The Penn's Grove record., 1901-03-15

his fortune. He goes with his mothers
consent and benediction. She has large
wealth, but he wants to make his own
fortune. he goes far away, falls sick and
gets out of money. He sends for the hotel
keeper where he is staying, asking for lie.
nience, and the answer he gets is, IF you
do not nav up SATURDAY. night you'll be re-
moved TO the hospital" The young man
sends to a comrade in the same building;
no help. He writes to a banker who was
a friend of his deceased father; no relief.
| Saturday night comes, and he is moved to
the hospital. Getting here, he is frenzied
with grief, and he borrows a sheet of
paper and a postage stamp, and he sits
down, and he writes home: Dear mother,
| am sick unto death. Come" 1t is TWEEN
ty minutes of 10 O'Clock when she gets the
letter. At 10 o'clock the train starts. She
is FIVE minutes from the depot. She gets
there in time to have five minutes to
spare, She wonders why the train that
can go forty miles an hour cannot go
eighty miles an hour. She rushes into the
hospital. She saws: my son. what does
all this mean? Why did YOU not send for
me? You sent to everybody but ~ You
knew | would and could help you, is this,
always" She bundles him up, takes him
home and gets him well very soon.
Now, some of you treat God just as that
young man treated his mother. When you
get into a financial perpleXity you call on
the banker, you call on the broker, you
cal! on your creditors, you call on your
lawyer for legal counsel, you call upon
everybody. and when you cannot get any
help then Won go to God. You say, 20
Lord, / come to Thee! Help me now out
of nv perplexity." And the Lord comes,
though it is in the eleventh hour. He
says: why did you not send for Me be-
fore? As one whom his mother comfort
eth so will | comfort you. 1t is to throw
us back upon God that we have this minis
try of tears.
| like what Martin Luther said to Philip
Melanchtnon when Melanchthon has gone
to bed discouraged and saying to Luther:
"Onr cause is lost, We have had a. our
work for nothing. | am in a state of de-
spair!" Then Luther said Come, Philip,
we have had enough of such talk. Let us
sing the Forty-sixth Psalm OF David: God
is our refuge and strength, a very present
help in trouble: therefore will not we fear
though the earth be removed and the
mountains eastNinto the midst of the sea,
though the waters thereof roar and be
troubled, though the mountains shake
with the swelling thereof. Selahl'"
Again, it is the use of trouble to capaci-
tate us for the office of sympathy. The
priests under the old dispensation were
set apart by having water s~prinaied upon
llblT nduuS -lGGl anu utdI, anu DN tUe
sprinkling of tears people are now set
apart to the office of sympathy. When we
are in prosperity we like to rave a great
many young people around us, and we
laugh when they laugh, and we romp
they romp, and we sing when they
but when we have trouble we like
plenty of old folks around. Why? They
how to talk. Take an aged mother,
'eventy-five years of age, and she is almost
been through it all. AT 7 o'clock in the
morning she goes to comfort a young
who has just lost her babe. Grand
knows all about that trouble.
Fifty years ago she felt it. At II O'Clock
Of that day she goes over to comfort a
widowed soul. She knows all about that.
She has been walking in that dark valley
some one knocks at the door, want
ing bread. She knows all about that.
Two or three times in her life she came
to her last loaf. AT 10 O'Clock that night
she goes over to sit UP with some one Sc
verely sick. She knows all about it. She
all about fevers and pleurisies and
broken bones. She has been doctoring all
her life, spreading plasters and pouring
out bitter drops and shaking up hot pill
.ows and contriving things to tempt a poor
Drs. Abernethy and Rush and
Hosack and Harvey were great doctors,
but the greatest doctor the world ever
saw is an old Christian woman. Dear me,
DO we not remember her about the room
we were sick in our b%oyhoody Was
there any one who could ever so touch a
sore without hurting it? And when she
lifted her spectacles against her wrinkled
forehead so she could look closer, at the
wound it was three fourths healed. And
the Lord took her home, although
you may have been men and women thirty,
fifty years of age, you lay on the
lid and sobbed as though you were
only five or ten years of age.
Your troubles are educational. l go
into the Office OF a lapidary, an a~rtificer in
precious stones, and | see him at work oil
precious stone for a few minutes, and
he puts it aside finished. l see him take
up another precious stone, and he works
on that all the afternoon, and ! come in
the next day and still find him working on
it, and he is at work on it all the week.
| say to him, why did you put only
and put a whole week on this
other?D ooh" he says, that one upon
which | put only twenty minutes work is
OF but little worth, and | soon got through
with it.. But this precious stone upon
which | have put such prolonged and care
full work is Of vast value, and it is to flash
in a kings coronet." So God let's one man
through illt Win UlilN Il nlllt cutting
of misfortune, for he does not amount to
much, he is a small soul and of compare
lively little value, but this other is of
great worth, and it is cut of pain, and cut
of bereavement, and cut of persecution,
and cut of all kinds of trouble, and
through many years, and | ask, Dear
Lord, why all this prolonged and severe
infinite value, and it is to fash in a kings
%coronet. He shall be Mine in the day
when l make up My jewels"
You know, on a Widespread table the
food becomes more delicate at the last. |
have fed you to-day with the bread of con-
ISOLATION. Let the table now be cleared,
and let us set on the chalice of heaven;
Let the Kings ~cupbearers come in. oh"
says some critic in the audience, "the
Bible contradicts itself. 1t intimates again
and again that there are to be no tears
in heaven, and if there be no tears in heav-
en- how is it possible that God will wipe
any away?" | answer, Have you never
seen a child crying one moment and laugh
ing the next and while she was laughing
you saw the tears still on her face?" And
perhaps you stopped her in the very midst
of her resumed glee and wiped off those
delayed tears. So l think after the heav-
emily raptures have come upon u there
may be the mark of some earthly grief,
and while these tears are glittering in the
hight OF the Jasper sea Tod VIII wipe them
away, How well He can do that!
Friends, if we could get any apprecia-
ton of what God has in reserve for us, it
would make us so homesick we would be
unfit for our everyday work. Professor
Leonard, formerly of Iowa University, put
in my hands a meteoric stone, a stone
thrown off from some other world to this.
How suggestive it was to me! And | have
to tell you the best representations we
have OF heaven are only aerolites flung off
from that world which rolls on, bearing
the multitude OF the redeemed. We ana
lyze these a~erolites and find them crystal
l~izations of tears. No wonder, flung off
from heavenl God shall wipe away all
tears from their eyes" l.,
Have you any appreciation of the good
and glorious times your friends are having
in heaven2 How different it is when they
get news there of a Christians death from
what it is herel 1t is the difference be-
tween embarkation and coming into port.
Everything depends upon which side of
the river you stand when you hear OF a
Christians death. If you stand on this
side of the river, you mourn that they go;
if you stand on the other side OF the river
you rejoice that they come.
Oh, the difference between a funeral on
earth and a Jubilee in heaven, between re-
| QUEEN here and triumph there, parting
| here and reunion therel Together Have