The Yale expositor. (Yale, St. Clair County, Mich.) 1894-current, 1896-02-21

or Southey, and the pen or irving. Inc
painters pencil has been honored, and
the world has celebrated the pencil Of
Murillo, the pencil of Rubens, and the
pencil Of Bierstadt. The sculptor's
chisel has come In for high encomium,
and the world has celebrated Chantrey's
chisel, and Crawford's chisel, and
Greenough's chisel. But there is one
instrument about which / sing the first
canto that was ever sung-the sickle,
the sickle of the Bible, the sickle that
has reaped the harvest of many CEN
turtles. Sharp and bent into a semi
circle, and glittering, this reaping hook,
no longer than your arm, has furnished
the bread for thousands of years. It's
success has produced the wealth of ma
lions. it has had more to do with the
worlds progress than sword, and pen,
and pencil, and chisel, all put together.
Christ puts the sickle into exquisite
sermonic smile, and you see that in
strument flash all up and down the
Apocalypse as st. John swings it, while
through Joel in my text God commands
the people, as through his servants now
he commands them-"Put we in the
sickle, for the harvest is ripe
Last November there was great re-
joicing all over the land. With trum-
pet and cornet and organ and thousand
voiced psalm we praised the Lord for
the temporal harvests. We praised
God for the wheat, the rye, the oats,
the cotton, the rice, all the fruits of the
orchard and all the grains of the field;
and the nation never does better thing
than when in autumn it gathers to
festivity and thanks God for the great
ness Of the harvest. But come to-day
to speak to you Of richer harvests, even
the spiritual. How shall we estimate
the value of a man? We say he Is
worth so many dollars, or has achieved
such and such a position; but we know
very we'll there are some men at the
top OF the ladder who ought to be at
the bottom, and some at the bottom
who ought to be at the top, and the only
way to estimate a man is by the soul.
We all know that we shall live forever.
Death cannot kill us. Other crafts may
be drawn into the whirlpool or shiv-
cred on the rocks, but this life within
US will weather all storms and drop 10
anchor, and ten million years after
death will shake out signals on the high
seas OF eternity. You put the mendi-
cant off your doorstep and say he is
only a beggar; but he is worth all the
gold of the mountains, worth all the
pearls of the sea, worth the solid earth,
worth sun, moon and stars, worth The
entire material universe. Take all the
paper that ever came from the paper
mills and put it side by side and sheet
by sheet, and let man with fleetest pens
make figures on that paper for 10000
years, and they will only have begun to
express the value of the soul Sup
pose / owned Colorado and Nevada and
Australia, Of how much value would
they be to me one moment after l de-
parted this life? How much of Phil
adelphia does Stephen Girard own to-
day? How much of Boston property
does Abbott Lawrence own to-day?
The man who to-day hath dollar in
his pocket hath more worldly estate
than the millionaire who died last year.
HoS do you suppose l feel standing
hero surrounded by multitude of
souls, each one worth more than the
material universe? Oh, was not
right in saying, this spiritual harvest is
richer than the temporal harvest? l
must tighten the girdle, must sharpen
the sickle, l must be careful how |
swing the instrument for gathering the
grain, lest one stalk be lost. One of
the ilost powerful sickles for reaping
this spiritual harvest is the preaching
Of the Gospel. If the sickle have rose
wood handle, and it be adorned with
precious stones, and yet 1t cannot bring
down the grain, it is not much of a
sickle, and preaching amounts to moth
ing unless it harvests souls for God.
Shall we preach philosophy? The
Ralph Waldo Emersons could beat us
at that. Shall we preach science? The
Agassizes could beat us at that. The
minister of Jesus Christ with weakest
arm going forth in earnest prayer, and
welding this sickle Of the Gospel, shall
find the harvest all around him waiting
for the angel sheaf-binders. Oh, this
harvest Of souls! 1 notice in the fields
that the farmer did not stand upright
when he gathered the grain. noticed
he had to stoop to his work, and / no
ticed that in order to bind the sheaves
the better he had to put his knee upon
them. And as we go forth in this work
for God we cannot stand upright in our
rhetoric and metaphysics and our cru
dition. We have to stoop to our work.
Ay, we have to put our knee to it Or
we will never gather sheaves for the
Lords garner. Peter swung that sickle
on the day of Pentecost, and three thou
sand sheaves came in. Richard Baxter
swung that sickle at Kidderminster,
and McCheyne at Dundee, and vast null
titudes came into the kingdom of our
God.
Oh, this Is u mighty Gospel! 1t cap
tured not only John the --rb, but Paul
the lion. Men may gnash their teeth
at it, and clinch their fists, but 1t is the
power of God and the wisdom OF God
p,,t TO