The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1889-11-14
"THE CITY STREETS"
A Short but Pithy Sermon by Rev.
T. Dewitt Talmage.
Life on the Streets of Great City and
the Lessons to be Learned There.
l. from-The Masters Work
Always in Our Path.

Streets" was delivered by Rev. I. Dewitt
Talmage in the Brooklyn Tabernacle.
His text was:
Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her
voice in the streets. T., 20.
We are all ready to listen to the voices
of nature-the voices of the mountain,
the voices Of the sea, the voices of the
storm, the voices of the star. AS in
some of the cathedrals in Europe there
is an organ at either end of the building,
and one instrument responds unsteady
to the other, so in the great cathedral of
nature day responds to day, and night to
night and flower to flower, and star to
star, in the great harmonies of the uni
verse. The spring time is an evangelist
in blossoms preaching of Gods love:
and the winter is prophet--white- beard
ed-denouncing woe against our sins.
We are all ready to listen to the voices
of nature; but how few of us learn any
thing from the voices of the noisy and
dusty street. You go to your merchan-
disc, and your mechanism, and to your
work, and you come back again-and
often with an Indifferent heart you pass
through the streets. Are there no things
for us to learn from these payements
over which we pass? Are there no tufts
Of truth growing up between these cob
blestones, beaten with the feet of toll,
and pain, and pleasure, the slow tread Of
old age, and the quick step of childhood?
Aye, there are great haryests to be
reaped; and now l thrust in the sickle
because the harvest is ripe.
Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her
voice in the streets.
In the first place the street impresses
me with the fact that this life is scene
of toll and struggle. By ten O'Clock
every day the city is Earring with wheels,
and schufding with feet and humming
with voices, and covered with the breath
OF smoke stacks, AMI a-rush with traffick-
ers. Once in awhile you ind man GO
ing along with folded arms and with
leisurely step, as though he had nothing
to do; but for the most part, as you find
men going down these streets, on the
way down to business, there is anxiety
in their faces, as though they had some
errand which must be executed at the
first possible moment. You are iostled
by those who have bargains to make and
notes to sell. Up this ladder with hod
of bricks, out of this bank with a roll of
bills, on the dray with load of goods,
digging celler, or shingling a roof, or
shoeing horse, or building q wall, or
mending watch, or binding a book.
Industry. with her thousand arms, and
thousand eyes. and thousand feet. goes
on singing her song of work! work
workl while the mills drum it and the
steam whistles fife it. All this is not be.
cause men love toll. Some one re marked:
every man is as lazy as he can afford TO
be-" But it is because necessity, with
stern brow aud with uplifted whip,
stands over them, ready, whenever they
relax their toll, to make their shoulders
sting with the lash. Can it be that, pass
ing up and down these streets on your
way to work and business you do not
learn any thing of the worlds toll, and
anxiety, and struggle? Oh, how many
dropping hearts, how many eyes on the
watch, how many miles travelled, how
many burdens carried, how many losses
suffered, how many battles fought, how
many victories gained, how many defeats
suffered, how many exasperations en-
dured-what losses, what hunger, what
wretchedness, what paflor, what disease,
what agony, what despairl Sometimes I
have stopped at the corner of the street
as the multitude went hither and yon,
and it has seemed to be a great panto-
mime, and as I looked upon it my heart
broke.
This great tide Of human life that goes
down the street is a rapid, tossed and
turned aside. and dashing ahead and
driven back-beautiful in its confusion
and confused in its beauty. In the car
peted aisles of the forest in the woods
FROM which the eternal shadow is never
lifted, on the shore of the sea over whose
coast losses the tangled foam, sprinkling
the cracked cliffs with baptism.of whirl-
wind and tempest is the best place to
study God; but in the rushing, swarm
ing, raving street is the best place to
study man. Going down to your bust
ness and coming home again, charge
you look about-see these signs of pow
erty, OF wretchedness, of hunger, of sin,
OF bereavement-and as you go through
the streets, and come back through the
streets, gather up in the arms of your
prayer all the sorrow, all the losses, all
the suffering, all the bereavements OF
those whom you pass, and present them
In prayer before an all-sympathetic God.
Then in the great day of eternity there
will be thousands of persons with whom
you in this world never exchanged one
word who will rise up aud call We blessed;
and there viii be a thousand fingers
pointed at you in Heaven, saying: THAT
is the man, there is the woman, who
helped me when l was hungry and sick.
and wandering and lost, and heart
broken. That is the man, that is the
woman" and the blessing will come
down upon you as Christ shall say:
81 was hungry and We fed me, L was
naked and ye clothed me. was sick and
in prison and ye visited me; inasmuch as
ye did it to these poor waits of the streets.
ye did it to me-"
Again, the street impresses me with
the fact that all classes and conditions
Of society must commingle. We some
times culture wicked exclusiyeness.
Intellect despises ignorance. Refine
ment will have nothing to do with boor-
ishness. Gloves hate the sunburned
hand, and the high forehead dispises
the nat head; and the trim hedgerow
will have nothing to do with the wild
eopsewood, and Athens hates Nazareth.
This ought not to be so. The astronomer
must come down from his starry reyelrv
and help us in our navigation. The
surgeon must come away from his studv
of the human organism and set our
broken bones. The chemist must come
away from his laboratory, where he has
been studying analysis and synthesis.
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