Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1879-08-22
Mind Over Matter.

SAAAW OVCI 1A0GtSAs
During a flying visit to Waukesha,
Wis, DR.. Robert Boyd related to us
an incident from the life of that prince
of preachers, Robert Hall, which is one
Of the finest illustrations of the power
Of mind over matter we have ever seen.
As is we'll known. Mr.. Hall was hardly
ever free from suffering. His disease,
so obscure as to battle all physicians,
steadily frightened its hold upon him,
and many of his great sermons were
preached under circumstances that
would entirely have Frustrated man
of feeble nerve. One Sunday morning
when, as usual, the church was packed
to hear the great preacher, one of his
deacons, entering the room at the rear
of the pulpit, found Mr.. Hall lying on
the floor enveloped in a perfect cloud of
smoke by which he was endeavoring to
deaden the pain. A student went into
the pulpit to conduct the opening serv-
ices. Mr.. Hall fingered in the vestry
to the very last moment wrestling with
excruciating pain. At length as the
last hymn was being sung, he rose, or
was lifted from the floor. His eye was
heavy with narcotics, his cheeks hung
fabby, and his whole expression was
lifeless. The sexton put his coat on
him and opened the door. Slowly and
laboriously pulling hand over hand he
climbed the pulpit stairs. With one
hand pressed on his side, and the other
grasping the pulpit, he announced his
text: 1.-THE Father of Lights" He
looked more like dead man than liv-
ing one. With slow and mechanical
utterance he began. Without motion
or gesture, save feeble occasional
movement Of the right hand, he went
on. He first described, as only he
could, the glories of the natural heav-
ems, and the exalted God as the
"Father" of all these lights. He then
called graphic roll of the worlds
intellectual masters. God was also the
Father Of mental greatness. And he
dwelt on moral and spiritual greatness,
aud traced it all to God.
As he proceeded, wonderful change
passed away from his cheeks, and the
heaviness out of his eyes. His face
shone like an angels, his eye blazed
with unnatural brilliance, and his voice,
losing the huskiness with which he
began, rang like a trumpet. A great
change came over the audience. As he
went on from picture to picture, and
poured out on that audience, accustomed
indeed to eloquence. but now aston
ished, his wonderful wealth OF word
and thought, the people leaned toward
in their seats hardly daring to breath,
and finally fully one-third of them,
unconscious of what they were doing,
rose up and leaned toward the pulpit
as far as they could reach. Many left
their pews, and with unconscious steps
silently, stealthily crept down the aisles,
until they found themselves standing
entranced directly in front of the
speaker, SO irresistible was the magnet
that drew them.
When the sermon was over, the giant
disease again claimed its victim, the
eyes sunk and the face fell. He was
again the feeble, dying man. But dur
ing that glorious hour, when "great
thoughts struck along the BRAIN" the
mind was supreme. 1t spurned weak
ness and death, and claimed its birth
right. Such an hour as that will forever
disprove the current materialism.
There are times when man can "above
himself erect himself" Such times
prophesy the permanent triumph of the
immaterial part of our being. If the
mind be but the happy collection of
physical atoms, then the eloquence Of a
physical broken and dying man is an
unexplained and anomalous thing. But
if the mind be separate and immortal
entity, using the body as its servant,
then we can understand how it can
climb sometimes to its grandest achieve
ments along the rickety and crumbling
stairway of an enfeebled and decaying
physical nature.-The Interior.