The true northerner., 1900-06-13
tooSTISuEp.l
CHAPTER Y.

MI. DtSdh III "a iON' Nitdi tohC
"Men and Women of Barton-To-
night l am not the man you have
known me these % years l have been
among you. l am, by the grace of God,
a new creature. AS | stand here l
have no greater desire in my heart
than to say what may prove to be
blessing to all my old townspeople and
TO my employees and to these strong
young men and boys. Within a few
short days God has shown me the self
lshness of human beings heart, and
that heart was my own, and it is with
feelings none Of you can ever know
that / look into your faces and say
these words"
Robert paused moment as If gath
ering himself up for the effort that fol-
lowed, and the audience, startled with
an unexpected emotion by the strange
beg inning, thrilled with excitement, as,
lifting his arm and raising his voice,
the once cold and proud man contin-
ued, his face and form glowing with
the TRANSPORTATION Of new manhood:
There is but one supreme law in
your neighbor with heart, mind, soul,
strength. And there are but two things
worth living for: The glory of God and
the salvation of man. Tonight |, who
look into eternity in a sense which |
will not stop 10 explain, feel the bit
terness which comes from the knowl-
edge that | have broken that law and
have not lived for those things which
alone are worth living for.
"But God has sent me here tonight
with a message to the people which my
heart must deliver. 1t is a duty even
more sacred in some ways than what
/ owe to my own kindred. am aware
that the hearts of the people are shock
ed into numbness by the recent horror.
/ know that more than one bleeding
heart is In this house, and the shadow
of the last enemy has fallen over many
thresholds in our town. What! Did
/ not enter into the valley of the shad-
ow of death myself as | stumbled over
the CHASTITY ruins Of that wreck, my
soul torn in twain for the love of three
of my own dear children? Do / not
sympathize in full with all those who
bitterly weep and lament and sit in
blackness of horror this night? Yea,
but, men Of Barton. why is it that we
are so moved, so stirred, so shocked by
the event of death when the far more
awful event of life does not disturb us
In the least?
1--WE shudder with terror, we lose
our accustomed pride or Indifference
we speak in whispers, and we tread
softly in the presence OF the visitor
who smites but once and then smites
the body only, but in the awful pres
ence of the living image of God we go
our ways careless. Indifferent. cold,
passionless, selfish.
II know whereof | speak, for I have
walked through the world like that my
self. And yet death cannot be COM
pared for one moment with life for
majesty, for solemnity. for meaning
for power. There were - persons kill
ed in the accident. But in the papers
this morning read in the column next
TO that in which the accident was
paraded in small type and in the brief
est Of paragraphs the statement that
a ttlidlu HOuliE llidll III llllS NtIN lOM II
of ours had been arrested for forging
his fathers name on a check and was
in the grasp of the law.
"And every day In this town and in
every town all over the world events
like that and worse than that are Of
frequent occurrence. Nay, In this very
town of ours more than - souls are at
this very moment going down into
far blacker hell of destruction than the
one down there under that fated
bridge, and the community is not hor-
rified over it. How many mass meet
ings have been held in this town with
In the last % years over the losses Of
character, the death Of purity, the de-
struction Of honesty? Yet they have
outnumbered the victims Of this late
physical disaster thousandfold.
"And what does mere death do? It
releases the spirit from its house Of
earth, but aside from that death does
nothing to the person. But what does
life do? Life does everything. 1t pre-
pares for heaven or for hell It starts
impulses, molds character, fixes char
acter. Death has no kingdom without
end. Death is only the last enemy of
the many enemies that life knows.
Death is a second; life is an eternity.
o men, brothers, If, as l solemnly and
truly believe, this is the last opportu-
nifty / shall have to speak to you in
such large numbers, l desire you to
remember, when L have vanished from
your sight, that l spent nearly my last
breath In an appeal to you to make
the most Of daily life, to glorify God
and save men.
THE greatest enemy of man is not
death; IL is selfishness. lie sits on the
disaster which has filed the town with