Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1888-12-24
The Subject Of Talmage's Sermon
at Brooklyn Yesterday.
The Cause of Those Violent Eruptions
Explained and Their Cure Made
Known 10 All Men.
A Few Unsightly Carbuncles on the Flesh OF
Christianity That Good Men Fear to Doe
tor in the Proper Manner.
Special to the Gazette.

Tabernacle to-day the Rev. Dewitt TAI
mage, D. D., read and expounded
chapter about the multiplication of loaves
and fishes. The opening hymn was:
The morning light is breaking.
The darkness disappears.
DR.. Talmage took as the subject of his
sermon, GA Bad Boil Cured. - The text
was: s'I have heard thy prayer; behold,
l win heal thee. And Isaiah said: Take
a lump of figs. And they took and laid
it on the boil, and he recovered. III
Kings, Xxx, 81.
Luxurious living is not healthy. The
second generation of kings and queens
and lords and princes is apt TO be brain
less and invalid. The second crop of
grass is almost always short. Royal
blood is generally scrofulOus. You will
not be surprised, then, to hear that
King HeZekiah had disorders which broke
out i'll a carbuncle, "virulent
and beautiful. The Lord told him he
must die: he Gid not want to die. He
turned his face 10 the wall, so that his
prayer would not be interrupted, and
cried to God for his life. God heard the
prayer and answered it, saving: "Be-
hold, / will heal thee But there was
human instrumentaiity to be employed.
This caTbuucle needed Il cataplasm. -
That is Il tough word we use to show how
much we know. If in the pulpit we al
ways used words the people understood,
we never should have any reputation for
learning Well, this carbuncle needed Il
cltaplasn, which is Il poultice. Your
old mother, who doctored her own chill
in Tho +iDnn whom Il,yrSjri9TS
not as plenty as they are now, will
tell you that the very best poultice is Il
fig, and that was what was used upon the
carbuncle of King Hezekiah. The power
of God accompanied by this human in
strumentality cured the king.
In this age of discovery when men know
SO much it almost kills them, and write
SO wisely it almost kills us, it has been
found out that prayer TO God is dead
failure. All things are arranged accord
ing TO memorable law. There is 10 use i'll
praying TO God for rain in time OF drouth
The weather probabilities - in the morn
ing papers viii decide the question, rain
or no rain, and
THE WHOLE NATION IN PRAYER
before God would not bring down a. single
drop. l am not now speaking of an i'm
aginary theory, but of that which is be-
lieyed J ten thousand times ten thousand
men.
\ If sickness comes to your household, it
depends entirely upon ventilation, good
diet and the skill of the doctors as to
whether your child gets well. The father
might pray all day and the mother might
pray all night, 1T would not have any effect
upon the case. If squilTs, belladonna,
paregoric and cruel do the work, your
child will get well: if not, not. There is
a caSt-iron God seated at the head of the
universe, holding IN the cold grasp OF His
metal fingers a band 81 law from which
nothing can break away.
Men and women of God, at this point
the great battle of Christianity is to be
fought. The great foe of Christianity
to-day is rationaliSm, that comes out
from our schools, and universities, and
magazines and newspapers, to scoff at
Bible truth aud caTicature the old religion
of Jesus. 1t says Jesus is not God, for it
is impossible to explain how He can be
divine and human at the same time.
The Bible is not inspired, for there are
things in it that they don't
like. Regeneration is farce;
there is good enough in us, and the only
thing is TO bring it ont. Development is
the acknowledgements. The Gar
den of Eden is Il fairy
story, and no more to be believed than
the Arabian Nights or CULVER IS Travels,
or Robinson Crusoe We all started as
balloons, and are blood relations to that
monkey squirming about on the top of
that hand organ. Lazarus was not dead
when Christ pretended to raise him; he
was only playing dead. The water was
not changed into wine at the wedding,
but Christ brought in some wine that he
had found elsewhere to make up the de-
ficiency. Christ did not walk on the sea,
but on the shore; so near that it seemed
as if he really were on the water.
What is still more alarming is that
Christians men dare not meet this ridicule.
There is not one Christian man in five
that can, unblanched, stand III the pres
ence of all this raillery, saying: 81 be-
lieve in tine whole Bible, and in every
single statement that it makes. -
Christian men try to soften the Bible
down
TO SUIT THE sKEPTICS.
The skeptics sneer ut the dividing of the
Red Sea; and the Christian goes to ex-
planning that the wind blew q hurricane
from one direction a good while until all
the water piled up; and besides, that it
was low water anyhow and so the Is
raelites weEs through without any
trouble. WIZ not be frank and say: ~
believe the lord God Almighty came TO
the brink of the Red Sea and with his
right arm swung back the pillows on the
right side and with his left arm swung
back the pillows on the left side, and the
abashed water stood up hundreds of feet
high, while through their CLASSY wall the
sea monsters gazed with fffrighted eyes
on the passing IsraeIteS. The ration
alist COMES to you saying: elbow about
Jonah and;the whale? DO you really be-
lieve that ishStory?'' There were never
so many Nantucket fishermen after one
whale rs there haye been rationalists
fiingimg harpoons st the Mediterranean
sea-monster, and h'em that one whale
they have got enough oil to light 10 900
souls to perdition. A skeptic tells you
that Jonah would have been killed in the
process of swallowing, and that he could
not, anyhow, have lived three days in
such close quarters, but woUh have been
smoJhered by the poor ventilation. How
the good Christians immediately go to
work and try to explain the whole thing
By natural laws, so as to please the
rationalists, and say that a whale is an
breathing fish; that evel. little while
n comes TO the surface, anlthat the