Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1883-04-14
SUNDAY EASY CHAIR.
Introspection.

lntrospection.
lis is good thing sometimes to be alone,
Sit calmly down and look self in the face,
Ransack the heart search every secret place,
Prayerful uproot the baneful seeds there thrown
Pluck out the weeds ere the full crop is grown.
Grid up the loins afresh TO run the race,
Foster all noble thoughts, cast out the base,
Thrust forth the bad and make the good thine own.
Who has the courage thus to look within,
Keep faithful watch and ward with inner eyes,
! The foe may harass, but meier surprise,
Or over him ignobe conquest win.
On doubt it not, if you w5uldst wear the crown,
Self baser self, must first be tramped down.
John Acklam.
The kind of life usually led by ministers
is beyond question the most efficient anti
dote to money making spirit that our
society knows. The minister is often the
one man in his circle who stands for come.
tting higher than mere getting. We know
well enough that there are divers kinds of
men in the ministry. There are those who
go about seeking fat pastures for the shep-
herd, and those who speculate in some
thing besides metaphysics, and there are
clerical sponges. 1t is impossible that any
profession should fail to get it's share Of
men who fall below the standard of their
calling. Bat, speaking generally, the
Christian ministry setssup lighthouse in
each community by giving to it man
whose life indicates that there are other
ends OF living than the gross one of getting
and keeping. Century Magazine.
When we calmly ponder upon the SUBJ
ject it is amazing that at the end of many
thousands of years of constant worship
and constant inquiry, the human race
should still possess SO little information
about the Maker. The soliloquy of Job
that the footprints of God are In the sea,
and are therefore easily erased and not to
be followed by man as they could be were
they made in the land or even in the
perishable snow, is the soliloquy of even
this far-off period, and hearts the most
devout often wish that the footprints of
the Heavenly Father were made where the
eye, even when blinded by tears, might
discover them and run along that bright
way with gladness. Books have APP
peared upon the Footprints of a Gre
ator," and yet after all such books have
been published and read, the mind falls
back again into it's old longing for some
more perfect evidence of the existence and
presence and sympathy of God. The fact
that our race has lived and inquired and
struggle so long over the perfect solution
of this problem, and stands to day in the
same cloud as that which lay around the
mind and soul of antiquity, may well lead
us to assume that there is something so IN.
measurable in the Being of God that the
human mind will always be kept away
from perfect solution of this mystery
david Swing.
In prize essay on the Sabbath, written
by journeyman printer in Scotland, there
occurs the following striking passage
"Yoke.fellows think how the abstraction
of the Sabbath would hopefessly enslave
the working classes with whom we are
identified Think of the labor thus going
on in one monotonous and continuous and
eternal circle-limbs forever on the rack,
the fingers forever plying, the eyeballs for
ever straining, the brow forever sweating,
the feet forever plodding, the brain forever
throbbing, the shoulders forever dropping,
the loins forever aching, and the restless
mind forever scheming Think of the
beauty it would efface, of the merry-heart-
edness it would extinguisb, of the giant
strength it would tame, of the resources of
nature it would exhaust, of the aspirations
IL would crush, OF Lne SICKNESS III would
breed, of the projects it would wreck, of
the groans it would extort, of the lives it
would immediate, of the cherries graves it
would prematurely dig See them toiIing
and moiling, sweating and fretting, grind
ing and hewing, weaving and spinning,
sowing and gathering, moving and reap
ing, raising and building, digging and
planting, unloading and storing, striving
and struggling-in the garden and in the
field, in the granary and in the barn, in
the factory and in the mill, in the ware
house and in the shop, on the mountain
and in the ditch, on the roadside and in the
wood, in the city and In the country, on
the sea and on the shore, on the earth in
days of brightness and of gloom. What a
sad picture would the world present if we
had no Sabbath