We have been to several ministers and they cannot explain them satisfactorily; perhaps you can.”  The great evangelist said:  “Sisters, you haven’t as much good hard sense as my cow.  We keep a cow and through the winter we give her hay to eat.  Now Georgia hay has a considerable mixture of briars.  When we give the cow an arm full of hay she has sense enough to eat the hay and let the briars alone.  But with the blessed Bible full of good hay, you are ‘chawing’ away on the briars.”  Young people, there is enough in God’s word you can understand to serve you if you live a thousand years, enough in there to save you if you die tonight, so don’t worry over what you can’t understand.

During the Civil War a terrible battle raged all day between the armies of Grant and Lee.  When the night shadows shut out the light, dead and dying were strewn for miles.  Surgeons were busy and the chaplains going their rounds.  A chaplain heard a voice say, in clarion tone:  “Here.”  Going to the spot from whence came the voice and bending over the prostrate form of a dying soldier, the chaplain asked:  “What can I do for you?”

“Nothing, sir; they were just calling the roll in Heaven, and I was answering to my name.”

Blessed book, in which there is enough a wounded soldier, dying far away from home and loved ones, can so understand as to fit him to answer the roll call in Heaven.

We may not comprehend the full meaning of faith, but we can grasp sufficient to be to our souls what the force of nature is to the trees, by which they stand with their branches reaching skyward and their roots drawing earth-centerward.  Take from me this faith and you take away the best friend I ever had, the friend that stood by me in the darkest hour of my life, when a daughter in the bloom of womanhood said, “good-bye,” and went away to live with the angels; that stands by me now pointing to where my child is waiting for me in the bowers that kiss the very porch of Heaven.  Without this faith how awful would be the dirge, “earth to earth, dust to dust.”  Blessed book that tells us we shall meet “beyond the river, where the surges cease to roll;” that death is but the doorway to a better land, “the grave a subway to a sweeter clime.”

My dear young friends, accept this faith and you will find in it a sweet companion up the hillward way of life, and down the sunset slope to the valley of death, where it will not leave nor forsake you, but will wait till you throw off your “burden of clay,” then “bear you away on its balmy wings to your eternal home.”  Young men, may you so follow the safe side of life, that when its great trials come, you can with the wings of faith cleave the clouds and soar safely above the thunders that roll at your feet.

My closing advice is, “Walk not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the way of sinners; but delight in the law of the Lord; and in his law meditate day and night.  In due season your life will fruit and whatsoever you do will prosper.”