The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1886-09-22

nor mother, and you will 60 around the place
where they used to watch you and find them
gone from the house, and gone from the field,
and gone from the neighborhood. Cry as
mound in the churchyard, they will not
answer. Deal! Dead! And then you will
take out the white lock of hair that
was cut from your mothers brow just
before they buried her, and you will
take the cane with which your father
used to walk, and you will think and
think and wish that you had done Just as
they wanted you to, and would give the
world if you had never thrust pang
through their dear old hearts. God pity the
young man who has brought disgrace on his
fathers name! God pity the young man
who has broken his mothers heart! Better
if he had never been born; better If in the
first hour of his life, instead Of being laid
against the warm bosom Of maternal tender
ness, he had been coffined and sepulchred.
There is no balm powerful enough to heal
the heart of one who has brought parents to
Q sorrowful grave, and who wanders about
through the dismal cemetery, rending the
hair and wripging the hands and crying:
"Motherl Mother!" Oh, that to-day by all
the memories of the past and by all the hopes
of the future, you would yield your heart to
God! May your fathers God and your
mothers God be your God foreyerl
LII. Igo on a little further; I come to the
invalid's chair. What! How long have you
been sicka "Oh, 1 have been sick ten,
twenty, thirty years" Isitpossible. What
families of my congregation these invalid
chairs. The occupants Of them think they
are doing no good in the world; but that in
valids chair is the mighty pulpit from which
they have been preaching, all these years,
trust in God. One day, on an island just off
from Sandusky, Ohio, I preached, and there
was great throng of people there; but tho
throng did not impress me,so much as the
spectacle of just one face-the face of an in.
said to her afterwards: Madam, how long
have you been prostrated9" for she was lying
fat in the Chair. oh" she replied,
81 have been this way fifteen years"
I said: 'Do you suffer very much?' "Oh,
yes" she said II suffer very much. I suffer
all the time; part Of the time was blind. I
always suffer-" 'Well," I said, "can you
keep your courage ups" Oh, yes" she She said. al d.
showed it. She looked the happiest of any
one on the ground. Oh, what means of
grace to the world. these invalid chairs!
On that field of human suffering the grace
Of God gets its victory. Edward Payson the
invalid, and Richard Baxter, the invalid,
and Robert Hall, the invalid, aad the ten
thousand of whom the world has never heard,
but of whom all heaven is cognizant. The
most conspicuous thing on earth for Gods
eve and thu eye of angels to rest on is
the invalid's chair. Oh, these men
and women who are always suffering but
never complaining victims of spinal
disease. and neuralgia torture, and rheu-
matte e5cruciation, will answer to the roll
call OF the martyrs, and rise to the martyrs
throne, and will wave the martyrs palm!
But when one Of these invalid chairs be-
como vacant, how suggestive it is! No more
bolstering up of the weary head. No more
changing from side to side to get an easy
position. No more use of the bandage, and
the catap'asm and the prescription. That
invalids chair may be folded up or taken
apart or set away, but it will never lose it's
queenly power; it will always preach of trust
in God and cheerful submission. Suffering
all ended now. With respect to that invalid
the words of my text haye been fulfilled:
"Thou shalt be missed, because thy seat will
be empty"
w. I pass on and find one more vacaut
chair. 1t is high chair. Ii is the child's
chair. If that chair he occupied, think it
is the most potent chair in all the household.
All the chairs wait on it.; all the chairs are
turned toward it. ltmeanS more than David's
chair at Saul's banquet At any rate, it makes
more racket That is strange house that
can be dull with child in it. How that child
breaks up the hard worldliness of the place.
and keeps you young to sixty, seventy and
your own, adopt one; it will open heaven to
your soul. 1t will ray its way. Its Growing
in the morning will give the day cheerful
starting, and its glee at night will give the
day cheerful close. You do not like children!
Then you hal better stay out Of heaven, for
there are so many there they would fairly
make you claZYl Only about five hundred
million of them! The old crusty disciples told
the mothers to keep the children away from
Christ. "You bother Him." they said: 'you
trouble the Master" Trouble him! He mas
filed heaven with that kind of trouble.
A pioneer in California says that for the
first year or two after his residence in
Sierra Nevada County, there was not
single child in all the reach Of hundred
miles. But the 4th Of July came, and the
miners were gathered together, and they
we're celebrating the 4th with oration and
poem, and a boisterous brass band; and
while the band was playing, an infants
voice was heard crying, and all the miners
were startled and the swarthy men began to
think of their homes on the Eastern coast,
and of their wives and children far away,
and their hearts were filled with homesick-
ness as they heard the babe cry. But the
music went on, and the child cried louder
and louder, and the brass band played louder
and louder, trying to drown out the in
fantile interruption, when a swarthy miner,
the tears rolling down his face, got up and
shook his fist and said: "Stop that noisy
oand, and give the baby a chance" Oh,
rnere was pathos as we'll as good cheer
in it! There is nothing to arouse, and mel5,
and subdue the soul like child's voice.
But when it goes away from you the high
chair becomes a higher chair, and there is
desolaton oil about you. In three-fourths
vacant high chair. Somehow you never get
over it. There is no one to put to bed at
night; no one to ask strange questions about
God and heaven. Oh, what is the use of
that high chair! 1t is to call you higher.
What drawing upward it is to have chill
dren in heaven! And then it is such pro-
ventive against sin. If father is going
away into sin he leaves his living children
with their mother; but il father is going
away into sin what is he going to do with his
dead children floating about him and hover
ing over his every wayward stepi Oh, speak
out, vacant high chair and say: "Father,
come back from sin; mother come back from
worldlincss. l am wat, ching you. I am wait
ing for YOU" With respect to your child the
words of my text have been fulfilled: Thou
shalt be missed, because thy seat will be
empty"
MY hearers, have gathered up the voices
of your departed friends, and tried to intone
them into one invitation upward. set in
array all the vacant chairs Of your homes,
and Of your social circle, and bid them cry
out: tTime is short Eternity is near. Take
my Saviour. Be at peace with my God.
Come up where am We lived together on
earth; come let us live together in Heaven"
We answer that invitation. Wecome. Keep
seat tor us, as Saul kept seat for David;
but that seat shall not be emnty Whan wa