The age-herald., 1902-01-26

it. and on wheels of fire, drawn by horses of fire. he rose. Fifty men for three days searched the mountains to see if the body of Elijah had not been dropped among the rocks and picked at by birds of prey. but the search was in vain. The law of gravitation had been defeated.
 Wonders of Divine Power.
 There Christ stood by his disciples on 1 the Mount of Olives after his coming out of the sepulcher. No ladders let down for his ascension but his feet lift from the 1 hill, and he goes up until the curtain Of l cloud drops and he is invisible. Law of gravitation again unharnessed. Enoch, | Methuselah's father, escaping death, went up bodily and will have no need of resur rection. So will all the good who shall be still alive at the end of the world. 1 They will not need wings. Every one of the millions of our planet who loved and served the Lord, if then alive, will be caught up as the Bible says. body as well as soul. the law of gravitation par alyzed. God mightier than any law he ever created. Oh, l like the miracles be- cause they show God independent of ev I erythlnR.
 Notice also the divine power in the backwoods. Wonderful things were done at the cities of Jericho and Jerusalem and Babylon and Nineveh and the great cities of our time have seen the divine power, but this miracle of my text was in the backwoods far away from the city in the lumber districts, where the stu dents had gone to cut timber for the new 1 theological seminary And e this sermon shall comeAas it will come, like my other l sermons for the last thirty years, with out missing week. let me say to those 1 far away from the house of God and l in the mountain districts that my text shows the divine power in the back woods. The Lord iby every stream as he certainly was by the Jordon on every l mountain as surely as he was on Mount Zion, on every lake as on Tiberias. by every rock as by the one whose gushing waters slaked the thirst of the marching | lsraelites.
 Do not feel lonely because your near | est neighbor may be miles away, because the width of the continent may separate you from the place where your cradle was rocked and your fathers grave was dug. Wakened though you may be by 1 lions roar or partners scream. God will l help, you whether at the time the for est around you raves in the midnight l hurricane or you suffer from something l quite insignificant. like the loss of an ax head. Take your Bible out under the l trees. if the weather will permit, and after you have listened to the solo of
 
 psalm of the, thunder, read those words of the Bible. which must have been writ ten out of doors: "rhe trees of the Lord are full of sap. the cedars of Lebanon which he hath planted, where the birds | make their nests, as far the stork, the fir trees are her house. The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats and the rocks for the conies Thou makest darkness. and it is night, wherein all the l aGte nf ha ha young lions roar after their prey and 1 seek their meat from God. The sun aris- l eth they gather themselves together and | lay them down in their dens. Man goeth | forth unto his work and to his labor until the evening. o Lord how manifold are thy worksl In wisdom hast thou made them all. The earth is full of thy riches How do you like that sublime pastoral?
 Overcome Evil.
 My subject also reminds us of the inn 1 portance of keeping our chief implement l for work in good order. l think that | young theological students on the banks of Jordon was to blame for not examining the ax before he lifted 1t that day against 1 tree. He could in a moment have l found out whether the helve and the l head were firmly fastened. The simple ] fact was the aX was not in good order 1 or the strongest stroke that sent the edge l into the hard sycamore would not have l left the implement headless. So God has | given every one of us aX with which to hew. Let us keep 1t in good order. having been sharpened by Bible study and strengthened by prayer. The reason we sometimes fail in our work is because we have dull aX or we do not know how alright to swing 1t. The head is not alright on the handle. At the time we want the | most skill for work and perfect equli- | hri,, in useless excitement the nervous energy that we ought to have employed in direct, | straightforward work. Your ax may be | a pen or a type or a yardstick or a scales or a tongue which In legislative hall or | business circles or Sababth class or pulpit is to speak for God and righteousness, but the ax will not be worth much until 1t has been sharpened on the grindstone l of affiction
 Go right through the world, and go right through all the past ages. and show | me one man or woman who has done any | thing for the world worth speaking of whose ak was not ground on the revolving wheel of mighty trouble. It was David, l for he was dethroned and bounded by unfilia Absalom. Surely it was not Paul for he was shipwrecked and whipped with 1 thirty-nine stripes from rods of elmwood on his way to beheadment Surely it was not Abraham Lincoln, called by every 1 vile name that human and satanic turpi- | tude could invent and depicted by car l toonists with more meanness than any other man ever suffered, on the way to meet a bullet crashing through his tenn ples.
 | God Does the Impossible. l 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 impossibilities may be turned into possibilities. That ax head was sunken in the muddiest river that could be found. The alarmed student of Elisha may know where 1t went down and may dive for it and perhaps fetch it up, but can the sunken ax head be lifted with out 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. 1t Is impossible, but with God all things are possible. After the tree branch was thrown upon the sur face of Jordan the iron did swim"
 Some one asks me. Did you ever see iron swim?" Yes. yes; many time. saw a soul hardened until nothing could make it harder. All styles of sin had piled that soul. It was petrified as to all fine feeling It had been hardening for thirty years It had gone into the deep est depths. It had been given up as lost The father had given 1t up. The mother the last to do so had given 1t up. But one day in answer to some prayer