Abilene weekly reflector. [volume] (Abilene, Kan.) 1888-1935, 1889-01-24
THE DAY OF REST.
DR.. Talnage Discourses on the
Christian Sabbath.
The Day One of Rest For Weary Workers
The Sabbath Breakers End-Necessity
of Properly Raising Children
Cheerful Christians.

In recent sermon at Brooklyn Rev. T.
DE Witt Talmage preached on the subject:
"A Bright Sunday versus Doleful Sun
day." The text was: '.And call the Sab
bath delight" Isaiah lviii. H. Dr. Tall
mage said: There is an element Of gloom
striking through al false religions. Pagan
ism is a brood of horrors. The god OF Con-
fucius frowned upon its victims with blind
fate. Mohammedanism promises nothing
TO those exhausted with sin in this world
7ut an eternity of the same passional in
dulgences. But God intended that our
religion should have the grand character
istic of cheerfulness. ST. Paul struck the
keynote when he said: "Rejoice evermore
and again 1 say, rejoice" This religion
has no spikes for the feet; it has no hooks
for the shoulder; il has no long pilgrime ges
totake; it has nofuneral-pyres upon which
20 leap; it has no Juggernauts before which
20 fall. Its good cheer is symbolized in the
Bible by the brightness OF waters, and the
redolence of lilies, and the sweetness of
music, and the hilarities of banquet. A
choir of seraphim chanted at its introduce
ton, and pealing trumpet, and waving
palm, and Tapping wing of archangel are
to celebrate it's triumphs. 1t began its
chief mission with the shout: ''Glory to
God in the highestw and it will close its
earthly mission with the ascription: HAL
-elujah, for the Lord God omnipotent
reignethW
But men have said that our religion is
not cheerful, because we have such dole
tul Sabbath. They say: "You can have
your religious assemblages, and your long
faces, and your shifting cant, and your
psalm book and your Bibles. Give us the
Sunday excursion, and the horse race and
the convivial laughter. We have so much
joy that we want to spread it all over the
seven days of the week, and you shall not
have one of our days of worldly satisfac-
ton for religious dolefulness." want to
show these men-if there are any such in
the house this norning-that they are I'M
der great delbsion, and that God intend
ed the fifty-tws Sundays of the year to be
hung up like bells in a tower, beating a
perpetual chime of joy and glory and SAL
walton and Heaven; for l want you to
carry out the idea of the text "and call
the Sabbath a delight"
remark, in the first place, we are to
find in this day the joy of healthy repose
In this democratic country we all have to
work-some with hand, some with brain,
some with foot. If there is in all this
house hand that has not, during the past
year, been stretched forth to some kind Of
toll, let it be lifted. Not one, not one.
You sell the goods. You teach the school,
You doctor in the sick room. You practice
at the bar. You edit a newspaper. You
tan the hides. You preach the Gospel.
You mend the shoes. You sit at the shut
tie. You carry the bod of brick up the
ladder ON the wall. And the one occupa-
tion is as honorable as the other, provided
God calls you to it. 1 care not what you
do. if you only do it well.
But when Saturday night comes you are
jaded and worn. The hand can not so
skilfully manu- facture; the eye can not see
so well; the brain is not so clear; the
judgment is not so well balanced. A
prominent manufacturer told me that he
could see difference between the goods
which went out of his establishment on
Saturday FROM the goods that went out on
Monday. He said: 'They were very
different indeed. Those that were made |
in ths former part of the week, |
because of the rest that had been |
previously given, were better than |
those that were made in the latter |
part of the week, when the men were tired |
out" The Sabbath comes, and it bathes |
agitated brain and puts out the fires of |
anxiety that have been burning all the |
week Our bodies are seven day clocks, |
and unless on the seventh day they are
wound up they run down into the grave
There are thousands of men who have
had their lives dashed out against the
golden gates of the Sabbath. promi-
nent London merchant testifies that thirty
years ago he went to London. He says: |
81 have during that time watched minute |
ly and | have noticed that the men who |
went tc business on the Lords day or
opened their counting houses have, with
out a single exception, come to failure" |
A prominent Christian merchant in Bos- |
ton says: Il find it don't paw to work on |
Sunday. When l was boy noticed out |
on Long Wharf there were merchants |
who loaded their vessels on the Sabbath |
day, keeping their men busy from morn
ing till night, and it is my observation |
that they themselves came to nothing
these merchants-and their children came |
to nothing. 1t doesn't pay" he says, ito |
work on the Sabbath"
/ appeal to your observation. Where |
are the men who twenty years ago were
Sabbath breakers, and who have been
Sabbath breakers ever since: Without a
single exception, you tell me, they have
come either to financial or to moral beg
gary. l defy you to point out a single
exception, aud you can take the whole
world for your field. 1t has either been a
financial or moral defalcation in every
instance. Six hundred and forty physi-
ciLas in London petition Parliament, say
ing: "We must have the S lbbath obeved.
We can not have health in this city and in
this Nation unless the Sabbath is OBJ
served" Those in our own country have
given evidence on the same side. The
man who takes down the shutters of his
store on the Sabbath takes down the curse
of Almighty God That Turner who cult
ures his ground on the Sabbath day raises
a crop of neuralgia, and of consumption
and of death. A farmer said: II defy
your Christian Sabbath. 1 will raise a
Sunday crop" So he went to work and
plowed the ground on Sunday. aud har-
rowed it on Sunday. and he planted corn
on Sunday, and he reaped the corn on
Sunday, and he gathered it into the barn
on Sunday.
"There, " he says, 81 have proved TO you
that all this idea about fatality accom-
pauying Sabbath work is perfect sham.
My corn is garnered, and all is Well" But
before many weeks passed the Lord God
struck that barn with his lightnings, and
away went the Sunday crop.
So great is the moral depression coming
upon those who toll upon the Sabbath day
that you may have noticed (if you have
not, 1 call your attention to the fact) that
in cases where the public interest demands
Sabbath toll the moral depression is so
great that there are but very few who can
stand it. For instance, the police service.
without which none of our houses would