The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-04-02

l
 I was nightly pleased that you remem bered the occasion as you did by com
 ing to my house the other night fol while feel as l say that the occasion
 ought not pass without notice, there i;
 no reason for sounding a trumpet in the market place.
 "I propose not this morning to spend | much time on the retrospect. We are
 all ten years older except those Of us
 who have passed through the veil and become forever young and those who were not here ten years ago. l know
 whereof I speak when I say of many
 of you that your manhood has grown
 in power, your womanhood deepened in
 sweetness wonderfully in these ten
 years. You are ten years older and have
 a right to be.
 Fortunate, born of God indeed, is
 that soul which ten years older throws
 out the heat and glow of a fire which
 has been burning ten years. Some Of
 you are ten years older and have right
 to be.
 "The church is ten years older
 Churches, like houses and nations, are
 built and pulled down. They have no
 immortality They live only when men
 and women live in them. Five hundred l and thirty seven members have been
 added to the church In the decade Of
 those who began the decade with me 290 remain unto this present hour, con- stituting about one-third of our active
 membership. Three women now living have been members of this church for sixty years and sixteen men and women for fifty years, This old guard of two hundred odd, with it's decimated ranks, still constitutes the largest element Of strength in the church, strength out of proportion to their numbers It Is true that there are not dozen mem bers of the Ladies Missionary society that were not here ten years ago. One half of the Ecclesiastical society were here ten years ago. On the other hand, of forty-fve officers and teachers of the Sunday school only eight were there in the previous decade. Of our deacons only two, and that would represent about the proportion of the prayer meeting. Of our present pew-holders eighty-nine hold over from the previous decade, which is not quite as many as might be expected The Ladies Aid society was organized with.n the decade and contains twenty-eight members who are of the previous decade, which is just about the proportion to expect. The cause of this somewhat prevalent idea that numerically twice what we were ten years ago, we are not really any stronger, seems to be dNe to the loss of some conspicuously able men, who had long filled a large place in the community, and to the breaking up and down of large families, which, in com munity where so many people have liv- ed all their lives, is noticed as it is not in more shifting populations. Families decline and break up, the leadership of communities changes and sometimes communities decline too irredeemably also, but it has not taken place here yet. We grow older ourselves, assume bur dens our fathers carried and do not realize that we take their places. Many of these pews were occupied when l came here by venerable figures My heart went out to them. goes out to them still. I never stand here without seeing their faces as 1 saw them those first impressionable years and shall see them, I hope, again. Their places are occupied by men of about my own age. I respect and love them, but naturally l do not venerate them.
 q realize well enough that no man in | America has enjoyed ten years of more glorious liberty than I have had here, | and after all that is the end of all mans | striving, to be free. Partly it is doubt | less due to the fact that we have nat ttxr 1,,,t If | has been due to a very genuine toler ance in you, which has carried the ship | through strenuous weather without | starting seams which afterward would | have let in the sea. There has never been single disagreement in the stand | ing committee, never been time when we all could not enjoy each other, and In the church at large I have learned, I have begged you to learn, to think about the pleasant people, the generous, the devoted, the loyal; not the lazy, the sell fish, the untrue, whose only victory in this world is when they make another like themselves.
 of many occupations, of varying de- grees of educational attainment, this 1ur fellowship contains many of the oravest and tenderest of the children of nen; think on these, to have been com 'ade with such is life's greatest bless ng Who knows but that glorious as las been the past, the greater glory is before us and that within these walls Christ will yet come as He never came ,efore.''
 Rev P. w. Stone of the Grand avenue Baptist church gave the right hand of