The Cowboy's Sermon.

Otago Witness, Issue 1897, 12 June 1890, Page 42

The Cowboy's Sermon.

" Lots of folks that would really like to do right think that servin' the Lord means shoutin' theirselves hoarse praisin' His name. Now, I tell you how I look at that. I'm workin' for Jim, here. Now, if I'd set round the house here tellin' what a good feller Jim is, and singin' 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 fired mighty quick. But when I buckle on my chaps and rustle among the hills and see 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' Jim as he wants to be served. 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 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 pinions for shelter 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 grub I could get, and gittin' down on my prayer bones and taffyin' the Lord up and askin' for more. The Bible says something somewhere— 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 crittur has had his moral natur starved ever sense he was a calf, and been let run a human maverick till the devil took pity on him, jest cause nobody else didn't look after him, aad put his brand on him so deep that even in the spring, when the 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." — "The Administratrix" — Emma Ghent Curtis.