The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1891-05-28
MEMORIAL SERVICES.
Rey. w. j. Warner breaches an
Eloquent Sermon at the Con-
= CPS grGgatiOnaI Church.

| IT,
Pursuant to announcement in the
columns of the UNION, the members of
the Gen. Sherman Post, G.. A. r., the
Sons of Veterans and Woman's Relief
Corps were out in force at the Congre-
gational church last Sunday morning.
The church had been handsomely dec
GRATED by the ladies on the previous
day. The music was excellent. Rev.
w. j. Warner preached an eloquent
and impressive sermon. Subjoined is
a good synopsis of the reverend gentle
mans discourse.
THE SERMON.
1t is expedent for us that one die for the peo-
pie, and that the whole nation perish not-John
XII, 50.
The story of our Savior's atoning
death may be fittingly used to call to
mind the story of those who laid down
their lives in our nations defense.
But the principle of sacrifice for sin
is revealed in the history of nations, as
truly as in the record of Gods dealings
with man. Great national sins have
been wiped out only at the cost of the
nations best blood.
We have met to-day to revive the
memory of those whose lives we're
given as the nations sacrifice for the
sin OF slavery. No words of mine can
pay the tribute due those heroes whose
lives paid the penalty of our nations
sin, and whose valor secured for US the
nations glory and fame. But the very
least we can do is to pause in the midst
OF this spring time to say, we are CRATE
full to the preservers of our country.
Grateful to the dead, and grateful to
the surviving soldier. .
AS we pause this morning, by the
graves of our sleeping warriors, and as
we look into the faces of those whose
| crippled limbs and bowed forms tell of
the fearful cost of war, are we inclined
to say it cost too much? How little we
know of values when human lives and
their higher interests are involved.
God knows the enormity of sin, and it's
fearful cost, when unchecked it has
sway to destroy character and life itself.
Those early Cos were dark days, days
that tried mems souls, days that re-
vealed treacherous hearts, and stamped
''coward' upon the brow of men who
tried to dodge the issue of the hour.
Jan. 8, 81, the first gun was fired. The
battery on Morris Island fired on the
''Star of the West,'' a boat that had
been loaded with men and supplies for
Fort Sumter. Three months later Fort
Sumter WAS taken. Little did the
nation know, either north or south,
what this war cloud the ''size of mans
hand" meant. Had they seen the end
from the beginning, what heart would
| have been stout enough to have gone
on? Years of agitation had prepared
the people of the north to take desper-
ate measures if necessary to check the
spread of slavery. They had not fol-
lowed ''Uncle Tom'' through the roman
| tic vicisitudes of his life without feel
ing most keenly that a black man has a
soul and that some white men were
soulless.
"Uncle Tom's'' three masters, Mr..
Shelby a christian gentleman, kind and
gentle, but forced by financial straights
to do a most cruel thing in selling
Uncle Tom' to be torn away from his
| wife and children; St. Clare, the in
dulgent master whose child Eva could
! never be made to understand that the
slaves were not to be loved, but who
died and left ''Tom" to be sold to the
heartless master, Simon Legree. These
three masters were types that gave to
the north a view of slavery which was
little less than a revelation. Then as
the reader followed with bated breath
the flight of Eliza Harris with her boy,
over the river on floating ice, on by the
underground railway, helped by a
southern senator, by Quakers, and by
many others whose hearts were too
kind to allow them to be made blood
hounds of for the use of southern slave
owners, on to the place of safety in
Canada, as the book was finished the
people of the north rose up from their
reading with their blood boiling with
righteous Indignation and they were
ready to do something more than vote
If necessary that the scourge of slavery
spread no further. Love of liberty has
been one of the strongest passions in the
human breast.
The yoke of slavery has always rested
on unwilling shoulders, and libertylov-
ing spirits among the enslaved have
always been stirring up rebellion, pre-
ferring death in resistance to life in
bondage. But while the historic page
abounds in the records Of the enslaved
trying to deliver themselves, where
shall we 60 to find the story of another
such war as ours in which a free and