The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1896-06-02

i swifter boat behind us as the stern re-
| solve came that I'VE had better die than
let the other fellow get ahead - In this
sympathy or spirit we greet the gallant
and better trained athletes OF the
present day. / stood on your baseball
field a year or two ago and watched
a man come to his home base. He did
/ not come on run; he shot himself in
| horizontally. How much such quick
/ ness and vigor of resolve is going to be
worth to a man in the hard places of
| lifel And yet who is it that has reach
| ed 40 or so years and has not seen fine
! athletic comrades, his equals or super
| Tors or the varied fields of youthful
| struggle, broken by every disease and
| swept away into the black stream iof
| premature death by vicious habit, by
drink and lust and incorporate eX-
| posure of every sort. just here Jesus
| Christ has a word of life for those who
came to him, leaving their confessed
faults behind and hearing the Master
saw $50, sin no more, lest a worse thing
come upon thee and by His grace in
purity and in temperance they see TO
| it that the worse thing never does
come upon them to the very end.
3. For the sake of the comfort of our
minds we go to Jesus Christ.
The bane of our Southern colleges
and universities is not unbelief.
The sentiment of our young men is
seasoned with respect for the plain
truths of the Bible. 1t is a state of
mind which has not come of itself, as
it were. Southern people were natur-
ally better, or as some might read 1T.
more credulous, than many of our
northeastern and northwestern con-
temporaries The strong prevailing
inclination towards evangelical truth
was, if not born, at least fostered into
it's present life by the stern expert
ences of battles, of camp, of hospitals
and of passion during the years of the
civil war. Man needed a practical
faith to lean on, when early their rod
of support was broken. And yet with
growing material prosperity unbeliey-
ing tendencies must need set in. Even
before this takes place, in large and
general way every educated young
mans mind is n seed bed for agnostic
and infidel creeds, until with the sweat
of his own brow, he has persisted ii out
with something better, with honest
convictions of the truth. 1t is a rare
state of mind in which to be when we
are obliged to lean on nature and on
human life. without fixed convictions
about God and heaven. Prof Ram
anes, the recently deceased evangelist
leader at Oxford University, said: I'm
belief had destroyed all the worth of
life" to him and that with the vir-
tual negation of God, the universe to
me has lost its soul of loveliness.' /
once saw this statement illustrated
before my own eyes in the case of
young man of skeptical views. He was
fellow passenger with me on the
Mediterranean not far from the coast of
Asia. | had noticed his fine but sad
face as he paced the deck one after
noon. Half an hour later, the steamer
was suddenly stopped and everybody
crowded to the deck rail. Out among
the waves | saw the sinking figure of
the same young man. He was brayely
saved by brave crew of Egyptian
sailors and in his statement the truth
came out. He was clerk in Alexan-
dria; his health failed; he was fearful
of losing his place; he had no hope in
God. he could go no where for help,
and in the agony of his doubt and
trouble he had thrown himself over
board. 1t is all very well when Iife's
sky is clear and its waters are smooth,
to hoist some little agnostic sail, but
when the storms beat fiercely we
want to be aboard some craft that has
engines of faith strong enough TO help
us off the rocks. The greatest poet of
our age, Robt Browning, has looked
into the very heart of the anxious
problems of these closing years of the
nineteenth century and he has declared
as the centre of his deep poetic philo-
sophy:
Il say that the acknowledgement of
God in Christ,
Accepted by the reason, solves for thee
All questions in the earth and out
of it."
Christ has, indeed, the word of life
for our minds. He says: II am the
way and the truth and the life; no
man cometh unto the father but by
me-" Having Him we have the key to
the understanding of the here and the
hereafter as far as their myteries need
to be unlocked for the present uses of
life. The solution of our varied prob
lens, as far as we must solve them, in
the first stage of our immortal exis-
tence, all pass through divine hands,
that out of infinite pity was pierced for
me and everybody.
4. For the sake of the satisfaction of
our feelings we go to Jesus Christ.
W y
feelings He does not sit in church
and weep when the minister tells about
sainted children and relates the glories
of heaven bursting upon the enrap-
tured vision of aged Christians. Thank
God for that! Drawn up as young men
are on the proud line of life's battle
field who that has himself a sound
mind wants them to stand with pocket
handkerchiefs against their eyes. But
touch them at the right place and see
if they have no feelings. Take the
Dragged athlete among you or the man
who, after his hard triumphant tug
with his examination paper, feels that
he is mathematics to the very base, or
touch him on the subject of his mother.
| Tell him that she is sick or sorrowful;
bring him a dispatch which says she
is dying" and see whether he has
| feelings There is reason for the af-
lection that tinglcs to the very end of
| his fingers. His mother has made
sacrifices for him.
Ever SINCE he had being, il he is sick
1.