Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1896-06-08

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 so
hard as steel could be put into such
floral shapes. have 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 saws they
shall DE 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. .sThere, you will let your child
drop. - 'sOh, no, she said, 81 couldn't
let the child DROP" He said, ssYou will
let the child DROP Why she said,
IF I 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.
I suppose God lets the east wind blow
just hard enough to drive us into the
harbor of God S 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 say with
the poet:
Change and decay all around I see
Oh, thou who changest not. abide with mel
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 I repeat it, for God an
it again and again, the best
thing that happens to US is trouble.
When the French army went down
into Egypt under Napoleon, an engi-
neer, in digging for a fortress, came
across a tablet which has been called
the Rosetta stone. There We're inscrip-
tions i'll three or four languages On that
Rosetta stone. Scholars studying cut
the alphabet Of hieroglyphics from that
stone were enabled to read ancient in
scriptionS on monuments and on tomb
stones. Well, many of the handwritings
of God in our life are indecipherable
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 in its
as we read, ''All things work
together for good to those who love
Cod - So we decipher the hieroglyphics.
Oh, my friends. have you ever calculat-
ed what trouble did for David? It made
him the sacred minstrel for all ages.
What did trouble do for Joseph? Made
him the keeper of the cct1lcribs of
Egypt. What did it do for Paul? Made
him the great apostle to the gentiles.
What did it do for Samuel Rutherford?
Made his invalidism more illustrious
than robust health. What did it do for
Richard Baxter? Gave him capacity to
write of the Saint s Everlasting Rest.
What did it do for John Bunyan?
Showed him the shining gates of the
city. What has it done for you? Since
the loss of that child your spirit has
been purer. Since the loss of that prop
erty, you have found out that earthly
Investments are insecure. Since you
lost your health, you feel as never be-
fore a rapt anticipation of eternal re-
lease. Trouble has humbled you, has
you, has multiplied your re-
has equipped you, has loosened
your grasp from this world and frightened
your grip on the next. Oh, bless God
for the east wind! Tt has driven you in
TO the harbor of Gods sympathy.
Nothing like trouble to show us that
this world is an insufficient portion.
Hogarth was about done with life, and
ne wanted to paint the end of all things.
He put OF canvas a shattered bottle, a
cracked bell, an unstrung harp, sign
board of tavern called 1.-The Worlds |
End falling down, shipwreck, the |
horses of Ph9bus lying dead in the
clouds, the moon in her last quarter, |
md the world on fire. lone thing |
more, said Hogarth, and my picture
is done.'' Then he added the broken |
palette of painter. Then he died. But |
,rouble, with hand mightier and more
,killful than Hogarth's pictures the fall
ing, failing, moldering, dying world.
And we want something permanent to
Lay hold of, and we grasp with both |
hands after Cod and saw ssTbo ord is |
my light, the Lord is my love, the Lord
is my fortress, the Lord is my sacrifice,
The Lord, the Lord is my God -
Bless God for your trials. Oh, my
Christian friend, keep your spirits up
oy the power of Christss gospel. Do not
Do you not know that when |