The Cowboy's Sermon

Feilding Star, Volume XI, Issue 147, 5 June 1890, Page 4

The Cowboy's Sermon

Detroit Free Prcse. • Lots' of folks that would really like to do right think that servin' the Lord means shouting theirselves . hoarse praising his name. Now I tell you how I look at that. I'm working for Jim, here. Now, if I'd set round the bouse here tellin' what a good feller Jim, is, and singin' songs to him, and gettiri' up in the nights to serenade him when he'd rather sleep, I'd be doin' jest like lots of Christians do; but I wouldn't suit Jim, and I'd get ; fired mighty quck But when I buckle on my chap's and rustle among the hills and see that Jim's herd is all right and ain't eufferiu' for water and feed andbein' run off the range and branded by cow thieves, then I'm aervin' Jim as he wants to be served. An if I was riding for the Lord I'd believe it was His wish that I'd ride r out in the ravineß of darkness and the hills of sin and keep His herd ;• from bein' branded by the devil and run off to where the feed was short and drinkin' holes in the cricks all dry, and no cedars and piononi for when the blizzards come. I don't see-how I'd be helping the Lord out if I" jest laid round the ranch eatin' up the gr.ub I could get, and -gettiu' down ou my prayer bones and taffyin' the Lord up and askin' for more. £he Bible says bomethin' somewheYe— l've got the place marked with an ace of diamonds— about how people serve the Lord by feedin' and waterin' and looking after the herd, and I think it would do lots of people good to read it over. When a eiittur has had his moral natur starved ever sense he was & calf, and been let run a human maverick till thb devil took pity on him, jest cause nobody else didn't look after him, and put his brand on him so deep that even in tbe Spring when tLe hair's longest and it's no trouble to tell whose herd he belongs to, it shows mighty plain that the cowpunchers of the Lord has been huntin salary harder than they've been huntin souls.'