Connecticut western news., 1905-01-12
Cal1r,aoe Sermon
By Rev. Frank De Witt Talmaee, D. D.

 tration by which, as he shows, days are continually being lost in the voy age of life; text, Ecclesiastes K, 10, whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might
 \ What tragic significance there may be in that little word ''Lostr' We hear it in the despairing cry of the miners starving in the Death valley of the Mojave desert. We hear it in the bit ter cry of the travellers bewildered in midwinter on the Montana prairies. It is a shriek of horror on the lips of the poor children on the General Slocum burning on the sound of New York. It is cry of dismay from the crew of the Royal Charter wrecked on the Irish coast. It is a cry of agony from the man in the upper story of the Windsor hotel in New York, whose body with suppliant arms stretched in ,entreaty to the fremen falls into the 'seething furnace. He is lost!' we cry as one of our number slides over the edge of the Alpine glacier. He is lostv we said in sorrow when our friend, the Rev. Dr. Robert B. Taylor of San Diego made a false step from the deck of the sailboat and sank to rise no more. "Lostw cries the mother frantically pacing the streets looking for her wandering child. "Lost! cries the gambler who has ventured his last coin on the turn of the wheel. Horror and dismay and agony and despair are h.
 h There is another kind of loss of which I want to speak to you today. At the beginning of new year it is impressed upon us with solemn import. Looking backward over the year that is gone, how sad is the thought of our lost days! Days there have been in which We might have done work for God which we have suffered to pass away in idleness, days which can never be recalled which we have frittered away uselessly.
 We all know the old adage that "time is money We are all ready to grant that this axiom is true "If a man has no regard for the time of other men," wrote Horace Greeley, "why should he have for their money? What is the diff ference between stealing a mans hour and stealing his $5? There are many men to whom each hour of the business day is worth more than $5." But, though time means money to most of us, time should mean more than that. It is sacred trust committed to us, for the right use of which we shall have to give account. Little enough is the DOT ton we can devote to our Masters serv- ice. If we waste it we defraud God.
 Losing the Minutes.
 We waste these days simply by vast ing here a minute and there a minute This thought was brought home to me in my tour around the world. In 1893 my father and left our homes in the east and started on our journe. We Followed the course of the setting sun. We travelled from New York to Pitts burg, from Pittsburg to Chicago, from Chicago to St. Louis, from St. Louis to pDenver, and then to San Francisco We zigzagged up and down, but always kept pushing toward the west. At San Francisco we set sail for the Sandwich Islands. Then we went on to Samoa Sometimes we would stop two or three days in a town, sometimes full week. It took us seven long months to encir- cle the globe. Each day, as rule, was for us not twenty-four hours, but twen- tyfour hours and ten or fifteen or even thirty minutes long. Of course you grasp my meaning. We were lengthen- ing our days, because we were travel Ing westward. How were we to straight en out our calendar? This was the way we did 1t. One night we went to bed on Wednesday. The next morning when we awoke 1t was Friday. There, in the middle of the Pacific ocean, we lost a full day. How did that day disappear?
 As I sat that Friday morning, after Thursday was dropped out of my cal endar, said to myself: ''Yes, yes. This is the way many days are lost for Christ in our great journey of life. Here 1t is a few minutes wasted for Christ in the morning. There it is a few minutes wasted at noon or at eventide or at night These few min ntes do not seem to amount to much at the time, but in the aggregate they make up whole days, weeks, months and perhaps whole years of wasted time that might have been spent in service for the Master
 How many days that might have been given to Christ have we lost? How do we lose them? First, by not starting the work of each day prompt ly and energetically sIs we ought to do, by oversleeping in the morning or by dawdling through our dressing, by lin gerfng too long at the breakfast table, by yawning and stretching and idly building air castles in bed after the rising bell has rung, by ignoring the "get up" call, which King Solomon in the sixth chapter of Proverbs pounds upon every bedroom door when he calls: "How long wilt thou sleep, o sluggard? When wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? Yet little sleep, a lit tie slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep. So shall thy poverty come as one that traveleth and thy want as an armed man." Lord Will mington once declared that the cause of the failure of the famous English
  was that he never started the days work on time. He loses half an hour every morning and runs after it during the whole day without being able to oyertake It." Many men and women are wasting precious days that might be used for Christ by not getting up on time and starting the work of the day on time and systematically and DrOmDt- ly meeting all demands as they come up for settlement.
 Wasting Time.
 This warning against the wasted min utes of the early morning is far more necessary than some of us have here tofore supposed. When we waste the early minutes of the morning we waste the very best minutes of the whole day. The old proverb says: Beauty sleep is always taken before F o'clock at night. Every hour of sleep before T 1;<xl1f fe, 1,,tl I,-,,