Connecticut western news., 1897-08-12

eQulpaS6 ana moved Wltu HOISeS anu chariots of fire? Why beg drink from the wayside, when out of the crystal ohalices of eternity he poured the Eu pirates, the Mississippi and the Anna zon, and dipping his hand in the foun- tains of heaven and shaking that hand over the world. from the tips of his fin gers dripping the great lakes and the oceans? Why let the Roman regiment put him to death, when he might have ridden down the sky followed by all the cavalry of heaven, mounted on white horses of eternal victory?
 Who Can Understand?
 You cannot understand Who can? You try to confound me. I am con founded before you speak. Paul said it was unsearchable He went climbing up from argument to argument and l from antithesis to antithesis and from | glory to glory and then sank down ill | exhaustion as he saw far above him oth- I CT heights of divinity unscaled and ex- | claimed "that in all things he might have the pre- eminence."
 Again, Christ was wonderful i'll his | teaching. The people had been used to formalities and technicalities. Christ | upset all their notions as to how preach 1 ing ought to be done. There was this | peculiarity about his preaching-the 1 people knew what he meant. His illus | trations were taken from the hen call ing her chickens together, from salt, from candles, from fishing tackle, from hard ere litor collaring debtor. How | few pulpits of this day would have al- | lowed him entrance? He would have been called undignified and familiar in his style of preaching. And yet the people went to hear him. Those old Jewish rabbis might have preached on the side of Olivet 50 years and never got an audience. The philosophers sneered at his ministrations and said, "This will never do. o." 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 wom an who ever mixed bread was ignorant of wbat 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 college studying ancient mythology. and three years in the theological seminary learn ing how to make a sermon, and then we go out to save the world, and if we cannot do it according to Claude's "Sermonizing, or Blair's Rhetoric, or Kames' "Criticism," we will let the world go to perdition. 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 shin ing oars, and then we push out methodi- cally and scientifically, while some plain shoresman, in rough fishing smack and with broken oar lock goes out and gets the crew and passengers and brings them ashore in safety. We throw down our delicate oars and say: What a ridiculous thing to save men in that wayl You ought to have done it scien- tifically and beautifully. "Ah," says the shoresman, Eff those sufferers had waited until you got out your fine boat they would have gone to the bottom.'
 The work of a religious teacher is to save men, and though every law of grammar should be snapped in the un- dertaking, and there be nothing but awkwardness and laundering in the mode, all hail to the man who saves a soul.
 Christ, in his preaching, was plain, earnest and wonderfully sympathetic We cannot dragoon men into heaven. We cannot drive them in with the butt end of catechism. We waste our time in trying to catch flies with acids in stead of the sweet honeyoomb of the gospel. We try to make crab apples do the work of pomegranates.
 The Sorrows of Jesus.
 Again, Jesus was wonderful in his sorrows The sun smote him, and the cold chilled him, the rain pelted him, thirst parched him and hunger exhaust ed him. Shall compare his sorrow to the sea? No, for that is sometimes hushed into a calm. Shall I compare it with the night? No, for that some times gleams with Orion or kindles with Aurora. If one thorn should be thrust through your temple you would | from the rhamnus or spina Christi small, sharp, stinging thorns. The mob make a cross They put down the long beam, and on it they fasten a shorter beam. Got him at last Those hands, that have been doing kindnesses and wiping away tears-hear the hammer driving the spikes through them. Those feet, that have been going about or ministrations of mercy - battered against the cross. Then they lift it up. Looh, look, look! Who will help him now? Come, men of Jerusalem-ye whose dead he brought to life, ye whose sick he healed-who will help him Who will seize the weapons of the sol diers? None to help. Having carried such cross for us, shall we refuse tt take our cross for him?
 Shall Jesus bear the cross alone
 And all the world go free?
 No; there's cross for every one, And there's cross for me.
 You know the process of ingrafting You bore hole into tree and put il the branch of another tree. This tret of the cross was hard and rough, bu into the holes where the nails wen there have been grafted branches of tht tree of life that now bear fruit for al nations. The original tree was bitter but the branches ingrafted were sweet and now all the nations pluck the frui and live forever.
 Again, Christ was wonderful in his victories.
 First, over the forces of nature. The sea is crystal sepulcher. It swallowed the Central America, the President ant the Spanish Armada as easily as any fly that ever floated on it. The inland lakes are fully as terrible in theil wrath. Galilee. when aroused in { !; storm, is overwhelming, and yet tha sea crouched in his presence and licked his feet. He knew all the waves ant