The Brookhaven leader., 1888-10-04
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
Superhuities q Hinderance Rather
than Help.
The Possession Of Too Much Of the worlds
Goods Not Conducive to Spiritual
wealth-Divtne Triumph In
the Human Anatomy.

ance." His text was:
A man Of great stature, whose fingers and
toes were four and twenty. six on each hand,
and six on each fCct; and he also was the son
Of the giant But when he defed Israel, Jona-
than the son OF Shimea, David's brother slew
him. m.-Chronicles, Xxx, 6-7
Malformation photographed, and for
what reason? Did not this passage slip
Ia by mistake into the sacred Scriptures,
as som stimes a paragraph utterly OBJ
noxious to the editor gets into his news
paper during his absence? Is not this
bcriptural errata? No, no; there is moth
ing haphazard about the Bible. This
passage of Scripture was as certainly in.
tended to be put in the Bible as the pas
sage, ain the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth" or, "God so
loved the world that He gave His only
begotten Son"
And select it for my tex to-day be.
cause 1t is charged with practical and
tremendous meaning By the people Of
God the Philistines had been conquered,
with the exception of few giants. The
race of giants is mostly extinct, I am
glad to say. There is no use for giants
now except to enlarge the income of
museums But there were many of them
In oilen times. Goliath was, according
to the Bible. eleven feet four and one
quarter inches high. Or, if you do not
believe the Bible, the famous Pliny,
secular writer, declares that at Crete, by
an earthquake, a monument was broken
open, discovering th4 remains of giant
forty-s;x cubitS long, or siXty-nine feet
high. SO, whether you prefer sacred or
profane history, you must come to the
conclusion that there were in those olden
times cases Of human altitude monstrous
and appalling. David had smashed the
skull of one of these giants, and
there were o her giants that the Davidean
wars had not subdued, and one Of them
stands in nv text. He was not only Of
| Alpine stature, but hal a surplus of
! digits. To the ordinary fingers was an
nexed an additional finger, and the foot
/ had also a supnrhuous addendum. He had
! twenty -four terminatjOns 10 hands an d
+ feet, where others have twenty. 1t was
/ not the only instance OF the kind. Taver-
/ nier, the learned writer, says that the
! Emperor of Java had a son endowed with
the same number Of extremides. Vol-
/ cattis, the poet, had six fin ,ers on each
/ hand. Maupetius, in his celebrated let
ters, speaks of two families near Berlin
similarly equipped of hand and foot. All
! L
two cases of the same physical super
! abundance.
But this giant Of the text is in battle,
and as David, the dwarf warrior, had dis
patched one giant, the brother Of David
| Stays this monster of my text, and there
! he lies after the battle in Gath, dead
| giant His stature did not save him, and
his superfiuous appendices Of hand and
! foot did not save him. The probability
was that the sixth finger on his hand
made hlm clumsy in the use of his weap-
on, and his sixth toe crippled his gait.
| Behold the PROSTATE and malformed
giant of the text:
man great OF stature, whose fingers and
! toes were four and twenty, six on each hand
and six on each foot; and he also was the son
| Of the giant. But when he det1ed Israel. Jona-
than, the son of Shimea, DaVid's brother, slew
! him.
Behold how superfulties are a hinder
ance rather than help. In all the battle
at Gath that day there was net man
with ordinary hand and ordinary foot
| and ordinary stature that was not better
off than this physical curiosity OF my
| text. AS phy sical size is apt to run i Il
| families, the probability is that this
brother Of David, who did the work, was
of an abbreviated stature. A dwarf on
the right side is stronger than giant on
| the wrong side, and all the body, and
mind, and estate, and opportunity that
| you can not use for God and the better
ment of the world is a sixth finger and
| sixth toe, and terrible hind erance. The
most Of the good done in the world, and
| the most of those who win the battles for
the right, are ordinary people. Count the
! fingers of their right hand and they have
| just five, no more and no less. One DR..
Duff among missionaries, but three thou
| sand missionaries that would tell you
they have only common endowment. One
Florence Nightingale to nurse the sick in
conspicuous places, but ten thousand
women who are just as good nurses
though never heard OF. The Swamp
Angel was big gun that during the war
made big noise, but muskets OF ordi-
nary caliber and shells of ordinary heft
did the execution. President Tyler and
his Cabinet go down the Potomac one
! day to experiment with the peacemak er,
great iron gun that was to alright with
! its thunder foreign navies. The gunner
touches it off and it explodes and leaves
Cabinet Ministers dead on the deck,
while at the same time, all up aud down
our coasts, were cannon Of ordinary bore
/
ready at the first touch to wakeu to duty
The curse OF the world is big guns. After
the politicians who have made all the
| noise go home, hoarse from angry dis
cussion, on the evening of the first Mou-
| day in November, the next day the peo.
pie with the silent ballots will settle
every thifg, and settle it right, million
of the white slips of paper they drop
! making about as much noise as the fall
OF an apple blossom.
Clear back in the country to day there
are mothers in plain apron, and shoes
fashioned on a rough last by the shoe
maker at the end of the lane, rocking
babies that are to be the Martin Luthers,
and the Faradays, and the Edisons, and
the Bismarcks, and the Gladstones, and
the W ashingtons, and the George White
fields of the year 1885, and who will make
the twentieth century so bright that this
much lauded nineteenth in comparison
will seem part Of the dark ages. The
longer l live the more ! like common
folks. They do the worlds work, bearing
the worlds burdens, weeping the worlds
sympathies, carrying the worlds conso-
lation. Among lawyers we see rise up
Rufus Choate or William Writ or 8
Samuel L. Southland, but society would
go to pieces tomorrow IL there
were not thousands of common law
yers to see that men and womer
get their rights, A Valentine Mot
or Willard Parker rises up eminent in
the medical profession, but what an IN
limited sweep would pneumonia, anC
diphtheria, aud scarlet fever have in th'
1 world II IL were not for ten thousSuS