Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1891-09-18

the petunia and which the morning
glory; but the morningglory blooms
only few hours and then shuts up for
the day, while the petunia is in as
widespread a glow at 10 o'clock al
noon and at o'clock in the evening as
at sunrise. And this grace of kindness
is not spasmodic. is not intermittent,
is not for a little while, but 1T IRA
dates the whole nature, all through
and clear on till the sunset of our
earthly existence. Kindnessl / am re-
solved to get it. Are you resolved to
get it? 1t does not come by hap-haZ-
gard, but through culture under the
Divine help. Thistles grow without
culture. Rocky Mountain sage grass
grows without culture. Mullen stocks
grow without culture. But that great
red rose in the conservatory, its leaves
packed on leaves, deep-dyed as though
it had been obliged to fight for its
beauty and it were still reeking with
the carnage of the battle. that rose
| needed To be cultured and through
| long years its floral ancestors
were cultured. O Cod implant kind
ness in all our souls, and then give us
grace to watch it, to enrich it, to de-
| velop it!
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 1 start they hail
me by storm signals all along the coast.
| can twist OH ship mast as easily as
u cows hoof cracks an der. With
one sweep of my wing, / have
strewn the coast from New
foundland to Key West with parted
ship-timb er / can lift and have lifted
the Atlantic Ocean. / am the terror
of all invalidism, and To fight me back
forests must be cut dow n for fires, and
the mines of continents are called on
to feed the furnaces. Under my
breath the nations crouch in sepul-
chres. Don't you wish you had my
| power?" said the east wind. The west
wilma made no answer, but started on
Its mission, coming somewhere out of
| che rosy bowers of the sky, and all
the rivers and lakes and seas smiled at
| its coming. The gardens bloomed,
and the orchards ripened, and the
| wheat fields turned their silver into
| gold, and health clapped its hands,
4 and Joy shouted from the hill tops,
and the nations lifted their foreheads
into the light, and the earth had a
| doAology 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, ana the
| fruits, and the beauty, and the life,
were the only answer the West wind
| made to the insoieneo of the East
| winds Interrogation.
| 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 it
ought to melt and transform all ma
tions. Kindness brought our Lord
from Heaven. Kindness to mis-
creants, kindness to prosecutors, kind
ness to the crippled and the blind
| and the cataleptic and the leprous
and the dropslcal, and the demoniaeal
| characterized him all the way, and ON
the Cross, lxindne ss to the bandits suf-
fering on the side of him, and kindness
to the executioners while yet they
| pushed the spear and hammered the
| spikes, and howled the blasphemics.
| All tie stories of the John towards
and the Florence Nightingales and the
Grace Darlings and the Ida Lew
| ises pale before this transcen-
dant example of h IN whose birth and
life and death are the greatest story
| that the world ever heard, and the theme
| of the mightiest hosanna that Heaven
ever lif ed. Yea, the kindness that
allowed both hands to be nailed
to the horizontal timber of the
| Gross with that cruel thumpl 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 sertdoms.
| And while we take this matchless kind
ness from God, may it be found that we
have uttered our last bitter word, writ
ten our last cutting paragraph, done
our last retaliatory action, felt our last
revengeful hear5-throb. And it would
not be "a bad epItapn 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 sugges-
| little kindness" But until the last
child of God has got ashore from the
earthly storms that drove him on the
rocks like Mediterranean Euroclydons,
not until all the thrones of heaven are
mounted, and all the conquerors
crowned, and all the harps and trum.
pets and organs OF heaven are
| thrummed or blown or sounded, and
| the ransomed of all chimes and ages are
! in II chorus under the jubilant
swing of angelic baton, and we shall
for thousands of years. have seen the
river from under the throne rolling
into the "sea of glass IN ngled with
| fire." and this world we now inhab.!
shall be so far in the past that only a
stretch of celestial memory can recall
| that it ever existed at all, not until
then will we understand what Nehe-
miah calls ''the marvellous kindness"
and Isaiah calls 1.-THE everlasting kind
| ness" of God!