Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1888-05-30
DIR. TALMAeE's SERMON, SUNDAY, MAY GOTH.

ID at the Tabernacle service to-day begins
with the words:
| more love to Thee. Oh Christ!
More love to Thee"
After making running commentary on
some passages of Scripture, the Rev. T. De
Witt Talmage, DID,, took the text: Sand
she went, and came, and cleaned in the field
after the reapers; and her hap was to light
on part of the field belonging unto Boaz,
who was of the kindred of Elinelech." !"
Ruth H., 8. He preached from these words
the following sermon:
The time that Ruth and Naomi arrive at
Bethlehem is harvest-time. 1t was the GUS
tom when q sheaf fell from load in the
harvest field for the reapsrs to refuse to
gather it up; that was to be left for the poor
who might happen to come along that way.
If there we're handfuls of grain scattered
across the field after the main harvest had
been reaped, instead of raking it, as farm
ers do now, it was, by the custom of the
land, left in its place, SO that the poor, conf
ing along that way, might CLEAN it and get
their bread. But, you say, "What is the
use of all these harvest fields to Ruth and
Naomi? Naomi is too old and feeble to go
out and toll in the sun; and can you expect
that Ruth, the young and the beautiful,
should tan her cheeks and blister her hands
in the harvest field p
| Boaz owns large farm, and he goes out
to see the reapers gather in the grain. Com
ing there, right behind the swarthy, sun
Drowned reapers, he bsholds a beautiful wo
mon cleaning woman more fit to bend
to harp or sit upon throne than to stoop
among the sheaves. All, that was an event.
full day
1t was love at first sight. Boaz forms an
attachment for the womanly gleaner-an
attachment full of undying interest to the
Church of God in ali ages, while Ruth, with
an ephan, or nearly a bushel of barley, goes
home to Naomi to tell her the successes and
adventures of the day. That Ruth, who
left her native land of Moab in darkness,
and travelled through an unGying affection
for the mother-in- law in the harvest field of
BoaZ is affianced to one of the best families
in Judah, and becomes in after-time the
ancestress of Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.
Out of so dark night did there ever dawn
so bright a morning?
I learn in the first place from this subject
how trouble develops character. 1t was
bereavement, poverty and exile that de-
veloped, illustrated and announced to all
ages the sublimity of Ruth's character.
That is a very unfortunate man who has no
trouble. 1t was sorrow that made John
Bunyan the better dreamer, and DIR. Young
the better poet, and O'Connell the better
orator, and Bishop Hall the better preacher,
and Havelock the better soldier, and Kitto
the better encyclopedist and Ruth the bet
ter daughter-in-law.
once asked an aged man ip regard to
his pastor, who was very brilliant man:
"Why is it that your pastor, SO very bril-
liant, seems to have so little heart and ten
derness in his sermons?' "Well." he re-
piled, "the reason is our pastor has never
had any trouble. When misfortune comes
upon him, his style will be different" AT
ter awhile the Lord took child out of that
pastors house; and though the preacher was
just as brilliant as he was before, oh the
warmth, the tenderness of his discourses.
The fact is that trouble is great educator.
| You see sometimes musician sit down at
an instrument, and his execution is cold and
| formal and unfeeling. The reason is that
all his life he had been prospered. But let
misfortune or bereavement come to that
man, and he sits down at an instrument,
and you discover the pathos in the first
sweep Of che keys.
Misfortune and trials are great educators
A young doctor comes into sick room
where there is a dying child. Perhaps he
is very rough in his prescription, and very
rough in his manner, and rough in the feel
ing of the pulse, and rough in his answer to
the mothers anxious guestion; but years
roll on, ard there has been one dead in his
own house; and now he comes into the sick
room, and with tearfnl eye he looks at the
dying child and he says: ooh, how this re-
minds me of my Charlie l' Trouble, the
great educator. Sorrow, see its touch in
the grandest painting; hear its tremor in
the sweetest song; l feel it's power in the
mightiest argument.
Grecian mythology said that the fountain
of Hippocrene was struck out by the foot of
the winged horse Pegasus. I have often
noticed in life that the brightest and most
beautiful fountains of Christian comfort and
spiritual life have been struck out by the
iron.shod hoof of disaster and calamity.
see Daniels courage best by the fash OF
prowess best when | find him on the found
| ering ship under the glare of the lightning
in the breakers of Melita. God crowns his
children amid the bowling of wild beasts
and the chopping of blood-splashed gull.
lotine and the cracking fires of martyrdom.
It took the prosecutions of Marcus Aurelius
/ to develop Polycarp end Justin Martyr. II
took the worlds anathema to develop Mar.
: !. tin Luther. 1t took all the hositilitieS
against the Scotch Covenanters and the
fury of Lord Claverhouse to develop James
Renwick, and Andrew Melville, and Hugh
McKail, the glorious martyrs of Scotch his
;; tory. 1t took the stormy sea, and the De.
cenber blast, and the desolate New Eng
land coast, and the ar-whoop of savages,
to show forth the prowess of the Pilgrim
Fathers
when amid the storms they sang
And the stars heard and the sea;
And the sounding aises of the dim wood
Rang to the anthems of the free."
1t took all our past national distresses to
, lift up our nation on that high career where
Il will march along after the foreign aristoc
) racies that have Knocked and the tyrannies
that have ieered, shall be swept down under
the omnipotent wrath of God, who hates
despotism, and who, by the strength of His
own red right arm, will make all men free