The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1889-06-19


flurrying His hair over His sun-browned
| forehead, standing on a hilltop looking
| off upon Lake Tiberias, on which at one
time, according to profane history, are not
four hundred four thousand ships. Au-
| thors have taken pains to say that Christ
was not affected by these surroundings,
and that He from within lived outward
and independent of circumstances. 20
| far from that being true, He was the most
sensitive being that ever walked the earth,
and if pale invalid's weak finger could
not touch His robe without strength going
out from Him, these mountains and seas
could not have touched His eye without
| irradiating His entire nature with their
magnificence. l warrant that lie 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,
terraces, vineyards cactus, sycamoreS.
These outbranching foliages did not have
to wait for the floods before their silence
was broken, for through them and over
them and in circles round them and under
them were pelicans, were thrushes, were
sparrows, were nightingales, were larks,
were quails, were blackbirds. were par
tridges, were bulbuls. YOnder the white
fiocks of sheep showed down over the
pasture lands. And yonder the brook re-
hearses 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 rev.
cling among the flaming fora. And all
this spring and song and grass and sun
shine and shadow woven into the most
exquisite nature that ever breathed or
wept or sung or suffered. Through study
ing the sky between the hills Christ had
noticed the weather signs, and that Grim
son sky at night meant dry weather next
day, and that a crimson sky in the morn
ing meant wet weather before night. And
how beautifully He made use of it in after
years as He drove down upon the pestif-
erous Pharisee and Sadducee by crying
out: when it is evening We say it will
be fair weather, for the sky is red, and in
the morning it will be foul weather to-
day. for the sky is red and lowering. O,
We hypocrites, We can discern the face OF
the sky, but can We 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 / have gathered thee as hen gath
ereth her chickens under her wingw BY
night He had noticed His mother by the
plain candle light which, as ever and anon
it was snutfed and the removed wick put
down on the candlestick, beamed brightly
through all the family sitting room rs His
mother was mending His garments that
had been torn during the days wander
ings among the rocks or bushes, and years
afterward it all came out in the smile of
the greatest sermon ever preached:
Neither do men light candle and put it
under bushel, but in candlestlck, and
it giveth 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 had been put away for
the summer he noticed how the moth
miller flew out, and the coat dropped
apart, ruined and useless, and so twenty
years after He enioined: clay up for
yourselves treasures in heaven where
neither moth 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 lilies"
a great storm one day during Christ's
boyhood blackened the heavens and an
gered the rivers. Perhaps standing in the
door of the carpenters shop He watched
it gathering 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 shift
ing sand for foundation and the other
an eternal rock for basis; and twenty
years after He built the whole scene into a
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 terror, which sublime
words / render, asking you, as far as pos
sible, to forget that you ever heard them
before: "Whosoever heareth these say
ings OF mine, and doeth them, | will liken
him to wise man, which built his house
upon a rock: and the rain descended, and
the floods came, and the winds blew, and
beat upon that house; and it fell not for
ii was founded upon a rock. And every
one that heareth these sayings of mine,
and doeth them not, shall be llkened unto
a foolish man, which built his house upon
the sand: and the rain descended, and the
floods came, and the winds blew, and beat
upon that house; and it fell; and great
was the fall of it,"
Yes, from the naturalness, the simple
ity, the freshness of His parallels and
Smiles and metaphors in manhood dis
course | know that He had been boy OF
the fields, and had bathed in the streams
and heard the nightingales call and
broken through the fowery hedge and
looked out of embrasures of the fortress,
and drank from the wells and chased the
butterflies, which travellers say have al
ways been one of the fiittering 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 neighbor-
hood, the dogs barking at their approach
at shutdown. AS afterward He was a per-
feet man, in the time of which l speak He
was a perfect boy, with the spring of a
boys foot, the sparkle of a boys eye, the
rebound of boys life, and just the OPP
posite of those juveniles who sit around
morbid and unelastic, old men at ten. I
warrant He was able TO take His own part
and to take the part of others. In that
village OF Nazareth | am certain 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 overpower the less muscular
and robust.
The Christ who afferward in no Limited