The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1891-05-27

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 disappointed heart.
Meanwhile man who never saw big
library in all his life has that week caught
with an old fishing-tackle enough to sup
ply his own table and the tables of all his
neighbors, and enough to salt down in
barrels for the long winter that will soon
come in. Alas! alas! II when the Satur-
day night OF our life drops on us, it shall
be found that we have spent our time in
the libraries of worldly philosophy, trying
10 mend our nets, and we have only few
souls to report as brought to God through
our fundamentally, while some humble
gospel fisherman, his library made up of a
bible and an almanac, shall come home
laden with the results, his trophies the
souls within fifteen miles of his log cabin
Westinghouse.
In the time of great disturbance in
Naples in 1919, Massaniello, bare-footed
fishing boy dropped his fishing rod, and by
strange magnetism took command of that
city of Coz, 900 souls. He took off his fishing
jacket and put on a robe of gold in the
presence OF bowling mobs. He put his
hand on his hip as signal and they were
silent. He waived his hand away from
him and they retired to their homes. He
became the nations idol. The rapid rise
and complete supremacy of that young fish
erman, Massaniello, has no parallel in all
history. But something equal to that and
better than that is an everyday occurrence
In heaven. God takes some OF those, who
in this world were fishers of men, and
who toiled very humbly, but because of
the way they mended their nets and en-
piOyed their nets after they were mended,
and suddenly HOSTS them 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 review, 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 don't 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
pole and a worm on the hook dipped into
the wave wait for some mullet to swim up
and be caught? Why did not ZeDedee
spend his afternoon trying to catch one
eel! NO, Iudl WOfh WAS TOO slOM. 1ucbS
men were not mending hook and line,
they were mending their nets So let the
church of God not be content 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, sll-encompassing nets,
and take the treasures in by hundreds and
thousands and millions. and nations be
born in a day, and hemispheres quake
with the tread Of O ransoming God.
Dc YOU know what will be the two most
tremendous hours in our heavenly exist
enee? 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 10 us one OF the
two greatest. The second greatest. |
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 80 little. There
will be the only embarrassmentinh heaven.
My Lord and my God! What will we
do and what will we say when, on one
side are placed the Savior's great
sacrifices for us, and our small
sacrifices for him; his exile, his hui
initiation, his agonies on one hand, and
our poor, weak, insufficient sacrifices on
the other To make the contrast less over
whelming let us quickly mend our nets;
and, like the Galilean Fisherman, may we
be divinely helped TO cast them on the
right side of the ship.