9 Sermon Illustrations on Faithfulness Rewarded

History informs us of an old Roman soldier who served forty years in the cause of his country, — ten as a private, and thirty as an officer. He had been present in one hundred and twenty battles, and had forty-five times been severely wounded. He had obtained fourteen civic crowns for having saved the life of a Roman citizen, three mural crowns for having been the first to mount the breach, and eight golden crowns for having rescued the standard of a Roman legion from the hands of the enemy. He had in his house eighty-three gold chains, sixty bracelets, eighteen golden spears, and twenty-three horse-trappings, the spoil of war. Let the Christian be equally faithful to his Saviour, and the glory and value of his reward shall far exceed that of this old Roman soldier. Bate.

Bishop Kingsley's is the proudest ecclesiastical distinction of the century. If spared to complete his tour, his name will have historic conspicuity as the first of his office who ever inspected the Lord's great flock the whole world round. History relates, that, when the first actual circumnavigator of the globe reported to his king, the king embraced him with delight, elevated him at once to noble rank, and granted him a coat of arms of fit devices, in which a globe was bordered with the proud inscription, Primus me circumdedisti. Such a reception, such distinctions, await our toiling bishop at the hands of Jesus Christ. Dr. W. F. Warren.

When Calvin was banished from ungrateful Geneva, he said, "Most assuredly if I had merely served man, this would have been a poor recompense; but it is my happiness that I have served him who never fails to reward his servants to the full extent of his promise."

During the heavy rains and floods in the cantons of Geneva and Vaud at the end of January (1910), a Swiss railway gatekeeper at level crossing named Allaman, hearing an unusual hissing sound, walked along the lines, having a presentiment that there was something wrong. He found that a stream flowing from the Jura mountains into Lake Geneva had become a torrent, and overflowing its banks had swept away about thirty yards of the permanent way, leaving the rails suspended in the air.

As the Geneva-Lausanne express traveling at sixty miles an hour was due in a few minutes and would be precipitated into the torrent with its sixty passengers, Allaman ran to his little house for a red flag and stopt the express fifty yards from the suspended rails, and then returned home pleased with the fact that he had prevented a terrible accident. Some days ago the news of the affair arrived at the Bern headquarters of the Federal Railway Company, and the Swiss managers thought that such an act on the part of a gatekeeper should be rewarded.

Allaman received his reward this morning for saving the express and its sixty travelers from destruction. The reward was 8s., which works out at 1½d. a life.

If the accident had occurred the Federal Railway Company would have been obliged to pay between £8,000 and £10,000 damages.--Pittsburg _Sun_.

The following incident appeared in a New York daily:

Bent with age but bright-eyed and alert, James Swift, eighty-four years old, was committed at his own request to the almshouse yesterday by Magistrate Krotel, sitting in Yorkville Court.

“I’m goin’ to start for California just as soon as I come out of the almshouse,” Swift told the magistrate. The old man displayed a silver watch with copper chain, which, he said, was a perpetual pass over the Union Pacific Railroad. It had been given him as a token that he was one of the men engaged in the construction of the road, the presentation being made on the occasion of the driving of the last spike in May, 1866. All he had to do, he said, when he wanted to ride over the road was to show the timepiece to the conductor.