The Lexington dispatch. [volume] (Lexington, South Carolina) 1870-1917, 1896-06-17

Halls Catarrh Cure. Send for cir
culars, free.
ing his time in making a commentary
on what you furnished as text? You
are physician, and in your sickness,
or in your absence, you get neighbor-
ing doctor to take your place in the sick
room, and he ingratiates himself into
the favor Of that family, so that you
forever lose their patronage. Or, you
take patient through the serious stages
of fever, and some day the impatient
father or husband Of the sick one rushes
out and gets another medical practi
toner, who comes in just in time to get
the credit of the cure Or, you are a
lawyer, and you come i'll contact with
trickster in your profession, and i'll
your absence, and contrary to agree
ment. he moves a nonsuit or the dis
missal of the case. Or the judge Oh the
bench, remembering All old political
grudge, rules against you every time he
gets 4 chance, and says with a snarl,
IF you dent like my decision, take al
exception. Or, you are = farmer and
the curculio stings the fruit, or the wee
vii gets into the wheat, or the drought
stunts the corn, or the loug continued
rains give you no opportunity for gath
cring the harvest. Your best COW gets
the hollow horn; your best horse gets
foundered. A French proverb said that
trouble comes in on horseback and goes
away on foot. So trouble dashed in on
you suddenly; but, oh, how long it was
in getting away! Came OH horseback,
goes away Oh foot. Rapid in coming,
slow in going. That is the history Of
nearly all your troubles. Again and
again and again you have experienced
the power of the east wind. 1t may be
blowing from that direction now.
My friends, God intended these trou-
bles and trials fer some particular pur-
pose. They do not come at random.
Here is the promise: "He stayeth his
rough wind i'll the day of the east
wind" In the tower of London the
swords and the guns of other ages are
FURNISHED and arranged into huge pas
sion flowers and sunfowers and bridal
cakes, and you wonder how anything 80
hard as steel could be put into such
floral shapes. Ihave to tell you that the
hardest, sharpest, most cutting, most
piercing sorrows of this life may be
made to bloom and blossom and put on
bridal festivity. The Bible says they
shall be mitigated, they shall be as
suaged, they shall be graduated. God is
not going to allow you to be overthrown.
A Christian woman, very much de-
spondent, was holding her child in her
arms, and the pastor, trying to console
the woman in her spiritual depression,
said, "There, you will let your child
DROP" "Oh, no." she said, II couldn't
let the child drop" He said, "You will
let the child drop" Why" she said,
IF / should drop the child here, it would
dash his life OUT" "Well, now," said
the Christian minister, "don't you think
God is as good as you are? Won't God,
your Father, take as good care OF you,
his child, as you take care of your child?
God won't let you drop"
Uses of Trouble.
suppose God let's the cast wind blow
just hard enough to drive US into the
harbor of Gods protection. We all feel
we can manage our own affairs. We
have helm and compass and chart and
quadrant. Give US plenty Of sea room
and we sail on and sail on; but after
awhile there comes a Caribbean whirl-
wind up the coast, and we are helpless
in the gale, and we cry out for harbor:
All our calculations upset, we sly with
the poet:
Change and decay on all around see.
Oh, thou who changcSt not, abide with me!
The south wind of mild providence
makes US throw off the cloak Of Chris
tian character and we catch cold, but
the sharp east wind of trouble makes US
wrap around US the warm promises
The best thing that ever happens to us
is trouble. That is hard thing perhaps
to say; but l repeat it, for God an
nounces it again and again, the best
thing that happens to US is trouble.
When the French army went down
into Egypt under Napoleon, all engi-
necr, in digging for fortress, came
across a tablet which has been called
the Rosetta stone. There were inscrip-
tions in three or four languages Gu that
Rosetta stone. Scholars studying out
the alphabet Of hiercglyphics from that
stone were enabled to read ancient in
scriptions Oh monuments and Oh tomb
stones. Well, many of the handwritings
of God in our life are indecipherable
hieroglyphics. We cannot understand
them until we take up the Rosetta stone
of divine inspiration, and the explana-
ton all comes out, and the mysteries all
vanish, and what was before beyond
our understanding now is plain III its
meaning, as we read, "All things work
together for good to those who love
God" So we decipher the hieroglyphics-
Oh, my friends, have you ever calculat-
cd what trouble did for David? 1t made
him the sacred minstrel for all ages.
What did trouble do for Joseph? Made
him the keeper Of the cOrncrlbs OF
Egypt. What did it 10 for Paul? Made
him the great apostle to the gcntlles-
What did it do for Samuel Rutherford!