The L'Anse sentinel. (L'Anse, L.S., Mich.) 18??-current, 1901-03-16
MINISTRY OF TEARS.
Dr.. Talmage Puts Misfortunes Of
Life in a Cheerful Light.
Shows That II They Were Borne In
the Right Spirit They Might
Prove to he Advantages
Sympathy of Jesus.

"The Ministry of Tears" he put tn
misfortunes of life in cheerful
light, showing that IL they were born
I'm the right spirit they might prov
to be advantages. His text was Rev
viii, IL: "And God shall wipe ava!
all tears from their eyes"
What a spectacle few weeks age
when the nations were in tears
Queen Victoria assembled from the
highest throne on earth to a throne
in Heaven. The prayer more otter
offered than any prayer for the last
Ga 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 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
or the Irish blood or the Scotch
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. II 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
O'Connell. our Havelock, our Ruskin,
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
1t 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 l 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 long dis
lance from any shelter, there came
was falling in torrents, the sun was
shining as brightly as l 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.
You remember that bottle which
David labeled as containing tears, and
Mary's tears and Paurs tears and
Christ's tears, and the harvest of Joy
that is to spring from the sowing of
tears. God mixes them; God rounds |
them; uod shows them where to- fall;
God exhales them. A census is taken |
of them, and there is a 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 a 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 it be all
bright around about you. here is a
shower of trouble somewhere all the
time. Tears, tearsi
What is the use of them. anyhow ?
Why not substitute laughter? Why not
make this world where all the people
are well and eternal strangers to 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, II they must be transplanted
to make other homes, then have them
all live, the family record telling
story Of marriages and births, but of
no deaths? Why not have the harvests
chase each other without fatiQuing
toll? Why the hard pillow, the hard
crust, the hard struggle? 1t Is easy
enough TO explain smile or a success
or congratulation, but come now and
bring all your dictionaries and all your
and all your religions and
help me explain a tear. A chemist will
tell you that 1t Is made up of salt and
lime and other component parts. but he
misses the chief ingredients--the acid
of soured life, the viperine sting of
. bitter memory, the fragments OF
broken heart. / will tell you what a
tear is. 1t is agony In solution. Hear,
hen. while discourse of the ministry
Of tears or the practical use Of sorrow:
First, II is the design of trouble to
keep this world from being too at
Something must be done to
make us willing to quit this existence.