Prison Light, The (Newspaper) - April 16, 1892, Waupun, Wisconsin THE PRISON LIGHT A LICHT IN THt Vol 1 No 4 TAKE MY HAMD Ottr pathway o'er the hill of life Is rough and steep The clouds so dark and threatening I scarce can courage keep I tremble oft and cannot stand Unless thou Father take my hand The tempter spreads his many snares To trip my weary feet Perhaps he thinks if once I fall His victory is complete Alone I cannot them withstand I pray thee Father take my hand the way is smooth and bright I am more apt to stray Because I on myself rely Then fall out by the way All by myself I cannot stand Bnt Thou wilt hold my hand The close of life comes on apace It may be very near But if I'm walking close to Thee I have no need to fear lead me to the shining strand I trust thee Father take tnv hand A B WIS For Prison Light THE CLOTHES AND THE FOLDED NAPKIN The linen clothes laid by St Luke And the napkin that was about His head not lying with but wrapped together in a place by John What were the designs of this Apparently trivial incident of the Resurrection to show and collected ness with which the Savior rose It was a strong circum- stantial refutation of the fiction which the chief priests and elders sought to promulgate Say ye His disciples by night and stole him away while we slept Surely there was no evidence of the haste confusion And indecorum of a Sepulcher bery here Its second design was to necessitate and to suggest to the minds of the disciples an additional miracle in the grand array of resurrection miracles the immediate provision of other clothing which provision occurring within the confines of the sepulcher could only have been made by mira- creative power Why did uol Jesus emerge from the tomb as rus did bound hand and foot with grave clothes It was unnecessary He could dis- robe and composedly lav aside His garments and furnish Himself with other though in the darkness of the night and ol tiie toino lor jle omnipotent Therefore it was that He laid the linen clothes by and assumed at once the at- tire of a gardener in which while it was yet dark He met Mary dalene Its third design was to show that the Saviour rose unchanged in human characteristics That He was that same Jesus when conqueror over death and the grave that lie had been when walking abroad with his dis- the lowly This incident was as we should say pre- like Him It was in perfect harmony with the dignity decorum carefulness thoughtfulness and cacy which had His demeanor on all occasions It must have reminded the disciples of two other miraculous occasions on which He had desired that the fragments should be gathered up and put into baskets And affording evidence of the Saviour's entire human identity after death had passed upon Him and He had risen from the dead it affords delightful assurance that toe shall lose nothing of our man identity by death and the rection design of this detail of the Resurrection was to show Christ's appreciation of the ministrations of His disciples Here again it was a proof of identity of character so ex- in keeping with ail His previous dealings with the disciples but with His commendation of the beloved Bethany Mary's anointing aforehand to his which must have been recalled by it Who can doubt that Joseph and Nicodemus were among the first to visit the tomb reported robbed though such a great stone were rolled and sealed against For probably it had been in- tended for the place of Joseph's own interment and was it not And as they entered it and saw the very linen clothes and napkin redolent of the spices in which they had so re- cently enshrouded the Lord's body all carefully laid aside by His hands how must they have been Christ's burial bat in them and in this particular is a strong rebuke of a spirit which sometimes appears the spirit of a certain aged Christian one who would fain have Imitated his Lord in other respects who said I want the plainest shroud coffin I would as soon have none would as soon you would dig for me and put me in it in the very clothes in which I die for I am a worm and no Jesus with His own dear pierced hands daintily folded the new and fine grant with one hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes which had mi- wrapped His body even though He had forever ceased to need them Oh is it not something to us who are so ten laying dear forms to rest thing to us who are ourselves so soon to be gathered in the to know as we select a place for the sleep and seek to make it tive that the place of our Saviour's entombment was a garden Is it not something as we tenderly smooth the and tastefully fold the pure of our loved ones daintily laying a here and a lily there is it not something aa we entertain and express to friends pre- in regard to our own en- that we may know that our precious Saviour He who was The Resurrection and the did must aave ueen to 01 appreciation of what they had Especially precious when they reflected on the magnanimity which this involved They had honored Christ at His burial but not until then They had been disciples cretly for fear of the Jews Not until He was actually dead had they ventured openly to espouse his cause and yet so forgiving so lovingly of the first penitential ing is