News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1893-05-25


tan tract distributor saw her coming
away all unkempt and unlovely. The
tract distributor went up, threw her arms
around her neck and kissed her. The
woman said, "Oh, my God, why do you
kiss me?" "Well, replied the other, 81
think Jesus Christ told me to-" ''Oh, no,
the woman said, ''don't you kiss me. 1t
breaks my heart. Nobody has kissed me
since my mother died" But that sisterly
kiss brought her to Christ, started her on
the road to heaven. The world wants
sympathy. 1t is dying for sympathy
large hearted Christian sympathy. There
is omnipotence in the touch.
Oh, am SO glad that when we touch
Christ Christ touches us! The knuckles,
and the limbs, and the joints, all falling
apart with that living death called the
leprosy, a man is brought to Christ. A
hundred doctors could not cure him.
The wisest surgery would stand appalled,
before that loathsome patient. What
did Christ do? He did not amputate; he
did not poultice; he did not scarify. He
touched him, and he was well. The
mother-in-law of the Apostle Peter was
in raging fever-brain fever, typhoid
fever, or what, do not know. Christ
was the physician. He offered no febri-
fuge; he prescribed no drops; he did not
put her on plain diet. He touched her,
and she was perfectly well.
Two blind men come stumbling into
room where Christ is. They are entirely
sightless. Christ did not lift the eyelid
to see whether it was cataract or oph-
| thalmia. He did not put the men into a
dark room for three OF four weeks He
touched them, and they saw everything.
A man came to Christ. The drum of his
ear had ceased to vibrate, and he had
suffering tongue. Christ touched the ear,
Ind he heard; touched his tongue, and
he articulated. There is funeral COM
ing out of that gate-a widow following
her only boy to the grave. Christ can
not stand it, and he puts his hand on the
heasse, and the obsequies turn into res
direction day.
HE WILL BEAR OUR BURDENS.
Omy brother, am so glad when we
touch Christ with our sorrows he touches
us. When out of your grief and vexation
you put your hand on Christ, it wakens
all human Renaissance. Are we tempt
ed? He was tempted. Are we sick?
He was sick. Are we prosecuted? He
was prosecuted. Are we bereft? He
was bereft.
st. 700 of Kermartin one morning
went out and saw beggar asleep on his
doorstep. The beggar had been all night
II the cold. The next night st. Yoo COM
PEELED this beggar to come up in the
house and sleep in the saints bed, while
st. Yoo passed the night ON the doorstep
in the cold. Somebody asked him why
that eccent1'icity. He replied: 1T isn't
an eccentricity. l want to know how
the poor suffer. l want to know their
agonies that 1 may sympathize with
them, and therefore l slept ON this cold
step last night" That is the way Christ
knows so much about our sorrows. He
slept on the cold doorstep of an inhos-
pitable world that would not let him in.
He is sympathetic now with all the suf-
fering and all the tired and all the per-
picked. Oh, why do you not go and
touch him?
You utter your voice in a mountain
pass, and there come back 10 echoes, 20
echoes, so echoes perhaps echoes.
Every voice of prayer, every ascription
of praise, every groan of distress has di-
vine response and celestial reverberation,
and all the galleries of heaven are filed
with sympathetic echoes and throngs of
ministering angels echo, and the temples
of the redeemed echo, and the hearts of
God the Father, God the Son and God
the Holy Ghost echo and re-echo.
preach Christ so near you can touch
him-touch him with your guilt and get
pardon-touch him with your trouble
and get comfort-touch him with your
bondage and get manumission. You
have seen man take hold of an electric
chain. A man can with one hand take
one end of the chain, and with the other
hand he may take hold of the other end
of the chain. Then 100 persons taking
hold of that chain will altogether feel
the electric power. You have seen that
experiment.
Well, Christ with one wounded hand
takes hold of one end of the electric chain
of love, and with the other wounded
hand takes hold of the other end of the
electric chain of love, and all earthly and
angelic beings may lay hold of that chain,
and around and around in sublime and
everlasting circuit runs the thrill of ter
restrial and celestial and brotherly and
sanity and cherubic and seraphic and
archangelic and divine sympathy. So
that if this morning Christ should sweep
his hand over this audience and say,
"Who touched me?" there would be hun |
dreds and thousands of voices respond
ing: 81! 1! ~