The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1889-09-27
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
'The City Streets Discoursed Upon
by the Brooklyn Preacher.
Lessons Without Number to he Learned
by Contact with the Various Char
acters One Meets in n
Great City.

Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her
voice in the streets.-Prov. l., 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-denounctng wos 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 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 quick step Of childhoodf
Aye, there are great harYests to be
reaped; and now 1 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 a scene
OF toll and struggle, BY ten O'Clock
every day the city is tarrinG with wheels,
and schuff1ing with feet and humming
| with voices, and covered with the breath
| Of smoke stacks, AMI a-rush with traffick-
| ers. Once in awhile you find man GO
1 h.
1 lelsurely step, as though he had nothing
/ 30 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 roll of
| bills, on the dray with load of goods,
| digging a celler, or Singing a roof, or
| shOeing a horse, or building a wall, or
mending a watch, or binding book.
Industry. with her thousand arms, and
! thousand eyes. and thousand feet goes
on singing her song of work. 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 toll, to make their shoulders
sting with the lash, Can it be that, pass
| ing mp 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
| Indebtedness, what pallOr, what disease,
| what agony what des pair! Sometimes l
| 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 l 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
he 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, 1 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
pra yer 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 and call We blessed;
and there will 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:
| 4 was hungry and We fed me, / was
naked and We clothed me. 1 was sick aud
in prison and ye visited me; inasnuch as
We did it to these poor waits of the streets,
ye did 1t to me-"
Again, the street impresses me with
the fact that all classes and conditions
of society must commingle. We some
Intellect despises ignorance. Refine
ment will have nothing to do with bOor-
ishness. Gloves hate the sunburneG
hand, and the high forehead dispises
the fat head; and the trim hedgerow
will have nothing to do wStb the wild
copsewood, and Athens hates Nazareth
This ought not to be so. The astronomer
must come 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 oul
broken bones. The chemist must come
away from his laboratory, where he has
been studying analysis and synthesis,
and help US to understand the nature Ol
the soils.
1 bless God that all classes of people
are compelled to meet on the street. The
| Offering coach-wheel flashes against
the scavenger's cart Fine robes rur
against the peddler's pack. Robust
health meets wan sickness. Honesty
confronts fraud. Every class of people
meet every other class. Independence
and modesty, pride and humility, purity
| and beastialness, frankness and hypoo.
risy, meeting on the same block, in the
same street. in the same city. Oh! that
| Is what solomon meant when be said
! 1.-The rich and the poor meet together
| the Lord is the maker Of them all
| ike this democratic principle Of4the Cos.