Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 287, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 December 1916 — CAST CARE ON HIM [ARTICLE]

CAST CARE ON HIM

Christian’s Heart Should Not Be Troubled by the Anxieties % of the World. If eVer there was occasion for one to find comfort in God, the immediate present is surely such an occasion. We hear the psalmist crying in one of the. “broken-hearted psalms,” “I will love thee, O Lord, ray strength. The Lord is my rock/and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strong rock, in him will I trust; my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower.” And again, “God Is our hope and strength, a very present help in trouble.” If the psalmist’s experience of God is a possible experience in onr time, foolish is the man or woman who leaves any step untakeu, nny stone unturned, that might result In such an experience. Happy are they who can now say out of the abundance of their own experience, “This God is our God for ever and ever; he shall be our guide unto death.” Happy are they who know in the depths of their hearts that. Peter knew whereof he spoke when he set down the words of our text: “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.” Happy and very desirable citizens of this world are they who know by personal experience the Eternal Caretaker, and believe mightily in his eternal goodness. Living as the Fool Lives. I feel It Increasingly that we Christians who are old enough to know better are careful in a wrong sense and troubled about far too many things; that we are overcharged with the cares of this we are “doped” with these cares; that much of the best that is in us, which, If it lived till it came to the birth, would mean blessedness here and blessedness forever, is choked to death by the pares of this world; and that hundreds and thousands of those who profess and call themselves Christians are living and dying as the fool lives and dies — the fool who said to his soul, “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry,” but to whom God said, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee”—l feel it increasingly that many of us who are old enough to know better, and to set a better example to those who ore coming after qs, ore making an awful and altogether unnecessary, and it may be incorrigible. mistake. Always in Our Father’s Care. God is our Eternal Caretaker. In onr Father’s house are many mansions. This world Is one of those many mansions. God Is our Caretaker while we are in this mansion. But that Is not enough—certainly not enough for the hifmnn spirit that has a passion for immortality—not enough for the ascending spirit of man that Is never so much its great self as when It stands with one foot on this earth and one foot on the sea of eternity. Our God is, and it Is his dear delight to be, our Eternal Caretaker. Not only In this mansion .in which we find ourselves today, but in that equijjly real mansion in which we may find ourselves tomorrow, and in each and every one of the innumerable mansions into and through which It is to be a part of our great experience to venture, our God is to be our Omnipotent Caretaker. And this being so, we ought—ought we not? —to be ashaisrPd to let our hearts be overmuch troubled by the cares and anxieties of this world. “He careth for us.” That is enough to know. Knowing that, one can sing with Whittier in his hymn on the Eternal Goodness: And so beside the Silent Sea I wait the muffled oar; No harm from him can come to me On ocean or on shorts. I know not where his islands lift Their fronded palms In air;* I only know I cannot drift Beyond his love and care. —Rev. Mercer G. Johnston.