Jesus He had been pleased by this careful orderly disposal of the habiliments which they had provided for Him to associate their deed with the most sublime event of all time His glorious Resurrection What comfort for all of us who seek even at the eleventh hour to 1101101 is to be found in this laying aside of the linen clothes and folding of the linen napkin furnished by the quent Joseph A fifth design was as it seems to me to show the Saviour's interest in burial appointments It is a significant fact LUll lit WHO rii inn men in life whose whole earthly career and whose death were marked by great humiliation made his grave with the and received after death much distinction That this final distinction was as necessary to the grand scheme as His previous is evident from many things but from none more than from this incident which shows His entire proval and acceptance of it all We have repeated indications in the that the burial appointment of God's children are not matters of in- difference to Him butit is peculiarly delightful to be able to draw this in- ference from the deportment of His own dear iSon in the sepulcher No argument for ostentatious burial can be found in the circumstances of Per sinks us into deep humiliation To avoid the possibility of falling into a state of despondency we should de- vote our spare moments to ing virtue rather than vice and put a premium upon exertion rather than idleness In these days we as Rev T J Brown so well says that the open eye shall govern and divert the open hand That one invariably meets opposition in trying to bulM shattered losses is undeniably true yet wo should strive all the harder in our to achieve success stead of having a effect it us oia That it is a Herculean tadt to rehabilitate one's character is aft pted fact anu although we are attempting to crawl under the tent of Daniel and thereby enter a plea of justification for our own misdeeds yet we firmly believe that many a downfall can be safely to that stern-browed mentor ex- wherein the child is tutored in a most relentless way Many parents run the risk of true innocence being destroyed and of ing a cloud settle down over the whole future of the child by not encouraging confidences and explaining openly the things that some one else will h selfish motives Give a and hang rona Give a person credit O conquest over it tenderly took these habiliments in His hands carefully folded them wrapping one in a place bv itself and left them in the charge of K R H For the Prison It is useless they sav to continue 7 against society and that heroism of virtue is like the courage of Don ote fighting against a windmill which ia wrecked by a single breath of air Chivalry we say of another century which should only inspire pity in this We admit that self de- nial is a stern-faced angel but if we hold him hard and fast long enough he will most assuredly er words of ia thr darkness of night stars appear above us and gladly share our loneliness To be more explicit thin world is what you and I make it We oft times choose our path without taking the tion of peeping into the dense thicket ahead of us If the of our ad ing nature we are apt t lake all the credit to ourselves If we encounter and everything goes wrong we too often in the endeavor to cape censure and blame our The of youth that all hearts are not true all protestations of friendship not genuine and all professed acts of kindness and loyally have proved to be un- matched in many instances goes far toward marring the grandest pictures nnd us of the most cherished traditions of our There are times in all our lives when everything goes wrong lays that arc cold and dreary when there seems neither on earth nor hope in heaven Then it is that we feel the pang of loss of a wasted life and the bitter wound f have flung the burr it will stick Who asks a writer is the of- The young man who is ing for a new character or the sham pretending friend who conspires to prevent the young man's laudable Let us one by one in taking leave of this penal institution go forth fully prepared to battle with the downs of life and convince those who once knew us that we are not wholly or devoid of rnanly traits of cha tauter In doing this we cannot only bring our friends and relatives to a sense of appreciation but we can cause them to be proud they once knew us One great trouble frith many of us is the fact that we quite frequently are enabled to point out the flaw in the eye of our associate but fail to observe a whole Haw mill in our own if we make a specialty of flaw picking we will soon find ourselves encumbered with burdensome thorns This is the time in life when we should allow memory to linger upon all that ind and when hope should scatter her most glowing tints O over the fast approaching future or in the words of the poet We are aide to see in this stage of life glimpses of the truth that the chief glory con- sists not in the remembrance of feats of prowess nor in the egotistic cise of power but in the conquest of peevish weaknesses in the brightness of and in the discrimination of happiness around PALMER Love no evil FASHIONED BUT GOD SAID SO The wicked shall be turned into hell and ail the nations that forget Psalm 9 17
