The Banner-Democrat. [volume] (Lake Providence, East Carroll Parish, La.) 1892-current, 1893-01-28

your fathers house for privation and
| trials known to God and your own
heart. The morning of life is flushed
with promise. Troops of calamities
since then have made desperate charge
| upon you. Darkness has come. Sor-
rows have swooped like carrion birds
from the sky, and barked like jackals
from the thicket. You stand amid
your slain. anguished and woe-struck.
| Rizpah on the rock.
So it has been in all ages vashti
must doff the spangled robes of the
Persian court, and go forth blasted
from the palace gate. Hagar exchanges
| oriental comfort for the wilderness of
Beersheba. Mary Queen of Scots must
pass out from Hattery and pomp to
| suffer ignominious death in the castle
of Fotheringay. The wheel of fortune
keeps turning. and mansions and huts
exchange, and he who rode the chariot
pushes the barrow, and instead of the
! glare of festal lights is the simmering
of the peatfire, aud in place of Saurs
palace is the rock. The cold rock, the
desolate rock.
| But that is the place to which God
comes Jacob with his head on stone
saw the shining ladder Israel in the
desert beheld the marshalling of the
| fiery baton. John on barren Patmos
heard trumpeting and the clapping
| of wings, and the stroke OF seraphic
fingers on golden hnrps, and nothing
but Heavenly strength nerved Rizpah
for her appalling mission amid the
scream of wild birds and the stealthy
tread of hungry NOR sters The grand
est visions of glory, the most rapturous
experiences of Christian love, the
greatest triumphs of grace have come
to tho tried and the hard-pressed and
the betrayed and the crushed. God
STOPPING down from Heaven to comfort
Rizpah on the rock.
Again the tragedy of the text dis
plays the courage Of woman amid great
emergencies. What mother or sister or
daughter would dare to go out to fight
the cormorant and jacket? Rizpah did
it. And so would you if an emergency
demanded. Woman is naturally timid,
and shrinls from exposure and depends
on stronger arms for the achievement
| of great enterprises. And she is often
troubled lest there might be occasions
demanding fortitude when she would
fail. Not So Some of those who are
afraid to look out of door after night
fall, and who quake in the darkness at
the least uncertain sound, and who start
at the slam of the door, and turn pale in
l CD N f1n do ri fV-io
came would be heroic and invnl perahle-
God has arranged it it so that woman
needs the trumpet of some great con-
test of principle or affection to rouse
up her slumbering courage. Then she
| will stand under the cross fire of oppos-
ing hosts at Chalons to give wine to
the wounded. Then she will carry
into prison and dark lane the message
of salvation. Then she will brave the
pestilence Deborah goes out to sound
terror into thu. heart of Gods enemies.
| Abigail throws herself between raid
ing party of Infatuated men. and her
husbands vineyards. Rizpah fights
back the vultures from the rock.
Among the Orkney islands an eagle
swooped and lifted child to its eyrie
far up in the mountains. With the
spring of panther the mother mounts
hill above HILL craig above craig, height
above height; the fire of her own eye
publishing the glare of the eagles,
and with unmailed hand, stronger
than the iron beak and the terrible
claw, she hurled the wild bird down
the rocks In the French revolution
Cazore was brought out to be executed
when his daughter threw herself on
the body of her father and said:
Strike, barbarians! You can not reach
my father but through my heartv'
The crowd parted, and, linking arms,
father and daughter walked out
free. During the siege of Saragossa,
Augustine carried refreshments to the
gates. Arriving at the battery of Por-
tillo she found that ali the garrison had
been killed. She snatched match
from the hand of a dead artilleryman
and fired u twenty-six FOUNDER, then
leaped on it and vowed she would not
leave it alive. The soldiers looked in
and saw her daring, and rushed up and
opened another tremendous fire on the
enemy. The life of James I. of Scot
land was threatened. Poets have sung
those times, and able pens have lin
gered upon the story Of manly endur-
ance, but how few to tell the story
of Catherine Douglas, one of the
queens maids, who ran to bolt the
door, but found the bar had been taken
away so as to facilitate the entrance of
the assassin. She thrust her arm into
the staple. The murderers rushing
against it, her arm was shattered. Yet
how many have since lived and died,
WHO never heard the touching, self
sacrificing heroic story of Catherine
Douglas and her poor, shattered arm
You know how calmly Nine. Roland
went to execution and how cheerfully
Joanna of Naples walked to the castle
of Muro, and how fearlessly Nine
Grimaldi listened to her condemnation,
and how Charlotte Corday smiled upon
the frantic mob that pursued her to the
guillotine. And there would be no end
to the recital if | attempted to present
all the historical incidents which show
that woman's courage will rouse itself
for great emergency.
But need not go SO far. You hav e
known some one who was considered a
mere butterfly in society. Her hand
| no lruoxvu M toll Her owe had wont