The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1889-04-25

and bleeding" tfYesD said another,
seven his hide would not be of any use to
the tanner" YES" said another, "the
odor of his cascass is dreadful" Then
Christ, standing there, said: "But pearls
can not equal the Whiteness of his teeth"
Then the people, moved by the idea that
any one could find any thing pleasant
concerning dead dog, said: "Why,
this must be Jesus of Nazareth"
ReproSed and convicted they went
away. Surely this legend o. Christ
is good enough to be true. Kindness
in all His words and ways and habits.
Forgiveness. Word of eleven letters,
and some of them thrones, and some of
them plain branches. Better have Christ
write close to our names that one word,
though he write it in dust, than to have
our name cut into monumental granite
with the letters that the storms of thou
sand years can not obiterate. Bishop
Darlington had a book of only three
leaves. The first leaf was black, the
second leaf red, the third leaf white. The
black leaf suggested sin; the red leaf
atonement; the white leaf publication.
That is the whole story. God will abund-
antly pardon.
must not forget to say that as Christ,
the ground, it is evident that his sympa-
thies are with this penitent woman, and
that he has no sympathy with her hypo-
critical pursuers. Just opposite to that
is the worlds habit. Why didn't these
unclean Pharisees bring one Of their own
number to Christ for excoriation and cap
| ital punishment? No, no; they overlook
that in man which they damnate in
woman. And so the world has had for
| offending women scourges and Objurga-
ton, and for just one offense she becomes
an outcast, while for men whose lives have
been sodomic for twenty years the world
! swings open its doors of brilliant well
come, land they may sit in Legislatures and
Senates and parliaments or on thrones.
| Unlike the Christ of my text, the world
writes mans misdemeanor in dust, but
| chisels a woman's offense with great capt.
| tails upon ineffaceable marble. For Tor
| eign lords and princes, whose names can
not even be mentioned in respectable cir
! cles abroad, because they are walking
| lazarettos of abomination, our American
| princesses of fortune wait, and at the first
/ beck sail out with them into the blacknesS
| of darkness forever. And in what are
called higher circles of society there is now
not only the imitation of foreign dress and
! foreign manners, but an imitation of for
| eign dissoluteness. l like an Englishman
and like an American, but the sickest
creature on earth is an American playing
the Englishman. Society needs to be re-
constructed on this subject. Treat them
alike, masculine crime and feminine
crime. If you cut the one in granite, cat
them both in granite. If you write the
one in dust, write the other in dust. No,
no, says the world, let woman go
| down and let man go up. What is
| that I hear FLASHING into the East river
| at midnight, and there is a gurgle as of
| strangulation, and all is still. Never
mind. 1t is only woman too discouraged
to live. Let the mills of the cruel world
/ grind right on.
But while I speak of Christ of the text,
His STOPPING down writing in the dust, do
not think underrate the literature of the
dust. 1t is the most solemn and tremen-
dous Of all literature. 1t is the greatest of
all libraries. When Layard exhumed
Nineveh he was only opening the door of
| its mighty dust. The excavations of
Pompeii have only been the unclasping
of the lids of volume of a nations dust.
When Admiral Farragut and his friends,
a few years ago, visited that resurrected
city, the house of Balbo, who had been
one of it's chief citizens in it's prosperous
days, was opened and table was spread
in that house which 1910 years has been
| buried by volcanic eruption, and Far
ragut and his guests walked over the ex-
quisite mosaics and under the beautiful
fresco, and it almost seemed like being
| entertained by those who, eighteen CEN
turtles ago, had turned to dust. Oh, this
mighty literature of the dust! Where are
the remains of Sennacherib and Attila
and Epaminondas and Tamerlane and
Trojan and Philip of Macedon, and
julius Cesar? Dustl Where are the
heroes who fought on both sides at Char
onea, at Hastings, at Marathon, at Cressy,
of the one hundred and ten thousand men
who fought at Agincourt, of the two
hundred and fifty thousand men who
faced death at Jena, of the four hundred
thousand whose armor glittered in the
sun at Wagram, of the one million men
under Darius at Arbella, of the two
million six hundred and forty one thou
sand men under Xerxes at Thermopyla?
Dust?
And all these library cases will be
opened, and all these scrolls unrolled,
and all these volumes unclasped, and as
easily as in your library or mine we take
up book, blow the dust off of it, and turn
over its pages, so easily will the Lord of
the resurrection pick up out of this
library of dust every volume of human
life and open it and read it and display
it. And the volume will be rebound, to
be set in the royal library of the Kings
palace, or in the prison library of the
self-destroyed. Oh, this mighty Htera-
ture of the dust! It is not so wonderful
after all that Christ chose, instead of an
inkstand, the impressionable sand on the
floor of an ancient temple, and instead Of
hard pen, put forth his forefnger with
the same kind of nerve and muscle. and
bone, and flesh, as that which makes up
our own forefnger, and wrote the awful
doom Of hypocrisy and full and complete
forgiveness for repentant sinners, even
the worst.
And now 1 can believe that which Tread,
how that mother kept burning a candle
in the window every night for ten years,
and one night very late poor waif of the
street entered. The aged woman said to
her: "Sit down by the fire." and the
stranger said: 'Why do you keep that
light in the Window" The aged woman