The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1886-08-06

the blooming bastion fringed with fire.
behind which Satan hides in this contest.
Send the arrows of your thoughts against
it. Shoot the winged shafts of your
prayers upon it. Turn against it the
silent enginery of public opinion, and
give them time to work; and some morn
ing-not very far off, please God-you
will wake to see that bastiOn fall-melt
away like the unsubstantial fabric of
dream. Only be strong and of good
| courage.
Let me close by holding up before you
| my dear sisters, another blessed motive
for this blessed work. Gratitude, yes,
gratitude to God that when He turned
| His thought to the redemption of the
world He stopped so tenderly to woman.
| He might have come in such majesty and
splendOr that all the kings and mail-clad
warriors of earth would have yielded
| Him ready homage and followed in His
train.
But He chose to come in such guise as
forbade the ministry of mans hand. His
mission was to the heart, and He came
II helpless baby. The tabernacle in
which dwelt the incarnate Son of God
was builded and fashioned by the gentle
beating of u woman's heart. He came
into her arms by the same gate af agony
by which my baby came to me, by which
your baby came to you. The same sub
lime of ecstasy and humanity filed her
soul when He first lay in her arms that
came to you IN that supreme moment
when your heart was filled with the
thought, 81 am the mother of an i'm
mortal being" She thrilled mt the touch
of baby lips and fingers Mt her breast just
rs we have done. She hung over Him
| llII n oil ~
vet of His skin and the matchless soft
ness of His hair, and when He opened
His eyes she wondered just as we have
done mt the searching glance that seemed
to read her soul. And she nursed HIM
and watched over Him, and made His
little garments, and 30 our blessed Lord
consecrated by His acceptance of it,
mother pain and toll and care. He up
lifted it and made it almost sacred.
And when He began His public min
istry He had no word of praise for those
qualities which had always been the
pride of man, but the long-scorned at
tributes of true wOmanhoOd received His
blessing and His insistance And when
ut last, man crucified Him and buried
Him, it was woman who wept over HIS
pierced body and came very early in
the morning bringing the spices for it,
and only think of the gentle kindness of
the Masters voice when in the cleaning
of that Easter morning He revealed
Himself to Mary by His utterance of her
name.
| sometimes think that man has been
in some sort affronted by this, and so
when our blessed Lord was gone from
sight. and the clouds of heaven had re-
ccived Him, man pushed woman aside
in her work for Christ and held her
labors in scorn. And yet whenever
woman has faced the rebuff, and reached
out her hand to guide the wandering and
save the lost, God has not failed to smile
upon her efforts. He remembers-up
there IN the blue-who comforted His
childhood, who blessed and revered His
manhood, who quickest perceived the
holiness yelled i'm the flesh, and He
pours out His blessing on her endeavors.
This is the secret, doubt not, of the
good so quickly brought about in this
very work of the Woman's Christian
Temperance Union for "God and Home
and Native Land"
Remember that just here, on this
hand, seethes the pit of eternal DESPAIR,
and the liquor traffic Is all the time
sending its victims there. And over
here, on the other hand, are the hills of
Paradise, crowned by the city that lieth
, four-square in ITS matchless symmetry.
If we can save the children from the
one and guide them to the other, is not
: that enough?
Why should we care for sneers or OBJ
, position when SO soon we may walk
those blessed hills with those we have
, loved and yearned for here,
"While the anthems of rapture unceasingI,
roll,
And the smile of the Lord is the feast of In,
Il SOUL"