Forest City press. (Forest City, Potter County, D.T. [S.D.]) 1883-19??, 1905-02-23
END UF A O N WAITING

eNO VI ~ eONO ~ luV u
1T seems so strange to see so many
we'll people on the street remarked
a hospital nurse, off for ii days outing,
I've unconsciously come to think hat
almost everybody had something the
matter with him. so used am l to living
among hundreds of sick people OF oil
Sorts
And what Il host of invalids there
are! Remember the thousands of hos
pitfalls In the land and the other thou
sands of sanitariums, and the tens OF
thousands of darkened rooms in indi
vidual homes, where visitors tread
SOFTLY because OF pain racked nerves.
The number of these .%'prisoners of
hope is legion. Yet how greatly their
lot has improved since the time when
the best that a great city could boast
of in the way of Il hospital was five
porches built about an Intermittent
medicinal spring. each sufferer being
left to care for himself.
The tender hearted Master who
passed by the pool one day, and whose
ever quick compassion was touched by
what He saw, has been the real build
er of all the hospitals, infirmaries, asy-
lums. sanitariuins and other Bethesdas
house of healing'-which nave min
istered to suffe. ing humanity since that
t'iIiC. W. III IA NIleiIi6tu III "
TANNED attitude of mankind during the
centuries that have borne the name OF
Christ we may read on IA larger scale
the miracle wrought upon the paralytic
at the Pool of Bethesda that Sabbath
day when Jesus walked through the
streets OF Jerusalem.
The fact had been discovered, that
during the periods of activity of u Ger
tain intermittent medical spring. the
waters had curative properties. There
fore, as good news cannot be kept,
the neighborhood of The pool became
a resort for all manner of diseased and
MANNED persons who waited and
watched, patiently. year after year, for
the opportunity to battle in the health
giving flow.
christ's Great Question.
Upon this pitiable and motley COM
pany the eye of Jesus fell, singing out
one poor paralytic who had been watt
ing thirty-eight years. He knew. as
many another who will read these lines
has also experienced. the truth of the
wise mans sayings: Hope deferred
ening. blighting, spirit breaking power
of waiting. waiting, waiting. for relief
that never comes. In buoyant young
manhood his sufferer had crawled
painfully to the pool. sure that he had
reached the goal of his desire.
But in the mad scramble of sufferers
than whom, when relief is in sight,
away from the waters. One. two three.
a dozen disappointments could
not discourage him. But when
the months had heightened into years.
and the years into decades, the chill
of hopelessness began to clutch his
heart. He found himself one Of that in
Vulnerable company Of the defeated in
life Nhn oro norh 4, tho vnnct p.tI,otia
spectacle of civilization.
1t was thus upon dull ears hat the
Strangers gentle question fell:
"Would'st thou be made whole? He
thought this hut the expression of a
kindly, though merely curious inter-
est on the part of a passer-by. How
could he understand tina this One
never grew hard eyed toward suffering,
as the best doctors and attendants in
evitable do? He vas yet to learn that
this Inquirer was compassion incar-
nate: n that His power to help was
equal to His power to pity.
Christ's question was characteristic.
en- race. completeness to fragmentary
men. I'm Him was life''-full- orbed,
complete and Astounding life. His mis-
sion was to make men whole-"holy,'
we now say. Wherever He has gone
He has shed health and fullness. No
mans life is altogether rounded until
he has taken Christ into it.
But He could not make an unwilling
man whole. wilt thou?" He says be-
fore He lays His healing touch upon
withered and undeveloped lives. Many
will not. That is the crux of the prob
lem of evil. Some men DE- not want
moral health; they prefer disease. The
unwillingness of the vicious to abandon
vice Is the difficulty that balks the re-
former and the moralist. Every now
and then great cities undertake to
eradicate vice. This is impossible. so
pms as men and women will to remain
vicious. Even Christ can only offer
Wilderness: He cannot thrust 1t upon
the unwilling, even as the wisest father
cannot compel his son to be good.
RELEASED at Last.
The Iroquois theater disaster. and
other great panics when the wolf in
all their instincts of chivalry. helpful
ness n brotherhood, are suggested by
the plaintive response of the paralytic
to the question Of Jesus-"Sir, have
no man, when h water IL troubled, to
put me into the pool; but while I am
coming another steppeth down before
me-" What a structure upon mankind!
How different the Christ spirit, as
manifested in countless familiar incl
dents-like that, for example, of two
men scalding to death in a boiler, and
n deliberately stepping back, thus
choosing death. In order that his fell
low. man with a family, might find
life.
The response Of Jesus wal not a lee.
ture. or = tract. or q mere expression
OF sympathy. or an appeal to the man
to be resigned to his fate. It was helm.
instant. complete and marvellous.
Arise. take up thy bed and walk. And
s~traightway the man was made whole.
and o up his bed and walked"
Now, as We know from the later
words OF Christ to him: 'Sin no more.
lest q worse thing befall thee" the man
had probably acquired his disease
through his w sinfulness. For while
not all who suffer have sinned, all who
Sin must suffer. There 10 q way that
seemeth right to a man but the end
thereof are the ways of DEATH" That