The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1890-10-30

But he moved in their midst in perfect
placidity until he had captured the
swarm of wandering bees And so have
seen men moving amid the annoyances.
and the vexations, and the assaults
of life in such calm, Christian deliber-
alton, that all the buzzing around about
their souls amounted to nothing. They
conquered them, and, above all, they
conquered themselves. 60" you say,
that's very good theory to preach on
a hot day, but it won't work" Il will
work. 1t has worked. I believe it is
the last Christian grace we win. You
know there are fruits which we gather
in June, and others in July, and others
in August, and others in September, and
still others in October; and l have to
admit that this grace of Christian for
I giveness is about the last fruit of the
Christian soul.
We hear a great deal about the bite r
tongue, and the sarcastic tongue, and
the quick tongue, and the singing
tongue; but we know very little about
'the soft tongue that breaketh the
bone" We read Hudibras, and Sterne,
and Dean Swift, and the other apostles
of acrimony, but give little time to
! studying the example of Him who was
reviled, and yet reviled not again. o
| that the Lord, by his spirit, would en-
| dow us all with 1.-THE soft tongue that
breaketh the bone"
| I pass now to the other thought that I
desire to present, and that is, kindness
| Of oF,1-
munities you find skeptical men.
Through early education, or through
the maltreatment of professed Chris
tian people, or through prying curiosity
| about the future world, there are a great
many people who become ske ptical in re-
ligious things. How shall you capture
them from God? Sharp argument and sar-
castle retort never won single soul from
skepticism to the Christian religion
While powerful books on the ''Evi-
dences of Christianity" have their mis-
sion in confirming Christian people in
the faith they have already adopted, l
have noticed that when skeptical peo-
pie are brought into the kingdom of
Christ, it is through the charm of some
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.
1t says: Now we'll just rouse up all
this sea-" and it makes a great
buster; but it does not succeed. Part
of the sea is reused up-perhaps one
half of it, or one-fourth of it. After
awhile the calm moon, placid and beau
tiful, looks down, and the ocean begins
to rise. 1t comes up to high-water
mark. 1t embraces the great head
lands. 1t submerges the beaches of all
the continents. 1t is the heart-throb of
one world against the heart-throb of an
other world. And 1 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 Chris
tian kindness can ever raise the death
less spirit to happiness and to God. I
have more faith in the prayer of child
five years old, in the way of bringing
an in1del back to Christ and to Heaven,
than l have in all the Kissing thunder
bolts of ecclesiastical controversy.
You can not overcome men with re-
ligious augmentation. If you come at
a skeptical man with an argument on
behalf of the Christi m religion, you put
the man on his mettle. He says. 81
see that man has carbine. I'll use my
carbine. I'll answer his argument with
thy argument" But if you come to
that man, persuading him that you de-
sire his happiness on earth, and his
eternal welfare in the world to come,
he can not answer it.
What l 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 stag
gering step, and the thick tongue, and
the disgusting hiccough, only worse
maddens his brain. But if you come to
him in kindness and sympathy; if you
show him that you appreciate the awful
grip of depraved appetite; if you per-
suade him of the fact that thousands
who had the graphing hooks of evil in
clination clutched in their souls as
firmly as in his have been delivered,
then ray of light will flash across his
vision, and it will seem as is a super
natural hand were steadying his stag
gering gait.
A good many years ago there lay in
the streets man dead drunk, his face
exposed to the blistering MONDAY 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 his debauch.
and began to look at the handkerchief.
and 10! on it was the name of highly
respectable Christian woman of the
city. He went to her, he thanked her
for her Kindness; and that little deed
saved him for this life, and saved him
for the life that is to come. He was
afterw0rd Acknowledgement of the
United States; but higher than all, he
became the consecrated discip le of
Jesus Christ.
Kind words are so cheap, it is q 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 wlo has fought