Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1898-04-25
| clouds-that light the irradiated faces
of your glorified kindred?

| clouds-that light the irradiated faces
of your gloriied kindred?
Making. the Worst of Things.
So also, my friends, l would have
you make the best of your sicknesses.
| When you see one move off with elastic
step and in full physical vigor, some
| times you become impatient with your
lame foot When man describes an
object mile off, and you cannot see it
at all, you become impatient of your
dim eye. WheE you hear Of a well man
making great achievement, you be-
come impatient with your depressed
nervous system or your dllapidated
health I will tell you how you can
make the worst of it. Brood over it;
brood over all these illnesses, ard your
nerves will become more twitchy and
your dyspepsia more aggravated, and
your weakness more appalling. But
that is the DEVILS work, to tell you how
to make the worst of it. 1t is my work
to show you bright light in the clouds.
Which of the Bible men most attract
your attention? YoS say, Noses Job,
David, jeremiah, PM. Why, what a
strange thing it is that you have chosen
those who were physically disordered!
Moses-I know he was nervous from the
clip he gave the Egyptian. Job-his
blood was Initiated and diseased, and
his skin distressfully eruptive. David
he had running sore, which he speaks
of wien he says, "My sore ran in the
night and ceased not" jeremiah had
enlargement of the spleen. Who can
/ doubt it who reads Lamentations? Paul
he had lifetime sickness which the
commentators have been guessing about
for years, not knowing exactly what the
/ apostle meant by "a thorn i'll the flesh. -
I do not know either, but it was some.
thing sharp, something that stuck him.
I gather from all this that physical dis
order may be the means of grace to the
soul. You say you have SO many tempta-
tions fross bodily ailments and if you
were only we'll you think you could be
a good Christian. While your tempta-
lions may be different they are no more
than those of the man who has an appe-
tite three times day and sleeps eight
hours every night.
Views of Heaven.
From my observation I judge that
invalids have more rapturous view of
the next world than well people and
will have higher renown in heaven.
The best view of the delectable noun
tains is through the lattice of the sick
room. There are trains running every
hour between pillow and throne, be-
tween hospital and mansion, between
bandages and robes, between crutch and
palm branch. Oh, I wish some of you
people who are compelled to cry: ''My
head, my head! My foot, my foot! My
back, my back!'' would try some of the
Lord medicine! You are going to be
we'll anyhow before long. Heaven is an
old city, but has never yet reported one
case of sickness or one bill of mortality.
No ophthalmia for the eye. No pneu-
monia for the lungs. No pleurisy for the
side. No neuralgia for the nerves. No
rheumatism for the muscles. "The in
habitants shall never say, am sick.
"There shall be no more pain.
Again, you ought to make the best of
life's fnality. Now, you think [ have
very tough subject. You do not see how
I am to stgike spark of light out of
the flint of the tombstone. There are
many people who have an idea that
death is the submergence of everything
pleasant by everything doleful. If my
subject could close. in the upsetting of
all such preconceived notions, it would
close we'll Who can judge best of the
features Of a man-those who are close
by him, or those who are affair off?
"Oh,' you say, "those can judge best
of the features of a man who are close
by him.
Now. my friends, who shall judge of
4Lo 49, hot
lovely or whether they are repulsive?
You? You are too far off. If I want to
get Judgment as to what really the
features of death are, I will not ask you;
will ask those who have been within a
month of death or week of death or
an hour of death or a minute of death.
They stand SO near the features, they
can tell. They give unanimous testi-
nony, if they are Christian people, that
death, instead of being demoniac, is
cherubic Of all the thousands of Chris
tians who have been carried through the
gates of the cemetery, gather up their
dying experiences and you will find
they nearly all bordered ON a jubilate.
How often you have seen dying man
join in the psalm being sung around his
bedside, the middle of the verse opening
to let his ransomed spirit free, long
after the lips could not speak looking
and pointing upward.
Not Gods Best Work.
Some of you talk as though God had
exhausted himself in building this
world and that all the rich curtains he
ever made he hung around this planet
and all the flowers he ever grew he has
woven into the Garnet of orr daisied
meadows. No. This world is not the
best thing God can do; this world is
not the best thing that God has done.