The Bossier banner., 1891-09-10

hymns that are better" And he did go
and make hymns that were better.
Now, l say to you, if you do not like
the weather get up a weather company,
and have president, and a secretary,
and a treasurer, and a board of direc-
tors, and ten million dollars of stock,
and then provide weather that will suit
all of use. There is man who has
a weak head and he can not stand the
glare of the sun. You must have a
cloud always lowering over him. like
plenty of sunlight, so you must always
have enough light for me. Two ships
meet in mid-Atlantic. The one is going
to Southampton, and the other is COM
ing to New York. Provide weather
that, while it is abaft for one ship, it is
a head wind for the other. There is a
farm that is dried up for the lack of
rain, and here is pleasure party going
out for field excursion. Provide
weather that will suit the dry farm
and the pleasure excursion. No. sirs, l
will not take one dollar of stock in
your weather company. There is only
one Being in the universe who knows
enough to provide the right kind of
weather for this world Hath the rain
father?"
My text also suggests Gods minute
supervisal. You see the Divine sonship
in every drop of rain. The jewels of
the shower are not flung away by a
spendthrift who knows not how many
He throws or where they fall They are
all shining princes of Heaven. They
all have an eternal lineage. They are
all the children of a King. ''Hath the
rain father?" Well, then, 1 say. if
God takes notice of every minute rain
drop, He will take notice of the most in
significant affair of my life. It is the
astronomical view of things that bothers
me. We look up into the night heavens
and we say: Worlds! worldsr' and
how insignificant we feel! We stand at
the foot of Mount Washington or Mont
Blanc, and we feel that we are only in
sects, and then we say to ourselves:
Though the world is so large, the sun
is one million four hundred thousand
times larger" "Or' we say, ''it is no
use; if God wheels that great ma
chinery through immensity He will
not take the trouble to look down at
me. "Infidel conclusion. Saturn, Mer-
curry and Jupiter are no more
rounded, and weighed, and swung
by the hand of God than are the glo-
bules on a lilac bush the morning after
a shower. God is no more in magni-
tude than He is in minutie. If 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
see Him through the microscope; no
more when you look up than when you
look down. Are not the hairs of your
head all numbered? and if Himalaya
has God, ''has not the rain father?"
take this doctrine of a particular prov
dence and l thrust it into the midst of
your everyday life. If God fathers a
rain-drop, is there anything so insignifi-
cant in your affairs that God will not
father that? When Druyse, the gun
smith, invented the needle-gun, which
decided the battle of Sadowa, was it
mere accident? When a farm
er's, boy showed Blucher a
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
ba n of6apoad IN Mice NI;IllDo,I. v,ro, - =
mere accident which side of the money
was up and which was down? When
the Christian army was beseiged at Be-
zIers, 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 starving mother, flying
with her starving child, sark down and
tainted on the rocks in the night and
her hand fell on a warm bottle of milk,
did that just happen SO? God is either
in the affairs of men or our religion is
worth nothing at all, and you had bet
ter take it away from us, and instead
VI tllS DlD1e winch tedcn6S
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" o! my friends, let us rouse up
to an appreciation of the fact that all
the affairs of our life are under Kings
command, and under Fathers watch.
Alexander's war horse Bucephalus.
would allow anybody to mount him
when he was embarrassed; but as soon
as they put on that war horse, Buce-
phalus, the saddle and trappings of the
conqueror, he would allow no one but
Alexander to touch him. AS if a soul
less horse could have so much pride in
his owner, shall not we immortals ex-
ult in the fact that we are owned by a
King? Hath the rain father?'
Again, my subject teaches me that
Gods dealings with us are inexplicable.
That was the original force of nv text,
The rain was great mystery to the
ancients. They could not understand
how the water should get INTO the
clouds, and getting there, how it should
be suspended, or falling, why it should
come down in drops. Modern science
comes along and says there are two