Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1900-07-27

column began to adjust itself, and the
cords of the neck began to be more sup
pie, and the eyes that could see only
the ground before, now looked into the
face of Christ with gratitude and up
toward Heaven in transport. Straight
After Is weary and exhausting years,
straight! The poise, the gracefulness.
the beauty of healthy womanhood re-
instated. The 38 years case was a
man who lay on a mattress near the
mineral baths at Jerusalem. There
were five apartments where lame peo-
pie were brought, so that they could get
the advantage of these mineral baths.
The stone basin of the bath is still
visible, although the waters have dis
appeared, probably through some con-
vulsion of nature. The bath, 100 feet
long, 40 feet wide and eight feet deep.
All poor man, if you had been lame anG
helpless 38 years, the mineral bath can
not restore you. Why, 3S years is more
than the average of human life. Moth
ing but the grave will cure you. But
Christ the Surgeon walks along these
baths and I have no doubt passes by
some patients who have been only six
months disordered, or year or five
years and comes to the mattress of the
man who had been nearly four decades
helpless, and to this 3s years invalid
said: 'tWilt thou be made whole?"
The question asked not because the
surgeon did not understand the pro-
tractedne1s, the desperateness, of the
case, but to evoke the mans pathetic
narrative. "Wi1t thou be made whole?"
"Would you like to get well?" ooh,
hot Sc -1,%
came to these mineral baths for.
have tried everything. All the sur
geons have failed, and all the pre-
scriptions have proved valueless, and
got worse and worse, and 1 can
| neither move hand nor foot nor head.
Oh, if I could only be free from this
pain of 3s years!' Christ and surgeon
| could not stand that. Bending over
the man on the mattress, and in a
voice tender with all sympathy, but
strong with all omnipotence, he says:
''Rise!' And the invalid ms family
scrambles to his knees and then puts
out his right foot, then his left foot,
and then stood upright as though he
| had never been Frustrated. While he
| stands looking at the doctor, with a
| Joy too much to hold, the doctor says:
shoulder this mattress, for you are
| not only well enough to walk, but we'll
enough to work, and start out from
these mineral baths. Take up thy bed
and walS!" Oh, what a surgeon for
| chronic cases then and for chronic
| cases now!
This is not applicable so much to
| those who are only little hurt of sin
and only for short time, but to tn ose
Frustrated of sin IL years, 1S years,
So years. Here is a surgeon able to
give immortal health. "Oh," you say.
81 am so completely overthrown and
trampled down of sin that I cannot
rise.'' Are you fatter down than this
patient at the mineral baths? No.
Then rise. In the name of Jesus of
Nazareth, the surgeon who offers you
His right hand of help, I bid thee rise.
Not cases of acute sin, but of chronic
sin-those who have not prayed for
3S years, those who have not been to
church for 80 years, those who have
been gamblers, or ibertines, or thieves,
| or outlaws, or blasphemers, or infdels.
or atheists, and all these together, for
3s years. A Christ for exigencies! A
| Christ for a dead lift! A surgeon who
never loses a case! --~.-s-.-...---~
In speaking of Christ as surgeon
must consider him as an oculist or
eye doctor, and an aurist or ear doc
tor. Was there ever such another Ocu-
list? That he was particularly sorry
for the blind folks take from the fact
that the most of His works were with
the diseased optic nerves. I have not
| time to count up the number of blind
11
Two blind men in one house; also one
who was born blind; SO that it was
mot removal of a visual obstruction,
but the creation of the cornea and
ciliary muscle and crystalline lens and
retina. and optic nerve and tear gland,
also the blind man of Bethsaida, cured
by the saliva which the Surgeon took
from the tip of His own tongue and
put upon the eyelids; also two blind
men who sat by the wayside.
In our civilized lands we have blind
ness enough, the ratio fearfully in
| creasing, according to the statemen
| of European and American oculists.
because of the reading of morning and
evening newspapers on the jolting cars
| by the multitudeS who live out of the
city and come in to business. But in
the lands where the Divine surgeon
operated the cases of blindness were
multiplied beyond everything by the
particles of sand floating in the air.
and the night dews falling on the eye
lids of those who slept on the top of
their houses, and in some of these lands
it is estimated that 20 out of 100 peo-
pie are totally blind. Amid all that
crowd of visionless people, what work
for an oculist! And do not believe
that more than one out of hundred