The Chanute times. [volume] (Chanute, Kan.) 1897-1913, 1902-01-31

enough 10 see tue pau Slue Oh IL, anu
he has met so many gracious and
kindly and splendid souls he also
knows the good side OF II.
Now, calm yourself. Thank God for
the past and deliberately set your
compass for another voyage. You
have chased enough thistledown; you
have blown enough soap bubbles; you
have seen the thanksgiving nature of
all earthly things. Open a new chap
ter with God and the world. This de-
cade of the forties ought to eclipse
all its predecessors in worship, in USE
fulness and in happiness.
My sermon next accosts the fifties.
How queer it looks when in writing
your age you make the first OF the two
figures 5. This is the decade
which shows what the other decades
have been. If young man has sown
wild oats and he has lived to this time.
he reaps the harvest of it in the fiflies,
or if by necessity he was compelled
to overtoil in honest directions he is
called to settle up with eXacting ma
ture sometime during the lifties. Sci
aticas and rheumatisms and neural
gias and vertigos and insomnias have
their playground in the fifties. A mans
hair cgins to whiten and, although he
may have worn spectacles before, now
he asks the optician for No. IA or No.
II or No. 10. When he gets a cough
and is almost cured, he hacks and
clears his throat good while after
ward.
o we who are in the fifties, think OF
1t! A half century of blessings to be
thankful for and a half century sub
tracted from an existence which, in
the most marked cases Of longevity
hardly ever reaches a whole century
By this time you ought to be eminent
for piety. You have been in so many
battles you ought to be a brave SOL
der. You have made so many voy-
ages you ought to be good sailor. So
long protected and blessed, you ought
to have a soul full of doxology.
In Bible times in Canaan every fifty
years was by Gods command year
Of jubilee. The people did not work
that year. If property had by mis-
fortune gone out of ones possession,
on the fiftieth year it came back to
him. If he had fooled it away, it was
returned without a farthing to pay.
If man had been enslaved, he was
in that year emancipated. A trum-
pet was sounded loud and clear and
long, and it was the trumpet of jubi-
lee They shook hands, they laughed,
they congratulated. What a time ii
was, that fftieth year! And If under
the old dispensation it was such
glad time, under our new and more
glorious dispensation let all who have
come to the fifties hear the trumpet of
jubilee that l now blow.
My sermon next accosts the sixties.
The beginning of that decade is more
startling than any other. In his
chronological journey the man rides
rather smoothly over the figures and
3 and and 5. but the figure gives
him big jolt. He says: 1T cannot be
that | am sixty. Let me examine the
old family record. l guess they made a
mistake. They got my name down
wrong in the roll of births" But no,
the older brothers or sisters remember
the time of his advent, and there is
some relative year older and another
relative a year younger. and, sure
enough, the fact is established beyond
all disputation.
Sixty! Now your great danger is
the temptation to fold up your fac
ulties and quit. You will feel a ten
dency to Renaissance. If you do not
look out, you will begin almost every
thing with the words, When | was
a boy" But you ought to make the
sixties more memorable for God and
the truth than the fifties or the forties
or the thirties. You ought to do more
during the next ten years than you did
in any thirty years of your life be-
cause of all the experience you have
had. You have committed enough
mistakes in life to make you wise
above your juniors. Now, under the
accumulated light of your past expert
go to work for God as never
before. When a man in the sixties
folds up his energy and feels he has
done enough, it is the devil of indo-
ence to which he is surrendering, and
God generally takes the man at his
word and lets him die right away.
My subject next accosts those in the
seventies and beyond. My word to
hem is congratulation. You have got
nearly if not quite through. You have
safely crossed the sea of life and are
about to enter the harbor You have
ought at Gettysburg, and the war is
)ver-here and there a skirmish with |
he remaining sin of your own heart |
ind the sin of the world, but I guess |
you are about done. There may be |
iome work for you yet on a small or
arge scale. Bismarck of Germany Wig |
,rous in the eighties. The prime min
ster of England strong at seventy |
wo. Haydn composing his oratorio,
The Creation" at seventy years of |
ge. Noah Webster, after making his