The Bossier banner., 1891-09-10

sick of him, live on, while here is
a man in mid-life, consecrated to God,
hard-working, useful in every respect,
who dies? Why does that old gossip,
gadding about the street, about every
body's business but her own, have such
good health, while the Christian moth
er, with flock of little ones about her
whom she is preparing for usefulness
and for Heaven--the mother who you
think could not be spared an hour from
that household-why does she lie down
and die with cancer? Why does that
man, selfish to the core, go on adding
fortune to fortune, consuming every
thing on himself continue to pros
per, while that man, who has been
giving ten per cent. of his income to
God and the church, goes into bank
ruptcy? Before we make stark fools of
ourselves let us stop pressing this ever
lasting why" Let us worship where
we can not understand. Let man
take that one question ''why?" and fol
low it far enough, and push it, and he
will land in wretchedness and perdi-
ton. We want in our theology fewer
interrogation marks and more exclama-
tion points. Heaven is the place foT
explanation. Earth is the place for
trust. If you can not understand so
minute thing as rain-drop, how can
you expect to under stand Gods deal
ings? Hath the rain father?"
Again, my text makes me think that
the rain of tears is of Divine origin.
Great clouds of trouble sometimes hover
over us. They are black and they are
gorged, and they are thunderous. They
are more portentous than Salvador or
Claude ever painted-clouds of poverty,
or persecution, or bereavement. They
hover over us, and they get darker and
blacker, and after awhile a tear starts,
and we think by an extra pressure of
the eyelid to stop it. Others follow, and
after awhile there is shower of tear
ful emotion. YEA there is a rain of
tears. Hath that rain father?''
80" you say, "a tear is nothing but
drop of limpid fluid secreted by the
lachrymal glands only sign of
weak eyes" Great mistake. 1t is one
of the Lords richest benedictions to
the world. There are people in Black,
wells Island asylum, and at Utica, and
at the asylums of this land, who were
demented by the fact that they could
not cry at the right time. Said a
maniac in one of our public institutions,
under Gospel sermon that started the
tears: 'iDo you see that tear? That
tho GY.c4
twelve years. l think it will
help my brain" There are great
many in the grave who could not stand
any longer under the glacier of trouble.
If that glacier had only melted into
weeping they could have endured it.
There have been times in your life when
yols would have given the world, if you
had possessed it, for one tear Youcould
shrek, you could blaspheme, but you
could not cry. Have you never seen ID
man holding the hand of dead wife, who
had been all the world to him? The tenn
pies llvid with excitement, the eye dry
and frantic, no moisture on the upper
or lower lid. You saw there were
bolts of anger in the cloud but no rain
To your Christian comfort he said.
Don't talk to me about God; there is
no God; or if there is hate Him; don't
talk to me about God; would He have
left me and these motherless childreu?'
But few hours or days after, coming
across some lead pencil that she owned
in life, or some letters which she
wrote when he was away from
homo with h. l.
there bursts the fountain of tears, and
as the sunlight of Gods consolation
strikes that fountain of tears you
lind out that it is a tender-hearted, mer-
clful, pitiful, and all-compassionate God
who was the father of that rain. 'Oh, -
you say, ''it is absurd to think God is
going to watch over tears" No, my
friends. There are three or four kinds
of them that God counts. bottles, and
eternizes. First, there are all parental
tears, and there are more of these
than of any other kind, because
the most of the race die in infancy,
and that keeps parents mourning all
around the world. They never get over it.
They may live to shout and sing after.
ward, but there is always a corridor in
the soul that is SILENT though it once
resounded. My parents never men.
toned the death of child who died
fifty years before, without tremor in
the voice and sigh, oh! how deep
fetched. 1t was better she should die,
1t was niercv she should die. She
would have been lifelong invalid.
But you can not argue away a parents
grief. How often do you hear the
moan: 'Oh! my child, my child!''
the king of Carthage was dethroned
mis- people rebelled against him. He
was driven into banishment. His wife
and children were outrageously abused.
Years went Oy, and the king of Carthage
made many friends. He gathered up a
great army. He marched again toward
Carthage. Reaching the gates OF
Carthage, the best men of the place
came out bare-footed and bare-headed,
and with ropes around their necks, crv.
ing for mercy. They said: ave abused
you and we abused your family, but we
cry for mercy" The king of Carthage
looked down upon the people from his
| chariot and said: Il came to bless. I
/ didn't sfan 70 Jae4,.o,v