Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1891 — IT IS GOD’S RAIN. [ARTICLE]

IT IS GOD’S RAIN.

A Practical Lesson Drawn From the Signal Service. Che Bible Student Should Not Wnde th Too Deep—A Silver Lining to the Darkest Cloud. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn last Sunday. Subject: “Hath the Rain a Father?'’ Text. Job xxxviii, 28. He said: This Book of Job has been the subject of unbounded theological wrangle Men have made it the ring in which to display their ecclesiastical pugilism. Some say that the Book of Job is a true history; others, that it is an allegory ; ethers, that it is an epic poem; others, that it is a drama. Some say that Job lived eighteen hundred years before Christ; others say that he never lived at all. Some say that the author of this book was Job; others, David; others, Solomon The discussion has landed some in blank infidelity. Now, I have no trouble with the Books of Job or Revelation—the two most mysterious books in the Bible —because of a rule [.adopted some years ago. I wade down into a Scripture passage as long as I can touch bottom, and when l ean not: then I wade out. I used to wade in until it was over my head and then I got drowned. I study a passage of Scriptifre as long as it is a comfort and help to my soul; but when it becomes a perplexity and a spiritual upturning I quit. In other words, we ought to wade in up to our heart, but never wade in until it is over our head. No man should ever expect to swim across this great ocean of divine truth; I jo down into that ocean as I go down into the Atlantic Ocean at East Hampton, Long Island, just far Miough to bathe; then I come out. I never had any idea that with my weak hand and foot I could strike my way clear over to Liverpool.

I suppose you understand your Family genealogy. You know something about your "parents, your grandparents, your great-grandpar-•nts. Perhaps you know where they were born, or where they died. Have you ever studied the parentage of the shower? “Hath the rain a father?” This question is not asked by a poetaster or a scientist, but by the nead of the Universe. To humble ind to save Job, God asks him fourteen questions: about the world's architecture, about the refraction of the sun’s rays, about the tides,about the snow crystal, about the lightnings, and then He arraigns nim with the interrogation of the text: “Hath the rain a father?” With the scientific wonders of the rain I have nothing to do. A minister goes through with that kind of sermons within the first three years, and if ae has piety enough he gets through with it in the first three months. A sermon has come to me to mean one word of four letters: “Help!” You ill know that the rain is not an orphan. You know it is not cast out of the gates of heaven a foundling. You would answer the question of tny text in the affirmative. Safely noused during the storm, you hear the rain beating against the window pane, and you find it searching all the crevices of the window sill. It first comes down in solitary drops, pattering the dust, and then it del-

ages the fields and angers the mountain torrents, and makes the traveler implore shelter. You know that the rain is not an accident of the world’s economy. You know it was born of the cloud. You know it was rocked in the cradle of the wind. You know it was sung to sleep by the’storm. You know that it is a lying evangel from heaven to earth. You know it is the gospel of the weather. You know that God is its father. If this be true, then, how wicked is our murmuring about climatic changes. The first eleven Sabbaths after I entered the ministry if stormed. Through the week it was dear weather, but on the Sunday the old country meeting house looked like Noah’s Ark before it landed. A few drenched people sat before the drenched pastor: but most of the farmers stayed at home and thanked God that what was bad for the church .vcs good for the crops. I committed a good deal of sin in those days in denouncing the weather. Ministers of the Gospel sometimes fret about the stormy Sabbaths, of hot Sabbaths or inclement Sabbaths. They forget the fact that the same God who ordained the Sabbath and sent forth His ministers to announce salvation, also ordained the weather. “Hath the rain a father?” Merchants, also, with their stores filled with new goods and their clerks hanging idly around the corners, commit tne same transgression, .fhere.have been, seasons when the ’ whole spring and fall trade has been ruined by protracted wet weather. The merchants then examined the weather probabilities with more interest than they read their Bibles. They watched for a patch of blue skj. They went complaining to the store, and came complaining home again. In all that season of wet feet and dripping garments and impassable streets they never once asked the quesaion, “Hath the rain a father?” So agriculturists commit this sin. There is nothing more annoying than to have planted corn rdt in the ground because of too much moisture, or hay all ready for the mow dashed of a shower, or wheat almost ready for the sickle spoiled with the rust. How hard it is to bear the' agricultural disappointments. God .has.infinite resource.B, but Ido not think He has capacity to make

