The intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1887-1891, 1890-05-17


L was reading of Il man born blind.
He was married to one who took care of
him all those years of darkness. A
surgeon said to him: 81 can remove that
blindness" and so he did. His sight
given him, u rose was handed to the
man who never before had seen a rose
and he was in admiration of it, and his
family whom he had never cen before
now appeared to him, and he was in
tears of rapture, hen he suddenly cried
out: 81 ought first to have asked to SEQ
the one who cured me; show me the
doctor" When from our eyes the
scales of earth shall fall, and we have
our first vision of Heaven, our first cry
ought not to be-: where are u loved
ones?" Our first cry ought to be:
''Where is Christ. who made all this pos
sible? Show me the Doctor!' Glory be
TO God for assembled humanity!
our fellow sufferer yet retains
A fellow feeling In our pains,
And still remembers, In the skies,
His tears. His agonles and cries"
/ am 50 glad hat Christ broke the
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 every thing. The reign Of
law Is a majestic thing, but the God
who made it has a right to break 1t, and
again and again has broken 1t, and
again and again will break it. A law Is
only Gods way of doing things, and IL
He chooses to do them some other way
He has n right to do so. A law Is not
strong enough to shackle the Almighty.
Christ broke the botanical law when one
Monday morning in March, on the way
from Bethany to Jerusalem, by a few
words he turned a full leaved fig tree
into a l~ifeless stick. He broke ichthyo-
logical law when, without any natural
inducement, he swung a great school Of
fish into a part of Lake Tiberias, where
the fishermen had cast their nets for
eight or ten hours without the capture
of a minnow, and by making a fish help
pay the tax by yielding from its mouth
a Roman slater. Christ broke the
law of storms by compelling,
with a word, the angered sea to hush it's
frenzy, and the winds to quit their bel
lowing. He broke geological law when
He made the devils possess the swine
of Gadara. He broke the law of eco
nomics when He made enough bread for
5000 people out of five biscuits that
would not ordinarily have been enough
for ten of the hungry. He broke in
tellectual law when, by a word, He
silenced a maniac into p%lacidity. He
broke physiological law when, by a
touch, He Strengthened a woman who
for eighteen years had been bent almost
double, and when He put spring into the
foot of inhumated Lazarus, and when,
without medicine, He gave the dying
girl back in health to the Syro-
Phenician mother, and when He made
the palatial home OF the nobleman re-
sound again with the laughter of his
restored boy, and when, without knife
or battery, He set cateracted eyes to
seeing again, and the drum of deaf ears
to vibrating again, and the nerves of
paralyzed arms to thrilling again, and
then when, in leaving the earth, He de-
fed all atmospheric law and physio-
logical law, and that law which has in
1t withes and cables and Orders enough
to hold the universe, the law of gravita-
ton.
The Christ who proved Himself on Sc
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 overriding the law.
Blessed be God that we are not the sub.
jects of blind fatality, but of a sympa.
thizing divinity. Have you never seen
q typhoid foyer break, or q storm sud-
denly quiet, or a ship a-beam's-end right
itself, Dr. a fog lift or o parched sky
break in showers, or a perplexity olsen
tangled, or the inconsolable take solace,
or the hayward reform at the call Of
prayer? l have seen it; multitudes have
seen 1t. You have, If you have been
willing to see it. Deride not the faith
cure. Because impostors attempt 1t, is
nothing against good men whom God
hath honored with marvellous restora-
tions. Pronounce nothing impossible to
prayer and trust. Because you and |
can not effect 1t IL no reason why others
may not. BY the same argument ]
could prove that Raphael never painted
o Madonna, and that Mendelssohn
pever wrote an oratorio, and that
Phidias never chiseled a statue.
Because we can not accomplish 1t
ourselves, we are not to conclude that
others may rot. There are in immen-
sity great ranges of mists which have
proved, under closer telescope scrutiny,
to be the storehouse OF worlds, and | do
not know, but from that passage in
James, which, to some Of us, is yet
.ofak,v anI Jir, tbara Yna " roll nttt a nnu
Heaven and a new earth. THE prayer
of faith shall save the sick" The faith
curists may, in this wsr against disease,
be only diminishing before Q general
engagement, in which all the maladies
of earth shall DO routed. Surely allo-
pathy and homeopathy and hydropathy
and eclecticism need reinforcement from
somewhere. Why not from the faith
and prayer of the consecrated2 The
mlghtiest school OF medicine may yet
be the school of Christ. do not know
but that diseases, now by all schools
pronounced incurabis, may give way I'M
der gospel bombardment. ! do not know
but that the day may ONE when faith
and prayer shall raise the dead. Strauss
and Woolston and SpiDoza and Hume
and Schleiermacher rejected the
miracles Of the far past do
not propose to be like them and reject
the miracles Of the far futuPe, This I
know, the Christ of Ascension day is
mightier than any natural laws, for on
the day % which / speak lie trampled
down the strongest of them all. Law is
mighty, but who He made it is mightier.
Drive out fatalism from yoNF theology,
and give grace the throne.
Standing to-day on the Ascension peak
of Mount Oliyet ] am also gladdened at
the closing gesture, the last gesture
Christ aver made. she lifted up His
hands and blessed them" says the in
spired account Of our Lords departure.
| am so glad He lifted up His hands.
Gestures are often more significant
than words, attitudes than arguments.
Christ had made a gesture of on
tempt when with His finger He wrote
on the ground; gesture of repulsion
when He said: sect thee behind me,
SATAN gesture of condemnation when
He said: WOE unto you, Pharisees and
hypocrites." But his last gesture is a
gesture of benediction. lie lifted up
his hands and blessed them. His arms
are extended and the palms OF His hands
turned downward, and so He dropped
benedictiop upon Olivet, benediction
upon Palestine, benediction upon all the
earth.
The cruel world took Him Ia at the
start on a cradle of straw, and at last
thrust Him out with the point
OF tho spear; but benediction! As
cending until beneath He saw on one
side the Bethlehem, where they put