NORTH SHORE BREEZE. 
17 
Luckily the fellow had sense enough 
not to urge or question, otherwise 
he might of had some real life ex- 
periences to have written of. 
The man was overdoing and did 
not know it. Some one had told him 
he must be common and spend his 
money, and the cow punchers simp- 
ly resented this fellow’s too-appar- 
ent and unnatural patronage. 
Time is the most abundant of all 
things in this country, and tomor- 
row is the most convenient of all 
words. Indolent, easy-going, the 
people live in the today, and let 
Carnegie and the Rockefellers do 
the worrying. 
Comforts there are none—that is 
according to our dictionaries. With 
the one exception, meat, the people 
do not raise anything they consume. 
Nothing will grow here except grass 
and weeds. Not a vegetable, a ber- 
ry, a tree of fruit, not a single green 
thing that man’s system craves. No 
gardens, not an onion, a radish, a 
vine—nothing, because of uncertain 
rainfall. Every article worn, eaten 
or used, except meat has to be 
freighted in from the railroads, 
hence the people have reduced their 
necessities to a minimum—beans, 
bacon and bread—and one could 
chase a cat through the most of the 
houses if all the doors and windows 
were closed. 
But there is health here in the 
thirsty land, health that money can 
not buy and drugs can not give; 
there are days of rare winter beauty 
and balminess that no place on earth 
can surpass; there are twilights 
with no curfew calls in the evening 
glow and nights when a great white 
moon shakes down a soft light and 
makes a scene so beautiful and al- 
luring that a cover over one’s bed 
seems sacrilege. 
There are no pennies, and very 
few ‘‘Yankee dimes’”’ in this coun- 
try. Two bits is the smallest piece 
of change in ready circulation. 
Ask for a postage stamp and tender 
a nickle and you get two stamps 
and a postal card. No one wants 
or will accept ‘‘penny pieces,’’ and 
it is but very recently that dimes 
and nickles have come into the me- 
dium of circulation. Everything 
one buys is bought into quantities 
of dollars, halfs and quarters. 
To give you a little idea of the vol- 
ume of business done in these cow 
towns I would state that one gen- 
eral store in Sonora does an average 
business of $1000 a day, and there 
are a half-dozen other stores. It 
would certainly be interesting to 
get statistics on the saloon trade 
here, but I will leave this rather 
delicate assignment for the next 
WHO HOLDS THE KEY? 
Rev. Henry C. Adams of Winthrop, Preached Interesting Sermon at 
the Congregational Church, Manchester, Sunday Morning. 
Sunday morning, the Rev. Henry 
C. Adams of Winthrop, preached at 
the Congregational church, Man- 
chester, taking as his text, Rev. 3:20, 
‘Behold I stand at the door and 
knock. If any man hear my voice 
and will open the door I will come 
in and sup with him, and he with 
me.’’ He said, in part: 
“Tf God is seeking for admission 
into human hearts, man has the 
power to grant or refuse the re- 
quest. If man had no choice in the 
matter, there would be no signifi- 
eance in the knocking. God is in- 
finitely wise, powerful and good and 
yet the divine power is being 
thwarted by the human will. 
‘Tt seems of little importance to 
me in this present life what man’s 
responsibilities will be. We hold 
open the door or we keep it closed. 
The vital question is what are we 
doing with the key? We hold the 
key. Are we using it in the right 
way or are we letting it rust in its 
place? The door will not turn on 
its hinges unless we take the trouble 
to open it. So great and complete 
is the measure of man’s freedom 
and the responsibility given to hin! 
This is what makes him a man, his 
freedom and the hope of sometime 
becoming God-like. ‘We shall be 
like him, for we shall see him as he 
is.’ We are free, responsible beings, 
and no one of us ean look back or 
any important event in our lives 
without knowing it is of our own 
choosing. 
‘“We see God standing at the door 
of our life, knocking for admission. 
Man holds the key. Many wiil an- 
swer in the time of trouble or loss, 
and adversity may move one to open 
the door that has been elose:l 
through prosperity. Yet none of 
us will ever covet adversity for our 
friends. 
‘‘God is ever standing at the door 
of our inner life, seeking admission. 
Let us think what this means. If 
human freedom has such heauty oF 
human nature, what shall we say of 
that beauty of divine nature of God, 
in his attitude toward men’ Can 
any conception be any more glort- 
ous? God is love, and love seeks 
the object upon which it is bestowed. 
If I say this is a grand conceptioa, 
how much grander is the though! 
that God is at all times, in all plac- 
es, seeking entrance to human 
man. With the temperance feeling 
here, I don’t fancy the job. 
hearts and lives. It is a fact of 
great significance, a fact to which 
many of us, perhaps all of us, owe 
our first impulse God-ward. First 
open the door. Some experience 
touches one person and leads him 
to God, another touches another 
person with a like result but these 
various experiences only serve to 
make very clear the fact that God is 
in them all, that he is continually 
knocking to see if he ean not gain 
the door of the inner life that is 
barred against Him. 
‘We are all impressed by the ana- 
logy between the natural and spirit- 
ual life. The psalmist. hikens God 
to the sun. One is the source of 
spiritual life and the other of physi- 
cal life. The sun always shines, al- 
though clouds sometimes shut it 
from the earth. The sun is ever 
seeking to pierce the clouds that 
‘light and heat may be given the 
earth. This is the chief point in 
the analogy this morning. It is hard 
to keep the sunshine out. It needs 
no special attraction to draw the 
sunlight. I like to think that this 
is a beautiful way of showing the 
soul’s relation to God. Man is free, 
with dominion over his own life, 
and God, with infinite patience, is 
seeking to enter into our lives. This 
is the conception the text gives us. 
God has been knocking at the door 
of your and my life all this week. 
Some of us have opened the door 
the greater part of the way. I won- 
der if any of us have fully given 
God the right of way? 
‘*We cannot measure Christ’s love 
to us, but unless our love for Him 
is greater than ‘our love for our- 
self, in no sense do we allow him 
to come into our lives, and the doors 
are still barred against him. 
‘The test of our love is the meas- 
ure of our obedience. The Master 
said a great deal about obeying. ‘Ye 
are my friends, if ye do the things 
I command you.’ What God asks 
of us, he gives in winning men. 
Love always obeys. God is love, 
and so God also obeys and the cross 
of Christ is first of all the fullest, 
deepest expression of God’s love to 
man, algo .of ..Christ’s. obedience. 
Obedience to God -is simply putting 
God first. Are we doing this? This 
is opening our heart to God, open- 
ing it so that he may enter and take 
our life to use as he likes. He is 
standing at the door of our imner 
life, knocking for admission that he 
may give us Himself,”’ 
