The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1899-01-20

guess will be just as apt to come true
What a. lot OF ingrates the Lord has al
meals a day for fifty years and yet fear
that they will soon have to rattle their
knife and fork on an empty dinner plate.
How many have had-winter and spring
and summer and fa1l-clorhing for sixty
years, but expect an empty wardrobe
shortly How many have lived under free
institutions all their days. but fear that
the United States may be telescoped In
some foreign collision! Oh. but the taxes
have gone upi Yes, but thank God, IL Is
easier with money to pay the taxes now
that they are up than it was without
money to pay the taxes when they were
down. We want a few men who have
which holds several things, among them
a millennium. Columbanus said to his
friend, "Deicolus. why are you always
smiling?' HI reply was. because no
want more men to feel that they have a
mission to cheer others and to draw up
the corners Of peoples mouths which
more Davtds who can shepherd whole
focks by bright hopes, and can play a
harp OF encouragement, and strike down
can say: Thou art worth 10000 of u.s."
/ admit that this thought of my text
fully carried out would change many
of the worlds statistics. Suppose a vii
lage is said to have 1000 inhabitants. and
that one-half of t~hem-namely. JO0-haye
for years been becoming less In body, and
through niggardliness and grumbling less
in soul. Each one of these is only one
half of what ne once was or one-half of
what she once was. original 500
have been reduced one-half in moral quail
ity and are really only $50. Suppose that
the other 500 have maintained their orig
inal status and are neither better nor
worse. Then the entire population Of
that village is $50. But suppos another
village Of LOCO. and 500 of them, as the
years go by, through mental and spirit
uaI culture, augment themselves until
men they originally were, and the other
500 remain unchanged and are neither
better nor worse, then the population Of
that village Is 800. Meanness is SUBJ
traction and mobility is addition. Ac-
cording as you rise in the scale of holi-
ness and generosity and conservation
you are worth 5 or 10 or so or 100 or 600
or 10000 others.
HUMBLE HEROES.
Notice, my friend, that this David,
warrior, strategist, minstrel, master of
blank verse and ton singer at the
giant, whom the soldiers of the text es-
timated clear up into the thousandfold
of usefulness on this particular occasion,
staid at home or in hts place of temper
airy residence. General Joab, General
Abishai and General Ittai, who COM
left wing and centre, did their work
bravely n left q, 900 of the Lords enc
mics dead on the field, and many of the
survivors got entangled in the woods of
Ephraim and mixed up in the bushes
and stumbled over the stumps of trees
and fell into Dogs and were devoured of
wild beasts which seized them in the
thickets. But David did his work at
home. We all huzza for heroes who have
been in battle and on their return what
professions we form and what triumphal
arches We spring and what banquet
we spread and what garlands we wreathe
and n Orations we deliver and what
oells we ring and what cannonades we
fire! But do we do justice to the stay at
homes? David, who was worth 10, 600 of
those who went out to meet the Lords
enemies in the woods of Ephraim, tina
day did his work in retirement.
Oh, the world needs a day of judgment
to give many Of the stay at homes prop
er recognition. In the different wars the
deck or battlefield exposed their lives
and earned the admiration of the coun-
try, but how about the mothers and faith
sons the noble sentiments that inspired
them to go and then gave them up when
perhaps a few words of earnest protest
would nave kept them on the farm and
in the homestead? The day of final re-
ward will reveal the self sacrifice and the
fidelity of thousands who never in all
their lives received one word of praise.
Oh, We unknown, We faithful and Chris
tan and all enduring stay at honest! I
nave no power now to do you justice,
but l tell you of one who has the power
and or the day when he will put it forth.
IT will be the day when the thimble, and
the ladle, and the darning needle, and
the washtub, and the spinning wheel, and
and the hammer, n the trowel, n the
plow, will come to as high an apprecia-
t non "a as a Mz + or the sword, or
the wall or the flag that was hoisted on
the scaled parapets.
"A GREAT SOLDIER.
more self control and moral prowess in
staying at home than he could have
shown commanding in the field. He was
a natural TS warrior. Martial airs stirred
him. He was one of those men who feel
at home in the saddle, patting the neck
pressed himself. He obeyed the com
mand of the troops whom he would like
to have commanded. Some of the great
backwoods Kitchens or in nursery. with
three children down with scarlet fever,
soon to join the two already in the
c~hurchyard, or amid domestic wrongs
and outrages enough to transform angels
into devils, or in commercial life within
their own counting rooms in time OF
Black Friday panics, or in mechanical
life in their own carpenter shop or on
the s~caffolding of walls, swept by cold
or smitten by heat. No Geographic wires
reported the crisis of the conflict, no
banner was ever waved to celebrate their
victory, but God knows, and God will
remember, and God will adjust and by
him the falling of a tear is as certainly
IOtlCSU dS iuuo puIlIlllS I'll d 'WOI1Q, dilO
h futter~ of a sparrow's wing as the
flight Of the ap%ocalyptic archangel.
Oh, what a God we have for small
things as well as big things! David mo
more helped at the front h helped at
home. The four regiments mobolized
for the defence of the throne of Israel
were right in protesting against David's
exposure of his life at the front Had
he BEEN pierced Of an arrow or cloven
down with a battleax or fatally slung
from snorting war charger, what a dis
aster for the throne of Israel! Absalom,
his son, was a low fellow and unfit to
resign; his two chief characteristics were
his handsome face and his long hair
SO long that when he had 1T cut that
which was scissored off weighed ZOO
shekels, after the kings weight" and
when a man has nothing Dut a handsome
face and an exuberance of hair there
is not much of him. The capture or STAY.
ing of David would have been a calami-
ty irreparable. Unnecessary exposure
would have been a crime Tor David, as
1t is a crime for you.
Some people think it is a bright thing
to put themselves in Unnecessary peril
They like to walk up to the edge of q
precipice and look off, defying vertigo
or go among contagious when they car
be of no use but to demonstrate theil
-. 10000 - uy;<I oJao xi.ixrn lnr-oe