Democratic messenger. [volume] (Snow Hill, Md.) 1869-1973, 1882-07-01
TALMAGE ON THE TURF.
What Christians May Properly Do
With the Horse-Satan on the
RRcecourse.

DIR. Talmage discussed upon the turl
Sunday morning in the Brooklyn Tab
ernacle. He said, upologetically, that
when tt ere is heresy abroad that cul.
| tivating horses hoetness is an inIquity
instead of commendable virtue q ser.
mon is demanded of every minister who
would like to defend public morals on
the one hand and who is not willing to
see an unrighteous abridgment of limo.
cent amusements on the other. For his
part the Doctor would say what he con-
sidered the Christian and common sense
view of this potent, all absorbing and
agitatlng question of the turf. He. con.
tinued: There needs to be a redistribu.
tion of coronets among the brute crea-
tion. For ages the lion has been called
the king of beasts. / knock of his COR
onet and put the crown upon the horse,
in every way nobler, whether in shape
or spirit, or sagacity or intelligence, or
affection or usefulness. He is semi.
human and knows how to reason on a
small scale.
The Centaur of olden times, part
horse and part man, seems to be sug-
gestion of the fact that the horse is
something more than beast. Job sets
forth his strength, his beauty, his maj
esty, the painting of his nostrils, the
paving of his hoof and his enthusiasm
for the battle. What Rosa Bonheur
did for cattle and what Landseer did for
the dog, Job, with mightier pencil,
does for the horse. The Church's adj
vance in the Bible is compared to a
company of horses of Pharaoh's chariot
In the parade of heaven the Bible makes
us hear the clicking of hoofs on the
golden pavement, as it says, the
armies which were In heaven followed
him on white horses. l should not
wonder if the horse, so banged and
bruised and beaten and outraged on
earth, should have some other place
where his wrong shall be righted. / do
not assert It, but l say I should not be
surprised if, after all, st. Johns descrip-
tions of the horses in heaven turned out
not altogether to be fgurat;ve, but
somewhat literal, and as the Bible
makes favorite of the horse, the patri-
arch and the prophet and the evangel-
ist and the apostle stroking his sleek
hide and patting his rounded neck and
tenderly lifting his exquisitely formed
hoof and listening with a thrill to the
champ of his bit, so all great natures in
all ages have spoken of him in encomi-
astic terms.
After citing modern instances of af-
fection for the horse the doctor con
tinued But what shall / say of the
maltreatment of this beautiful and won
1arf.,1 kinrn &c (IN1 All -
Professor Bergh, the chief apostle for
the brute creation, for the mercy he
has demanded and achieved for this
king of beasts. / do not believe
in the transmigration of souls,
but cannot very severely denounce the
idea, for when l see men who cut and
bruise and whack and welt and strike
and maui and outrage and insult the
horse, that beautiful servant of the
human race, who carries our burdens and
pulls our plow and turns our threshers
and our mills and runs for our doctors
when / see men thus beating and
abusing and outraging that creature it
seems to me that it would be only fair
that the doctrine of transmigration of
souls should prove true and that for
their punishment they should pass over
in some poor, miserable brute, and be
beaten and whacked, and cruelty treated
and frozen, and heated, and overdriven
an everlasting stage horse, an eternal
traveller on towpath or tied to an eter-
nal post in an eternal winter, smitten
with an eternal epizootic. daughter. J
1t ought to be that if any man over
drives horse, or feeds him when hot
or recklessly drives nail in the quick
Of his hoof, or rowels him to see him
prance, or so shoes him that his fetlocks
drop blood, or puts a collar on raw
neck, or unnecessarily clutches his
tongue with twisted bit, or cuts off his
hair until he has no defense against
the cold, or unmercifully abbreviates
the natural defense against insectile an
noyance-that such a man as that HIM
self ought to be made to pull and let his
horse ride
The speaker next said that whatever
can be done to develop the horses feet
ness and strength and majesty ought to
be done. The long tried and faithful
servant of the human race, he said, de-
serves all kindness, all care. Those
farms in Kentucky and in different parts
of the North where the horse is trained
to perfection in fleetness and in beauty
and in majesty are we'll set apart. There
is delusion abroad IN the world that a
thing must be necessarily good if it is
slow and dull and plodding. There are
very many good people who seem to
imagine that it is humbly pious to drive
spawned, CALLED, glandered, spring
halted, blind.staggered jade. There is
not so much virtue in Rosinante as
there is in Bucephalus.
But what shall say of the effort be-
ing made in this day on large scale to
make this splendid creature of God,
this divinely honored being, an instru-
ment of atrocious evil? ] make no in
discriminate assault against the turf.
believe in the turf if it can be conducted
On right principles and with no betting.
There is no more harm in offering a
prize for the swiftest racer than there is
harm at an agricultural fair in offering
prize to the farmer who has the best
| wheat or to the fruit grower who has the
largest pear. Prizes by all means, re-
wards by all means. That is the way
God develops the race, and without the
prize the horses feetness and beauty
and strength will never be fully de.
veloped. If it cost 81 900 or 5000 OF
so, 900 and the result be achieved it is
cheap. But the sin begins where the
betting begins, for that is gambling, OF
the effort to get that for which you give