Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1902-05-02

ened and encouraged to take care of
himself.
This is an age Of the specialization
of talents. Instead of one man making
a shoe, as in olden tim 5 a single cob
bier did, it now takes so Zen to
make the same shoe. Instead of one
wcman spinning her own thread and
weaving her own cotton and sewing
her own garments each woman con-
centrates her power of mind upon one
distinct part of an industry. Civiliza
ton has developed its cotton mills, its
cutters, it's sewers, it's filters and its
importers and exporters, and the COM
bination tends to the general advan-
tage. We buy-where we can buy the
cheapest, and we sell where we can
sell the dearest. All these results come
from the specialization of talent. The
realization must come that some men
can do things better than we. We in
turn in another line of business ought
to do some things better than those
who are not proficient in our trades.
n good gunsmith does not always
make a crack marksman. An expert
yacht builder cannot always be turned
into a trustworthy sea captain.
The intelligent traveller gathers infor-
nation wherever he goes. When talk
ing with mOtOrman upon the street
car, with the farmer in the field, with
the mechanic at his bench, with the
sailor upon the ships deck, with the
engineer in his cab, he can obtain an
swerS to questions which he himself
could never solve. He can always find
man who knows more, in at least
some special field, than he himself
knows, no matter how intelligent the
questioner might be. The servant in
the kitchen in all probability knows
how to bake bread better than her
master, even though the head of the
house may be the chief owner of the
great Pillsbury -four mills, where
thousands and tens of thousands of
bushels of grain are daily turned into
the white substance which forms the
staple of every meal. The skill of the
eminent surgeon is never 1essened by
seeing carpenter handling a saw, and
there never comes a time when the
man of ten talents can afford to de-
| spise the lessons he may learn from
the man of one talent.
Proficiency being granted to us in
mental or manual abilities, there is
also proficiency given to us in spiritual
abilities. Certain temptations which
assail one sinner do not appeal to an
| other sinner. One man may have
lurking propensity for gambling, an
other for drink, another for licentious-
ness, another for sloth, another for
profanity, another for theft, still an
other for perjury. Some men are born
liars. Parents testify that certain chill
| dren in one family have a tendency
| to falsehood from their cradles; other
| children born in the same famiI = never
show a disposition to prevaricate. Par
ents can often trace the lies weak
neSses of their children almost from
the time those children began to walk
and talk. They can distinguish certain
satanic characteristics as distinctly
a stranger can tell whether a child by
| the color of the skin is born from
white of black parents. Of course it is
often a great deal harder to tell wheth-
| er the white child has black heart or
a black skinned child has a white heart
than to tell the color of the outside
| epidermal covering.
AS nearly every man is stronger in a
| spiritual sense in some one way than
| his neighbOr, it ought to be that strong
mans duty to use his strength to COM
! penSate for the weakness of his neigh
Dor. Bear and fOrbear is the teaching
of the Bible. This is the reason Christ
sent forth His messengers two by two.
This is the reason we find impulsive
Peter often walking by the side of the
well-poised John; the gentle Mary liv-
ing in the same house with her sister,
who lost her temper in the kitchen,
| spiritualized by her own sweetness of
| soul that entire household. This is the
way in which we can double our loved
| ones spiritual usefulness and diminish
their temptations to sin. Bear We one
another's burdens" has a wider and
deeper significance than most of us
| have ever realized.
Members of a Christian church are
in the sight of God one spiritual fam
lily and therefore have a right to eX-
pect help one from another. Every
shipwrecked mariner has claim upon
| every stout keel floating the wide seas.
The religion of the Lord Jesus Christ
cannot be hemmed in by the four walls
of a religious edifice. The parable of
the good Samaritan teaches that we
should love our neighbor as ourselves.
Our neighbor is not alone the friend
who lives next door. He is also the
| stranger of foreign birth who has fall
en- among the thieves on the road to
Jericho. Any traveller who is naked,
| ahungered, athirst, any wayfarer who
is lost upon the mountains far away
from home, whose guide we can be, is
our neighbor. We as Christians have a
| duty to foreign missions as well as to
home missions, to the savage living in
| the jungles of Africa as well as to the
heather in the back alley half block
| away from our kitchen door, to the
| waif of the street who has fallen