Check out these names for animals images:
A Very Tiny Jumper
Image by e_monk
Hat-tip to Mean and Pinchy for the ID of Metacyrba species.
View large on black
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Kingdom: Animalia
Subkingdom: Eumetazoa
Phylum: Arthropoda
Subphylum: Chelicerata
Class: Arachnida
Order: Araneae
Infraorder: Araneomorphae
Section: Dionycha
Superfamily: Salticoidea
Family: Salticidae
Subfamily: Marpissiniae
Genus: Metacyrba
Species: M. taeniola
Binomial name: Metacyrba taeniola
Memorial Sermon for Arthur Morson
Image by Robert of Fairfax
[As transcribed by RGK1958, 14 March 2007. Anything in brackets [..] our my own notes to clarify or add historical context.
Mamee kept a copy of this sermon with her her entire life. So, it must have been truly sentimental to her.
The Mississippi Confederate Grave Registry indicates that Arthur Alexander Morson (20 Jun 1846 - 7 Oct 1914) is buried at Cedarlawn cemetery in Jackson, MS.
Name: Morson, Arthur A.
Born: Jun 20, 1846
Died: Oct 8, 1914, Van Winkle, MS
Rank & Unit: Pvt; Co. E, 3rd MS Inf
Cemetery, City, type Marker: Cedarlawn, Jackson, MS, Private
Enlisted: May 21, 1861
Discharged: Apr 26, 1865
County Contributor: Hinds
Cedarlawn cemetary is located at 2434 West Capitol Street, Jackson, Mississippi just south of Hawkins Field and east of Jackson Zoological park.
Based on the following transcription, the sermon was held in a little school house in Van Winkle. This could possible be Van Winkle Elementary School, 6 miles from Cedarlawn cemetery. It will be interesting to do further research to confirm the location.
]
I N M E M O R I A M
A. A. MORSON
[Arthur Alexander Morson, 1846 - 1914]
--o--
SERMON PREACHED AT MEMORIAL SERVICE
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1914
at
VAN WINKLE, MISSISSIPPI
By
REV. DR. E. T. EDMONDS
--o--
I want to read the Ninetieth Psalm:
"Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.
Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.
For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which growth up.
In the morning it flourisheth, and growth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.
For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.
Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.
For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
Who knoweth the power of thine anger? Even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.
So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
Return, O Lord, how long? And, let it repent thee concerning thy servants.
O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil.
Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children.
And, let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it."
UNQUOTE
Let us pray.
Almighty God, we come into Thy holy presence at this time, feeling very much our sense of need and our deep and great dependence upon Thee; that in Thee we live and move and have our being, and that from Thee cometh life, and breath, and all things.
Oh, God, we know not what the day or the hour may bring forth. We are in Thy hands and our destiny is with Thee, and we pray Thee, Father, to make us faithful to the duty and service of life, and so by faith to follow the leading of Thy providence, and we pray that we may be thoroughly guided by Thy spirit, and walk in the ways of peace and righteousness. Our hearts are very sad today, our Father, and very lonely, and we feel that at this hour we miss the dear one, who has left us very much; and we pray, Father, that his spirit may be with us today and worship with us, and we pray that his kind and gentle life may linger with us as a gracious fragrance and a blessed memory; and that his beautiful example may ever before the people of this community; and that others, the men of this community especially, may realize how much his life has meant, that they too may make their lives fruitful in the service of the Lord and of our Christ. And, Father in Heaven, we pray for the dear ones who have given up to Heaven the father and the husband. We pray that thou wouldst give them "beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness."
And we pray, Father, that all of us, in our own way, may be faithful to the duty and service of life as he was; and when the hour shall come, if thou shouldst call us home in the morning, or at the midnight hour, we pray that we may be ready, as he was ready, to pass hence into the everlasting bliss beyond.
