The Progress. (Shreveport, La.) 1892-1900, 1896-11-21

In their own family or neighbOrhood,
and here and there you think of one.
What JUNCTION they had in prayer.
What power they had in exhortation!
If they walked into home every mem
I Der of it felt holy thrill, and if they
walked into prayer meeting the dull
ness and stoidty instantly vanished.
One Of them would wake up a whole
church. One of them would sometimes
eIectrify whole city.
But the most wonderful one Of that
Characterization the world ever saw or
| heard or felt was a peasant in the far
east, wearing plain blouse like an in
vcrted wheat sack with three open
ings, one for the neck. and the other
two for the arms. His father a wheel
wright and house builder, and given to
various carpentry. His mother at first
! under suspicion because Of the CirCum-
stances of his nativity. and he chased
by Herodic mania out Of his native
land. to live awhile under the shadows
of the sphinx and Pyramid OF GiZeh.
afterward confounding the LID 3 of
Jerusalem, then stopping the paroX-
ysm of tempest and of mailman. His
path strewn with slain dropsies and
catalepsies and ophthalmias, transfig-
ured on one mountain, preaching on
another mountain, dying on another
mountain, and ascending from another
mOuntain-the greatest. the loveliest,
| the mightiest, the kindest, the most
| sacrificing, most beautiful being
whose feet ever touched the earth. Tell
! us. we deserts who heard our SaviOr's
| prayer; tell us. We seas that drenched
him with your surf; tell us, we multi
tudes who heard him preach on deck,
on beach, on hillside; tell us, Golgotha
who heard the stroke of the hammer
on the spikeheads, and the dying groan
in that midnight that dropped on mid
noon did anyone like Jesus have this
passion for souls?
A stranger desired to purchase a
farm but the owner would not sell it
| would only let it. The stranger hired
| it by lease for only one crop, but he
| sowed acOrns, and to mature that crop
three hundred years were necessary.
| That was practical deception, but |
deceive you not when | tell you that the
crop of the soul takes hold of unend-
ing ages.
| see the author of my text seated in
! the house of Gaius. who entertained
him at Corinth, not far from the over
hanging fortress Of Acro-Corinthus,
and meditating on the longevity of the
soul, and getting more and more agi-
tated about its value and the awful risk
some of his kindred were running con-
corning it, and he writes this letter
containing the text, which Chryso-
stom admired so much he had it read
to him twice week, and among other
things he says those daring and start
ling words of my text: 81 could wish
that myself were accursed from Christ
for my brethren, my kinsmen, accord
ing to the flesh.'
Now, the object of this sermon Is
10 stir at least one-fourth of you to
al ambition for that which my text
presents in blazing vocabulary, namely,
ccinr fnr cn,r1c ~, Iol
is possible to have much of that spir-
| it, bring the conservation of 1890 for
eign missionaries. 1t is usually esti-
| mated that there are at least 5000 mis-
slonaries. | make liberal allowance,
and admit there may be ten bad mis-
sionaries out of the 5000, but | do not
believe there is one. All English and
| American merchants leave Bombay,
Calcutta, Annoy, and Pekin as soon as
they make their fortunes. Why? Be-
cause no European or American in his
senses would stay in that climate af-
| ter monetary inducements have ceased.
Now, the missionaries there are put
uOWu VII tlC udl COZ HCICo5ltlSS, anu
! most of them do not lay up one dollar
/ in twenty years. Why, then do they
stay in those lands of intolerable heat,
and cobras, and raging fevers, the Their
n.meter sometimes playing at 100 and
i4O degrees of oppressiveness twelve
thousand miles from home, because of
the unhealthy climate and the prevail
ing immoralities of those regions COM
| peiled to send their children to Eng
land, or Scotland, or America, prob
ably never to see them again? o,
Blessed Christ! Can it be anything
but a passion for souls? 1t is easy to
understand all this frequent deprecia-
ton of foreign missionaries when you
know that they are all opposed to the
opium traffic, and that interferes with
commerce; and then the missionaries
are moral and that Is an offense to
many of the merchants all of
them, but many of them-who, absent
from all home restraint, are so i'm
moral that We can make only faint al
fusion to the monstrosity of their
denominations. Oh, would like to be at
thegate of heaven when those mission
aries go in, to see how they will have
| tho y%(oly ~ poropoto upd thrOroo oO1