Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-11-13

| II young bcnbItLn6u 10 maxi slcif
fortunes and gain professional emineuce by
the time they are thirty. fors 10Th thew are
failures. What absurdities Jonah 5 gourds-
how many of them that see themselves TAIL
ures in life; yes, Jonah's gourd is the SYM
Dol of very much of our young America. |
beg you to hold it well in recollection that
the immortal men served long apprentice
chip; the men whose voices go sounding on
forever must have their ears open and
their minds trained from many vigil and
through many rounded month and year
yea, even decades of years.
And so this youth is 80 years of age, having
devoted II or 10 years simply to his prepare
ton, in addition to all that he had received in
the way of instruction before he left his ma
tive city of TaTsus, and at the time of
which | speak, as he stands there witnessing
this horrible scene of blood, he is 80. Our
young gentlemen are citizens of the United
States at the age of one and twenty-they
reach their majority. Among the older and
wiser people, as it seems TO me, they did not
gaiu their majority until 30-asd SO he is
having been thus far under the guidance and
| instruction OF tnGors, governors, teachers and
guardians-he is now to take the tilleT of his
destiny into his own hand, aud his bark, thus
Tar steered for hun, IS to be steered by him
self What is his election? What does he
decide to do? His future Is before him, and
genius such as his-and he must have felt It's
strings; there must have been some prompt
ings from his brain which told him OF his
latent power He might easily devote him
self 70 the profession of a tea ;ner-a teacher
of Greek eloquence and philosophy and
poetry. We pretend to honor and remuner-
ate our teachers to-day, but we stint them to
the last and meauest degree. There are 30
people, pSrhaps excepting the Christian min
| md flyE hpf hYr law Tn
be exc pted-there are no people who do SO
valuable, so noble, so glorious, and so bene-
fetal work III the world who are treated Ia so
niggardly fashion by the people they serve
and the society they benefit as our teachers
of public schools ana private, elementary and
higher. We boast thai we are civilized. The
old Greeks, in this respect, were immeasur-
ably more civilized than we. And q man
of such magnificent powers as this youth
possessed, with such wondrous training, with
! such incisiye intellect, with such coInpre-
I hensive understanding, with such elegant
,sOniag powers to eXpound the orscles of
osophy and to thrill mems blood with the
Of his elGquence, might easily in his
{ native city of TarsuS or at Antioch or at
| Athens, establish professors chair which
might gain the largest clieatsge and draw as
| Aristotle, as Plato, as Zeno and as many
another famous seer, pupils from all quarters
| of the world, and with them revenue honor
fame-all that he could desire. He did not
become professor of Grecian learning.
There was another avenue open to him.
| have said that Roman citizenship was his
birthright. He could easily have applied him
! self to the study of tue Roman law he
could have began his profession in the San
| hedrim at Jerusalem, and having gained suf
fcient revenue, he could have removed
TO toe Areopagus at Athens, and then,
having further increased bis revenue
and reputation, he could easily have
removed to Rome itself. the Imperial
and Eternal City. And who can question
| that ii this youth had given his attention to
| the Roman law, with all his powers of logic
and reasoning, and his classical eloquence-
who can doubt that he would have arisen to
the very pinnacle of his profession-that
there in Rome he could have easily challenged
the fame of Cicero, the greatest OF ancient
orators? A Tribune's seat the Senatorial
dignity and robe, the liberty to address the
Conseript Fathers, and a hand In moldipg
the politics and the legislation OF the world
| It was all open to him-honor fame, bound
less wealth, far-reaching influence, all that
bids man onward in the hard paths we travel.
He did not choose to become a Roman law
| yer any more than a Grecian professor.
Why Because in the whole history of
patriotism, think, you find no man that
SURPRISES, if You find one that equals, the in
tensity and enthusiasm of this mans devotion
| to his country a Hebrew Hebrew of
the tribe of Beniamin-he felt all that was
| implied in his glorious ancestry, in the i'm
munity and franchise enjoyed by his ma
| ti0nality, the proudest race. the most favored
race, the most illustrlous race that has yet
! trodden the planet. He was OF that stock q
son of Gods own friend, the father of the
faithful, and of the greatest law-giver the
world has ever seen. He belonged to the
| race in whose loins there seemed TO be held
| the promise of the worlds deiverance, the
hope of the worlds salvation Everything
connected with the history of this race is
/ sacred to day. He determined to devote him
! self to his country, with all ais energy, with
| all his genius, with sll his enthusiasm And
need there was at such an hour as that that
every true Israelite should give himself to
| his country. 1t was time of universal ex-
pectation, and the nation is on tip-toe the
| seventy weeks of Daniel is fulfilled ; the
deliverer the Messiah, the Amounted Que,
foretold from the sad hour when the first pair
| came forth from Eden laden with the curse,
is to come. Those dreary, many years of
sorrow and of trouble seemed now almost
accomplished I; the foot of the Roman tyrant
is upon the neck of the nation his foot was
to be removed and the PROSTATE captive was
to rise up and be delivered. The King the
mighty Savior, was to make his appear
ance. The nation was as | say on tip
toe. And, strange to say, there is
come one from the despised province of
Gallee, and from the contemned and con-
temptable town of Nazareth, and from the
house of q carpenter, attended by peasants
and fishermen and throng of women. some
of peasant rank and some of equivocable
reputation and claims to be this Messiah
the Christ, the annointed-Jesusi is his name
The aristocratic class. the men of learning,
the men of culture, the men of knowledge,
of law and the professions, the men of trained
brains and supplemented faculties, the men
| whose hands are accustomed to rule-had
been content to let him go and give no at
tention to him, "but that he assaulted us and
called Us the aristocracy of the nation, a
generation of vipers, and declared that we
could not escape the damnation of hell He
assailed our ruling classes, and at length the
struggle between him and US became SO fierce
that one or the other had to perish, and so
we secured his condemnation az the hands of
| Pontius PLATE, and he was cruciied as be
deserved TO be. He was an imposter, pre-
tending to be the Messiah foretold by Isaiah
and all the other prophets. We sup
posed there had been an end of the
heresy, and that there would be no
schism in our nation but strange to say, fifty
days after this company of ignorant and
vulgar peasants, in number not more than
| IZU, counting Tue women, nave gathered CO-
gether here in Jerusalem, and at length have
had the audacity to invade the sacred pre-
cincts of the temple itself, and declare that
they have received what they call the bap-
tism of the Holy Ghost; and not only that,
they are making converts-wresting them
from the true faith of Israel, and creating,
through their heIesy, schism dividing the
nation. They are not only doing this, but
they have the audacity to stand in the pres
ence of our rulers, these illiterate and I'M
trained fishermen, declaring that this Jesus
whom our rulers put to death was really the
Christ; and even here, in my own synagogue,
representing the most refined cultured,
wealthy and aristocratic Of the young Jews
of the dispersion-my synagogue. the one
that among the four hundred of Jerusalem
stands prominent man, jew by blood,
but a Greek by name (Stepbenl, has the
audacity TO come and attempt TO prove to rs
by the writings of Moses that this Galilean
| peasant was the very Christ, and OF course
we carried him to the Sanbedrim, and he
had the temerity to stand there and attempt
to prove to the priests, the lawyers and the
| rulers, out of our sacred scriptures, that this
| Jesus was the Christ OF course his doom
was sealed; and therefore l have had the
firmness to stand and witness this terrible
tragedy, at which my heart and blood re-
volted-and what else could L do! My
course is plain Myself resign the Roman
law and the forum I resign; all honors,
wealth and fame l give up; dedicate my