OCR Text |
Show SUBJECT OF J SERMON At the regular meeting of the Everyman's Every-man's Rlble class, Sunday morning at 10 o'clock, the men were addressed by Frank M Driggs of the State School for the Deaf and Blind Mr Origgs dwelt with the present-dav problems and methods of Instruction 1 (n the great work in which he is a national leader The hour uas not I only very interesting, but instructive I as well. The men of the Presbyterian church 1 are meeting at 10 o'clock, nch Sun- 1 day. and studying the general prob I perns of the day as they are presented I in a reading of the Gospel according 2 to Mark The theme last night in the First Presbyterian church was th lessons I Of the "Rise of the House of Hohn- 9 zollern." Rev. Carver said in part: "The older instruction concerning kings and rulers as found in the Book of Deuteronomy, is character-Istic character-Istic of Moses Tt is a safe nntiloto for those who today dream that the have divine rights above their fellov men Wo read mueh about the divine di-vine right of kings toda, but the only dline right that has over held, either in ancient or modern times, is the divine di-vine right of ability and service Tint divine right extends to each and all of us Nevertheless most Instructive is the story of the rise of the house of Hohenzollern. "Hohenzollern, ' says Carlyle, "lies far south in Suabia, nenr the Alps, a little north of Lake Constance and close to the source of the Danube The name means 'place of tolls.' and It Is supposed that travelers romlng out H of Italy and Switzerland there had to B pay toll before they could pass to I Germany Tt wa: about 1160 when I Conrnd a younger member of the I Hohenzollern family, set out to Join I the forces of Frederic Barbarossa He nj could find no better teacher than this M great ruler who was a power in most I all of Europe Conrad must have been a man of worth for he found fa- N vor with Barbarossa and was rapidly H promoted Conrad also found favor K with the heiress of the Vohburg family, fam-ily, and married into large estates and fortune, and was appointed Burggraf of Nurnberg His estates were pro-ductlve pro-ductlve and. as the Hohenzollerns were ever a thrlftv folk, they acquired much fortune The House of the I Hohenzollerns is unique, not for Its great age. but for tho length of con tlnuous relcn Without interruption or even dispute it has ruled from the mrly part of the fifteenth century "Antiquity, undisturbed possession and implied consent of their subjects, we read, are the titles on which the Hohenzollerns rest a strong claim to the legitimacy of their power They call this divine right, but it is the divine right of a mortgagee who forecloses fore-closes on an estate when his debt becomes due. Slglsmund, as omper- ! or. mortgaged the mark of Brandenburg Branden-burg and Frederic the Sixth of Hohenzollern Hohen-zollern for one hundred thousand Hungarian Hun-garian guldens. In 14H he foreclosed and so his name was changed to Frederic Fred-eric First of Brandenburg and he became an elector The story of the rise from a capitalist family to a reigning family Is a long one Frederic Fred-eric the Second made the position firm He was a man of iron will. He slezed by foree a square in Berlin Ber-lin and on It erected the first Schloss on the Spree. He wan a great warrior war-rior in his day His crowning act was the establishment of the law of primogeniture :ind was the first ruler to formally declare It His son John, who followed his rule, was also a man of strong will He procured from his people a grant of an excise on beer, the earliest tax of that kind on record. His grandson John Slgis-mund Slgis-mund turned from the Lutheran to the Calvlnist faith as his father had turned from tho Catholic to the Lu-t Lu-t heran The older German name for Brandenburg Bran-denburg was North Mark. That was changed to Mork of Brandenburg and then to Brandenburg Now the name Brandenburg, as a leading name in Prussia appears. "Prussia Is from Po-Russia. The people were Slavs by race and wove warlike hunters and fishers The church desired to convert thern by the Kword and after several defeats the Teutonic knights were appointed the task This order of crusaders did the work- enmiiletelv when nope and em peror called them from their retreat at Venice. After converting the Po-Rnsslans. they ruled them well for two centuries- then, by indolence, lost their power and were repeatedly defeated de-feated The grand master of the Teutonic Teu-tonic Knights dying. It was hard to secure any one to take up the work. Albert of Hohenzollern finally took up the work and reworj the lost standing stand-ing of thn Knight? Albert followed Luther'fl advice and became one of the leaders of the reformation. He created the Duchy of Prussia In 1701 when Frederick III crowned himself him-self king, he was heir to both Brandenburg Bran-denburg and of Prussia, but as Prussia Prus-sia was independent and Brandenburg was dependent upon the emperor, he took the name of Duke of Prussia Later the Hohenzollerns were kings of Prussia "The next step In advance waa taken when on January 1, 1X71, at Versailles William the Second was , crowned with the Imperial crown as emperor of Germany This completed comple-ted the long upward trend from when , Conrad left Hohenzollern to seek his , fortune 10 when his descendant was j emperor of the Germans and the House of Hohenzollern in complete , power. m .. 1 "Who shall say that any family ( that has this ability to rise from an f adventuresome Conrad to a great empire em-pire ruling housA has not in It the story of firmness of will that Is helpful help-ful to us all? "The present emperor of Germany I comer, bv his love of artillery and in- t fantrv most naturally. When Fred- c eric in 141R. had purchased Brsnden- j bure he at onco set to work secur-Ins secur-Ins and malclng what now would bo called very crude artillery but with It he beoaroo absolute master of the newly purchased electorate. Freder- J aJIBJfMJBMsW" ' " vHasssM , iIm ick William, who was the second king, built up a very fine Infantry. He B irched the world for giants and tried to form an entire brigade of them. We think that more lives ar ruined by sheer inaction than by any other hindrance or curse. If one house can develop such power with a view to temporal kingdoms, why not the Christian develop power, abll ity and service with an eternal kingdom king-dom in view. If heaven means anything any-thing or of the promises of the Christ are of power we must give unto them our very best." |