Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-03-31

My mental endowment is not large,
and the world would not rate me high
/ for my intelligence, and my vocabulary
| is limited, and my education was defect
| i've, but here goes what have for God
and salvation, and the making of the
! world good and happy He puts in
| word here and a word there, encourages
a faint-hearted man, gives a Scripture
| passage in consolation TO some bereft
woman, picks up child fallen In the
| street, and helps him brush of the
dust and puts a f1ve-cent piece in his
| hand, telling him not to cry, so that the
boy is singing before he gets round the
corner; waiting on everybody that has
| letter to carry or message to deliver;
comes into rail-train, or stage coach,
or depot, or shop with smiling face that
sets everybody to thinking, ''If that
man can with what appears small equip
| ment in life be happy, why cannot l,
possessing far more than he has, be
equally happy?' One day of that kind
of doing things may not amount to much,
but forty years of that-uo one but God
Himself can appreciate its immensely.
There are tens of thousands of such
people. Their circle of acquaintance is
small. The man is known over at the
store. He is clerk or weigher or dray-
sit near him clear back in the church
under the galleries, and at the ferry
gates where he comes in knocking the
snow from his shoes, and threshing his
arms around his body to revive circula-
ton, on some January morning. But if
he should die tomorrow there would
not be q hundred people who would
know about it. He will never have his
NAME IN THE NEWSPAPERS
but once, and that will u the announce
ment of his death, if some one will pay
for the insertion, so much a line for the
two lines. But he will come up glori-
ously on the other side, and the God
who mas watched him all through will
give him higher seat ana better man
sion and grander eternity than
many a man who had on
earth, before his name, the word honor
able, and after his name LII. D. and f.
R. S. Christ said in Luke, the sixth
chapter, that in heaven some who had
it hard here would laugh there. And 1
think q laugh of delight and congratu-
lation will run around the heavenly
circles when this humble one of whom
l spoke shall go p and take the pre-
cedence of many Christians who in this
world felt themselves to be of ninety
nine per cent. more Importance. The
whisper will go round the galleries of
the upper temple: "Can it be posi-
bic that that was the weigher in our
store?' ''Can it be possible that that
was the car driver on our street?''
lean it be possible that was the
sexton OF our ohurch?' 'fCan it be
possible that is the man that heaved
coal into our oellar?'' 81 never could
haye thought it. What a reversal Of
things! We were clear ahead of him on
earth, but he is clear ahead of US in
heaven. Why, we had ten times more
brain than he had, we had
thousand times moremoney than
he had, we had social posi-
innumerable opportunities more than he
had, but it seems now that he accom-
plished more with his one talent than we
did with our ten. - while Solomon, stand
ing among the thrones, overhears the
whisper, and sees the wOnderment, and
will, with binignant and all-suggestive
smile, says, eyes, it is as l told the
world many centuries ago-better issmall
faculty actively used than great talent
unemployed, better is living dog than
a dead lion.
The simple fact is that the world has
been and the world is now, full of dead
lions They are people of great capacity
and large opportunity, doing nothing for
the improvement Of society, nothing for
the overflow OF evil, nothing for the
salvation of souls. Some of them are
monetary lions They have accu-
INFLATED so many hundreds of
thousands Of dollars that you
can feel their tread when they walk
through any street or come into any cir
Gle. They can by one financial move up
set the money market. Instead of 10 per
cent. of their income which the Bible
lays down as the proper proportion of
their contribution to the cause of God,
they do not give per cent, or per
cent, or per cent. or l per cent, or
% per cent, or Il per cent. That they
are lions no one doubts. When they
roar Wall street, State street, Lombard
street and the Bourse tremble. In few
years
THEY WILL LIE DOWN AND DIE.
They will have great funeral, and a
ong row of fine carriages, and mightiest
requiems will roll from the organ, and
polished shaft of Aberdeen granite will
indicate where their dust lies, but for all
use to the world that man might as we'll
ave never lived. AS an experiment as
to how much he can carry with him, put
a ten-cent piece in the palm of his dead
hand, and five years after open the
tomb, and you will find that he has
dropped eVenthe ten-cent piece. A lion!
Yes, but dead lion! He left all his
treasures on earth, and has no treasures
in heaven. What shall the stone-cutter
nut upon the obelisk over him? I sug-
gest, let it be the man S name, then the
date of his death, then the appropriate.
Scripture passage, ''Better is a
living dog than a dead lion.'
But thank God that we are having
just now an outburst of splendid bcne-
ficence that is to increase until the earth
is girded with it. 1t is spreading with
the speed of an epidemic, but with just
the opposite effect of an epidemic. Do
you not notice how wealthy men are
opening free libraries, and building
churches in their native village? Have
you not seen how men of large means,
instead of leaving great philanthropies
N their wills for disappointed heirs to
OuarreI ahont and the OrDhan courts to