Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1899-04-24
"A GREAT MAN FALLEN
DR.. TALMAGE EULOGlzES THE LATE
JUSTICE FIELD.


of Our Times, Whose Life Is Worthy
of Emulation, Says the Pulpit Ora
Copyright. Louis Klopsch. 1921
WASHINGTON, April 23.-One of the
most notable characters of our time is
the subject of DR.. Talmages discourse,
and the lessons drawn are inspiring;
text, II Samuel iii. SO, t'Know We not
that there is prince and great man
fallen this day in Israel?''
Here is plumed catafalque, followed
by King David and a funeral grafton
which he delivers at the tomb Con-
corning Abner, the great, David weeps
out the text More appropriately than
when originally uttered we may now
utter this resounding lamentation,
ttKnow ye not that there is a prince and
great man fallen this day in IsraelY'
It was 80 minutes after 6, the exact
hour of sunset of the Sabbath day, and
while the evening lights were being
kindled, that the soul of Stephen J.
Field. the lawyer, the judge, the pa
triot, the statesman, the Christian,
assembled. 1t was shutdown in the home
on yonder Capitol hill, as it was sun
down on all the surrounding hills, but
in both cases the sunset to be followed
by a glorious sunrise Hear the Easter
anthems still lingering in the air, ''The
trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall
rise
Our departed friend came forth boy
from ministers home in New Eng
land. He knelt with father and mother
at morning and evening prayer, learned
from maternal lips lessons of piety
which lasted him anG controlled him
amid all the varied and exciting scenes
of lifetime and helped him to die in
peace an octogenarian. Blot out from
American history the names of those
ministers sons who have done honor to
Judicial bench and commercial circle and
national legislature and presidential
chair, and you would obliterate many
of the grandest chapters of that history.
1t is no small advantage to have started
from home where God is honored and
the subject of a worlds emancipation
from sin and sorrow is under constant
discussion. The Ten Commandments,
which are the foundation Of all good
1aw-Roman law, German law, Eng
lish law, American law-are the best
foundation upon which to build charac-
ter, and those which the boy, Stephen
j. Field, so often heard in the parson-
age at StCcktridge were his guidance
when a half century after, as a gOwned
Justice Of the supreme court of the
United States, he unrolled his opinions.
Bibles, hymn books, catechisms, family
prayers, atmosphere sanctiied, are good
surroundings for boys and girls to starr
from, and if our laxer ideas Of religion
and Sabbath days and home training
produce as splendid men and women as
the much derided Puritanic Sabbath
and Puritanic teachings have produced,
it will be a matter of congratulation
and thanksgiving
Do not pass by the fact that have
not yet seen emphasized that Stephen
J. Field was g minister's son. Notwith-
standing that there are conspicuous ex-
captions to the rule-and the exceptions
have built up a stereotyped defamation
on the subject-statistics plain and IN
deniable prove that larger proportion
Of ministers sons turn out well than
are to be found in any other genealogic-
al table Let all the parsonages Of all
denominations Of Christians where chill
dren are growing up take the consola-
ton. See the star Of hope pointing
down to that znangeri
Member Of Royal Family.
Notice also that our departed friend
was member Of royal family. There
were no crowns or scepters or thrones
in that ancestral line, but the family
of the Fields, like the family of the
New York Primes, like the family Of
the Princeton AIexanders, like a score
of families that I might mention, if it
were best to mention them, were 'fthe
children Of the king and had put on
them honOrs brighter than crowns and
welded influence longer and wider than
scepters That family of Fields traces
an honorable lineage back 500 years to
Hubertus de la Field, coadjutor of Will
iaa the Conqueror. Let us thank God
for such families, generation after gen
Grafton on the side of that which is
right and good. Four sons of that coun-
try minister, known the world over for
extraordinary usefulness in their
spheres, legal. commercial, literary and
theological, and daughter, the mother
of one of the associate justices of the
supreme court. Such families counter
balance for good those families all
wrong from generation to generation
families that stand for wealth, upright
eously got and stingily kept or wicked
ly squandered families that stand for
fraud or impurity or malevolence; fam
lily names that Immediately come to
every mind, though through sense of
propriety they do not come to the lip.
The name of Field will survive centu-
ries and be synonym for religion, for
great Jurisprudence, for able Christian
Journalism, as the names of the Pha-
raohs and the Caesars stand for cruelty