The following encouraging thought comes into Brother Kline’s mind in connection with a review of his work on Lost river.  It is dated: 

SUNDAY, February 18.  One man may sometimes strike a hard stone a good many times without breaking it; when another may take the same hammer, strike it in a slightly different place, or in a different way, and it falls to pieces.  It may be that the first man’s strokes accomplished more than he knew of.  The force of his blows may have diminished the solidity of the stone, and thus made it easier for the second man to break.  If I cannot see much fruit of my labor here now, perhaps some, who will come after me, may.

THE COVE.

SUNDAY, April 22.  Brother Kline and Daniel Miller had meeting in a place among the mountains in Hardy County, Virginia, called the Cove.  This consists of an area of country so nearly enclosed by mountains of a somewhat circular form that it has but one outlet both for its streams and its inhabitants.  Viewed from the summit of some neighboring peak it has the appearance of a vast amphitheatre whose dome is the sky, whose floor is a variegation of corn and wheat fields interspersed with beautiful green meadows, and whose walls are the substantial mountain masonry of nature’s own sublime art.  Here these two beloved brethren broke the Bread of Life to a small gathering of people, mostly residents of the place we have described.

Acts 3 was read.  After many instructive remarks by Brother Kline concerning the great Prophet spoken of in the latter part of the chapter, Brother Daniel Miller followed with a brief discourse, so clear, so pointed, so forcible, that I will give his remarks as nearly as I can in the order and manner in which he presented them.

He first endeavored to draw the attention of the unconverted part of the audience specifically to these words:  “Every soul, which will not hearken to that prophet, shall be utterly destroyed.” “I know of no expression in the Bible,” said he, “more sharply pointed than this.  The word ‘destroyed,’ as here used, does not mean blotted out of existence.  But it does mean cast out as evil, unfit for the companionship of God’s people in heaven.  In much the same sense of the word it is said that intemperance destroys men.  It unfits them for the duties of life, and for the society of the pure and the good.

“A ship may be said to be destroyed even though its dismantled hulk still floats upon the sea, borne by the waves and driven by the winds.  A fruit tree is destroyed when a worm, secretly gnawing at its root, girdles it with a belt of deadness.  It may still stand, but fruitless and lifeless.  An eye is destroyed when it becomes so far injured by disease or accident as to be forever out of the reach of power to restore its sight.