The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1889-06-10


divine boy, the wind flurTying his HAIR over
his sun-hrowned forehead. standing on a
hilltop looking OF upon Lake Tiberias. on
which at one time, according to p-ofaue
history, are, not four hundred, four thou
sand ships. Authors have taken pains to
say that Christ was not affected by these
surroundings, and that he from within
of circumstances. So far from
that being true, he was the most
sensitive being that ever walked the earth,
and if pale invaiid's weak finger could
not touch his robe without strength gong
out from him, these mountains and seas
could not have touched his eye without
irradiating his entire nature with their
magnifcence. / warrant that he had
mounted and explored all the fifteen hills
around Nazareth, among them Hermon,
with its crystal coronet of perpetual snow,
and Carmel and Tabor and Gilboa, and
they all had their sublime echo in after
time from the Olivetic pulpit.
And then it was not uncultivated grand
eur. These hills carried in their arms or on
their backs gardens, groves, orchards, ter
races, Vineyards cactus, sycamOres. These
outbranching foliages did not have to wait
for the foods before their silence was bro
ken, for through them and over them and
in circles round them and under them were
pehcans, were thrushes, were sparrow ;,
were blackbirds, were partridges, were bull
bulls. YoEder the white flocks of sheep
showed down over the pasture lands.
And yonder the brook rehearses to the
pebbles its adventures down the rocky
shelving. Yonder are the oriental homes,
the housewife with pitcher on the shoulder
entering the door, and down the lawn in
front children reveling among the flaming
fora. And all this spring aud song and
grass and sunshine and shadow woven into
the most exquisite nature that ever breathed
or wept or sung or suffered. Through
studying the sky between the hills, Christ
had noticed the weather signs, and that a
crimson sky at night meant dry weather
next day, and that a crimson sky in the
night. And how beautifully he made
use of it in after Years as he drove
down upon the pestiferous Pharisee and
Sadducee by crying out: when il is even
ing We say it will be fair weather, for the
sky is red, aud in the morning it will be
foul weather to-day, for the SKY is red and
lowering. o ye hypocrites, We can discern
the face of the sky, but can ye not discern
the signs of the times" BY day, as every
boy has done. he watched the barnyard
fowl at sight of overswinging hawk cluck
her chickens under wing and in after years
he said: 80, Jerusalem, Jerusalem
How often would l have gathered
thee as a hen gathereth her chick
ems under her wing" By night he had nc
ticed his mother by the plain candle light
which, as ever and anon 1t was snuffed and
the removed wick put down on the candle
stick, beamed brightly through all the fam
lily sitting room as his mother was mending
his garments that had been torn during the
days wanderings among the rocks or
bushes, and years afterward it all came out
in the simile of the greatest sermon ever
preached: Neither do men light
a candle and put it under a busnel
but in candlestick and it
giyeth light to all who are in the house.
Let your light so shine" Some time, when
his mother in the autumn took out the
clothes that bad been put away for the
summer, he noticed how the moth miller
few out, and the coat dropped apart ruined
and useless, and so twenty years after he
enjoined: Lay up for yourselves
nor rust can corrupt" His boyhood
spent among birds and flowers, they all
caroled and bloomed again fifteen
years after as he cries out: Behold the
fowls of the air. "Consider the liliesn A
great storm one day during Chrlst's hey
hood blackened the heavens and angered
the rivers Perhaps standing in the door
of the carpenters shop he watched it gath
ering louder and wilder until two cyclones,
one sweeping down from Mount Tabor and
the other from Mount Carmel, met in the
valley of Esdraelon and two houses are
caught in the fury and crash goes
the one, and triumphant stands
the other, and he noticed that
one had shifting sand for a founda-
ton, and the other an eternal rock for
basis; and twenty years after he built the
whole scene into peroration of flood and
whirlwind that seized his audience and
lifted them into the nights of sublimitY
with the two great arms of pathos and ter
ror, which sublime words render, asking
you as far as possible to forget that
you ever heard them befsre: Whose
and doeth them, | will Gken him unto
a wise man, which built his house
upon rock: and the rain descended, and
the floods came, and the winds blew, and
beat upon that house; and it fell not for it
was founded upon rock. And every one
that heareth these sayings of mine, and
doeth them not, shall be likened unto a
foolish man, which built his house upon the
sand; and the rain descended, and the foods
came, and the winds blew, and beat upon
that house; and it fell; and great was the
fall of it.n
Yes. from the naturalness, the simplicity.
the freshness of his parallels and SMILES
and metaphors in manhood discourse
know that he had been boy of the fields
Auu DdLUeu III Tie streams ana heard
the nightingales call, and broken through
the fiowery hedge and looked out of the
embrasures of the fortress, and drank from
the wells and chased the butterflies, which
travellers say have always been one of the
fitting beauties of that landscape, and
talked with the strange people from
Damascus and Egypt and Sapphoris
and Syria, who in caravans or on
foot passed through his neighbour
hood, the dogs barking at their
approach at shutdown. As afterward he
was perfect man, in the time OF which [
speak he was perfect boy. with the spring
of boys foot. the sparkle of Il BOYS eve
the rebound of a boys life aud just the OBJ
poslte of those juveniles who sit around,
morbid and unelastic, cid men at ten. |
warrant he was able to take his own part
and to take the part of others In tbat
village of Nazareth I am cer,ain there
was what is found in all
the neighborhoods of the earth,
that terror of children, the bully, who
seems born to strike, to punch, to bruise to
oyerpower the less muscular and robust
The Christ who afterward in no limited
terms denounced hypocrite and Phari-
see, l warrant, never let such juvenile
villain impose upon less vigorous child
hood and Yet go unscathed and unde-
Tended. At ten years he was in sympathy
with the underlings as he was al thirty and
thirty-threes | want no further inspired
or uninspired information to persuade me
L