Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1887 — Faith Illustrated. [ARTICLE]

Faith Illustrated.

’ At an island on the coast of Maine which is much resorted to there is an esteemed local clergyman who ill known to the summer residents, nearly all of whom are Bostonians, as the “hen minister.” by reason of his habit of telling, in season ’and out of season, a certain story which queerly illustrates the idea of faith. “I preached a sermon one Sunday, ” the good minister ,Will say, “on the doctrine of faith, in which I taught my hearers the good Christian doctrine that all things may be brought about by faith, instructing them that faith is the evidence of things not seen, the substance of things hoped for. There was a farmer’s wife in the congregation who was greatly edified by the sermon, and came t,o me and told me that she now understood just what faith was. “Next Sunday morning I overtook her on the way to church. “ ‘See here, i 3 arson,’ says she, ‘I don’t think much of your teachin’ about faith.’” “ ‘ Why not?’ I asked. “ ‘Why,’ says she, ‘the other day I heard my speckled hen a cacklin’ like all to pay.’’ “Now,” says I, “here is a chance to see what faith is. That speckled hen’s egg is the evidence of things not seen; the substance of things hoped for. I have faith that she’s laid an egg, and I’m sure that when I’ll go out to the shed I’ll find it.” So I goes out and looks for it, and there wasn’t any egg there, and that speckled hen hadn’t laid any. Now, what’s your faith good for, I’d like to know?’ “And then,” the minister will say, “I told her what was the matter with her faith. ‘lt was meant for a rebuke to you that you didn’t find an egg there,’ said I. ‘You’d ought to have trusted in God, and not in tho hen.’” —Boston Record.