The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1892-12-29
THE CHRIST.
REAUr1FUL AND ELOQUENT SERMON
BY A GIFTED PREACHER.
Full Text Of the Discourse OF Mr.. 4. III
Wheelock Before the Unitarian congre-
gregation Of Austin on Christmas Day
"A Highly Apreciative Audience.

AuSCln, lex, Oh yesterday
day:
Peace on earth, good will to men."-Luke IL ID
The career of Christ the worlds
enigma. Men see him as through
haze, and identify him not with relig :
ion, but with Righteousness. Hence
His service has become ceremony.
Yet men see, too when they cease TO
be priest ridden that whatever there
was large and lofty in Him was akin
on the higher plane to all that is upon
the lower plane of common, daily
working life. He earned His bread,
even from childhood. He toiled
through youth with saw and ham
mer. at home He helped to nurse
the younger children of Mother
Mary, washed their clothes, assisted
in the cookery, turned His hand to
any of the domestic needs. 1t is tri-
files, carefully gathered and utilized,
that make the comforts OF poor
mans home. From a hard working,
painstakiug, industrious and careful
boy, He grew little by little as silent,
thoughtful and energetic youth. and
finally as working man, one OF the
toiling masses.
OF schooling He had none. In
books He was not versed. Philoso-
phy or science He did not know, An
humble laboreT, He had no leisure for
study. Literature was not within His
reach. There came no help to Him
from rabbi or scribe. His only cult
ure was that of the spirit. The uni
verse was His school room; all life con-
tributed to His lessons; the changing
aspects of nature, the great calm pres
ence and beauty of creation, the rising
and the setting sun, the waving corn
and the lilies of the field. To the open
soul, the school of nature and the still,
small voice of the spirit are enough.
He stands on His own feet and is His
own university.
| The contents OF box of tools
ere more to him than a the schools.
All that me wrought in stately Greece and
Rome
home.
This child planned better than the widows son
Who reared the palace of King Solomon"
Born as the child of Israel, son of
David, an atom in the hard mass OF
the hardest, narrowest of all earthly
people,
HE OUTGREw THE PRECEPTS
of the elders, the visions of their seers
and the wisdom of their Mosaic law.
His sympathies enlarged and His hori-
zon widtned until He was re- born as
the child of Universal mankind or the
"Son of Man No longer mere He
brew, He became the brother of each
man of whatever nation or race. His
life grew to be world wide, as if the
blood of the whole human race was in
His veins, which indeed spiritually 1t
is. He loved man until private at
tachments. family ties, the bonds of
people and nation expanded iuto a
philanthropy which embraced all.
even to the unhappy ones who, con
tinuing in the evolution of evil, sink
after death into the under world for
discipline. instruction, experience and
final publication.
To conquer the world by loving it
with love stronger than its hate, to
find his life by losing it, to be blessed
by renouncing all earthly comfort,
pleasure and happiness, this seemed
to him the only life that true man
could lead. He touched the stops on
the keyboard of his own heart, until
the world itself became the organ
pipe, and the whole vast breath of
mankind the wind that blew
through it.
At an age when the boy does not
vet waken to the realities of life, when
the world is still to him a pleasure
and playground, there foated over
Mary's child the ideal of
WHAT MAN SHOULD BE.
The burden of the work which He
came into the world to do began to
press upon him when, at IL years old
he was found after three days alb
sence, talking in the temple with the
rabbis and sages of Judea. That con
versation with pedants, Journalists and
mouldy theologians awoke the intel
llgence which was to fertilize tire
spiritual life of mankind to the end Of
time.
He had no fellowship with
ism ism of hi, countrymen. He
could not hate the Roman, and could
not have shed drop of Roman blood
in anger, though the success of all His
life work had turned upon it. Hi.
delight was in Notwithstanding
forth upon the common heart, in be-
altitude and parable, the gentle inspir
: ations of his being; in discoursins
, with Samaritan heretics of the true
divine worship that could not be 10
Called at jerusalem or elsewhere, bu
rises to the Infinite from every spot
where there is heart to offer it il
spirit and in truth; in sitting famil-
iarly at the table with tramps. anC
felons, and fallen women, and al
kinds of friendless, scorned and out
, cast people; blessing little children
and unfolding the theology of thu
lilies of the field and ths fov Is of the
air.
He who had never known scholar
) ship or culture, and who wrote M
word except on the sand, dwelt in thu
sunlight of heavenly ideas until they
became to Him the only real things 0
life, and outward nature was but
GALLERY OF HINTS,
/ symbols and pictures of the fin'
intuitions OF reason and the ricl
inspirations of God. He did not dis
: join himself from the universal minC
by any pettiness, obliquity, or elf