The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-11-13

the ground. The ancient Hebrew prophet, watching them as they fell, saw in them a symbol of the failing of human lives. As the leaves fall and die, so man falls and dles We all do fade as a leaf," is the overwhelming and incontrovertible state ment of my text
 Like the fading leaf mans cradle and grave are not very far apart. Like the lie of leaf, our earthly existence springs into budding life. has it's short season of glorious maturity, and then fades and falls with a rapidity that startles us. Joseph Cook seems to stretch mans earthly life out almost endlessly. Mans life,' said he, means tender teens, teachable twenties, tireless thir- ties, fiery forties, forcible fiftes, serious sixties, sacred seventies, aching eighties, shortening breath, death the sod God" But, oh, though we may live our three score years and ten, or even four score years how soon those years slip away. As the months of the spring quickly change themselves into the months of the summer, and the months of the summer change into the frosts of the autumn, we can see our lives slipping away. We can see them go as the sands of an hour glass run away before our eyes. God puts upon one side of the leaf the snow bank and upon the other side of the leaf the iceberg of another winter. He then says to the embryo of the leaf: You must not begin to sprout before the whistli1g winds of March have died away. You must on the other hand, be ready to surrender your life before the December storms have trampled all the tapestries O. the forests under foot, making the bare tree look like the dis mantled and ruined palaces of a king" So God says to man; Your earthly life is to be very, very short. You are to spend your earthly days as the life of a leaf Therefore, what you are to do for me and for the world you must do quick ly. Hear ye not in the signing of the autumnal winds the forthcoming sum- mons that you must soon fade away as the leaf, as the dying autumnal leaf?'
 A 5ymbo of Earth.
 The fading autumnal leaf, the symbol of the passing away of the human gener- ationi Can you not see it? Can you not feel it? To me it is the most .tartling symbol of earth for, as I go out in the autumn and look off upon the hillsides and see the vineyards with their dying leaves, the most overwhelming fact that forces itself upon me is the rapidity with which generations go. Aye, the members of the generation which preceded us as well as many members of our own gener- ation seem to have disappeared as the mists at the sunrising as the dewdrops dlC hiSSeu oil lli6 lilS Ol lut ltdNtS5 dS til6 tears on the cheek of a little child are wiped away by a sympathetic mother. Wandering up and down the world, we think of all the friends we have on the other side of the grave. Then we seem to feel that the great character of the ''Wandering Jew" created by Eugene Sue is not an absurdity, for everywhere we go and everywhere we turn we hear the voices of the dead crying: T am gonel l am gonei I am gone I have faded away as the leaf-as the dying leafr'
 Oh, the rapidity with which the hu- man family pass away! Some time ago I picked up a bound annual volume of a weekly periodical I took for some years. This volume recorded a political cam pagn of some twenty years ago. As turned over the leaves and saw the faces of the prominent men of that day invol- untarily exclaimed on turning over each of the pictures Dead! Deadl Dead Deadl Deadl Deadr' So, speaking today of the dead, the multtudes of our de- parted loved ones seem to pass before us. There are scores and hundreds of them. As the autumnal leaves fall, so they died. Whatever we are to do for God we must do quickly. for we all do fade away as the leaf. We are dying as the autumnal leaves.
 But, though the span of life may be very short as whole, yet, after all when death comes to most of us, it will come as to the leaf. gradually. Death, as rule. does not spring out upon his victims suddenly. Like a loved friend travelling abroad, he sends message after message that he is coming. He sends notice after notice. He sends word to you just the same as the soldiers fighting in the United States army during the civil war sent messages to their children at home At night the mother used to read those letters to her babies. Then she would say; Papa is coming. Yes, some day papa is going to come.' Then when the surrender at Appomattox came the moth- CT sang a new song. Now, children, said she, papa will soon be here" Then came the preparation for meeting the train Then came the expected parent. Death comes to most not as a thief in the night. As a rule, death comes to us as he comes to a leaf, gradually, very gradually