The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-08-24
.DR. ELDRIDGE'S SERMON.
FORMER PASTOR OF FIRST II. g
 CHURCH BREACHES HERE.

Takes for His Subject, "PrOphecy of
 BeIns"-where Man is at His Best
 Physically He Can Do Great Things-
 Mans Prophetic Power-RsTsrsnee to
 Failures.
 Taking up as his text "we see not
 yet all things put under hiTa. But We
 see Jesus," parts of verses and s of
 the second chapter os Hebrews, the
 Rev. Dr. Gardener J. Elhridge. former
 ly pas tor of the First Methodist Epis-
 copa! church, this city. but now pastor
 of Summer avenue church. Brooklyn,
 rrcaCf ed to his former cOngrtg gation yesterday morning a powerful srrmon
 or the Prophecy of Being" !n sub suaace Tr. Eldridge spoke ns :oliows: The writer has been speaking
 of the conquest of the world, and says that it has not yet been accomplished. We see not yet all things put under
 him, but we see Jesus, the vitaliizing hope, the source of this prophecy of be- ing, the real power in life.
 The Christian attitude is to look for
 ward, not backward. Our success, our failures, great though we deem them, are only incidents of life, but to lose the prophecy of ones being, that is trag- edy of the soul. When a man is at his best physically then it is that he can do great things, and when a man is at his best in the higher sense, then it is that he holds life, being, thought, feeling, with power at the food-tide in the great arteries of the soul. Prophetic power is mans pa- tent and woe betide the man who loses it. Sometimes man will lose. this pro- phetic power, this ability to look out and beyond into the larger soul life through success, but sadder than that is
 the case of the man who has lost that
 power through failure. Robert Louis Stevenson says: If we fail, let us fail in good spirits and I repeat if we must fail, let us fail in good spirits, be- cause after all there Is left to us this prophecy of being. ... iAlo pAophCbAb PVNNA OL q AieAh 9 bOT ing is the essence of all achievements. The sublimest heights to which we can climb are those of manhood and wo- manhood. No luxury on earth is like that of being true man or true woman. We find the luxury of life when we get down into the depths, when we feel the strong under currents.
 Some times the happiness of a per- son is temperamental. The deaf man can get along very nicely with the scolding wife, while the person who has
 no ear for music is not annoyed by the constant piano practice next door. But the smile that is tenperamental is not so deep nor like the smile that comes through tears. It is no credit to the nightingale that it sings at night nor to the lark that 1t sings in the early
 morning, since for that they were made. Happiness is sometimes due to circufn- stances. You go into poorly fur
 nished, desolate room and you natural ly look for scowling face. But life Is deeper than circumstances. Tempera-
 ment never goes back of ones ancestors and circumstances are of the present. put illt IS IHbTG are IftiteS
 when a man feels he must stand alone,
 above temperament, above circumstan ces. There are times when man feels
 the responsibility of the city, the state.
 the country. God pity the man who
 does not. It is flash of the divine
 power when man feels that he must do something to make the world better Sometimes we get pessimistic and think that it is hard to live right, but the world. we will find, is neither black
 nor white. It takes It's color from us.
 It is the priest that makes the temple,
 the woman that makes the home and the congregation the church. The world was not made for business or art, or any single thing, but as place where man can be man, and a wo-
 man woman. It is place for the d. vine drama of manhood and woman hood.
 There are two ways of looking at life. One is that we are sort of Aeoli-
 an harp, strung with bundle of sensi-
 bilities, set first in one place, then an- other, always moving about to catch the latest breeze of sensation, until the
 strings shrink up and break and the whole harp falls into decay and dust. "The other is that we are the harper, that the world is the harp, and that we
 are here to bring out the music, not out
 of the world, but out of ourselves, for
 the music is not in the instrument, but
 in the soul of the player. When the
 world seems out of tune, when the mu-
 sic seems to have deparfed if is mt
 because everything has gone out of the
 world, but out of you. Not in the
 world around you, but in your soul is
 the essence of real life, the God-given
 prophecy of being"