Dodge City times. [volume] (Dodge City, Kan.) 1876-1892, 1888-09-13
SMALL EVENTS.
d.. Talmage Discourses on Great
Results From Small Events.
Nothing Really Insignificant in This Life
The Great Results of Seemingly Unim-
pOrtant Incidents - Unknown
Agencies For Good.

In late sermon upon the subject:
"Great Results May Depend on Small
Events" DR.. Talmage took for his text:
Through a window, in a basket, was ]
let down by the wall.''-2 Corinthians ii.
So He said:
Damascus is city of white and glisten-
ing architecture, sometimes called ''the
Eye of the East" sometimes called "a
Pearl Surrounded by Eneralds," at one
time distinguished for swords of the best
material called Damascus blades, and up
holstery of richest fabric called damasks.
A horseman by the name of Paul, riding
toward this city, had been thrown from
the saddle. The horse had dropped under
q flash from the sky, which at the same
time was so bright it blinded the rider for
many days, and, l think, SO permanently
injured his eyesight that this defect of
vision became the thorn in the flesh he af-
terward speaks of. He started for Damas-
Gus to butcher Christians, but after that
hard fall from his horse he was n changed
man and preached Christ in Damascus till
the city was shaken to its foundation.
The mayor gives authority for his ar
rest, and the popular cry is: xiii him!
Kill him." Tie city is surrounded by
high wall, and the gates are watched by
the police lest the Cilician preacher es-
cape. Many Of the houses are built on the
wall, and their balconies projected clear
over ard lowered above the gardens out
side. 1t was customary to lower baskets
out of these balconies and pull up fruits
and flowers from the gardens. To this
day visitors at the monastery of Mount
Sinai are lifted aud let down in baskets.
Detectives prowicd around from house to
house looking for Paul, but his friends hid
him now in one place, now in another. He
is no coward, fifty incidents in his life
demonstrate. But he feels his work is not
done yet, and so he evades assassination.
els that preacher here" the police shout
at another house door. Sometimes on the
street incognito he passes through crowd
of clenched fists, and sometimes he Sc
cretes himself on the house-tOp. At last
the infuriate populace get on sure track
of him. They have positive evidence that
he is in the house of one of the Christians,
the balcony of whose home reaches over
the wall. ''Here he is. Here he is" The
vociferation and bIasphemy and bowling
of the pursuers are at the front door. They
break in. "Fetch out that gospelizer, and
let us hang his head on the city gate.
Where is he:"
The emergency was terrible. Providen-
TALLY there was a good, stout basket in the
house. Pauls friends fasten a rope to the
basket. Paul steps into it. The basket is
lifted to the edge of the balcony on the
wall, and then while Paul holds on to the
rope with both hands his friends lower
away, carefully and cautiously, slowly
but surely, further down and further
down, until the basket strikes the earth
and the apostle steps out, and afoot and
alone starts on that famous missionary
tour, the story of which has astonished
earth and Heaven. Appropriate entry in
Paul's diary of travels: Through a win
do ", in basket, was l let down by the
wall"
Observe, first, on what a slender tenure
great results hang. The ropemaker who
twisted that cord fastened to that low
ering basket never knew how much would
depend on the strength of it. How if il
had been broken and the apostles life had
been dashed out. What would have be-
come of the Christian Church! All that
magnificent missionary work in Pam
philia, Cappadocia, Galatia, Macedonia
would never have been accomplished. All
his writings that make up so indis-
pensable and enchanting a part of
the New Testament would never have
been written. The story of resurrection
would never have been so gloriously
told as he told it. That example of heroic
and triumphant endurance at Philippi, in
the Mediterranean euroclydon, under flag
citation and at his beheading would not
have kindled the courage of ten thousand
martyrdoms. But that rope holding that
basket, how much depended on it! So
again and again great results have hung
on what seemed slender circumstances.
Did ever ship of many thousand tons
crossing the sea have such important pas
senger as had once a boat of leaves, from
taffrail to stern only three or four feet the
vessel made waterproof by sort of btu
men and floating on the Nile with the in
FAINT lawgiver of the Jews on board! What
if some crocodile should crunch it: What
If some of the cattle wading in for drink
should sink it: Vessels of war sometimes
carry forty guns looking through the port
holes, ready to open battle. But that tiny
craft on the Nile seems to be armed with
all the guns of thunder that bombarded
Sinai at the law giving. On how fragile
craft sailed how much of historical impor.
lance!
The parsonage at Epworth, Eng, is on
fire in the night, and the father rushed
through the hallway for the rescue of his
children. Seven children are out and safe
on the ground, but one remains in the con.
suming building. That one wakes, and,
finding his bed on fire and the building
crumbling, comes TO the window, and two
peasants make a ladder of their bodies,
one peasant standing on the shoulder of
the other, and down the human ladder the
boy descends-John Wesley If YOU would
know how much depended on that ladder
of peasants ask the millions of Methodists
on both sides of the sea. Ask their mis-
sion stations all around the world. Ask
their hundreds of thousands already as
cended to join their founder, who would
have persisted but for the living stairs of
peasants shoulders.
An English ship stopped at Pitcairn
Island and right in the midst of surround
ing cannibalism and squalor the passen-
gers discovered a Christian colony of
churches and schools and beautiful homes
and highest style of religion and civiIiza-
ton. For fifty years no missionary and
no Christian influence had landed there.
Why this oasis of light amid desert of
heathendom: Sixty years before a ship
had met disaster and one of the sailors,
unable t0save any thing else, went to his
trunk and took out a Bible which his
mother had placed there and swan ashore,
the bible held in his teeth. The book was
read ON all sides until the rough and
vicious population were evangelical and
church was started and an enlightened
commonwealth established, and the worlds
history has no more brilliant page than