Excerpt from A Set of Holiday Sermons

Granted all this, namely, that the burden of our message be true respecting the generality of men, I take it that here as everywhere are gathered hosts of the heart-sick and soul-weary, who take leave of the speeding year with nothing of regret, who look forward to the incoming twelve month without aught of hopefulness. Saddened by sorrow, embittered by disappointment, grieved by misfortune, these tell us that our march from year to year is futile and profit less. With much show of wisdom and more of pathetic help lessness, these prophets of evil point out to us the vanity of time's flight, that all men are but as wanderers along the desert-sands, leaving behind them, at best, foot-prints which the faintest wind will dislodge or the earliest storm blotout from sight forever. And, at last, as if to adduce an unanswerable argument, these, the believers in the final triumph of void and darkness, think to prove the aimless destiny of man by comparing his course in life to the ship which sails across the seas and leaves no trace or memory of its passage. But is this similtnde just and can we carry this analogy to its logical end? Is it indeed true that the bark of a human life sails tracklessly across the ocean of time? Let us see! Lately, I was hastening homeward from across the sea. In a certain sense it-was true enough that the vast ship which bore us ploughed its mighty way through the watery waste, leaving no mark or record of its passing. In very truth it might be said that ours was a pathless, trackless flight; for how soon are the seething, foaming billows in the wake of a boat swallowed up in the stillness of the emerald deep! Trackless was our voyage, but not aimless. Trackless it may be, viewing merely the manner of our going from place to place. Was that voyage aimless or even pathless, however. Which brought us safely to our appointed goal, distant by thousands of miles from our starting-point? Was that journey aimless which from far, far away winged us unto the embrace of loved ones, eagerly awaiting our return after weeks or months or years of separation? Was that sailing aimless which carried num bers of young people from the. Stifling breath of their native lands to the invigorating atmosphere of our free country, which transplanted hundreds of gifted, ambitious youths from places where energy and aspiration were fore doomed to failure, to our own country, which rewards talent, honors enterprise and crowns industry? Look to the sea and you will find no sign or reminder that this noble bark was ever piloted from shore to shore. The record must be sought and will be found in the hearts of the re united, in the boundless hopes of those to whom America spells opportunity for the gaining of great riches, or honor able fame, or high place.

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