The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1896-04-24

| lG0l, anu WIFI tIlC lNNNt " 90 AStAt'NNt ~
strike deeper down the spikes of thorn,
Christ watched the whole procedure.
When his hands 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 any
thing in the palms of your hands. No
ether no chloroform, no merciful an9s-
thetic to dull or stupefy, but, wiae
awake he saw the observation Of the
heavens the unbalancing of the rocks
the countenances quivering with rage
and the cachinnation diabolic. Oh, it
was the hostile as we'll as the barren is
land of world.
Far From Heaven.
I go farther and tell you that this
exile was far from home. 1t is 50, 600, =
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 calculation,
and if, as some think, that great center
in the distance is heaven, Christ came
far from home when he came here.
Have you ever thought of the homesic k
ness Of Christ? Some of you know what
inconsistencies is when you have been
only few weeks absent from the do
nestle circle. Christ was 33 years
away from home Some of you feel
homesicl1ness when you are a hundred
or a 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 hewa a-hungered, and
he was on the way from being born in
another mans barn to being buried i'll
another mans grave.
l 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 I'M
der the inconsistencies. But, oh, the home
sickness Of Christ! Poverty homesick
fer celestial riches. Persecution home
sick for hosanna. WEAKNESS homesick
for rest. Homesick for angelic and arch
angelic cCmpaniOnship. HOmesick to
get out Of the night, and the storm,
and the world S eXecratiOn. HOmesick-
ness will make a week seem as long as
a month and it seems to me that the
three decades of Christ's residence on
earth must have seemed to him almost
interminable. You have often tried to
measure the other pangs Of Christ, but
you have never tried to measure the
magnitude and ponderosity Of Saw
iour's homesickness.
I take a step farther and tell you that
Christ was in an exile which he knew
would end i'll assassination. Holman
Hunt, the master painter has picture
in which he represents Jesus Christ in
the Nazarcne carpenter shop. Around
him are the saws, the hammers, the
axes, the drills Of carpentry. The pic
ture represents Christ as rising from
the carpenters working bench and
YEARLY stretching out his arms as one
will after being i'll contracted or uncOm-
Portable 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 shadow was on everything IN
Christ's lifetime Shadow of a cross ON
the Bethlehem swaddling clothes Shad
Ow of a cross ON the road over which the
three fugitives fled into Egypt. Shadow
Of a cross on Lake Galilee as Christ
walked its mosaic floor of opal and
emerald and crystal. Shadow of cross
ON the road to Emmaus. Shadow Of a
cross on the brook Kedron, and on the
temple, and on the side of Olivet. Shad-
ow Of a cross On sunrise and sunset.
Constantine, marching with his army
saw just once a cross i'll the sky, but
Christ saw the cross all the time.
The End Was Death.
On 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 defoliagCd
tree without one leaf and with only two
branches bearing fruit of such bitter
ness as no human lips had ever tasted. |
Oh, what an exile-starting in an in
fancy without any cradle and ending in
assassination! Thirst without amy water.
Day without any sunlight. The doom of |
a desperate for more than angelic excel |
fence. For what that expatriation and |
that exile? Worldly good sometimes |
comes from worldly evil. The acciden-
tai glance of Il sharp blade from a razor |
wheel put out the eye Of Gam |
BETA and excited sympathies which |
gained him an education and started |
him on q career that made his name |
more majestic among Frenchmen than
any other name in the last 20 years.
Hawthorne, turned out Of the Office |
of collector at Salem, went home in de-
spair. 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
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