The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1890-09-05


We hear great deal about the bitter
tongue, and the sarcastic tongue, and the
quick tongue, and the singing tongue
but we know very little about 1.-THE soft
tongue that breaketh the bone" We
read Hudibras, and Sterne, and Dean
Swift, and other apostles OF acrimony'
but give little time to studying the ex
ample of Him who was reviled, and yet
reviled not again. O. that the Lord, by
His spirit would endow us all with 1.-THE
soft tongue that breaketh the bone"
pass now to the other thought that
l desire to present and that is kind
ness as a means of usefulness. In all
communities you find skeptical men.
Through early education, or through
the maltreatment of professed Christian
people, or through prying curiosity
about the future world. there are great
many people who become skeptical in
religious things. How shall you capture
them for God? Sharp argument and
sarcastic retort never won a single soul
from skepticism to the Christian relig-
ion While powerful books on the
mission in confirming Christian people
in the faith they have already adopted.
have noticed that when skeprical peo-
pie are brought into the Kingdom of
Christ 1t is through the charm of genial
soul and not by argument at all Men
are not saved through the head; they are
saved through the heart A storm comes
out of its hiding place. Itsiys: Nov
we'll just rouse up all this sea-" and it
makes great buster, but 1t does not
succeed. Part of the sea is reused up
perhaps one half of it or one-fourth of
it. After a while the calm moon, placid
and beautiful, looks down, and the ocean
begins to rise. 1t comes up to high
water mark. 1t embraces the great
headlands. 1t submerges the beaches
of all the continents. 1t is the heart
throb of one world against the heart
throb of another world.
And have to tell you that while all
your storms of ridicule and storms of
sarcasm may rouse up the passion of an
immortal nature, nothing less than the
attractive power of Christian kindness
can ever raise the deathless spirit to
happiness and to God. ! have more
faith in the prayer OF child five years
old, in the way of bringing an infidel
back to Christ and to Heaven, than /
have in all the kissing thunderbolts of
ecclesiastical controversy.
You can not overcome men with re-
ligious augmentation. II you come at
skeptical man with an argument on
behalf of the Christian religion, you
put the man on his mettle. He says:
Il see that man has carbine. I'll use
my carbine. I'll answer his argument
with my argument" But if you come
to that man, persuading him that you
desire his happiness on earth, and his
eternal welfare in the world to come,
he can not answer it
What have said is just as true in the
reclamation of the openly vicious Did
you ever know drunkard to be saved
through the caricature of drunkard?
Your mimicry of the staggering step,
and the thick tongue, and the disgust
ing hiccough, only worse maddens his
brain. But if you come to him in kind
ness and sympathy; if you show him
that you appreciate the awful grip of
depraved appetite; If you persuade him
of the fact that thousands who had the
hooks of evil inclination
clutched in their soul as firmly as in his
have been delivered, then ray of light
will fash across his vision, and it will
seem as if a supernatural hand were
his gait.
A good many years ago there lay in
the streets man dead drunk, his face
exposed to the blistering noon day sun.
A Christian woman passed along looked
at him, and said: "Poor fellow" She
took her handkerchief and spread it
over his face, and passed on. The man
reused himself up from hisdebauch, and
began to look at the handkerchief, and.
10! on it was the name of highly re-
spectacle Christian woman of the city.
He went to her, he thanked her for her
and that one little deed saved
him for this life and saved him for the
life that is to come. He was afterward
Acknowledgement of the United States.
but higher than all, he became the con-
secrated disciple of Jesus Christ
Kind words are so cheap it is a won
der we do not use them oftener. There
are tens of thousands of people who are
dying for the lack of one kind word.
There is business man who has fought
against trouble until he is perfectly ex-
hausted. He has been thinking about
forgery, about robbery, about suicide.
Go to that business man. Tell him that
better times are coming, and tell him
that you yourself were in tight busi-
ness pass and the Lord delivered you.
Tell him to put his trust in God. Tell
him that Jesus Christ stands beside
every business man in his perplexities
Tell him of the sweet promises of Gods
comforting grace. That man is dying
for the lack of just one kind work. Go
tomorrow and utter that one saving,
omnipotent kind word. Here is a soul
that has been swamped in sin. He wants
to find the light of the Gospel He feels
like shipwrecked mariner looking out
over the beach, watching for sail
against the sky. o. bear down on him.
Tell him that the Lord waits to be gra-
cious to him, and though he has been a
great sinner there is a great Saviour
provided. Tell him that though his
sins are as scarlet they shall be as snow,
though they are red like crimson they
shall be as wool. That man is dying
forever for the lack of one kind word.
There used to be sung at great
many of the pianos all through the
country song that has almost died out
wish somebody would start it again in
our social circles There may not have
been very exquisite art in the music,
but there was grand and glorious senti-
ment:
"Kind words never die, never die;