News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1888-01-12
TALMAGES SERMON
SUNDAY MORNING DISCOURSE
IN BROOKLYN.
Subject. The Barn and Its Sur
roundings.


aud see this thing lUhich is come to pass" y
Luke xxi, l5..
One thousand years of the worlds exist
ence rolled painfully and wearily along and
no Christ. Two thousand years, and no
Christ Three thousand years. and no Christ.
Four thousand years, and no Christ. Give
us Christ" had cried Assyrian and Persian
and Chaldean and Egyptian civilization, but
the lips of the earth and the lips of the sky
made no answer. The world had already
been afiuent of genius. Among poets had
appeared Homer and Thesps and Aristoph-
anes and Sophocles and. Euripides and Alexis
4Hschylus, yet no Christ to be the most poetic
hgul es OF the centuries. Among historians
had appeared EerodOtus and Xenophon and
Thucydides, but no Christ from whom all
history was to date backward and forward
B. G. and a. D. Among the conGuerors
Camillus and Manlius and Regulus and
Xantippus and Hannibal and ScipiO and
P6mpey and Caesar, yet no Christ who was
to be cohqueror of earth and heaven.
But the slow century and the slow year
and the slow mouth and the slow hotlr at
last arrived. The world had had mathis or
concerts in the morning and vespers and con-
certs in the evening, but now it is to have
concert at midnight. The black window
shutters of a December night were thrown
open, and some of the best singers of world
where they all sing stood there, and putting
back the drapery of cloud, Chanted a peace
anthem, until all the echoes of hill and val
ley applauded and encored the Halleluiah
chorus
At last the world has Christ and just the
Christ it needs. Come, let US go into that
Christmas scene as though we had never be-
fore wo-shipped at the manger. Here is a
Madonna worth looking at. l wonder not
that the most frequent name in all lands and
in all Christian countries is Mary. And there
are Marys in palaces and Marys in cabins
and though German and French and Italian
and ot,1 i
entity, they are all namesakes of the one whom
we find en- led Of straw with her pale face
agairs5 the soft cheek of Christ in the night of
the Nativity. All the great painters have
tried on canvas to present Mary and
her child and the incidents of that
most famous night of the worlds
history. Raphael in three different
masterpieces celebrated them. Iintoret
and Guirlanjo surpassed themselves in the
Alteration of the Magin Corregio needed
to do nothing more than his Madonna" to
become immortal. The "Madonna of the
admiration of all ages. Murillo never won
greater triumph by his pencil than in his
presenta ton of the Holy Family" But all
the galleries of Dresden are forgotten when [
think OF the small room of that ga alery CON
tanning the Sistine Madonna Yet all of
them were copies of St. Matthew's Ma
donna" and Luke's 8 Madonna . the inspilel
Madonna of the Old Book which we had put
into our hands when we were infants and
that we hope to have under our heads when
we die.
Behold, in the first place, that Oh the first
night of Christ'S life God honored the Irute
creation. You cannot get into that Bethle.
hem barn without going past the camels, the
mules the dogs, the oxen. The brutes of
that stable heard the first cry of the infant
Lord. Soma of the old painters represent
the oxen and camels kne ling that night be-
fore the new born babe. And we'll might
they kneel Have you ever thought that
Christ came, among other things, to alleviate
the sufferings of the brute creationl Was it
not appropri te that he should during the
first few days and nights of His life on earth
be surrounded by the dumb beasts whese
for ages been a prayer to God for
the arresting of their tortures and the
righting of their wrongs3 1t did
not merely "nappen So that the unintelli-
gent creatures of God should have been that
in all the centuries, not birds nest, not
worn out horse on towpath, not herd freez-
ing in the poorly built COW pen, not freight
car in summer time bringing the beeYe; to
market without water through thousand
miles of agony, not surgeons S room witness
ing the struggles of fox or rabbit or pigeon
or dog in the horrors of VivisectiOn but has
an interest in tn fact that Christ was born
in a stable surrounded by brutes He remem-
berS that night, and the prayer He heard in
their pitiful moan He will answer in the pun
ishment of those who maltreat the dumb
brutes. They surely have as much right in
this world as we have.
