Herald and news. [volume] (West Randolph, Vt.) 1878-1943, 1894-08-09
LIFE +
Rev. L
Que
ar The
~
Life for God. Life FOR otnse, :.
of Unselfishness. a Useful Life. Chris
tian Life, is Always Worth
Living The True Value
of Existence.

Worth Living" the text being
taken from Lamentations iii. 10.
Wherefore doth a living man com.
alain?n
II we leave to the evolutionist to
guess where we came from and to the
theologians to prophecy where we are
going to, we still have left for consid-
Grafton the important fact that we are
here. There may be some doubt about
where the river rises and some doubt
about where the river empties, but
there can be no doubt about the fact
that we sailing on. So | am not sur
prised that everybody asks the cues
ton, rs life worth living?"
Solomon in his unhappy moments
says it is not. Vanity .'Vexation of
spirit mo good" are his estimate
The fact is that Solomon was at one time
apolygamist, and that soured his dispo-
sition, One wife makes a happy man:
more than one makes him wretched.
But Solomon was converted from po-
lvgamy to monogamy, and the last
words he ever wrote, as far as we can
read them, We're the words, mountains
Of spices" But jeremiah says in my
text life is worth living.
In book supposed to be doleful, and
lugubrious, and sepulchral, and en-
titled Lamentations, he plainly iuti-
mates that the blessing of merely liv-
ing is so great and grand blessing
that though a man have piled on him
all misfortunes and disasters he has
no right to complain. The author of
my next text cries out in startling in
tonation to all lands and to all CEN
turtles: Wherefore doth living man
complain?' A diversity of opinion in
our time as well as in olden time. Here
is young man of light hair, and blue
eyes, and sound digestion, and gen
erous salary, and happily affianced, and
on the way to become a partner in
commercial firm of which he is an inn
portant clerk. Ask him whether life is
worth living. He win laugh in your
face ane say; YES, yes, yesm He is
man who has come to the forties. He
is at the tip-top of the hill of life.
Every step has been stumble and
turned out deserters and the money he
has honestly made he has been cheated
ont of. His nerves are out of tune. He
has poor appetite, and all the food he
does eat does not assimilate. Forty
miles climbing up the hill of life has
been to him like climbing the Matter
horn. and there are forty miles yet to
4 10 al
dangerous than ascent Ask him |
whether life is worth living and he will |
drawl out in shivering and lugubrious |
and appalling negative: NO, no, MOI"
How are we to decide this matter |
and intelligently? You |
will find the same man vacillating. os-
cllating in his opinion from detection |
10 exuberance, and if he be very mer-
curial in mis- temperament it will de-
pend very much upon which way the
wind blows. If the wind blow from
the northwest and You ask him, he will
say. "Yes;" and If it blow from the
rtheast and YOU ask him, he will say
NO" How are we then to get the
question righteously answered? Sup
pose we call all nations together in a
great convention on eastern or western
hemisphere and let all those who are
in the affirmative say AYE and all
those who are in the ne gative say mo. "
There would be hundreds of thousands
who would answer in the affirmative,
there would be more millions who
would answer in the negative, and be-
cause of the greater number who have
sorrow and misfortune and trouble the
noes would have it. The answer |
shall give will be different from either,
and yet it will comm end itself to all
who hear me this day as the right an
,wer. If you ask me, SIS life worth
vingq" answer it all depends upon
the kind of life you live.
In the first place. remark, that a
life of mere money-getting is always
failure, because you will never get as
much as you went. The poorest people
4 this country are the ric hest, and |
lext to them those who are half as rich.
There is not scissors-grinder on the
treets of New York or Brooklyn who
S so anxious to make money as these
uen who have piled up fortunes year
Ifter year in storehouses. in govern
nent securities, in tenement houses, in
Whole city blocks. You ought to see
hem jump when they hear the fire-bell
ing, You ought to see them in their
when some bank explodes.
lou ought TO see their agitation when E
here is proposed refor nation in the
arif. Their nerves tremble like harp
trings, but no music in the vibration
hey read the reports from Wall street
q the morning with concernment
hat threatens paralysis or apoplexy, 7
r more probably, they have tele- 9
raph or telephone in their own 9
ouse, so they catch every breath OF 4
hange in the money market. The dis P
ase Of accumulation has eaten into d
hem-eaten into their heart. into their y
lngs, into their spleen, into their liver, ?
ito their bones.
Charoie4s Hara sarr,afirnee aualVZed y