The semi-weekly messenger., 1901-01-08


ask them to mention one man or woman
greatly good or useful who was not de-
preciated and failed and made q laugh
ing stock. Racks and prisons and whips
and shipwrecks and axes Of beheadment
did their worst, yet the heroes were more
than conuuerors. With such things you
viii 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.
GOOD morning! How do you do to-
day.? said clergyman in New Haven
many years ago to a stonemason who
was covered with dust and mortar. The
stonemason was sour with the world
and cross and grabbed, but at that salu-
tation Of the clergyman looked up in sur
prise and stopped and asked some one
who was passing who that man was who
spoke to him so kindly and was told he
was the pastor of a church on that
street. The stonemason next Sunday
went to that church to hear its pastor
preach. The stonemason was converted
under the sermon and prepared for the
ministry and became one of the most
useful and brilliant and foremost minis
ters in the Baptist denomination.
heard him in my boyhood say on the an
niversary platform in Broadway taber-
nacle that that good morning on the
street Of New Haven many years before
saved him for this world and the next.
Oh, the power Of kind wordi
Words of Comfort.
That word courage ftly spoken with
compressed lips and stout grip Of the
hand and an intelligent flash Of the eye
well, the finest apples that ever thumped
on the ground in an autumnal orchard
nj in fhn hon, fr,l
basket Ct silver network before keen ap-
petites could not be more attractive.
Furthermore, a comforting word fitly
spoken is a beautiful thing. No one but
God could give the inventory of sick beds
and bereft homes and broken hearts. We
ought not to let day pass without visit
or letter or message or q prayer con-
solatory. You could call FIVE minutes on
your way to the factory, you could leave
a half hour earlier in the afternoon and
fill a mission Of solace. You could bright
en- a sickroom with one chrysanthemum.
You could send your carriage and give an
afternoon airing to an invalid on neigh
boring street. You could loan a book with
some chapters most adapted to some par
ticular misfortune. Go home today and
make out list of things you can do that
will show sympathetic thoughtfulness for
the hardly bestead. How many dark
places you might illumine! How many
tears you could stop, or, if already start
ed, you could wipe awayl How much like
Jesus Christ you might get to be! So
sympathetic was he with beggary, SO
helpful was he for the fallen, and SO
stirred was he at the sight of dropsy, epi-
lepsy, paralysis and ophthalmia that
whether he saw it by the roadside, or at
the sea beach, or at the mineral baths of
Bethesda, he offered relief. Cultivate
genuine sympathy, Christlike sympathy.
You cannot successfully dramatize it.
False sympathy Alexander Pope sketches
in two lines:
Before her face her handkerchief she spread
To hide the food of tears she did not shed.
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 himself q
loved one and try the word reunion
not under wiltry sky, but in everlasting
springtide; not a land where they can be
struck with disease, but where the inhab-
liant never says, 81 am sick" not a re-
union that can be followed by separation,
but in a place from which they shall go
no more out forever" For emaciation
and signing, immorta, health. Reunion,
or, if you like the word better, anticipa-
this world. Try them with heaven.
With chapter from the great book
open one Of the II gates. Give them one
note of seraphic harp, one fash from the
sea of glass, one clatter of the hoofs of
the horses on which victors ride. That
word reunion, or anticipation, fitly spo-
ken-well no fruit heaped up in silver
baskets could equal it. Of the 1000
kinds of apples that have blessed the
world not one is so mellow or so rich or
SO aromatic, but we take the suggestion
of the text and compare that word of
comfort, ftly spoken, to apples of gold
in baskets OF silver.
Word Of Warning.
So also is word Of warning. A ship
may sail out of harbor when the sea has
not so much as ripple, but what a fool
hardy ship company would they be that
made no provision for high winds and
wrathful seas. However smoothly the
voyage of life may begin we will get
rough weather before we harbor On the
other side, and we need ever and anon to
have some one uttering in most decided
tones the word beware" There are all
the temptations to make this life every
thing and to forget that an inch of ground
is larger as compared with the whole
earth than this life as compared with
our external existence. There are all the
temptations of the wine cup and the demi-
john, which have taken down as grand
men as this or any other century has
heard of. There are all the temptations
of pride and avarice and base indulgence
and ungovernable temper. There is no
word we all need oftener to hear than
the word beware"
The trouble is that the warning word
is apt to come too late. We allow our
friends TO be overcome in fight with
some evil habit before we sound an
alarm. After a man is all on fire with
evil habit your word of warning will
have no more effect than would an ad
dress to house on fire asking it to stop
burning, no more use than a steam tug
going out to help ship after it has sunk
to the bottom Of the ocean. What use in
word of warning to that inebriate whose
wife was dying from wounds inflicted by
hon bo halI hah mi ~ b Is