The Newtown bee., 1905-11-17
TOWN TOPICS.
PORTION OF SERMON PREACHED
 IN TRINITY IHURCH, NEWTOWN,

PORTION OF SERMON PREACHED
 IN TRINITY IHURCH, NEWTOWN, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5, BY RT. REV
 FREDERICK FooTE JOHNSON, ASSIST
 ANT BISHOP OF SOUTH DAKOTA.
 wherefore sxf shn shouid fasti i % Gan I bring him back again? l shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.
 We have had. this week just ended, one of the Church's chiefest, choicest days. But while we were busy here and there it was gone. It came when many of us had scarcely given thought to it's approach, and it had passed al- most before we wholly realized that 1t was here. mean, of course, All Saints day; that day of which our much loved Puritan New England poet, Lowell, wrote:
 "One feast of holy days the crest,
 I, though no Church man, love to keep
 All Saints. the unknown good that rest
 In Gods still memory folded deep;
 The bravely dumb that did their deed.
 And scorned to blot It with name.
 Men of the plain heroic breed
 That loved heavens silence more than fame.'
 The incident of which the words of our text form part seems not an un- suitable around which to cluster our reverent thoughts as we sit to-day moment in the aftermath of the
 BLESSED FESTIVAL OF ALL SAINTS.
 We are, no doubt, sufficiently famil- far with our Old Testament to readily ci to VI the occasion of David's confession of faith recorded here in the Second Book of Samuel You remember the story of the mortal illness of David's little child. In sadness and heavinesS of soul the father now humbleS him. self by fast, now lies upon the earth in penitential agony, now sends up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears, unto Him who is able to save; now sits beside the nar- row bed to watch the paler growing features and to count the fleebly flick ering pulSe-beatS until seven days and nights are gone. So deep has been his aff1iction of soul and body through these slowly dragging days and nights, that when at last the crisis comes and the life which David watched and nursed and strove to keep alive has spent it's breath the members of his household think it wise, if possible, to keep the sad intelligence from him. Taking counsel one of another, through fear that the father may dc himself some injury if the truth be told, they try to keep him ignorant of the fact of the child's death. "How will he vex himself,' they say one to another, Eff We tell him that the child is dead. :" But their whiSperingS together have aroused suspicious in his father-heart and calling them, David puts straight ly to them that question which gives opportunity for no deceit in their re- ply, ''Is the child dead?'' And they say, "He is dead"
 And then that conduct of the father, so strange, so wholly inexplicable to them, the amounting and cheering ot his soiled face with bath and rouge ungents, the putting on of his accus- toned kingly garments once again, in- stead of sackcioth and ashes which had covered him the seven long, anxious days and nights gone by, and the we'll filled board set forth with luxury and SplendOr, at which he who for so long had kept solemn fast now sits and | makes a royal feast. And to those who come to him and ask an explanation of l his conduct this is the fathers answer: | 'While the child was yet alive lasted and wept, for 1 said, who can tell 1 whether God will be gracious to m | is dead, wherefore should l fast? Can l 1 bring him back again? I shall go to | him but he shall not return to me-" David, living in an age to which no certain revelation yet had come of a | life bounded by horizon broader than | the earth he saw; living in an age in | which philosophers and Sages and poets l were prOclaiming death the end of all things, and the grave the goal of every human life; saying sometimes to him. self as he looked at death apart from himself and his own loves and affec- tions, Man is compared unto the Max r, "Dost thou show wonders among the dead, or shall the dead rise up and praise thee;"- when death had come close home to him and had touched his own bone and flesh, stand ing above the grave which closed upon the body of his babe, he spoke truth of which the world as yet had only faintest foregleams and made his in- tuition of that truth his Solace in the hour of his bereavement, 'I shall go to him but he shall not return to me- J | Dear brethren, we Christian people l to whom has been revealed the full. l | far short of what should be expected of us, of cheerfulnesS in the presen ce of the death of those we love- We have personified death by names far better suited to an age of heatheniSm than to an age to which
 THE GLORIOUS GOSPEL OF THE RISEN l SON OF GOD
 has come.
 We call death the Dread Messenger
 we talk of the event of death as the
 fOrding of cold and icy flood; we clothe ourselves with trappings and
 habilaments of woe. Above the spot
 where we commit the body of our loved
 one to the ground we raise a slat
 which neither word nor emblem bears
 to give it's silent testimony to the
 truth as it is in Jesus. This is al
 wrong, dear brethren. It is conduct
 contrary to our Christian profession
 it is distinctly at variance with all the
 teaching of Christ and those who fol lowed him, with reference to the meaning and significance of death; i,
 is rebuked by the examples of holy
 men and women of the ancient days
 who, though they never had received
 such promises as we have had, but only 1 fo off fni 1u {,-