The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1890-05-28

day of valedictory ON the ridge from which
He swung into the skies. How much we
will want to see Him.
was reading of man born blind. He was
married to one who took cara Of him all those
wears of darkness. A surgeon said to him,
II can remove that blindness" and so hs
did. His sight given him. a rose was handed
to the man who never before had seen rose
and he was in admiration Of it, and his fam
lily whom he had never seen before now ap-
peared to him, and he was in tears Of rap
ture, when he suddenly cried ont: Il ougnt
first to have asked to see the one who cured
me; show me the DOCTOR" When from our
eyes the scales Of earth shall fall aad we have
our first vision of heaven, our first cry ought
firstcry ought to be, "Where is Christ, who
made all this possible? Show ma the doctor~
Glory be to God for assembled humanity!
Could we realize it, and that it is all in SYM
pathy for us, we would have as cool cour-
age in the conflict of this life as had Charles
the Twelfth wheh he was debating dispatches
to his secretary, and bombshel fell into
the room, and the secretary dropped his psn
and attempted flight Charles said to him:
"Go on with your writing! What has tina
bombshen to do with the letter l am die
tating?' If the assembled Christ be on or
side, nothing should disturb US.
our fellOW SuUerer yeL
A fellow feeling in our pains, 81
And still remembers, in the skies,
His tears, His agonies, and cries.
lam 50 glad that Christ broke thu natural
law Of gravitation when He shook off from
His feet the clutch of Mount Olivet. People
talk as though cold, iron, unsympathetic,
natural law controlled everything. Thereign
of law is a majestic thing, but ths God who
made it has q right to break it, AMI again
and again has broken it, AMI again and again
will break it. A law is only Coils way OF
doing things and if He chooses to do them
some other way He has right to do so. A
law is not strong enough to shackle tne Al
mighty. Christ broke botanical law when,
one Monday morning in March, on the way
from Bethany to Jerusalem, by few words
He turned full leaved fig tree into
lifeless stick. He broke ichthyologi-
cal law when, without any natural
inducement, He swung great school OF fish
into part of Lake Tiberias, where the fish
ermen had cast their nets for eight or ten
hours without the capture of q minnowt
and by making fish help pay the tax by
yielding from its mouth a Roman slater.
Christ broke the. law of storms by compel.
ing, with word, the angered sea to hush
its frenzy, and the winds to quit tteir bel
lowing He broke geological law when he
made the devils possess thu swine Of Gadara.
He broke the law of economics when he
made enough bread for five thousand people
out of five biscuits that would not ordinarily
have been enough for ten of the hungry
He broke intellectual law when, by word
He silenced a maniac in placidity. He
broke physiological low when, by a touch,
He Strengthened woman who for eighteen
years had been bent almost double, and when
He put spring into the foot of inhumatec
IA
gave the dying girl back in health to thu
Syro- Phenician mother, and when He E1adl
the palatial home of the nobleman resount
again with the laughter of his restored boy
and when, without knife or battery, He Sc
cataracted eyes to seeing again, and the drum
of deaf ears to vibrating again, and tn
nerves of paralyzed arms to thrilling ag ain
and then when in leaving the earth He defiet
all atmospheric law and physiological law
and that law which has in it withes ant
cables and girders enough to hold the uni
verse, the law Of gravitation.
The Christ who proved Himself on so many
occasions, and especially the last superior.to
law, still lives; and every day, in answer to
PRAYER for the good Of the world, He is over
riding the law. Blessed be God that we are
not the subjects of blind fatality, but Of
sympathizing divinity. Have you never
seen typhoid fever break, or storm sud-
denly quiet, or ship beams-end right it
self, or fog lift, or parched sky break in
showers or a perplexity dlssntangled,
or the inconsolable take solace, OF
the wayward reform at the call of prayeri
I have seen it; multitudes have seen
it. You have, if you have been willing
to see it. Deride not the faith cure. Because
impostors attempt it is nothing against good
men whom God hath honored with marvel
ous restorations. Pronounce nothing impos.
sible to prayer and trust. Because you and
I cannot effect it is no reason why Others
may not. By the same argument could
prove that Raphael never painted Madon-
ma, and that Mendelssohn never wrote an or.
atorio, and that Phidias never chiseled a
statue. Because we cannot accomplish IL
ourselves, we are not to conclude that others
may not. There are in immensity great
ranges Of mists which have proved,
under closer telescope scrutiny, to be
the store house of worlds, and l do
not know but from that passage in
James, which to some Of us is yet misty and
dim, there may roll out new heaven and
new earth: 'sThe prayer of faith SHALL save
the sick" The faith curists may, in this
war against disease, be only sErmisntug bs-
fore general engagement, in which all ths
maladies Of earth shall be routed. Surely
allopathy and homeopathy and hydropathy
and eclecticism need reinforcement from
somewhere. Why not from the faith and
PRAYER of the consecrated? The mightiest
school of medicine may yet bs the school of
Christ I do not know but that diseases now
by all schools pronounced incurable
may give way under Gospel lombard
ment I do not know but that the day
may come when faith and prayer shall raise
the dead. Strauss and Woolston and Spin
oza and Hume and Schleiermacher rejected
the miracles Of the far past. do not pro-
pose to be like them and reject the miracles
of the far future. This know-the Christ
of Ascension Day is mightier than any nat
He trampled down the strongest of them all.
Law is mighty, but He who made it is
mightier. Drive out fatalism from your
theology, and give grace the throne.
Standing to-day on the Ascension peak Of
Mount Olivet I am also gladdened at the
closing gesture, the last gesture Christ ever
made. "He lifted up His hands and blessed
them," says the inspired account of our
Lords departure. I am so glad He lifted
up His hands. Gestures ara often mora sig
nifcant than words, attitudes than argu-
ments. Christ hal made a gesture of con-
tempt when with His finger He wrote on the
ground gesture of repulSion when He said:
Sect thee behind ME, Satan;" gesture of con-
demnation when He said: s'Woe unto you,
Phar,sees and hypocrites. But His last
gesture, His Olivetic gesture. is gesture of
banodiction. He lifted up His hands and
blessed them. His arms are EXTENDED, and
the palms of His hands turned downward,
andso He dropped beuelic5ioa upoa Olivet,
benediction upon Palestine banediction upon
all the earth.
The cruel world took Him in at the start
on a cradle Of straw, and at last thrust
Him out with the point of the spear; but
benediction! Ascending until, beneath, He
saw on ono side the Beth them where they
put Him among the cattle, and Calvary on
the other side, where they put Him among
the thieves. As far as the excited and in-