Five Sermons
FIVE SERMONS BY THE RT. REV. H.B. WHIPPLE, D.D., LL.D. BISHOP OF MINNESOTA 1890 PREFACE My only excuse for printing these sermons is the request of friends who could not secure copies of them. They are printed as delivered, and the repetition of incidents was a part of the historical statement. The Third and Fifth Sermons were preached without notes and reported by a stenographer. H.B.W. CONTENTS I. SERMON AT THE OPENING SERVICES OF THE GENERAL CONVENTION, OCTOBER 1889 II. SERMON AT THE FARIBAULT CELEBRATION OF THE CENTENNIAL
as a libation, lest, he said, his warriors should thirst the more when
they saw him drink alone; and, no doubt, too, because he felt the
exceeding value of that which was purchased by loyal love.
A like story is told of Rodolf of Hapsburgh, the founder of the
greatness of Austria, and one of the most open-hearted of men. A flagon
of water was brought to him when his army was suffering from severe
drought. 'I cannot,' he said, 'drink alone, nor can all share so small a
quantity. I do not thirst for myself, but for my whole army.'
Yet there have been thirsty lips that have made a still more trying
renunciation. Our own Sir Philip Sidney, riding back, with the mortal
hurt in his broken thigh, from the fight at Zutphen, and giving the
draught from his own lips to the dying man whose necessities were
greater than his own, has long been our proverb for the giver of that
self-denying cup of water that shall by no means lose its reward.
A tradition of an act of somewhat the same character survived in a
Slesvig family, now extinct. It was during the wars that ranged from
1652 to 1660, between Frederick III of Denmark and Charles Gustavus of
Sweden, that, after a battle, in which the victory had remained with the
Danes, a stout burgher of Flensborg was about to refresh himself, ere
retiring to have his wounds dressed, with a draught of beer from a
wooden bottle, when an imploring cry from a wounded Swede, lying on the
field, made him turn, and, with the very words of Sidney, 'Thy need is
greater than mine,' he knelt down by the fallen enemy, to pour the
liquor into his mouth. His requital was a pistol shot in the shoulder
FIVE SERMONS BY THE RT. REV. H.B. WHIPPLE, D.D., LL.D. BISHOP OF MINNESOTA 1890 PREFACE My only excuse for printing these sermons is the request of friends who could not secure copies of them. They are printed as delivered, and the repetition of incidents was a part of the historical statement. The Third and Fifth Sermons were preached without notes and reported by a stenographer. H.B.W. CONTENTS I. SERMON AT THE OPENING SERVICES OF THE GENERAL CONVENTION, OCTOBER 1889 II. SERMON AT THE FARIBAULT CELEBRATION OF THE CENTENNIAL