News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1889-01-03
SUNDAYS SERMON.
ONE OF REV. DIR TALMAGE'S
STERLING DISCOURSES.
Subject a Bad Boil Cured"

ItOjU heal thee. Ind then took and laid Il
on the boil and he recOUsred.n-II Kings
Xxx, ), z.
Luxurious living is not healthy. The Sc
ond generation of Kings, and Queens, and
Lords, and Princes is apt to be brainleSs anC
invalid. The second crop of grass is almost
always short. Royal blood is generally
scrofu,ouS. You will not be surprised, then,
TO hear that King Hezekiah had disorders
which broke out in a carbuncle, virulent and
deathtuL The Lord told him he must die
be did not want to die. He turned his face
20 the wall, so that his prayer would not
he interrupted. and cried to God for his life.
God heard the prayer and answered it, say
ing: Behold. will heal thee" But there
was human instrumentality to be EN-
ployed This CaFbuncle needed "cata-
plasm." That is tough word we use 10
show how much we know. II in the pull
pit we always used words the people under
stood, we never should have any reputation
for learning. Well this carbDnCle needed a
''cataplaSm,n which is a poultice. Your old
mother, who doctored her own children in
the time when physicians were not so plenty
as they are now, will tell you that the very
best pOultce is a fig, and that was what she
used upon the carbuncle of King Hezekiah-
The power of God, accompanied by this
human instrumentalty, cured the King.
If sickness comes to your household, it will
depend entirely upon ventilation, good diet,
and the skill of the doctors, as to whether
your child gets well. The father might pray
all day, and the mother might pray all night
it would not have any effect upon the case.
If squillS, bellaC onna, paregoric and cruel do
the work. your child viii get well; If not,
not There is a cast iron God seated at the
head of the universe, holding in the cold
grasp of his metal fingers band of law from
which nothing can break away.
Men and women of God, at this point the
great bate of Christianity is to be fought.
The great foe of Christianity to-day is ration
alism. that comes out from our schools, and
universities, and magazines and newspapers
to scott at Bible truth and caricature the old
religion of Jesus 1t says Jesus is not God,
for it is impossible to eXpa how He can be
divine and human at the same time. The
Bible is not inspired, for there are things in
it that they don't like. Regeneration is a
farce; there is good enough in us, and the only
thing is to bring it out. Development is the
word-developmen The Garden Of Eden is a
fairy story and no more to be believed than
the Arabian Nights" or 'Gulliver's Trav-
els OF Robinson Crusoe." We all started
es balloons and are blood relations to that
monkey squrming about on the top of that
hand organ. | azarus was not dead when
Christ pretended to raise him; he was only
playing dead. The water was not changed
into vine at the wedding, but Christ brought
in some wine that He had found elsewhere to
make up the deficiency. Christ did not walk
on the sea, but on he shore, so near that it
seemed as if He really were on the water.
What is still more alarming Is, that Chris
tiau men dare not meet this ridicu,e. There
is not one Christian man in five that can, I'M
blanched, stand in the presence Of all this rail-
lery, saying: Il believe in the whole Bible.
and in every single statement that it makes "
Christian men try to soften the Bible down
to suit the SEepticS. The skepticS sheer at the
dividing o. the Red Sea; and the Christian
goes to explaining that the wind blew a hur-
rcane from one direction a good while,
until all the water piled up; and besides, that
it was low water anyhow, and so the Israeli
ties went through without any trouble.
Why not be fr nix and say: 81 believe the
Lord God Almighty came to the brink of the
Red Sea and with His right arm swung back
the pillows on the right side, aud with His
left arm swung back the pillows on the
left side. and tho abashed water stood
up hundreds of feet high, while
through their G assy wall the sea
monsters gazed with affrighted eyes on the
passing israeIites:n The nationalist comes
to you saying: How about Jonah and the
whale! Do you really believe that fish
stOryl1 There never wers so many Nam
tucket fisherman after one whale as there
have been Tationalis:s finging harpoons at
the Mediterranean sea monster, and from
that one whale they have got oil enough to
light ten thousand souls to perditiOn. A
skeptic tells YOU that Jonah would have been
killed in the process of swallowing, and that
he could not, anyhow, have lived three days
IN such close quarters, but would have been
smOthered by the poor ventilation. How
and try To explain the whole thing by natural
laws, so as to please the rationalists, and
say that a whale is air breath
ing fish; that every little while it
comes to the surface, and that the whale
that swallowed Jonah did the same
thing, and thus got a supply for itself and
for the prophet Why not rather say that
God can do anything; and He could take
Jonah through the whales throat, although
the throat would not have teen half large
enough ordinarily to let him pass, and could
have kept him alive in the whale five years
without ally air if He had chosen to! Who
made the wbae? God. Who made Jonahf
God. Then He could do anything He pleased
with either of them.
