The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-07-24
THE EQUATION OF LIFE
STRIPPED OF ITS EMBELLISH-
MENIS WHATDOES IN AEOUNT roe

OF Life and Life Itself Pointed Out by
Rev. Theodore IL. WiIson-Strong Ser
mon Before Congregation of Daven-
port Church-subject," Our Work."
In the place of the pastor, the Rev
George Foster Prentiss, the pulpit at
the Davenport Congregational church
yesterday morning was occupied by the
Rev. Theodore B. Wilson of this city.
The Rev. Mr.. Wilson's sermon was an
unusually strong one, and was listened
to by quite large congregation with
evident close attention. He chose for
his subject Our Work." and his text,
March 1884: "To Every Man His
Work."
He spoke in part as follows
There are probably few people who
have gotten far into this life of care
and hard work, without putting to
themselves at one time or another the
question: What does it all amount top
That life is a tread-mill and dull
round that it's genuine satisfactions
and substantial pleasures are in great
part the creatures of anticipation only
nearly every mature mind.
II go about and I find men confined
at their work every available hour from
Monday morning till Saturday might.
They were there last week, they will
be there next week, and every week.
The programme of such a one is work
or starve. 1t is, do a thousand things
you don't like to. 1t is, save some one
else. early and late, whether you are
weary or are not weary. 1t is, keep
yourself and your family in clothes and
food and perchance lay by a few dol
lars as the result of all this hardship
and labor Now, let us reduce it to the
simplest form into which such a career
can be thrown. You are aware that
there is science of probabilities sci
ence which will take such facts, which
seem to be controlled only by chance,
and trace their main drift and trend, and
handle all as surely and accurately as
though they were certainties. What
then, according to the law of probabili-
ties, is the biography of this man?
Stripped of the coloring which hope
will tint it from the beginning, all
through, though growing paer toward
the last, and reduced to what the facts
will warrant and the circumstance jus
tify his biography will be something
like this.
"He was born of parents in very
moderate circumstances. He had fair
amount of common schooling. The av
erage child is in school but three years,
it is said. AT rather early age he
undertook the task of taking care of
himself and he is at it yet. He has
now a wife and children dependent on
him whom he makes comfortable, by
dint Of faithfulness and self-denial,
supplemented by the fathfulness and
self-denal of his wife.
"By and by the time comes, when he
is not far from forty-two years of age,
(this being the longevity in his walk
of life) for him to go. His widow man
ages some way for a few years longer
taken care of by the children who must
and do about this time get out into the
world, and then she passes away, and
my friends, after the equation of life |
one generation has run it's course. Now, |
my friends, after the equation of life
has had the ups and downs cancelled |
out Of it, has been reduced to it's sim
plest form, we get the above as a toll
erably reliable formula to study.
Now, is there anything in it? Does
1T pay? Throw in all the embellish-
ments which accompany such a life in
the great average and let us see. In
the first place there are pleasures which
have sweetening power, All this time
his meals taste good to him. He finds
a pleasure in the expressions Of endear-
ment at home. He is made glad by the
music of the little feet that run to meet
him. He finds joy in forming few
friendships among his fellows These
are, however, but the tints here and
there-the frescoes, on the dull gray of
life. All along, too hope has been fiat
tering and beguling, and has been MAX
ing promises which she never really
meant to fulfill and he ought indeed to
have known it. Allow for all this,
which has taken off the rough edges
to an extent, and still, look again at
the result we have ciphered out and tell
me whether life pays.
"In point of fact it looks like the
bare struggle of one generation for the
sake of the genera ton which is to fol-
low and in turn do the same thing.
"You ask the father who is toiling {
thus why he is doing it and he will
point you to the cradle, and say that !
1t contains his inspiration, he is strug-
Cling to clothe, to educate, to make pro-
vision for the babe that is there. And {
so he tolls, and the mother sacrifices
for that babe till he is a little larger t
grown, and that he in turn undertakes !
the same eternal task for himself and '
his. I
eff now we have seen it all, and {
there is nothing more in it than APP s
pears on it's face, truly we cannot see
why God instituted it.
but surely there is as much differ
ence between these external clrcum-
stances and forms of life, and life it.
self, as there is between turning the
paees of a book and reading the book.
The little child thinks that is all there
is of reading and he goes ana gets d /
book and sits down and thinks he is '
doing it all if he looks intently at the G
book, either side up, and now and then c
turns a leaf. But as in point OF fact c
the closer the reading, and the more s
1eeplv you are studying, the more t
slowly do you turn the leaves and the Ii
ess outward sign do you make that s
you are doing anything at all, so are
those lives often the deepest and most