The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1900-10-25

- AIAooCg A-AOiu-yOu-SOS SOU tuClI
desert they would long ago have been
pitched over the battlements. The
mote in their neighbours eyes, SO
small that it takes a microscope to
find it, gives them more trouble than
the beam which obscures their own
optics. With air sometimes super
cilious and sometimes pharasaical and
always blasphemous they take the
razor of Divine judgment and sharp
en- it on the hone of their own hard
hearts and then go to work on men
sprawled out at full length under dis
aster, cutting mercilessly. They be-
gin by soft expressions of sympathy
and pity and half praise and lather
the victim all over before they put on
the sharp edge.
Again, when / read in my text that
the Lord shaves with the hired razor
of Assyria the land of Judea, I think
myself Of the precision of Gods provi-
dence. A razor swung the tenth part
of an inch out of the right line
means either failure or laceration, but
Gods dealings never slip, and they do
not miss by the thousandth part of an
inch the right direction. People talk
as though things in this world were
at loose ends. Cholera sweeps across
Marseilles and Madrid and Palermo,
and we watch anxiously. Will the
epidemic sweep Europe and America?
People say: THAT will entirely de-
pend on whether the incubation is
successful experiment; that will de-
pend entirely on quarantine regula-
tions; that will depend on the early
or late appearance of frost. That ep-
idemie is pitched into the world, and
it goes blundering across the con-
tinents, and it is all guesswork and
an appalling perhaps" I think, per-
haps, that God had something to do
with it, and that His mercy may have
in some way protected us; that He
may have done as much for us as the
quarantine and the health officers. 1t
was right and necessity that all
caution should be used, but there have
come enough macaroni from Italy,
and enough grapes from the south
of France, and enough rags from tat
terdemalions, and hidden in these ar
ticles of transportation enough chol-
eraic germs to have left by this time
all the cities mourning in the ceme-
teries. l thank all the doctors and
quarantines, but more than all. and
first of all, and last of all, and all
the time, thank God. In all the 5000
years of the worlds existence there
has not one thing merely happened
So" God is not an anarchist, but
king, father.
When little Tad, the son of Presi-
dent Lincoln, died. all America sym
pathized with the sorrow in the white
house. He used to rush into the room
where the cabinet was in session and
while the most eminent men Of the
land were discussing the questions OF
national existence. But the child had
no care about those questions. Now
God the Father and God the Son and
God the Holy Ghost are in perpetual
session in regard to this world and
kindred worlds. Shall you, His child
rush in to criticise or arraign or con.
denim the Divine government? No;
the cabinet of the Eternal Three car
govern and will govern in the wisest
and best way, and there never will be
a mistake, and, like razor skillfully
swung, shall cut that which ought
to be cut and avoid that which ought
to be avoided. Precision to the very
hairbreadth. Earthly timepieces may
get out Of order and strike wrong
saying it is one o'clock when it is two
or two when it is three. Gods clock
is always right, and when it is one
it strikes one, and when it is IL II
strikes IL, and the second hand is al
| accurate as the minute hand.
Further, my text tells us that Goo
sometimes shaves nations. I'm thu
same day shall the Lord shave will
razor that is hired" With one sharI
sweep He went across Judea, anl
down went it's pride and its power
In 1861 God shaved the American ma
ton. We had allowed to grow Sab
bath dissertation and oppression ant
blasphemy and fraud and impurity
and all sorts of turpitude. The soutl
had it's sins, and the north its sins
and the east it's sins, and the west it.
sins. We had been warned again ant
again, and we did not heed. At length
the sword of war cut from the st
Lawrence to the gulf and from At
lantic seabord to Pacific seaboard
The pride Of the land, not the cow
ards, but the heroes, on both side
went down. And that which we tool
for the sword of war was the Lord
razor. In 1862 again it went across
the land; in 1883 again; in 1864 again
Then the sharp instrument was in
cased and put away.
Never in the history of the ages wa
any land more thoroughly shaved thai
during those four years Of civil com
bat, and, my brethren, if we do no
quit some of our individual and na
tional sins the Lord will again tax
us in hand. He has other razors with
in reach besides war = epidemic,
droughts, deluges, plaques - gras,
hopper and locust-or our overtowel
| e