Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1891-05-18

Of Jesus CnrlsJ ana start new one
when he said, go and be crucified and
then raise yourself from the grave thethird
dayr Those who propose to mend their
uets by secular skeptical books are just like
n man who has just one week for fishing,
and six Of the days he spends in reading
lsaak Walton's Complete Angler" and
Wheatley's "Rod and Line" and Scott's
Fishing in Northern Waters" and Pull
mans "Vade Mecum of Fly Fishing for
Trout" and then on Saturday morning,
his last day out, goes to the river to ply
his art, but that day the fish viii not bite,
and late on Saturday night he goes home
with empty basket and a disappointed
heart.
Meanwhile man who never saw big
library in all his life has that week caught
with an old fishing tackle enough to supply
his own table and the table of all his neigh
bors, and enough to salt down in barrels
for the long winter that will soon come in.
Alas! alasl Ii, when the Saturday night of
our life drops on us it shall be found that
we have spent our time in the libraries of
worldly philosophy, trying TO mend our
nets, and we have only few souls to re-
port as brought to God through our instru-
mentality, while some humble Gospel fish
erman, his library made up of Bible and
an almanac, shall come home laden with
the results, his trophies the souls within
fifteen miles of his log cabin meeting
house.
In the time of great disturbance in Ma
Piles in 1919 Massaniello, a bare footed fish
ing boy, dropped his fishing rod, and by
strange magnetism took command of that
Ia es,s.r 4. a.
took off his fishing jacket and put on
robe Of gold in the presence of bowling
mobs. He put his hand on his lip as sig
nal, and they were silent. He waved his
hand away from him, any they retired to
their homes. Armies passed in review be,
fore him. He became the nations idol
The rapid rise and complete supremacy of
that young fisherman, Massaniello, has no
parallel in all history. But something
equal to that and better than that is an
everyday occurrence in heaven.
God takes some of those, who in this
world were fishers of men, and who toiled
very humbly, but because of the way they
mended their nets and employed their nets
after they were mended, and suddenly
hoists them and robes them and scepters
them and crowns them and makes them
Tul6TS OVER many ClblCS, anu ne ndtCDeS
armies of saved ones before them in re
view Massanellos unhonored on earth,
but radiated in heaven. The fisher boy of
Naples soon lost his power, but those PEG.
pie of God who kept their nets mended and
rightly swung them shall never lose their
exalted place, but shall reign forever and
ever and ever Keep that reward in sight
SWEEP ALL THE SEAS
But do not spend your time fishing with
hook and line Why did not James the
son of Zebedee sit on the wharf at Cana,
his feet hanging over the lake and with a
long pole and a worm on the hook dipped
into the wave, wait for some mullet to swim
up and be caught? Why did not Zebedee
spend his afternoon trying to catch one
eel? No, that work was too slow These
men were not mending a hook and line,
they were mending their nets. So let the
church of God not be content with having
here one soul and next month another soul
brought into the kingdom. Sweep all the
seas with nets-scoop nets, seine nets, drag
nets, all encompassing nets-and take the
treasures in by hundreds and thousands
and millions, and nations be born in day,
and the hemispheres quake with the tread
of a ransoming God. Do you know what
will be the two most tremendous hours in
our heavenly existence? Among the quad
rillions of ages which shall roll on, what
two occasions will be to us the greatest?
The day of our arrival there will be to us
one of the two greatest. The second great
est, think, will be the day when we shall
have put in parallel lines before us what
Christ did for us and what we did for
Christ-the one so great, the other so little
That will be the only embarrassment in
heaven, My Lord and my Godl What
will we do and what will we say when on
one side are placed the Sayour's great sac
rifices for us and our small sacrifices for
him-his exile, his humiliation, his agones
on one hand, and our poor weak, insult
ficient sacrifices on the other? To make
the contrast less overwhelming, let us
quickly mend our nets, and like the Cali
lean fishermen may we be divinely helped
to cast them on the right side of the ship.