The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1902-04-24

Tile ankles skinned by the painful
stocks, and the laundering of the
Alexandrian corn ship, and the be-
heading stroke of the Roman sheriff
to bring Paul to his proper develop
ment. 1t was not because Robert
Moffat and Lady Rachel Russell and
Frederick Oberlin were worse than
other people that they had to suffer.
1t was because they were better, and
God wanted to make them best. By
the carefulness of the thrashing 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 can't bear It'll" But
you did bear it. God would not have
sent it upon you if He 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 deepnor 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 case. 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 swindle Of your busi-
ness partner or 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. l don't like to be
cheated and outraged" Neither does
the corn like the corn thrasher, but
after it has been thrashed and Win
moved it has a great deal better opin-
ion of winnowing mills and corn thrash
ers.
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 tosses 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 tothis 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 estima tions
a very Insignificant world, and it is de-
preciating all the time as spiritual
property. Ten per cent. off, so 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 trerulant 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 climate
like our June before the blossoms fall
or our gorgeous October before the
leaves scatter.
In that land the souls will talk over
the different modes of thrashing Oh,
the story of the staff that struck the
fitches and the rod that beat the cum
min and the iron wheel that went over
the corn! Daniel will describe the
lions and Jonah leviathan, and Paul
the elmwood whips with which he was
scourged, and Eve will tell how aro-
matte Eden was the day she left it,
and John Rogers will tell of the smart
of the flame and Elijah of the fiery
team that wheeled him up the sky
sleeps and Christ of the numbness and
the paroxysms and hemorrhages OF
the awful cricifxion. There they are