The morning call., 1890-09-08
DEVOTIONAL EXERCISES.
A sermon on the Native Sons and Their
Inheritance.

A Sermon on the Native Sons and Their
Inheritance.
lue First Baptist Church, on Ediy street,
above Jones, was crowded to excess last
evening, The occasion being the services for
the Native Sons of the Golden West. The
auditorium was handsomely decorated with
flags, flowers and eyergrerns, over the pull
pit being the motto: 1850. Welcome \. 5.
q. W. 1880" Among the audience the nu-
merous siiken badges indicated large at
tendance of members of the order, nearly
all the city parlOrS and many country par
lors being represented A musical pro-
gramme of unusual excellence had been pre-
pared, including among the numbers two
solos by James G. Clark, the one preceding
tie sermon being, 1.-The Star of My Soul"
and after the sermon The Promised Land
Tomorrow
The pastor. Rev. ]. O. A. Henry, spoke
upon the theme, The Native Sons and
Their Inheritance" choosing for his text
First John iii: and 2. Behold what man
ner of love the Father hath bestowed on us
that we should be called the sons OF God"
AN ABLE DISCOURSE.
every anniversary" he said, sis mile
stone in the pathway of our existence.
Therefore as we approach the greatest ami
versary of the greatest event in the history
of the Golden State, we may well pause to
contemplate the measure and direction OF
our progress. Naught' treads so silent as
the foot of time. The pioneer puzzles his
brain in attempting to realize that forty
years have come and gone since the Oregon
entered the Golden Gale to announce, amid
wild enthusiasm and profound gratitude,
the admission of California into the Union.
That was a memorable day. We hail its
fortieth return with splendid celebration,
commensurate in dignity and splendOr
with the natal day we commemorate, as well
as the exceptional prosperity aud enduring
oh re h.,xra
the threshold of the last decade of our
jubilee, as well as of the century, with what
reason may we pause to indulge profit
able retrospect to rev ew the record made !;
mark well the bulwarks built; chronicle the
results achieved and shout a Brother,
half to workers from afar.
Two-FIFTHS OF A CENTURY
''Forty years What a magnificent season
of time do they constitute! TwO-fifths Of
the most wonderful century in all recorded
time. For intelligence and invention, faith
and fruitiulness, advancement and achieve
ment, fraternity and fortune, philanthropy
and piety, eyangeliZation and missionary
enterprise these forty years cover the grand
est period of all the world.
'With our commonwealth these have been
years of struggle and success. OF trial and
triumph, in which we have had baptisms
by fire and flood. Like all pioneers our
fathers were called upon to endure many
privatons, suffer many Inconvenience,
and hazard many hOpes. 1t has been
formative period, time IN WHICH new
civilization was being made and nodded; a
season of clearance and construction; days
of foundation work, in which our fathers
were engaged in what Lord Bacon calls the
heroic work of making nation How
grandly aud glor0usly they tOled the bless
ings we now enjoy do everywhere attest.
They builded more wisely than they knew,
and so,
A mighty State I'm grandeur grew.
THE PROVINCE OF THE PREACHER.
"But 1t is not the province OF the preacher
to pronounce a panegyric upon people OF,
or the prosperity and peace since,
The days OF old, the days OF gold. the days OF AZ
" His mission and message are rather o
trace the presence, prominence and power
of him that rules the illimitabie world, nat
guides its motions, from the brightest star
10 the least dust of this sin tainted fold.
God Is King of the world. In him fe live
and move aud have our being. HislSover-
eign hand is our individual and national
life. Christianity constructs, cor'ects, con-
serves and completes character. This
country was born in the lap OF devotion
Its institutions are essentially Christian. and
in this fact is found their glory and the
promise Of peace and perpetuity. Never did
the gospel have such proportiogate power in
our national life as to-day. Yhe present is
no time to decry.. ignore or fon get God. whose
is the earth and all the fitness thereof.
The gospel of Christ iS the mightiest