Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1898-09-21
SERMONS OF THE DAY


TEXT: David, after he had served his
own generation by the will of God, fell on
sleep.'-Acts xiii, 36.
That is "a text which has for long time
been running through my mind. Sermons
have a time to be born as we'll as time to
die; a cradle as well as grave. David,
cowboy and stone Singer, and fighter, and
dramatist, and blank-verse writer, and
prophet did his best for the people of his
time, and then went and laid down on the
southern hill OF Jerusalem in that sound
slumber which nothing but an archangelic
blast can startle. David, after he had
served his own generation by the will of
God, fell on Sleep" 1t was his own gen.
, GRAFTON that he had served; that is, the peo-
pie living at the time he lived. And have
you ever thought that our responsibilities
are chiefly with the people now walking
abreast OF us? There are about four genera
tlons to a century now, but In olden time,
life was longer, and there was, perhaps,
only one generation to century.
Taking these facts into the cal
culation, 1 make rough guess,
and say that there have been at least one
hundred and eighty generations of the
human family. With reference to them We
have no responsibility. We cannot teach
them, We cannot correct their mistakes,
we cannot soothe their sorrows, we cannot
heal their wounds. Their sepulchres are
deaf and dumb to anything we might saw
to them. The last regiment of that great
army has passed out of sight We might
halloO as loud as we could; not one of them
would avert his head to see what we
wanted. l admit that | am in sympathy
with the child whose father had suddenly
died, and who In her little evening prayer
wanted to continue to pray for her father
although he had gone into heaven, and no
more needed her prayers, and looking up
into her mothers face, said: "Oh, mother,
cannot leave him all out. Let me say,
thank God that had u good father once,
so l can keep him in my prayers"
But the one hundred aud eighty genera
! tions have passed OH. Passed up. Passed
down. Gone forever. Then there are gen
erations to come after our earthly exis-
| tence has ceased. We shall not see them;
we shall not hear any Of III .ir voices; we
will take no part in .heir conyocations,
| their elections, their revolutions, their
catastrophies, their triumphs. We will in
| no wise affect the $50 generations gone or
| the $50 generations to come, except as
| from the galleries Of heaven the former
generation : look down and rejoice at our
| victories. or we may, bv our behavior
start il hucnces, good or bad, that shall
roll on through the advancing ages. But
our business is, like David, to serve our
own gem ration, the people now living
those whosr lungs now brs athe, and whose
| hearts now beat. And, mark you, it is not
| q silent procession. but moving. 1t is a
'.forced march, at twenty four miles a
| day, each hour being a mile. Going witt
| that celebrity, it has got to be quick SER
vice on our part, or no service at all. We
not only cannot teach the $50 generations
| past AMI will not see the $50 generations
| to come. but this gt neration now on the
stage will soon be Off, and we ourselves
will be eff with them. TIE fact is, that you
and 1 will Lave to start very-soon for our
work, or it will be iIonical and sarcastic
| for anyone after our exit to say OF US, as it
n "a L., L. 4 II
own generation by the will of God, he fell
on sleep
Well now, let us look around earnestly,
Il prayeriully, in a commen-ScnSe way, and
! see what we can do for our own genera
tion. First of all, let US see to it that, as
far as we can, they have enough to eat
The human body is so constituted that
three times day the body needs food as
much as lamp needs oil, as much as a
locomotive needs fuel. To meet this want
God las girdled the earth with apple
orchards, orange groves wheat fields and
oceans full of fish, and prairies full of cat
tie. And notwithstanding this, will un-
dertake to say that the vast majority of
the human faulty are now suffering either
for lack OF food or the right kind of food.
Our civilization is all askew and God
only can set it right. Many OF the great
est estates of to- day have been built out of
the blood and bones of unrequited toll. In
olden times, for the building of forts and
towers, :he inhabitants of lspahan had 10
contribute 20 0OO skulls, and Bagdad 80, ,OJ0
human skulls, and that number of people
were compelled to furnish the skulls. But
these two contributions added together
made only 100000 skulls, while in the
tower of the worlds wealth anu
pomp have Eeen wrought the skele-
tons OF uncounted numbers of
the half-fed populations Of the earth
millions of skulls. Don't sit down at your
table with five or six courses of abundant
supply and think nothing Of that family in
the next street who would take any one of
those five courses between soup and al
mond nuts and feel they were in Heaven.
The Lack of the right kind of food is the
cau-e of much of the drunkenness. After
drinking what many of our grocers call
coffee, sweetened with what manv cali
sugar and eating what many Of our butch
ers call meat, and chewing what many OF
our bakers call bread, many OF the labor
ing class feel so miserable they are tempted
to put into their nasty pipes what the
tobacconist calls tobacco, or go into the
drinking saloons for what the rum sellers
call beer. Good coffee would do much in
driving out bad rum.
/ How can we serve our generation with
enough to eat? By sitting down Ia en-
broidered slippers and lounging back in an
! armchair, our mouth puckered up around
a Havana of the best brand, and through
clouds of luxuriant smoke reading about
| l:tical economy anu tHe ol
| strikes? No, mol By finding out who Ia
this city has been living on gristle, and
sending them a tenderloin beefsteak. Seek
! out some family, who through sickness or
I, conjunction of misfortunes have not enough
to eat, and do for them what Christ did for
the hungry muititudes of Asia Minor, null
tipIying the loaves and the fishes. Let us
Quit the surfeiting OF ourselves until we
cannot choke down another crumb OF cake,
and begin the supplies Of others necessi-
ties So lar from helping appease the
worlds hunger are those whom Isaiah de-
! scribes as grinding the faces of the poor.
!, You have seen n farmer or mechanic put
a scythe or an axe on a grindstone, while
some one was turning it round and rouna
and the man holding the axe bore on it
. harder and harder while the water dropped
from the grindstone and the edge of the
axe from being round and dull, got keener
and keener. So 1 have seen men who were
put up against the grindstone of hardship,
), and while one turned the crank, another
, would press the unfortunate harder down
and harder down until he was ground away
thinner and thinner-his comforts thinner,
I his prospects thinner and his face thinner.
And Isaiah shrieks out: what mean ye
that We grind tine faces of the poor?"
1t is an awful thing to DE hungry. 1t is
(; an easy thing for US to be In good humor
, with ali the world when We have no lack.
But let hunger take full possession of us
and we would ;.li turn into barbarians and
! cannibais and fiends. Suppose that some
, Of the energy we are expending in useless
and unavailing talk about the bread ques-
tion should be expended in merciful allie
yiations l have read that the Battlefield
on which more troops met than on any
other in the worlds history was the battle
field of Leipsic-160, 900 men under Ma
poleon, $50 900 men under Schwarzeberg
No, no! The greatest and most terrific
battle is now being fought all the worlt
over. 1t is the battle for bread. Ths
ground tone of the finest passage Of one o
the great musical masterpieces, the arts
says. was suggested to him by the cry o
ene hungry populace OF Vienna as the kin.
rode through and they shouted, BREAD
Give US breadp' And all through th
/ great harmonies OF musical academy an
cathedral I hear the pathos, the groun'
tone, the tragedy Of uncounted multi
tudes, who, with streaming eyes and wal
cheeks and broken hearts, in behalf o
J themselves and their families, are plead