Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1902-01-20

the time we want the most skill for
work and perfect equilibrium we lose
our head. We expend in useless ex-
element the nervous energy that we
ought to have employed in direct,
straightforward work. Your AK may
be pen or type or a yardstick or a
scales or a tongue which in legislative
hall or business circles or Sabbath
class or pulpit is to speak for God and
Righteousness, but the ak will not be
worth much until it has been sharp
ened on the grindstone Of afflictiOn.
Go right through the world, and go
right through all the past ages, and
Show me one man or woman who has
done anything for the world worth
speaking Of whose ak was not ground
on the revolving wheel of mighty trou-
BILE. 1t was not David, for he was de-
throned and bounded by unfilial Alb
SALON.. Surely it was not Paul, for he
was shipWrecked and whipped with
thirty-nine stripes from rods of elm
wood on his way to beheadment. Sure
ly it was not Abraham Lincoln, called
by every vile name that human and
satanic turpitude could invent and de-
picted by cartoOnists with more mean
ness than any other man ever suffered,
on the way to meet a bullet crashing
through his temples.
God Does the Impossible.
But | have come to the foot Of the
Alps, which we must climb before we
can see the wide reach of my subject.
See in all this theme how the impossi-
bilities may be turned into possibilities.
That ak head was sunllep in the mud
diest river that could be found. The
alarmed student of Elisha may know
where it went down and may dive for
it and perhaps fetch it up, but can the
sunken ak head be lifted without a
hand thrust deep into the mud at the
bottom of the river? No; that is i'm
possible. I admit, so far as human
power is concerned, it is impossible,
but with God all things are possible.
After the tree branch was thrown upon
the surface Of Jordan the iron did
SWIM"
Some one asks me, Did you ever
see iron swim?" Yes, yes; many a
time. | saw soul hardened until
, nothing could make it harder All
styles of sin had piled that soul. 1t
was petrified as to all fine feeling. 1t
had been hardening for thirty years.
1t had gone into the deepest depths.
1t had been given up as lost. The ia
Their had given it up. The mother, the
last to do so. had given it up. But one
day in answer to some prayer a branch
of the disfoliaged tree of Calvary was
thrown into the dark and Sullen
stream. and the sunken soul responded
to its power and rose into the light,
and, to the establishment of the church
and the world, the iron did SWIM" |
have seen hundreds of cases like that.
] When the dying bandit on the cross
beside Cbrist's cross was converted.
/ When Jerry McAuley, a ruffian gradu-
ate of Sing Sing prison, was changed
into great evangelist, so useful in
reclamation of wandering men and wO-
men that the merchant princes of New
York established for him the TTater
Street and CremOrne missions and
IlOuIIcC DIT Ills DuIlbl, SllIlIU TIC ltlIllCA-
tations of a city. When Newton, the
disappearing sailor under the power
of the truth was brought to Christ and
became one of the mightieSt preachers
of the gospel that England ever saw.
When John Bunyan. whose curses
shocked even the prOfanC of the fish
market. was 50 changed in heart and
life that he could write that wonder
full dream, The Pilgrims Progress,
in such a way that uncOunted thou
sands have found through it the road
from the city of destruction" to the
celestial city" In all these cases
think iron was made to swim. l wOr-
ship the God who can do the impOssi-
bic.
Lost and Restored.
You have q hayward boy. Only Goo
knows how you have cried over him
You have tried everything for his ref