News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1895-07-25

of the three angels On the plains Of
Mamre will help every woman to pro-
vide hospitality, however rare and en-
barrassing 1t is high time that some Of
the attention we have been giving to the
remarkable women of the Bible-re-
markable for their virtue or want of it
or remarkable for their deeds-Deborah
and Jezebel and Herodia and Athaliah
and Dorcas ard the Marys, excellent and
abandoned--.t is high time some of the
attention we have been giving to these
conspicuous women of the Bible be
given to Julia of the text, an ordinary
woman amid ordinary circumstances,
attending to ordinary duties and meet
ing ordinary responsibilities.
Premature Old Age.
Then there are the ordinary business
men. They need divine and Christian
help. When we begin to talk about bust
ness life, we shoot right off and talk
about men who did business on large
scale, and who sold millions of dollars
of goods a year, but the vast majority
of business men do not sell a million
dollars of goods, nor half a million, nor
a quarter of million, nor the eighth
part Of a million. Put all the business
men of our cities, towns, villages and
neighborhoods side by side, and you
will find that they sell less than $780,
900 worth Of goods All these men in
ordinary business life want divine help.
You see how the wrinkles are printing
on the countenance the story of worri-
ment and care. You cannot tell how old
business man is by looking at him.
Gray hairs at 30. A man at 45 with the
stoop of a nonogenarian. No time to at
tend to improved dentistry, the grinders
cease because they are few. Actually
dying of old age at 40 or so when they
ought to be at the meridian.
Many of these business men have
bodies like neglected clock to which
you come, and you wind it up, and it
begins to buzz and roar and then the
hands start around very rapidly, and
then the clock strikes or 10 or 40,
and strikes without any sense, and then
suddenly stops. So is the body of that
wornout business man. 1t is q neglect
ed clock, and though by some summer
recreation it may be wound up still the
machinery is all out Of gear. The hands
turn around with a velocity that excites
the establishment of the world. Men
cannot understand the wonderful activ-
ity, and there is roar, and a buzz, and
a rattle about these disordered lives,
and they strike ten when they ought to
strike five, and they strike IL when
they ought to strike six, and they strike
40 when they ought to strike nothing,
and suddenly they stop Post mortem
examination reveals the fact that all the
SPRINGS and pivots and weights and bal
anca wheels Of health are completely
der nged. The human clock has simply
run down. And at the time when the
steady hand ought to be pointing to the
industrious hours on clear and sunlit
dial the whole machinery Of body, mind
and earthly capacity stops forever. The
cemeteries have thousands Of business
men who died of old age at 80, 35, 40,
45.
The Best Kind of Grace.
Now, what is wanted is grace-divine
grace for ordinary business men, men
who are harnessed from morn till night
and all the days Of their life-harnessed
in business. Not grace to lose $780,,
900, but grace to lose $40. Not grace
to supervise $50 employees in factory,
but grace to supervise the bookkeeper
and two statesmen and the small boy
that sweeps out the store. Grace to in
vest not the $50, 900 Of net profit, but
the So, 500 Of clear gain. Grace not to
endure tho loss of a whole shipload Of
spices from the Indies, but grace to en-
dure the loss of q paper of collars from
the leakage Of a displaced single on a
poor roof.
Grace not to endure the hardness Of
the American congress i'll passinga nee
essary law, but grace to endure the tar
diness of an errand boy stopping to play
marbles when he ought to deliver the
goods; such grace as thousands Of
business men have today, keeping them
tranquil whether goods sell or do not
sell, whether customers pay or do not
pay, whether the tariff is up or tariff is
down, whether the crops are luXuriant
or a dead failure, calm in all circum-
stances and amid all vicissitudes-that
is the kind of grace we want. Millions
of men want it, and they may have it
for the asking. Some hero Or heroine
comes to town, and as the procession
passes through the street the business
men come out and stand on tiptoe on
their store steps and look at some one
who in arctic cline or in ocean storm
or in day Of battle or in hospital agonies
did the brave thing, not realizing that
they, the enthusiastic spectators, have
gone through trials in business life that
are just as great before God There are
men who have gone through freezing
arctics and burning tor1ids and awful
Marengos Of experiences without moving
five miles from their doorsteps. Now,
what ordinary business men need is to
realize that they have the friendship of
that Christ who looked after the religious
interests Of Matthew, the custom house
clerk and helped Lydia of Thyatira to
sell the dry goods, and who opened q
bakery and fish market in the wilderness
Of Asia Minor to feed the I, 1000 who had
come out on a religious picnic, and who
counts the hairs Of your head with as
much particularly as though they were
the plumes of coronation, and who
took the trouble to stoop down with His
finger writing on the ground, although
the first shuffle of feet ob1iterated the