The Idaho world. [volume] (Idaho City, Idaho Territory) 1864-1918, 1874-02-19
EXTRACT FROM A SERMON BY HENRY
WARD BEECHER.

! When Sir Christopher Wren died he was
buried in St. Paul's Cathedral; but do not
think it mattered whether he was buried there,
whether he was laid in country church yard,
whether he was left on the bare ground, or
whether he was sunk in the ocean. On his tong
was inscribed, IF you ask, Where is his mon
ument! look about you" Not only the grand
cathedral in which he lay entombed, but all
London was his monument. He did more in
his day to beautify that city than all the other
architects of hundred years. Therefore it
was most fitting that the inscription of his bu-
rialplace should declare that wherever men
looked they saw what he had done.
Men work; their whole life is series of
earnest labors; and when they die they seem
to themselves to have done very little; for no
man makes any account Of the secondary in
tiuences which he exerts; no man makes any
account of what he stirs other people up to do;
no man makes any account of the work that he
commences, but that is to be finished by future
generations. Men very seldom understand that
which they begin, and which they carry for
ward to a certain point, will inevitably fall into
other hands and be consummated by them.
There are multitudes Of men whose minds have
been the leaven OF the age in which they lived !;
but dying they seem to have done very little
They do not own houses and lands; they have
no bank stock. They seem not to have done
much; but after all, dying, dead, their works
follow them; and men who come after them
say, The whole magnitude of these results
flowed from them"
When Livingston made the civil code of Lou
isiana little had he to show for his life; but
every year since has been, and every age in the
future will be. witness to the wisdom of that
code, and to the fact that in making it he be-
came benefactor to the world Very little
had Washington done when he lay at Valley
Forge What did he do, Did he fight bat
tie Did he besiege a city! Did he capture
an army! Did he go through anything that
showed him to be very efficient! With bloody.
footed soldiers he naited. His power of wait
ing as we now look back upon it, his patience,
his indomitable purpose that could stand still
and wait, is among the illustrious results of
that mans life.
Still more striking is the fact that the higher
the result on the moral scale, the longer is the
time which is required for attaining it. When
you work in things which have respect to mat
ter, when you labor with reference to the ma.
terial structure of society, there is gradation
of time required according to cause and effect;
according to the complexity of the thing which
is to be wrought out; according to that part of
nature which it addresses itself to and serves;
but when you turn from that to the mind itself
and not the body, you will find that still more
emphatically this principle is evinced and car
ried out The intellect in its relations to infu-
ences which consists Of matter can be deve-
oped great deal faster than the philosophical
intellect, or that part of the understanding
which takes cognizance of the invisible rela-
tions of things. A man is an observer first,
and philosopher afterwards. A man learns
to see, a great deal sooner than he learns to
reason Reason is high in the scale. and it
takes long time to come to it, 1t takes longer
still to come to the cooperation and harmonic
zation with each other of number of superior
faculties.
The slowest thing that can be done in this
world is the building up of moral character.
Many persons think that there is lightning
like process by which mems characters can be-
built up by the Holy Ghost. They think that
when God by his Spirit strikes the soul he
knocks the old nature out of it; and that then
the man rises up new creature in Christ .Je.
is some truth in it; but if you litcralize it, and
test it scientifically, and say that God changes
mans nature in an instant as by flash of
lightning, it is not true. 1t is as far from the
analogy of nature as it possibly can be. For
there is no work that is so important, and none
that is so high, as the creation of manhood in
Christ Jesus; and there is no work that takes
so much time; there is no work that is 30 slow;
and there is no work in which men are tempt
ed to be 50 impatient.
Now, there are some points of analogy be-
tween conducting school and conducting a
business; but when man attempts to treat
human beings-lttle Arabs and their sisters
as though they were subject to the same coer-
Give changes that atmaterial objects are, as though