The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1900-03-01
BENTON. LOUISIANA, THURSDAY MARCH l, 1900.

osn cheer those young merchants VINO
are making their first mistakes in bar
gain and sale. That old farmer who
has 200 acres in best tillage and his
barns full of harvested crops, and the
wheat at high prices before it was
reaped, needs no sympathy from you,
but cheer up that young farmer whose
acres are covered with big mortgage
and the drought strikes them the first
year. That builder with contracts
made for the construction of half 3
dozen houses and the owners impa-
tient for occupancy is not to be pitied,
but give your sympathy to that me-
chanic in early acquaintance with
hammer and saw and bit and amid all
the limitations of a journevman.
Go forth to be busybody in other
mems matters, SO far as you can help
ing them out, and help them on. The
world is full of instances of those who
spend their life in such alleviations, but
there is one instance that overtops and
eclipses all others. He had lived in a
palace. Radiant ones waited upon him.
He was charioted along streets yellow
with gold, and stopped at gates glisten-
ing with pearls, and hosannaed by inn
mortals coroneted and in snowy white.
Centuries gave him not pain. The
sun that rose on him never set. His do
minions could not be enlarged, for they
had no boundaries, and uncontested
was His reign. Upon all that luster and
renown and environment of splendors
He turned His back and put down His
crown at the foot of His throne, and on
bleak December night trod His way
down to a stone house in Bethlehem of
our world. Wrapped in what plain
shawl, and pursued with what enemies
on swift camels, and howled at with
what brigands, and thrust with what
sharp lances, and hidden in what sepul-
chral crypt, until the subsequent GEN.
turies have tried in vain to tell the story
by sculptured cross, and painted can
vas, and resounding doxologies, and
domed cathedral, and redeemed na-
tions.
He could not see woman doubled up
with rheumatism but He touched her,
and infiamed muscles relaxed, and she
stood straight up. He could not meet q
funeral of young man but he broke up
the procession and gave him back to his
widowed mother. With spittle on the
tip of His finger He turned the mid
night of total blindness into the mid
noon of perfect sight. He could not see
man down on his mattress helpless
with palsy without calling him up to
health and telling him to shoulder the
mattress and walk off. He could not
find man tongue-tied but He gave him
immediate articulation. He could not
see man with the puzzled and inquir-
ing look of the deaf without giving him
capacity to hear the march of life beat
ing on the drum of the ear. He could
not see crowd of hungry people but
He made enough good bread and sur
plus that required all the baskets.
He scolded only twice that I remem-
ber, once at the hypocrites with elon-
gated yisage and the other time when
sinful crowd had arraigned an unfor.
tunate woman, and the Lord, with the
most superb sarcasm that was ever ut
tered, gave permission to anyone who
felt himself entirely commendable to
hurl the first missile. All for others.
His birth for others. His ministry for
others. His death for others. His as
cension for others. His enforcement
for others.
And now my words are to the invis-
ible multitudes reach week by week
but yet will never see in this world, but
whom I expect to meet at the bar OF
God and hope to see in the blessed
Heaven. The last word that Dwight Z
Moody, the great evangelist, said to me
at Plainfield, N. j., and he repeated the
message for me to others, was: "Never
be tempted under any circumstances
to give up your weekly publication OF
sermons throughout the world" That
solemn charge 1 will heed as long as ]
have strength to give them and the
newspaper types desire to take them.
Oh, We people back there in the Sheffield
mines of England and ye in the sheep
pastures of Australia and ye amid the
pictured terraces of New Zealand and
We among the cinnamon and color in
famed groves of Ceylon and ye Ar
menians weeping over the graves Of
murdered households in Asia Minor and
We amid the idolatries Of Benares on
the Ganges and ye dwellers on the
banks of the Androscoggin and the
Alabama and the Mississippi and the
Oregon and the Shannon and the Rhine
and the Tiber and the Danube and the
Nile and the Euphrates and the Cas-
plan and Yellow seas; ye of the four
corners of the earth who have greeted
me again and again, accept this point
blank offer of everything for nothing:
of everything of pardon and comfort
and illumination and safety and
Heaven, without money and without
price," What gospel for all lands, all
zones, all ages! Gospel OF sympathy!
Gospel of hope! Gospel of emancipa-
ton! Gospel of sunlight! Gospel OF
enforcement! Gospel Of eternal vic
tory! Take it, all ye people, until your
sins nre all pardoned and your sorrows