The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-02-02

lard Parker or a Sims: now he finds his sphere Is that of family physician, prescribing for the ordinary ailments that affiict our race. He was sailing on in fog and could not take a reckoning. but now it clears up enough to allow him to find out his real latitude and longitude. He has been climbing. but now he has got to the top of the hill. and he takes a long breath. He is half way through the journey at least, and he is in a position to look backward or for ward. He has more good sense than he ever lad. He knows human nature. for he has been cheated often enough to see the bad side of it, and he has met so many gracious and kindly and splen- did souls he also knows the good side of it. Now. calm yourself Thank God for the past and deliberately set your c0m- pass for another voyage. You have chased enough thiStledown: you have blown enough soap bubbles; you have seen the unsatisfying nature of all earthly things. Open d new chapter with God and the world. This decade of the forties ought to eclipse all it's predecessors in worship, in usefulness md in happiness.
 The Reaping Age.
 My sermon next accosts tho fifties. How queer 1t looks when in writing your age you make the first of the two fig ures a 5. This is the decade which shows what the other decades have been. If a young man has soWn wild oats and he has lived to this time, he reaps the har. vest of 1t in the fifties, or If by necessity he was compelled to overtoil in honest directions he Is called to settle up with exacting nature sometime during the f1f- ties. Many have 1t so hard in early life that they are octogenarians at fifty. Sci aticas and rheumatisms and neuralgiaS and Yertigos and insvmnias have their playground in the fifties. A mans hair begins to whiten and, although he may have worn spectacles before. now he asks At G-s- Co. A Mo nR 10. When he gets q cough and is almost cured. he hacks and clears his throat a good while afterward. O we who are Tn tho fifties. think of it. A half century of blessing to be thankful for and haIf century subtracted from an existence hich. in the most marked cases ot loL gevity, hardly ever reaches q whole century. By this time you ought to he eminent for piety. You have been in so many battles you ought to be brave soldier. You have made so many Voy- ages you ought to be d good sailor. So l)ng protected and hlessed. you ought to have a soul full of doxology. In Bible times in Canaan every fifty years was by Gods command a year of jubilee. The people did not work that year. If prop erty had by misfortune gone out of ones possession, on the fiftieth year 1t came back to him. If he had fooled 1t away. it was returned without a farthing to pay. If a man had ben enslaved, be was in that year cmancipated. A trumpet was sounded loud and clead and long. and it was the trumpet of jubilee. They shook hands. they laughed, they conErat- ulated. What a time it was that flf- tieth year! And if under the old dispen- sation let all who have come to the fifties hear the trumpet of jubilee that I now blow That was the allusion made by Mir. Toplady, the great hymnoIogist. when he wrote:
 Blow ye the trumpet, blow
 The gladly solemn sound;
 Let all the nations know.
 To earth's remotest bound.
 The year of jubilee has come:
 Return. ye ralsomed sinners. home.