Baptist Courier

[For The Baptist Courier.]
AN OLDTIME SERMON.
The following sketch of a sermon, said to have been preached in Georgia about fifty years ago, may amuse the young people:
"The preacher was about fifty years of age, large, muscular, and well-proportioned. On entering the pulpit, he took off his coat and hung it upon a nail behind him, then opened his collar and wristbands, and wiped the perspiration from his face, neck and hands. He was clad in striped cotton homespun, and his shirt was of the same material. He had traveled several miles that morning, and he seemed almost overcome by the heat. But the brethren sung a couple of hymns while he was fanning and cooling off, and when he arose he looked comfortable and good-natured.
He had preached there once or twice before, but to most of the audience he was a stranger. Hence he thought it necessary to announce himself, which he did as "Old Club-Axe Davis, from Scriven county, a half hard and half soft shell Baptist."
"I have given myself that name," said he, "because I believe the Lord elected me from eternity to go ahead in the back woods and grub out a path and blaze the way for other men to follow. After the thickest of it is cut away, a good, warm, Methodist brother come along and take my trail, and make things a little smoother and a good deal noisier. Arter all the underbrush is cleaned out, and the wolves are skeered back, and the rattlesnakes is killed off a Presbyterian brother, in black broadcloth and white cravat, will come along and cry for decency and order. And they'll both do good in their sphere. I don't despise a larnt man, even when he don't dress and think as I do. You couldn't pay me enough to wear broadcloth, summer nor winter, and you couldn't pay a Presbyterian brother enough to go without it in dog-days.
"God didn't make us all alike, my brethren; but every man has his own sphere. When He wanted General Jackson, He made him, and set him to fighting Injuns and the English; and when He wanted George Whitfield, He made him for to blow the gospel trumpet as no man ever blew it; and when He wanted old Club-Axe Davis, He made him, and set him to grubbin' in the backwoods.
"But my shell isn't so hard but I can see good pints in everybody; and as for the Presbyterians, they are a long ways ahead of us Baptists and Methodists in some things. They raise their children better than any people on the face of the earth. Only a few days ago a Methodist class-leader said to me: 'Bro. Club-ax, I was born a Methodist, and, by the grace of God, I hope to die a Methodist; but, thank God, I've got a Presbyterian wife to raise my children.' And I believe, my brethren, if the Lord should open the way for me to marry again, I'd try my best to find a Presbyterian woman, and run my chances of breakin' her in to the savin' doctrines of feet-washin' and immersion afterwards."
I believe old brother Davis was right. When the Lord has work for a man to do He puts him at it with such tools as may be necessary to do the work. I felt that way when I was elected deacon, and I always try to be on hand on communion occasions and have the table in order. Yes, when a man is sent out to grub and kill rattlesnakes he ought to do it. But, when the brushwood has all been cleared away and the rattlesnakes all killed, why should he be going about with a grubbing hoe in one hand and a snake-pole in the other; when he ought to be ploughing and harrowing and gathering fruit, &c. Times change in the course of half a century, and so do people in some things. It is so hard for some people now-a-days to see the "good pints" even in their own brethren. It is so hard for them to speak kindly of their brethren if they don't "dress and think" and work as they do. But they mean it all for good of course, and we will love them for their candor.
John Rush, Jr.
Sandy Ridge, S. C.