The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1901-05-21
The TOUCH OF JESUS
Rev. H. D. RondthaIer's Ser
mon at State Normal.
How the Poor, the Sorowing. The Diseased Are
Drawn by That Loving Powerful
Touch.
tspecial to News and obgeryerl

Greensboro, N. c., May 20.-One of the
best sermons ever heard here on a like
occasion was the one delivered yesterday
morning by Rev. Howard i. kondthaler,
of Winston Salem before the graduating
class of the State Normal and Industrial
College. The chapel was filled, many
former students of the institution being
present. Prayer was offered by Rev. l..
W. Crawford d. d.. after which President
McIver introduced Mr.. Rondthaler, saying
that no community in North Carolina had
shown a more kindly spirit toward the
State Normal and Industrial College than
the home of this gifted young divine of
the Moravian church.
Mr.. Rondthaler chose as the subject of
his discourse, The Touch of Jesus" and
said:
There have been other great leaders;
men who have essayed to lead their fell
low men, to direct vast movements. to
organize great undertakings, to lead null
titudes, but none other has ever dared to
undertake so great a work, that of
drawing all men unto him in so simple
and seemingly slow, even unspeakable,
by one.
1T was His delight to come near
enough to men to literally touch them.
Men were units to the Master, not
masses; individuals, not classes.
He touched poverty--touched it in the
truest way by making Himself poor.
Though He was rich, yet for our sakes
became He poor.
Men have but lately awakened to
Christs way of studying poverty-not by
theorizing and specializing upon it, but
by going down into it and sharing it. The
college settlement is not new idea;
it is but a part of Christ's way of pow
erty-by making ourselves poor.
He touched labor-not by statistical
computations, not at arms length not
as a problem, but during Is years of His
life, by making wooden plows, framing
oxyokes in a NaZarean carpenter shop
with tools no better than the crude i'm
plements of the present Gallilean car
penter No wonder that laboring men be-
came amongst His most devoted follow
ers
"He touched child life-in His own ex-
perience of course, and then notably when
He sat with the little ones clustering
about Him. Mothers brought their child
rem to Him that He might lay His hands
upon them and pray for them. But He
did more-He took them up in His arms,
laid His lands upon them and blessed
them. 1t was no wonder that when 9TH
ers in Jerusalem received Him angrily in
the morning of His entrance His boy
friends cried in the temple! "Hosanna
to the Son of David
He touched sorrow-not as q specta-
TOW htN+
He touched disease. Until His hand
was laid upon them, the blind went
stumbling along; the dumb were enchain-
ed in silence till their tongues were
crossed by His hand, and it was His
touch which unstopped the heavy ears.
1T could only be after watching two
gentle German nurses as they passed
from cot to cot in an Oriental leper hos
pital, swathing and cleansing the sores
of those pitiable patients that we could
form any appreciative conception of what
it meant for Christ to lay His hand upon
the leDrous. There were other things
that He must needs touch, and so it was
in the course of time that His own hand
was touching a bloody cross tree, and
that at sunset of that sad day He was
laid gently down upon the cold stone floor
of the neW-made seDulchre."
In concluding his remarks, the preacher,
turning to the graduating class said
And now, young ladies' whom will you
touch? The conspicuously heroic fields are
reserved for but the few. The first thing
with which most of us come into contact
is our home life. Few pictures at the
Worlds Fair gained the interest which
was attached to breaking the home ties
| have thought of a possible counterpart
thereto: 'Remaking the home ties, per-
haps the return of youth or maiden, en-
riched with the instruction and experience
of college life, to the old home. In the
parents faces | see a commingling OF
pride and hopeful expectation that this
one for whom, perhaps, real sacrifice has
been made, may show forth a life sweet
ened and cultured into larger sympathy
and helpfulness. / see upon the younger
faces of the household an expression,
half timid, of an instructive questioning
whether the returned one will be loving
and lovable as before.
ut is just here in your home life that
you can begin to succeed or begin to fail.
Do not await the fancied coming of some
supposedly heroic or romantic field of
lifework, but begin at once to show what
you are and what you've gained in sym
pathetic life lived in the nearest sur
roundings which present themselves. But
remember that whatever you touch, to be
of lasting vale, it must have in it the
power which comes only by personal ac-
ceptance of Christ as your Savior.
There are those who move graciously
through the world by reason of refine
ment, education and cultivation, and their
touch tempers and refines, but in the end
it is ever found lacking in those perma-
nent elements whereof Paul speaks when
he says Christ in us the hope of glory
so that 1 live, yet not l, but Christ
liveth in me-
Il commend to you this as a worthy
ambition: A life so touched with Christ
that it becomes to others an image, beau
tiful and inspiring, of the Christi life"