weather to please all the farmers. Sometimes it is too hot, or it is too cold; it is too wet, or it is too dry; it is too early, or is it too late. They forget that the God who promised seed tiine and harvest, summer and winter. Cold and heat, also ordained all the climatic changes. There is one question that ought to be written on every barn, on every fence, on every hay-stack, on every farm: “Hath the rain a father?” If we only knew what a vast enterprise it is to provide appropriate weather for this world we would not be so critical of the Lord. Isaac Watts, at 10 years of age, complained that he did not like the hymns that were sung in the English Chapel. “Well,” said his father, “Isaac, instead of your complaining about the hymns, go and make hymns that are better.” And he did go and make hymns that were better. Now I say to you, if you do not like the weather, get up a weather company have a President and Secretary and a Treasurer and a Board of Dircctors and $10,000,000 of stock, and then provide weather that will suit all of us. There is a man who has a weak head, and he cannot stand, the glare of the sun. must always have a cloud hovering over him. I like the sunshine; I can not live without plenty of sunlight, so you must always have enough light for me. Tv o ships meet in midatlantic. The one is going to Southampton and the other is coming to New York. Provide weather that, while :t is abaft for one ship, it is not a head wind for the other. There is a farm that is drying up for lack of rain, and here is a pleasure party going out for a field excursion. Provide weather that will suit the dry farm and the pleasure excursion. No, sirs, I will not take one dollar of stock in your weather company. There is only one being in the universe who knows enough to provide the right kind of weather for this world. “Hath the rain a father?” My text also suggests God’s minute supervisal. You see the Divine Sonship in every drop of rain. The jewels of the shower are not flung away by a spendthrift who knows not how many he throws or where they fall. They are all shining princes of heaven. They all have an eternal lineage. They are all the children of a King. “Hath the rain a father?” Well, then, I say if God takes notice of every minute raindrop he will take notice of the most insignificant affair of my life. It is the astronomical view of things that bothers me. We look up into the night-heavens and say: “Worlds! worlds!” and how insignificant we feel! We stand at the foot of Mt. JBlanc or Mt. Washington, and we feel that we are only insects, and then we say to ourselves: “Though the world is so large, the sun is 1,400,000 times larger." We say: “Oh. it is no use, if God wheels that great machinery through immensity- He will not take the trouble to look down at me.” Infidel Conclusion. Saturn, Mercury and Jupiter are no more rounded and weighed and swung by the hand of God than are the globules on a lilac bush the morning after a shower. God is no more in magnitudes than he is in minutiae. If He has scales to weigh the mountains He has balances delicate enough to weigh the infinitesmal. You can no more see Him through the telescope than you can see Him through the microscope; no more when you look up than when you look down. Are not the hairs of your head all numbered? And if Himalaya has a God, “hath not the rain a father?” I take this doctrine of a particular Providence, and I thrust it into the very midst of your every-day life. If God fathers a raindrop, is there rnything so insignificantin your affairs that God will not father that? When Druyse, the gunsmith, invented the needle-gun, which decided the battle of Sadowa, was it a mere accident?

God is either wrong in the affairs of men, or our religion is worth nothing at all, and you had better take it away from us, and instead of Bible, which teaches the doctrine, gvie us a secular book, and let us, as the famous Mr. Fox, the member of Parliment, in his last hour cry out: “Read me the eighth book of Virgil.” O! my friends, let us rouse up to an appreciation Of the fact, that all the affairs of our life are under a King’s command, and under a Father’s watch. Alexander’s war-horse, Bucephalus, would allow anybody to mount him when he was unharnessed, but as soon as they put on that warhorse, Bucephalus, the saddle and the trappings of the Conqueror, he would allow no one but Alexander to touch him. And if a soulless horse could have so much pride in his owner, shall not we mortals exult in the fact that we are owned by a king? “Hath the rain a father?” Again, f: my subject teaches me that God’s dealings with us are inexplicable. That was the original force of my text. The rain was a great mystery to the ancients. They could not understand how the water should get into the cloud, and, getting there how it should be suspended; or, falling, why it should come down in drops. Modern science comes along and says there are two portions of air of different temperature, and they are charged with moisture, and the one portion of air decreases in temperature so the water may no longer be held in vapor, and it falls. And they tell us that* some of the clouds that look to be no larger than a man’s hand, and to be almost quiet in the heavfins, are great mountains of mist 4,000 feet from base to top, and that they rush miles a minute. But, after all the brilliant experiments of Dr. James Huston and "iSaussurc and other scientists, there

