The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1901-02-07

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adjective of fools"
Show them also that what is true
in worldly directions is more true in
spiritual directions. Call the roll of
prophets, apostles and martyrs and
private Christians from the time the
world began and ask them to mention
one man or woman greatly good or
useful who was not deprecated and
failed and made a laughing stock.
Racks and prisons and whips and
shipwrecks and axes of beheadment
did their worst, yet the heroes were
more than conquerors. With such
things you will illustrate that word
courage" and they will go out from
your presence to start anew and right,
challenging all earth and hell to the
Combat.
There are four or five words which
fitly spoken, might soothe and emanci-
pate and rescue. Go to those from
whose homes Christ has taken to Him
self loved one, and try the word "re-
union"-not under wintry sky, but in
everlasting springtide; not a land
where they can be struck with disease,
but where the inhabitant never says:
II am sick;" not a reunion that can be
followed by separation, but in place
from which they shall go no more out
forever For emaciation and sigh
ing, immortal health. Reunion, or, if
you like the word better, anticipate ton.
There is nothing left for them in this
world. Try them with Heaven. With
chapter from the great book open
one of the IL gates. Give them one note
OF seraphic harp, one flash from the sea
of glass, one clatter of the hoofs of the
horses on which victors ride. That
word reunion, or anticipation, fitly
spoken-well, no fruit heaped up in sill
yer baskets could equal it. OF the 2,oOo
kinds of apples that have blessed the
world, not one is so mellow or SO rich
or SO aromatic, but we take the sugges-
tion of the text, and compare that
word of comfort, fifty spoken, to apples
OF gold in baskets of silver.
There must be no impatience in the
warning we give others. We must
realize that but for the kindness of
God to us we would have been in the
same rapids. That man going wrong
may be struggling with tide of evil
inherited from father and grandfather
and great-grandfather The present
temptation may be the accumulated
force of generations and centuries.
"No." you say, "his father was a
good man. knew him." But did you
know his grandfather? Evil habit
is apt to skip one generation, fact
recognized in the Ten Commandments,
which speak of the third and fourth
generations, but say nothing of the
second generation.
Or the man astray may have an un-
happy home, and that is enough to
wreck anyone. We often speak Of
men who destroy their homes, but do
not say anything about the fact that
there are thousands of wives in Amer
lea who by petulance and fretting and
reconsideration and lack of economy
and all manner of disagreeableness
drive their husbands into dissipation.
The reason that thousands of men
spend their evenings in clubhouses
and taverns is because they cannot
stand it at home. I know men who
are 30-year martyrs in the fact that
they are awfully married. That mar
riage was not made in Heaven. With
out asking Divine guidance they en-
tered into an alliance which ought
never to have been made. That is
what is the matter with many men
you and know. They may be very
brave and heroic and say nothing
about it but all the neighbors know.
Now, if the man going wrong has such
domestic misfortune, be very lenient
and eXcusatory in your word of warn
ing. The difference between you and
him may be that you would have gone
down faster than he is going down if
you had the same kind of conjugal
wretchedness.
In mentioning fine arts people are
apt to speak of music and painting
and sculpture and architecture, but
they forget to mention the finest of
all the fine arts-the art of doing
good, the art of helping others, the
art Of saving men. An art to be
studied as you study music, for it is
music in the fact that it drives out
moral discord and substitutes eternal
harmony; an art to be studied like
sculpture, for it is sculpture in the
fact that it builds man, not in the
cold statue, but in immortal shape,
that will last long after pentelican
marble has crumbled; an art to be
studied as you study architecture, for
it is architecture in the fact that it
builds for him house of God, eternal
in the heavens, but an art that we
cannot fully learn unless God helps
us. Ourselves saved by grace Divine,
we can go forth to save others, and
with tenderness and compassion and
a pity that we could not otherwise ex-
ercise we can pronounce the warning
word with magnificent result. The
Lord said to the prophet Amos:
"Amos, what seest thou?" And he
answered: "a basket of summer
fruit" But / do not think Amos saw
in that basket of summer fruit any
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