The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1898-09-16

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plant black and blue in the world
when God so seldom plants themP
Plenty of scarlet colors, plenty of yell
low, plenty of green. plenty of pink,
but very seldom plant black or blue.
never saw a black flower, and there's
only here and there bluebell or a
violet; but the blue is for the most
part reserved for the sky, and we have
to look up to see that, and when we
look up, no color can do us harm.
Why not plant along the paths of
others the brightnesses instead of the
glooms?
Do not prophesy misfortune. II you
must be prophet at all, be an Ezekiel
and not a jeremiah. In ancient times
prophets who foretold evil were doing
right, for they were divinely directed;
but the prophets of evil in our time
are generally false prophets Some of
our weatherwise people prophesied we
would have a summer of unparal.
leled heat. 1t has been very
comfortable summer Last fall all
the weather prophets agreed in
saying we should have a winter
of extraordinary severity, blizzard
on the heels of blizzard. II was the
mildest winter l ever remember to
have passed. Indeed the autumn and
the spring almost showed winter out
OF the procession. Real troubles have
no heralds running ahead of their
somber chariots, and no one has au-
thority in our time to announce their
coming. Load yourself up with hope
full words and deeds.
Before you begin TO show yourself
friendly you must be friendly. Get
your heart right with God and man
and this grace will become easy. You
may by your own resolution get your
nature into a semblance of this virtue,
but the grace of God can sublimely
lift you into it. IT, when under the
flashes of the Holy Ghost, we see our
own foibles and defects and depravi-
ties, we will be very lenient and very
easy with others. We will look into
their characters for things commenda-
tory and not damnatory II you
would rub your own eye little more
vigorously you would find a mote in it,
the extraction of which would keep
you so busy you would not have much
time to shoulder your broad-ax and go
fourth to split up the beam in your
neighbours eve. In Christian spirit
keep on exploring the characters of
those you meet and am sure you will
find something in them fit for a
foundation of friendliness This is
the way the world talks: l put my
name on the back of a mans note, and
had to pay it, and will never again
put my name on the back of any mans
note. gave beggar ten cents, and
in five minutes after saw him enter
ing liquor store to spend it. l will
never again give cent to beggar.
helped that young man start in bust
ness, and 10, after awhile, he came and
opened store almost next door to me,
and stole my customers. i will never
again help a young man TO start in
business | trusted in what my neigh
Dor promised to do, and he broke his
word, and the Psalmist was right be-
fore he corrected himself, for "all men
are liars" So men become suspi-
cious and saturnine, and selfish,
and at every additional wrong done
them they put another layer on the
wall Of their eXclusiveness, and another
bolt to the door that shuts them out
from sympathy with the world. They
get cheated out Of 1000, or misin-
terpreted, or disappointed or betrayed,
and higher goes the wall, and faster
goes another bolt, not realizing that
while they lock others out they lock
themselves in; and some day they wake
up to find themselves imprisoned for
a dastardly habit No friends to
others, pothers no friends TO them.
There's an island half way between
England, Scotland and Ireland, called
the Isle of Man, and the seas dash
against all sides of it, and am told
there is no more lovely place than that
Isle of Man; but when man becomes
insular in his disposition, and cuts
himself off from the mainland of the
worlds sympathies, he is despicable,
and all around him is an Atlantic
ocean of selfishness. Behold that Isle
of Man.
Now, supposing that you have, by
a divine regeneration, got right to-
ward God and humanity, and YOU
started out TO practice my text. "A
man that hath friends must show
himself friendly" Fulfill this by all
forms of appropriate salutation. Have
you noticed that the head is so poised
that the easiest thing on earth is to
give a nod OF recognition? To swing
the head from side to side, as when il
is wagged in derisiou, is unnatural
and unpleasant; to throw it back in
vites vertigo; but to drop the chin in
greeting is accompanied with so little
exertion that all day long, and every
day you might practice it without the
least semblance of fatigue. So, also,
the structure of the hand indicates
hand-shaking; the knuckles not made
so that the fingers can turn out, but
so made that the fingers can turn in,
as in clasping hands; and the thumb
divided from and set aloof from the
fingers, SO that, while the fingers take
your neighbours hand on one side, the
thumb takes il on the other and
pressed together, all the faculties of