The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1901-03-15
MINISTRY OF TEARS.
DR.. Talmage Puts Misfortunes of
Life in a Cheerful Light.
shows That II Tbey Were Horne In
the Right spirit They Might
Prove to lie AdVnntnEes-
sympathy of Jesus.

NEW oIhs MdlNh w.
A vast audience crowded the Acad-
envy of Music in this city to-day to
hear DR.. Talmage. Discoursing on
''The Ministry of Tears" he put the
misfortunes of life in cheerful
light. showing that If they were borne
in the right spirit they might prove
to be advantages. His text was Rev.
vii, II: And God shall wipe away
oil tears from their eyes"
What spectacle few weeks ago
when the nations were in tearsl
Queen Victoria assembled from the
highest throne on earth to a throne
in Heaven. The prayer more often
offered than any prayer for the last
CT 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 honorcd wom-
an of many centuries. As near four
years ago the English and American
nations shook hands in congratula
ton at the queens jubilee, so in
these times two nations shook hands
in mournful sympathy at the queens
departure. No people outside Great
Britain so deeply felt that mighty
grief as our people. The cradles of
many of our ancestors 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
ha Iii h.. GnAtnb
blood and the stream of our life
would be a mere shallow. They are
over there bone of our bone and
flesh of our flesh. 1t is our WILDER
force, our Coleridge, our De Quincy,
our Robert Burns, our John Wesley,
our John Knox, our Thomas Chal-
mers, our Walter Scott, our Bishop
Charnock, our Latimer, our Ridley,
our Robert Emmett, our Daniel
OConnell, our Havelock, our Rusllin,
our Gladstone, our good and great
and glorious Victoria.
The language in which we offered
The English nation our coincidence is
the same language in which John
Runyan dreamed and Milton sang
and Shakespeare dramatized and
Richard Baxter prayed and George
Whitefield Numbered. The prince of
Wales, now king, paid reverential Wis
Il to Washington's tomb at Mount
Vernon, and Longfellow's statue
adorns Westminster abbey, and Abra-
ham Lincoln in bronze looks down
upon Scotland's capital. 1t was nat
ural that these two nations be in
tears. But ] am not going to 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 dis
tance from any shelter, there came
a sudden shower, and, while the rain
was falling in torrents, the sun was
shining as brightly as | ever saw
1t shine, and l thought: What
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.
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 ioy
that is to spring from the sowing of
tears. God mixes them; God rounds
them; God shows them where to fall;
God eXhales them. A census is taken
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. Al
eXander in his sorrow had the hair
clipped from his horses and mules
and made great ado about his grief,
but in all the vases of Heaven there
is not one of AleXander's tears. I |
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 storm miles away, but |
you know from the drift of the
clouds that it will not come any
where near you. SO, though il 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 a world where all the people |
are well and eternal strangers 10 pains |
and aches? What is the use Of an east |
ern storm when we might have per-
petual nor'wester? Why. when a fam
lily is put together, not have them all |
stay, or, If they must be transplanted |
to make other homes, then have them
all live, the family record telling a |
story OF marriages 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 smile or a success |
Dr. a congratulation, but come now and |
bring all your dictionaries and all your
PHILOSOPHERS and all your religions and
help me explain a tear. A chemist will
tell you that it is made up of salt and
lime and other component parts. but he
misses the chief ingredients1 acid
OF soured life. the viperine sting Of
a bitter memory, the fragments of
broken heart will tell you what
tear is. 1t is agony in solution. Hear