Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1893-03-03

II we are the Lords, the evening of our
life will come. The heats of tie day
will have passed. There viii be
shadows and we cannot see as far. The
work of life will be about ended The
hawks of temptation that lowered in
the sky will have gone TO the woods
and have folded their wings. Sweet
silences will come down. The air will
be redolent with the breath of whole
arbors of promises sweeter than jas
mine or evening primrose. The air
may be a little chill, but Christ will
call us, and we will know the voice and
heed the call, and we will come
under the wings for the night,
the strong wings the soft
wings, the warm wings, ana without
fear, and in full sense of safety, and
then we will rest from shutdown to sun
rise, Gas hen gathereth her chickens
under her wing" Dear mel How
many souls the Lord hath thus brooded.
Mothers after watching over sick era
dies and then watching afterward over
hayward sons and daughters, at last
themselves taken care of bya motherly
God. Business men, after a lifetime
struggling with the uncertainties of
money markets and the change OF
tariffs, and the underselling of men,
who, because of their dishonesties, can
afford to under-sell and years of dis
appointment and struggle, at last under
wings where nothing can perturb them
any more than bird of prey, which
is ten miles off, disturbs chick at mid
night brooded in barnyard.
My text has its strongest application
for people who were born in the coun-
try, wherever you may now live, and
that is the majority of you. You can
not hear my text without having all
the rustic scenes of the old farmhouse
come back to you. Good old days they
were. You knew nothing much of the
world, for you had not seen the world.
BY law of association, You cannot re-
call the brooding hen and her chickens
without seeing also the barn, and the
hay-mow, and the wagon-shed, and the
house, and the room where you played,
and the fireside with the big back log
before which you sat, and the neigh
bors, and the wedding, and the
deep snowbanl1s, and hear the
village bell that called you TO wor-
ship, and seeing the /horses which,
after pulling you to church, stood
around the old clapboarded meeting
house, and those who sat at either end
of the church pew, and indeed all the
scenes of your first fourteen years, and
you think of what you were then and
of what you are now, and all these
thoughts are aroused by the sight of
the old hencoop. Some of you had bet
ter &c back and start again. In thought
return to that place ana hear the cluck,
and see the outspreaG feathers, and
come under the wing and make the
Lord your portioE and shelter and
warmth, preparing for everything that
may come, and so avoid being classed
among those described by the closing
words of my text, ''as a hen gathereth
her chickens under her wings,
and ye would not" All, that throws
the responsibility upon u.s. "Ye
would not" Alasl for the would
nots." If the wandering broods
of the farm heed not their moth
er's call and risk the hawk and dare
the freshet and expose themselves to
the frost and the storm, surely their
calamities are not the mothers fault.
''Ye would mott" God would, but how
many would not When a good man
asked young woman who had Sban-
doned her home and who was deplor-
ing her Indebtedness why she did not
return, the reply was: 81 dare not go
home. My father is so provoked, he
would not receive me home" "Then,"
said the Christian man, II will test
this" and so he wrote TO the father, and
the reply came back. and in a letter
marked outside Immediate" and
inside saying "Let her come at
once; all is forgiven" So Gods
invitation for you is marked
| Immediate on the outside,
and inside it is written, "He will
abundantly pardon" Oh, We wander
ers from God and happiness and home
and heaven, come under the sheltering
wing. Under this call, see you turn
ing from your old way TO the new
way, the living way, the Gospel way.
A vessel in the Bristol Channel was
nearing the rocks called the "Steep
Holmes" Under the tempest, the
vessel was manageable, and the
only hope was that the tide would
change before she struck the rocks and
went down, and so the Captain stood on
the deck, watch in hand. Captain and
crew and passengers were pallid with
! terror. Taking another look at his watch
and another look at the sea- he
shouted, THANK God, we are saved!
The tide has turnedl One minute more
and we would have struck the rocks. 4"
Some of you have been long while
drifting in the tempest of sin and sor-
row, and have been making for the
breakers. Thank God, the tide has
| turned. Do you not feel the lift of the
billow? The grace of God that bring
eth salvation has appeared to your
soul, and, in the words of Boaz to Ruth,
/ commend you to ''the Lord God of
Israel, under whose wings thou hast
come TO trust"