The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1896-04-24

were fastened to the cross they were
wide open still with benediction.
Mind you, His head was not fastened;
He could look to the right and He
could look to the left, and He could
look up and He could look down. He
saw when the spikes had been driven
home, and the hard, round, iron heads
were in the palms of His hands; He
saw them as plainly as you ever saw
anything in the palms of your hands.
No ether, no chloroform, no merciful
anesthetic to dull or Supply, but
wide awake. He saw the observation
of the Heavens, the unbalancing of
the rocks, the countenances quivering
with rage and the cachinnation dia-
bolic. Oil it was the hostile as well
as the barren island of a worldi
1 go further and tell you that this
exile was far from home. 1t is $4,000
600 miles from here to the sun, and all
astronomers agree in saying that our
solar system is only one of the smaller
wheels of the great machinery of the
universe turning around some one
great center; the center so far distant
it is beyond all imagination and calcu-
lation, and, if, as some think, the
great center in the distance is Heaven,
Christ came far from home when He
came here. Have you ever thought of
the inconsistencies of Christ? Some of
you know what inconsistencies is when
you have been only a few weeks alb
sent from the domestic circle. Christ
was 80 years away from home. Some
of you feel inconsistencies when you are
100 or 1000 miles away from the do
nestle circle. Christ was more mil
lion miles away from home than you
could count if all your life you did
nothing but count You know what
it is to be homesick even amid pleas
ant surroundings, but Christ slept in
huts, and He was athirst, and He was
a-hungered, and He was on the way
from being born in another mans
barn to being buried in another mans
grave.
1 have read how the Swiss, when
they are far away from their native
country, at the sound of their national
air get so homesick that they fall into
melancholy and sometimes they die
under the inconsistencies. But oh! the
inconsistencies of Christ. Poverty
homesick for celestial riches. Perse-
cution homesick for hosanna. Weari-
ness homesick for rest Homesick for
angelic and archangelic companion
ship. Homesick to get out of the night
and the storm and the worlds execra-
ton. Homesickness will make a week
seem as long as a month, and it seems
to me that the three decades of Christ
residence on earth must have seemed
to Him almost interminable.
1 take a step further and tell you
that Chrift was in an exile which He
knew would end in assassination. Hol-
man Hunt, the master painter, has a
picture in which he represents Jesus
Christ in the Nazarene carpenter shop.
Around him are the saws, the ham,
mers, the axes, the drills of carpentry.
The picture represents Christ, as ris-
ing from the carpenters working
bench and YEARLY stretching out His
arms, as one will after being in con.
tracted or uncomfortable posture, and
the light of that picture is so arranged
that the arms of Christ, YEARLY
stretched forth, together with His
body, throw on the wall the shadow OF
the cross. OH my friends, that shad.
ow was on everything in Christ's life
time Shadow of cross on the Beth
lehem swaddling clothes. Shadow of a
cross on the road over which the three
fugitives fed into Egypt Shadow OF
| 7 IL o.
it's mosaic floor of opal and emerald
and crystal. Shadow of a cross on the
road to Emmaus. Shadow of a cross
on the brook Kedron, and on the tenn
pie. and on the side of Olivet. Shadow
of a cross on sunrise and sunset. Con-
stantine, marching with his army, saw
just once a cross in the sky, but Christ
saw the cross all the time.
On a rough journey we cheer our.
selves with the fact that it will end in
warm hospitality; but Christ knew that
HIS rough path would end at a defoli.
aged tree without one leaf and with
only two branches, bearing fruit OF
such bitterness as no human lips had
ever tasted. Oh! what an exile-start-
ing in an infancy without cradle, and
ending in assassination. Thirst with
out any water. Day without any sun.
light. The doom of desperate for
more than angelic excellence. For
what that expatriation and that exile?
Worldly good sometimes comes from
worldly evil. The accidental glance
of a sharp blade from razor-grinder's
wheel put out the eye of Gambetta and
excited sympathies which gained him
an education and started him on a
career that made his name more ma.
jestic among Frenchmen than any
other name in the last 20 years. Haw-
thorne, turned out of the Office of col.
lector, at Salem, went home in despair.
His wife touched him on the
shoulder and said, Now is the
time to write your book" and his
famous Scarlet Letter was the bril-
liant consequence. Worldly good
sometimes comes from worldly evil.
Then be not unbelieving when tell