Vernon County censor. [volume] (Viroqua, Wis.) 1865-1955, 1901-03-13

IN Academy OF NJ Sc IN New otA
SS City Sunday to hear DIR. Ialmage.
Discoursing on The Ministry of Tears.
he put the misfortunes of life in cheer
full light, showing that if they were borne
in the right spirit they might prove to be
advantages. His text was Rev. vii, Il,
"And God shall wipe away ali tears from
their eyes,
What spectacle few weeks ago
when the nations were in tears, Queen
Victoria ascended from the highest
throne on earth to throne in heaven.
The prayer more often offered than any
prayer for the last sixty-four years had,
been answered, and God did save the
queen. All round the world the bells
were tolling, and the minute guns were
booming at the obsequies of the most
honored woman of many centuries. As
near four years ago the English and
American nations shook hands in con-
graduation at the queens jubilee so in
these times two nations shook hands in
moarnful sympathy at the queens de-
parture. No people outside Great Britain
so deeply felt that mighty grew as oni
people. The cradles of many Of our an-
cestors were rocked in Great Britain.
Those ancestors played in childhood on
the banks OF the Tweed or the Thames or
the Shannon. Take from our veins the
English blood or the Welsh blood or the
Irish blood or the Scotch blood and the
stream of our life would he mere shall
low. They are over there bone of our
bone and flesh of our flesh. 1t is our Will
berforce, our Coleridge, our De Quincy,
our Robert Burns, our John Wesley, our
John Knox, our Thomas Chalmers, our
Walter Scott, our Bishop Charnock, our
Latimer, our Ridley, our Robert Emmett,
our Daniel O'Connell, our Hayeloek, our
Ruskin, our Gladstone, our good and
great and glorious Victoria
The language in which we offered the
En- glish nation our coincidence is the
same language in which John Bunyan
dreamed and Milton sang and Shak
speare dramatic and Richard Baxter
prayed and George Whitefield thunder
ed The Prince of Wales, now king.
paid reverential visit to Washington
tomb at Mount Vernon. and Longfelow's
statue adorns Westminster abbey, and
Abraham Lincoln in bronze looks down
upon Scotland's capital. 1t was natural
that these two nations he in tears. But
am not going "a speak of national tears
but of individual tears and Bible tears.
Riding across a Western prairie wild
flowers up to the hub of the carriage
wheel. and while a long distance from
any shelter, there came a sudden shower,
and, while the rain was falling in tor
rents, the sun was shining as brightly as
ever saw it shine, and thought What
a beautiful spectacle is this! So the
tears of the Bible are not midnight
storm, but rain on pansied prairies in
Gods sweet and golden sunlight
The Ministry of Tears.
You remember that bottle which David
labeled as containing tears, and Mary's
tears and Paul's tears and Christ's tears,
and the harvest of JOY that is to spring
from the sowing o. tears. God mixes
them; God rounds them; God shows
them where to fall; God exhales them.
A census is tak.n of them, and there IS
record as to the moment when they
were born and as to the place OF their
grave Tears of bad men are not kept.
Alexander in his sorrow had the hair
clipped from his horses snd mules and
made a great ado about his grief but in
all the vases of heaven there is not one
of Alexanders tears. / speak of the
tears of Gods children. Alas, me, they
are falling all the time! In summer you
sometimes hear the growing thunder,
and YOU see there is a storm miles away, !
but you know from the drift of the clouds
that it will not come anywhere near you. |
So. though it may be all bright around
about you, there is a shower of trouble |
somewhere all the time. Tears, tears,
What is the use of them anyhow? /
Why not substitute laughter? Why not /
make this world where Ill the people /
are well and eternal strangers to pains
and aches? What is the use of an east I
ern storm when we might have per- |
petual nor'wester? Why, when family /
is put together, not have them all STAY I
or, if they must be transplanted to make /
other homes. then have them all live |
the family record telling a story of mar
riages and births, but of no deaths? /
Why not have the harvests chase each /
other without fatiguing toll? Why the
hard pillow, the hard crust, the hard /
struggle? 1t is easy enough to explain /
a smile or Il success or a congratulation, /
but come now and bring all your diction- T
aries and all your PHILOSOPHERS and all I
your religions and help me explain a /
tear. A chemist will tell you that it is
made up of salt and lime and other com
ponent parts. but he misses the chief in
gredients-the acid of a soured life, the +
viperine sting of bitter memory, the
fragments of a broken heart. | will tell /
you what n tear is. 1t is agony in solu-
ton Hear, then, while | discourse of
the ministry of tears or the practical
uses of sorrow:
First, it is the design of trouble to keep
this world from being too attractive.
Something must be done to make us will
ing to quit this existence. Ii it were not
for trouble, this world would be a good
enough heaven for us. You and | would
be willing to take a lease of this life for
a hundred million years if there were no
trouble. The earth. cushioned and up
holstered and pillared aud chandeliered
at such expense. no story of other worlds
could enchant us. We would say Let
well enough alone. If you want to die
and have your body disintegrated in the
dust and your soul go out on a celestial
adventure, then you can go, but this
worlu is good enough for me- You
M ssht as well go to man who has just
entered the Louvre at Paris and tell him
to hasten off to the picture galleries of
Venice or Florence. Why" he would
say. what is the use of my going there?
There are Rembrandts and Rubenses and
Titians here that / have not looked at
yet" No man wants TO go out Of this
world or out of any house until be has
better house
To cure this wish TO stay here God
must somehow create 4 disgust for our
surroundings. How shall he do it: He