Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1890-09-29
II the world.

Inc cnurcn OF OOu is dying OF faS-
tidiousness. We cry over the suffer
ings OF the world in hundred dollar
pocket handkerchiefs. and then put a
cent in the poor box. There are many
willing to do Christian work among the
clearly, and the refined, and the ele-
CANT, and the educated, but excuse
them from taking loaf of bread down
dirty alley, excuse them from teach
ing a mission school among the I'M
combed and the unwashed, excuse
them from touching the hand of one
whose finger nails are in mourning for
departed soap. Such religious pre-
cisionists can toll in atInospheres laden
with honeysuckle and rosemary, but
not in air floating up from the NAL
odorous watts. No, no, mol Excuse
them from lodging with one Simon, the
tanner.
During the last war there were in
Virginia some sixty or seventy wound
ed soldiers in barn, on the second
floor, so near the roof that the heat of
the August sun was almost insupport-
able The men were dying from sheer
exhaustion and suffocation A dis
tinguished member of the Christian
commission said to the nurse who stood
there, Wash the faces and feet of
these men and it will revive them"
''No," said the nurse, Il didn't come
into the army to wash anybody's feet.
s'Wen," said the distinguished member
of the commission, "bring me water
and a towel; I will be. very glad to
wash their feet" One was the spirit
of the devil. the other the spirit of
Christ.
THE HOUSE TOPS OF JOPPA.
But reference to Peter reminds me
that we must go to the housetop in
Joppa where he was taught the de-
mocracy of religion. That was about
the queerest thing that ever happened.
On our way up to that housetop we
passed an old well where the great
stones were worn deep with the ropes
of the buckets, and it must be well
many centuries old, and I think Peter
drank out of it. Four or five goat or
calfskins filed with water lay about
the yard. We soon got up the steps
and on the housetOp. 1t was in such
a place in Joppa that Peter one noon
while he was waiting for dinner had a
hungry fit and tainted away, and had
a vision or dream or trance. / said to
my family and friends on that house
top, ''Listen while read about what
happened here" And opening the
Bible we had the whole story
It seems that Peter on the housetop
dreamed that a great blanket was let
down out of heaven, and in it were
sheep and goats and cattle and mules
and pigeons and buZzards and snakes
and all manner of creatures that fly the
air, or walk the field, or crawl the earth,
and in the dream a voice told him as
he was hungry to eat, and he said, II
cannot eat things unclean." Three
times he dreamed it. There was then
heard a knocking at the gate of the
house on the top of which Peter lay in
a trance, and three men asked, els
Peter hereW Peter, while yet wonder
ing what his dream meant, descends
the stairs and meets these strangers at
the gate, and they tell him that good
man by the name of Cornelius, in the
city of Ceesarea, has also had dream
and has sent them for Peter and to ask
him to come and preach. At that call
Peter left Joppa for C@sarea. The
dream he had just had prepared him to
preach, for Peter learned by it to re-
ject no people as unclean, and whereas
he previously thought he must preach
only to the Jews, now he goes to preach
to the Gentiles, who were considered
unclean.
TWO DREAMS.
Notice how the two dreams meet
Peters dream on the housetop, Cor
nelius' dream at Cesarea So I have
noticed providences meet, distant
events meet. dreams meet. Every
dream is hunting up some other dream,
and every event is searching for some
other event In the Fifteenth century
Q492) the great event was the discov-
cry of America. The art of printing,
born in the same century, goes out to
meet that discovery and make the New
World an intelligent world. The Dec
laration of independence, announcing
equal rights, meets Robert Burns
\ mans man for a that
The United States was getting too
large to be managed by one govern
ment, and telegraphy was invented to
compress within an hour the whole
continent Armies in the cival war
were to be fitted out with clothing, and
the sewing machine invention came out
to make it possible. Immense farming
acreage is presented in this country,
enough to support millions of cur
native born and millions of foreigners;
but the old style of pillow and scythe
and reaper and thresher cannot do the
work, and there come steam plows,
steam harrows steam reapers, steam
rakes, steam threshers, and the work is
accomplished. The forests of the earth
fail to afford sufficient fuel, and so the
coal mines surrender a sufficiency. The
cotton crops were luxuriant, but of
comparatively little value, for they
could not be managed; and so, at just
the right time, Hargreaves came with
his invention of the spinning jenny,
and Arkwright with his roller. and
Whitney with his cotton gin. The
world, after pottering along with tallow
candles and whale oil, was crying for
better light and more of it, and the
hills of Pennsylvania poured out rivers
of oil, and kerosene iHumined the
nations. But the oil wells began to
fail, and then the electric light comes
forth to turn night into day.
So all events are woven together, and
the world is magnificently governed,
because it is divinely governed We
criticise things and think the divine
machinery is going wrong, and put our
fingers amid the wheels only to get
them crushed. But I say, hands off
Things are coming out gloriously. Cor
nelius may be in C@sarea, and Peter in
Joppa, but their dreams meet. 1t is
one hand that is managing the world,
and that is Gods hand; and one mind