The Bossier banner., 1886-09-23
cried out the beautiful Moabitess to Naomi.


"Ruth, you must go back. You are too
delicate to take this journey. You will
give out in the first five miles. You can
not go. You have not the physical stam-
ina or the moral courage to go with me-"
Ruth responds:
"Mother, am going anyhow. If I stay
in this land will be overborne of the
idolators; if I go along with you l shall
serve God. Give me that bundle. Let me
carry it. I am going with you mother,
anyhow"
And if we want to serve God, we must
do as Ruth did, crying out:
Where thou goest, will go.
Never mind the De,d Sea. Afoot or
horseback. If there be rivers to ford, we
must ford them. If ther be mountains to
scale, we must scale them. If there be
enemies to fight, we must fight them. 1t
requires grit and pluck to get from Moab
to Judah. Oh, how many Christians
there are who can be diverted from the
path by qulver of the lip, indicative of
scorn? They do not surrender to tempta-
ton, but they bend to it. And if in a
company there be those who tell unclean
stories they will go so far as to tell some-
thing on the margin between the pure and
the impure. And If there be those who
swear in the room and use the rough word
"damn," they will go so far as the word
"darn," and look over the fence, wishing
they could go farther; but as to any de-
termination like Ruth's 10 go the whole
road of all that is right, they have not the
grace TO do it. They have not in all their
body as much courage as Ruth had in her
little finger. Oh, my friends, let us
start for Heaven and go clear
through! In the river that runs by
the gate of the city we shall wash off all
our bruises. When DIR. Chalmers printed
his astronomical discourses, they were
were read in the haylofts, in the fields, in
the garrets and in the palaces. because
they advocated the idea that the stars
wereinhabited. o, hearer, does not your
soul thrill with the thought that there is
another world beautifully inhabited? Nay,
more, that you by the grace of God may
become one of its glorious citizens?
3. Again I remark: If we want to be-
come Christians. like Ruth in the text. we
must choose the Christians habitation.
Where thou lodgest, will lodge,
cried ruth to Naomi. She knew that
wherever Naomi stopped, whether it were
howell or mansion, there would be Chris
tian home, and she wanted to be in it,
What do mean by Christian home? /
mean home in which the Bible is the
chief book; home in which the family
kneel in prayers; home in which father
and mother are practical Christians; a
home in which on Sabbath, from sunrise
to sunset, there is profitable converse, and
cheerful song, and suggestions of better
world. Whether the wall be frescoed or
not, or only a ceiling of unplaned rafters;
whether the marble lions be couchant at
the front entrance, or plain
latch is lifted by a tow-string-that
home is the ante chamber of
Heaven. A man never gets over
having lived in such an early home. 1t
holds you in an eternal grip. Though
your parents may have been gene forty
years, the tears of penitence and gladness
that were wept at the family altar still
glitter in your memory. Nay, do you not
now feel warm and hot on your hands the
tears which that mother shed thirty years
ago, when, one cold winter night, she
came and wrapped you up in the bed and
prayed for your welfare here and for
your everlasting welfare before the throne?
U, ye who are to set up your own home
see that it be Christian home! Let Jesus
make the wine at that wedding. A home
without God is an awful place, there are
ca %o -
himself is so bitterly against it; but
The Lord encampeth around about the
habitation of the just.
What a grand thing it is to have God
stand guard at that door, and the Lord
Jesus the family physician; and the wings
of angels the canopy over the pillow, and
the Lord of Glory a perpetual guest. You
say it is important that the wife and the
mother be Christian. say to you it is
just as important that the husband and
father be a Christian. Yet how MANY
clever men there are who say:
"My wife does all the religion of nv
house. l am a worldly man, but 1 have
confidence in her, and l think she will
briag the whole family up all right"
1t will not do, my brother. The fact
that you are not Christian has more in
fuence on your family than the fact that
your wife is Christian. Your children
will say:
Fathers very good man; he is not a
Christian. and if he can risk the future,
can risk the future"
Q father and husband! join your wife
on the road to Heaven, and at night gath
er your family at the altar. Do you say:
"fcan't pray. lam a man of few words
and don't think could put half dozen
sentences together in such a prayer?"
You can pray; you can. If your child
were down with scarlet fever, and the
next hour were to decide its recovery or
its death, you would pray in sobs, and
groans and paroxysms of earnestness.
Yes, you can pray. When the eternal
life of your household may depend upon
your supplication, let your knees limbe.
and go down; but if you still insist that
you can not compose prayer, then buy
or borrow prayer book of the Episcopal
church, and gather your family, and put
your prayer book on chair, and kneel
down before it, and in the solemn and
hushed presence of God gather up all your
sorrows, and temptations, and sins, and
cry outs
HGood ord 1al;ror