Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1888-03-09
TALMAGE'S SERMON,
The Weekly Discourse of the Great
Brooklyn Preacher
Subject: "The Grandm o Their
and Her Grandchildren"

Lois. III. Timothy, l., ).
In this love letter which Paul. the old
minister, Is writing to Timothy the young
minister, the family record is brought out.
Paul practically says: "Timothy, what n
good grandmother you had. You ought to
be better than most folks, because not only
was your mother good, but your grand
mother. Two preceding generations of
plety ought to give you a mighty
push in the right direction" The
TACT was that Timothy needed encourage
ment. He was poor i'm health, having a weak
stomach, and was dyspeptic, and Paul pre-
scrlbed for him tonic, "a little wine for thy
etomachs saken-not much wine, But a little
WINE, and only as medicine. And if the
wine then had been as much aduterated with
iiogwood and strychnine as our modern wines,
he would not have prescribed any.
But Timothy, not strong physically, is en-
couraged spiritually by the recital of grand
motherly excellence, Paul limiting to him, as
hint this day to you, that God sometimes
gathers up as in reservoir away back Of the
active generations of to-day godly in
tiuence, and then in Response to prayer let's
down the power upon children and grand
children and great grandchildren. The
world is woefully in want of a table
of statistics in regard to what is
the protractedneSs and immensely of influence
of one good woman in the church and world.
we have accounts of how much evil has
been wrought by Margaret the mother of
criminals, who lived near hundred years
ago, and of how many hundreds of Grim
mails her descendants furnished for the peni-
tentlary and the galows and how many
thousands of dollars they cost this country
IN their arraignment and prison support
as well as in the property they burg
iarized or destroyed. But will not
some one come out with brain Compre-
hensive enough and heart warm enough and
pen keen enough to give us the facts in re-
gard to some good woman of a hundred
years ago, and let us know how many Chris
tian men and women and reformers and use
ful people have been found among her de-
scendantS, and how many asylums and col
leges and churches they built, and how many
millions of dollars they contributed for hui
manitarian and Christian purposes!
Iho good women whose tombstones were
planted III the 18th century are more alive
for good in the 18th century than they were
before, as the good women Of this 10Th cent
ury will be more alive for good in the goth
century than now. Mark you, | have no
idea that the grandmother's were any
better than their granddaughter. You cannot
get very old people to talk much about how
things were when they were boys and girls.
They have reticence and n-committal-
ism which makes me think they feel them
selves to be the custodians of the reputation
of their early comrades While our dear old
folks are rehearsing the folles of the present,
II you put them on the witness stand and
cross examine them as to how things were
seventy years ago the silence becomes OPP
pressive.
A celebrated Frenchman by the name Of
Nolney, visited this country in 1896, and he
says of woman's diet in those times: "If a
premium were offered for regimen most
destructive to health, none could be devised
atAtf Mo Al
use among these people, That eclpses
our lobster salad at midnight. Every
body talks about the designations Of
modern society and how womanly
health goes down under it, but it was worse
hundred years ago, for the chaplain of a
French regiment in our Revolutionary War
wrote III 1882, i'll his book of American
women, saying: "They are tall and well
proportional, their features are generally
regular, their compilations are generally fair
and without color. At twenty years of age
the women have no longer the freshness of
youth. AT thirty or forty they are decrepit.o
In lSl2 foreign consul wrote a book en-
TITLED: "a Sketch of the United States at
the Commencement of the Present Century,
and he says of the women of those times:
AT the age of thirty all their charms have
disappeared" One glance at the portraits of
the women hundred years ago and their
style OF dress makes us wonder how they ever
got their breath All this makes me think
that the express rail train is no more an i'm
provement on the old canal boat, or the
telegraph no more an improvement on the
old-tlme saddlebags, than the women of our
day are an Improvement on the women of
the last century.
But still, notwithstanding that those times
were so much worse than ours, there was a
glorious race of godly women, seventy and a
hundred years ago, who held the world back
from sin and lifted it toward virtue. and
without their exalted and sanctiiied influence
before this the last good influence would have
persisted from the earth. Indeed all over
not SO much in churches, for many
of them are too feeble to come
great many aged grandmothers. They
sometimes feel that the world has gone past
them, and they have an idea they are of
little account. Their head sometimes gets
aching from the racket of the grandchildren
downstairs or in the next room They steady
themselves by the banisters as they 90 up and
down. When they get cold it hangs on tc
them longer than it used to. They cannot
bear to have the grandchildren punished
even when they deserve it, and have
so relaxed their ideas of family
aiscIpnne UnaU they would spoil all the young
sters of the household by too great leniency
These old folks are the resort when great
troubles come, and there is a calming anC
soothing power in the touch of an aged hand
that is almost supernatural. They feel they
are almost through with the journey Of
life and read the old book more thar
they used to, hardly knowing which mos
they enjoy, the Old Testament or the
New, and often stop and dwell tearfully
over the family record half way between
We hail them to-day whether in the house Of
God or at the homestead. Blessed is thai
hot hoC f,,t SIC
Where she is angels are lowering round anC
God is in the ROOM May her last days b.
like those lovely autumn days that we cal
Indian summer
never knew the joy of having a grand
mother that is the disadvantage of being tn
youngest child of the family The eide
members only have that benediction. Blu
though she went up out of this life before
began it, | have heard of her faith in God
that brought all her children into the king
dom and two of them into the ministry, an
then brought all her grandchildren int
the kingdom, myself the last am
least worthy. Is it not time tina
you and I do two things, swing open
picture gallery of the wrinkled faces an
stopped shoulders of the past, and call dow
from their heavenly thrones the cody grand
mothers to give them our thanks, and the
persuade the mothers of to-day that they ar
living for all time, and that against the side
of every cradle in which a child is rookie
beat the two eternities.
Here we have an untried, undiscussed an
unexplored subject. You often hear abor
your influence upon your children-I am M
talking about that. What about your inf,
ence upon the twentieth century, upon IL
tbirtieth century, upon the fortieth centur,
upon the year two thousand, upo
the year four thousand, if the world last
so long The world stood four thousan
years before Christ came; it is NJ
unreasonable to suppose that it ma
stand four thousand years after his arriva
-Four thousand years the world swung off
sir, four thousand years it may be swingin
back into Righteousness. By the ordinar
rate of multiplication of the worlds popul'
ton in a century your defendants wi
be over three hundred, and by tw
centuries at least over fifty Thousand
and Of thnr,a II