The Yale expositor., 1898-12-16

Patience! An old English proyerb re-
ferring to long-continued invalidism,
says. "A creaking gate hangs long on
its hinges" and this may be a pro-
tracted case of Observation-Disclosures
but you will have taken the last bitter
drop, you will have suffered the last
misinterpretation, you will feel the
gnawing of the last hunger, you will
have tainted the last time from exhaus-
ton, you will have felt the cut Of the
last lancet, you will have wept under
the last loneliness. The last week of
the Noachian deluge came, the last day,
the last hour, the last moment. The
beating of the rain on the roof ceased,
and the dashing of the pillows on the
side of the ship quieted, and peacefully
as yacht moves out over quiet Lake
Cayuga, Como or Luzerne, the ark,
with its illustrious passengers and i'm
portGnt freight, glided to it's mountain
wharfage.
Meanwhile you have all divine and
angelic sympathy in your inhrmities.
That Satan thoroughly understood poor
human nature was evidenced when, in
plotting to make job do wrong, the
great master Of evil after having failed
in every other way to overthrow the
good man, proposed physical; distress,
IA then the boi!a c-sne which made
him swear right odt. The mightiest
test of character is physical suffering.
! Critics are inpatient at the way
Thomas Carlyle scolded at everything.
His seventy years of dyspepsia were
enough to make any man scold. When
you see people out OF patience and
irascible ard lachrymose, inquire into
the case, and before you get through
with the exploration your hypercriti-;
| cism will turn to pity, and TO the d.
vine and angelic sympathy will be ad-
ded your own. The clouds OF your in
| dignation, which were full of thun-
dc"Hclts, will begin to rain tears OF
Pity.
BY strange Providence, for which
| shall be forever grateful, circum-
stances with which l think you are all
familiar, l have admission through the
newspaper press, week by week. to tens
| OF thousands OF Gods dear children,
who cannot enter church on the Sab
! bath and hear their excellent pastors,
| because of the age Of the sufferers, or
| their illness, or the lameness of foot,
| or their incapacity to stay In one posi-
ton an hour and half, or their pow
critics, or their troubles OF some sort
will not let them go out Of doors, and
to them as much as to those who hear
me | preach this sermon. as / preach
many of my sermons, the invisible au-
dience always vaster than the visible,
some OF them tossed on wilder seas
than those that tossed the eight MEM
bers OF Noahs family. and instead OF
| forty days Of storm and five months OF
being shut in. as they were. II has been
with these invalids Ave years OF shut
! in" or ten years of "shut-in," or TWEEN
ty years of "shut-in." Oh. comforting
God! Help me to comfort them! Give
me two hands full of salve for their
wounds. When we were three hundred
miles out at sea, hurricane struck us,
and the life-boats were dashed from the
davits and all the lights in the cabin
were put out by the rolling OF the ship
and the water which through the
broken skylights had poured in. Cap
tain Andrews entered and said to the
men on duty. "Why don't you light up
and make things brighter. for we are
going to outride this storm? Passen-
gers, cheer up! Cheer up" And he
struck a match and began to light the
burners. He could not silence either
the wind or the waves. but by the strik-
ing of that match, accompanied by en-
couraging words, we were all helped.
And as l now find many in hurri-
canes OF trouble, though l cannot quiet
the storm, i can strike match to light
up the darkness, and strike a match:
Whom the Lord loveth he chasten-
eth" strike another match: Weep
ing may endure for a night, but Joy
come.h in the morning" / strike an
other match: I'VE have a great High
Priest who can be touched with the
feeling OF our inilrmities, and he was
in all points tempted like as we are
Are you old? One breath of heaven
will make you everlastingly young
again. Have you aches and pains?
They insure Christs presence and SYM
patty through the darkest December
nights, which are the longest nights OF
the year Are you bereft? Here is a
resurrected Christ, whose voice is full
Of resurrectionary power. Are you
,cnely? All the angels of heaven are
ready to swoop into your companion
ship. Here is the Christ Of Mary and
Martha when they had lost Lazarus
and OF David when he had lost his son
and of Abraham when he had lost
Sarah, and of your father and mother
when in time of old age they parted al
the gates OF the tomb. When last was
In Savannah, Georgia, at the close OF
the Sabbath morning service, / was
asked to go and see a Christian woman
for many years an invalid. l went.
had not in all that beautiful city oil