The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1890-06-26

earth, and hallelujahs of all Heaven.
THE blind receive their sight, and the
lame walk; the lepers are cleaned and
the deaf hear"
notice this Surgeon had fondness
for chronic cases. Many surgeon,
when he has had patient brought to
him, has said: 'Why was not this at
tended to five years ago? You bring
him to me after all power of recupera-
ton is gone? You have waited until
there is complete contraction OF the
muscles, and false ligatures are formed,
and Justification has taken place. 1t
ought to have been attended to long
ago." But Christ, the Surgeon, seemed
to prefer inveterate cases. One was
hemorrhage of twelve years, and He
stopped it. Another was curvature of
eighteen years, and He Strengthened it.
Another was cripple of thirty
eight years, and he walked out
well The eighteen-year patient
wPA a woman bent almost double.
Il you could call a convention
of all the surgeons of all the centuries,
their combined skill could not cure that
body SO drawn out of shape. Perhaps
they might stop it from getting any
worse, perhaps they might contrive
braces by which she might be made
more comfortable, but it is, humanity
speaking, incurable. Yet this Divine
Surgeon put both His hands on her, and
from that doubled-up posture she began
to rise, and the empurpled face began
to take on healthier hue, and the
muscles began to relax from their rigid
ity, and the spinal column began to ad-
just itself, and the cords of the neck be-
gan to be supple, and the eyes, that
could only see the ground before, now
looked up into the face of Christ with
gratitude, and up toward Heaven in
transport. Straight! After eighteen
weary and exhaustive years, straight!
The poise, the gracefulness, the beauty
of healthy womanhood reinstated.
The thirty-oight years case was a
man who lay on mattress near the
mineral baths at Jerusalem. There
were five apartments where lame peo-
pie were brought so that they could get
the advantage of tho mineral baths.
The stone basin of the bath is still visi-
BILE, although the waters have disap-
peared, probably through some convul-
sion of nature, the bath, one hundred
and twenty feet long, forty feet wide
and eight feet deep. All. poor man; if
you have been lame and hel pless thir-
ty-eight years, that mineral bath can
not restore. But Christ, the Surgeon,
walks along these baths, and have no
doubt passes by some patients who have
been only six months disordered, or a
year, or five years, and comes to the
mattress of the man who had been near
ly four decades helpless, and to this thir-
ty-eight years invalid said: "Wilt thou
be made whole?"
In speaking of Christ as Surgeon,
must consider Him as an oculist, or eye
doctor, and an aurist, or ear doctor
Was there ever such another oculist?
That He was particularly sorry for the
blind folks, l take from the fact that
the most of His work was with the
diseased optic nerves. / have not time
to count up the number of blind people
mentioned who got His cure. Two
blind men in one house, also one who
was born blind; so that it was not re-
moVal of a visual obstruction, but the
creation of the cornea, and ciliary
muscle, and crystalline lens, and
retina, and optic nerve, and
tear gland; and the blind man
of Bethsaida, cured by the saliva which
the Surgeon took from the tip of His
own tongue and put upon the eyelids;
also two blind men who sat by the way
side. In our civilized lands we have
blindness enough, the ratio fearfully in
creasing, according to the statement of
Boston and New York and Philadelphia
oculists, because of the reading of morn
ing and evening newspapers on the
jolting cars by the multitudes who live
out of the city and come in to business.
| But in the lands where this Divine Sur
geon operated, the cases of blindness
were multiplied beyond every thing by
| the PARTICLES of sand floating in the
air, and the night dews falling on the
eyelids y those who slept on the top
of theiS houses; and in some of these
| lands it is estimated that twenty out of
hundred people are totally blind.
Amid all that crowd OF visionless peo-
| pie, what work for an oculist! And do
not believe that more than one out of a
hundred of that Surgeons cures were
| reported. He went up and down among
those people who whore feeling slowly
their way by staff, or led by the hand
of man or rope of dog, and introducing
them to the faces of their own
household, to the sunrise and the sun
set and tho evening star. He just ran
His hand over the expressionless face
and the shutters of both windows were
swung open, and the restored went
home, crying: II see! l see! Thank
God, 1 seer
But this Surgeon was just as wonder
full as an aurist. Very few people have
two good ears. Nine out of ten people
are particular to get on this or that side
of you when they sit or walk with you,
because they have one disabled ear.
Many have both ears damaged, and
what with the constant racket of our
great cities, and the catarrhal troubles
that sweep through the land, it is re-
markable that-there are any good ears
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