The Brookhaven leader., 1886-01-28
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
The First of Series of Discourses
on the Marriage Ring"
The Choice % q wIfe-Some Men WHO
Have No Right to Marry--Moral and
Spiritual beauty More Desirable
the Mere Physical.


below. The following was the text:
Is there never a woman amongthe daugh.
tiers of thy brethren, or among all my peo.
pie, that thou gnest to axe - wife OF the uu.
circumcised PiiiStinrs?-Judg gcs, xiv, ;.
Samson. the giant, is here asking con-
sent of his father and mother to marriage
with one whom they thought unfit for him.
tie wa, wise in asking their counsel, but not
wise in rejecting it. Captiyated with her
looks the big son wanted to marry daugh-
ter of one of the ostile families, a deceitful,
hypocritical, whining and saturnine crea.
tdre. who afterward made for him a world
of trouble till she quit him forever. In my
text his parents forbade the haunS,
practically saying: When there are
so many honest and beautiful maIdens
Of your own country, are you so
hard put to for lifetime partner that
you propose conjugality with this for
eign flirts Is there such dearth of ILL.,
lies in our Israelitish gardens that you
must wear on your heart Philistine
thistle: Doyou take crab-apple because
there are no pome granatesE is there
never a woman among the daughters of
thy brethren, or among all my people,
that thou goeSt to take a wife of the un-
circumcised Philistines""
ExcuseleSs was he for such a choice in
land and amid race celebrated for female
loveliness and moral worth, land and
race of which self-denying Abigail, and
heroic Deborah, and dazzling Nashti, and
pious Esther, and glorious Ruth, and Mary
who hugged to her heart the blessed Lord,
were only magnificent specimens. The
midnight folded in their hair, the lakes of
liquid beauty in their eyes, the graceful
ness of spring morning in their posture
and gait, We're only typical of the greater
brilliancy and glory of their soul. Like
wise eXcuseless is a man i'll our time who
makes lifelong alliance with any one who,
because of her disposition, or heredity, or
habits, or intellectual vanity, or moral
justification, may be said to be one of the
Philistines.
The world never owned such opulence of
womanly character or such splendor of
womanly manners or mutitudinous in
stances of wifely, motherly, daughterly,
sisterly devotion as it owns to-day.
have not words to express my admiration
for good womanhoOd. Woman is not only
mans equal, but in affectional and re-
ligious nature, which is the best part of us,
she Is seventy-five per cent. his superior
Yea, during thelaSt twenty years, through
the increased opportunity opened for female
education the women of the country are
better educated than the majority of the
men; and if they continue to advance in
mentality at the present ratio, before long
the majority of men wild find diffiulty in
finding in the opposite sex enough ignor-
| ance to make appropriate consOrt. III
! am under delusion as to the abundance
of good womanhood abroad, consequent
! upon my surrO Snings since the hour | en-
tered this work until now, | hope the delu
/ sion will last until | embark from this
| planet. So you will understand, if | say
in this course of sermon something that
seems severe, am neither cynical nor dis
gruntled.
There are thousands of American pull.
! pirs. among them this pulpit gUi in the
fact that on some of the subjects Oh which
men and women need practical advice
they have been silent, or teaching them
/ only in forceless CircumlOcution. About
the choice of a lifetime companion, a
| question in which SO much of time and all
of eternity are involved, what universal
silence in the Church, so that there are not
ten people in this house who have ever
heard a discourse of this theme; and the
first one | have ever heard is the one | am
preaching. We leave to the hippant novel
or the spectacular play, OF the jingle OF a
doggercl rhyme, that which ought to bur-
den the most tremendous sermon minis-
ter ever breaches, from the day when he
takes ordination to the day when in judg-
! Tnent he meets his God And so, in this
. course of sermons, | am going to hitch up
my best team to the whiffietree, and put
the coulter of the plow clear up to the
beam, and 60 straight on from fence to
fence, however many nests of moles and
serpents may be ripped up by the furrow,
and however many alarmed people may
cry whoa
That MARI ge is the destination of the
human is mistake that want to correct
before 90 further. There are multitudes
who never will marry, and still greater
multitudes who are not fit to marry. In
Great Britain to day there are 94S,0OO more
women than men, and that, understand,
is about the ratio in America. By mathe-
matical and inexorable law, you see, mil
lions of women will never marry. The
supply for matrimony greater than the de-
mand, the first lesson of which is that ev-
cry woman ought to prepare to take care
of herself if need be. Then there are thOa-
sands of men who have no right to marry,
because they have become so corrupt OF
character that their offer of marriage is an
insult to any good woman. Society will
have to be toned up and corrected on this
subject, so that it shall realize that If a
woman who has sacrificed her honor is un
fitted for marriage, SO is any man who has
ever sacrificed his purity. What right
have you, Oh masculine beast, whose life
has been loose, to take under your care the
spotlessness of virgin reared in the sane
tty of respectable home: VIII buzzard
dare to court dove:
But the majority OF you will marry and
have right to marry, and, as your re-
li9ious teacher, wish to say to these men,
in the choice Of a wife, first Of all seek Di-
vine direction. Abut thirty five years ago
when Martin Farquhai Tupper, the
English poet, urged men to
prayer before they decided upon
matrimonial association, people
laughed. And some OF them have lived to
laugh on the other side of their mouth.
The need of Divine direction argue from
the fact that so many men, and some OF
them strong and wise, have wrecked their
lives at this junc1ure. Witness Samson
and this woman of Timnath. Witness
Socrates, pecked of the historical Kan
tippe. Witness job whose wife had moth
ing to prescribe for his carbuncles but allo-
oathic doses of profanity. Witness
Ananias, a liar, who might perhaps have