The Penn's Grove record., 1903-05-22

learn, except TO XIII an EgyptIan-Iuhud-
mentally the game man, of course, that he
was during the browning, distinguishing
period of his life, but not having happened
during his first -four score years to be so
circumstance or to be so plueked t by
the pull of events as to discover that he
was not a nonentity, and when summoned
to action by Jehovah, pleading of, as 10
many like him have done since, by alleging
himself to be constitutionally unequal to
the task that was set him. If you ask a
man to do something who thinks himself
incompetent and he says "No," you have
to take his "No." The advantage the Lord
has is that He does not have to take q
mans NO." did not take Moses "No,"
but chung to him, stood hin up and put the
it, and just the weight of the load made
him able to go along with it, pressure found
the limp muscles that had been waiting for
almost a century to be crushed into exer-
ton, and circumstances not made INN
great, but gave him a chance to be what
he and millions of other people are in con-
dition to be when the chance comes, when
the assassin's bullet strikes, when at the
opportune moment a shove is given into
the Pool of Bethesda.
No matter what a person is in native
acuteness or in inward moral and Christian
beauty, we give him credit for only so
much as has externalized itself and as has
wrought itself into a kind of ~encompassing
halo, and we base estimate on the square
contents of the halo. You have man. a
time seen a locomotive looming out of the
darkness with its flashing headlight. and
that light has appeared to you so brilliant
in the dense night it has seemed to you al
most as though the front of the engine
were frescoed with a section of the sun
and the ground for a hundred rods in adj
vance of the train whitened with almost
the b~riliancy of daytime. But if you have
had an opportunity to inspect that head
light and to narrow all this illumination
down TO its fountain source you have very
likely discovered there a small glass lamp
furnished with a wick and a little kerosene
oil. This is not to find fault with the light,
but only to call attention to the fact,
which you are likely to forget. that in es-
timating it you reckoned in the reflector
that was framed to encompass the light
and which made you suppose there was a
| great deal more luminousness than was act
| ually the case. That is the way in which
our estimates generally are arrived at
| original light with the clrcumjacent refiec-
tor added in-central fame plus the au-
| reole.
Now the Lord in His estimates dis
| penses with aureole-which is what Scrip
lure means when it says that He looketh
not on the outward appearance. He IS
never misled by refectors or by the alb
sence of Iefectors. A man may have very
little virtue and yet put that virtue into
some snowy achievement with a large SUI
p~erfcial area, whereupon men get out
their measuring rods, figure up the area,
consult the multiplication table and decide
that he has a great deal of virtue; that ls
what | mean by computing on a basis OF
a~ureole. adding reflector to the little kero-
sene lamp. On the other hand, a person
may have an immense amount OF virtue.
but circumstances be such that 1t never
becomes manifested in a way to arrest at
tention-a very beautiful light 1t may be,
but not shining under conditions that ring
it with a halo.
Now that was the case with the woman
in the temple. The halo hunters saw
nothing but a commonplace widow travel
ing past the contribution box. The Lord,
with whom nimbus does not count, saw
and felt what the woman herself meant
and was. To Him she was the same as
though she had dropped in a thousand
shekels, but not to others who were pres
ent, for others would have reasoned just as
people do now, and would have looked to
the size of her gift TO determine the size
of her heart and would have concluded
therefore that she had a %two-penny heart.
Already nineteen hundred years ago that
poor widow had been become convinced
that nobody has a right to die rlch-
1 CDG dCIGu Ol III oAl(h oa~ e-A "
in her two mites. No one made anything
of it but Jesus, because there was not gid
ing enough upon her advertisement OF the
principle to make the air bright about 1t.
Nineteen hundred years later the same
principle that nobody has a right to do
die rich" was announced by one quite diff
~ferently situated from the widow with two
mites; and the principle and the man who
announced it were published and heralded
clear around the globe. In the first IN
stance there was only a two-penny halo,
aud in the other a million-dollar halo, and
the big halo won. 1t cannot be part OF
our purpose to claim that the lllustrious
Scotchman is not just as charitable as the
inconspicuous Jewess. We are only claim
ing that the reflector that you frame
around the lamp is no part of the lamp
and certainly no part of the blaze that the
burning oil sustains.
1t would be interesting to see the COM
motion that would have been excited over
her there in the temple had a heart as
sweet and beautiful as the Lord saw her
heart to be, not been held under the hmi.
tations of ungenerous circumstances, and
had it been within her means to do all that
her heart prompted-in other words, had
the conditions under which she lived been
wide and open enough to match her own
personal nobility. Most people live IN a
very small world; they are in it and they
have to stay in it. Influences hereditary,
and providential IL you please, have built
around them an environment close and i'm
prisoning; possessed of hearts and lntelr
gence larger than the sphere that despctlc
circumstances permit them to NIL. Some
times it may be due to physical debility;
sometimes it comes as the result OF those
untoward conditions IN early life that pre-
vented the discipline of personal powers
and graces, certainly possessed, but sur
f~ciently cultivated to make them a Rad
and servlceable potency. Such ones are all
about us and we could give their names.
Then there is another host of those who
BY the very necessities of life have been
condemned to an inevitable routine OF
small duties, destined to lifelong slavery
that is not called slavery only for the rea-
son that the lash that is held over them IS
welded by common necessity, not by q
slave master. {
/ feel this very keenly sometimes when
I stand by the casket OF some faithful old
soul that has lived a good many years and
been patiently faithful all the while, and
then try to speak some kindly memorial
word in her behalf befose the casket IS
finally closed. There Is not very much
that can be said, at least of a kind that IS
usually thrown into e~ulogies. She simply
did kindly and well a lot Of little things
one dav, and then the next day did very
much the same things over again, and con-
tinued in that way till the hnal nlght
came and she lay down to her long rest.
In the newspaper column of deaths you
read that she was born on such a date,
died on such a date and the funeral will be
held on such a day. That is you viii find
such a notice as this if there are enough
people that cared for her and if the survi-
vors can afford to pay for the advertise
ment. And that is all. Nothing in the
case out Of which to construct the ordinary
run of funeral Grafton; no luminous halo
made up of remarkable works done, re-
markable words spoken; no record you
can read from of large donations bequeath-
ed, colleges instituted, hospitals founded.
There was no money to found them with.
Her father had left her nothing and she
was never in the way of making any; all
she could do was to take care of her little
home. She had a heart big and tender
enough to create asylums for all the sick
and distressed in the town, but asylums
cost money and she had little money, and
almost all her dollars were mites. There
was a halo around her sleeping face, but
only a ~two-penny halo as most people saw
it. The Lord saw more and perhaps two
or three others. The funeral was a small
affair: there was plenty of room, room for
a good many that were not there. Not