The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1885-12-31

/
wounds of thy side, and by thine own
wounds ask thee to pity mine" Try no
longer to carry that burden. Oh, abused
| soul, go and tell Jesus!
| Again commend the behavior of these
disciples to the bereaved. As stand here
| Sabbath by Sabbath, and look off upon
this audience, how many signals of mourn
| ing do 1 behold! God has his own way of
breaking up the family. The emigration
| from this world to the next is so vast an
enterprise that God only can conduct it.
That emigration from earth to eter-
nifty keeps three-fourths of the fam
lilies of the world in desolation. The child
that lay near the mothers heart is taken
to lie in the cold and in the darkness. The
| laughter freezes to the girls lip and the
rose scatters. The boy comes in from
| the harvest fields of Shunam saying:
"My head, my headw and dies on
the lap of his mother. Widowhood stands
with tragedy of woe struck into the pallor
of the cheek, and orphanage eries in vain
for father and for mother.
Sometimes when we have sorrow our
friends comes in, and they try to sympa-
thize with us to certain extent, but they
can not understand it altogether. But,
blessed be God! Christ knows. He has
been all through the trouble and oil
round about it. He has counted the
| tears, and counted the groans; and
before the tears started and before
the groans began he saw the
hiding-pIace of the sorrow. Bone of
our bone! Flesh of our flesh! Heart of
our hearth Sorrow of our sorrow! As
long as he remembers Lazarus tomb he
will stand beside us in the cemetery. As
! long as he remembers his own heart breaks
he will stand with you in the laceration, of
your affections. When he forgets his foot
sore way, and his lonely nights, and his
weary mind, and his exhausted body, and
his awful cross, and his solemn grave, then
will he forget you; but not until then.
Sometimes, when we have trouble, our
friends are far away from US. We write
letter, saying, "Come right away" or we
telegraph to them, saying, "Take the next
train; come immediately" but it may
take hours, it may take days, before
they can reach US in our trouble.
But / have to tell you this morning
of one who is near to help, ever near,
near before you, behind you, within
you-nearer than the staff on which you
lean, nearer than the cup you press to your
lip, nearer than the handkerchief with
which you wipe away the tears. preach
him-an ever-present Jesus. Sometimes,
when we have trouble, our friends come,
and they do all they can for us; but they
can not relieve all the trouble, they can not
disentangle our finances, they can not cure
| our oh thou nau not raica o11r daad
Blessed be God? the one to whom these
disciples went has all power in Heaven and
on earth, and he will, at just the right
time, balk our calamities, and at just the
| right time, in the presence of an applaud
/ ing earth and a resounding heaven,
will raise our dead. o, I preach
him, an almighty Christ. The uast
sword will leap from the scabbard of
omnipotence and the last resource of in
finite God be exhausted before God will al
low one of his children TO cry for comfort
and not get it. I heard of child who
went to sea with her father, sea captain,
and when the first storm came, in the mid
night, the little child awakened and rushed
out in great fright, and cried: "Where's
father? Where's father?' Then they told
her the father was on deck, and that he
was guiding the ship and he was watch
ing the storm, and she said: "Wen, if
fathers on deck, then I'll go to Sleep" So
she went to sleep.
Oh! ye who are tossed in the storms of
this life, want to tell you the Lord is
guiding the ship; your Father is on deck,
and he will bring you through into
the harbor. Oh! We whose cheeks
are wet with the night dew of
the grave, we whose hearts are tried with
sirocco, in the name of religion which
can wipe every tear, and lift every burden,
and deliver every captive and illumine
every darkness, l implore you, go and tell
Jesus. If you will not, if you try and carry
your sins and burden yourself, tell you,
my brother, plainly, your life viii be a
failure, your death will be disaster, and
eternity calamity; but if you will go to
Christ with all your sins and all your sor-
rows to-day, your foot will strike the up
ward path, and the shining messengers
who tell above what is done here viii make
the arches of God resound with the tidings
that you have gone to tell Jesus.
Well, l look over this audience and l
wonder whether you viii carry your own
burdens; whether you are going to be so
foolhardy as to take the consequences of
your own sin when there is balm, a
balsam, for all wounds and pardon for all
transgressions. Soon you will be gone,
and gone forever. You remember how
Xerxes felt when he looked at his army
100000 men-perhaps the greatest army
ever marshaled. Xerxes rode along that
army and reviewed it, Two million men
And after he had reviewed the troops he
came to hill, and he looked off upon the
great host, and he burst into tears. One of
his staff officers expressed surprise that at
a time when he ought to be full of ex-
ultation and triumph he should weep.
"Oh," he said, 81 weep because SO soon all
this host will be gone" And this morning
/ look off upon this audience, and realize
that soon you viii all be gone-gone from
the Church, gone from the home circle,
gone from business circles and gone for
ever. Whittier? Whittier?
IT'S not for man to trifle;