s an infinite mystery about the rain, i There is an ocean of the unfathomable in every rain drop, and God says j to-day as He said in the time of Job: “If you cap not understand one drop of rain, do not be surprised if mj! dealings with yod are inexplicable. Yes, God also is Father of all that rain of repentance.. Did you ever see a rain of repentance? Do you know what it is that makes a man repent? 11 see people going around trying to repent. They can not repent. Do you know no man can reSmt until God helps him to repent? ow do I know? By this passage: “Him hath God exalted to be a Prince and a Savior to give repentance,” O! it is a tremendous hour when one wakes up and says: “I am a bad man, I have not sinned against the laavs of the land, but I have wasted my life; God asked me for my services, and I haven’t given, those services. O! my sins God so give me. ” When that tear starts it; thrills all heaven. An angel can no-, keep his eyes off it. And the Church' of God is the Father of that rain, the Lord, long suffering, merciful and gracious. O! that God would break us down with a sense of our sin and then lift us up with- an appreciation of this mercy. Tears over our wasted life Tears over a grieved Spirit. Tears" over an injured father, O! that God would move upon this audience witl a great wave of religious emotion! The King of Carthage was dethron ed. His people rebelled agaius him. He was driven into banish ment. His wife and children wer outrageously abused. Years wen’ by. and the King of Carthage mad< many friends. He gathered up ; great, army. He marched agaii toward Carthage. Reaching th. -gate of Carthage. The best nisi of the place came out Bare footed and bareherded, and wit ropes around their necks, crying so mercy. They said: “We abused yo’ and we abused your family, but w cry for mercy.” The King of Carthage looked down upon the peopl from his chariot and said: “I cam' to bless, I didn’t come to destroy. You drove me out, but this day § renounce pardon for all the people •pen the gate and let the prepl come in. ” The King marched in an • took the throne, and the people al ■ shouted: “Long live the King!' My friends, you have driven th» Lord Jesus Christ, away from you hearts, you have been maltreatin,! Him all these years: but He comeback to-day. He stands in front o' the gates of your soul. If you wil! only pray for His pardon, He wil meet you with His gracious spirit, and He will say: “Thy sins and thy iniquities I will remember no more. Open wide the gate; I will take the throne. My peace I give unto you." And then, all through this audience, from the young and from the old. there will be a rain of tears, and God will be the Father of that rain.

A Country of Easy Going Habits Harper’s Magazine for July. The evidence gathered from th< most various sources about the Par aguayan native was always the same. An English ex-naval officer and exelephant hunter in Africa, who ha; a cane distillery near Paraguari. was of opinion that Paraguay is not going to improve in the immediut-. future. In twenty or thirty year* time, when the population has in creased and life become inore dii-i cult, there may be a change. At pres ent the people have inandioca am oranges in abundance; they need not work, and they will not wo»k. Tin gentleman thought that the Para guayans were most happy under th severe tyranny of Francai and Lo pez, when they were all practical!, slaves, and he regretted that foreign ers are now allowed to come in am buy land. becau.se it means to th natives an ultimate loss of nation ality. Another 'Englishmim. wlb had been three years cattle farmin; at San Ignacio, told me that eve since he had been there he had nevgot a stroke of work out of the n: tives dwelling on his land; they liv on oranges, mandico and matt and will not work. On his »fltanei. he has 20,000 orange tre-xs, bv> so want of means of transpotation th fruit has no market value. Unde the trees the oranges lie on the soa foot deep, and the cattle eat the. and fatten well. The observer snj. gested that it might be a good thin, for Paraguay if the governmeu caused the orange trees to be cu down, as the government of Cost Rica once had the bauaniers di stroyed, with a view, to stamping ou laziness and obliging the peoffie t> work for their bread. All this see n, strange. Nature and the Jesuit have given these Paraguayans th means of life and of oblivious fellcit in the shape of mandioca, oranges mate, and tobacco. They en ; oy climate so delightful that clothes at scarcely needed. And yet the niei dlesome Europeans are surprise and irritated because they do u< work.

The Usual Thing.

Puck. Bursar (Nebigh university): ‘ ‘Ol Mr. Millard has left us $400,000 ii his will.” President (ditto): “Oh, dear Telegraph to Filem <t Robben an offer a first mortgage on our Librar; building as a retainer.” Not in His Study. New York Weekly. Lady—“ls your father at ho:iy dear?" Minister's Little Daughter “Yes’m, he’s in his sernionizin, room.” “You mean his study, I presume. “No’m, we don’t f call it a study an;, more. Pa doesn’t want anv one ft suspect him of heresy, -