The Brookhaven leader. [volume] (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1883-1891, 1891-10-22

arc, "a minister without charge"
They were heroic race. They had
small salaries, and but few books, and
they swan spring freshet to meet
their appointments. But they did
in their day a mighty work for
God. They took off more of the heads
of Philistine iniquity than you could
count from noon to shutdown. YDu put
that old minister of the Gospel now
into a prayer meeting, or occasional
pulpit, or sick room where there is
some one TO he comforted, and IL is the
same old ring to his voice and the same
old story of pardon and peace and
Christ and Heaven. His hand has SO
long clutched the sword in Christian
conflict he can not drop it. ''His hand
clave unto the sword"
had in my parish in Philadelphia .
very aged man who. in his early life,
had been the companion and adviser Of
the early presidents, Madison and Mon
roe. lie had welded vast influence,
but l only knew him as a very aged
man. The most remarkable thing about
him was his ardor for Christ. When re
could not stand up in the meetings
without propping he would throw his
arm around a pillar of the church,
and though his mind was partially gone,
his love for Christ was so great that all
were in deep respect and profound admit
ration, and were moved when he spoke.
| was called to see him die. j entered
the room. and he said: "Mr. Talmage,
| can not speak to you now lie was
in n very pleasant delirium, as he i'm
agined he had an audience before him.
lie said: II must tell these people &c
come to Christ and prepare for Heaven"
And then in this pleasant delirium, both
arms lifted, this octogenarian preached
Christ, and told of the glories of the
world to come. There, lying on his dy,
ing pillow, his dying hand clave to bis
sword
There is the headless body of Payl
on the road to Ostea. His great brain
and his great heart have been severed.
The elmwood rods had sturg him fear.
fully. When the corn ship broke up
he swan ashore, coming up drenched
with the brine. Every day since that
day when the horse reared under him
in the suburbs of Damascus, as the
supernatural light fell, down to this
day, when he was sixty-eight years of
age, and old and decrepit from the
| prison cell of the Mamertine,
he has been outrageously treated,
and he is waiting to die? How
does he spend his last hours'
and describing the rheumatism that he
got in prison, the rheumatism affecting
his limbs, or the neuralgia piercing his
temples, or the thirst that fevers his
! tongne? Oh, no. His last words are
the battle shout for Christendom: II
am now ready to be offered, and the
time of my departure is at hand; have
| fought the good fight" And so his dy.
ing hands clave unto the sword.
1t was in the front room on the second
floor that my father lay dying. 1t was
Saturday morning, four o'clock. Just
three years before that day my mother
had left him for the skies, and he had
been homesick to join her company.
He was eighty-three years of age,
Ministers of the Gospel came in to COM
fort him, but he comforted them. How
wonderfully the words sounded out
from his dying pillow: 81 have beer
young and now am old, yet have
never seen the righteous forsaken, CT
his seed begging bread" They bathed
his brow, and they bathcd his
hands, and they bathed his feet, and
they succeeded in strengthening out the
feet; but they did not succeed in BATH
ing open the hand so it would stay
open. They bathed the hand open. but
it came shut. They bathed it open
again, but it came shut. What was the
matter with the thumb and the fingers
of that old hand? All! it had so long
clutched the sword of Christian conflict
that his hand clave unto the sword.
You noticed that the officers of the
northern army few years ago as
sembled at Denver, and you noticed
that the officers of tho southern army
assembled at Lexington. Soldiers com.
ing together ard very apt to recount
their experiences and to show then
scars Here is soldier who pulls up
his sleeve and says: There, / was
wounded in that arm" and shows this
scar And another soldier pulls down
his collar, and says, There, / was
wounded in the neck" And
another soldier says. II have no
use of the limb since the gunshot
fractured" O my friends, when the
battle of life is over, and the resurrec-
ton has come. and our bodies rise from
the dead, will we have on us any scars
of bravery for God? Christ will be
there all covered with scars. Sears oY
the brow, sears on the hand, scars on
the feet, scars all over the heart won in
the battle of redemption. And all
Heaven will sob aloud with emo
ton as they look at those scars.
Ignatius will be there, and he
will point out the place where the
tooth and the paw of the lion seized
him in the Colosseum, and John Huss
will be there, and he will show where
the coal first scorched the foot on that
day when his spirit took wing of fiame
from Constance M'Millan and Camp
bell and Freeman, American mission
aries in India, will be there-the men
who, with their wives and children,
went down in the awful massacre at
Cawnpore, and they will show
where the daggers of the sepoys
struck them. The Waldenses viii
be there, and they will show where
their bones were broken on that
day when the Piedmontese soldiery
pitched them over the rocks. And there
will be those there who took care of
the sick and who looked after the poor,