New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1888-08-08
EVERYDAY MARTYRS.
That Was the Subject of Rev. DR.. TaImage's Ser
mon at a Chautauqua Assembly.

An important chautauqua assembly was
held at Lakeside, Ohio, at which the leading
professors, scholars and clergymen of this and
other lands have addressed the audiences.
The Rev. Z. Dewitt Taimage, D. D., of
Brooklyn, has been there, and preached to an
immense throng. The subject ofhis sermon
was, ''The Martyrs of Every Day Life He
took for his text, Thou, therefore, endure
hardness I'll Timothy, H., 8. DR.. Talmage
said:
Historians are now slow to acknowledge the
merits of great military chieftains. We have
the full length portraits of the Cromwells, the
Washingtons, the Napoleons and the Yelling
tons of the world. History is not written in
black ink, but in red ink ofhuman blood. The
gods of human ambition do not drink from
bowls made out of silver, orgold, or precious
stones, but out of the bleached skulls of the
fallen. But I am now to unroll before you
q scroll of heroes that the world has
never acknowledged; those who faced
no guns, blew no bugle blast, con-
quered no cities, chained no captives to their
chariot wheels and yet, in the great day of
eternity. will stand higher than those whose
names startled the nations; and seraph, and
raptspirit, and archangel will tell their deeds
to q listening universe. l mean the heroes of
common, every day life.
In this roll, 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 hands 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 anything, To be shut in a room as
fast as though it was a bastile. To be SO
nervous you cannot endure the tap of a
child's foot. To have luxuriant fruit, which
tempts the appetite off the robust and healthy,
excite our loathing and disgust when it first
appears on the platter. To have the IA pier
of pain strike through the side or across the
temples, like razor, or to put the foot into
"a vice, or throw the whole body into a blaze
of fever. Yet there have been men and
women, but more women than men, who
have cheerfully endured this hardness.
Through years of eXhausting rheumatisms
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 very 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,
land she became weaker and weaker and
every "good night" was feebler than the
"good night" before-yet never sad. The
children looked up into her face and saw
suffering transformed into heavenly smile.
Those who suffered on the battlefield, amid
rshot and shell, were not SO much heroes and
heroines as those who in the field hospital
and in the asylum had fevers which no ice
could cool and no surgery cure. No shout
of q comrade to cheer them, but numbness,
and aching, and homesickness-yet willing to
suffer. confident in God, hopeful of heaven.
Heroes of rheumatism. Heroes of neuralgia.
Heroes of spinal complaint. Heroes of sick
headache. Heroes of lifelong inVaidism.
Heroes and heroines. They shall reign for
lever and ever.
Harkl catch just one note of the eternal
Bless God for that
In this roll | also find the heroes of toll,
who do their work uncomplainingly. 1t is
easy to lead regiment into
battle when you know that the whole ma
ton will applaud the victory; it is compare
lively easy to doctor the sick when you
know that your skill will be appreciated by
large company of friends and relatives; it is
comparatively easy to address an audience
when in the cleaning eyes and flushed cheeks
you know that your sentiments are adopted;
but to do sewing where you expect that the
employer will come aud thrust his thumb
through the work to show how imperfect it
As, or to have the whole garment thrown
back on you to be done over again; to build
a wall and know there will
be no one to say you did
lit well, but only swearing en-
9ployer bowling across the scaffold; to work
until your eyes are dim and your back aches
fand your heart faints, and to know that if
youstop before hight your children will starve.
All the sword has not slain SO many as the
needle. The great battlefelds of ourlast war
were not Gettysburg and Shiloh and South
Mountain. The great battlefelds of the last
war were in the arsenals, and in the shops
and in the attics, where women made army
jackets for a siXpence. They toiled on until
they died. They had no funeral eulogium,
but in the name of God, this day, enroll
-6heir names among those of whom the world
was not worthy. Heroes of the sewing ma
chine. Heroes and heroines. Bless God for
them.
In this roll also find the heroes who have
endured domestic injustices.
There are men who for their toll and anxiety
have no sympathy in their homes. Exhaust
ing application to business gets them live
lihood, but an unfrugal wife scatters it.
The exasperations of business life augmented
ny UIe eAitS peEdUlOuS Oh uOI1eSUlC lie. SuCQ
men are laughed at but they have heart
breaking trouble, and they would long ago
have gone into appalling dissipation but for
the grace of God. Society to-day is strewn
with the wrecks of men, who, under thenorth-
east storm Of domestic infelicity, have been
driven on the rocks. There are tens of
thousands of drunkards in this country to-
day, made such by their wives. That is not
poetry, That is prose. But the wrong is
generally in the opposite direction. You
would not have to go far to find a wife
whose life is perpetual martyrdom. Some
times harder than stroke of the fist; unkind
words, stragglings home at midnight and
constant maltreatment which have left
her only a wreck of what she was on that
day when in the midst of a brilliant assem-
blage the vows were taken, and full organ
played the wedding march, and the carriage
rolled away with the benedction of the peo-
pie. What was the burning of Latimer and
Ridley at the stake compared with this?
Those men soon became unconscious in the
fire, but there is so years martyrdom, a
so years putting to death, yet uncomplain-
ing. No bitter words when the rolicking
companions at 2 O'Clock in the morning
pitch the husband dead drunk into the front
entry. No bitter words when wiping from
the swollen brow the blood struck out in a
midnight carousal. Bending over the
L i