The Russellville Democrat., 1889-09-26
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
"The City Streets" Discoursed Upon
 by tho Brooklyn Preacher.
Lessons Without Number to he Learned by Contact with the Various Char actcrs One Meets in
 Great City.

Wisdom crieth withoat she uttereth her voice in the streets, Prov. l., 70.
 We are all ready to listen to the voices ut uoture--tha voices of the mountain. the voices of the sea, the voices of the storm. the VOic3s Of inc star. As in some of the cothedrals in Europe there 2s au organ at either end of the building. 1ud one instrument responds musically Co the other, SO in the great cathedral of nature day responds to day, and night to night and flower 10 flower, aud star to star m the greas harmonies of the uni verse The spring time is an evangelist lu biossG<ns preaching of Gods love; and the winter IS prophet--white- beard ed-,deuouncing wos against our sins. HNe are all ready to listen tc 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 10 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 pavements 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 quiek step of childhoodi Aye, there are great harvests to be reapedl and now 1 thrust in the sickle bec9lise the harvest is ripe.
 Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets.
 h the first place the street impresses me with the fact that this life is a scene of toll and struggle. By ten o'clock every day the city is jarring with wheels, and schgtHing with feet, and humming z with voices, and covered with the breath of smoke stacks, aul a-rush with traffick- CTS. Once in awhile you find a man go- ing along with folded arms and with lelsureiy step, as though he had nothing Co doS but for the most part, as you find tnen 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 bod uf bricks, out of this bank with roll of bills, on the dray with load Of goods, digging celler, or shinging roof, or shoeing a horse, or building wall, or mending watch, or binding book.
 Industry, with her thousand arms, and thousand eyes, and thousand feet goes on singing her song of workl work work while the mills drum it and the steam whistles fife it. All this is not be- cause men love toll. Some one remarked Every man is as lazy as he can afford to be.' But it is because necessity, with stern brow and with uplifted whip, stands over them, ready, whenever they relax their toii, 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 toil and anxiety, and struggley 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 pallor, what disease, what agony, what despair Sometimes l have stopped at the corner of the street as the multitude went hither and yon, and it has seemed to be great panto- mime, and as I looked upon it my heart broke.
 This great tide of human life that goes
 
 turned aside, and dashing ahead and driven baek--beautiful in it's confusion and confused i'll it's 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, raviug street is the best place to study man. Going down to your busi- ness and coming home again, I charge you look about--see these signs of pow erty, of wretehedness, of hunger, of sin, of bereavement--and as you go through tho streets, and come back through the streets, gather up in the arms of your pray yer all the sorrow, all the losses, all the suffering, all the bereayements Of those whom you pass, and present them in prayer before an sympathetic God.
 Then in the great day of eternity there will be thousands of persons with whom you in his world never exchanged one word who will rise up and callye blessedi i and there will be 6 thousand fingers pointed at you in Heaven, saying; That is tue man, there is the woman, who helped me when was hungry and sick, and wondering, 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;
 '1 was hungry and ye fed me, l was naked and 70 clothed me, l was sick and in prison and ye visited me; inasInuch as ye did il to these poor waifs of the streets, ye dil 1t to me-"
 Again. tho street impresses me with tho fact that all classes and conditions of society must oommingle. We some- times culture a wicked eXelusiyeness, Intellect despises ignorance. Refine , meut Till have nothing Co do with boor- ishness. Gloves hate the sunburned hand, and lhe high forehead dispises tho fiat head; and the trim hedgerow win have nothing to do w.tb the wild copscwOod, and Athens hates Nazareth. IAis ought not to be SO. The astronomer must como down from his starry revelry and help us in our navigation. The surgeon must come away from his study of the human organism and set our broken bones. The chemist must come away from his laboratory, where he has been studyils analysis and synthesis, and help us to understand the nature of Che -ou8.
 bless GOl that all classes of people are competed to meet on tlte street. The eIrerug ach wheel flashes against fine -enyeuger's cart, Fine robes run against ihe pedder's pack. Robust health meets wan sickness, Honesty coJigouis fraud. Every class of people meet every other class, Independence and uodcsty pride and humility, purity aud beastial lsss, frankuess and hypoc- risy meeting uu the same block, in the same street, in the same city. Ohl that Is what solomon meant when he said; "Ihe rich and the poor meet together; te Lord is the maker Of them all. l ike this democratic principle of.the Co., pei 1f Jesus Christ which recognizes the fact tAat we and before one God on one and ile sam platform. Do not take op any airs; whatever position you have gained in scc.ety, you arc nothing but a