Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-09-29

the tanner People who 20 out to do
| reformatory and missionary and Christian
work must not be too sensitive. Simon
| no doubt brought to his homestead every
night the malodors of the calf skins and
ox-hides in his tannery, but Peter lodged
in that home, not only because he may
not have been invited to the houses of
meI chant princes surrounded by redolent
gardens, but to teach all men and women
engaged in trying to make the world
better, they must not be squeamish and
fastidious and finical and over particular
in doing the work of the world.
THE CHURCH OF GOD
is dying of fastidiousness. We cry over
the sufferings of the world in 500 pocket
handkercbiefs, and then put cent in
the poor box. There are many willing to
do Christian work among the clearly and
the refined and the elegant and the edu-
Gated; but excuse them from taking a
loaf of bread down dirty alley, excuse
them from teaching a mission school
among the uncOmbed and the unwashed,
excuse them from touching the hand
OF one whose finger nails are in mourning
for departed soap. Such religious pre-
cislonists can toll in atmospheres laden
with honeysuckle and rosemary, but not
in air floating Up from the malodorous
watts. No, no, no! Excuse them from
lodging with one Simon, the tanner.
During the last war there were In
Virginia some sixty or seventy wounded
soldiers in a barn on the second floor, so
near the roof that the heat of the August
sun was almost iusupportable. The men
were dying from sheer exhaustion and
suffocaton. A distinguished 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 mo said the nurse,
~ didn't come into the army to wash
anybody's feet" ''Well,'' said the
distinguished member of the oommlss-
sion, "bring me water and towel; l
will be very glad to wash their feet. -
One was the spirit of the devil, the other
the spirit of Christ.
But reference to Peter reminds me
that we must go to the housetop in
Joppa where he was taught the democ-
racy of religion. That was about the
queerest thing that ever happened. On
our way 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 q we'll
many centuries old, and, think Peter
drank out of it. Four or five goat or
calf skins filed with water lay about the
yard. We soon got up the steps and on
the house top. 1t was in such place in
Joppa that Peter, one noon, while he
was waiting for dinner, had hungry fit
and tainted away and had vision or
dream or trance. l said to my family
and friends on that house top: ''Listen
while l read about what happened
here.' And opening the Bible, we had
the whole story. 1t seems that Peter, on
the house top, dreamed that a great
blanket was let down out OF heaven, and
in it were sheep and goats and
cattle aud mules and pigeons and
buzzards and snakes and ell
manner of creatures that fly the air, or
walk the fields, or crawl the earth, and
in the dream voice told him that as he
was hungry, to eat, aud he said: 81
cannot eat things unolean."
Three times he dreamed it.
There was then heard q
knocking at the gate of the house on the
top of which Peter lay in trance and
three men asked, "Is Peter here?'
Peter, while yet wondering what his
dream meaut, descends the stairs and
meets these strangers at the gate and
name of Cornelius, in the city of
Cesarea, 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 Cesarea. The dream he
had just had prepared him to preach,
for Peter learned by it to reject no peo-
Pile as unclean, and whereas he previ-
ously thought he must preach only to the
Jews, now he goes to preach TO the Gen.
tiles
WHO WERE CONSIDERED UNCLEAN.
Notice how the two dreams meet
Peters dream on the housetop, Corns-
Illus dream at Cesarea. So have no.
tlced the 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 1492)
the great event was the discovery of
America. The art OF printing, born in
the same century, goes out to meet that
discovery and make the New world an in
telligent world. The Declaration of In
dependence announcing equal rights
meets Robert Burns.
"a mans man for a. that
The United States was getting too
large to be managed by one government,
and telsgraphy was invented to compress
within an hour the whole continent.
ARMIES in the civil war were to be fitted
out with clothing, and the sewing ma
chine invention came out to make it
possible. Immense farming acreage is
presented in this country, enough to sup
port millions of our native born, and
millions of foreigners; but the cid style
of plough and scythe, and reaper, and
cannot DO the work, and there
came steam ploughs, 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 to the coal mines
surrender sufficienoy. The cotton
crops were luXuriant, but of compare
lively little value, for they could not be
and SO, at just the right time,
Hargraves 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 illumined 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 mag
niticently governed, because II is di-
vinely governed. We criticise things