The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-10-21
o.c"c.c.o.o.o.o.o.c.o. DIR. TALMACE'S SERMON
 BY THE REV. FRANK DE WITT TALMAoE, D.>D

answers sharply. fThe frost is not my enemy. but my friend. It comes to me as a lover and puts it's white arms about me and says: Tree. I want thee to live hundred years. I want thee to grow ] thousands upon thousands of leaves. But in order to do this I must husband thy strength. l must give thee an annual rest. l must enrich the soil where thy roots are buried. Trust me. Believe me.
 l am thy friend for the deeper I pile the snowbanks about thy trunk the richer the food thou shalt have to live upon when the warm summer sun comes back from its journey on the other side of the
 equator and kisses thy cheeks. The frost 1 is my friend and not my enemy" When the tree speaks thus, instead of condemn ing a winter blizzard, thank God for the
 winters cold as well as the summers l heat.
 The Necessity of Rain.
 l turn from the forests and enter the valleys. There l find the corn and the 1 wheat and the vegetables growing ev-
 erywhere. It is now July instead of Jan uary. I have foolishly gone out without my heavy boots and macintosh. My wife warned me that 1t might rain when I started out, but I needed not her ad- vice. The dark clouds were even then gathering. Suddenly there sounds a nut tering of thunder. Then the lightnings
 flash and a tree is shattered by my side. Then comes the rain falling in a perfect deluge. The rain does not matter much
 to me. because I know that if I walk
 briskly and keep my blood in circulation
 I shall not catch cold. But the poor flowersl The poor grain! The poor corn! They seem to be almost human. They seem to hang their heads as though they do not want the water to spatter into their faces. Poor things, poor thingsF l say
 But almost instantly a mighty chorus Of protest sounds from the fields We are not poor things" they answer. We are parched and God has sent us this rain to quench our thirst We are filthy and God has sent us this shower bath to cleanse Us. We would die of hunger, but God, by this rain, has swelled the brooks until they come 1eaping down the noun tain sides to irrigate the valleys that our food may be moistened so that our roots can suck 1t up. God has sent us this atmospheric disorder that we may grow strong and feed a hungry worldl The rain is just as essential to our lives as the sunbeam" Wonderful and true answer that When I tramped home did not find fault with my wet garments. l knew that the rain, as truly as the sunshine was sent as a messenger of di- vine love Where no oxen are, the crib is clean, but much increase is by the strength of the OK" Do you not grasp the sublime proverb as applied to the physical or natural life?
 But we can have "a stagnating cos mos" in our mental life as well as In our physical or lower entities The man who physically basks under the summer sun, who never wishes to do any manual labor, who always sits down in prefer ence to standing up and rides instead of walks; the man who never takes any more active exercise than walking up- stairs to his bed and who never feels the eXhilaration of a pedestrian expanding his chest against the beating winds. either becomes a physical degenerate or Is foolishly signing his own death war rant On the other hand, the man who simply allows his brain to lie fallow, who never develops his mind, who never studies, who never struggles up the mountain heights of thought, as the Al pine climber pants and pushes and pulls himself up the crags of the Matterhorn, is a man who becomes a mental degener- ate. It is only by work, only by dis couragements, only by shutting the teeth and braclng the will and pushing ahead, that the chaotic conditions of the mental realm can be evolved into the harmones of mental cosmos.
 The Development of the Mind.
 John Ruskin once beautifully described the development of the mind. Your minds" he wrote. 'are endowed with a vast number of gifts for totally different uses-limbs of mind which if you don t exercise you cripple. One Is curiosity that is a gift a capacity of pleasure in knowing which if you neglect you make yourself cold and dull. Another Is sym pathy-the power of showing the feelings of living creatures. which if you destroy you make yourself hard and cruel. An other of your gifts is admiration-the power of enjoying beauty or ingenuity, oh, ma ixa aI base and irreverent. Another Is wit-the power of playing with the lights of the many sides of truth, which if you de- stroy you make yourself gloomy and dull to others. In choosing your way of work it should be your alm as far as possible to bring out all these faculties-not one merely. but all of them. The way to bring them out is to concern yourselves attentivey with each faculty. To culti- Vate sympathy you must be with living creatures and thinking about them. To cultivate admiration you must be among beautiful things and looking at them" ." But some people have "a stagnating men, tai eosmos." They are never willing to read. They are never willing to study They care nothing about the great wide world and its doings. They literally would not go across the street to see the most beautiful picture ever painted or hear the most exquisite harmonies ever sung, NIllE OH tue OlileI tltiiiu opiile men are never satisfied with their pres ent mental condition. They are always reaching up and reaching out. They will go to any trouble to learn. No work for them is too difficult if they can only im- prove themselves and learn something new.
 "Drat that boy!" the farmer says. "HIe is not worth two pinehes of salt. I can never make a man out of him. He is all
 ways idling his time away with some study l send him down into the fields to blow. and as soon as dinner time comes he opens his tin pail and book al the same time and then begins to read Then he forgets everything but his books | l am just as liable to find him there reading an hour later as not No, farm CT, you will never make a man out o1 l that boy if your definition Of man is | to be hedged in by a cabbage patcn. Thai boy has higher visions of life than plant | ing corn. He Is dreaming. He Is looking ahead to the time when, as minister ol l the gospel. he shall save men Tor christ l or when as a physician he can relieve the pain of the fevered brow, or when as a lawyer he can defend an innocent mar in the clutches of the law. Through the
 disorder of corn crib he sees the work
 which God is calling him to take up. Not a Loafer.
 You miserable, lazy loafer! cried the peasants angry wife to the stranger breeding at her fireside Did l not tel | thee would give thee thy dinner If thol wouldst watch that 1t did not get burned au1f hast SnOilpC