The Russellville Democrat., 1890-06-12
MISSION OF THE SWORD.
Dr. Talmage Diseourses to the Thir-
 teenth Regiment.
Used in Righteousness the Sword Is Po- tcnt to Redress Wrongful the Hands of Tyrant 1t Be-
 comes a Thing of Evil.

livered by Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage iI
 the Brooklyn Academy of Music before
 the Thirteenth Regiment, from the
 text:
 Chaplain, in the Brooklyn Academy of
 Music, from the text:
 My sword shall be bathed in Heaven Isaiah xxxiv.. 5.
 Three hundred and ffty-one times does the Bible speak of that sharp, keen, curved, inexofable weapon, which flashes upon us from the text--the sword.
 Sometimes the mention is applaudatory and sometimes damnatory, sometimes as drawn, sometimes as sheathed. In the Bible, and in much secular literature, the sword represents all iayelins, all muskets, all carbines all guns, all po- lice clubs, all battle-axes, all weaponry for physical defense or attack. Itwould be an interesting thing to give the his tory of the blow, and follow its furrow all down through the ages, from the first crop in Chaldea to the last crop in Min nesota. It would be interesting to fol- low the pen as it has traced its way on down through the literature of nations, from its first word in the first book to the last word which some author last night wrote as he closed his manuscript. It would be an interesting thing to count the echoes of the hammer from the first nail driven, down through all the mech
 anism of centuries to the last stroke in the carpenters shop yesterday. But in
 this, my annual sermon as chaplain of the Thirteenth Regiment, I propose taking up weapon that has done work that neither blow nor pen nor hammer ever accomplished. My theme is the sword
 tits mission and it's doom.
 The sword of the text was bathed in Heaven: that is, it was a sword of righ teousness, as another sword may
 be bathed in hell, and the sword of cruelty and wrong. There is a great difference between the sword of Wink elried and the sword of Cataline, be-
 ween the sword of Leonidas and the
 sword of Benedict Arnold. In our effort
 O hasten the end of war, we have hung
 he sword with abuses and generations, when it has had a Divine mission, and when in many crises of the worlds his tory it has swung for liberty and justice, civilization and righteousness and God. At the very opening of the Bible and on the east side of the Garden of Eden,
 Sod placed flaming sword to defend the tree of life. Of the officer of the law, St. Paul declares: He beareth not the sword in vain. Through Moses God commanded: Put every man his sword by his side" David, in his prayer, says:
 "Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, 0 most mighty" One of the old battle-shouts of the Old Testament was: ''The sword of the Lord and of Gideon.n Christ, in a great exigency said, that such a weapon was more important than coat for He declared: He that hath no sword let him sell his garment and buy one." Again He declared: ''I come not to send peace but sword" Of Christs second coming it is said: "out of His mouth went a sharp, two-edged sword" Thus, sometimes fguratively, but oftener literally, the Divine mission of the sword is announced.
 What moro consecrated thing in the world than Joshua's sword, or Caleb's sword, or Gideon's sword, or David's sword, or Washingtons sword, or Marion's sword, or Lafayette's sword, or Wellington's sword, or Kosciusko's sword, or Garibaldi's sword, or hun dreds of thousands of American swords thathaye again and again been bathed in Heaven. Swords of that kind have been the best friends of the human race. They have slain tyrannies, pried open dungeons, and cleared the way for nations in their march upward. It was better for them to take the sword and be free, than lie under the oppressor's heel and suffer. There is something worse than death, and that is life if it must cringe and crouch before the wrong.
 Turn over the leaves of the worlds history, and find that there has never been tyranny stopped or nation lib erated except by the sword. l am not talking to you about the way things ought to be, but about the way things have been. What force drove back the Saracens at Tours, and kept Europe from being overwhelmed by Moham- and, subsequently,, all Amer lea given over to Mohammedanism? The sword of Charles Martel and his to tell what was accomplished for the worlds good by the sword of Joan of Arc. In December last l looked off and saw in tho distance the battlefield of and I asked myself what was 1t that on that most tremendous day in history stopped the Persian hosts rep resenting not only Persia, but Egypt, and Tripoli, and Afghanistan, and Be- and Armenia; host that had Asia under foot and proposed to put Europe under foot and, if success ful in that battle, would have sub by Asiatic barbarism Eu- ropean civilization, and as a conse- quence in after time, American civili- zation? The swords of Miltiades, and and Aristides At the waving of these swords the eleven thousand lancers of Atheus on tho run, dashed against tho one hundred thou sand insolent Persians, and trampled them down or pushed them back into the sea- The sword of that day saved the best part of the hemispheres, a trinity of keen steel flashing in the two ights-the light of the setting sun of barbarism. the light of the rising sun of civilization. Hail to these three great swords bathed in Heavenl
 What put an end to infamous Louis XVI's plan of universal conquest. by which England would have been made to kneel on the steps of the Tuileries and the Anglo-Saxon race would have been halted and all Europe paralyzed? The sword of Marlborough, at Blen- helm. Time came when the Roman war eagles, whose beaks had been punched into the heart of nations, must be brought down from their eYries. All other attemps had disgracefully failed, but the Germans, the mightiest nation for brawn and brain, undertook the work, and, under God, succeeded. What drove back tho Roman cavalry till the horses, wounded, flung their riders, and the lastrider perished, and the Hercynian forest became the scene of Rome's humil- iation? The sword, the brave sword, the ..s \.