Oh, God, be with us, bless us, and lead us in Thine own wisdom. Help us to distrust ourselves and trust Thee and love Thee; and may Christ be ever regnant in our very hearts, and through His name and in His name, and by His blood, may we find peace and acceptance before Thee, and may Thy spirit be with us, fill us and possess us, and lead us, Father, to the eternal home, where thee shall be no death and no separation, and where we shall serve Thee world without end, through Jesus Christ. Amen.
Two verses of number five.
At the close of the service we will sing number two hundred eight, "Just as I am, Without One Plea."
I want to call your attention to a phrase in the Book of Isaiah, the sixty-foruth Chapter and sixth Verse: "But we are all as an unclean thin, and all our righteousnesses are a filthy rags, and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away."
"We all do fade as the leaf." There are a great many expressions in the Old Testament, especially about the brevity of life, and about the swiftness with which death may summon us to the beyond. We are told that our life is like a weaver’s shuttle; and we are told that death comes upon us like a flood. And we are told so frequently that we are like the grass and the flower of the grass, in the morning flourishing, in the evening cut down and withereth.
This phrase in the Book of Isaiah, "We all do fade as a leaf, "is a peculiarly suggestive expression that has often appealed to me, and especially at this season of the year. All the leaves fade.
I was brought up, friends, as a child and as a boy, until I was about twenty years old, indeed, in a country where the leaves never fade; where the bark changes on the tree, but the leaves are perpetually green---that is, the native trees. Of course imported trees that come from other continents bring with them their own habits. And so I must confess to the wonderment that came to me in the first autumn that I spent in Kentucky and beheld the fading leaves of the forest trees. All of the leaves fade: the leaves of the tiny bramble, and the leaves of the mighty oak. And so "death, with equal pace, knocks at the palace and the cottage gate."
And it is an important reflection, friends, to remember about the fading leaves, that they fade when their work is done. There is a very important office, if I may use that word, in the life and foliage of our trees. The animal creation is always pouring out a great tide of poisoned air from the lungs, taking out of the great animal economy all of the poison that, if left, would really destroy the bodies of all animal life, and the leaves through the hot summer continually absorb all those poisons; but when the summer season has ended, and the touch of frost has come to tell us of the coming winter, then the leaves fade when their work is done. And I think, friends, it is so beautiful for us to think of life that way, as fading when our work is done. And God only knows, beloved, when our work is done.
I remember when President Garfield was shot [July 2, 1881] in Washington, D. C., how the nation prayed for his recovery, and the whole world seemed to be in sympathy with the nation that was in grief. And yet he died. And yet, somehow, I think his death was wonderfully blest, for he died in the hope and triumphant expectation of Christian faith, and in the day when Ingersol was preaching his doctrine of materialism and opposing Christian hope. It was a great thing for us when he died to have a Christian die in public life, and in a public way, and in a public place. It helped the world to see the confidence of one’s faith in God.
I don’t know, friends, about the apostle Paul, --what I covet most about him. I think, you know, that he exemplified more of the Christian faith than any other man whose life is found upon the pages of the New Testament. You know he was in prison for a long time, and then he was let out of prison, and then when fierce persecution came, he was arrested and put in prison, [and] condemned to die. I love to think of Paul’s letters so much. I was writing to my brother the other day in Washington, D. C. I have not seen him for many years. But after I had written the letter on the typewriter, I thought of some little message, a little personal message. And I wrote that with a pen. I said to myself, "Now, he will think this is the dearest part of this letter, this little foot note." And that is true. In the very foot notes of Paul’s letters, friends, I find such beautiful things. In that love letter to Phillipians [Philippians] we find a beautiful story. Onesiphorus, who brought to Paul a gift from the Phillipians [Philippians], had been sick and had gotten well. Paul was sending him back. He wrote that beautiful letter to the Phillipians [Philippians], ---Paul’s love letter. At the bottom of the letter, I find this postscript: "All the saints salute you, chiefly they of Caesar’s household." The very soldiers that guarded Paul had become his own brethren. And when Paul wrote that letter he told them how much, how much he loved them. And so Paul added at the end of the letter, "All the saints salute you, chiefly those of Caesar’s household." And then when he was going to die, his life was fulfilled as God’s providence would seem to have it fulfilled. He wrote that final letter to Timothy---Timothy, that wonderful preacher, that young man Paul loved as he loved no other man.
