Connecticut western news., 1895-03-28

thrilling every time he went through it. In the saddlebags that hung across my horse's back as I rode from Jerusalem down to the Dead sea and up to Damas- GUS had all the books about Palestine that I could carry, but many man on his knees, in the privacy of his room, has had flashed upon him more vivid ap- preciation of the word of God than many man who has visited all the scenes of Christ's birth, and Paul's elo- quence, and Peter's Imprisonment, and Joshua prowess, and Elijah s ascension. do not depreciate any of the helps for Bible study, but I do say that they all together come infinitely short without direct communication from tho throne of God in response to prayerful solicita- tion. We may find many interesting things about the Bible without especial illumination, as how many horses Solo, mon had in his stables, or how long was Noah's ark, or who was the only woman whose full name is given i'll the Scrip lures, or which is the middle verse of the Bible, and all that will do you no more good than to be able to tell how many beanpoles there are ill your neigh bor's garden.
 The learned Earl of Chatham heard the famous MT. Cecil preach about the Holy Ghost and said to friend on the way home from church: "I could not understand it, and do you suppose any body understood it?" "Oh, yes," said his Christian friend, "there were uned- oh present who understood it. :" l warrant you that the English soldier had under supernal influence read the book, for aftor the battle Cf Inkermann was over he was found dead with his hand glued to the page of the open Bible by his own blood, and the words adhered to his hands as they buried him, ''I am the resurrection and the life; he that be- | lieveth in me, though dead, yet shall he live"
 A Reconstructor and Solace.
 Next consider the Holy Ghost as a human reconstructor. We must be made over again. Christ and Nicodemus talk ! ed about it. Theologians call it regener- ation. do not care what you call it, | but we have to be reconstructed by the | Holy Ghost We become new creatures, | hating what we once loved and loving | what we once hated. If sin were a lux | ury, 1t must become detestation. If we | preferred bad associations, we must pre- l fer good associations. In most cases it is | such complete change that the world | notices the difference and begins to ask: "What has come over that man? Whom | has he been with? What has so affected | him? What has ransacked his entire na- | ture? What has turned him square about?" Take two pictures of Paul-one on the road to Damascus to kill the dis ciples of Christ, the other on the road to Ostia to die fer Christ Come nearer l home and look at the man who found ! his chief delight in a low. class of club rooms, hiccoughing around n card table | and then stumbling down tho front steps after midnight and staggering homo | ward, and that same man, ono week aft erward. with his family on the way to prayer meeting. What has done it? It | must be something tremendous. Itmust be God. It must be the Holy Ghost. Notice the Holy Ghost as the solacer of broken hearts. Christ calls him the | Comforter. Nothing does the world so l much want as comfort. The most people | have been abused, misrepresented, cheat | ed, lied about, swindled, bereft. What | is needed is balsam for the ounds, Ian | tern for dark roads, rescue from malign- ing pursuers, lift from the marble slab of tombstones. Life to most has been semifailure. They have not got what they wanted. They have not reached that which they started for. Friends betray. | Change of business stand loses old cus- tom and does not bring enough custom | to make up for the loss. Health becomes | precarious when one most needs strong muscle and steady nerve and clear brain Out of this audience of thousands and thousands, if should ask all those | who have been unhurt ill the struggle | of life to stand up CT all standing to 1 hold up their right hands, not one would
 move. Oh, how much we need the Holy | Ghost as comforter! He recites the sweet
 gospel promises to the hardly bestead.
 He assures of mercy mingled with the
 seventies. He consoles with thoughts of coming release. He tells of heaven
 where tear is never wept and burden is never carried and injustice is never suf- ! fered. Comfort for all the young people
 who arc maltreated at home, or receive | insufficient income, or are robbed of their
 schooling, or, kept back from positions
 they earped by the putting forward of
 others less worthy. Comfort for all these
 men and women midway in the path of
 life, worn out with what they have al-
 ready gone through and with no bright
 ening future. Comfort for these aged
 ones amid many infirmities and who feel
 themselves to be in the way in the home
 or business which themselves establish
 ed with their own grit.
 The Holy Ghost comfort, think, gen.
 erally comes in the shape of soliio-
 quy. You find yourself saying to your
 self: Well, I ought not to go on this
 way about my mothers death. She had
 suffered enough. She had borne other
 peoples burdens long enough. I am glad
 that father and mother are together in
 heaven, and they will be waiting to greet
 us, and it will be only little while
 anyhow, and God makes no mistakes '"
 Or you soliloquize, saying: '1t is hard
 to lose my property. am sure worked
 hard enough for it. But God will take
 care of us, and. as to the children, the
 money might have spoiled them, and we
 find that those who have to struggle for
 themselves generally turn out best,
 and it will all be we'll if this upsetting
 of our worldly resources leads us to lay
 up treasures in heaven" Or you solilo-
 quize, saying, "It was hard to give up
 that boy when the Lord took him. I ex-
 pected great things of him, and, oh, how
 we miss him out of the house, and there
 are so many things I come across that
 make one think of him, and he was such
 a splendid fellow! But then what an
 escape he has made from the tempta-
 tions and sorrows which come to all