The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-02-14

and roar and then the hands start around
very rapidly. and then the clock strikes
five or ten, or forty and strikes with
out any sense, and then suddenly stops Sa
! is the body of that worn-out business man.
II is a neglected clock. and though BY some
summer recreation it may be wound up,
still the machinery Is all out of gear. The
hands turn around with a velocity that
excites the establishment Of the world. Men
cannot understand the wonderful activ-
ity, and there is roar, and a buzz. and
rattle about these disordered lives and
they strike ten when they ought to strike
five. and they strike twelve when they
ought TO strike six, and they strike forty
when they ought to strike nothing, and
suddenly they stop. Post-morteIh exam
ination reveals the fact that all the
springs, and pivOts, and weights and bal
ance wheels of health are completely de-
ranged. The human clock is simply run
down. And at the time when the steady
hand ought to be pointing to the industrI-
GUS hours on a clear and sunlit dial the
whole machinery of body, mind. and earth
ly capacity stops forever. Oak Hill and
Greenwood have thousands of business
men who died of old age at thirty, thirty
five forty, forty-fve
Now, what is wanted Is grace-divine
grace for ordinary business men men who
are harnessed from morn till night and
all the days of their life-ndrnessad in
business. Not grace to lose n hundred
thousand but grace TO lose ten dollars
Not grace to supervise two hundred ard
htty employees in factory but grace to
supervise the boolSkeeper, and two sales
men, and the small boy that sweeps out
the store. Grace to invest not the eighty
thousand dollars of net profit but the
twenty-five hundred of clear gain Grace
not 10 endure the loss of a whole shipload
OF spices from the Indies. but grace to
endure the loss of a paper of collars from
af
poor roof Grace not to endure the tar
ciness of the American Congress in pass
ing a necessary law, but grace to endure
the hardness of an errand boy stopping
10 play marbles when he ought to de-
liver the goods. Such a grace as thou
sands OF business men have to-day-keep-
ing them tranquil whether goods sell or
DO rot sell, whether customers paw or do
not pay, whether tariff Is up or tariff is
down, whether the crops are luxuriant or
dead failure-calm in all circumstances,
and amid all vicissltudes. That is the
kind of grace we want.
Millions OF men want it, and they may
have 1t for the asking Some hero or hero
ine comes TO town, and as the procession
passes through the street the business men
come out, stand on tiptoe on their store
step ana look at some one who in Arctic
CLINE, or in ocean storm, or in day of bat
tie, or I'm hospital agonies, did the brave
thing, not realizing that they, the enthu-
siasuc spectators, have gone through trials
in business life that are lust ms great he
fore God. There are men who have gene
through freezing Arctics and burning tor
Ilds, and awful Marengoes of experiences
without moving five miles from their door
step.
Now, what ordinary business men need
is to realize that they have the friendship
OF that Christ who looked after the re-
HglouS interests of Matthew, the custom
house clerk, and helped Lydia of Thva tIra
TO sell the dry goods, and who opened a
bakery and fish-market in the wilderness
of Asia Minor to feed the seven thousand
who had come out on a religious picnic
ana VINO counts the hairs of your head
with as much particularly as though they
were the plumes of a coronation aud who
took the trouble to stoop down with his
finger writing on the ground, although the
first shuttle of feet obliterated the divine
caligraphy, and who knows just how many
locusts there were in the Egyptian plague.
and knew just how many ravens were
necessary to supply Eljahs pantry by The
brook Cherith and who, as floral .om-
mander, leads forth all the regiments Of
primroses, foxgloves, daffodils, hyacintns
and lilies which pitch their tents of beauty
and kinde their camp-fres of color all
around the hemisphere-that that Christ
end that God knows the most minute af-
fairs of your business life and however
inconstderable, understanding all the af-
tnTe1d-
and-needle store as well as all the affairs
of a Rothschild and a Barring.
Then there are all the ordinary farmers.
We talk about agricultural life and we
Immediately shoot off to talk about Gin
cinnatus the patrician, who went from
the pillow to a high position, and after he
got through the dictatorship, in twenty
one days went back again to the plow
What encouragement is that to ordinary
farmers? The vast majority of them
none of them will be patricians. Perhaps
none of them will be senators. If any of
them have relationships it will be over
forty, or fifty, or hundred acres of the
old homestead. What these men want is
grace. to keep their patience while plow-
ing with balky oxen, and to keep cheerful
amid the drought that destroys the corn
crop, and that enables them to restore the
garden the day after the neighbours cattle
have broken in and trampled out the
strawberry bed, and gone through the
Lima bean patch, and eaten up the sweet
corn in such large quantities that they
must be kept from the water lest they
swell up and die.
Grace in catching weather that enables
them, without imprecation, to spread out
the hay the third time, although again.
and again, and again, 1t has been almost
ready for the NOW. A grace to doctor
the cow with a hollow horn, and the sheep
with the foot rot, and the horse with the
distemper, and to compel the unwilling
acres to yield a livelihood for the family,
and schooling for the children and little
extras to help the older boy in business,
and something for the daughters wedding
outfit, and little surplus for the time
when the ankles will get stiff with age.
and the breath win be little short, and
| the swinging of the cradle through the
hot harvest field will bring on the old
mans vertigo. Better close up about
+ Cincinnatus. 1 know fJe hundred farm
ers just as noble as he was. What they
want is to know that they have the friend
ship of that Christ who often drew his
SMILES from the farmers life, as when he
said: "a sower went forth to SOW" as
when he built his best parable out of the
scene of a farmer boy coming back from
his wanderngs, and the old farmhouse
shook that night with rural jubilee; and
who compared himself to lamb in the
pasture field, and who said that the eter-
nal God is farmer declaring: My
Father is the husbandman."
Those stone masons do not want to
hear about Christopher Wren the archi-
tect, who built ST. Paul's Cathedral ut
would be better to tell them how to carry
( the bod of brick up the ladder without