686 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



plish the task which is unsuited to his age. That word "simplicity" is often 

 a very misleading word. But, worst of all, is the young person, in the spring 

 time of life, when all the sap is running, with whom all the forces of life are, 

 or ought to be, in love; with whom there are wooings and weedings in the 

 air, and with whom all the energies of life are thrilling with the great eternity, 

 who mechanically puts on the autumn face of November, suddenly adopts 

 tearfulness, like a fall of rain; and woefully seeks to realize that kind of 

 piety that goes with a long face. My dear friends, all these are perverse; 

 all are based on misconceptions about life. Y©ur young man has no more 

 business to be an old man, in order that he shall seem satisfactory to a board 

 of deacons, than an old man has to be a young man, in order that he shall 

 satisfy a prevailing impression, or become center rush in the football eleven. 

 Nature detests mechanics of this kind. 



There is a worrying incongruity in any man's life who does not under- 

 stand the law that all human life is sacred. There never was a wasted 

 moment in the life even of this common product. (Indicating a pumpkin. ) Not 

 from the moment when it was a seed, until today, when "it holds within 

 itself, in gold, the whole ideal of the dome of St. Peter's." It is a great 

 thing in nature, which has been arguing tke future of St. Peter's and St. 

 Paul's domes. There never was a moment in its history which was not of 

 prof und importance to it. The value of the seed lay in the fact that, some 

 day, it would be this sphere of gold; and the glory of this sphere of gold lies 

 in the fact that out of that seed it has arisen into the fullness of its prophecy. 



It has accomplished itself. Here it is, in all its beauty, and in all its 

 strength. Here are object lessons to you, today — there are two hundred 

 and fifty pumpkins here, this morning — all of them preaching an autumn 

 sermon, because each has realized itself out of a little seed. Every moment 

 of its life has been emptying itself into every other moment, and making 

 that quick, to make the best of the world and of itself. No! The glory of 

 a young man is his strength, and the beauty of and old man is his gray 

 head. 



There was a time when good people thought it decorous to use things in 

 order to keep from any appearance of having gray hairs. That was a time 

 when it was very embarrassing to read this text in certain congregations. 

 Here is the Word of G©d today. Here is the good news. It is a gospel, in 

 the first place, of growth, so certain that it begins precisely where all 

 growth begins; and it has exactly the same rules of growth that shall come 

 to you, and to me, in the development of all our life. ^ 



I wish this morning that with this ear of corn, and with these stalks, 

 and with these leaves, right here, in your very presence, I could show you, 

 in the first place, that the greatest products of life, the noblest results of 

 growth, have nothing whatever to do with what the Pharisees and Sadducees 

 call " consistency." And yet, inside of all inconsistency of life, with all 

 consistency, is that divine power of achiering the end of growth. Along 

 with inconsistency, so to speak, there comes glorious consistency, triumphant 

 over all. 



Suppose, today, we take another of these ears of corn; here upon this 

 shock, and we begin to say, ' 'this thing, now, must be consistent from the 

 very beginning to end." Then you must husk this corn, and take a single 