You can tell a whole lot by a man’s friends, the kind of people who are his friends. I like to think of Paul’s friends. Paul’s friends are interesting. Timothy was one of them. He wrote this final message to Timothy. "I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand." He wrote, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth, there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which God, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day, and not to me only, but to all of them also that love his appearing."
I was in the city of Rome in 1896 and went to the prison in which Paul very likely wrote this beautiful letter. Leaving the bright sunlight of Italy, on an August day, I went into a dungeon and there was just enough light to dimly light it up. Then the tonsured monk lighted a little taper, and we went down into a lower dungeon that has been there for centuries and centuries. And I thought of Paul in that dark dungeon writing this beautiful letter: "I am now ready to be offered and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith." And it seems to me, friends, that the very light of Heaven must have come in a flood into that dark dungeon in which he was writing. And so he added: "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which God, the righteous judge, has given to me, and not to me only, but unto all of them also that love his appearance." It is a great thing to finish life with our work done, and well done.
I thought I was going to die some years ago, friends, and there were perhaps six doctors, in the next room talking about my condition, and the doctors said I was in a very dangerous condition. I did not think so, but the doctors said so. But do you know the things that worried me as I thought of dying,--it was the unfinished tasks, the incompleted [uncompleted] things that I had started and had not finished. I was building a great church, a stone church. I had set my heart upon its completion. And Oh, I did pray to the Lord that I might finish that at least, and I did. And, you know, I think when we come to die, we will think very much of the things that are unfinished, the unfinished tasks of life; and Oh, I try now, friends, as I get older to hurry to completion everything I undertake, and leave it completed and finished. "I have fought a good fight, I have kept the faith, [and] I have finished the course." Oh, for a completed life, and Oh, for a satisfied sense of completed service when the Master calls us home.
And the leaf, friends, is brightest when it fades. You know a great many people think that spring time is the joy of life, that when these branches that have been singing their miserere [misery?] through the weary months of winter, put on their new foliage and every hillside has its carpeting of green, and the first flowers come and are sending out upon the passing breeze their fragrance, and giving color against the green patches of grass, that the spring time seems to be the welcome time of the year. But, you know, I love the fall of the year, I love the autumn, I love the season of the fading leaves. Walking from the station over here this afternoon, I felt I would have fifty times preferred to walk rather than to ride; to feel the joy of coming through the forest on an autumn day. There is a stillness, friends, about the woods, there is a stillness about the air, there is a carrying quality about the atmosphere in the fall of the year that I miss in every other season. And then, friends, I used to love, when I was in Arkansas, to go up into the Ozarks, in the fall of the year. As the train traveled up from the river level, up the mountain side, up and up, arising to an ascent of about sixteen hundred feet above the sea level, and then we could climb to a two thousand foot level. It was something worth while to look down upon the mountain when the first frost had tinted the leaves, and to behold that marvelous sunset of color, all the yellow and gold, and the green and all the mingling colors. That great mountain side seemed to me to be more beautiful than the sunset upon the Mediterranean Sea. That is the time, friends, when the appealing voice in the fading leaf somehow speaks to me a great message from the Father. The leaf is brightest when it fades. I think that is the way of life, friends; it ought to be.
Oh, it is sweet to take a little baby with its eyes of blue, its unfathomed mysteries as you look into the light of its eyes. There must have been, for Jesus took a little child and set him in the midst and said unless you become converted and become like this little child you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The purest thing under the canopy of Heaven, Jesus said, is a little child, that precious thing. But I love to think of life, friends, not in its childhood or youth, but as it is fading out; and as we are leaving behind the life of flesh and blood, the soul life, the divine life and the God life are speaking out their mysterious, wonderful something through the eye and through the hand, speaking to us of that life that is beyond, when we shall be transformed into the likeness, the image of Jesus Christ. It is brightest when it fades. And so, friends, as the fires of life dies, as the passions fade out, as the great physical powers are sinking, there seems to come up out of the soul, out of the inmost life, there seems to come up the likeness of the very Christ, and so out of the "muddy vesture of decay" we see the developement [development] of that spiritual life that is to find its home in glory. And then friends, the leaf fades in hope, in hope, in hope.
