Orange County observer., 1904-01-28
A SERMON FOR SUNDAY
AN ELOQUENT DISCOURSE BY THE
REV. Dr.. J. BAocCM SHAW.
An Interesting Lesson Drawn From the
Text Run With Patience keep
Jesus as a Pattern Before You in the
Race of Life.

Jesus as a Pattern Before You IN the
Race Of Life.
PRINCETON, N. 1.-The Rev. DR.. John
Balloon 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"
DR.. Shaw said:
There is a vast difference between walk
ing with patience and running with pa
tience. Both are hard, Incidentally hard,
but they are hard in very different ways,
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.
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 un-
fluence, he has no friends at court, he
can command no capital. Therefore, he
must stay clerk when he deserves the
suparintendency. He must go to business
when he would prefer profession. Creep
| ing when you are eager to be leaplng-
/
tience. 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-impatience under linn
| itations.
Walking with patience is misfortune's
mission. To be held back by reverses, dis
abled by. sickness, retarded by circum-
stances, felled by 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
J bear,
Whate'er my Fathers hand may choose
to send.
| want the love that; patiently endures
The wrongs that come from earthly foe
or friend.
Some great soul who had evidently
taken full course in the school of suf
fering and won the full diploma of res
ignation, has most aptiy and beautifully
expressed the souls need under such con
|
The night is dark, but God, my God,
lie here-erad command:
And sure am I, when morning breaks
l shall be at the land.
And since l know the darkness is
To Him as sunniest day,
| I'll cast the anchor-patience- out,
And wish-but wait for day.
The very pace of the runner is itsel
} the foe of patience. It calls, seemingly
for impetuousity, and the more impetu
GUS the runner, we are accustomed to think
the better. Its certain effect is to heat tn
blood and fire the nerves. Behold tn
athlete with every muscle taught, ever
and eager, the applauding crowd urgin
him on! How can he be poiseful an
self-controlled? Indeed, patience woul
seem impossible, and impatience the YER
price Of the prize. And yet every ath
letic man before me knows this is the tai
, ner needs it is self-control, to be abl
''to keep his head,'' as we say, to con
> mand his nerves, to hold his strengt
in check at the first and let it out towar
the finish, to keep from being unnerve
, by the shouts of the crowd, to be equal t
any condition before unreckoned with tha
might appear. And does it not alway
turn out that a running match is at bo
| tom chiefly a question OF self-command-
muscle, wind, nerve, mind, yes, and hear
and the winner ever found to be the on
who has run the race with the creates
patience?
Young men, this is a running age, and
, country where, whether you will or no
! you must adopt the quickest pace. "Ste
lively" the car conductors inelegant con
mand, is characteristically American
though it may usually happen in this cas-
= to be spoken by foreigner. All Amer
cans are proverbially in hurry. Even OIL
! kindergarten tots have caught the ste]
t and from childhood on it gets gradual
faster and faster, until, when a young ma
reaches maturity, he is on dead ru]
i Life these days is veritable rush for e.
e istence.
To run, then is an easy thing-it is tt
most natural thing in the world to us, v
e have been bred to it.; it is instinct, but |
d run with patience, to keep the soul cal
when the body becomes heated and owe
e behind the material life, and we. grow
q verish, sordid, impetuous-ah! this is qui
another thing. Such a difficult task is
that, amid the clamor and tumult Of OF
r modern life, it is the rarest thing to fir
- men with tranquil temperaments, stea
and pressure of the times we get irascib]
= restless, nervous, narrow and shallow
, soul Solitude has no longer any cong
= niality for us, and, as DR.. Samuel Johns(
declared years ago, when man cann
!, bear his own company, does not like to J
IL alone. there is something wrong"
= would seem as if Wordsworth were a
raigning our age and not his own, whis
was so phlegmatic and meditative as COZ
e pared with this, when he wrote down b
S memorable lines:
s. '"The world is too much with us; late al
Getting and spending, we lay waste OF
5, powers.
s Little we see in nature that is our;
h We have given our hearts away, sord
7" boon!"
Aversive to solitude, and over-enamore
q of society, hard driven by materialist
gain and greed, tearing ahead for pri
$ that our nervous clutch may crush so SOC
= as it is once in the hand, we outrun our r
;. ligious duty, the claims of our inner .natu
- are left away behind, and we go dashi1
g madly ahead, like runaway engine, in
spiritual, if not moral, ruin. This. your
!, men, is the feverish race you are soon
enter. Whatever your disinclination ther
7, to, you are bound to run it. The one s
r preme question is, will you run it with p
o tience or, as the great majority are see
y ing to do, impetuously, wildly, without Sc
0 l ord fhoroforo ,1uS,1coaSsfu11u9