The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-06-19


 fly, but DIT humphry Davy, the great En- glish chemist, once saw this interesting | spectacle. He gives q full description Of | the scene. First the eagles followed out | exactly the picture of my text. The | young birds. with fear and trembling. | elung to the rocks where they were | matched, but the old birds said to them | selves; This won't do; this won't do These young birds must be taught to fly" | So the parent birds first tried to coax | the young to leave the nest Then when | coaxing accomplished nothing. they struck | right and left with their beaks With | their powerful talons they scratched the | nest Then they gave the young a big | push, and off the fiedgelngs went Then | the young were carried back to the nest | bv the broad wings of the parent bird. The mother ,and father birds seemed to stop awhile to have little talk. They seemed to say: Now, children. you must obey me- whether you will or no. And, as you must obey me want you to do f willingly I want you to follow my every movement. See how I raise my wings. so. I beat them in the air just so. And ow I begin to circie rounc and round. Come, boys; come girls That is right. Now. try again. Are you ready? Here we go up and up and up. See how easy 1t is.'
 Let me describe this object lesson in almost the same language with which Sir Humphrey Davy described it when he saw the two old eagles, by their actions. teaching their young how to fly above the crags of Ben Nevis: After the old birds had coaxed the eaglets off the eyrle they made small circles, which the young eaglets tried to initiate. Then the parent birds made larger and larger cir
 
 the birds, old and young, were finally lost to view in the great heaven of blue" An, yes, the old eagles teach the young eagles to fly, first, by the sharp blow of the beak and the pushing off the nest; second by the rescue and the bringing back to the nest; third, by the object lessons, which say: Come, children, do as I am doing now. Come, life your wings as my wings flap, and go up and up." God teaches us how to fly by pushing us off into the great abyss of trouble. He rescues us by the infinite power of the atoning cross. He then teaches us how to go up and and up by the object lessons of Christ's earthly life.
 Chrst's Life Object Lesson.
 Have you and 1 ever stopped to fully consider how Christs earthly life was meant to be an object lesson for sinful men, as the Tapping wings of the old eagles are meant to be visible object lessons to teach the young eagles how to fly? God did not tell us how to be good merely in the abstract, but he tells us to be good as Jesus Christ was good, because Christ was bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh and suffered as we suf- fer and was tempted as we are tempted. Thus Christs life is an object lesson to us in all our trial. We must do as he would do if he were in our place.
 He knows the bitter, weary way,
 The endless strivings day by day, The souls that weep, the souls that pray.
 He knows. He knows.
 But there is stil another lesson to be learned from the old eagle stirring up her nest She pushes out her young in order to make room for the next batch of fedgelings If she did not do this there would be only one brood matched in the nest. Thus the eagles offspring would only consist of two or three or four young. But no sooner does the old eagle finish raising one family than she prepares to raise another batch of hedge- lings
 Have you ever considered how soon this old earth would be overcrowded and an unfit place in. which to live if God did not push the generations on and up? This is an age of the slaughter of the n- nocents. Life is in mortal combat for life. The earth is soaked with blood. The guillotine never stops it's endless chop. Every lullaby has corresponding death rattle Every cradle implies a grave. So rapidly can shell life propa- gate that one tiny cell can reproduce it. self one thousand million times in a month. A common codfish lays between eight and nine million eggs every year. A common queen ant lays eighty thous- and eggs in day. Herbert Spencer de- clared that if the cattle propagated themselves as rapidly as the nsectile world the cattle would die of starvation in Q week. But. though the human race does not reproduce itself as rapidly as the insectile world, or even as the cattle, yet if allowed to live on this earth unin- terruptedly, 1t would soon be impossible for the growing members of the human family to exist.
 New generations come, and room must be made for them. The infant leaves the cradle to a successor and becomes the youth. the youth passes on to manhood and on to old age. and the younger geaer- atons tread upon his heels at every step At last he passes on into eternity What then? The apostle says. Tt doth not yet appear what we shall be-" but we know enough of that life to be full of hope. To those who through Christ have made peace with God there is the promise of continued development. They that wait on the Lord, says the prophet, shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint" In that heavenly state there shall be neither hunger nor pain. nor wearness. nor sickness. nor death. Even the eagle. long loved as it Is, grows old and dies. but there We shall live forever. And the love of our Father in heaven is eternal. The eagles affec- tions are transferred from one brood to the next. but nothing can separate us from the love of God, whose heart is large enough for all his children.
 Dread Sin Like Serpent.
 Would you have such a future to an- ticipate? Then let that power which God promises to impart come even now into your life. The only thing that can blot out that prospect is sin. Dread sin as you would dread the bite of d ser- pent. Theodore l.. cuyler. the grand old man of the Brooklyn pulpit, graphically described a scene which 1 have carried in my memory for many years. peas ant living upon the mountain side was on his way home in the evening hour. Tired after hard days work he turned to look down the valley which as a panorama stretched away at his feet.