The Penn's Grove record., 1889-06-29
PENIS GROVE. N. j.. SATURDAY. JUNE 20. 1889.

"When it is evening We say it will be
fair weather, for the sky is red, and in
the morning it will be foul weather to-
day. for the sky is red and lowering. o
We hypocrites, We can discern the face OF
the sky but we cannot discern the signs
of the times?" By day, as every boy
has done, He watched the barnyardfowl
at sight of overswinging hawk, cluck
her chickens under wing, and in after
years He said: 80 Jerusalem, jerusalem
how often would I have gatheredth thee as
a hen gathereth her chickens under her
wing!" By night He had noticed His
mother by the plain candle-light, which,
as ever and anon it was snuffed and the
removed wick put down on the candle-
stick, beamed brightly through all the
family sitting-room, as His mother was
mendlng His garments, that had been
torn during the day swanderingsamong
the rocks or bushes, and years after
ward
IT CANE U IN THE SMILE
of the greatest sermon ever preached:
'sNeither do men light a candle and put
it under n bushel, but in a camdlestick,
and it giveth light to all who are in the
house. Let your light so shine" Some
time, when His mother in the autumn
took out the clothes that had been put
away for the summer, he noticed how
the moth miller flew out and the coat
dropped apart, ruined and useless, and
so, twenty years after, he enjoined:
clay up for yourselves treasures in
heaven, where neither moss nor rust can
corrupt" His boyhood spent among
birds and flowers, they caroled and
bloomed again fifteen years after, as He
cries out: ''Behold the fowls Of the
air." Consider the lilies"
A great storm one day, during bhrist's
boyhood, blackened the heavens and
angered the rivers. Perhaps, standing
in the door of the carpenters shop, He
watched it gathering louder and wilder,
until two cyclones, n sweeping down
from Mount Tabor and the other from
Mount Carmel, met in the valley of Es-
draelon, and two houses are caught IN
the fury, and crash goes the one and
triumphant stands the other, and He
noticed that one had shifting sand for a
foundation and the other an eternal
rock for basis; and twenty years after,
He built the whole scene into a perora-
ton of food and whirlwind, that seized
His audience and lifted them into the
heights of sublimity with the two great
arms of pathos and terror.
Yes, from the naturalness, the sim
.plicity, the freshness of his parallels and
SMILES and metaphors in discourse, l
know that he had been
BOY OF THE FIELDS
and had bathed in tie streams, and
heard the nightingale's call, and broken
through the fiowery hedge, and looked
out of the embrasures of the fortress,
and drank from the wells, and chased
the butterflies, which travellers say have
always been n of the fitting beauties
of that landscape, and talked with the
strange people from Damascus and
Egypt and S%apphoris and Syria, who in
caravans or on foot passed through his
neighborhood, the dogs barking at their
approach at shutdown. As afterward He
was a perfect man, in the time Of which
l speak he was a perfect boy, with the
spring of a boys foot the sparkle of a
boys eye, the rebound Of a boys life,
and Just the opposite of those juveniles
who sit around morbid, and unelastic,
old men at ten. | want no further in
spired or uninspired information to per-
suade me that He was a splendid boy, a
radiant boy, the grandest, hottest,
mightiest boy of all ages. Hence I
commend Him as a boys Christ. What
multitudes between ten and fifteen
years have found Him out as the one
just suited by His W personal exper-
fence to help any boy!
Let the world look ont how it treads
on a boy, Tor at that very moment
7 THREADS ON HRIsT.
You strike a boy, you strike Christ you
insult a boy, you insult Christ; you
cheat a boy, you cheat Christ. 1t is an
awful and infinite mistake to come as
far as manhood without a Christ when
here is a boy Christ. That was onerea
son, l suppose, that Jonathan Edwards,
afterwards the greatest American logi-
clan and preacher of his time, became a
Christian at seven years OF age; and
Robert Hall, who afterward shook
Christendom with his sacred ~eloquence,
became a Christian at twelve years of
age; and Isaac Watts, who divided with
Charles Wesley the dominion of holy
song, became a Christian at nine years
of age; and if in any large religious
assemblage it were asked that all the
men and women who learned to love
Christ before they were fifteen years of
age would please lift their right hand,
there would be enough hands lifted to
a coronation. What is true in a
religious sense is
TRUE IN A SECULAR SENSE,
Themistocles amazed his scho~ol-fellows
with talents which in after years made
the world stare. Isaac Newton, the boy,
by driving pegs in the side OF ahouse to
mark the decline of the sun, evidenced
a disposition towards the experiments
which afterwards showed the nations
how the worlds swing. Robert Stephen
son, the boy, with his kite on the COM
mons experimental with electric cur
rents and prophesied work which should
vet make him immortal. sect ont of
my wayi" said a rough man to boy,
''get out of my way! what are you good
for, anyhow" The boy answered;
''They make men out of such things as
We are" Hear it, fathers, mothersl
hear it philanthropists and patriots:
hear it, all the youngl The temporal
and eternal destiny of the most ofthein
habitants of this earth is decided before
fourteen years Of age. Behold the
Nazareth Christ, the country Christ, the
boy Christ.
But having shown you the divine lad
in the fields, / must show you Him in
the mechanics shop. Joseph, %hisfather,
died very early, Immediately after the
trip to the temple, and this lad
had not only to support Himself, but
support His mother, and what that is
some of you know. There is
ROYAL RACE OF BOYS
on earth now doing the same thing.
They wear no crown. They have no
purple robe adroop from their shout
ders. The plain chair on whichthey sit
is as much unlike a throne as anything