The Evening statesman. [volume] (Walla Walla, Wash.) 1903-1910, 1904-01-04
e,,aIEcr OF REV. ANDREAS
RARD's NEW YEARS SERMON
DELIVERED SUNDAY.
Feels That Without the Gospel OF
Christ There Is Nothing in Life
That Is Worth While.

At st. PauTs Episcopal church yes
terday Rev. Andreas Bard delivered
a most beautiful and eloquent New
Years sermon choosing as subject for
his theme Life a Stepping Stone
The reverend gentleman said:
"A Tale that is Told"-Moses.
l. Brother Moses must have had the
blues when he called life a tale that is
told He compares it to a stream that
flows on without purpose. to the
grass that comes up and withers, to
watch in the night, to sleep. And
so it appears. We have lived thirty,
forty, fifty years. Some fail, some
succeed Some made money, others
have but a dry crust and a cup Of
water. Some were loved, admired,
adored Others died and no flower
adorns their grave. Napoleon con-
quered a world. Vanderbilt accumulat-
ed millions. Emerson developed an in
tellect. Beacher praised religion, In
gersoll rdiculed it. Weyler suppress
ed Cuba, Mckinley liberated it. What
of it? The ashes of the just mfngle
with that of the unjust. History is a
dance and death plays the fiddle. Soon
our turn will come. This life of mine
with all its trials, hopes, failures at
tainments and struggles ends IN a
tombstone. Truly it is a tale told by
an idiot full of sound and fury signify
ing nothing.
But things are not always what they
appear to be. The earth seems to
stand still In reality it is moving.
The tree of today looks exactly as the
tree of yesterday. But it is changing
every minute. So life is more than it
seems, First We play with dolls and
tin soldiers and wooden horses that
is childhood. Then We love out door
sports, ball games, wrestling matches,
gymnastics; that is youth. Then We
struggle for money, for political pres
tige, for social gIamor: that is man
hood. Bat at last We recognize that
all these things crumbe into dust. The
toy-box is set aside. The material
world vanishes, the spiritual appears
We see no longer through a glass
darkly. We realize that character is
the only thing worth while, God the
only reality that survives. We have
learned the lesson of life and are ready
to graduate. Out of our experiences,
Of good and evil of failures and sue
cesses, of vice and virtue we con-
strue a ladder of Jacob which leads up
ward. This is Shakespeare's creed
when he exclaims: "Ripeness is all"
when l returned some three years
ago to my home city 1 found that the
their glitter; the streets seemed short
and narrow; the people provincial, the
scenes of bOyhood void of fascinatio
Did this fact depress me? Nay, it
made me glad. for l know that I had
grown since I left, that my ideals had
become higher, my atmosphere broader
my expectations of life grander I
had gone forward. And this is the ad-
dition which Christianity has made to
the statement of Moses. life is in
deed a tale that is told. It's first
chapter is the cradle: it's last the
grave, And yet between the first and
the last we have the gilded pages of
love, of marriage, of hope made real
and the sadder pages which tell of
losses and failures, of errors and
misSteps. But life is not only a tale
that is told. 1t is tale which has a
a story with a meaning.
Just as IN this world we so from the
primary department to the upper
grades and from the high school 70 the
college. so the laboratory of life is
there to develop us for the higher