Milford chronicle. [volume] (Milford, Del.) 1878-1974, 1891-07-10

Z princes OF heaven. Iney ali nave an eber'
nal lineage. They are all the children of a
king, Hath the rain fatherf" Well,
then, say if God takes notice Of every
minute raindrop he will take notice Of the
most Insignificant affair OF my life. Il Is
the astronomical view of things that
bothers me.
We look up into she night heavens, and
we say, "Worldsl worldsp and how insig-
niicant we feell We stand at the foot OF
Mount Washington or Mont Blanc, and
we feel that we are only insects, and then
we say to ourselves, Though the world is
80 large, the sun is one million four hun
dred thousand times larger" ''Ohp' We
say, sit is no use, if God wheels that great
machinery through immensely he will not
take the trouble to look down at me-" In
: fidel conclusion. Saturn, Mercury and
J Jupiter are no more rounded and weighed
and swung by the hand Of God than are
the globules on a lilac bush the morning
after shower.
( God Is no more in magnitudes than he is
/ in minutie. II he has scales to weigh the
mountains he has balances delicate enough
{ to weigh the infnitesimal You can no
! more see him through the telescope than
/ you can sec him through the microscope; no
/ moro when you look up than when you
/ look down. Are not the hairs of your
( head all numbered? And if Himalaya has
/ a God, Hath not the rain father?'
( take this doctrine OF particular Provi-
dence, and | thrust it into the very midst
( Of your everyday life II God fathers a
raindrop, is there anything so insiRnil-
! cant IN your affairs that God will not
father thSt2
When Druyse, the gunsmith, invented
the needle gun, which decided the hattie
( of Sadowa, was it a mere accident? When
a farmers boy showed Butcher short cut
by which he could bring his army up soon
enough to decide Waterloo FOR England,
was it "A mere accident? When Lord Byron
took piece of money and tossed it up to
decide whether or not he should he affi-
anced to Miss Millbank. was it a mere ac-
cident which side of the money was up and
which was down? When the Christian
army was besieged at Beziers, and a
drunken drummer came in at midnight
and rang the alarm bell, not knowing what
he was doing, but waking up the host in
time to fight their enemies that moment
arriving, was it an accident?
When in one of the Irish wars a starv-
ing mother, flying with her starving child,
sank down and tainted on the rocks in the
u
of milk, did that just happen so2 God is
either in the affairs of men or our religion
Is worth nothing at all, and you had better
take it away from us, aud instead Of this
Bible, which teaches the doctrine, give us
a secular book. and let us. as the famous
Mr.. Fox, the member of parliament, in his
last hour, cry out, Read me the eighth
book of Virgil"
ns,I INV ftf ar1Ic LAT u1a rOuaa nm n IN an
probation of the fact that all the affairs Of
our life are under a kings command, and
under a fathers watch Alexander's war
horse, Bucephalus, would allow anybody
to mount him when he was embarrassed,
but rs soon as they put on that war horse,
BucephaJus, the saddle and the trappings
of the conqueror he would allow no one
but Alexander to touch him. And if a
soulless horse could have SO much pride in
his owner, shall not we immortals exult in
the fact that we are owned by a king2
''Hath the rain father?"
GODS WAYS ARE PAST FINDING OUT.
Again my subject teaches me that Gods
dealings with us are ineXplicable That
was the original force Of my text. The
rain was a great mystery to the ancients,
They could not understand how the water
should get into the cloud, and getting
there, how it should be suspended, or fall
ing, why it should come down in drops.
Modern science comes along and says there
are two portions of air of different tenn
perature. and they are charged with mois-
ture, and the one portion of air decreases
in temperature so the water may no longer
be held in vapor, and it falls. And they
tell lis that some of the clouds that look
to be only as large as a mans hand and to
be almost quiet in the heavens, are great
mountains of mist four thousand feet from
base to top, and that they rush miles
minute.
But after all the brilliant experiments of
DR.. James Hutton, and Saussure, and other
scientists, there is an infinite mystery
about the rain There is an ocean of the
unfathomable in every raindrop, and God
says today as he said in the time of Job,
"If you cannot understand one drop of
rain do not be surprised if my dealings
with you are inexplicable." Why does that
aged man, decrepit, beggared vicious, sick
of the world and the world sick Of him.
live on, while here is Il man in mid life,
consecrated to God, hard working, useful
in every respect, who diesf Why does chat
old gossip gadding along the street about !
everybody's business but her own, have
mother. with q flock of little ones about
her whom she is preparing for usefulness |
and for hcaven-the mother who you think |
could not be spared an hour from that |
household-why does she lie down and |
die with a cancer?
Why does that man, selfish to the core, |
go on adding fortune to fortune, consum-
ing everything on himself, continue to |
prosper, while that man, who has been |
giving ten per cent. of all his income I
to God and the church, goes into bank |
ruptcy? Before we make stark fools Of |
ourselves, let us stop pressing this ever I
lasting why" Let us worship where we /
cannot understand. Let man take that |
one question, "Why?" and follow it far /
enough, and push it, and he will land in |
wretchedness and perdition. We want in /
our theology fewer interrogation marks |
and more exclamation points Heaven is |
the place for explanation. Earth is the |
place for trust. If you cannot understand /
so minute thing as a raindrop, how can
you expect to understand Gods dealings? |
"Hath the rain fatherg'
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 por-
tentous than Salvador or Claude ever
painted-clouds of poverty, or persecution,
or bereavement. They hover over US, and
the get darker and blacker, and after
awhile tear starts, and We think by an
extra pressure Of the eyelid TO stop it.
Others follow, and after awhile there is a
shower of fearful emotion. Yea, there is
rain of tears "IIath that rain father'"
GOD SEES OUR TEARS
"Oh." YOU say "a tear is nothing but
drop VI limpid fluid secreted by the lacl-
rymal gIand-it is only a sign Of weak
eyes" Great mistake. It is one of the
Lords richest benedctions to the world.
There are people in Blackwell's Island in
sane asylum, and at Utica, and at all she
asylums CT this land, who were demented
by the fact that they could not cry at the
right time. Said maniac in one Of our
public institutions, under a Gospel sermon
chat started the tears: "Do you see that
teari that is the first | have wept for
. mill hal