The Camden chronicle. (Camden, Tenn.) 1890-current, 1904-07-08


is not neglected in this distribution Of
compensation, no trial has overtaken Won
more than is common to man, no trial ia
put upon you more than you are able ~
bear, with the trial there is some wav Of
escape, OF compensation. Both God end
nature lay burdens on us, for life is n dis.
ciipline fol, character in ourselves, for ser.
vice for others; but neither God nor nature
mas any pleasure IN seeing our shoulders
stoop too soon, or our hearts break un
timely. 1t is possible for uc to hear these
things and not be moved. for God and ma
ture have ordained sufficient sources of
strength to enable US to bear them.
There are outside sources: The young
spear OF wheat beginning to grow in the
bleak winds of November or March finds
itself supported by little barrel of -four
in the grain out of which it springs The
young caterpillar waking up to begin its
life finds itself providentially deposited by
its winged mother on some green leaf on
which it can feed while yet too weak to for
age for itself. Take your own children, YOU
can count up 1these things" Of trial that
beset the child to an extent that would
make you sigh with pity. They have come
dangers to body and to mind. They are
wrapt in no furs, furnished with no
weapons, provided with no stored up food
in themselves. How can they bear "these
things" and not be moved? How can they
bear them and be happy? Yet they are
happy. Scarcely is the tear dry on the
little face when the wreatheu smile oil an
angel comes there. For the child also
draws it's first strength from outside
sources. Good hath set the solitary in
families" God lets down on the child in
normal society the protection AVID pro,
vision of home. This is the necessity and
sanctity of the home; not only that 1T IS
Christian law, not only that it is moral
law. but simply that it is natural law.
There are inside sources of strength
Neither God nor nature sDoils the child.
BY o'clock nature withdraws her morning
dews leaving he growing things to find
new sources of strength in which to stand
unmoved in the sultry or ths stormy noon.
Not now the outside dew. but the inside
sap. Nature giving the sprouting grain an
outside supply for it's first few days now
leaves it to send its own roots into the
earth, it's green leaves into The air, and by
its own inward activities transmute them
into life and growth The first green leaf
exhausted the caterpillar must now move
off to find new leaf for itself. From the
children of men. too, God withdraws the
early baptism. The youth must one day
leave home and its protection and pro-
vision and bv the exercise of his own pow
ers wiring living for himself. If now ne
is to meet these things and not be unduly
moved. il he is to meet them like true
man with courage and strength and tri-
umph he must develop the sources OF
strength within himself.
Here exactly is the weakness of this pres
ent day. Every age has its own strength
and pre-eminence The strength of our day
has been the discovery and application of
the forces of nature, by art and science. tc
our daily living in all its branches. We
have turned the hullocEE cart mo the anu
mobile, the tardy sickle into the steam
harvester, the postman going three miles
an hour with letters into the telegraph and
the telephone. Yet it is always true that
from the greatest strength falls a shadow
ing weakness Our fathers had but few
outside forces on which to rely. Not long
were they allowed to lie in the cradle, not
long TO play in the nursery Nature was
rugged and rough with them. The old
farm house stood far from it's neighbor,
drifts Of snow or swollen streams often lay
between. When the wintry night closed
in there was no public place of amusement,
no stirring procession of multitudes under
the electric lights of the streets, but moon
light and shadows on the lonely country
road If the family would pass, genial
evening they must develop the inside
the log cabin and find the comedies and
minds and hearts. No newspaper or mag
azine allured them out of themselves.
There in their own little world. at their
own Preside, they thought out their poll
tics. their literature and their theology. In
education the schools were poorly fur
nished, the teacher but poorly trained, the
text books but few and serving the sue
cessive members OF, the family IN turn;
If they were to be educated they must find
their education by the painful development
of their own powers of memory and reflec-
ton. You have seen pictures of the poor
school house in which Daniel Wester or
Henry Clay was trained, or, going a gem
Grafton further back. we may think of the
simple school in which George Washington
or Patrick Henry was educated; yet ont
of such school houses came leaders who
founded States wrote constitutions, built
a republic. grappled with the diplomacy of
Europe, out of them came orators whose
eloquence. though dead on the printed
page, still thrill the reading soul. Gather
them ont Of this primitive school house.
closet them in the Colonial Congress in
PHILADELPHIA to fashion out of their own
minds, their own destinies and that Of
their own nation and what was the re-
suit?
In religion the churches of yesterday
were bare and cold, no fresco on the wall,
no inward vision of spiritual things; no
organ rolled its music to lead their praise
no gifted voices in a selected choir lifted
them out of themselves on the waxen
wings of Icarus; no grace of rhetoric made
Theology easv. They were left to the de-
velopment of their own inward sources OF
praise. of prayer and of thought. And
what Homeric characters they were! Jona-
than Edwards in barren Stockbridce made !
himself the first philosopher of his age:
It may well be feared that the church of
to-day is doing for the young people just
what the schools are doing for them, sur,
religious props and stays-societies, clubs,
brotherhoods. guilds. and now. to add to