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

sickness or persecution or bereavement
gather and thiclxen and blaclken, and
come run for shelter to bank, but ii
IN poor shelter, and others run to
friendly advisers, and they fail TO help,
and others fly nowhere simply because
they know not where to go, and they
perish in the blast, but others
hear a divine call, saying: "Come, for
all things are now ready" "The spirit
and the bride say, Come" And while
the heavens are laundering terror, the
divine voice proffers mercy, and the
soul comes under the brooding care of
the Almighty ''as hen gathereth her
chickens under her wing"
The wings ofmy text suggest warmth
and that is what most folks want.
The fact is that this is a cold world,
whether you take it literally or figura-
lively. We have big fireplace called
the sun, and it has very hot fire, and
the stolxers keep the Goals well stirred
up, but much of the year we cannot get
near enough to this fireplace to get
warmed. The worlds extremities are
cold all the time. Forget not that it is
colder at the South Pole than at the
North Pole, and that the Arctic is not
so destructive as the Antarctic. Once
Ill IL WHllc JllC hICIlC Will leu tADlOIcTS
come back, but the Antarctic hardly
ever. When at the South Pole, a ship
sails in. door of ice is almost sure to
be shut against its return. So life to
many millions of people at the South
and many millions of people at the
North is prolonged shiver. But when
l say that this is cold world, chiefly
mean fguratively. If you want
10 lrnnxy xybat tc tho rnaapiOer
of the ordinary term of re-
ceiving the "cold shoulder" get
out of money and try 10 borrow. The
conversation may have been almost
tropica, for luxuriance of thought and
speech, but suggest your necessities
and see the thermometer drop to so de-
grees below zero, and In that which,
till a moment before, had been a warm
room. Take what is an unpopular
position on some public question and
see your friends fly as chaff before a
windmill. AS far as myself is con-
cerned, have no word of complaint,
but look off day by day and see COM
munities freezing out men and women
of whom the worlo is not worthy. Now
il takes after one and now after an
other. 1t becomes popular to depreci-
ate and defame and .eXecrate and lie
about some people, This is the best
world / ever got into, but it is the
meanest world that some people ever
got into. The worst thing that ever
happened to them was their cradle
and the best thing that will ever
happen to them will be their grave.
What people want is warmth. Many
years ago a man was floating down
on the ice of the Merrimac and
great efforts were made to rescue him.
Twice he got hold of plank thrown
to him and twice he slipped away from
il, because that end of the plank was
covered with ice, and he cried out.
For Gods sake, give me the wooden
end of the plank this time" and this
done, he was hauled to shore. The
trouble is that in our efforts to save
the soul, there is too much GOODNESS
and icy formality and so the imperilled
one slips off and floats down. Give it
the other end of the plank. Warmth
of sympathy, of genial surroundings.
The world declines to give it, and in
many cases has no power to give it,
and here is where Christ comes in, and
as on cold day, the rain beating and
the atmosphere full of sleet, the hen
clucls her chickens under her wings
and the warmth of her own breast
put warmth into the wet feathers and
the chilled feet of the infant group
of the barnyard, so Christ says
| to those sick and frosted and
| disguised and frozen of the world, come
in out of the March winds of the
| worlds criticism, come in out of the
sleet of the worlds assault, come in
out of the world that does not under
stand you; l will comfort and L will
soothe and / will be your warmth, 'as
| a hen gathereth her chickens under
her wing" Oh, the warm heart of God
is ready for all those to whom the
world has given the cold shoulder.
But notice that some one must take
the storm for the chickens. Ali the
| hen takes the storm. / have watched
her under the pelting rain. Ihaveseen
| her in the pinching frosts. Almost
| frozen to death, or almost strangled in
| the waters, and what fight she makes
for the young under wing if a dog, or
| a hawk, or a man come too near. And
| so the brooding Christ takes the storm
for us. What food of anguish and
tears that did not dash upon his holy
soul? What beak of torture did not
| pierce his vitals? What barking Ger
berus of hell was not let out upon him
| from the kennels?
What he endured. O who can tell
To save our souls from death and hell.
Yes, the men took the storm for the
chickens, and Christ takes the storm
! for us. Once the tempest rose SO sud-
denly the hen could not get with her
| young back from the new ground to
| the barn, and there she is under the
fence half dead. And now the rain
turns to snow and it is an awful night,
and in the morning the wilderness about
the gills and the beak down in the mud
show that the mother is dead, and the
young ones come out, and cannot I'M
derstand why the mother does not
scratch for them something TO eat, and
they walk over her wings, and call
with their tiny voices, but there is
no answering cluck. She took the
storm for others and persisted. Poor
thing! Sclf-sacriticing even unto death!
And does it not make you think of him
who endured all for us? So the wings
under which we come for spirit
ual safety are blood-spattered wings,
are night-shadowed wings, are temp
est-torn wings In the Isle of Wight L
saw the grave of Princess Elizabeth,
who died while a prisoner at Carisbrook
castle, her finger on an omen Bible and