Clinch Valley news. [volume] (Jeffersonville, Va.) 18??-2019, 1917-08-17
GOOD SAMARITAN.
Rev. Mr.. Platt breaches Special
Red Cross Sermon in Pres
byterian Church-Good Col
lection Taken.

The following is the Cermon Of the
Rev. II. B. Platt delivered in the Pres
byterian church last Sunday morn,
ing, the services being called n SPEC.
ial Red Cross service.
Read Luke 10:25-37.
The Good Samaritan of the Twen.
tieth Century is The Red Cross So
ciety. He has all the good qualities
of both the masculine and the FEM
mime. He has has all the grace, the
tenderness, the sympathy, and the pit
ying love Of the most tender heart
ed woman and also, all the daring
the firmness, the strength, the stern
mes of the most stalwart man. His
watchword is Service. He never
! shirks, never shrinks from the most
arduous task where human need is
involved. He is not an Individual
but an institution; an organization.
Yet he is personality. His soul has
been defined by another in these
words: "To bind up the nations
wounds; to care for him who shall
have borne the battle, and for his
widow and his orphan-to do all
which may achieve and cherish n
just and lasting peace among our
selves and with all nations. The Red
Cross or the Good Samaritan of the
Twentieth Century, will plead for SER
vice, record humanity at its best, out
line the vision of greater nation in
the non-material fields, cheer the de-
spondent, and direct the wandering
good intention. He is the tie that
binds the 'far-separated acts togeth-
er, until the little tricllles of human
ity shall all come together in vast
stream of human sympathy so pure
and powerful as to accomplish new
thing on earth"
The Good Samaritan of he Twen-
tieth century is international in char
acter-that is, he belongs TO all ma
tions and TO all people. Every civiliz-
ed nation today has him. He is Eng
lish and American; French and Ital-
ian; Russian and Japanese; German
and Austrian; white, yellow, black.
He was born in the first century of
the Christian era. He was created by
the Man of Sorrows who knew humai,
suffering i'll all its intensity and who
released from his own divine person
ality those forces which minister in
case of need. The Good Samaritan
of that first century was but the pro-
totype of the Good Samaritan of to-
day. That one helped one poor trav-
eler who fell among enemies while
this one of our day has succored mil
lions. He has not confined his nc
tivities to times of war. When famine
has stalked about in any section of
the land he has supplied food; when
epidemic has ravaged the vitals of
community he has applied the healing
balm; when earthquakes and fires
have rent the earth and reduced pros,
porous cities to ashes he has gother-
ed up the fragments, and out of the
ruin anw waste has builded anew;
when floods have overwhelmed and
vandals have prowled about like the
thieves in the night, the Red Cross
has been on hand to turn debris into
new homes, and to restore law and
order. The American Red Cross alone
has spent millions Of dollars and rem
dered billions of hours of personal
service in peace time and disasters
within the last dozen years.
While the Good Samaritan of the
Twentieth Century was created two
thousand years ago he was not much
force in an organized way until the
middle Of the nineteenth century.
Then battle Of the Crimean worked
such havoc among the soldiers and
conditions among the wounded were
SO acute as th,t Swiss journalist
proposed that the nations organize
relief societies for the care of the
wounded and the sick in time of bat
c. War is most horrible but out of
all wars some good has come, and it
is back to this war that we must look
for the impulse that made Red Cross
work reality. The rulers of Europe
called conference of the powers and
at Geneva in October, 1868, the Red
Cross Treaty was signed by fourteen
powers. 1t provided that each gov
crnment extend its sanction, au l.or-
ity and protection to volunteer relief
organizations in time of war; that
the privilege of neutrality be extend
ed by all the belligerents to the am
balances, hospitals, doctors, nurses,
all persons attached to the medical
relief corps of the armies, and adopted
as the insignia the Greek cross of
red on filed of white" This insig-
mia, with which we are all familiar,
has the red to denote the spirit of the
sacrifice and the white to denote pu-
rity of motive of service, and has
since then been respected, except by
savages. In 1877 few patriotic cit
izens of America fostered the idea of
the Red Cross in the United States,
and in 1881 they secured charter of
incorporation under the laws of the
District of Columbia. The next year
our government signed the treaty of
Geneva with the other nations. In
every disaster such as the Johnstown
flood, the San Francisco earthquake
the Red Cros rendered such service
as to impress the Nation with it's i'm
portance, ever growing in knowledge