The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1897-09-16

men, among the philosophers You
may boast of self-control, but if you
had seen: Him you would have put your
arms around His neck and said: Thou
art altogether lovely"
Jesus was wonderful in the opposites
and seeming antagonism of His nature.
You want things logical and consist
ent, and you say: How could Christ
be God and man at the same
timer John says Christ was the Gre
ator: "All things were made by Him,
and without Him was not anything
made Matthew says that He was
omnipresent: "Where two or three
are met together in My name, there
am l in the midst of them" Christ de-
clares His own eternity: II am Alpha
and Omega How can He be lion,
under His foot crushing kingdoms,
and yet lamb licking the hand that
Stays Him? At what point do
the throne and the manger touch?
If Christ was God, why flee into
Egypt? Why not stand His ground?
Why, instead of bearing the cross, not
lift up His right hand and crush His
assassins? Why stand and be spat
upon? Why sleep on the mountain
when He owned the palaces of eternity?
Why catch fish for His breakfast on
the beach in the chill morning, when
all the pomegranates are His, and all
the vineyards His, and all the cattle
His, and all the partridges His? Why
walk when weary, and His feet stone
bruised, when He might have
taken the splendors of the sunset for
His equipage and moved with horses
and chariots of fire? Why beg a drink
from the wayside, when out of the crys-
tai chalices of eternity He poured the
Euphrates, the Mississippi, and the
Amazon, and dipping His hand in the
| fountains of Heaven, and shaking that
hand over the world, from the tips of
His fingers dripping the great lakes
and the oceans? Why leo the Roman
regiment put Him to death, when He
| might have ridden down the sky fol-
lowed by all the cavalry of Heaven,
mounted on white horses of eternal
victory?
You can not understand. Who can?
You try to confound me. l am con-
founded before you speak. Paul said
it was unsearchable. He went climbing
up from argument to argument, and
from antithesis to antithesis, and from
glory to glory, and then sank down in
exhaustion as he saw far above him
other heights of divinity unscaled, and
| exclaimed, that in all things he might
have the epreeminence.
Again: Christ was wonderful in His
teaching. The people had been used
to formalities and technicalities; Christ
| upset all their notions as to how
preaching ought to be done. There
was peculiarity about His preaching:
The people knew what He meant. His
| illustrations were taken from the hen
! calling her chickens together; from
salt, from candles, from fishing tackle,
from hard creditor collaring a debt
Or How few pupils of this day would
have allowed Him entrance? He would
have been called undignifed aad
| familiar in His style of
| te hear Him. Those oil Jewish rabbis
might have preached on the side of
Olivet so years and never got an audi
ence. The philosophers sneered at His
ministrations and said: This will
never do."' The lawyers caricatured,
| but the common people heard Him
gladly. Suppose you that there were
any sleepy people in His audiences?
Suppose you that any woman who
ever mixed bread was ignorant of
what He meant when He compared
the kingdom of Heaven with leaven
or yeast? Suppose you that the
sunburned fishermen, with the fish
scales upon their hands, were listless
when He spoke of the Kingdom of
Heaven as a net? We spend three
years in a college studying ancient
mythology, and three years in the the
illogical seminary learning how to
make a sermon, and then we go out to
save the world; and if we can not do it
according to Claude's "Sermonizing,"
or "Blair's Rhetoric" or Kane's Crit
icism," we will let the world go to per-
dition. If we save nothing else, we
will save Claude and Blair. We see a
wreck in sight. We must go out and
save the crew and passengers. We
wait until we get on our fine cap and
coat and find our shining oars, and
then we push out methodically and
scientifically, while some plain shores
man, in rough fishing smack, and with
broken oarloclss, goes out and gets the
crew and passengers, and brings them
ashore in safety. We throw down our
delicate oars aud say: What ridic-
ulous thing to save men IN that way!
You ought to have done 1T scientifically
and beautifully" "Ah" says the
shoresman, IF those sufferers had
waited until you got out your fine boat
they would have gone to the bottom" "
The work of religious teacher is to
save men, though every law of gram
mar should be snapped in the under
taking, and there be nothing but awk'
| wardness and blunders in the mode
all hail to the man who saves a soul.
Christ, in His preaching, was plain
earnest, and wonderfully sympathetic
We can not dragoon men into Heaven
We can not drive them in with th'
butt-end of a catechism. We waste