In the first chapter of Genesis you may see
that they were placed on the earth before
man was, the fish and fowl created the fifth
day and the quadrupe1 the morning of the
sixth day, and man not until the afternoon
Of that day. The whale, the eagle, the lion,
and all the lesser creatures of their kind were
predecessors of the human family. They
have the world by right of possession. They
have also paid rent for the places they occn-
pied. What an army of deience all over the
land are the faithful watch dogs And
who can tell what the world owes to
horse, and camel, and OK for Transports
ton? And robin and lark have, by the
cantatas with which they have filed orchard
and forest, more than pail for the few grains
they have picked up for their sustenance.
When you abuse any creature of God You
strike its creator, and you insult the Christ
who, though he might have been welcomed
into life by princes, and taken his first in
fantile slumber amid Tyrian plush and
canopied couches and ripping waters from
royal aqueducts dripping into basins OF
ivory and pearl, chose to be born on the
level with cows horn, or a camel's hoof, or
q dogs nostril, that he might be the allevla-
tion of brutal suffering as well as the re-
deemer of man.
Standing then as l imagine now l do, IN
that Bethlehem night with an infant Christ
on the one side AMI the speechless creatures
of God on the other cry Look out how you
strike the rowel into that horses side Take
off that curbed bit from that bleeding mouth
Remove that saddle from that raw back
Shoot not for fun that bird that is too small
for food. Forget not to put water into the
cage of that canary. Throw out some crumbs
to these birds caught too far north in the
winters incemency. Arrest that man who
is making that one horse draw q load heavy
enough for three. Rush in upon that scene
where boys are torturing cat or tranSi1x.ng
butterfly and grasshopper Drive not of
that old robin, for her nest is mothers
cradle, and under her wing there may be
three or four prima donnas of the sky in
training And in your families and in your
schools teach the coming generation more
mercy than the present generation has ever
shown in this marvellous Bible picture of the
while you point out to them the
angel show them also the camel, and while
hey hear the celestial chant let them also
near the cows moan. No more did Christ |
how interest in the botanical world when he
aid: Consider the lilies,n than he showed
for the ornithological when
ie said: tBehold the fowls of the air
md the cuadrupedal world when he allowed
himself 10 be called in one place lion and in
another place lamb. Meanwhile, may the
Christ of the Bethlehem cattle pen have
mercy on the suffering stock yards that are
American households.
Pehold a'so in this Bible scene how on
hat Christmas night God honOred child |
rood. Christ might have made His first |
visit to our world in ciold. In what a |
.hariot of illumined Vapor he might have |
oiled down the sky escorted by mounted |
'avalry with lightning of drawn sword. |
Eli ah had q carriage of fre to take him up, |
Why not Jesus aCarriage of fire to fetch Him |
lown! Or over the archcd bridge of a rain |
T N,.l L,r- 10. .1nl N.
Christ might have had his mortality built |
lp on earth out of the dust of a garden, as
vas Adam, in full manhood at the start |
without the introductory feebleness of in |
ancy. Oh no Childhood was to be hon
red by that advent He must have a |
land, and a child's beaning eye, and |
.hild's laven hair and babyhood was to be |
lorored for all time to come, and a cradle |
vas to mean more than grave. Mighty
ibd May the reflection of that one chlldS |
ace be seen in all infa3tile faces. Enough |
iave all those fathers and mothers on hand
f they have a chill in the house. A throne, |
crown q scepter a kingdom under charge, |
Be careful how you strike hln ross the |
lead, iarring tie brain. What YOU say to |
lim will lie centennial and mlil6nIal, ana a |
hundred wears and thousand years will not |
top the echo and re-echo. Do not say: 1T is |
,nly child" Rather say: lit is only an nm
Mortal" 1t is only masterpiece of Jehovah. !
It is only beng that shall outlive sun and
noon and star and ages Quadrillennial. God
las infinite resources and he can give pres
'nts of great value. hut when he wants to
,ive the richest possible gift to a household
!e looks around all the worlds and al the
Universe, and then gives a child The great
st present that God gave our world he
rave about 1857 years ago, and he gave it on