Next spring these dry, withered leaves, rattling through winter’s weary months, with every passing breeze, upon these oak branches---you will not have to cut them off; the swelling bud will push them off. They will fall to the ground. And so this life friends, fades in hope. And so the Christian fades in hope; and thus he passes away with the assurance and expectation of the joy that is beyond, "where never fading spring abounds and never withering flowers."
I never can forget, friends, an experience I had in traveling in Switzerland in the month of August, a few years ago, near the place where the river Rhone rises under a great glacier and flows into the great southern reaches of France. And I remember the night I was there. It was freezing a little all night. And early in the morning we got up and went to the Rhone glacier, and walked over a great bed of ice that had been there for centuries and centuries and centuries; and through the great crevasses we could hear the flowing stream and trickling drops, the beginning of the great Rhone river [River]. And then as the sun came up, what a glory! There was a great encircling range of mountains capped with eternal snow, and as the sun came up the peaks were crimsoned with the new light of day. After we had had breakfast, we walked over to the station, or traveled in a carriage, then too the train. Under the mountains there is a very long tunnel between eight and nine miles long. We went into the darkness of that tunnel. The difference between the elevation of the mountain and the valley below is so great that the descent would be too great to go straight down, so the tunnel winds around like a corkscrew and lets you down in that sort of way. And for twenty minutes we were in that darkness. It was almost as much as I could endure to live through those twenty minutes. I think it was the longest twenty minutes of my life. And yet there came all in a moment, as we left the tunnel at the other end, into a valley of Italy, there came the bright glory and glad sunshine, the flowers, the songs of the birds, and the leaping streams down the mountain sides. I said it is wonderful, it is wonderful. This, it seems to me, is what death means. We leave behind the sin and winter and the bitterness, and the momentary darkness is perhaps the experience of death, and then we are ushered into the glad light, into the eternal sunshine, into the never-fading glory of that world beyond that is so beautiful. We know not what we shall be, we do not; but we know that when he shall appear, "we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is."
Beloved friends, I do not want to start anew the fountain of tears. I would not make the aching heart sore again. Rather would I heal it.[?] Yet, I must confess to you that an awful sense of loneliness and loss came over me as I came into this little school house [This appears to be a metaphor for the church the Reverend was speaking in. However, read on.] this afternoon; an awful sense of depression. I felt as if one had left us whose face was always here; whose glad hand was always ready with its manly greeting and whose voice was always vibrant with truth and righteousness,--a manly Christian. And what a good man dear Brother Morson was! I think of him, friends, so much, as a man, as a good man. I was talking a moment ago at the Edwards House to a young man, and we were talking about a merchant, and I said, "He has a good stand for business," but he said, "That isn’t much of a stand," he said, "It is the man that is getting the business, it isn’t the stand at all." Do you know, friends, I have come to look at life that way very much indeed. Back of every contract I make I want to see the man. Back of every piece of goods I buy I want to see the man. Back of every promise and pledge I want to see the man. When I feel there is a man behind every transaction, I am not so particular about how the contract reads, or how the goods look; if I have the pledged word of the man, it means so much. Friends, the greatest thing we are doing in America is making men, making men, and our republic will never die and go into decay as long as we are rearing God-fearing men an women and have in every community such a citizen as this good man was, with the life that was always breathing the very spirit of Christ. What a valuable citizen he was! Why, they tell me in Jackson, when they had one of the meetings for this projected creamery [According to my Dad, A. A. Morson was in the Creamery business], after everybody had spoken, this modest man sat in the corner and said nothing. Somebody called on him to speak and they said he told them more about it than they had ever known about this enterprise. His few words of wisdom revealed a lifetime of experience tersely and clearly put and he sat down as the accepted authority upon the question.
