The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1895-09-15
AN ELooUENT pERoRATIoN.

Allusion was made yesterday to the
sermon on "a Gall to Work" by the late
Rev. Dr. Chas. Fl. Hall at Chapel Hill in
June, 1886. The paroration of that ser
mon will long be remembered by all
who heard it. The readers Of Sundays
NEWS AND OBSERVER could hear no ser
mon better than its closing words, which
are as follows;
When the century has gone by, many
of us, nay, all of US, will be ghosts and
mere names on the lips of other men.
can fancy myself then standing on
the dome of Mount Mitchell, and hear
ing again what I once heard with de
lighted awe.
A party of us had toiled to its mighty
top, and stood together there as the sun
went down in the west and the unclouded
full moon rose all beautiful in the east.
That lonely grave of the pious and noble
discoverer gave a solemn feeling, suited
to the place and hour.
The sea of mountain tops lay before Us.
The symmetrical Roam shaded gracefully
away from is rosy hue to a darker love.
liress. and the monster Craggy seemed
to bear witness to the old geologic periods
when its great gashes had been made bt
the Creator, as if to defy the storms OF
all historic ages, and q deepening dark
began to hide partly the Smokes and
Balsam ranges. The wind had been
murmurirg in the hemlocks around the
party. silent and awed by the scene and
by the thought of standing on the loftlesi
peak of this eastern side OF the continent
Suddenly and unnoticed the murmur.
ing b .eeze ceased, and strange sound,
that was hardly a sound, came to us
from no one spot or on no one line OF
bearing. 1t became a ghost of muir
muir, and slowly increased, with curious
lack of any one direction, coming from
no one place. l can hardly describe it.
[ thought of Elijah in his lonely cave
mouth on Horeb, when the God OF his
father came to him, not in the storm OF
earthquake, but, as the Hebrew puts II
in the Kol dana, the voice of silence; or,
as we now read 1t, the still sna0tI U0fce
Our sound was the resultant OF ali
the thousand water falls. of all the brooks
and rivulets of the abysses b3tween us
and the Craggy; no one of them able to
be heard alone, bat all together making
the weird evening hymn above the
grave of the good man who
had fallen in one of them, tie
baptismal gate to heaven. When weshall
stand there century hence, the same
hymn of nature will keep up its cease
less Ter sanctus, and then another hymn
will also be heard, of the myriad homes,
the countless cottages, the numberless
churches and schools that will tell how
men as well as nature ever join the
song of the ages: Great and wonder
ful are thy works, o God Of Nature !!
Loved aud honored thy Baatitudesl o.
Lamb, slain from the foundation of the
world, ever teaching Us that our true
work is always thine" to labor where
Thou hast put us. Thy real lesson al
ways to 'lezrn TO labor and to wait. !"
In anticipation of the times when the
Master shall send his Steward to call us
TO His reckoning, when each true man
shall receive his denariUS his days
wage for his days york-,et Us now do
our part in the faith Of a great future
for our children after we are gone
great future for US all, when at the last,
the mountain sepulchre shall be opened,
and t1e stone rolled away from il, and
from every sleeping place Of The sons OF
God.