The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1891-07-17

farm kHdb IL uTlCA uP IDE the lack DA
rain, and bere is q pleasure party going
out for a field excursion. Provide
weather that viii suit the dry farm
and the pleasure excursion. No, sirs, 1
viii not take one dollar of stock in
your weather company. There is only
one Being In the universe who knows
enough { o provide the right kind of
weather for this world. "Hath the rain
a 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
s~pendthrift who knows not how many
lie throws or where they fall. They are
all shining princes of Heaven They
all have an eternal lineage They arc
all the children of a King. Hath the
rain N father?" Well, then, / say. if
God takes notice of every minute rain
drop, He will take notice of the most in
significant affair of my life. 1t is the
astronomical view of things that bothers
We look up into the night heavens
and we says: "Worldsl worldst' 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" ''Ol' we say, lit is no
use; if God wheels that great ma
chinery through immensely He viii
not take the trouble to look down at
me. ''Inidel 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
n shower. God is no more in magni-
tude than He is in ninutie. If He has
scales to weigh the mountains, Heshas
balances delicate enough to weigh the
i~nfnitcsimal. 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 a God, has not the rain a father?'
take this doctrine of a particular prov
dence and ] thrust it into the midst of
your everyday life. If God fathers a
rain-drop, is there anything so insignia
cant in your affairs hat God viii not
father that? When Druyse, the gum
smith, invented the needle-gun, which
decided the battle of Sadowa, was it
n mere accident? When a farm
er's boy showed Butcher 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 a piece of money and tossed it up
to decide whether or not he should
be afianced to Miss Millbank, was it IA
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 i'm one of
the Irish wars n starving mother, flying
with her starving child, sank down and
tainted on the rocks in the night and
her hand fell on n 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 taxi it away from us, and 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" OF my friends, let us rouse up
to an appreciation of the fact hat 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 as soon
as they put on hat 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 a father?"
Again, my subject teaches me that
Gods dealings with us are inexplicable.
That was the original force of my ext.
The rain was a 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 sholld
come down in drops. Modern science
comes along and says there are two
portions of air of different temperature,
and they are charged with moisture,
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 us 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 a minute.
But after all the brilliant experiments
of DIR. James Hutton, and Saussure, and
other scientists, there is an infinite
mystery about the rain. There is an
ocean of the unfathOmable in every
r~ain-drop, and God says to-day. as He
said in the time of Job: IF you can
not 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, I've on, while here is
a man in mid-l:fe, consecrated to God,
handwriting. 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
err, with a 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
i and die with a cancer? WHY does that