The Monitor-register., 1897-06-04

" "oOA Va sAO
worlds work has been done by men of
subtracted physical organization. S.. S.
Preston, the great orator of the south
west, went limping all his life, but
there was no foot put down upon any
platform of his day that resounded so far
as his clubfoot. Beethoven was SO deaf
that he could not hear the crash of the
orchestra rendering his oratorios. Thorn
as Carlyle, the dyspeptio martyr, was
given the commission to drive cant
out of the worlds literature. The Rev.
Thomas Stockton of Philadelphia, with
one lung raised his audience nearer heav-
en- than most ministers can raise them
with two lungs. In the banks, the insur-
ance companies, the commercial estab-
lishments, the ~reformatory associations,
the churches, there are tens OF thous-
ands of men and women today doubled
up with rheumatism or subject to the
neuralgias " with only fragments of
limbs, the rest of which they left at
| Chattanooga or South Mountain or the
| Wilderness, and they are worth more to
| the world, and more to the church, and
more to God than those of us who have
never SO much as had a finger joint
| stiffened by a felon.
i Put to full use all the faculties that
remain and charge on all opposing cir
| cumstances with the determination of
John of Bohemia, who was totally
blind, and yet at a battle cried out, II
pray and beseech you to lead me SO far
into the fight that l may strike one good
| blow with this sword of mine!" Do not
think so much of what faculties you
have lost as of what faculties remain.
You have enough left to make yourself
felt in three worlds, while you help the
earth and balk hell and win heaven.
Arise from your discouragements, o
men and women of depleted or crippled
physical faculties, and see what, by the
special help of God, you can accomplish
Alexander and Bucephalus.
The skilled horsemen stood around
Bucephalus, unable to mount or man.
age him, SO wild was the steed. But
Alexander noticed that the sight of his
own shadow seemed to disturb the
horse. So Alexander clutched him by
the bride and turned his head away
from the shadow and toward the sun,
and the horses agitation wa gone, and
Alexander mounted him and rode off,
to the establishment of all who stood
by. And what you people need is to
have your sight turned away from the
shadows of your earthly lot, over which
| you have so long pondered, and your
head turned toward the sun-the glori-
Gus sun of gospel consolation and Chris
tian hope and spiritual triumph.
And then remember that all physical
| disadvantages will after awhile vanish.
Let those who have been rheumatismed
out of a foot, or cataracted out Of an
eye, or by the perpetual roar of u cit
les thundered out of an ear, look for
| ward to the day when this old tenement
house of flesh will come down and a
| better one shall be builded. The resur-
rection morning will provide you with a
| better outfit. Either the unstrung,
| worn out, blunted and crippled organs
will be SO reconstructed that you will
not know them, or an entire new set of
eyes and ears and feet will be given
you. Just what it means by corruption
putting on interruption we do not
know, save that it will be glory ineffa-
BILE, no limping in heaven, no straining
of the eyesight to see things a little
way off, no putting of the hand behind
the ear to double the capacity of the
tympanum, but faculties perfect, all
the keys of the instrument attuned for
the sweep of the fingers of ecstasy. But
until that day of resumption comes let
us 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 a 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
p~enitentiary. 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
tltudes 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 feel compe-
tent. They W nothing to English
grammar, or geography, or bellies let
tres. They would not know a partici-
pie from a pronoun if they met it many
times a 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 a 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.
Ungrammatical, 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 layman in a former pastoral
charge that l even heard speak on reli-
gious themes could within five min
utes of e~xhortation 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
| would rather have him pray for me if
Iwere sick or in trouble than any Chris
tan 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 I 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 a word have 1 to say against &C.
curacy of speech or fine elecution or
high mental culture. Get all these you
can. But I 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
get up to the gate of heaven, no one
will ask you whether you can parse the
first chapter of Genesis. but whether