Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1891 — IT IS GOD’S RAIN. [ARTICLE]

IT IS GOD’S RAIN.

Il Practical Lesson Drawn From the Signal Service. A* Bible Student Should Hot Wade In Too Deep—A Silver Lining to the Darkest Cloud. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn last Sunday.,. Subject: “Hath the Rain a Father?” Text, lob xxxviii, 28. He said: This Book of Job has been the subject of unbounded theological wrangle Men have made it tne 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 iu 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 I adopted some years ago. I wade down into a Scripture passage as long as I can touch bottom, Mid when I can not: then I wade out. C used to wade in until it was over my head and then I got drowned. I study a passage of Scripture as long •s it is a comfort and help to my toul; but when it becomes a perplexity and a spiritual upturning I quit. Cn other words, we ought to wade in up to our heart, but never wade in until it is over our head. No mau should ever expect to swim across this great ocean of divine truth. I £» down into that ocean as Igo down to the Atlantic Ocean at East Hampton, Long Island, just far tnough 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 rou ever studied the parentage of the shower? “Hath the rain a fath•r?” This question is not asked by ft poetaster or a scientist, but by the nead of the Universe. To humble rod to sdve Job, God asks him fourteen questions: about the world’s arehitecture, about the refraction of the sun’s rays, about the tides,about the snow crystal, about the lightnings, and then He arraigns him witn the interrogation of the text: “Hath the vain a father?” With the Identifier 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 ne has piety enough he gets through with it in the first three months. A lermon has come to me to mean one word of four letters: “Help!” You nil know that the rain is not an orphan. You know it is not cast out if the gates of heaven a foundling. You would answer the question of my text in the affirmative. Safely Housed during the storm, you hear the rain beating against the window Eane, and you find it searching all tie crevices of the window sill. It Bret comes down in solitary drops, pattering the dust, and then it deluges 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 flying evangel from heaven to earth.. You know it is the gospel of the father.

If this be true, then, how wicked it our murmuring about climatic shanges. The first eleven Sabbaths after I entered the ministry it itormed. Through the week it was dear weather, but on the Sunday the »ld 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 ,vas 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 Goa who ordained the Sabbath and sent forth Hie ministers to announce salvation, also ordained the weather. “Hath the rain a father?” Merchants, also, with their stores Oiled with new goods and their elerka hanging idly around the corners, oommlt toe same transgression. There have been seasons when the whole spring and fall trade has been ruined oy 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 shy. That went complaining to the store, *nd came oomplaining home c«ain.- In all that season of wet feet and dripping garments and impassable streets they never once asked Sie quesaion, “Hath the rain a father?” agriculturists commit this sin. There is nothing more annoying than to have planted corn, rot m 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 lias infinite resources, but Ido not Jhiiu, JBjLhss caparitj to make

weather to please ail 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 seem time 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: t# 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 pf Directors 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. You 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. Tvo ships meet in midatlantic. The one is going to Southampton and the other is coming to New York. Provide weather that, while it 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 raih 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 lifo. 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. Blanc 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 insignificant in 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 Parl}ment, 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, 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 ana 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 heavens, 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 iSaussure and other scientists, there

s an infinite mystery aSout the rain. There is an ocean of the unfathomable in every rain drop, and God says to-day as He said in the time of Job) “If you can not understand one drop of rain, do not be surprised if mjf dealings with you 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? I see people going around trying to repent. They can not repent. Do you know no man can reS;nt 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 laws of the land, but lhavd wasted my life; God Risked me for my services, and I haven’t given those services. O! my sins God so give me.” When that tear starts iti thrills all heaven. An angel can not) keep his eyes off it. And the Chureli of God is the Father of that vain, 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 with a great wave of religious emotion! The King of Carthage was dethron ed. His people rebelled against him. He was driven into banish ment. His wife and children wert outrageously abused. Years went by, and the King of Carthage mode many friends. He gathered up a great army. He marched again toward Carthage. Reaching th< gate of Carthage. The best men of the place came out bare footed and bareherded, and wit! ropes around their neeks, erying foi mercy. They said: “We abused you and we abused your family, but wf cry for mercy.” The King of Car thage looked down upon the peoph from his chariot and said: “I came to bless, I didn’t come to destroy You drove me out, but this day I g renounce pardon for all the people. •pen the gate and let the people come in.” The King marched in anti took the throne, and the people al; shouted: “Long live the King!’ My friends, you have driven tho Lord Jesus Christ, away from your hearts, you have been maltreating Him all these years: but He comes back to-day. He stands in front o < the gates of your soul. If you will only pray for His pardon, He will meet you with His gracious spirit, and He will say: “Thy sins and thi iniquities I will remember no more. Open wide the gate; I will take th« 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 Goci will be the Father of that rain.

A Country of Easy Going Habit*

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 immediatt future. In twenty or thirty yearz. time, when the population has in creased and life become more diffi cult, there may be a change. At pres ent the people have mandioca am oranges in abundance; they need not work, and they will not wo’-k. Thi gentleman thought that the Para guayans were most happy under th severe tyranny of Francai and Lo pez, when they were all practically slaves, and he regretted that foreign ers are now allowed to come in am buy land, because it means to th natives ini ultimate loss of nation ality. Another Englishman, win had been three years cattLe farminj at San Ignacio, told me that eve since he had been there he had net got a stroke of work out of the ns tives dwelling on his land; they liv. on oranges, mandico and matt and will not work. On his istanei; he has 20,000 orange trera, bio foi want of means of transpotation th< fruit has no market value. Unde the trees the oranges lie on the sot a foot deep, and the cattle eat then and fatten well. The observer sug nested that it might be a good thin; for Paraguay if the government caused the orange trees to be cu down, as the government of Cost; Rica once had the bananiers destroyed, with a view to stamping ou laziness and obliging the people ti work for their bread. All this seem! strange. Nature and the Jesuit have given these Paraguayans th< means of life and of oblivious felicity in the shape of mandioca, oranges mate, apd tobacco. They enjoy ; climate so delightful that clothes ar scarcely needed. And yet the meti dlesome Europeans are surprise* dttd irritated because they do nc work.