The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-03-04
NOTHING WASTED IN |NAN|MATE WORLD Society for individual RobS So-
 ciety at Large GOD A SEVERE ECONOMIST Faith and Courage Like That of Jesus, Trying to Seek and Save,
 is Supreme Need of
 Hour.

The Rev. Dr. Sterling J. Foster preached at the regular II o'clock services at the South Highlands Presbyterian church yesterday morning, taking his text from the tenth verse of the nineteenth chapter of Luke; For the Son of man is come to seek and save that which was lost
 pr. Foster spoke in part as follows:
 It has been well said that God is a se- were economist. Judging from the pro cesses of nature, We must conclude that in the nanimate world he wastes noth- ing. It is true that our first impression is rather the reverse of this. When we see the great floods poured out upon the earth, far more than is needful for the sustenance of life, He seems prodigal and extravagant but all that is not used by the thirsty soil is carefully gathered into lake or river or returned to the sky in Vapour. There seems, too more heat than is needful, but this also through the ages He has been stdzAng away in the depths of the earth, and today we are tunneling mountain and valley and bringing to light His rich treasures hidden through the ages.
 And in His management of the universe there is no lost power, and all worlds and planets wheeling through infinite space are always on schedule, and we arrange our calendars and set our clocks by their t1,nt from the realm of the inanimate to the animate, from dead matter to human life, all of this is reversed. Here we find ex- travagance, prodigalty and wastefulness on every hand. Man seems the greatest of spendthrifts. l do not pause to speak of the young man who inherts the fortune of his parents, that has cost them the labor and self-denial of years, and who with needless uneoncern dissipates it in a year. He, it is true, is one of the pitiful creatures whom we find from time to time, but in comparison is rare, for few inherit large fortunes from their parents.
 Mankind at Large.
 But I speak of mankind at large, who has everywhere inherited and is the heir of untold wealth, and is wasteful and prodigal in the extreme. How extrava- gant of time, how needless of opportuntyi That which he does not create and which when lost he cannot recover, he seems most determined to squander, and filings away with reckless abandon. The capaci- ties of his own soul, the powers of his own heart, the possibilities of his own growth, all that $ godlike within him. and which constitutes his chief assets in life, are regarded as so much useless lum- Der, that only serves to interfere with his enjoyment, and he hastens to rid himself of such a burden.
 The loss is great, but he does not be- leve it; the loss is irreparable, but he does not consider it, and he becomes a bankrupt ere he has realized his treas ures. Who is the loser? Society, 1t is true, for the individual robs society at large but by far the greatest loser is the in- dividual himself, for ones power to af- feet others, while great, is small in com parison with his power to injure him self
 Listen to the words of one, who though dead, has been recently before the public again. Oscar Wilde, that brilliant de- generate, who perpetrated the unspeak- able drama of Salome, which as an opera has been denied the board even in New York, made this confession in his pathetic prison book which appeared a year or two since:
 '"The fact of my having been the pris- oner of a common jail, l must frankly accept, and curious it may seem, one of the things I shall have to teach my self is not to be ashamed of it, I must accept it as a punishment and if one is ashamed of having been punished one might just as well never have been pun ished at all.
 "Of course, there were many things of which I was convicted that I had not dohe; but then, there are many things of which l was convicted that I had done, and a still greater number of things in my life for which I was never indicted al all. must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody, great or small. can be ruined except by his own hand. 1 am quite ready to say so. This pitiless indictment l bring without pity against myself Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible stll.'
 Loss and Ruin.
 Here is loss, here is ruin unspeakable, written after Salome, after the receiver had been appointed and the defendant de- cared a bankrupt indeed. It is the sight of such wasted fortunes, with their at tendant misery and humiliation, that be-