Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1897-05-31

until that day of resumption comes let
as bear each others burdens and so full
fill the law of Christ
Another form of disadvantage under
which many labor is lack of early edu-
cation. There will be no excuse for ig-
norance in the next generation. Free
schools and illimitable opportunity of
education will make ignorance crime.
I believe in compulsory education, and
those parents who neglect to put their
children under educational advantages
have but one right left, and that is the
penitentiary. But there are multitudes
of men and women in midlife who have
had no opportunity. Free schools had
not yet been established, and vast null
titudes had little or no school at all
They feel it when as Christian men
they come to speak or pray in religious
assemblies Or public occasions, patriotic
or political or educational. They are
silent because they do not seel compe-
tent. They owe nothing to English
grammar, Or geography, or bellies let
tres. They would not know partici-
pie from pronoun if they met it many
times day. Many of the most success
full merchants of America and men in
high political places cannot write an
accurate letter on any theme. They are
completely dependent upon clerks, and
deputies, and stenographers, to make
things right I knew literary man
who in other years in this city made
his fortune by writing speeches for con-
gressmen Or fixing them up for The
Congressional Record after they were
delivered. The millionaire illiteracy of
this country is beyond measurement.
Unxrammatical, but Effective.
Now, suppose a man finds himself in
midlife without education, what is he
to do? Do the best he can. The most eff
fective Iayman in a former pastoral
charge that ever heard speak on reli-
gious themes could within five min
utes of exhortation break all the laws
of English grammar, and if he left any
law unfractured he would complete the
work of lingual devastation in the
prayer with which he followed it. But
I would rather have him pray for me if
Iwere sick or in trouble than any Chris
tian man know of, and in that church
all the people preferred him in exhorta-
ton and prayer to all Others Why? Be-
cause he was so thoroughly pious and
had such power with God he was ire
sistible, and as he went on in his pray
er sinners repented and saints shouted
for joy, and the bereaved seemed to get
back their dead in celestial companion
ship. And when he had stopped praying
and as soon as / could wipe out of my
eyes enough tears to see the closing
hymn ended the meeting, fearful that
some long winded prayer meeting bore
would pull US down from the seventh
heaven.
Not word have to say against ac-
curacy of speech or fine elecution or
high mental culture. Get all these you
can. But do say to those who were
brought up in the day of poor school
houses and ignorant schoolmasters and
no opportunity: You may have SO much
of good in your soul and so much of
heaven in your everyday life that you
will be mightier for good than any who
went through the curriculum of Har-
ward or Yale or Oxford, yet never grad
uated in the school of Christ. When you
will ask you whether you can parse the
first chapter of Genesis, but whether
you have learned the fear of the Lord,
which is the beginning of wisdom, nor
whether you know how to square the
circle, but whether you have lived a
square life in round world. Mount
Zion is higher than Mount Parnassus.
But what other multitudes there are
under other disadvantages! Here is a
Christian woman whose husband thinks
religion a sham, and while the wife
prays the children one way the husband
swears them another. Or here is a
Christian man who is trying to do his
best for God and the church, and his
wife holds him back and says on the
way home from prayer meeting, where
he gave testimony for Christ: ''What a
fool you made of yourself! I hope here
after you will keep still. - And when
he would be benevolent and give $50
she criticises him for not giving 80
cents. I must do justice and publicly
thank God that I never proposed at
home to give anything for any cause of
humanity Or religion but the other part
ner in the domestic firm approved it,
and when it seemed beyond my ability
and faith in God was necessary she had
three fourths the faith. But I know
men who, when they contribute to char
liable objects, are afraid that the wife
shall find it out. What whitening
curse such woman must be to a good
mani
Then there are others under the great
4 &c -
get things cheapest? You say those who
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