The McCook tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 1886-1936, 1896-11-13

NuGS ohNblOI bi4Cy 80 P'sS - :
What power they had in exhortation!
II they walked into home every MEM
ber of it felt holy thrill, and IL they
walked into a prayer meeting the dull
ness and stolidity instantly vanished.
One of them would wake up whole
church. One of them would sometimes
electrify 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
verted wheat sack, with three open
ings one for the neck, and the other
two for the arms Hie 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 LIDS or
Jerusalem, then stopping the parox-
ysm of tempest and of madman. 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
mcuntain-the greatest, the ioVellest,
the mightiest, the kindest, the most
self-sacrificing most beautiful being
whose feet ever touched the earth. Tell
us, ye deserts who heard our Savior's
prayer; tell us, ye seas that drenched
him with your surf: tell us, ye 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
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 a practical deception, but l
deceive you not when 1 tell you that the
crop of the soul takes hold of unend-
ing ages.
I see the author Of my text seated in
the house of Gaiu6, who entertained
him at Corinth, not far from the over
hanging fortress of Acro-Corinthus,
1on6it1f fi-1O nD thn 10y, cra--it1r of hA
soul, and getting more and more agi-
tated about its value and the awful risk
some of his kindred were running con-
cerning it, and he writes this lctter
containing the text, which Chryso-
stom admSed 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: Il 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
to stir at least one-fourth Of you to
All ambition for that which my text
presents in blazing vocabulary, namely,
q passion for souls. To prove that it
is possible to have much OF that spir-
it, l bring the conservation of 1890 for
eign missionaries. 1t is usually esti-
mated that there are at least 5000 mis-
slonaries l make a liberal allowance
and admit there may be ten bad mis-
sionaries out of the 5000, but l 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
down On the barest necessities, and
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 ther-
mometer sometimes playing at $50 and
40 degrees of cppressiveness, twelve
thousand miles from home, because OF
the unhealthy climate ard the prevail
ing immoraiities of those regions com
pelled 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 deDrecia-
tion CT 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 then-who, absent
from ali home restraint. are so in
neral that We can make only faint al
Iusion TO the monstrosity Of their
abominations Oh. l would like 10 be at
the gate of heaven when those mission.
aries go in, to see how they VIII have
the pick OF corcnets, and thrones, and
mansions on the best streets Of heaven.
We who have had easy pulDits and
loving congregations, entering heaven
viii, in my opinion, have to take our
turn and wait for the Christian work
ers who, amid physical 5ufferirgs and
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