So many people think they are endowed with a peculiar and special sort of wisdom and are able to fool their fellow men so successfully that they try it on the Lord. Here is where they make a fatal mistake, for the Lord certainly knew what he was doing when he made countenances. The newspaper’s most clever ads are no comparison to the clean, open ads the Lord puts on faces and the clear unfrosted windows where you can look far into the soul.
You can’t break man’s laws without being detected. If you are a sneak criminal, inebriate, crook, lascivious, immoral or any other of the degrading types in the category of a false man, the warning is openly and clearly displayed on your countenance. You can’t fly false colors and succeed, for sooner or later you pay the penalty to the last farthing. When you hear the remark “I don’t like his looks,” there is something shown in the countenance to verify the statement or no accusation would have been made. Be a man and your face will do the advertising.
Don’t be afraid of censure or criticism or let it keep you from helping the fellow that is down. God gave us religion for that purpose. It’s something to use every day in the week and not a specialty for the Sabbath; the more you use it the brighter it gets. Anything you don’t use and keep polished loses its usefulness and becomes rusty. Use it whenever you can and you’ll be surprised the confidence you gain in people’s hearts. It’s the greatest purifier in the world, that’s why God gave it to us. He knew what he was doing. It’s the only thing in the world that will lift up the fallen woman, the drunken man, the horse thief, the blasphemer and all others when every hand is turned against them. It’s a panacea for every evil. It’s the only thing that will take humanity with all their sins after they are entirely forsaken and down at the threshhold of hell and make them better. It will take them in the eleventh hour when they come sneaking in at the back door with characters stained as black as night and every law has been transgressed, but as they plead piteously for forgiveness, their petition is heard and all their sins are blotted out and the Lord gives them another chance. He stoops down in his great mercy and love and gives them that peace beyond all understanding. He raises them up and helps them reach for the cross when no hand is extended to help them.
At every opportune chance laugh long and heartily, nothing is better to cheer and comfort, and while it is doing the other fellow good you are getting the cheapest medicine on the market for your digestive organs. Try it after you eat some boarding house pancakes an inch think. You have lots of things to smile for. There is always some one else worse off than yourself. You see them everywhere. If you have a large family your neighbor has a larger one. If you have none at all pity your neighbor who can’t figure out some way to get rid of his mother-in-law without losing his wife. If you are able to hobble around, have a heart for the fellow in the wheel chair and the fellow that has to stay flat on his back and never sees the sun rise.
There are two kinds of sunshine; one is entirely dependent upon the individual and the other was inaugurated shortly after creation. Each is necessary to fill the divine plan. While one kind is periodical in some people, the other is always at hand unless clouds intervene. God’s sunshine is unexcelled and is a marvel in itself for warmth, beauty, cheerfulness and grandeur. The rising and falling of this wonderful orbit body is said to start and finish the work of man, as he was supposed to labor and scheme from sun to sun.
This plan may have been popular and proper before the day of the multi-millionaire, but the time is too short for the present day man, and in order to pay the necessary obligations to exist the twilight at both ends must be consumed and then reach in and grab several hours of darkness. The housewife may have to sew and rock the baby and prove her contention that her work is never done, but it’s up to the Governor, the old man, Dad, or any other name you may call him, to keep the flour in the bin, coal in the bucket, shoes on the children, and an endless number of other things. He’s the lad that must fix it up with the banker when the note is renewed. He must through some devised method dress the kids in schools as good as his more prosperous neighbor, or there’s snobs and tears. He must provide something besides the proverbial soup bone that one neighbor could borrow from another through the winter months. He must buy the latest books, procure lyceum and chautauqua tickets, pay the preacher, the ice man, the milk man, the water man, light man, and dig continually for charity, and thus you see the sun to sun theory has the bottom torn out of it.
Dad is never still long enough for the birds to build nests in his goatee and set three weeks. If he slackens up you notice a visible reduction in your pancake pile. The Lord didn’t make the suns far enough apart for dad or some other people. I worked for a farmer one time that used to start out with a handmade sun about two-thirty A. M. and never ceased till ten P. M. The meals always bothered me; I couldn’t tell if it was breakfast the next morning or two suppers. If God’s sunshine meets man’s sunshine and the two mix properly, you’ve got an individual that is a continual pleasure, one whose existence is exhilarating. He whistles and sings and smiles and laughs and gets out of life everything that is good, and everybody likes and knows him.
I was never so ashamed in my life as I was one time when I had encased in my left cheek a quid of tobacco the size of a hen’s egg. I was carrying on nonchalantly a conversation with a depot master, and the saliva was gathering so rapidly, it wasn’t long before I could only grunt. I always disliked to ruin a floor with expectoration and was also embarrassed by the presence of the agent’s boy, a little fellow of four years, but my mouth was so full and my cheeks so inflated that leakage was starting and I was forced to eject it or swallow it. I chose the former and let it go. It sounded like the distant booming of guns and the space required to contain it on the floor was unbelievable. If its dimensions didn’t cover a foot square outside of the innumerable rivulets in every direction, I’ll buy my wife a twelve dollar Easter bonnet for a Christmas present. The little boy looked at it and said, “My, that’s a big one!” I sneaked out crestfallen, abashed and ashamed, but didn’t have the sense to quit for some years afterwards, when the preacher said something about the ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
TEMPERANCE.
The cause of temperance is one that has been close to my heart for twenty years. Taken from the logical standpoint of protection to the home, sound saneness, improvement in morals, an enhancement of citizenship, it is the second paramount issue of the age. Take away liquor, stop the traffic entirely, and you reduce seventy-five per cent of crime. The empty whisky-bottle is the greatest curse that ever existed. When it is standing filled in front of some bar-room mirror, it is harmless, but when it is empty it signifies that it has been drank by somebody and has been the direct cause for all that has followed.