Newport weekly independent., 1902-03-28

the pounding of him with stones un- til he was taken up for dead, and the tanning against him of prison gates and the Ephesian vociferation, and the ankles skinned by the painful stOclls and the laundering of the AIeNandrian corn ship, and the be- heading stroke of the Roman sheriff to bring Paul to his proper develop ment. It was not because Robert Motfat and Lady Rachel Russell and Frederick Oberlin were worse than other people that they had to suffer It was because they were better, and God wanted to make them best. By the carefulness of the thra2hing you may always conclude the value of the grain.
 Next, my text teaches up that God proportions our trials to what we can bear-the staff for the fitches, the rod for the cummin, the iron wheel for the corn. Sometimes people in great trouble say: "Oh, I cant bear it." But you did bear it. God would not have sent it upon you if H had known that you could not bear it. You trembled and you swooned, but you got through. God will not take from your eyes one tear too many nor from your lungs one sigh too odeepnor from your temples one throb too sharp. The perplexities of your earthly business have not in them one tangle too intricate. You some times feel as if our world were full of bludgeons flying haphazard. Oh, no; they are thrashing instruments that God just suits to your ease. There IS not dollar of bad debts on your ledger or a disappointment about goods that you expected to go up, but that have gone down, or a swindle of your buSl- ness partner or a trick on the part of those who are in the same kind of mer- chandise that you are, but God intend ed to overrule for your immortal help. "Oh, you say, 'there is no need of talk ing that way to me. don't like to be cheated and outraged" Neither does the corn like the corn thrasher, but after it has been thrashed and win nowed it has a great deal better opin- ion of winnOwing mills and corn thrash CTS.
 Again, my subject teaches that God keeps trials on us until we let go. The former shouts "Whoa!" to his horses as soon as the grain is dropped from the stalk. The farmer comes with his fork and losses up the straw, and he sees the straw has let go the grain and the grain is thoroughly thrashed. So God. Shifting rod and turning wheel both cease as soon as we let go. We hold on to this world, with it's pleasures and riches and emoluments, and our knuckles are so firmly set that it seems as if we could hold on forever. God comes along with some thrashing trouble and beats us loose. We start ed under the delusion that this was a great world. We learned out of our ge- ography that it was so many thousand miles in diameter and so many miles in circumference, and we said: "Oh, my, what a wOrld!" Trouble came in after life, and this trouble sliced off one part of the world, and it has got to be a smaller world and in some estimations very Insignificant world, and it is de- preciating all the time as spiritual property. Ten per cent off, 50 per cent. off, and there are those who would not give ten cents for this world-the en- tire wOrld-as a soul possession.
 Another thing my text teaches us is that Christian sorrow is going to have a sure terminus. My text says: Bread corn is bruised because he will not ever be thrashing it." Blessed be God for that! Pound away, o fail! Turn on, o wheel! Your work will soon be done. "He will not ever be thrashing it!" Now, the Christian has almost as much use in the organ for the stop trerlulant as he has for the trumpet, but after awhile he will put the last dirge into the portfolio for ever. So much of us as is wheat will be separated from so much as is chaff. and there will be no more need of pounding. They never cry in Heaven because they have nothing to cry about. There are no tears of bereave- ment, for you shall have your friends all round about you. There are no tears of poverty because each one sits at the Kings table and has his own chariot of salvation and free access to the wardrobe where princes get their array. No tears of sickness, for there are no pneumonias in the air and no malarial eXhalations from the rolling river of life and no crutch for the lame limb and no splint for the broken arm, but the pulses throbbing with the health of the eternal God in a climate like our June before the blossoms fall or our gorgeous October before the