I always felt, friends, that I wanted to know Brother Morson better, I knew him so slightly. You know, there are some people you meet and you do not want to meet them intimately again. And there are some people you meet, and the more you meet them the more you feel their faults and failings. And yet there are some other people the more you meet them the more you like them, and he was the kind of a man to me; the more I knew him the more I loved him, and the more I wanted to know him. He was one of those wonderful men, so simple, so modest, so true, and yet so wonderfully wise, I felt as if I wanted to know him and take him to my heart to love. I have never known a man for such a brief time, who made a deeper impression on my heart than he made. And I am sure you will miss him. You will miss him so much. But I am persuaded that his example and his life will remain in this community of years as a blessed fragrance of the Christ.
And then what a father he was! I have thought so much of this family of children that he and his dear wife [Bessie Eppie Dameron, 1860 - 1835] have brought up. These thirteen children [See list below]. And I have thought of these children, how they have developed, how they have gone out into life to find their place and reflected honor and credit upon their mother and father. And wherever they have gone they have carried his good name unsullied. I think it is a great thing.
[
Along with their mother, all thirteen living children attended the ceremony:
Name, DOB - DOD, age in 1914
Bessie Eppie Dameron, 1860 - 1935, 54
Louis Alexander Morson, 1879 - 1879, would have been 35
Arthur James Morson, 1880 - 1950, 34
Mildred Berry Morson (Youngberg), 1881-1934, 33
Robbie Mae Morson, 1882 - 1883, died
Hallie Taylor Morson (Kennington), 1884 - 1967, 30
Elizabeth Kate "Bessie" Morson (Greene), 1885 - 1971, 29
John Andrew Morson, 1886 - 1962, 28
Rosalie Vere Morson (Emerson), 1888 - 1962, 26
Julie Dameron Morson, 1889 - ???, 25
Hugh Blair Morson, 1891 - 1925, 23
Sara Francis Morson (Boteler), 1893 - 1982, 21
William "Willie" Todd Morson, 1895 - 1943, 19
Phillip Hull Morson, 1897 - 1960, 17
Margaret Priscilla Morson (Hood), 1900 - 1978, 14
Mary Roberta Alexander Morson (Sexton), 1903 - 2002, 11
]
You remember the old story in the Roman history we used to learn when we were children. The story of the Graechi,--the mother who lived in a great mansion, beautiful home,--her husband was an illustrious senator. Somebody said to her, when she had shown them everything, "Now, madam, where are your jewels?" She brought her two boys,[;] she said "These are my jewels." I tell you, fathers and mothers, it does not matter how many acres you own, how much bank stock you have, there is not anything that will give you credit quite as much as your noble sons and your splendid daughters,--your children, your children, who grow up to be noble men and women, to do Christ’s work, serve God, and their country. I am sure these children loved this dear father. I am sure they will love his memory. And I am sure our very heart goes out in sympathy and affection and love to this home that has lost the father, the husband and brother, and to this community that has laid away this noble citizen.
I am interested in what you are doing here. I pray that these men, noble men they are, may take up this work and carry it forward, and Van Winkle may feel the influence of the holy work you are doing in this little school house [this confirms it really was a school house and not a church]. And when your daughters and sons have gone forth into the world, may they look back to this place and say, "Right here in this little school house in Van Winkle, it is here I found God and came into the possession of the new life, and there was formed the might resolutions that made my character." I pray that God may bless you all in what you are doing.
Now, we are going to sing this beautiful hymn, "Just As I Am, Without One Plea;" we are going to sing just two verses, the first and last verses.
And I want to say this; if there are those here today who are not Christians, who have never given themselves to the Lord Jesus, while we sing these two verse if you feel you want to declare your faith in Christ, you may come forward and give me your hand and the Lord your heart.
And now may the God of Peach, that brought again the Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the Sheep, through the blood of the everlasting Covenant, make you perfect in all things to do His will, working in you that which is well pleasing to His will, through Jesus Christ, the Lord Amen.
