The Bossier banner., 1894-08-30
NUMBER n.

prison, and goes across the sea;
is rearrested and brought back,
and again remanded to jail. Why?
HE that sitteth in the heavens
laughed" Rome was a great empire.
She had Horace and Virgil among her
poets; she had Augustus and Constan-
| tine amongst her emperors. But what
means the defaced Pantheon, and the
Forum turned into cattle market, and
the broken-walled Coliseum, and the
architectural skeleton of her great
| aqueducts? What was that thunder?
''Oh, you say, ''that was the roar of
the battering rams against her walls" !"
No. What was that qulver? "Oh,"
| you say, that was the tramp of
hostile legions." No. The quiver
and the roar were the outbursts of
Omnipotent laughter from the defied
and insulted heavens. Rome defied
God, ,and He laughed her down. Thebes
defed God, and He laughed her down.
Nineveh defied God, and He laughed
her down. Babylon defied God, and He
| laughed her down. There is great
difference between Gods laugh and His
smile. His smile is eternal beatitude.
He smiled when David sang, and
Miriam clapped the cymbals, and
Hannah made garments for her
son, and Paul preached, and
John kindled with apocalytic
vision, and when any man
has anything to do and does
it well. His smile! Why, it is
the 18th of May, the apple orchards in
full bloom; it is morning breaking on
ripping sea: it is Heaven at high
noon, all the bells beating the mar
riage peal. But His laughter-may it
never fall on us! It is condemna-
tiOn for our sin; it is wasting away.
We may let the satirist laugh at us,
and all our companions may laugh at
us, and we may be made the target for
the merriment of earth and hell; but
God forbid that we should ever come
to the fulfillment of the prophecy
against the rejectors of the truth:
81 will laugh at your calamity" But,
my friends, all of us who reject
Christ and the pardon of the Gospel
must come under that tremendous bonn
bardment. God wants us all to repent.
The other laughter mentioned in the
Bible, the only one shall speak of, is
Heavens laughter, or the expression of
eternal triumph. Christ said to His
disciples: Blessed are ye that weep
now, for ye shall laugh" That makes
me know positively that we are not to
spend our days in Heaven singing long
meter psalms. The formalistic and
stiff notions of Heaven that some
people have would make me
miserable. / am glad to know that
the Heaven of the Bible is not only
place of holy worship, but of mag
nifcent sociality. What" say you,
will the ringing laugh go around the
circles of the saved?" / say, yes; pure
laughter, cheering laughter, holy
laughter. It will be a laugh of con-
graduation. When we meet friend
who has suddenly come to fortune,
or who has got over some dire sickness,
do you not shake hands, do we not
shake hands, do we not laugh with
him? And when we get to Heaven
and see our friends there, some
of them having come up out of
great tribulation, why we will
say to one of them: "The last
time / saw you you had been suffering
for six weeks under low intermittent
fever" or, to another we will say:
"You for ten years were limping with
the rheumatism, and you were full of
complaints when we saw you last,
congratulate you on this eternal recov-
cry" We shall laugh. Yes; we shall
congratulate all those who have come
out of great financial embarrassments
in this world, because they have be-
come millionaires in Heaven. Ye shall
laugh. 1t shall be a laugh of reassoci-
ton. 1t is just as natural for us to
laugh when we meet a friend we
have not seen for ten years as
anything is possible to be natural.
Does not your heart beat quickly at the
thought of the great jubilee upon which
we are soon to enter? | pray God that
when we get through with this world
and are going out of it, we may have some
, such vision as the dying Christian had
when he saw written all over the clouds
in the sky the letter "W;" and they
asked him, standing by his side, what
, he thought that letter ''W" meant
''Oh!' he said, "that stands for wei.
come" And somay it be when we quit
this world. ''W' on the gate, "W'' on
! the door of the mansion, ''W" on the
, throne. Welcomed Welcome! Welcome
| / have preached this sermon with five
) prayerful wishes: That you might see
7 what mean thing is the laugh OF
skepticism, what bright thing is the
. laugh of spiritual exultation; what q
hollow thing is the laugh of sinful
: merriment, what an awful thing is the
! laugh of condemnation; what radiant
! rubicund thing is the laugh of eternal
j triumph. Avoid the i'll; choose the
= right. Be comforted. Blessed are "
: that weep now-ye shall laugh, ye shal
. laugh.
Mr. Gladstone Oflfo said. eth.