And the text wuz, “Wherefore seeing we are encompassed about by so great a cloud of witnesses let us lay aside every weight and the sin that doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.”

And then follered a sermon that wuz better than any I ever hearn in my life, and I have sot under splendid preachers in my day. But this, though delivered in simple language wuz so helpful, lifting us, holding us up, so we could ketch a glimpse of the right way and inspire us with the strength to foller it.

He pinted out to us the sins that so easily beset us, easily indeed. Not the old sins of Adam and Noah and the rest—patriarchal sins that made us feel reproachful towards the old sinful patriarchs and comfortable toward ourselves. No, he pinted out the besettin’ sins that are rampant and liable to ruin us in the nineteen hundreds. After speakin’ of the other deadly sins that are liable to lay holt on us, such as oncharitableness, envy, jealousy, bigotry, intolerance, injustice, over-weaning ambition, and other personal and national sins, he spoke at 175 length of that monster sin, that national disgrace, Intemperance.

I spoze it wuz some as if when you tapped a barrel filled with pure water, why pure water would flow out of it. And I spoze he wuz so full of his great life work aginst that gigantick evil Intemperance, that them ideas had to flow out when the plug of silence wuz removed. And readin’ what he had about them who through faith had stopped the mouth of lions, escaped the edge of the sword, I spoze he wanted to make his hearers feel that they too could so arm themselves with faith and the power of His might, as to stop the mouths of these nineteenth century lions, overthrow the laws entrenched in lion-like strength in the stronghold of National protection, and escape the edge of the sword of personal greed and selfishness, and put to flight the army of the aliens from God and the good of humanity.

And I spoze when he thought of them wimmen who had received their dead raised to life agin, he thought of the yearly sacrifice to Intemperance, the thousands and thousands of husbands, sons, brothers who are struck by the death blight now, makin’ ready to fall into those oncounted graves. And he wanted to roust 176 ’em up and save their souls and bodies alive and give them back to these wimmen agin, raised from the dead.

Yes, his warnin’s and appeals wuz all directed to this present time and preached to us. He never mentioned them old Egyptians who wuz all dead and drownded out years ago, both by the Red sea, and the long swosh of the sea of Time, or the old Jews and Hebrews, nor he didn’t dwell on science or philosophy, but he pressed the truth home to the hearts of his hearers, how the Lord Jesus had once dwelt upon earth, how He had passed through all the cares and sufferings that we wuz passing through, how He wuz tempted by the sins, pained by the griefs of the world, and how He pitied us and would help us.

As I say, instead of Bible crimes that had been committed centuries ago, he dwelt strong and as if his hull heart wuz in his words on that terrible national crime back of most all the other sins and crimes of to-day. That stands a huge black shape blocking up the world’s progress, that we ort to try our best to fight aginst, and how we had a Helper. And his idee wuz that good men, clergymen and such, who are wont to stand off and look down on the battlefield, ort to buckle on their armor and 177 join in the warfare. And he said that if sometimes the battle smoke hid the form of our great High Priest and Helper we mustn’t forgit that He wuz there, lookin’ on, seeing how the battle went between the Right and the Wrong, and giving His help towards the right side in His own good time, and he gin us to understand that:

All the blood that falls in righteous cause,
Each crimson drop shall nourish snowy flowers,
And quicken golden grain bright sheaves of good,
That under happier skies shall yet be reaped.

“For,” sez he:

When Right opposes Wrong, shall Evil win?
Nay, never; but the years of God are long.