Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1897-05-10

you nave III the fIOyd1 DduA OF heaven.
You say: ''All that is very poetic, but
you may have the black ravens. Give
me the gold eagles. We had better be
content with just enough. If in the
morning your family eat up all the food
there is in the house. do not sit down
and cry and say, IT don't know where
the next meal is to come FROM About
B, or 6, or o'clock in the morning just
look up, and you will see two black
spots on the sky, and you will hear the
Tapping of wings, and instead of Edgar
A. Poe's insane raven alight on the
chamber door, ''only this and nothing
more" you will find Elijah's two
ravens, or two ravens Of the Lord, the
one bringing bread and the other bring
ing meat-plumed butcher and baker.
A Living Fountain.
God is infinite in resource. When the
city of Rochelle was besieged and the
inhabitants were dying of the famine,
the tides washed up on the beach as
never before. and as never since, enough
shellfish to feed the whole city. God is
good. There is no mistake about that.
History tells us that in 555 in England
there was a great drought. The crops
failed, but in Essex, on the rocks, in a
place where they had neither sown nor
cultured, great crop of peas grew un-
til they filed 100 measures, and there
were blossoming vines enough, prom
Using as much more.
But why go SO far? I can give you
family incident. Some generations back
there was a great drought in Connecti-
cut, New England. The water disap-
peared from the hills, and the farmers
living on the hills drove their cattle
down toward the valleys and had them
supplied at the wells and fountains of
the neighbors. But these after awhile
began to fail, and the neighbors said to
Mr.. Birdseye, of whom I shall speak:
"You must not send your focks and
herds down here any more. Our wells
are giving OUT Mr.. Birdseye, the old
Christian man, gathered his family at
the altar, and with his family he gath
cred the slaves Of the household-for
bondage was then in vogue in Connect
icut-and on their knees before God
they cried for water, and the family
story is that there was weeping and
great sobbing at that altar that the
family might not perish for lack of wa
ter, and that the herds and f1ocks might
not perish.
The family rose from the altar. Mr..
Birdseye, the old man, took his staff
and walked out over the hills, and in
place where he had seen scores of times,
without noticing anything particular,
he saw the ground was very dark. and
he took his staff and turned up the
L
oned to his servants, and they came and
brought pals and buckets until all the
family and all the focks and the herds
were cared for, and then they made
troughs reaching from that place down
to the house and barn, and the water
flowed, and it is living fountain today.
Now call that old grandfather Eli
jah, and call that brook that began to
roll then and is rolling still the brook
Cherith, and the lesson to me and to
all who hear it is, when you are in
great stress of circumstances, pray and
dig, dig and pray, and pray and dig.
How does that passage go? 1.-The noun
tains shall depart and the hills be re-
moved, but my loving kindness shall
not fail" If your merchandise, if your
mechanism, if your husbandry fail,
look out for ravens. If you have in your
dependency put God on trial and con-
demned him as guilty of cruelty, move
today for new trial. IF the biography
of your life is ever written, will tell
you what the first chapter and the mid
die chapter and the last chapter will be
about if it is written accurately. The
first chapter about mercy, the middle
chapter about mercy, the last chapter
about mercy. The mercy that lowered
over your cradle The mercy that will
hover over your grave. The mercy that
will cover all between.
Unexpected Relief.
Again. this story of the text impresses
me that relief came to this prophet with
the most unexpected and with seeming
ly impossible conveyance. If it had been
q robin redbreast, or a musical meadow
lark, Or a meek turtledove, or a sub
lime albatross that had brought the |
food to Elijah, it would not have been
SO surprising. But no. It was bird so |
fierce and inauspicate that we have fash
toned one of our most forceful and re-
pulsive words out of it-ravenous. That |
bird has passion for picking out the |
eyes of men and of animals. 1t loves to |
maui the sick and the dying. 1t swal-
lows with vulturous guzzle everything
it can put its beak on, and yet all the
food Elijah gets for six months or a
year is from ravens So your supply is
going to come from an unexpected |
source.
You think some great hearted, gener-
ous man will come along and give you
ais name on the back Of your note, or
ne will go security for you in some
great enterprise. No, he will not God
will open the heart of some Shylock to-
ward you. Your relief will come from
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