The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1898-02-18
Then there are all the ordinary farm.

Then there are all the ordinary farm
ers We talk about agricultural life,
and we Immediately shoot off to talk
about Cincnnatus, the patrician, who
went from the pillow to high position,
and after he got through the dictator
ship in 81 days went back again to the
pillow. What encouragement is that to
ordinary farmers? The vast majority of
them-none of them will be patricians.
Perhaps none of them will be senator's
If any of them have relationships, it
will be over 40 or so 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 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 straw berry 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
Noble Husbandmen.
Grace in catching weather that en-
ables them, without imprecation, to
spread out the hay the third time, al
though again and again and again it
has been almost ready for the now A
grace to doctor the COW with hollow
horn, and the sheep with the foot rot,
and the horse with the distemper and
to compel the unwilling acres to yield
livelihood for the family, and school
ing 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 will be little short,
and the swinging of the cradle through
the hot harvest field will bring ON the
old man s vertigo. Better close up about
Cincinnatus. | know 500 farmers just
as noble as he was. 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 parable out of the
scene of a farmer boy coming back
from his wanderings, and the old farm
house shook that night with rural jubi-
lee, and who compared himself to
lamb in the pasture field and who said
that the eternal God is farmer, de.
claring, "My Father is the husband
man.
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 car
ry the bod of brick up the ladder with
out slipping, and how on cold morn
ing with the trowel to smooth off the
mortar and keep cheerful and how to
be thankful to God for the plain food
taken from the pail by the roadside.
Carpenters standing amid the adj, and
the Bit and the plane, and the broadax
need to be told that Christ was car
penter, with his own hand welding
saw and hammer. Oh, this is tired
world, and it is an overworked world,
and it is an underfed world, and it is
a wrung out world, and men and wom-
en- need to know that there are rest and
regeneration in God and in that religion
which was not so much intended for
extraordinary people as for ordinary
people, because there are more of them.
Next to God.
The healing profession has had its
Abercrombies and it's Abernethys and
it's Valentine Motifs and its Willard
Parkers, but the ordinary physicians do
the most of the world s medicining, and
they need to understand that while TAX
ing diagnosis or prognosls or writing
prescription or compromising medlca-
ment or holding the delicate pulse of
dying child they may have the presence
and the dictation of the Almighty Doc
tor who took the case Of the madman
and after he had torn off his garments
in foaming dementia clothed him again,
body and mind, and who lifted up the
woman who for IS years had been bent
almost double with the rheumatism In
to graceful stature, and who turned the
scabs of leprosy into rubicund complex
ion and who rubbed the numbness out
of paralysis, and who swung wide open
the closed windows of hereditary or &C.
cidental blindness until the morning
light came streaming through the flesh
ly easements, and who knows all the
diseases and all the remedies and all
the herbs and all the catholicons and Is
monarch of pharmacy and therapeutics
and who has sent ten thousand doctors
of whom the world makes no record
but to prove that they are angels Il
mercy | invoke the thousands OF men
whose ailments they have assuaged and
the thousands of women to whom IN
crises of pain they have been next to
God in benefaction.
Come, now, let us have a religion for
ordinary people in professions, in occu-
pations, i'll agriculture, in the house
hold, in merchandise, in everything
salute across the centuries Asypcritus,
Phlegon, Hermas, Patrobas, Hermes,
Philologus and Julia.
Unpretentious People.
First of all, if you feel that you are
ordinary, thank God that you are not
extraordinary. l am tired and sick and
bored almost to death with extraor-
binary people. They take all their time