resurrection power of living truth. But it will come from the selfish souls who have notbeen softened by di¬ vine grace. Those in whose souls the redeeming grace of God has never been permitted to get below the im¬ mortal dollar, and brake its hold on the selfish affections of the heart—such as love what they call a free, ehfeap Gos¬ pel, by which they can go to Heaven without money. Such can have the saving power of the   Gospel to start
on, but then they must pay their part to sustain it among thom. Many per¬ sons would bo pleased to have a Gos¬ pel so free that they would have noth¬ ing to do in any sense of the term,— Such may complain of us.
WrIUm for tht Oorpel Horali.
The Punishment of Guilt. H. K. m'connell.
Guilt makes all nature vocal with harrassing accusation. The green grass seems to say, as the guilty foot is about to tread upon it, "do not stain me with the crimson of your wickedness." Charles DeMoore said of the beautiful earth, while it was being kissed by the departing rays of the setting sun, "This earth, this heaven,is a hell to me." Had his poor soul been guiltless, how would this same inspiring scenery have poured into his bosom "the soul-refreshing drops."
When Herod heard of tho spread¬ ing fame of Jesus he immediately thought of John, whom he had so un¬ justly imprisoned and beheaded, and said, "This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead; and therefore mighty works do show forth in him." This he said, not because there was a chiain of testimony tending to that conclusion; but on account of the up¬ rising of his guilty conscience, which bade him fear that God would in some such way avenge such violent wrong as he was guilty of in the murder of John the Baptist.
What a hell must this have been to himi The first interpretation of every strange thing, to be a harbinger of di¬ vine justice to inflict still higher pun¬ ishment on him than the ceaseless anguish of his lacerated conscience.
Some birds were in the habit of visit¬ ing a chamber-window to warble their matin lays. The inmate had them killed; and assigned as the reason therefor, that they accused him of the assassination of his father. It needs no philosopher's ken to see that it was his own guilt of the act, that gave such accents to the voice of nature's sweet songsters.    '
He had murdered his father, and on this account he heard in the melody of the birds his first accusation. Like Cain, who, though unseen by man while in the act of committing the "foul deed of his brother's blood," feared that every one who saw him would slay him.
A King was used to hear, in the moaning of tho wind, the drowning shrieks of the prince whom he had caused to be committed to tho -waves; not because the innocent wind actual¬ ly bore a sound not breathed upon it, but so quick was his conscience to tho guilt of the act that it converted the sighs of the zephyr into accents like this.  •
Thus sufter the guilty while here, where the true condition is locked up from the sight of all earthly associates —where little of their true history can bo read or known—where even the extent to which God knows the secrets of the heart is crudely realized. What will it be when the soul is unmasked in the piercing light of eternity, so that the whole and complete panorama of life, in "life-size," will be visible to
their own as well as the vision of all other beings around and above them. May not the withering anguish that must then follow, justly be called "tho second death?" But lest my article, as Shakspearo says, be a,s but two grains of wheat to two bushels of chaff, I hei'e clcse.
WriUmforthe Cospa! Hvrald,
Notes by the Way.
BY D.   W.   MOORE.
I have just returned from a visit to the N. J. Christian Conference,.and the city of New York. It would do your very soul good, to travel through northern New Jersey, and especially along the banks of .the beautiful Dela¬ ware, at this season . of the year. ;On my way to Conference, I called on Bid. J. D. Lauer, who resides at. Hope, in Warren County, and is pastor of .the Hope and Johnsonburg Christian churches. Ho is doing a good work and isi highly esteemed by hiSiCongre- gations. Here I had the pleasure of visiting the "Jeriny Jump" anountftins, of which Elder i?.ay gave you such: an interesting account, ,a few weeks,ago. This remarkable niountain'for beauty and sublimity of scenery, must be seen, to be realized.
On Wednesday the 23d ult., I left Hope, and went to Belvidere, the shire town of Warren Co. I here visited the jail, where tho Eev. Jacob Harden is now in chains, and in prison, under the sentence of death, for tne murder of his wife. But I did not havo jin opportunity of conversing with the prisoner, as he did not feel inclined to, entertain strangers. He is to be executed on the 28th day of. the pres¬ ent month, He is a young man, but 23 years of ago, and for three years previous to his arrest, was a minister in the M. E. church.
But temptations were thrown around him, evil passions grew upon him, un¬ til ho comraittod the highest crime re¬ corded in our statutes; and now his doom is fixed, the sentence passed, his days are numbered, and he soon must suffer the penalties of the law. 0 boys and young men take warning.
Prom Belvidere I passed down the Delaware river, on the New Jersey side, on the B. & D. E. R The Dela¬ ware is certainly one of the most beau¬ tiful rivers I ever saw; banks high, pebbly bottom, aud water pure. Ar¬ rived at Milford, in Hunterdon Co., about 5 P. M. This neat little village is situated on the left bank of the Del¬ aware, about 40 miles above Fhiladel- phia. It is one of the pioneer stations of the Christian church, and the final resting place of sister Abigail Roberts, who did so much for the Christian cause throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. Here I had the pleasure of forming an acquain¬ tance with our good brother, Elder J- N. Spoor, who is pastor of the Milford Christian congregation. Hehasagood church, numbering about 150avairable raembera. He informed mo, that o-n the Sunday previous, he baptizedS-i converts, in the beautiful waters of the Delaware, in the presence of about a thousand people.
About two miles from Milford, across inPennsylvania, is to be seen, what might be called one of the i"wond6r8"