The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1897-10-22

supernal society if 1 could reach it?" /
him you would. 1 know you would.
I remember hat in the husking time
there was a great equality Of feeling
among the neighbors. There at one
corn shock a farmer would be at work
who owned 200 acres Of ground. The
man whom he was talking with at the
next corr shock owned but 80 acres
Of ground, and perhaps all covered by
a mortgage. That evening at the close
Of the husking day one man drove home
a Dan pan SO risky, SO full Of life,
they got their feet yer the traces. The
other man walked home. Great differ
ence in education, great difference in
worldly means. but I notice at the
husking time they all seemed to enjoy
each others society. They did not ask
any man how much property he owned
or what his education had been. They
all seemed to be happy together in
those good times.
A PICTURE OF HEAVEN.
And so it will be in heaven. Our
Father will gather his children around
him, and the neighbors will come in
and the past will be rehearsed. And
some one will tell OF victory, and we
will all celebrate it. And some one will
tell of great struggle. and we will all
praise the grace that fetched him out Of
it. And some one will say: Here is
my old father that I put away with
heartbreak. Just look at him. He is
as young as any of U.s." And some will
say: Here is my darling child, that I
buried in Greenwood, and all the after
years Of my life were Swallowed with
desolation. Just look at her! She
doesn't seem as if she had been sick a
minute" Great sociality. Great neigh
borhood kindness.
What though John Milton sit down
on one side and John Howard sit down
on the other side. No embarrassment.
What though Charlotte Elizabeth sit
down On one side and Hannah More sit
down on the other side? Nc embar-
rassment. A monarch yourself, why be
embarrassed among mOnarchs? A
songster yourself, why be embarrassed
amid gloriied songsters? Go in and
dine.
ALI the shocks of corn coming in in
their season. Oh, yes, in their season.
Not one Of you having died too soon, or
having died too late, or having died at
haphazard. Planted at just the right
time. Plowed at just the right time.
Cut down at just the right time. Husk-
ed at. just the right time. Garnered at
just the right time. Coming in in your
season.
OuS L "1SA CAdl liz In VI OuSA
els of corn now in the fields or on the
way to the seaboard might be a type of
h grand yield OF honor and glory and
immortality when all the shocks come
in!
I do not know how you are consti-
tuted, but I am so constituted that
there is nothing that so awakens remin-
iscences in me as the doors OF a. corn
field when I cross it at this time of year
after the corn has been cut and it stands
in shocks. And so I have thought it
might be practically useful for us to-
day to cross the cornfield, AND I have
thought perhaps there might be some
r-emininiscence reused in our soul that
might be salutary and might be saving.
In Sweden a prima donna, while her
house in the city was being re-
paired, took q house in the country for
temporary residence, n she brought
out her great array Of jewels to show
a friend who wished to Sc them. One
night after displaying these jewels and
leaving them on the table, n all her
friends had gone, and the servants had
gone-one summer night-she a
thinking and looking into a mirror just
in front of her chair, when she saw in
that mirror the yace Of a rObber look
ing in at the window behind her and
gazing at those jewels. She was in
great fright, III sat still, and hardly
knowing why she did * h began to
sing an old nursery song, her fears
making the pathcs Of the song more
telling.
Suddenly she noticed while looking
at the mirror that the robbers face lid
gone from the window, n it did not
come back. A few days after the prima
donna received a letter from the rob
Der, saying, II heard that the Jewels
were to be out that night, and I came
to take them at whatever hazard, but
When I heard you sing that nursery
song with which my mother so often
sang me to sleep I could not stand it
and I fled, and I have resolved upon a
new and an honest life"
Oh, my friends, there are jewels in
peril richer thar those which lay upon
that table lat night. They are the
jewels of the immortal soul. Would
God that some song rolling VI out of
the deserted nursery Of your childhood
or some ong rolling up out Of the corn
fields, the song Of the huskers twenty
or forty years ago, might turn all our
feet u of the paths of sin into the
paths OF righteousness. Would God
that those memories waited in odor or
song might start US this moment with
swift feet toward that blessed place
where so many Of our loved ones have
already preceded us, "as a shock OF
corn cometh in in his season."
It is a mistaken idea that a cough