The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1858-05-28
Beecher's Thoughts.

Men in extensive and prosperous bust
ness are often at a target for envy to shoot
at; and when they fail and 90 down,
there are thousands who wickedly rejoice
in their fall. But in our days some men
are institutions. They do not stand like
Pompey's Pillar or Cleopatra' s Needle,
towering to the sky, detached aud alone
they are like mountains which carry for
csts far up their sides, and shelter and
nourish ten thousand living things in
their shadow. Some one says: "Why
do you care shat their water-whccl is bro
ken? A black, numbering thing half of
the time in the water and half of the time
out. Why do you not caro- for the nicer
wheels and spindles within the build
ing"
I do care, and therefore am sorry for
the breaking Of the great wheel. It's axis
passes within, and by drum and bands
its power is communicated to the various
rooms, and every spindle is dependent
upon its revolutions When an earth
quake comes, by as much as house is
elevated above the others, by so much is
its ruin greater than thcirs-the third
story crashing into the second, and the
second into the first. Now, men in extern
sive business are mountains of shelter;
ponderous wheels that turn the mill
lofty houses which cannot fall without
causing widespread disaster; and when
we hear Of their failure, we must not
think of them alone, but also of the ten
thousand dependents who have affiliated
with them. In a not irrevcrent sense it
may be said, they are "set for the fall
and rising of many in Israel"
A man living at hotel is like grape
vine in fower-pot-moveablc, carried
around from place to place, docked at the
root and short at the top. Nowhere can a
man get real root-room, and spread out his
branches till they touch the morning and
the evening, but in his own house.
am suspicious of that church whose
members are one in their beliefs and opin-
ions When a tree is dead, it will lie any
way; alive it will have its own growth
When mems deafness is in the church,
and their life elsewhere, all will be alike.
They can be cut and polished any way.
When they are alive, they are like trop-
ical forcst-somc shooting up like the
mahogany tree, some spreading, like the
vine; some darkling, like the shrub
some lying, herblike, on the ground but
all obeying their own laws of growth
common law of growth variously express
ed in cach----and so contributing to the
to the richness and beauty of the wood.
1t is a solemn thing to be married. TO
have to preach to congregation from
your own loins; to have God put the
hand Of ordination on you in the birth of
your children, and say to you, "Now art
thou priest unto those whom | have
given thee"
If ever the stream of life should flow
like crystal water over shining stones, it
should be the stream of daily life in the
family. If God has taught us all truth
in teaching US to love, then Hc has given
us an Interpretation Of our whole duty in
our own households We thank Him
that we are not born as the partridge of
the wood, or the ostrich of the desert, to
be scattered every whittier; but that we
arc grouped together and brooded by love,
and reared day by day in that first of
churches, the family.
E-syn Call around and nov the nrinfer