Springfield daily republic. [volume] (Springfield, O. [Ohio]) 1887-1888, 1888-07-30
TALMAGE IN THE WEST.
HE breaches TO A CHAUTAU-
QUA ASSEMBLY.

The Martyrs of Everyday Life-The Sword
Has Not Slain So Many as the Needle.
The Majority of Martyrs Are Women.
The Heroes Of Christian Charity.
LAKESIDE, o., July 29-For many years
an assembly of the Chantauqua type has been
held at this point. Tho leading professors,
scholars and clergymsi Of this and other
lands have addressed the audiences. The
Rev, T. De Witt Talmage, d. D., Of Brook
iyn, is now here. He lectured yesterday
Saturday and preached today, to throngs
innumerable. The subject of his sermon to-
day was: "The Martyrs of Everyday Life" !"
He took for his text: "Thou, therefore, en-
dure hardness. III Timothy ii, 5. DR..
Talmage said:
Historians are not slow to acknowledge the
merits of great military cbieftains. We have
the full length portraits sf the Cromwells,
the Wasbingtons, the Napoleons and the
Wellingtons of the world History is not
written in black ink, but with red ink of hu-
man blood. The gods Of human ambition
do not drink from bowls made out of silver,
or gold, or precious stones, but out Of the
bleached skulls of the fallen. But am now
to unroll before you scroll of heroes that
the world has never acknowledged; those
who faced no guns, blew no bugle blast, con-
auered 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
rapt spirit, and archangel will tell their deeds
to listening universe. mean the heroes Of
common, everyday life,
In this roll, In the first place, find all the
heroes of the sick room. When Satan had
failed to overcome Job ne said to God: Put
forth thy hand and touch his bones and bis
flesh, and be will curse thee to thy face"
Satan had found out what we have ell found
out, that sickness is the greatest test Of ones
character. A man who can stand that can
stand anything To be shut in room as
fast as though it were a bastile To be so
nervous you cannot endure the tap of a
child's foot. To have luxnriant fruit, which
tempts the appetite of the robust and
healthy, excite our loathing and disgust
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 wise. or throw the
whole body into blaze Of fever. Yet there
than men, who have cheerfully endured this
hardness. Through years of exhausting
and excruciating neuralgias
they have gone, and through bodily dis
tresses 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 Hence 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
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 battle field amid
shot 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 a comrade to cheer them, but
numbneSs, and aching, and homesickness-
yet willing to suffer, confident in God, hope
ful of heaven. Heroes OF rheumatism
Heroes of neuralgia Heroes of spinal COM
plant. Heroes of sick headache. Heroes of
lifelong invalidism. Heroes and heroines.
They shall reign for ever and ever.
Harki l 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
easy to lead a regiment into
battle when you know that the whole nation
will applaud the victory; it is comparatively
easy to doctor the sick when You know that
your skill will be appreciated by large COM
pany Of friends and relatives; it is compara-
lively easy TO address an audience when in
the cleaning eyes and the flushed cheeks
you know that your sentiments are adopted;
but TO do sewing where you expect that the
will come and thrust his thumb
through the work to show how imperfect it
is, or to have the whole garment thrown
back on You to be do done over again;
to build a wall and there will be
no one to say you did it well,
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 before
night your children will starve Ahi the
sword has not slain so many as the needle.
The great battlefields of our last war were
not Gettysburg and Shiloh and South Noun
tain. The great battlefields of the last war
were in the arsenals, and in the shops and in
the attics, where women made army jackets
for sixpence They toiled OF until they died
They had no funeral eulogium, but, in the
name of God, this day enroll their names
worthy. Heroes of the needle Heroes of the
- L. II
roes of the cellar. Heroes and heroines. Bless
God for them
In this roll l also find the heroes who have
endured domestic injus-
tices. There are men who for their toll and
anxiety have no sympathy in their homes
application to business gets them
q livelihood, but an unfrugal wife scatters
it. He is fretted at from the moment he en-
ters the door until he comes out of it. The
exasperations of business life aug
mented by the exasperations Of domes-
tic life Such men are laughed at, but
they have heartbreaking trouble, and
they would have long ago gone into ap-
palling dissipations but for the grace
Of God. Society today is strewn with the
wrecks of men who, under the northeast
storm Of domestic infelicity, have been
driven on the rocks. There are tens of thou
sands of drunkards in this country today,
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 wife
whose life is perpetual martyrdom. Some
thing heavier than q stroke of fist; unkind
words, staggerings home at midnight, and
constant maltreatment which have left her
,nly wreck of what she was on that day
when in the midst of brilliant assemblage
The vows were taken, and full organ played
he wedding march, and the carriage
rolled away with the benediction of
,he people. What was the burning
IF Latimer and Ridley at the stake compared
With thisi Those men soon became uncon-
,cious in the fire, but hers, is a fifty years