The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1901-04-04

SAAA0 eAAAS III eAAS SoPACuA SiVy ohC1C 0IV
scores of men wearing themselves
out in the public service. In ten
years they will not have a healthy
nerve left in their body. In COM
mittee rooms. in consultations that
involve the welfare of the nation, un-
der the weight of great responsible
ties, their vitality is being subtracted.
In almost every village of the country
you find some broken down state or
official. After exhausting
in the public service, rough
politics kicks him out of
or cabinet or legislative hall.
and he goes into comparative OBJ
scurity and comparative want, for he
has been long enough away from
home to lose his professional oppor-
tunities. No man that was ever put
to death by sword or instrument of
torture was more of martyr than
that man who has been wrung to
death by the demands of official po-
sition. The scars may not be visible,
for these are scars on the brain,
and scars on the nerve and scars on
the heart, but nevertheless are they
scars, and God counts them and their
reward will be abundant.
In all lands there are veterans of
war who may not have had their face
scraped with one bullet or their foot
famed by one bursting shell ard who
could not roll up their sleeve and
show you one mark suggestive of
battle, yet carry with them weak
nesses got in exposures to disease
along malarial swamps or from
many miles of marching, and ever
and anon they feel a twinge of pain,
each recurrence of which is sharper
or more lasting, until after awhile
they will be captured for the tomb
by disorders which started 20 or 80
or 40 years before. And their scars
are all unseen by human eyes. But
those people are as certainly the vic
Tins of war as though they had been
blown up in an undermined fortress
or thrust through with a cavalry
mans lance.
There are many who can, in the same
sense that Paul uttered it. say: Il bear
in my body the marks of the Lord Je-
sus"-that is, for the sake of Christ
and His cause they carry scars which
keep their indenture through all time
and all eternity. Do you think that
Paul was accurate when he said that ?
If you have studied his career, you have
no doubt of it. In his youth he learned
how to fashion the hair of the Cilician
goat into canvas, quiet trade, and
then went to college, the president Of
which was Gamaliel, an institution
which scholars say could not have been
very thorough because of what they
call Paul's imperfect command of
Greek syntax. But his history became
exciting on the road to Damascus.
where he was unhorsed and blinded.
His conversion was a convulsion.
Whether that fall from the horse may
have left mark upon him know not,
but the mob soon took after him and
fiogged and imprisoned and maltreated
him until he had scars more than
enough to assure the truthfulness of
his utteraEce: II bear in my body the
marks of the Lord Jesus"
All of Paul's suffering was for
Christ's sake. He had intellectual
powers which could have achieved for
him all worldly successes. You see
what he could do in courtroom when
with extemporaneous speech he made
the judicial bench tremble; when on
Mars hill he confounded the Athenian
critics; When he preached amid the ex
citement of tumbling penitentiary;
when in storm at sea he took com.
mand of the ship, the only one on board
oo1 headed. With his inspired logic
and his courage of utterance, and his
power of illustration, and his capacity
to move audiences, and his spirit of de.
fiance, there was no height of worldly
power he might not have gained.
What Hannibal was to an army
what Draco was in making laws, what
Homer was to poetry, what Demos
themes was in power of persuasion
what Socrates was to philosophy, what
Aeschylus was to the drama, that Pau
might have been to all centuries. Goo
never before and never since made an
other human being like him. But will
all his capacity and opportunity o
achieving worldly renown he turns hi.
back on home and becomes an exile. OF
bounteous tables and eats his hare
crust by the roadside, on the pleasur,
yachts that sailed the Mediterranean
and embarked on a freightboat from
Alexandria, on scholars in Athens ant
talks to fishermen. Instead of plaudit!
of aroused and enthusiastic as
semblages he addressed audiences tha
| talked back and asked insolent ques
tions and broke up in riot. Insteat
of garlands flung at his feet they hurlet
stones upon his head. Five times h
was scourged, at each whipping 8
strokes, the fortieth stroke spared no
from mercy, but because 40 stroke
were the severest punishment the la,
allowed, and they feared, throug1
counting wrong, they might make i
Al and so themselves be punished
| Why, Paul must have been SCARED al
over, and he only tells the plain trutl
without any commentary when he de
1 olares. sI hear in nv body the mark