The Progress. (Shreveport, La.) 1892-1900, 1898-05-28
PROPER COMFORTERS
Or. TALMAGE TELLS HOW TO HELP
PEOPLE IN TROUBLE
A Better Way of Dealing With Broken
Hearts - No Place For Cant and Much
Talking Happiness Comes Through
Suffering.


Suffering.
copyright. 1885, by American Press Asso-
clation]
WASHINGTON, May 22.-The awkward
and irritating mode of trying to comfort
people in trouble is here set forth by DR.
Talmage, and n better way Of dealing with
broken hearts is recommended; text, Job
xvi, 2, miserable comforters are ye all. y
The man Of Uz had great many trials
the loss of his family, the loss of his
property, the loss of his health-but the
most exasperating thing that came upon
him was the tantalizing talk of those who
ought to have sympathized with him.
And looking around upon them, and
weighing what they had said, he utters
the words of my text
Why did God let sin come into the
world? 1t is question often hear dis
cussed, but never satisfactorily answered.
God made the world fair and beautiful at
the start If our first parents had not
sinned in Eden, they might have gone out
of that garden and found so paradises all
around the earth-Europe, Asia, Africa,
North and South America-sO many flow
er gardens Or orchards of fruit, redolent
and luscious. l suppose that when God
poured out the Gihon and the Hiddekel he
poured out Mt the same time the Hudson
and the Susquehanna. The whole earth
Why did 1t not stay so? God had the pow
er to keep back sin and woe. Why did he
not keep them back? Why not every cloud
rOseate, and every step a joy, and every
sound music, and all the ages a long jubi
lee of sinless men and sinless women? God
can make a rose as easily as he can make
a thorn. Why, then, the predominance of
thorns? He can make good fair, ripe
fruit as well as gnarled and sour fruit.
Why SO much, then, that is gnarled and
souri, He can make men robust in health.
Why, then, are there SO many invalidS?
Why not have for our whole race perpetual
leisure instead Of this tug and toll and
tussle for livelihood? 1 will tell you why
God let sin come into the world-when l
get on the other side of the river of death.
That is the place where such questions
will be answered and such mysteries
solved. He who this side that river at
tempts to answer the question only illus
trates his own ignorance and incompe-
tency All know is one great fact, and
that Is, that n herd of woes has come in
upon us, trampling down everything fair
and beautiful. A sword at the gate of
Eden and q sword at every gate.
More people under the ground than on
1t. The graveyards In vast majority. The
5000 winters have made more scars than
the 5000 summers can cover up. Trouble
has taken the tender heart of this world
in its two rough hands and pinched it UNI
til the nations wall with the agony. If all
the mounds Of graveyards that have been
raised were put side by side, you might
step on them and nothing else, going all
around the world, and around again, and
around again. These are the facts. And
now / have to say that in world like
this the grandest occupation is that OF Civ
ing coincidence. The holy science of inn
parting comfort to tho troubled we ought
all OF us to study. There are many of you
who could look around upon some of your
very best friends, who wish you well and
are very intelligent, and yet be able truth
fully to say to them in your days of trou-
BILE, Miserable comforters are We all.
No Comfort In Much Talking.
I remark, in the first place, that very
voluble people are incompetent for the
work of giving comfort. Bildad and Eli
phaz had tho gift of language, and with
their words almost bother Jobs life out
Alas for these voluble people that go
among the houses of the afflicted and talk
and talk and talk and talk. They rehcarse
their own SORROWS, and then they tell the
NOR sufferers that thew feel badly now