The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1897-06-04

what multltudes OF people have but
one eve or but one foot! The ordinary
casualties of life have been quadrupled,
quintupled, sextupled. aye. centupled,
in our time by the civil war. and at the
north and south a great multitude are
fighting the great battle of life with
half or less than half the needed phys
zeal armament 1 do not wonder at
the pathos of soldier during the war,
who, when told that he must have his
hand amputated, said, doctor, can't
you save itP- and when told that it
was impossible, said, with tears roll
ing down his cheeks: "Well, then,
good-by, old hand hate to part with
you. You have done me good ser
vice for many years, but it seems you
must go GoOd-by.'
A celebrated surgeon told me of
scene in the clinical department of
one of the New York hospitals,
when a poor man with a wounded leg
was brought in before the students to
be operated on. The surgeon was
pointing out this and that to the STU
dents and handling the wounded leg,
and was about to proceed to amputa-
ton when the poor man leaped from
the table and hobbled to the door and
said, Gentlemen, l am sorry to disap-
point you, but by the help of God l
will die with my leg on" What ter
rife loss is the loss of our physical fac
ulties!"
Yet how many suffer from this phys
ical taking off! Good cheer. my broth
erl God will make it up to you some
how. The grace, the sympathy of God,
will be more to you than anything you
have lost If God allows part of your
resources to be cut off in one place, he
will add it on somewhere else. As
Augustus, the emperor, took off day
from February, making it the shortest
month in the year, and added it to Au-
gust, the month named after himself,
so advantages taken from one part of
your nature will be added on to anoth-
er. But it is amazing how much OF the
worlds work has been done by men of
subtracted physical organization. S. S.
Preston, the great orator of the south
west, went limping all his life, but
there was no foot put down upon any
platform of his day that resounded so
far as his clubfoot. Beethoven was so
deaf that he could not hear the crash
of the orchestra rendering his orator
los. Thomas Carlyle, the dyspeptic mar
tyr, was given the commission to drive
can't out of the worlds literature. Rev.
Thomas Stockton, of Philadelphia,
with one lung raised his audience
nearer Heaven than most ministers can
raise them with two lungs. In the
banks, the insurance companies, the
commercial establishments, the reform
atory associations, the churches, there
are tens of thousands of men and
women to-day doubled up with rheu-
matism or subject to the neuralgias
or with only fragments of limbs, the
rest of which they left at Chattanooga
or South Mountain or the Wilderness,
and they are worth more to the world,
and more to the church, and more to
God than those of rs who have never
so much as had finger joint stiffened
by felon.
| Put to full use all the faculties that
remain and charge on all opposing cir
cumstances with the determination Of
John of Bohemia, who was totally
| blind, and yet at battle cried out, Il
pray and beseech you to lead me so far
into the fight that / may strike one
good blow with this sword of miner
| Do not think so much OF what iacul-
ties you have lost as of what faculties
remain. You have enough left to
make yourself felt in three worlds.
while you help the earth and balk
hell and win Heaven. Arise from
your discouragemeuts, o men and
women of depleted or crippled ply
steal faculties, and see what, by the
special help of God, you can accom-
plishl The skilled horsemen stood
around Bucephalus, unable to mount
or manage him, so wild was the steed.
But Alexander noticed that the sight of
his own shadow seemed to disturb the
horse. So Alexander clutched him BY
the bride and turned his head away
from the shadow and toward the sun,
and the horses agitation was gone,
and Alexander mounted him and rode
off, to the establishment of all who
stood by. And what you people need
is to have your sight turned away
from the shadows of your earthly lot,
over which you have so long pondered,
and your head turned toward the sun
the glorious sun of gospel consolation
and Christian hope and spiritual tri-
umph.
And then remember that all physical
disadvantages will after awhile van
ish. Let those who have been rheuma-
tismed out of foot, or cataracted out
of an eye, or by the perpetual roar of
our cities Numbered out of an ear,
look forward to the day when this old
tenement house of flesh will come
down and a better one shall be build
ed. The resurrection morning will
provide you with a better outfit.
Either the unstrung, worn out, blunt
ed and crippled organs will be so re-
constructed that you will not know
them, or an entire new set of eyes and
ears and feet will be given you. Just
what it means by corruption putting
on interruption we do not know, save
that it will be glory ineffable, no
limping in Heaven, no straining of the
eyesight to see things little way off,
no uuttinU of the hand behind the ear