The Iola register., 1891-02-13
MAK1Nc HARvEsrs oF GRACE.

winter of England for lack of enough
snow to keep them warm. Snow strikes
back the rich gases which otherwise
would escape in the air and be lost.
Thank God for the SHOWS, and may
those of February be as plentiful as
those of December and January have
/ been, high and deep and wide and en-
riching; then the harvest next July
will embroider with gold this entire
American continent. But who with any
analogical faculty can notice that out
OF such ichill as the snow comes the
wheat, without realizing that chilling
sorrows produce harvests of grace! The
strongest christians, without any ex-
ception, are those who were by be-
reavements or sickness, or poverty or
persecution. or all of them together,
showed under, and again and again
showed under. These snow storms OF
troubled They kill the malarias of the
soul. They drive us out of worldly de
pendence to God. Call the roll of all
the eminently pious of all the ages and
you will find them the sons and daugh-
| ters of sorrow. The MarOnites say
that one characteristic of the cedar
tree is that when the air is full of snow,
and it begins to decend, the tree lifts
it branches in way better to receive
the snow and bear up under it, and |
know by much observation that the
grandest cedars of Christian character
lift higher their branches toward God
when the SHOWS of trouble are coming.
Lord Nelson's coffin was made out of
the masts of the ship L'Orient, in
which he had fought so bravely, and
your throne in heaven, o, suffering
child of God, will be built out of con-
quered earthly disasters. What gave
John Bunyan such wondrOus dream
of the celestial city? The Bedford pen
itentary. What gave Richard Baxter
such power to tell of the saints Ever
lasting Rest" and give his immortal
'Call to the Unconverted?" Physical
disease which racked every nerve in
his body. What made George White
field so mighty in saving souls, bring
ing ten thousand to God when others
brought hundred? Persecution that
caricatured and assailed him all up and
down England, and dead vermin thrown
in his face when he was a preaching.
EARTHLY WOES REAL BLESSINGS.
What mellowed and glorified Wilber-
forces Christian character? A finan-
cial misfortune that led him to write:
81 know not why my life is spared so
long except it to be shown that a man
can be as happy without fortune as
with one." What gave John Milton
such keen spiritual eyesight that he
could see the battle of the angels? Ex-
tinguishment of physical eyesight.
What is the highest observatory for
studying the stars of hope and faith
and spiritual promise? The believers
sick-bed. What proclaims the richest
and most golden harvest that wave on
the hills of heavenly rapture? The
SHOWS, the deep SHOWS, the awful SHOWS
of earthly calamity. And that comfort
ing thought is one of the treasures of
the snow.
Another treasure of the snow is the
suggestion that this mantle covering
the earth is like the soul after it is for
gotten. "Wash me-" said the Psalmist,
'and shall be whittier than snow" My
dear friends, Gasherie Dewitt, never
went over to Geneva, Switzerland, for
the recovery of his health, but the Lord
had something better for him than
earthly recovery. Little did l think
when | bade him goOdby one lovely
afternoon on the other side the sea to
return to America that we would not
meet again till we meet in heaven. AS
he lay one Sabbath morning on his dy-
ing pillow in Switzerland, the window
opened, he was looking out upon Mount
Blanc. The air was clear. That great
mountain stood in its robe of snow, gilt
tering in the morning light, and my
friend said to his wife: Jennie, do you
know what that snow on Mount Blanc
makes me think of? 1t makes me think
of that Righteousness of Christ and the
pardon of God cover all the sins and i'm
perfections of my life as that snow
covers up that mountain, for the pro-
mise is that though our sins be as scar
let they shall be as white as snow
Was not that glorious?
THE ONLY TRUE PURIFICATIoN.
] do not care who you are, or where
you are, you need as much as do that
cleansing which made Gasherie Dewitt
good while he lived and glorious when
he died. Do not take it as the tenet of
an obsolete theology that our nature is
corrupt. We must be changed. We
must be made over again. The ancients
thought that snow water had especial
power to wash out deep stains. All
other water might fail, but melted snow
would make them clean. Well, Job had
great admiration for snow, but he de-
clares in substance that if he should
wash his soul in melted snow he would
still be covered in mud like man down
in ditch. Job tx, 30, IF | wash my
self in snow water and make my hands
never so clean, yet shalt thou plunge
me in ditch and mine clothes shall
abhOr me-" We must be washed in the
fountain of Gods mercy before we can be
whittier than snow. without holiness
no man shall see thetord." o, for the
cleansing power.
If there be in all this audience one
man or woman whose thoughts have
always been right, and whose words
always right, and whose actions always
right, let such a one rise, or il already
standing, lift the right hand. Not one.
All we, like sheep, have gone astray.
Unclean! unclean. And yet we may be
made whittier than snow, whittier than
that which, on cold winters morning
after night of storm, clothes the tree
from bottom of trunk to top of the high
est branch; whittier than that which,
this hour. makes the Adirondacks and
the Sierra Nevada and Mount Washing
ton heights of pomp and splendor fit to
enthrone an archangel.
In the time of Graham, the essayist.
in one mountain district of Scotland an
average of ten shepherds perished
every winter in the snow drifts, SO he
proposed that, at the distance OF every
mile, pole fifteen feet high and with
two cross pieces be erected, showing
the points of the compass, and bell
hung at the top, SO that every breeze
would ring it, and so the lost one in the
mountains would hear the sound and