Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1889-03-01
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
The Weekly DISCOURSE Of The Great
Brooklyn Preacher.
Subject; "Our Own Genera
Ifon.o


That is a text which has for a long time
been running through my mind, but not UNI
til now has it been fully revealed to me.
Sermons have time to be born as well as q
time to die, q cradle as we'll as a grave.
ID vid. cowboy and stone-slinger and fighter
and car and dramatist and blank verse
writer and prophet, did his best for the people
of his time and then went and laid down on
the southern hill of Jerusalem in that sound
slumher which nothing but an archangelle
blast can startle David, after he had
served his own generation by the will of God,
fell on Sleep
It was his own generation that he had
served; that is the people living at the time
he lived. And have you ever thought that
our responsibilities are chiefly with the
peope now walking abreast Of usi There
are about four generations to century now,
but in o den time life was longer and there
was, perhaps, only one generation to CEN
fury. Taking these facts into the calculation,
make a rough guess and say that there have
been at least one hundred and eighty
generations of the human family. With
reference to them we have no responsibility.
We cannot teach them, we cannot correct
their mistakes, we cannot soothe their sor-
rows, we cannot heal their wounds. Their
sepulchers are deaf and dumb to anything
we might say to them. The last regiment OF
that great army has passed out of sight. We
might halloo as loud as we could, not one OF
them would avert his head TO see what we
wanted.
/ admit that am in sympathy with the
child whose father had suddenly died and
who in her little evening prayer wanted to
continue to pray for her father although he
had gone into heaven and no more needed
her prayers, and looking up into her
mothers face said: 80, mother, l can
not leave him all out Let me say,
Thank Gcd that had good father once,
and so l can keep him in my pray.
ers'n But the one hundred and eighty gen.
creations have passed off. Passed up Passed
down. Gone forever. Then there are gener-
ations to come after our earthly existence
has ceased, perhaps hundred and eighty
generations more, perhaps thousand gener-
at ons more. We shall not see them, we shall
not hear any of their voices, we will take no
part in III ir congocations their elections,
their revolutions, their catastrophes, their
triumphs. We will in no wise affect the one
hundred and eighty generations gone, or the
ore hundred and eighty generations to come,
except as from the galleries of heaven the
former generations look down and rejoice at
our victories, or as we may by our behavior
start influences, good or bad, that shall roll
on through the advancing ages. BIT our busi-
ness is, like David, to serve our own generation,
the people now living, those whose lungs now
breathe and whose hearts now beat. And
mark you, it is not silent procession, but
moving. 1t is a forced march, at twenty
four miles day, each hour being a mile.
Going with that celebrity, it has got to be
quick service on our part or no service at
all We not only cannot teach the
one hundred and eighty genera
Gions past and will not see the
one hundred generations to come but this
generation now on the stage will soon be off
and we ourselves will be off with them. The
fact is that you and / will have to start very
FOR Vvorly n will ha ipopinol and
sarc lstc for any one after our exit to say of
as as it was said of David, latter he had
ser veS his cWG generation By the will of God,
he fell on sleep"
Well, now, let us look around earnestly,
prayerfully and in common sense way and
see what we can do for our own generation.
First of all let us see to it that, as far as we
can, they have enough to eat The human
body is so constituted that three times a day
the body needs food as much as lamp
needs oil, as much as a locomotive
needs fuel. To meet this want God
has grdled the earth with apple orchards,
orange groves, wheat fields and oceans full
of fish and prairies full of cattle. And not
withstanding this, will undertake to say
that the vast majority of the human family
are suffering either for lack of food or the
right kind Of food Our civilization is all
askew on this subject and God only can set
1T right.
MANY OF UtlE RFodUGSU SSUhLeS OIL Jay HuV0
been built out of the blood and bones of I'M
requited toll. In olden times, for the build
ing of forts and towers, the inhabitants
of Ispahan had to contribute 10, 900 human
skulls, and Bagdad 80, 900 human skulls, and
chat number of people were slain so as to
furnish the skulls. But these two contribu-
lions added together made only 100000
skulls, while into the tower of the worlds
wealth and pomp and magnifcence have
been wrought the skeletons of uncounted
numbers of the half fed populations of the
earth, millions of skulls.
Don't sit down at your table with five or
six courses Of abundant supply and think
nothing of that family In the next street who
would take any one of those five courses be-
tween soup and almond nuts and feel they
were in heaven. The lack of the right kind
of food is the cause of much of the drunk
enness After drinking what many Of our
grocers call coffee, sweetened with what
many call sugar, and eating what many of
our butchers call meat, and chewing what
many of our bakers call bread, many of the
Iaborlng classes feel so miserable they are
tempted to put into their nasty pipes
what the tobacconst calls tobacco, or
go into the drinking saloons for what the
rum sellers call beer. Good coffee would do
much in driving out bad rum. Adulteration
of food has got to be an evil against which
all the health officers and all the doctors and
all the Christians need to set them
selves in battle array. How can we serve
our generation with enough to eat By sit
ting down in embroidered slippers and loung-
ing back in an arm chair our mouth puck
cred up around Havana of the best brand,
and through clouds of luxuriant smoke read
ing about political economy and the philos-
ophy OF strikes9 MOI No! By finding out
who in Brooklyn has been living on gristle
and sending them a tenderloin beefsteak.
Seek out some family who through sickness
or conjunction of misfortune have
not enough to eat and do for
them what Christ did for the
hungry multitudes of Asia Minor, multiply
ing the loaves and the fishes. Let us quit
the surfeitng of ourselves until we cannot
choke down another crumb of cake and be-
gin the supply of others necessities.
We often see on a small scale a recklessness
about the welfare of others which a great
warrior expressed on a large SCALE when his
officers we're dissuading him from certain
campaign, saying: ut would cost two hun
dred thousand lives" replying with diabol-
ism that can never be forgotten: What are
two hundred thousand lives to meF
So far from helping appease the worlds
hunger, there are those whom Isaiah de-
scribes as grinding the faces of the poor. You
have seen farmer or mechanic put
scythe or an ak on a grindstone, while some
one was turning it round and round, and
the man holding the ak bore on it harder
and harder while the water dropped from
the gripdstone, and the edge Of the ak from
being round and dull got keener and kesnsr,
and the mechanic lifted the ak glistening and
sharp and with edge so keen he must eau
tiously run his finger along lest while ex-
aiming the implement he cut his hand
to the bone. So | have seen men who were
put against the grindstone of hardship, and
while one turned the crank another would
press the unfortunate harder down and
harder down until he was ground away thin
ner and thinner, his comforts thinner, his
prospects thinner aud his face thinner
And Isaiah shrieks out: What mean we
that We grind the faces Of the poorp 1t is
an awful thing to be hungry. It is an easy
thing for us to be in good humor with all the
world when we have no lack. But let hun.