Friday Lard Blogging

Moses E. Lard was born in Bedford County, Tennessee, Oct. 29, 1818, and after fighting "the good fight of faith" for over sixty years, entered into eternal life from Lexington, Ky., at midnight, June 17, 1880. His father, Leaven Lard, with his family, moved to Ray County, Missouri, about 1829, hoping to secure a home by entering land, and also to enjoy the chase, for at that time game of all kinds abounded. Though disappointed in proving up his claim, and doomed to succumb at an early day to the dreaded scourge, smallpox, and to leave his family of six children without adequate support, his son Moses was entered in the school of adversity, from which he learned independence and that courage which has bequeathed to posterity the example of true greatness. Surely the fires within and without played over his soul with a fury that would have consumed one of inferior mold. It was from the pure ozone of the West, from the wide prairies and boundless forests, from great rivers that swept past his feet onward to the sea, that the early life of Moses E. Lard drew its inspiration. Here he derived his power of depicting nature, here he put himself en rapport with the throbbing heart of God in trees and brooks and running streams.

His vivid imagination created his word pictures with a power rivaling the pencil of the master painters. All the wealth of his genius flowed from his lips upon the canvas, and the men and women created by his own words stood before you real beings, living, moving, breathing at his command. Although he spoke without note, these masterpieces came from his mind ready for the press, and defied the criticism of the best scholars and writers. It is much to be regretted, that aside from what was left in the Quarterlies, no sermon survives. Had his best sermons been written out and published, they would today be masterpieces in sermonic literature, and all others would pale before their brightness, beauty and logical coherence. The writer has never heard any preacher surpass him in his power to flood his theme with the effulgent glory of divine truth. The Scriptures had so penetrated all his powers, so thrilled his entire being, that they came from his lips burning with fire off God's own altar. It is true that he was not uniformly eloquent. Genius is never uniform. It will not be subject to ordinary devices, or be thrust within the narrow confines of the ordinary nutshells of commonplace brains.

Recognizing his great gifts as a writer, his friends induced him to undertake the publication of what became at that time the ablest periodical published by the advocates of the Restoration, Lard's Quarterly.

- from J.B. Jones, Churches Of Christ, ed. John T. Brown, c.1904 pages 416 - 418

Let us mourn now and remember a great man, whose great Lard name was only surpassed by that of his father - Leaven Lard. Oh, that I had such a name, and such a marvelous neck mullet as Moses once sported, to carry me through the lean times.