Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1902-02-08
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
DUTIES AND TRIALS OF THE DIFF
FERENT DECADES OF LIFE.
All the Years of Man Considered-work
of the Twent aud Thirties should
BE Crowned with Splendid Reward
in the seventies.

Copyright, 1902 Louis Klopsch, N. Y)
Washington, Jan. 26.-From an un-
usual standpoin: DR.. Talmage in this
discourse looks at the duties and trials
which belong to the different decades
OF human life; text, Psalms xc, 10,
The days of our years are threescore
years and ten
The seyentieth milestone of life is
here planted as at the end of the jour-
ney. few go beyond it. Multitudes
never reach it. Whatever your age, l
will to-day directly address you, and
tweslties. the thirties. the forties, the
f1fties. the sixties, and to those who are
in the seventies and beyond.
First, then, / accost those of you
who are in the twenties. You are full
of expectation. You are ambitious
that is, if you amount to anything-for
some kind of success, commercial or
mechanical or professional or literary
or agricultural or social or moral. If
/ find some one in the twenties with
out any sort of ambition, 1 feel like
saying, My friend, you have got on
the wrong planet. This is not the
world for you. You are going to be
in the way. Have you made your
choice of poorhouses? You will never
be able to pay for your cradle. Who
is going to settle for your board?
There is a mistake about the fact
that you were born at ALL
Some of the mightiest things for God
and eternity have been done in the
twenties. AS long as you can put the
figure before the other figure that
helps describe your age I have high
hopes about you. Look out for that
figure 2. Watch it's continuance with
as much earnestness as you ever
watched anything that promised you
salvation or threatened you demoli-
ton. What a critical time-the twen-
tiesI While they continue you decide
your occupation and the principles by
which you will be guided; you make
your most abiding friendships; you ar
range your home life; you fix your
habits. Lord God Almighty, for Jesus
Christ's sake, have mercy on all the
men and women in the twenties.
Next / accost those in the thirties.
You are at an age when you find what
a tough thing it Is to get recognized
and established in your occupation or
profession. In some respects the hard
est decade of life is the thirties, be-
cause the results are generally SO far
behind the anticipations. Nine-tenths
of the poetry of life has been knocked
out of you since you came into the
thirties. Men in the different profess
sions and occupations saw that you
were rising, and they must put an es-
toppel on you, or you might somehow
stand in the way. They think you
must be suppressed.
Oh. the thirties, Joseph stood before
Pharaoh at thirty; David was thirty
years old when he began to reign;
the height of Solomon's temple was
thirty cubits; Christ entered upon his
active ministry at thir, years of age;
Judas sold him for thirty pieces of
silver. oh. the thirties, What a
word suggestive of triumph or disas-
ter!
Next I accost the forties. Yours is
the decade of discovery. 1 do not
mean the discovery of the outside, but
the discovery of yourself. No man
knows himself until he is forty. BY
that time he has learned what he can
do or what he cannot do. He thought
he had commercial genius enough to
become a millionaire but now he is
satisfied to make a comfortable hv-
ing He thought he had rhetorical
power that would bring him into the
United States senate; now he is con-
tent if he can successfully argue a
common case before a petit jury He
thought he had medical skill that
would make him a Mott or a Crosse or
Willard Parker, or a Sims; now he
finds his sphere is that of a family
physician, prescribing for the ordinary
ailments that aff1ict our race. He is
half way through life's journey and he
is in a position to look backward or
forward. He has more good sense
than he ever had 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 splendid souls he also
knows the good side of it,
NV 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 v hat 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 sf1fties,
or il by necessity he was compelled
| to overtoil in honest directions he is
called to settle up with exacting 1a-
ture sometime during the nfties- Sci
aticas and rheumatisms and neural
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