The moment you begin to explain away
the miraculous and supernatural you surren-
der the Bible. Take the supernatural out of
the Bible and you make it a collection of
lies and humbugs, In preference to which
choose ''-Esop's Fables" They are what they
pretend to be-fables. But if, after all that
the Bible declares, Jesus is not God, and
Lazarus was not raised from the dead, and
the water was not turned into wine and the
Red Eea was not divided, and in answer TO
prayer Hezekah's boil did not get WELL then
the Bible is the worst fraud ever perpetrated
in Gods universe.
All! my friends, have we been mistaken2
Does God hear and answer prayer, or does
lie not! Hezekiah was sick unto death; he
prayed for his life; God heard him, and
added fifteen years to that lifetime. The
prayer saved him-the lump of figs applet
being merely the God-appointed human in
strumentality.
But" says some one, 81 don't believe the
Bible" All! then we will have to part com-
plny for four or five minutes, for it is useless
10 try to argue with any man with whom
you cannot stand upon common ground. In
any argument, if you would be successful,
there must be some common data to start
from. 1t is foolish to try to prove to man
that twice three are six, provided he does
not admit the multiplication tables, or that
two and two are four, if he does not admit
the addition table.
Ny first address. therefore, is to those who
do believe in the Bible. l want to tell YOU
that prayer is the mightiest of all remedies
and that the allopathic and homeopathic
and the electric schools will vet acknowledge
il. Here are two cases of sickness precisely
alike; the same kind of medic ne is given to
both of them. and in the same quantities.
The one patient RECEIVERS and the other does
not Why! God blesses the one remedy,
and does not bless the other. PRAYER has
helped many n laundering doctor through
with case that would have otherwise become
completely unmanageable There is such
thing as Gospel hygiene, as Christian phar-
macy, as divine materia medica- That
Is foolish man who, in case of sick
ness, goes only to human resources when
we have these instances of the Lords
help in the sick room. Before you call
the doctor while he is Ghere and after he
goes away look up to Him who cured HeZe-
tiah. Let the Gpothecary send the poultice.
out God makes it draw. OH am glad to
+ave doctor who knows how to pray God
md salvation to all the doctorsi Sickness
would be oftener halked, death would be
oftener hurleI back from the door sill if m ID
iCal men came into the sick room like Isaiah
of the text, with prescription in their hands
and the word of the Lord in their mouths.
John AberCrombie, the most celebrated
physician of Scotland PRAYED when he went
into the sick room. and he wrote no more
ably about diseases of the brain" than about
"the philosophy of the moral feelings [
don't know how much of the medical success
of SYdenham, and Cooper, and Harvey, and
Rush depended upon the fact that they knew
how to pray as well as TO prescribe. / don't
want physician who sees no God in human
anatomy to doctor my broken bones. If God
male us (4nl l think He did, AMI if the
Bible is true land / am rather disposed to
think it Isl. then it is not strange that PRAYER
does traverse natural cause; av, that it in
trOduces new cause. When God made the
law, He did not make it so strong He could
not break it. If God made our bodies. when
they are broken He is the one to mend them;
and it is reasonable that we should call Him
in to do it. II my furnace in the cellar
breaks down, there is no one so competent to
repair it as the manufacturer If my watch
stops, there is no one so competent to set it
going as the one who male it. If the body
IS disordered, call in the Maker of it. Is it
not all, as these physicists tell us, a matter of
ventilation or poisoned air, of cleanliness or
dirt, of nutritious diet or poor fare! l have
known people to get well in rooms where the
windows had Eeeu six weeks down, tight
SHUT, and | have known them to die right
under patent ventilatOrs. / have known
children sickly who every day had their bath,
and have known children robust. the wash
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