. The field of
Christian work is so large that there is no need that our hoe-handles
hit.

May God extirpate from the world ecclesiastical lies, commercial lies,
mechanical lies, and agricultural lies, and make every man, the world
over, to speak truth with his neighbor!

A GOOD TIME COMING.

As on some bitter cold night, while threshing our hands about to keep
our thumbs from freezing, we have looked up and seen the northern
lights blazing along the sky, the windows of heaven illumined at
the news of some great victory, so from beyond this bitter night of
abomination a brightness strikes through from the other side.

I have thought that it would be well, in these chapters on the sins of
the times, to lift before you a vision of what our cities will be
when the work of good men shall have been concluded and our population
redeemed. I doubt not that sometimes men have shut this book, thinking
that the gigantic wrongs we depict may never be discomfited. Lest you
be utterly disheartened, I will show you that we fight in a war in
which we will be completely victorious. This is to be no drawn battle;
for, when it is done, the result will not be disputed by a man on
earth, or an angel in heaven, or a devil in hell. We shall have
captured every one of the strongholds of darkness. You and I will
live to see the day when gambling-hells will be changed into places of
Christian merchandise, and houses of sin swept and garnished for the
residence of the purest home circles.

Beethoven was deaf, and could not hear the airs he composed; but when
the song of universal disenthralment arises, and white Circassian
stands up by the side of black Ethiopian, and tropical groves wave to
the Lebanon cedars, we shall, standing somewhere, know it and see it,
and hear it. If gone from earth, we will be allowed to come out on the
hills and look.

We do not talk about impossibilities. We do not propose a medicine
about which we have to say that it will "kill or cure." For this balm
that oozes from the tree of heaven will inevitably cure.

I remark that this coming time of municipal elevation will be a time
of financial prosperity. Many seem to suppose that when the world's
better days come, the people will forsake their industries, and give
themselves to perpetual psalm-singing, and, being all absorbed in
spiritual things, will become reckless as to dress and dwelling; and
very rigid laws then governing the commercial world, all e