Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1891-05-18

tentlon. They are tired of obscurity.
They must do something to attract at
tention, so they sit down on the beach
and go to tearing to pieces the fishing
nets instead of mending them The
staid old denomination to which they
belong does not pay them enough at
tention, so they attract attention by
striking their grandmother They do
not get enough attention by standing
in the pulpits, so they go to work and
break the church windows
These dear brethren of all denomina-
tiOns, afflicted with theological fidgets
had better go to mending nets instead
of breaking them. Before they break
up the old religion and try to foist on
us new religion, let them go through
some great sacrifice for God that will
prove them worthy for such q work,
taking the advice of Talleyrand to a
man who wanted to upset the religion
Of Jesus Christ and start u new one,
when he said Go and be crucified
and then raise yourself from the grave
the third day" Those who propose to
mend their nets by secular and skepti-
cal books are like man who has just
one week for fishing and six of the
days he spends in reading Izaak Wal
tons Complete Angler" and Wheat
ley's Rod and Line" and SCOTS
Fishing in Northern Waters" and
Pullman's Wade Mecum of Fly Fish
ing for Trout" and then on Saturday
morning, his last day out, goes to the
river to ply his art, but that day the
fish will not bite, and late on Saturday
night he goes home with empty basket
and Il disappointed heart.
Meanwhile a man who never saw a
big library in all his life has that week
caught with an old fishing tackle enough
to supply his own table and tile table
Of all his neighbors, and enough to salt
down in barrels for the long winter that
will soon come in. Alasl alas! If
when the Saturday night of our life
drops on us it shall be found that we
have spent our time in the libraries of
worldly philosophy, trying to mend our
nets, and we have only few souls to
report as brought to God through our
instrumentality, while some humble
Gospel fisherman, his library made up
of Bible and an almanac, shall come
home laden with the results, his trophies
the souls within fifteen miles of his log
cabin meeting house.
\ FISHERMAN IN COMMAND.
In the time of great disturbance in
Naples in 1919 Massaniello, a bare
footed fishing boy, dropped his fishing
rod and by strange magnetism took
command of that city of six hundred
thousand souls. He took off his fish
ing jacket and put on a robe of gold in
the presence of bowling mobs. He put
his hand on his lip as signal and they
were silent. He waved his hand away
from him and they retired to their
homes. Armies passed in review before
him. He became the nations idol.
The rapid rise and the complete su-
premacy of that young fisherman, Mas
sanielIo, has no parallel i'll all history.
But something equal to that and bet
ter than that is az everyday occurrence
in heaven. God takes some of those
who in this world were fishers Of men,
and who toiIed very huInbIy, but be-
cause of the way they mended their
nets and employed their nets after they
and robes them and scepters them and
crowns them, and makes them rulers
over many cities, and he marches
armies of saved ones before them in re-
view, MassaniellOs unhOnOred on earth |
but radiated in heaven. The fisher
boy of Naples soon lost his power but |
those people of God who have kept |
their nets mended and rightly swung |
them shall never lose their exalted |
place, but shall reign forever and ever
and ever. Keep that reward in sight.
But do not spend your time fishing |
with hook and line. Why did not |
James the son of Zebedee sit on the |
wharf at Cana, his feet hanging over |
the lake and with a long pole ana n |
worm on the hook dipped into the wave |
wait for some mullet to swim up and |
be caught? Why did not Zebedee |
spend his afternoon trying to catch one |
eel2 No that work was too slow. |
These men were not mending hook |
and line; they were mending their nets.
SO let the church of God not be con
tent with having here one soul and |
next month another soul brought into |
the kingdom. Sweep all the seas with |
nets, scoop nets-seine nets, drag nets, /
all-encOmpassing nets-and take the |
treasures in by hundreds and thousands /
and millions, and nations be born in a
day, and the hemispheres quake with
the tread of a ransOming God. Do you
know what will be the two most ire
mendous hours in our heavenly eXis-
tence? Among the quadrillions of ages
which shall roll on what two occasions
will be to us the greatest?
The day of our arrival there will be
to us one of the two greatest. The
second greatest, l think, will be the
day when we shall have put in parallel
lines before us what Christ did for us,
and what we did for Christ, the one so
great, the other so little That will be
the only embarrassment in heaven.
My Lord and my Godl What will we
do and what will we say when, on one
side are placed the Saviour's great sac
ritices for US, and our small sacrifices
for him; his exile, his humiliation, his |
agonies ON one hand, and our poor.
weak, insufficient sacrifices on the
other? To make the contrast less
let us quickly mend our
nets, and, like the Galilean fishermen,
may we be divinely helped to east them
on the right side of the ship.
If children who have passed the
fourth year are bathed carefully twice
a week it ought to meet all the actual