THE COWBOY'S SERMON.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 2179, 1 July 1890, Page 4

THE COWBOY'S SERMON.

" Lots of folks that; would really like to do right think that serviu' the Lord means shoutin' theirselves hoarse praisin' His name. Now, J tell you how I look at that. I'm workin' for Jim, here. Now, if I'd set rouud the house tellin' Avhal a good feller Jim is, and siugin' songs to him, and gettin' 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 iired mighty quick. But when I buckle on my chaps and rustle among the hills and sec that Jim's herd is all right and ain't sufferin' for water and feed and bein' run off the range and branded by cow thieves, then I'm servin 1 Jim as he wants to be sewed. And if I was ridin' for the Lord I'd believe it was His wish that I'd ride out in the ravines of darkness and tho hills of sin and keep His herd from bein' branded by the devil and run off to where the feed was short and clnnktu' holes in the cricks all dry, and no cedars and pinons for shelter when the blizzards come. I don't see how I'd be helping the Lord out if I just; laid round the ranch eatin' up the grub I could git, and gettiu' down on my prayer bones and taffyin' the Lord up and askin' for more. The Bible says somethin' somewhere— l've got the place marked with an ace of diamonds —about how people serve the Lord by feedin' and wateriu' and looking after the herd, and I think it would do lots of people good to read it over. When a critter has had his moral natur starved ever sence he was a calf, and been let run a human maverick till the devil took pity on him, jest because nohody else clidn' look after him, and put his brand on him so deep that even in the spring, when the hair's longest, and its no trouble to tell whose herd he belongs to, it shows mighty plain that the cow punchers of the Lord has been huntin' salary harder than they've been huntin' souls."