The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1902-09-01

Full of Meaning and Pathos as the
Word Farewell.
In the First Baptist church of South
Main avenue, last night, Rev. s. F.
Mathews delivered his farewell sermon,
taking for his text the words found IN
III Corinthians, xiii:11, "Finally breth-
rem farewell. Be perfect, be OF good
comfort, be OF one mind, live In peace
and the God of love and peace shall be
with YOU" Rev. MIR. Mathews spoke
as follows:
There is no word In all of our expressive
mother tongue that Is so full or meaning
and OF pathos as that one brief strange
sad word, farewell. Wherever spoken
or uttered by human lip, 1t means the
sundering of the ties that make life a JOY
and gives its sweetest, tenderest meaning,
and as we now stand here tonight W
tering It with reluctant tongue; 1t Is WITH
profound emotion. as II we were indeed
about to breathe some strange weird
spell that shall cause all of the past be-
tween us to fade away like an unsub-
stantial dream A spell that Is about TO
cut in one severing sweep the solemn yet
beautiful social ties that have bound us
as pastor and people so long tosether'
anl shall as vessels parted III mid ocean
allow us now and forever In the future Oh
human time to drift wider and wider
apart until forever lost from human view
AS we breathe that fateful word softly,
tenderly, sadly we feel that there Is In
it a something that reveals clearly ana
distinctly our human fate and our human
doom, the one word that ever ana ever
echoes it's solemn sound under every SKY,
in every cline of sorrowing hearts. OF
,t.rt,;, ,i,.tt I'll
broken and sin cursed humanity.
WHAT THE WORD TELLS.
AS the futterng sheet trembling in the
agitated air of a storm swept ocean and
nailed to the shattered mast. tells of
wreck and ruin. so does that strange
word tell OF the wreck and ruin of hu-
manty. tell of the mighty storm to the
soul that under the doom of some sl-
prone power has made 1t rudderless,
mastess. and almost hopeless wreck.
That word was never designed by the AL
mighty God when He wrote the mighty
lexicon of this glorious universe. When
He wrote in letters OF gold the word sun
shine; when FIe wrote in the beauty and
exquisite fragrance of the flowers the
words rose and violet and jasmine; when
He wrote in colors of carmine and azure,
crimson and emerald the living words re-
plete with life all around lis in the crea-
cabulary of the Infinite when His
breath gave motion and life to the voices
of joy and gladness that thrilled in
thousand harmonies all through nature at
it's birth. No, it is the one dark word
written by man with his fateful finger In
the beginning of his destiny: written in
that solemn fearful hour when in the
shades of Eden amid it's God given pro-
fusion and loveliness and it's note of per-
vading peace. man spoke the first dark
terrible farewell to honor, to happiness,
to peace, to purity and his God, in his
mad yielding to sin, instead of a pure
and glad obedience to his Father God
1t is a very significant fact that amid
the sweetness and glory of such home.
was farewell to holiness to life and
earthly happiness spoken. How sadly It
has been duplica ted since for farewell has
not always come as the end Of misery;
not as the death OF all that is intoerabe
in human life. hut 1t has often. very
often come as a terrible something to
tear us from earthly peace and JOY.
Farewell has been uttered by many a
lip when 1t least desired it, as stern fate
has called the young, the happy from the
enjoyment of life and friends to descend
into the valley of dissolution; into the
shadow that wells the dark portals of the
unknown.
PERVADES OUR HUMANITY.
How the word pervades our humanity,
1t ever weaves like a thread of black
through all the weaving of our poor sad
human life. We cannot shut it out or bid
1T vanish; like Banquos ghost. 1t ever
steals on the scene of our pleasures when
the least wanted. the least desired and
when it comes it comes to bid pleasure
depart and from throne to cottage 10
summon the tear TO the eye. sadness to
the heart, grief to the home and the bit
ter to nestle forever more within the
sweet
When that couple ruined. wrecked and
under a curse escaped from their home
in Eden, they carried nothing in their
empty hands as souvenirs of the past;
but they carried a spectre with them, a
ghost that should haunt every home for
evermore. A ghost that should track ev-
cry child from the womb of Eve until the
last that shall be born before the worlds
final doom, and it was the ghost of fare
well.
The sob of farewell as they turned from
Eden has been echoed in a million tones
since then. and today it rings out still in
thousand ways to distress the soul. l
often think of a possible world that never
knew in it's sweet experience that dreaded
word. of Its homes, that word never
troubled by its utterance, of hearts that
word never set throbbing with it's pain,
and somehow when l get the chain com
plete of a world glorious with no adieux,
with no farewell, I have the world such
as God must have created this; ma
terial heaven the first grand stepping
stone to Gods own home of the soul.
But now oh how changed.
AS 1 turn my eye, as it is guided by
that one word, see it as it is the bane of
earthly happiness. ] see world trying to
be happy, trying to forget, trying to
Danish from its thoughts a something
- that ever haunts it; the farewell at last
to every earthly joy that must come!
see by the holy altar of God the two
who stand there to pledge the most sa-
cred VOWS that ever fell from human lip;
] see the timd shrinking form robed in
bridal white. ready to give itself away in
sublime faith born of love and sane
titled by hope, "For richer or poorer, In
sickness or in health, in prosperity or
adversely" God helping. II see the
manly lover with the same impulse eX-
changing the same grand truth. and see
them at last as to the sound of the mar
riage hymn. they turn away as husband
and wife to tread the first steps of
mutual life, rich with the blessings of
God
There are many farewels In this life,
some full of grief, exquisite pain. some
thank God that have hope in them of
a better thing to follow. The farewell
to the summer Is sad adieu, as in the