The free press. (Poplarville, Miss.) 1890-19??, 1892-06-23

husband through the darkness. BUT no.
| The house was full of excitement ana the
neiphbors were gathered and stood around
the wife of the house who was lnsenssoie as
| from some great calamity On inquiry Ine
returned husband found that the little chld q
of that cabin was gone. She had wandered
out to meet her father and get the present
| he had promised. and the child was lost.
| Then the father unrolle1 from the blanket
the child he had found in the fields, ana 10!
! it was his own child and the lost one OF the
prairie home, and the cabin quaHed WIN une
shout over the lost one found.
How suggestive of the fact that once we
were lost in the open fields or among the
mountain crags, Gods wandering chlldren,
and He found us dying in the tempest ana
wrapped us in the mantle or bis love anu
fetched US home gladness AMI congratuia-
ton bidding us welcome. The fact is that
the world does not know God. or they would
all flock to Him, Through their own blind
ness or the fault of some rough preaching
that has GOT abroad in the centuries many
men and women have an idea that God is a
tyrant, an oppressor, an autocrat, Mana
Sab ib. an omnipotent Herod Antipas. 1t is
libel against the Almighty; it is a SANDER
against the heavens; it IS deiamatlon
of the infinties.
| counted in my Bible 304 times the word
"mercy.n single or compounded with other
words. counted in my Bible 473 times the
word Glove" single or compounded Win
other words. Then l got tired counting.
Perhaps you might count more. being better
at figures. But the Hebrew and the Greek
and the English languages have been taxed
till they cannot pay any more TRIBUTE 10 the
love and mercy and kindness and grace and
charity and tenderness and friendship and
benevolence and sympathy and bounteous-
ness and fatherliness and motherllness and
patience and pardon of our God.
There are certain names so magnetic that
their pronunciation thrills all who hear 1t.
Such is the name of the italian soldier and
liberator, Garibaldi. Marching with his
troops he met a shepherd who was IN great
distress because he had lost lamb. Carl
baldi said to his troops: ''Let us help this
poor shepherd find his lamb" And so, with
lanterns and torches, they explored the
mountains, but did not find the lamb and
after an unsuccessful search late at night
they went to their encampment.
The next morning Garibaldi was found
asleep far on into the day, and they
Weakened him for some purpose and found
that he had not given up the search when
the soldiers did, but had kept on still farther
into the night and had found 1t, and he pulled
down the blankets from his couch and there
lay the lamb, which Garibaldi ordered i'm
taken to its owner. So the Com
OIL All UII6 HOslS VI Gil ouiicA
aside from His glorious and victorious
march through the centuries Of heaven and
said: 81 will go and recover that lost world,
and that race of whom Adam was the pro-
genitor. and let all who will accompany
Me-
And through the night they came, out
do not see that the angelic escort came any
farther than the clouds, but their most Illus
trious Leader came all the way down, and by
the time His errand is done our little world,
our wandering and lost world, our world
deecy with the light, will be found in the
bosom of the Great Shepherd, and then all
heaven will take up the cantata AMI sing:
The lost sheep is found" So | set open the
wide gate of my text, inviting you all to
come into the mercy and pardon OF God; yea,
still further, into the ruins OF the place
where once was kept the knowledge of your
niquities.
Inc place has been torn down and the
records DESTROYED aud you will find the
ruins more -dilapidated and broken and
PROSTATE than the ruins of Melrose or kenil-
worth, for from these last ruins you can PICK
I'D some fragment OF a sculptured stone, or
you can see the curve of some broken arch,
but after your repentance and your forgive
ness you cannot find in all the memory of
God fragment of all your pardoned sins so
large as a needles point. Their sins aud
their iniquities will remember no more"
Aud none of that will surprise you if you
will climb to the TOP of a bluff back of Jeru-
salem lit took us only five or ten minutes to
climb it,, and see what went on when the
plateau of limestone was shaken by par
oxysm that set the rocks, which had been
upright, aslant and on the trembling cross
pieces of the split lumber hung the quiveriug
form of Him whose life was thrust out by
metallic points of cruelty that sickened the
monday sun till it tainted and fell back on
the black lounge of the Judeau midnight
Six different kinds of sounds were heard
on that night which was INTERCEPTED into the
daylight of Christs assassination. The
neighing OF thu war horses-for some of the
soldiers were in the saddle-was one sound;
the bang of the hammers was a second
sound; the jeer of malignants was a Third
sound: the weeping of friends ana co1dju-
tors was a fourth sound; the piash of blood
on the rocks was fifth sound: the groan of
the expiring Lord was n sixth sound. And
they all commingled into one sadness.
Over place in Russia where wolves were
pursuing a load OF travellers, and to save
them servant sprang from the sled into
the mouths of the wild beasts and was de-
voured and thereby the other lives were
save1, are inscribed the words: "Greater
love hath no man than this that man lay
down his life for his friend"
Many a surgeon in our own time has in
tricheotomy with his own lips drawn from
the wndpipe of diptheric patient that
which cured the patient and slew the sur
geon, and all have honored the self sacrifice.
But all other scenes of sacrifice pale before
this most illustrious Martyr of all time and
all eternity. After that agonizlng spectacle
in behalf of our fallen race nothing about
the sin-forgetting Col is too stupendous for
my faith, and | accept the promise, and will
you not all accept it? "Their sins aud their
iniquities will remember no more"