Connecticut western news., 1889-10-30

Can you not tell when you hear . man pray, whether he has ever had any trouble? I can. The cadence, the phraseology indi- cate it. Why do women pray better than men? Because they have had more trouble. Before man has had any trouble, his pray CTS are poetic, and he begins away up among the sun, moon and stars, and gives the Lord a great deal of astronomical information that must be highly gratifying. He then comes on down gradually over beautiful tablelands to ''forever and ever, amen." But after a man has had trouble, prayer Is with him & taking hold of the arm of God and crying out for help. I have heard earnest prayers on two or three occasions that I remember.
 Once, on the Cincinnati express train going at forty miles the hour, and the train jumped the track, and we were near chasm eighty feet deep; and the men who, few minutes before, had been swearing and blas- pheming God, began to pull and jerk at the bell rope, and got up on the backs of the seats and cried out, 70 God, save us!" There was another time, about eight hundred miles out at sea, on laundering steamer after the last lifeboat had been split finer than kindlng wood. They prayed then. Why is it you so often hear people, in recit- ing the last experience of some friend, say : ''He made the most beautiful prayer I ever heard"' What makes it beautiful? It Is the earnestness of it. Oh, tell you man is in earnest when his stripped and naked soul wades out in the soundless, shoreless, bot tomless ocean of eternity.
 It is trouble, my friends, that makes us feel our dependence upon God. We do not know our own weakness or Gods strength until the last plank breaks. It is contempt ible in us when there Is nothing else to take hold of, that we catch hold of God only. A man is unfortunate in business. He has to raise great deal of money, and raise it quick ly. He borrows on word and note all he can borrow. After while he puts a mortgage on his house. After while he puts a second mOrtuapo On his housp Then he ruts lion on his furniture. Then he makes over his life insurance. Then he assigns all his property. Then he goes to his father-in-law and asks for help!
 We'll, having failed everywhere, completely | failed, he gets down on his knees and says:"O Lord, have tried everybody and everything, now help me out of this financial trouble" He makes God the last resort instead of the first resort There are men who have paid ten cents on dollar who could have paid a hundred cents on dollar If they had gone to God in time. Why, you do not know who the Lord is. He is not an autocrat seated far up In palace, from which he emerges once year, preceded by heralds swinging swords to clear the way. No. But father willing, at our call, to stand by us in every crisis and predicament of life.
 I tell you what some of you business men make me think of. A young man goes off from home to earn his fortune. He goes with his mothers consent and benediction. one nstS laTSe WeaIIn out ne wants CO Wake his own fortune. He goes far away, falls | sick, gets out of money. He sends for the l hotel-keeper where he is staying, asking for lenience, and the answer he gets is: of you don't pay up Saturday night you'll be re- moved to the hospital" The young man | No help. He writes to a banker who was friend of his deceased father. No relief. He writes to an old schoolmate, but gets no help. Saturday night comes, and he is removed to | the hospital.
 l Getting there, he is frenzied with grief and he borrows a sheet of paper and a post age stamp, and he sits down, and he writes home, saying: "Dear mother, am sick uuto death. Come" It is ten minutes of 10 o'clock when she gets the letter. At 10 from the depot. She gets there in time to have five minutes to spare. She wonders why train that can go thirty miles an hour cannot go sixty miles an hour. She rushes into the hospital. She says: "My son, what does all this mean? Why didn't you send for knew could and would help you. Is this the reward I get for my kindness to you alwaysY' She bundles him up, takes him home, and gets him well very soon.
 young man treated his mother. When you | get into financial perplexity,. you call or the banker, you call on the broker, you cal on your creditors, you call on your lawyer for legal counsel; you call upon everybody and when you cannot get get, any he help, then you Thee. Help me now out of my perplexity.' And the Lord comes, though it is the eleventh hour. He says: "Why did you not send fol me before? As one whom his mother com forteth, so will comfort. you" It is tt throw us back upon all comforting Goo that we have this ministry of tears.
 Again, it is the use of trouble to capacitat' US for the office of sympathy. The priests under the old dispensation, were set apart b! having water sprinkled on their lhands, fee people are now set apart to the office o1 sympathy. When we are in prosperity w like to have a great many young peopl around us, and we laugh when they laugh and we romp when they romp, and we sing when they sing; but when we have troubl They know how to talk. Take an aget mother, 70 years of age, and she is almos omnipotent in comfort. Why? She ha been through it all. At o'clock in thu morning she goes over to comfort young mother who has just lost her babe.
 Grandmother knows all abou that trouble. Fifty years ago sh, felt it. At 12 o'clock of that day sh' goes over to comfort widowed soul. Sh knows all about that. She has been walking in that dark valley twenty years. At o'clock in the afternoon some one knocks a the door wanting bread. She knows al about that. Two or three times in her Tiff, she came to her last loaf. At 10 o'clock tha night she goes over to sit up with some on' severely sick. She knows all about it. Sh' knows all about levers and pleurisies ant broken bones. She has been doctOring al her life, spreading plasters, and pouring ou bitter drops, and shaking up hot pillows and contrfying things to tempt poor appe tite. Doctors Abernethy and Rush ant Hosack and Harvey were great doctors, bu tha prnatast doctor the world ever saw iS al old Christian woman. Dear me! Do w not remember her about the room when W, were sick in our boyhood? Was there an. one who could ever so touch 8 sore withou hurting it?
 And when she lifted her spectacles agains I her wrinkled forehead, so she could lool closer at the wound, it was three-fourth healed. And when the Lord took her home although you may have been men ant women 30, 40, 50 years of age, you lay on tn coffin lid and sobbed as though you were onl, 5 or 10 years of age. o man., praise God honest, sympathetic, kind, self sacrificing Chrstlike mother. Oh, it takes these peopl who have had trouble to comfort others il trouble. Where did Paul get the ink witt which to write his comforting epistle Where did David get the ink to write hi ink to write his comforting Revelation They got it out of their own tears. When
 man has gone through the curriculum, an, has taken a course of dungeons and imprison ments and shipwrecks, he is qualified for tn work of sympathy.
 When began to preach, my sermons ol the subject of trouble were all poetic and il semi-blank verse; but God knocked tn blank verse out of me long ago, and I hay found out that cannot comfort people ex cept as myself have been troubled. Go make me the son of consolation to the pee pie. would rather be the means of sooth ing one perturbed spirit today, than to pla tune that would set all the sons of mirt reeling in the dance. am an herb doctor I put into the caldron the Root out of dr ground without form or comeliness. Then