The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1898-02-22

about ~Cincinnatus, the patrician, who
went from the plow to a high position,
and after he got through the dictator
ship in twenty-one days went back
again to the pillow. What encourage
ment is that to ordinary farmers? The
vast majority of them-none Of then
will be patricians. Perhaps none of
them Will be senators. If any Of them
have relationships, it will be over
forty or fifty or 100 acres Of the old
homestead. What these men want is
grace to keep their patience while
blowing with balky oxen and to keep
cheerful amid the drought that de-
strOys the corn crop and that enables
them to restore the garden the day af-
ter the n~eighbor's cattle have broken
in and trampled out the strawberry
bed and gone through the Lima bean
patch and eaten up the sweet corr in
such large quantities that they must
be kept from the water lest they swell
up and die.
NOBLE HUSBANDMEN.
Grace in catching weather that en-
ables them, without im~precation, to
spread out the hay the third time, al
though again and again and again it
has been almost ready for the NOV. a
grace to doctor the Gov 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 school
ing for the children, and little extras
to help the old boy in business, and
something for the daughters wedding
J outlet, and a little surplus for the time
when the ankles will get stiff with age,
and the breath will be a 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. | know 500 farm
ers just as noble as ne a What
they want is to know that they have
the friendship 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 par
| able out of the scene of a farmer boy
| coming back from his wanderings, and
the old farmhouse shook that night
| with rural jubilee, and who compared
| himself to a lamb in the pasture field,
| and who said that the eternal God is a
farmer, declaring, My Father is the
~husbandman."
Those stone maSOnS do not want to
hear about Christopher Wren, the ar
chitect who built st. Paul's cathedral.
| 1t would be better to tell them how TO
carry the hod of a brick up the ladder
without slipping, and how on a cold
morning with the trOwel to smooth off
the mortar and keep cheerful, n how
to be thankful to God for the plain
food taken from the pail by the road
| side. Carpenters standing amid the
adj, and the bit, and the plane, and the
broadax need to be told that Christ
was a carpenter, with his W hand
welding saw and hammer. Oh, this
is a tired world, and it is an Overwork-
ed world, and it IS an underfed world,
and it is a wrung out world, and men
and women need to now that there
are rest and recuperation in God and
in that religion which was not so
much intended for extraordinary peo-
pie as for ordinary people, because
there are more Of them.
NEXT TO GOD.
The healing profession has had it's
| A~bercrOmbies and it's Abernethys and
| it's Valentine Motifs an0 its Willard
| Parkers, but the ordinary physicians
| do the most of the worlds m~edicining,
| and they need to understand that
| while taking diagnosis or prOgnOsis or
! writing prescription or compromising
| medicament or holding the delicate
| pulse of a dying child they may have
| the presence and the dictatiOn of the
Almighty Doctor who too the case of
the mailman and after he Lad torn off
his garments in foaming dementia
/ clothed him again, body and mind, and
who lifted up the woman who for
eighteen years had been ben almost
double with the rheumatism into
graceful stature, and who turned the
scabs of leprosy into rubicund COM
plexion and who rubbed the numbness
out of paralysis, and who swung wide
open the closed windows Of hereditary
or accidental blindness until the morn
ing light came streaming through the
fieshly easements, and who knows all
the diseases and all the remedies and
all the herbs and all the cathOlicons
and is monarchy of pharmacy and Their
apeutics, and who has sent ten thou
sand doctors of whom the world makes
nc record, but to prove that they are
angels of mercy l invoke the thousand
of lei whose ailments they have as
suaged and the thousands of women
to whom in crises of pain they have
been mex to God in benefaction.
Come, now, let us have a religion for
ordinary people in professions, in oc-
equations, in agriculture, in the house
hold, in merchandise, in everything. l
salute across the centuries Asyncritus,
Phlegon, Hermas, Patrobas, Hernles,
P%hilolOgus and Julia.
UNPRETENTIOUS PEOPLE.
First of all, if you feel that you are
ordinary, thank God that you are not
extraordinary. 1 am tired and sick
and bored almost to death with extra
ordinary people. They take al their
time to tell us how very extraordinary
they really are. You know as well as
do nv brother and sister tha- the