The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1898-03-24
NO. 4.

"Aoh AAiS AASSl "il1lAg on tne ground,
although the first shuttle of feet
obliterated the divine caligraphy,
and who knows just how
many locusts there were in
the Egyptian plague, and knew Just
how many ravens We're necessary to
supply Elijah's pantry by the brook
Cherith, and who, as floral commander,
leads forth all the regiments of prim.
roses, foxgloves, datfodils, hyacinths
and lilies which pitch their tents of
beauty and kindle their camp-fires of
color around the hemisphere-that that
Christ and that God know the most
minute affairs of your business life and
however inconsidera ble understanding
all the affairs of that woman who
keeps a athread-and-neeGles store as we'll
as all the affairs of RothsoAsld and
Barring.
Then there are all the ordinary farm
ers. We talk about agricultural life,
and we Immediately shoot off to talk
about Cincinnatus, the patrician, who
went from the plow to a high position,
and after he got through the dictator
ship, in 81 days went back again to
the plow. What encouragement is that
to ordinary farmers? The vast ma ior-
ity of them-none of them will be pa
tricians. Perhaps none of them will be
senator's. If any of them have dicta-
torships it will be over 40, so or 100
acres of the old homestead. What
these men want is grace to keep their
patience while plowing with balky on
en-, and to keep cheeful amid the drought
that destroys the corn crop, and that
enables them to .'estore the garden the
day after the neighbor's cattle have
broken in and trampled out the straw
berry bed and gone through the Lima
bean patch, and eaten up the sweet
corn in such large quantities that they
must be kept from the water less they
swell up and die.
Grace in catching weather that en-
ables them, without imprecation, to
spread out the hay the third time,
although again, and again, and again,
it has been almost ready for the NOW.
A grace to doctor the cow with
hollow horn. and the sheep with the
foot rot, and the horse with the dis
temper, and to compel the unwilling
acres to yield livelihood for the
family, and schooling for the children
and little extras to help the older boy
in business, and something for the
daughters wedding outfit, and little
surplus for the time when the ankles
will get stiff with age, and the
breath will be little short,
and the swinging of the cradle
through the hot harvest field
will bring on the old mans vertigo.
Better close up about Cincinnatus. I
know 500 farmers just as noble as he
was. What they want is to know
that they have the friendship of
that Christ who often drew His
SMILES from the farmers life,
as when He said: "A sower
went forth to SOW as when He built
His best parable out Of the scene of =
farmer boy coming back from his wan
derings, and the old farmhouse shook
that night with the rural jubilee: and
who compared Himself to lamb in the
pasture field, and who said that the
eternal God is farmer, declaring:
'My Father is the husbandman."
Those stone masons do not want to
hear about Christopher Wren, the archi-
tect, who built st. Paul's cathedral.
1t would be better to tell them how to
carry the hod of brick up the ladder
without slipping, and how on a cold
morning with the trowel to smooth off
the mortar and keep cheerful, and how
to be thankful to God for the plain
food taken from the pail by the road
side. Carpenters standing amid the
adze, and the bit, and the plane, and
Christ was carpenter, with His own
hand welding saw and hammer. Oh,
this is tired world, and it is an over
worked world, and it is an underfed
world, and it is wrung-out world,
and men and women need to know that
there is rest and recuperation in God,
and in that religion which was not SO
much intended for extraordinary peo-
pie as for ordinary people, because they
are more of them.
The healing profession has had its
Abercrombies, and it's Abernethys, and
its Valentine Motifs. and it's Willard
Parkers; but the ordinary physicians
do the most of the worlds medicining,
and they need to understand that while
taking diagnosis or prognosis, Or writ
ing prescriptions, or compounding
medicament, or holding the delicate
pulse of the dying child, they may
have the presence and the dictation of
the Almighty Doctor who took the case
of the madman, and. after He had torn
off his garments in foaming dementia,
clothed him again, body and mind, and
who lifted up the woman who for Is
years had been bent almost double
with the rheumatism into graceful
stature. and who turned the scabs OF
leprosy into rubicund complexion,
and who rubbed the numbness
out of paralysis, and who swung
wide open the closed windows of he
reditary or accidental blindness, until
the morning light came streaming
through the feshly easements, and
who knows all the diseases, and all the
remedies, and all the herbs, and all the
catholicons, and is monarch of phar'