The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1889-01-10
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
The Weekly Disoourses Of the Great
BROOKLYN Preacher.
Subject. "A sad Roll Cured"

v" "o ~" una ne FecoVSFeu' III Mugs,
TX, s.
Luxurious living is not healthy. The Soc
ond generation of Kings, and Queens, and
Lords, and Princes is apt to be brainless and
invalid, The second crop OF grass is almost
always short Royal blood is generally
scrofuous You win not bs surprised, then,
to hear that King Hezekiah had disorders
which broke out in carbuncle, virulent and
deathfuL The Lord told him he must die;
to the wall, SO that his prayer would not
be interrupted, and cried to God for his life
God heard the prayer ard answered 1t, say
ing; Behold will heal thee" But there
was human instrumentality. to be en-
ployed. This carbuncle needed "cata-
plasm." That is a tough word we use 10
show how much we know. If in the pull
pit We always used words the people under
stood, we never should have any reputation
for learning Well, this carbuncle needed q
'cataplasm," which is 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 poultice is a fig, and that was what she
used upon the carbuncle of King Hezekiah.
The power OF God, accompanied by this
human fundamentally, 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 we'll The father might pray
all day, and the mother might pray all night
lit would not have any effect upon the case.
II squills, belladonna, paregoric and cruel do
the work, your child will 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 battle 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 explain how He can be
divine and human at the same time. The
Bible is not inspired, for there are things in
1t 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
acknowledgements. The Garden of Eden is
fairy story and no more to be believed than
the ARABIAN Nights or 'Gulliver's Trav-
els" or Robinson Crusoe." We all started
as balloons, and are blood relations to that
monkey sluirming about on the top OF that
hand organ. Lazarus was not dead when
Christ pretended to raise him; he was only
playing dead The water was not changed
into wine 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 the shore, so near that it
seemed as if He really were on the water.
What is still more alarming is, that Chris
tian men dare not meet this ridicule There
is not one Christian man in five that can, I'M
blanched stand in the presence OF all this rail-
lery, saying: II believe in the whole Bible,
and in every single statement that it makes"
Christian men try to soften the Bible down
to suit the skeptics. The skeptics sheer at the
dividing OF the Red Sea- and the Christian
goes to explaining that the wind blew hur-
ricane from one direction a good while,
until all the water piled up; and besides, that
it was low water anyhow, and so the Israel
ties went through without any trouble.
Why not be frank and say: 81 believe the
Lord God Almighty came to the brink of the
Red Sea, land with His right arm swung back
the pillows on the right side, and with His
left arm swung back the pillows on the
left side. and the abashed water stood
up hundreds of feet high, while
through their gassy wall the sea
passing Israelites4 The nationalist comes
to you saying: "How about Jonah and the
whalel Do you really believe that fish
story" There never were SO many Nam
tucket fisherman after one whale as there
have been rationaists flinging harpoons at
the Mediterranean sea monster, and from
that one whale they have got oil enough to
light ten thousand souls to perdition.
skeptic tells you that Jonah would have been
killed in the process of swallowing, and that
he could not, anyhow, have lived three Gays
in such close quarters, but would have been
smothered by the poor ventilation. How
the good Christians Immediately 20 to work,
and try to explain the whole thing by natural
laws, SO as to please the rationaists, and
say that whale is an air breath
ing fish; that every little while il
comes TO the surface, and that the whale
that swallowed Jonah did the same
thing, and thus got supply for itself and
for the rrOphpt WHY rothar 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 any air, if He had chosen to! Who
made the w'ha es God. Who made Jonahl
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 supernat ural out Of
the Bible, and you make it collection OF
choose 'Esops Fables. They are what they
pretend to be-fables. But if, after oil that
the Bible declares, Jesus is not God, and
Lazarus was not raised from the dead. anf
the water was net turned into wine, and the
Red Sea was not divided, and in answer to
prayer Ilezekiah's boil did not get well, then
the Bible is the worst fraud ever perpetrated
in Gods universe
All my friends, have we been mistaken!
Does Col hear and answer prayer, or does
He 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 applied
being merely the God-appointed human in
strumentality.
"But," says some one, 81 don't believe the
Bible" Ali then wa will have to part COM
plny for four or five minutes for it is useless
to 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 somo 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.
My first address. therefore, is to those who
do believe in the Bible. | want to tell you
that prayer is the mightiest of all remedies,
and that the allopathic and homeopathic
and the electric schools wills yet acknowledge
1t. 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 laundering doctor through
with case that would have otherwise become
completely unmanageable. There is such a
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 there and after he
goes away look up to Him who cured Heze-
kiah Let the apothecary serd the poultice,
but God makes it draw OH am glad to
have doctor who knows how to pray God
send salvation to all this doctorsl Sickness
would be oftener baked, death would be
oftener hurled back from the door sill if med
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 Ahercrombie 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 tha moral feelings"
don't know how much of the medical success
of Sydenham, and Cooper. and Harvey. and
Rush depended npon 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
made us land I think He did, AMI il 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