The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-05-15


of Baiazet the great MOslem general, who
was brought a captive to the tent of
Timur He had attempted the massacre
of Timur and his men. Timur said to
him: Had YOU Vanquishcd us, | am not
ignorant of the fate which you reserved
for myself and my troops. but l disdain
to retaliate. Your life and honor are Sc
cure and shall express my gratitude to
! God by my clemenCy to man. BeaUti-
/ ful! Revenge on Christians tongue or
| pen or hand is inapt, and more damage to
| the one who employs it than the one
| against whom it is employed. What! A
/ ldvelin hurled at you and fallen at your
/ feet, and you not hurl it back again.
/ Yes. / have tried the plan. ! learned il
/ from my father and have practiced it all
my life, and il works well, and by the
/ help of God and javelins not picked up,
/ have conquered all my foes, and preached
! funeral sermons in honor Of most of them.
! The best thing YOU can do with a iaVelin
! hurled at YOU is to let it lie where it
! dropped, or hang it up in your museum as
| a curiosity. The deepest wound made by
/ a javelin is not by the sharp edge, but by
! the dull end of the handle to him who
| yields il. | leave it to YOU to say which
/ got the best of that fight in the palace
/ Saul or David.
! See also in my subject that the fact
| tAat a man sometimes lodges is
| not against his courage Ny text says
| that when Saul assailed him, David
! avoided out of his presence twice. that
| is, when the iayelin was flung, he stepped
out of its direction, or bent this way or
| that, in other words he lodged. But all
! those who have read the life of David
| know that he was not lacking in prOwess.
! David had faults, but cOwardice was not
one of them. When David, who was |
| guess, about four feet and a half high,
! went out to meet the giant, who was, ]
! guess, about ten feet high, it was big
undertaking, and the inequalities of the
struggle were so great that 1t struck the
giants idea of the ludlcrOus, and he sug
gested to the little fellow that he would
make a fine dinner for a buzzard or
iackal: Come to me and / will give thy
flesh unto the fowls of the air and
to the beasts of the field
| When David went out to meet
that giant and conquered him, he demon
strated, as he did on other occasions, his
courage But | am so glad that when
Saul flung that iavelin David lodged it,
or the chief work of his life would never
have been done. What a lesson this is
to those who go into useless danger and
expose their lives or their regulations or
their usefulness unnecessarily. When
duty demands, go ahead, though all earth
and hell oppose. Bulge not one inch from
the right position. But when nothing is
involved step back or step aside. Why
stand in the way of perils that you can
avoid Go not into quiXotic battles to
fight windmills. You will be of more use
to the world and the church as an active
Christian man than as target for jave-
Inns. There are Christians always in
fight. If they go into churches
they fight there. If they go into
presbyteriese or conferences or con-
sociations they fight there. My advice
to you is, if nothing is to be gained for
God or the truth, stand out of the way of
the javelins. l. Sam. xviii, II: "David
avoided out of his presence twice"
Washington was as mighty in his re
treats as in his advances His army would
several times have been destroyed if he
had not lodged. He lodged on Long
Island he lodged on New Jersey nights.
Lincoln on his way to Inauguration at
Washington was waited for by assassins,
but he took another train and lodged the
desperadoes. We have high example of
the tact that sometimes a man will serve
God best by disappearing from this or
that place, this or that environment.
a mob brought Christ to the top of the
rocks back of Nazareth. They did
not like his preaching and they proposed
TO hurl him down the precipice.
But while they were getting ready
for the massacre, Christ darted into the
crowd, and amid the confusion escaped to
Capernaum, and continued exercising
devils and cooling fevers and filling fish
nets and giving healthy circulation of
blood to paralysis, and curing dementia,
and turning cOrpses into living men and
women, and doing his chief work What
u good thing he lodged the crowd on the
rocks back of Nazareth Likewise at
Jerusalem one day. while he was saunter-
ing up and down in SOlOmons porch
waiting for an opportunity to say kind
words or do a useful deed, the people pro
posed to pay him for his self-sacrifces by
stoning him to death, but the record is
che escaped out of their hands,
See also in my subject the unreasonable
attitude of iavelin toward harp. What
had that harp in David's hand done to
the jaVelin in Sauls hand? Had the
vibrating strings of the one hurt the
keen edge of the other2 Was there an
old grudge between the two families of
sweet sound and sharp cute Had the
triangle ever insulted the polished shaft?
Why the deadly aim of the destroying
weapon against the instrument of sooth-
ing, calming, healing sound! Well |
will answer that if you will tell me why
the hostility of so many to the gospel,
why the Yirulent attacks against
Christian religion, why the angry antip-
athy of SO many to the most genial, most
lnNlGluB, llOSU sanitary luUuCuCG unUeH
all the heavensl Why viii men give
their lives to writing and speaking and
warning against Christ and the gospel?
Why the lavelin of the worlds hatred and
rage against the harp of heavenly lOve2
You know and know men who get wrath
fully red in the face and foaming at the
mouth and use the gesture of the clinched
fist and put down their feet with indig-
nant emphasis and invoke all sarcasm and
irony and vituperatiOn and scorn and spite
at the Christian religion. What has the
Christian religion done that it should be
so assailed} Whom hath it bitten and
left with hydrophobiac virus in their
veins that it should sometimes be chased
as though it were a maddened canine2
To head off and trip up and push down
and corner our religion was the domi-
nant thought in the life of David Hume
and Noltaire and ShaftesburN, and even
the Earl of Rochester until one day in a
princely house, in which they blasphem-
ously put God ON trial, and the Earl of
Rochester was the attorney against God
and religion and received the applause of
the whole company, when suddenly the
| earl was struck under conviction and
cried: Good God, that q man who walks
Cprightly, who sees the wonderful works
of God and has the use of his senses and
reason should use them in defying his
| Creator! | wish ! had been. crawling
leper in di,ch rather than have acted
| toward GOD as ] have done javen of