The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1890-04-21


stop it from getting any worse, perhaps they
might contrive braces by which she might
be made more comfortable, but It is, hu-
manly speaking, incurable. Yet this di-
vine surgeon put both his hands on her.
and from that doubled-up posture she
began to rise, and the empurpled face
began TO take on a healthier hue, aud the
muscles began to relax from their rigidity.
and the spinal column began to adjust
itself, and the cords of the neck began to
be more supple, and the eyes that could see
only the ground before, now looked into
the face Of Christ with gratitude, and up
toward heaven with transport. Straight !
After eighteen weary and exhaustive years,
straight.9 The poise, the gracefulness, the
beauty of healthy womanhood reinstated.
The thirty-eight years case was a man
who lay on a mattress near the mineral
baths at Jerusalem. There we're five apart
ments where lame people were brought, so
that they could get the advantage of these
mineral baths. The stone basin of the bath
is still visible although the waters have dis
appeared, probably through some convul-
sion Of nature, the bath, one hundred and
twenty feet long, forty feet wide, and eight
feet deep. All, poor man; If you have
been lime and helpless thirty-eight years,
that mineral bath cannot restore you.
Why, thirty-eight years is more than the
average Of human lifei Nothing but
the grave will cure you. But Christ the
surgeon walks along these baths, and have
no doubt passes by some patients who have
been only six months disordered, or year,
or five years, and comes TO the mattress of
the man who had been nearly four decades
helpless, and to this thfrty-eight years in
valid said: "Wilt thou be made wholesn
The question asked, not because the surgeon
did not understand the protractedness, the
desperateness, of the case, but to evoke the
mans pathetic narrative. "Wilt thou be
made wholep "Would you like to get
well" 30. yes" says the man; shat is
what ! came TO these mineral baths
for; | have tried everything. All
the surgeons have failed, and all the
prescriptions have proved valueless, and
l have got worse and worse, and can
neither move hand or foot or head. O, if
| could only be free from this pain of thirty
eight yearsP Christ, the surgeon, could not
stand that. Bending over the man on the
mattress, and in a voice tender with all
sympathy, but strong with all omuipotence,
he says, "Rise" Aud the Invalid insta ltly
scrambles to his knees, and then puts out his
right foot, then his left foot, and then stood
upright as though he had never been pros
trated. While he stands looking at the
doctor with joy too much TO hold, the
doctor saws: "Shoulder this mattressl for
you are not only well enough TO walk, but
well enough to work, and start out from
these mineral baths. Take up thy bed and
walkW . what surgeon for chronic cases
then, and for chronic cases now
This is not applicable so much to those
who are only little hurt of sin, and only
for short time. but to those FRUSTRATED of
sin twelve years, eighteen years, thirty
eight years. Here is a surgeon able to give
immortal health. 90" you say, Il am SO
completely overthrow and trampled dowa
of sin that cannot rise.n Are you flatter
down than this patient at the mineral
bathss No. Then rise. In the name of
Jesus Of Nazareth, the surgeon who offers
you his right hand of help, bid thee rise.
Not cases of acute sin, but OF chronic sin
those who have not prayed for thirty-eight
years. those who have not been
to church for thirty-eigbt years.
those who have been gamblers, or
libertines, or thieves, or outlaws, or
blasphemers, or infidels, or atheists, or all
these together, for thirty-eight years. A
Christ for exigencies9 A Christ for dead
lift A surgeon who never loses case
In speaking of Christ as a surgeon, must
consider him as an oculist, or eye doctor,
and an aurist, or ear doctor. Was there
ever such another oculists That he was
particularly sorry for the blind folks, take
was with the deceased optic nerves. have
not time to count up the number of blind
people mentioned who got his cure. Two
blind men in one house, also one who was
born blind; so that it was not removal of
visual obstruction, but the creation of the
cornea, and ciliary muscle, and crystalline
lens, and retina, and optic nerve,
and tear gland; also the blind man
Of Bethesda, cured by the saliva
which the surgeon took from the tip of
his own tongue and put upon the eyelids /;
also two blind men who sat by the wayside.
In our civilized lands we have blindness
enough, the ratio fearfully increasing, ac-
cording to the statement OF Boston and New
Y ork and Philadelphia oculsts, because of
the reading of morning and evening news
papers on the jolting cars 5y the multitudes
who live out of the city and come ia to
business. But in the lands where this divine
surgeon operated, the cases of blindness
were multiplied beyond everything by the
particles of sand floating in the air, and the
night dews falling on the eyelids of those
who slept on the tops Of their houses; and
In some of these lands it is estimated that
twenty out of hundred people are totally
blind Amid all that crowd Of
visionless people, what work for an oculist |
And do not believe that more than one
out of a hundred of that surgeons cures
were reported. He went up and dlwn
among those people who were feeling
slowly they way by staff, or led by the
hand of man or rope of dog, and introduce
ing them to the faces of their own house
hold, to the sunrise and the sunset, and the
evening star. He just ran his hand over
the expressionless face, and the shutters
of both windows were swung open and the
restored went home, crying: II see l
seel Thank God. see"
That is the oculist we all need. Till he
touches our eyes we are blind. Yea, we
were born blind. By nature we see things
wrong if we see them at all. Our best
eternal interests are put before us and we
cannot see them. The glories of a loving
aud pardoning Christ are projected, and we
do not behold them. Or we have defect
i've sight which makes the things Of this
world larger than the things Of the future,
time bigger than eternity. Or we are color
blind ard cannot see the difference between
the blackness of darkness forever and
the roseate morning of an everlast-
ing day. But Christ, the surgeon comes
in, and though we shrink back afraid
to have him touch us, yet he puts his fingers
on the closed eyelids Of the soul, and mid
night becomes mid-noon; and we under
stand something of the joy Of the young
mau Of the Bible, who, though he had never
before been able to see his hand before his
face, now, by the touch OF Christ, had two
headlights kindled under his brow, cried
out in language that confouuded the jeer-
ing crowd who were deriding that Christ
that had effected the cure, and wanted to
make him out bad man. Whether he