Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1900-01-01


board bill at the tavern; that Of the
big dinner, to which the invited guests
sent in fictitious regrets; that of the
shepherd answering the bleat of the
lost sheep and all the rural neighbors
that night helping him celebrate the
fact that it was safe in the barnyard; ;
that of the bad boy, reduced to the
swines' trough, greeted home with
such banqueting and jewelry that it
stuffed the older son with jealousy
and disgruntlement; that of the Phari-
see full of braggadocio and the pub
Hcan shifting his breast with a stroke
that brought down the heavens in COM
miseration; stories about leprosy, about
paralysis, about catalepsy, about drop
sy, about OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES that he
SO well told that they have rolled down
to the present and will roll down
through the entire future.
1 heard Daniel Baker, the wonderful
evangelist of his time, preach what
supposed was a great sermon, but
remember nothing Of it except a story
that he told, and that, l judge from
the seeming effect, may that afternoon
have brought hundreds into the king
dom Of God. l heard Truman Osborne
preach several sermons, but l remem-
Der nothing Of what he said in public
or private except a story that he told,
and that was, among other things, the
means of my salvation. The lifelong
work of John B. Cough, the greatest
temperance reformer Of all time, was
the victory of anecdote, and who can
ever forget his story of Joel Straton
touching him on the shoulder, or Of
Deacon Moses Grant at Hopkinton, or
of the outcast woman nicknamed "Hell
Fire." but redeemed by the thought
that she 'was one Of us?" Dwight l..
Moody, the evangelist of worldwide
fame and usefulness, who recently
passed to his great reward on high.
during his valuable labors in the pulpit
welded the anecdote for God and
heaven until all nations have been NOV
ed by it.
Make Blessings known.
If you have had experiences of par
don and comfort and disenthrallment,
tell Of it. Tell it in the most pointed
and dramatic way you can manage.
Tell it soon, or you may never tell it
at ALL Oh, the power of 'the tale that
is toldv' An hours discourse about
the fact that blasphemous behavior is
sometimes punished in this world
would not impress us as much as the
simple story that in a town of New
York state at the close of the last cen
fury SO profane men formed them
selves into a club, calling themselves
"Society of the Druids." They met
regularly to deride and damage Chris
tianity. One night in their awful meet
ing they burned Bible and admins
tered the sacrament to a dog. Two Of
them died that night. Within three
days three were drowned. In five years
all the SO came to a bad end. Before
justices of the peace it was sworn
that two were starved to death, seven
were drowned, eight were shot, five
committed suicide, seven died on the
gallowS, one was frozen to death and
three died accidentally. Incidents like
that, sworn to, would balk any pro-
posed irreverent and blasphemous be-
havior.
In what way could the fact that in
fidelity will not help any one die well
be SO powerfully presented as by the
incident concerning a man falling il!
in Paris just after the death of Vol
taire, when a professional nurse was
called in, and she asked, ''Is the gentle
man a Christian?'' "Why do you ask
that?" said the messenger. The nurse
replied, 81 am the nurse who attended
Voltaire in his last illness, and for all
the wealth of Europe | would never see
another infidel die" What discourse
in it's moral and spiritual effect could
equal a tale like that?
You might argue upon the fact that |
those fallen are our brothers and sis |
ters, but could we impress any one |
with such a truth so we'll as by the |
scene near Victoria park, London,
where men were digging a deep drain,
and the snoring gave way, and great |
pile of earth fell upon the workmen.
A man stood there with his hands in
his pockets, looking at those who were |
trying to shovel away the earth from |
those who were buried, but when some |
one said to the spectator, "Bill, your
brother is down there" then the spec
tator threw off his coat and went to |
work with an agony Of earnestness to |
fetch up his brother. What course Of |
argument could so well as that Incl !
dent set forth that when we toll for ,
the salvation of q soul it is a brother
whom we are trying to save?
A Brief Story.
A second reading of my text reminds
me that life is not only a story told,
but that it is a brief story. A long mar
rative stretched out Indefinitely loses
it's interest 1t is generally the story
that takes only minute Or half min
ute to rehearse that arrests the atten-
ton. And that gives additional inter-
est to the story of our life. 1t is a
short story. Subtract from our life all