The Bossier banner., 1891-11-19

actar, in our moral arithmetic, we stuck
to addition instead of subtraction! kind
ness! Let us, morning, noon and night,
pray for it until we get it. When you
can speak good word for someone,
speak it. If you can conscientiously
give letter of commendatiOn. give it.
Watch for opportunities for doing good
fifty years after you are dead. All my
life has been affected by the letter
of introduction that Rev. DR.. Van
Vranken, of New Brunswick theolOg-
ical seminary, wrote for me, boy un-
der him, when l was seeking a settle
ment in which to preach the Gospel.
That letter gave me my first pul-
pit. Dr. Van Vranken has been dead
more than thirty years, yet feel the
touch of that magnificent old professor.
Strange sensation was it when | re-
ceived kind message from Rev. Thomas
Guard, of Baltimore, the great Method
ist orator, six weeks after his death.
BY way of the eternal world? Oh, no,
by way of this world. | did not meet
the friend to whom he gave the mes
sage until nearly two months after
Thomas Guard had ascended. SO yo2
can start word about some one that
will be on its travels and vigorous long
after the funeral psalm had been sung
at your Obsequies. Kindness! Why, if
fifty men all aglow with it should walk
through the lost world methinls they
would almost abolish perditiOn.
The east wind and the west wind
were one day talking with each other,
and the east wind said to the west
wind: Don't you wish you had my
power? Why, when l start they hail
me by storm signals all along the coast,
l can twist off a ships mast as easily
as u cows hOOf cracks an alder. With
one sweep of my wing have strewn
the coast from Newfoundland to Key
West with parted ship timber. l can
lift and have lifted the Atlantic ocean.
| am the terror of all invalidism, and
to fight me back forests mus,s be cut
down for fires, and the mines OF
continents are called on to feed the
furnaces. Under my breath the nations
crouch into sepulchers. Don't you wish
you had my power?" The west wind
made no answer, but started ON its mis-
sion, coming somewhere out of the rosy
bowers of the sky, and all the rivers
and lakes and seas smiled at its coming.
The gardens bloomed, and the or
chards ripened, and the wheat fields
turned their silver into gold, and the
health clappcd its hands, and JOY
shouted from the hill-tops, and the ma
tions lifted their fOreheads into the
light, and the earth had a doXOlogy for
the sky, and the sky an anthem for the
earth, and the warmth and the sparkle
and the gladness and the foliage and
the flowers and the fruits and the
beauty and the life were the only an
swer the west wind made to the in
science of tie east wind s interroga.
tion.
Kindness to all! Surely it ought not
to be difficult grace to culture when
we see towering above the centuries
such an example that one glimpse of il
ought to melt and transform all na.
tions, Kindness brought our Lord from
Heaven. Kindness to miscreants, kind
ness t0 prosecutors, kindness to the
crippled and the blind and the
cataleptic and the leprous and
the dropsical and the demonical char
acterized Him all the way: and on the
cross, kindness to the bandits suffering
on the one side of Him and kindness to
the eXecutioners while yet they pushed
the spear. and hammered the spikes,
and hOWled the blasphemies. All the
stories of the John Howards, and the
Florence Nightingales, and the Grace
Darlings. and the Ida Lewises pale
before this transcendant example
of Him whose birth and life
and death are the greatest story
that the world ever heard, and
| tle theme of the mightiest hosanna
that Heaven ever lifted. Yea, the very
kindness that allowed both hands to be
nailed to the horizontal timber of the
cross with that cruel thump! thump!
now stretches down from the skies
those same hands filled with balm
for all our wounds, forgiveness for
all our crimes, rescue for all our
serfdoms. And while we take this
matchless kindness fir: IN God, NAV
IL UG lOuul GlldG we nave uttered
our last bitter word, written our last
cutting paragraph done our last retalia-
tory action, left our last revengeful
heart-throb And it would not be a bad
epitaph for any of US if by the grace of
God from this time forth we lived such
benefcent lives that the tombstone's
chisel could appropriately cut upon
the plain slab that marks our
grave a suggestion from the text.
HE showed us no little kind
ness" But not until the last child
of God has got ashore from the earthly
storms that drove him on the rocks like
Mediterranean Euroelydons not until
all the thrones of Heaven are mounted.
and all the conquerors crowned, and all
the harps and trumpets and organs of
Heaven are thrummed or blown or
sounded, and the ransomed of all
climes and ages are in full cho-
rus under the jubilant swing of
angelic baton, and we shall for thou
sands of years have seen the river
from under the throne rolling into the
''sea of glass mingled with fire" and
this word we now inhabit shall be so