The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1889-06-20

arms around our neck and expresses such
sorrow and such promises of doing better,
that her tears landed on the lips of our
kiss, and we held her half hour after on
our knee, AMI would as soon think Of
slapping an @hgeI in the face as of even
striking her with the weight of our little
finger. God is a Father, and while He
has promised His world scourgings, though
they were to be for a thousand years or
five thousand years, He would, If the
world repented, substitute benediction
and Divine caress.
God changed His mind about Sodom six
times. He had determined on its destruc-
ton. Abraham asked Him if He would
not spare it If fifty righteous people were
found there; and, narrowing down the
number, if forty five were found there;
if forty people; if thirty people; if twenty
people; if ten people were found there.
And each Of the six times the Lord an
swered yes. Oh, why didn't Abraham go
on just two steps further and say il five
be found there and if one be found there,
for then for the sake of Lot, its one good
citizen, I think Sodom would have been
spared Eight times does the Bible say
that God repented when He had promised
punishments and withheld the stroke.
Was it a slip of Paul's pen when
he spoke of Gods cutting short
the work in righteousness I? No,
Paul's pen never slipped. There is
nothing in the way of propEesy to hinder
the crusade have proposed for the last
decade of the nineteenth century. The
whole trouble is that we put off the COM
pletion of the worlds redemption to such
| long and indefinite distances. The old
| proverb that "what is every body's bust
ness is nohody's business" might be
changed a little and be made truthfully
to say hat is the gospel business of all
the ages is the gospel business of no age.
| We are so constituted we can not get up
much enthusiasm about something five
| hundred years from now or one thousand
years from now. We are fighting at too
long range. That gun called the Swamp
| Angel" was nuisance. It shot six miles,
but it hardly ever hit any thing. 1t did
| its chief destructive work when it burst
and killed those who were setting it off.
Short range is the effective kind of work,
whether it be for worldly or religious pur-
pose.
| Some man with his eyes half shut
| drones out to me the Bible quotation: "a
thousand years are as one days" that is,
ten centuries are not long for the Lord.
But why do you not quote the previous
sentence, which says that one day is with
the Lord as thousand years? That is,
He could do the work of ten centuries in
| twenty-four hours. The mightiest OBJ
stacle to Christian work is the impress
sion that the worlds evangelization is
away off. And we take the telescope and
look on and on through centuries until
we see two objects near each other and
we strain our vision and guess what they
are, and we call great conventions to
guess what they. are, and we get down
our heaviest theological works and bal
anee our telescope on the lid and look and
look, and finally conclude that they are
two beasts that we see. and the one has
hair and the other has wool, and we guess
it must be the lion and the lamb lying
down together. In that great cradle of
postponement and somnolence we rock
the Church as though it were an i'm
patient child, and say: "Hush, my dear,
don't be impatient! Don't get excited by
reyivals! DON'T cry! Your Fathers
comingi Don't get uneasy He will be
here in two or three or ten or twenty
thousand years." And we act as though
we thought that when Macaulay's famous
New Zealander in the far distance is seat
ed on broken arch of London bridge
sketching the ruins of st. Paul's his
grand child might break in and Jolt his
pencil by asking him if he thought the
millennium ever would appear. Men and
women of the eternal GodI Sons and
daughters of the Lord Almighty! We
may have it start in the decade that is
soon to commence, and it will be done il
| 10
and then to get re ady for the work.
If you continue to ask me why think
the world can be saved in the final decade
of the ninete enth century, Ireply because
1t is not great undertaking, considering
the number of workers that will go at it, il
once persuaded that it can be done. We
have sifted the five hundred million work
| ers to four hundred million, and three
! hundred million, and two hundred mill
ion, and one hundred million and fifty
million. I went TO work to cipher out
how many souls that number could
bring to God in ten years if each
brought one soul every year. and if each
soul so brought should bring another
each succeeding year. l found out
aided by a professor in mathemat-
les, that we did not need any
|
listed. You see it is simply a question o.
mathematics and in geometrieal progress
sion. Then 1 gave to the learned profes
sor this problem: How many person.
would it require to start with if each on,
, brought soul into the Kingdom each yea
/ for ten years and each one brought an
other each succeeding year, in order tt
have one billion four hundred million
people saved, or the population of tn,
earth at present? His answer was tive
million seven hundred and fifty four thou
sand three hundred and seventy fiv,
workers. So you see that when l siete(
the five hundred million nominal Chris
| tians of the earth down to fifty million
/ and stopped there, 1 retained for worl
forty-seven million people too many
There it is in glorious mathematics quod
erdt denaoaStrdndum.
Do you tell me that God does not car,
! for mathematics? Then you have never
seen the Giants Causeway where Coo
shows His regard for the hexagonal il
whole ranges of rocky columns with 81,
angles. Then you have not studied tn,
geometry of a bees honeycomb with sil
sides and six angles. Then you have no
noticed what regard God has for thu
} square; the altar of the ancient taberna,