Milford chronicle., 1908-02-07
CalnaQe
Sermon
By Rev.
Frank De Witt Talmaee. D. D.


souls is wise"
Every man wants to make the most
put of his life. As the blossom changes
60 the bud and the bud opens into the
flower, so man wants the latest buds
Of his better life to mature and ripen
and then spread their leaves far and
wide that he may scatter their fra
GRANGE everywhere. The heart is not
a silent tomb filled only with the de-
composing cOrpses of dead memories.
It is a great hall in which myriads Of
voices are chanting in chorus And all
these voices are sounding a clarion call
} to the higher life, which God bids all
his children live.
OF course man does not always obey
these calls to the higher life. The
spirit may be willing. but the flesh is
very weak. This means in plain Eng
fish that our good intentions are often
like the seed Christ described in the
gospel of Mark: And some fell by the
wayside. and the fowls came and de-
VOured it up. And some fell on stony
ground, where it had not much earth,
and Immediately it sprang up, because
1t had no depth of earth, but when the
sun was up it was scorched. and be-
cause it had no root it withered away.
And some fell among thorns, and the
thOrns grew up and choked it." In
other words. our good intentions, like
the good seed in the hand of the sower,
are in our hearts, but no sooner are
they planted than the thorns Of temp
i Il. II.
stead of our lives becoming a flower
garden they are nothing but a barren
waste But that does not dispro7e the
fact which l have already asserted
namely, that our hearts are great mu-
sic halls in which myriads of voices
united in chorus are sounding forth
the clarion calls for US to lead the bet
ter life.
Soul Winning Versus Gold.
King Solomon in my text tells us
how we can make good use Of our
lives. He says: Soul winning is the
greatest of all work open to us on
earth. 1t is better than seeking gold.
It is better than seeking fame. 1t is
better than having high political posi-
AAUAGs 4LD AGLuAnb OhEA LDP AhOoI VI ~
other mental and physical and spirit
ual endeavors. No matter what your
brain or worldly opportunities may be,
the grandest, the best and the happiest
work on earth is the work Of bringing
men and women to the cross" He
that winneth souls is WISE" or, TO put
this truism in another way, Solomon is
saying, "NO matter what man may
be accomplishing, if he is not a soul
winner for Christ he is missing the
greatest opportunity of his life"
And this assertion is the more amaZ-
ing because we find it in the book of
Proverbs. OF all the writers of the
two Testaments there is not one who |
represents worldly wisdom in its clear
est type as did King Solomon. A man
may not believe in the rest of the BIZ |
bic, but he must believe in the truth of
most of these proverbs. Indeed, it has |
been asserted that Solomon could not |
have written the book Of Proverbs, but |
must have collected the proverbs of |
many lands and combined them in one |
book And yet right in the midst of |
those invaluable nuggets of worldly |
advice he wrote these words of my |
text: ''He that winneth souls is wise"
Let us study for a little while why the
occupation of soul winning is the
greatest and the most important and
the happiest business in which any
man can engage.
In the first place, when a Christian
wins a soul for Christ he deals with
the only part of a man that is immor-
tai. He deals with the only part of
man that will never die. The soul Is
that unweighable, unanalyzable some
thing in the human body which dwells
in the flesh, but which springs out Of
the flesh when that flesh dies. And
then, taking upon itself the pinions Of
Immortality. it flies away to another
realm, another world. another place of
existence. where it lives and continues
to live after the worlds themselves
shall be no more. The soul will never
die.
The Soul the Vital Part.
Now. if the soul is the only part of
man that is going to live on through
the coming ages the wisest act Of our
lives must be to put the chief empha-
sis of our work upon that part of man
which alone has immortal life. You
surely are not going to expend all
your energies of mind upon the phys
teal body, which at most can live only
a few years, while the soul is going to
live forever. You may say you love
the body, and so you do. But you
merely love the body because the soul
IS in it. When the soul is gone, then
that body will soon become a mass of
decomposition. was talking about
this matter the other day to a friend J
of mine who had lately lost his moth {
er. Her body, according to her ex-
pressed wish, was cremated. Her ash !
es only a few days before had been I
ssought home and deposited in G
bronze urn on the parlor table. "That S
is uncanny," l said, "that fine, strong !
woman like your mother should be
Fro1,obf homo a Iiftlp handful Of ash i