The Camden chronicle. (Camden, Tenn.) 1890-current, 1904-03-11
A SERMON FOR SUNDAY
AN ELOQUENT DISCOURSE BY THE
REV. DR.. J. BASCOM SHAW.
An Interesting Lesson Drawn From the
Text Run with Patience keep
Jesus as a Pattern Before You In the
Race of Life.

|
Balcom Shaw. pastor of the West End
Presbyterian Church, Manhattan, preached
Sunday morning before the students of
Princeton University. He took his text
from Hebrews kill: run with patience"
DIR. Shaw said
There is a vast difference between walk
ing with patience and running with pa
thence. Both are hard, incidentally hard,
but they are hard in very different ways,
and call for graces which are exact OPP
posites. Walking with patience re-
quires the grace of repression. or resig-
nation. The spirit, leaps ahead but the
body must needs lag behind. We want
to run, but we have to walk, and slow
pace when one feels he might make
haste and ought to make haste is might
lily aggravating.
Walking with patience is one of the
young mans struggles. He wants to get
on and up, with quick speed, but cir
cumstances are holding him back. He has
a mother to support, he works for an IN
appreciative firm, he lacks the proper in
huence, he has no friends at court, he
can command no capital. Therefore, he
must stay clerk when he deserves the
superintendency. He must go to business
when he would prefer a profession. Creep
ing when you are eager to be leaplng-
can you imagine a greater tax upon pa
thence than that?
Walking with patience is poverty's prob
lem. To suffer want when Others no more
deserving than you are in affluence, and be
resigned to it, it is the hardest possible
task That is the bottom cause of all
our labor agitation-impatienc under linn
itations.
Walking with patience is misfortunes
mission. To be held back by reverses, dis
abled by sickness, retarded by circum-
stances, felled by a great, sorrow, so that
we must walk instead Of run-these are
among the most difficult experiences of
life, and are these not experiences that
come to all? Who of us, the most pros
| porous and fortunate, those whose track
has the fewest up grades upon it-even
| the young college man with his own Pc
culiar problems to solve and struggle to
meet-who of us does not find frequent
| need to cry out with face turned upward?
| want the love that all things sweetly
bear,
! Whateer my Fathers hand may choose
to send.
I want the love that patiently endures
| The wrongs that come from earthly foe
or friend.
Some great soul who had evidently
taken a full course in the school of suf-
fering and won the full diploma of res
ignation, has most aptly and beautifully
| expressed the souls need under such co
ditions in these words:
lne nlSuL is QdIh, DuI NOu, NOu1
| Is here and in command;
And sure am |, when morning breaks,
/ shall be at the land.
And since | know the darkness is
To Him as sunniest day,
I'll cast the patience--out,
And wish-but wait for day.
God help us to learn how to walk with
patience!
But what about running with patience?
70
ing of ourselves, just as running on the
athletic field demands training peculiar
to itself? Even a fast walker is not nee
essarily a good runner. The requirement
in this case is active rather than negative.
Here is needed not the grace of repression,
rs IL the other case, but of cultivation,
of application or concentration rather than
of resignation. In walking with patience,
the weights and the brakes both must be
applied in order to hold the spirit back and
keep it apace with the body. But to run
with patience, the weights need to be laid
aside and the brakes removed that the in
ner may keep abreast with the outward,
that our ambitions, our hopes, cur aims,
may fly forward toward the goal, nor"
as the line of the old hymn runs, "tire
amid the heavenly road"
The very pace of the runner is itself
the foe of patience. 1t calls, seemingly,
TO-. impetuousity, and the more impetu-
GUS JHt we are dCCus W GIlluhy
the better. Its certain effect is to heat the
blood and fire the nerves. Behold the
athlete with every muscle taught, every
line of his face hard set, his eye intense
and eager, the applauding crowd urging
him on! How can he be poiseful and
self-controled? Indeed, patience, would
seem impossible, and impotence the very
letic man before me knows this is the talk
of novice. If there is anything the rum
ner needs it is self-control, to be able
"to keep his head as We say, to com
mand his nerves, to hold his strength
in check at the first and let it out toward
by the shouts of the crowd, to be equal to
any unforeseen turn the race may take or
any condition before unreckoned with that
might appear. And does it not always
turn out that running match is at bot
tom chiefly a question of self-command-
muscle, wind, nerve, mind, yes, and heart
and the winner ever found to be the one
who has run the race with the greatest
patience?
Young men, this is a running age, and
country where, whether you will or not,
you, must adopt the. quickest pace. "Step
lively the car conductors ineegant com
mand, is enthusiastically American,
though it may usually happen in this case
to be spoken by a foreigner. All Ameri-
cans are proverbially in hurry. Even our
kindergarten tots have caught the step,
and from childhood on it gets gradually
faster and faster, until, when young man
reaches maturity, he is on dead run.
Life these days is a veritable rush for ex-
istence
To run, then is an easy thing--it IS the
most natural thing in the world to us, we
have been bred to it.; it is instinct, but to
run with patience, to keep the soul calm
when the body becomes heated and oyer
taxed, so that the spiritual does not lag
verish, sordid, impetuous-ah! this is quite |
another thing. Such difficult task is it |
that, amid the clamor and tumult of our