The Bossier banner., 1893-09-28

to the strife for precedence in all ages.
How many there are who waut to
get great architecture, and homes
furnished with all art all painting, all
statuary, who have not enough taste
to distinguish between Gothic and
Byzantine, and who could not tell
figure in plaster of paris from Palmer's
white Captive" and would not know
a boys penciling from Bierstadt's
yosemite. Men who buy large
libraries by the square foot, buying
these libraries when they have hardly
enough education to pick out the day
of the almanac! Oh, how many there
are striving to have things as well as
their neighbors, or better than their
neighbors, and in the struggle vast
fortunes are exhausted, and business
firms thrown into bankruptcy, and
men of reputed honesty rush into as
founding forgeries.
Of course 1 say nothing against re-
fnement or culture. Splendor of abode,
sumptuousness of diet, lavishness in
art, neatness in apparel-there is moth
ing against them in the Bible or ont
of the Bible. God does not want us to
prefer mud hoyel to English cottage or
untanned sheepskin to French broad
cloth, or huslxs to pineapple, or the
clumsiness of boor to the manners of
gentleman. God, who strung the
beach with tinted shell and the grass OF
the field with the dews of the night
and hath exquisitely tinged morning
cloud and robin redbreast, wants us to
keep our eye open to all beautiful sights
and our ear open to all beautiful ca
dences and our heart open to all ele-
waiting sentiments. But what want
to impress upon you is that you ought
not to inventory the luxuries of life as
among the indispensables, and you
ought not to depreciate this woman of
the text, who, when offered kingly pre-
ferment, responded: 81 dwell among
my own people"
Yea, this woman of the text was
great in her piety. Faith in God, and
she was not ashamed to talk about it
before idolaters. All, woman will
never appreciate what she owes to
Christianity until she knows and sees
the degradation of her sex under
Paganism and Mohommedanism. Her
very birth considered misfortune.
Sold like cattle in the shambles. Slave
for the funeral pyre of her husband.
Above the shrek of the fire worshipers
in India and above the rumbling of
the juggernauts, l hear the million
voiced groan of wronged, insulted,
broken-hearted, down-trodden woman.
Her tears have fallen in the Nile and
Tigris and the La Plata and on the
steppes of Tartary. She has been dis
honored in Turkish garden and Persian
palace and Spanish Alhambra. Her
little ones have been sacrificed in the
Ganges. There is not groan, or
dungeon, or an island, or a mountain,
or river, or a sea, but could tell a
story of the outrages heaped upon her.
But, thanks to God, this glorious
Christianity comes forth, and all the
chains of this vassalage are snapped,
and she rises up from ignominy to
exalted sphere, and becomes the eff
fectionate daughter, the gentle wife,
the honered mother, the useful Chris
tain. Oh, if Christianity has done so
much for woman, surely woman will
become it's most ardent advocate and
its sublimest exemplification.
When l come to speak of womanly in
fiuence, my mind always wanders off
to one model-the aged one who, twen-
ty-seven years ago, we put away for
the resurrection. About eighty-seven
years ago, and just before their mar
riage day, my father and mother stood
up in the old Westinghouse at Somer-
vile, n. j., and took upon them the
vows of the Christian. Through long
life of vicissitude she lived harmIessly
and usefully, and came to her end
in peace. No child of want ever came
to her door and was turned empty
away. No one in sorrow came to her
but was comforted. No one asked her
the way to be saved but she pointed
him to the cross. When the angel of
life came to neigh bor's dwelling she
was there to rejoice at the starting of
| another immortal spirit. When the
angel of death came to neighb bor's
dwelling she was there to robe the de-
parted for the burial.
We had often heard her, leading fam.
lily prayers in the absence of my IA
ther, say: ''Oh, Lord, ask not for nv
children wealth or honor, but I do ask
that they all may be subjects of Thy
comforting grace!" Her eleven chill
dren brought into the Kingdom of God,
she had but one more wish, and that
was that she might see her long-ab-
sent missionary son, and when the
ship from China anchored in New York
harbor, and the long-absent ope passed
over the threshold of his paternal home,
she said: 'Now, Lord, lettest thou Thy
servant depart in peace, for mine eyes
have seen Thy salvation" The prayer
was soon answered
1t was an autamnal day when we
& athered from sfar and found only the
house from the soul had fed forever.
She looked gery natural, the hands
very much rs when they were en-
ployed in kindness for her children.
Whatever else we forget, we never for
get the look of IN others hands. Aswe
stoo3 there by the casket we could not