The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1907-03-03

The preacher gives in this sermon
an ideal of a conservation to the
work of preaching the gospel and of the
obligations arising from a consciousness
of divine call. The text is 1 Corinth-
ians. tx, 16, WOE is unto me if preach
not the gospel
In the Pitt palace of Florence is a Won
derful picture. supposed to have been
painted by Michael Angelo, called the
Three Fates" There sit the three sisters
of neurological fame-Clotho, spinning
the thread of life, and Antropos, with her
long, sharp shears cutting the thread of
life. 1t is thought that when Michael
Angelo painted this picture he used the
same model for all the three faces.
Whether this is true we know not, but
one fact about this picture we know-tt
is most impressive and suggestive pic
| ture The artist has depicted three wo-
men at their daily tasks, going on in
| their work serenely, remorselessly and alb
solutely independent of all outside infiu-
| ences by which they may be surrounded.
i When you watch those three faces you
| involuntarily say: Eyes, l can under
stand how men who did not recognize
Gods hand in the government of the
world may have said as they looked at
this picture: The fates are ruling our
7 lives They meet us at the cradle. They
guide us through childhood's hours. They
grow for us the orange blossoms OF the
marriage altar. They lower the bars OF
the great fields of usefulness in which we
are to labor They plant the trees out ol
which our coffins are to be made. IL we
a aat1tG yTa
our work well. If we turn dear ear
| to their behests, then unutterable mis-
fortune and failure will be ours. lhere
the fates sit, spinning our thread OF ne
holding our thread of life and with their
| long shears cutting the thread oil Ire at
| the brink of the grave. Thus men nave
felt the overarching influences OF me
about them. and they believed they
would never get away from the place OIL
| the life those fates had made for them
Sometimes men with this beliet trled
| to avoid their mission in life, just as men
| in our day sometimes try 10 eVaue inc
duty to which God has called them. but
whenever they do so these men are I'M
happy in their work and do not make the
most out of their lives. They are ike
| the late Henry S. Frieze, the beloved
, Latin professor of Michigan university.
| God never meant him to be Latin pro-
| fessor. He was born to be musician.
| All his desires seemed to call out, Let
me linger by the piano keys" President
| Andrew D. Write once said of him:
| Though it has been my good fortune
| to hear all the leading panists OF my
, time | have never heard one who seemed
| to interpret the masterpieces more
worthily. | have always insisted that
had he lived in Germany he would have
| been "a second Beethoven. so passionate
| ly was he devoted to music that at times
he sent his piano away from his house
| in order to shun temptations to abridge
| his PROFESSIONAL work" We find men
| like Henry Simmons Frieze in every de-
partment of life They are like John
| Tyndall who tried to be q civil engineer
when he was meant to be a physicist.
| They are like Matthew Simpson, who
wished to be a physician when God in
| tended him to be a minister. They are
! like James Russell Lowell and Walter
| Scott, trying to be lawyers, when GOD
meant them to be poets and literary men.
| Happy, thrice happy, are the men who
allow the inward tendencies of their
| minds and hearts to develop along the
lines for which they were born and Tor
which God equipped them
One of the Happiest of Men.
| Now. Paul in the words of my text is
| glorying in the fact that he has conse-
| Grated his brain and body and soul to
| the work God had intended him to do.
| He seems to say in this chapter: Some
/ people think ] sacrificed my joy and
| pleasure when / gave up my life to gos-
| pei preaching. Why, sirs, / could do
nothing else If l tried. My greatest en-
! ioyment in life is not to be found out
| side of the gospel ministry, but inside.
| Why sirs, if ! were not allowed to
nreach Jesus Christ | would be the most
] miserable of all men" Then he uses
/ these words of my text: "Woe is unto
?, me if [ preach not the gospel OF Jesus
I Christ" / want to show you that Paul
! was one of the happiest of men because
| he was allowed to be a missionary of
Jesus Christ and that he would have been
| one of the most miserable of men had he
! not surrendered all his energies-body,
mind and soul-to be a flaming evangelist
| of the cross.
Paul had an absorbing passion to preach
! the gospel because. in the first place, he
4 had revelation of the divine personality
| of Jesus Christ He could never get
away from his Damascus road experience.
| lie had felt the Christ touch. lie had
| stood face to face with Jesus. He had
| seen Jesus. He had talked to Jesus. He
| had heard Jesus talk to him No sooner
| did this divine revelation come than there
| sprang up in him a longing desire to go
| forth and tell to the world what he had
! seen and how his Christ could become
| the worlds Savior. Paul's Damascus ex-
| perience was like that which some of us
| have had during our past lives. 1t may
! have been during some revival services
! in the village church of our boyhood days
| or it may have been during season of
| awful sickness or when we buried lit
tie child or during the hours which sue
| ceeded our yielding to heinous sin that
| Christ appeared unto us. We can remem-
| Der it as yesterday. Jesus rose up before
us as he came to Paul, saying, II am