St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1900-02-03
PAST EXPERIENCES.
Dr.. Ta!mase Says They Should Be
Our Guides for the Future.

Dr. Ta!mase Says They Should Be
Our Guides for the Future.
some Practical and Timely suxges-
tiona n to Right Living-Our
Life as - Tale That
Il Told"
Copyright, 1880, by Louis Klopsch.1
Washington,
In this holiday discourse DIR. Tai
mage takes the opportunity of Of
tcr;ng scme rery practical and use
ful suggestions: text. Psalms. nc, Q:
"We spend our years as a tale that is
told"
The Israelites were 40 years in the
wilderness. and during 3s years of the
n nothing is recorded of them. and
suppose no other emigrants had a
duller or more uninteresting time
taan they had. So they got to telling
stories = stories concerning them
selves or concerning others; stories
about the brick kilns of Egypt. where
they had toiled in slavery; stories
about how the waters of the Red sea
piled up into palisades at their cross
ing; story of how the lantern hung in
the heavens to guide them by night;
story of ibises destroying the reptiles
of the wilderness; stories of personal
encounter. 1t must have been an aw-
full thing to have had nothing to dc
in So years except to get lost every
time they tried to escape from the
wilderness. So they whiled away the
time in story telling. Indeed, there
were persons whose one business was
to narrate stories. and they were
paid by such trifles as they could pick
up from the surrounding listeners. To
such instances our text refers when il
says: I'VE spend our years as tale
that is told"
At this tremendous passage from
the year 1899 to the year 1900 it will
60 us all good tc consider that our
whole life is story told-a good
story or bad story; tragic story OF
mirthful story; wise story or a
foolish story; n clean story or filthy
story; a story of success or story OF
failure. I'VE spend our years as q
tale that is told"
in the first place I remark that
every persons life is very interest.
irg story. My text does not depre-
ciate "a tale that is told" We have
all of us been entertained by the
story teller when snow bound in the
rail train; or in the group a winters
night in the farmhouse: or gathered
around blazing hearth with some
hunters at the mountain inn. Indeed
it is praiseworthy art to imperson.
ate good story well. If you doubt
the practical and healshful and inspir.
ing use of such story. take down
from the library Washington Irving's
''Tales of n Traveller" or Nathaniel
Hawthorne's "Twice Told Tales" But
as interesting as any of these would
be the story of many an obscure life
if the tale were as well told. Why dc
we al! like biographies and autobiog
rarhies? Because they arc stories oi
eminent human lives. But the story
of the life of n backwoodsman, of a
man who looks stupid, of one about
whom you never heard aword, must be
just as thrilling on a small scale as on
a larger scale is the life of Cyrus. OF
a Caesar, or q Pizarro. or a Mark An
tony, or n Charlemagne, or the late
Gen. Gordon, who was upon a parapet
leading his soldiers with nothing but
stick in his hand, and his troops
cried: ''Gorrlon. come down. You
will be killed" But he did not come
down. and one of the soldiers said:
'It is all right. He don't mind being
killed. He is one of those blessed
Christians
If you get the confidence of that
very plain man just come out of the
backwoods and can induce him to give
the stirring experiences of his life, he
will tell you that which will MAKE
your blood curdle and your hair stand
on end. That night when panther
disputed his pathway on the way
home; that landslide when the noun
tains seemed about to come down on
his cabin; that accident to his house
hold, and no surgeon within Is miles;
that long storm that shut them in and
the food was exhausted; that contest
at his doorway with bandits who
thought there might be within some
thing worth taking: that deathbe:l
with no one but himself to count the
fiuttering pulses.
As Oliver Cromwell on the anniver.
sary of his greatest victory followed
his darling daughter to the grave. so in
the hnmblest and most unpretending
life 1ere has been a conmingling OF
gladness and gloom, of triumph and de-
spair. Nothing that David Garrick
ever enacted at Drury Lane theater in
the way of tragedy or Charles Mat.
thews ever playedin Covent Garden in
the way of comedy excelled things
which on small scale have been seen
in the life of obscure men and women
Many a profound and learned sermon
has put the audience to sleep, white
some man whose phraseology could no,
be parsed and whose attire was cut and
fitted and made up by plainest house
wife has told the story of his life in q
way that melted the prayer circle into
tears as easily rs warm April sun dis
solves the snow of the previous night.
Oh. yes. while I'VE spend our years
as a tale that is told" it is an interesting
stor.:. It is the story of an immortal
and that makes it interesting. He j.
launched on an ocean of eternal years
in a voyage that will never terminate
He is striking the keynote of an anthem
or a dirge that will never come to it.
last bar. That is whAt makes the de.
votional meetings OF modern times 81
much more interesting than they used
to be. They are filed not with dis
courses by laymen on the subject oi
justification and sanctification. which
3Gy discourses administer more to the
facetious than to the edifying, but will
stories of what God has done foI