Connecticut western news., 1892-04-14

' as the palm tree. If kind words are wanted, they are ready to utter them. If helpful deeds are needed, they are ready to perform them. If plans of use fulness are to be laid out, they are ready to project them. If enterprises are to be forwarded, they are ready to lift them. People who say, "Yes! Yes" when they are asked for assistance by word or deed, instead of "Nol Nol" Most of the mysteries that bother others do not bother me because l adjourn them, but the mystery that really both- CTS me is why God made so many reo- pie who amount to nothing so far as the worlds betterment is concerned. They stand in the way. They object. They discuss hindrances. They suggest pos abilities of failure. Over the road of life instead of pulling in the traces they are lying back in the breechings. They are the everlasting No. They are bram- ble trees; they are willows always mourning, or wild cherry trees yielding only the bitter, or crab apple trees pro ducing only the sour, while God would have us all flourish like the palm tree. Planted in the Bible that tree always means usefulness. But, how little any of us or all of us accomplish in that di- rection. We take twenty or thirty years to get fully ready for Christian work, and in the after part of life we take ten or twenty years for the gradual closing of active work, and that leaves only so little time between opening and stopping work that all we accomplish is so little an angel of God needs to exert himself to see it at all.
 ALL THINGS ARE OF USE.
 Nearly everything l see around, be- meath and above, in the natural world suggests useful service. If there is noth- ing in the Bible that inspires you to use fulness, go out and study the world around you this springtime, and learn the great lesson of usefulness. What art thou doing up there, little star? Why not shut thine eye and sleep, for who cares for thy shining? ''No," saith the star, ''I will not sleep. guide the sailor on the sea. l cheer the traveller | among the mountains. l help tip the dew with light. Through the window of the poor mans cabin 1 cast a beam of hope, and the child on her mothers lap asks in glee whither come and what do and whence l go. To gleam and | glitter, God set me here. Awayl 1 have no time to sleep" The snowflake comes struggling down. "Frail, tickle wan derer, why comest thou hereg' "I am no idle wanderer," responds the snow flake. High up in the air was born, the child of the rain and the cold, and at the divine behest come, and l am no straggler, for God tells me where to put my crystal heel. To help cover the roots of the grain and grass, to cleanse | the air, to make sportsmen more happy and the ingle fire more bright, 1 come. | Though so light am that you toss me | from your muller and crush me under your foot, l am doing my best to fulfill what was made for. Clothed in white I come on a heavenly mission, and when my work is done and God shall call in morning vapor l shall go back, drawn by the fiery courses of the sum-" What doest thou, insignificant grass blade under my feet2" "I am doing a work" says the grass blade, "as best ] can. help to make up the soft beauty of field and lawn. I am satisfied if, with millions of others no bigger than I, we can give pasture to the focks and herds. 1 am wonderfully made. He | who feeds the ravens gives me susre- I nance from the soil and breath from tho air, and he who clothes the lilies of the field rewards me with this coat of green. '" | "For what, lonely cloud, goest thou across t:le heavensY Through the bright air voice drops from afar, say ing: Up and down this sapphire floor l pace to teach men that, like me, they are passing away. I gather up tine waters from lake and sea and then, when the thunders toll, refresh the earth, making the dry ground to laugh with harvests of wheat and fields Of corn. 1 catch the frown of the storm and the hues of the rainbow. At even- tide on the western slopes l will | pitch my tent, and over me shall dash the saffron and the purple and the fire \of the sunset. A pillar of cloud like me led the chosen across the desert, and sur | rounded by such as l the judge of | heaven and earth will at last descend, for Behold he cometh with cloudsr '" Oh, my friends, if everything in the in animate world be useful, let us immor- tai men and women be useful, and in that respect be like the palm tree. But must not be tempted by what David says of that green shaft of Palestine, that living and glorious pillar in the eastern gardens, as seen in olden times the palm tree; l must not be tempted | by what the Old Testament says of 1t to lessen my emphasis of what John the Evangelist says of it in my text.
 LAWFUL ROBBERY.
 | Notice that it was beautiful and lawful robbery of the palm tree that helped make up Christ's triumph on the road to Jerusalem that Palm Sunday. The long. broad, green leaves that were strewn under the feet of the colt, and in the way of Christ were torn off from the trees. What a pity, some one might say, that those stately and graceful trees should be despoiled. The sap oozed out at the places where the branches broke
 The glory of the palm tree was appro- priately sacrificed for the Saviours tri- umphal procession. So it always was, so it always will be in this 'world-no worthy triumph of any sort without the tearing down of something else. Brook lyn bridge, the glory of our continent, must have two architects prostrated, the one slain by his tolls and the other for hfetims invalided. The greatest pictures of the world had, in their rich est coloring, the blood of the artists who made them. The mightiest oratorios that ever rolled through the churches had, in their pathos, the sighs and groans of the composers, who wore their lives out in writing the harmony. American independence was triumphant. but it moved on over the Efeless forms of tens of thousands of men who fell at Bunker Hill and Yorktown and the battles be- l tween which were the hemorrhages of