Orange County observer. [volume] (Hillsborough, N.C.) 1880-1918, 1904-05-12

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 a 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 "these things, of trial that
b. beset set the the chi child to an extent 9 that would
into a world fraught with pain, privation,
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 wreathed smile of 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
vision of home This is the necessity and
sanctity OF the home; not only that it 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 spoils the child.
By o'clock nature withdraws her morning
dews leaving the growing things to find
unmoved in the sultry or tn: 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, its green leaves into the air, and by
it's own inward activities transmute them
into life and growth. The first green leaf
ov bau Tho oaforpillar. rnI1st now ro0vo
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 by the exercise of his own pow
ers wiring living for himself. If now he
is to meet these things and not be unduly
| moved, if 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 it's own strength
and pre-eminence. The strength of our day
has been the discovery and application Of
our daily living in all its branches. We
have turned the bullock cart into the auto
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
| 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 its neighbor.
| 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
sources of the home, of the hearthstone in
| the log cabin, and find the comedies and
| tragedies of life on the stage of their own
minds and hearts No newspaper or mag
azine allured them out Of themselves.
There, in their own little world. at their
| 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 ref1ec-
| ton. You have seen pictures of the poor
school house in which Daniel Wester or
Henry Clay was trained, or, going gen.
Grafton further back, we may think of the
simple school in which George Washington
or Patrick Henry was educated. yet out
| of such school houses came leaders who
founded States, wrote constitutions, built
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 out 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 wal,
no inward vision of spiritual things; no
organ rolled it's music to lead their praise
no gifted voices in selected choir lifted
them out of themselves ON the waxen
wings of 1carus; no grace OF rhetoric made
theology easy. 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 Stockbridge 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
rounding them with ever increasing outside
religious props and stays-societies, clubs,
brotherhoods, guilds, and now, to add to
this, comes the threatening addition OF a
scientific pedagogy" for the simplicity OF
, the Sunday-schooI. Some of you were
! brought up in Sunday-school where there
were just two outside sources to help, the
, , Bible and a question book without an
; swers You learned to know your Bible,
, you came out of that school into the
I church and into Christian service that
= has filled the world with Christian philan'
thropy. The Sunday-schools of our chill
dren are furnished with Vallombrosa Of
: lesson leaves-primary, intermediate, quar-
!, terly, and the teachers with variety Of
helps, ready made expositions, to be famil
iarized in the hour between breakfast and
? Sunday-school. Ask the average scholar t.
Il turn to the second chapter of ZephaniaE
!, or of Titus, and see the vain turning ovel
= of unfamiliar pages. What can you ex
pect? How should they cultivate the in
= ward sources of memory and reflection
!, when you have excused them by supplying
them with all conceivable outside supports
!. that make memory and reflection super
fuous. Do you remember that solemn
parable of the seed falling on stony ground
{ quickly growing on the shallow soil and as
! quickly withering before the heat and the
!, drought of the growing day? because hay
> ing exhausted the supply of the outside
: source, '.it had no root in ITSELF: As
: Christian men, let us lean less and less on
: these temporary and childish outside sup.
T