The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1888-08-30
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
A Discourse on "The Martyrs OF
Everyday Life"
The Rewards Awaiting Those Who,
Through Tribulations and Trials,
Do Their Whole Duty-Coro-
nation Day in Heaven.

nation Day in Heaven.
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage delivered the
following discourse on "The Martyrs of
Everyday Life" to an immense con-
course of people at Lakeside, o. His
text was:
Thou therefore endure hardness.-H. limo
thy
Historians are not slow to acknowledge
the merits of great military chieftains.
We have the full-length portraits of the
Cromwells, the Washingtons, the Napo-
Icons and the Wellingtons of the world.
History is not written in black ink, but
with red ink of human blood. The gods
of human ambition do not drink from
bowls made of silver, or gold, or precious
stones, but out of the bleached skulls of
the fallen. But am now to enroll before
you scroll of heroes that the world has
never acknowledged; those who faced no
guns, blew no bugle blast conquered no
cities. chained no captives to their chariot
wheels, and yet, in the great day of eterni-
ty, will stand higher than those whose
names startled the nation; and seraph,
and rapt spirit, and archangel will tell
their deeds to listening universe.
mean the heroes of common, every day
life.
In this role, in the first place, find all
the heroes of the sick-room. When Satan
had failed to overcome Job, he said to
God: 'Put forth Thy hand and touch his
bones and his flesh, and he will curse
Thee to Thy face" Satan had found out
what we have all found out, that sickness
is the greatest test of ones character. A
man who can stand that can stand any
thing. To be shut in room as fast as
though it were bastile. To be so nerv-
GUS you can not endure the tap of q
child's foot. To have luxuriant fruit,
which tempts the appetite of the robust
and healthy, excite our loathing and dis
gust when it first appears on the platter.
To have the rapier of pain strike through
the side, or across the temples, like a
razor, or to put the foot into q vice, or to
throw the whole body into blaze of
fever. Yet there have been men and
women, but more w$men than men, who
have cheerfully endured this hardness.
Through years of exhaustiAg rheumatism
and excruciating neuralgias they have
gone, and through bodily distresses
that rasped the nerves, and tore the
muscles, and paled the cheeks and
stopped the shoulders. BY the dim light
of the sick-room taper they saw on their
wall the picture of that land where the
inhabitants are never sick Through the
dead silence of the night they heard the
chorus of the angels. The cancer ate
away her life from week to week and day
to day, and she became weaker and weak
er, and every 'good night" was feebler
tba sfrood 10Th hafo rot
sad. The children looked up into her face
and saw suffering transformed into a
heavenly smile. Those who suffered on
the battlefield amid shot and she'll were
not so much heroes and heroines as those
who, in the field hospital and in the asy-
lum, had fevers which no ice could cool
and no surgery cure. No shout of a COM
rade to cheer them, but the numbness
and aching, and homesickness-yet will
ing to suffer, confident in God, hopeful of
Heaven. Heroes of rheumatism. Heroes
of neuralgia. Heroes of spinal COM
plant. Heroes of sick headache. He
roes of lifelong invalidism. Heroes and
heroines. They shall reign for ever and
ever.
Hark! / catch just one note of the
eternal anthem: There shall be no
more pain" Bless God for that.
In this roll also find the heroes of toll,
who do their work uncomplainingly. 1t
is comparatively easy to lead regiment
into battle when you know that the whole
nation will applaud the victory; it COM
paratively easy to doctor the sick when
you know that your skill will be appre-
clated by large company of friends
and relatives; it is comparatively easy
to address an audience when, in the
cleaning eyes and this flushed cheeks, you
know that your sentiments are adopted;
but to do sewing where you expect that
the employer will come and thrust his
thumb through the work to show how i'm
perfect it is, or to have the whole gar
ment thrown back on you to be done over
again; to build a wall and know there will
be no one to say you did it we'll, but only
swearing employer bowling across the
scaffold; to work until your eyes are dim
and your back aches, and your heart
faints, and to know that if you stop be-
fore night your children will starve. All!
the sword has not slain so many as the
needle. The great battle-fields of the
last war were not Gettysburg, and Shiloh,
and South Mountain. The great battle
fields Of the last war were in the arsenals,
and in the shops, in the attics, where
women made army jackets for sixpence.
They toiled on until they died. They had
no funeral eulogium, but in the name of
my God, this day, I enroll their names
among those of whom the world was not
worthy. Heroes of the needle. Heroes OF
the sewing machine. Heroes of the attic
Heroes of the cellar. Heroes and heroines.
Bless God for them.
In this role l also find the heroes who
have uncomplainingly endured domestic
injustices. There are men who for their
toll and anxiety have no sympathy in
their homes. Exhausting application to
business gets them livelihood, but an
unfrugal wife scatters it. He is fretted at
from the moment he enters the door until
he comes out Of it. The exasperations OF
business life augmented by the exasper a.
tions of domestic life. Such men are
laughed at, but they have heart break
ing trouble, and they would have long ago
gone into appalling designations but for
the grace of God. Society to-day is
strewn with the wrecks OF men, who, un-
der the northeast storm of domestic in
felicity. have been driven on the rocks,
There are tens of thousands of drunkards
in.