Connecticut western news., 1896-04-23

aIu H, ar Sttiht tulhh, tilab kltab CCutSI in the distance is heaven, Christ came far from home when he came here. Have you ever thought of the homesick- ness of Christ? Some of you know what homesickness is when you have been only a few weeks absent from the do- mestic circle. Christ was 33 years away from home. Some of you feel homesickness when you are hundred or thousand miles away from the do- mestic circle. Christ was more million 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 pleasant surround ings. 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 un- der the homesickncss. But, oh, the home sickness of Christi Poverty homesick tcr celestial riches. Persecution home sick for hosanna Weariness homesick for rest. Homesick for angelic and arch angelic companionship. Homesick to get out of the night, and the storm, and the worlds exscration- Homesick- ness will make week seem as long as a month, and it seems to me that the ,hree decades of Christ's residence on earth must have seemed to him almost ,nterminable. You have often tried to measure the other bangs of Christ, but you have never tried to measure the magnitude and ponderosity of Saw ours homesickness
 I take step farther and tell yon that Christ was in m exile which he knew would end in assassination Holman Hunt, the master painter, has picture n which he represents Jesus Christ in he Nazarene carpenter shop. Around aim are the saws, the hammers, the ,xes, the drills of carpentry. The pic ture represents Christ as rising from he carpenters working bench and wearily stretching out his arms as one will after being in contracted or uncom- fortable posture, and the light of that picture is so arranged that the arms of Christ, wearily stretched forth, together with his body, throw on the wall the shadow of the cross Ohl my friends, hat shadow was on everything in Christ's lifetime. Shadow of a cross on he Bethlehem swaddling clothes Shsd-
 w of cross on the road over which the hree fugitives fled into Egypt Shadow if cross on Lake Galilee as Christ walked its mosaic floor of opal and merald and crystal. Shadow of a cross m the road to Emmaus Shadow of @ ross on the brook Kedron, and on the remple, and on the side of Olivet Shad- w of a cross on sunrise and sunset. Constantine, marching with his army, aw just once a cross in the sky, but Christ saw the cross all the time.
 The End Was Death.
 On a rough journey we cheer our elves with the fact that it will end in warm hospitality, but Christ knew that ,is rough path would end at defoliaged rec without one leaf and with only two ranches, bearing fruit of such bitter less as no human lips had ever tasted 0h, what an exile-starting in an in- 'ancy without any cradle and ending in assassination! Thirst without any water. Day without any sunlight. The doom of desperado for more than angelic excel ence. For what that repatriation and hat exile? Worldly good sometimes comes from worldly evil. The acciden- al glance of sharp blade from a razor grinder wheel put out the eye of Gam ,etta and excited sympathies which gained him an education and started Jim on a career that made his name nore majestic among Frenchmen than my other name in the last 20 years.
 Hawthorne, turned out of the office f collector at Salem, went home in de- ;pair. His wife touched him on the shoulder and said, "Now is the time to write your book, " and his famous Scarlet Letter" was the brilliant con- sequence. Worldly good sometimes somes from worldly evil. Then be not mbelieving when tell you that from the greatest crime of all eternity and of the whole universe, the murder of the Son of God, there shall come results which shall eclipse all the grandeurs of eternity past and eternity to come. Christ, an exile from heaven opening
 he way for the deportation toward heaven and to heaven of all those who will accept the proffer. Atonement a ship large enough to take all the passen- ,ers that will come aboard it
 The Open Gates-
 For this royal exile bespeak the love and service of all the exiles here pres ent, and in one sense. or the other that includes all of us The gates of this continent have been so widely opened that there are here many voluntary ex- iles from other lands Some of you are Scotchmen. I see it in your high cheek poncG and in the color that illumines your face when mention the land of yuur nativity. Bonny Scotland! Dear old kirkl Some of your ancestors sleep ing in Greyfriars churchyard, or by the deep lochs filled out of the pitchers of heaven, or under the heather, sometimes 30 deep of color it makes one think of the blood of the Covenanters who signed their names for Christ, dipping their pens into the veins of their own arms opened for that purpose. How every fiber of your nature thrills as mention the names of Robert Bruce and the Campbells and Cochranel bespeak for this royal exile of my text the love and the service of all Scotch exiles. Some of you are Englishmen. Your ancestry served the Lord. Have I not read of the sufferings of the Haymarket, and have I not seen in Oxford the very spot where Ridley and Latimer mounted the red chariot? Some of your ancestors heard George Whitefield thunder. or heard Charles Wesley sing, or heard John Bunyan tell his dream of the celestial city, and the cathedrals under the shad- ow of which some of you were born had in their grandest organ roll the name of the Messiah.
 bespeak for the royal exile of my ser men the love and the service of all English exiles. Yes, some of you came from the island of distress over which hunger, on throne of human skeletons, sat queen All efforts at amelioration