Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1890-04-05
4 dead LION"
REV. DIR. TALMAGE'S SUNDAY
SERMON.
Preached at the Academy of Music.
Brooklyn. N. Y.

Preached at the Academy of Music
Brooklyn. N. Y.
TEXT; "A living dog is better than a
dead ion."-Eccles. TX, 4.
The Bible is the strangest, the loveliest, the
mightiest, the weirdest, the best of books
Written by Moses the lawyer. Joshua the
soldier, Samuel the judge, Ezra the builder,
Job the poet, David the shepherd, Daniel the
prime minister, Amos the herdsman, Mat
thew the custom house officer, Luke the doc
tor. Paul the scholar, John the exile; and
vet a complete harmony from the middle
verse of the Bible, which is the eighth verse
of the one hundred and seventeenth Psalm,
both ways to the upper and lower lids, and
from the shortest passage, which is the thir-
ty-ffth verse of the eleventh CHAPTER of
John, to the longest verse, which is the ninth
verse of the eighth chapter of Esther, and
vet not an imperfection in all the I13, 693
words which 1t is composed of. 1t not only
reaches over the past, but over the future;
has in tia ferryboat as in second Samuel;
and Geographic wire, as in Job; and rail-
road train, as in Nahum; aud introduces US
TO a foundryman by the name of Tabul Cain.
and shipbuilder by the name OF Noah, and
an architect by the name Of Aholiab, and
tells us how many stables Solomon had to take
care OF MS nCIStS, uO" mum Paib IN
those horses But few things in this versatile
and comprehensive book interest me so much
as its apothegms, those short, terse, senten
tio.:s epigrammatic sayings. of which my
text is one: "a living dog is better than
dead lion.'
Here the lion stands fer nobility, and the
dog for meanness. Youmust know that the
dog mentioned in the text is not one OF our
American or European or Scottish dogs that,
fort he mi
the graceful, the affectionate, the sagaclous
and the true The St. Bernard dog is a hero,
and IL you doubt it, ask the SHOWS OF the
Alps. out of which he picked the exhausted
traveller. The shepherd dog is poem, and
# you doubtit, ask the Highlands Of Scot
land. Tho Arctic dog is the rescue Of ex-
plorers, and if you doubt it, ask DR.. Kane 5
expedition The watch dog is living pro-
lection. and if you doubt II, ask ten thou
sand homesteads over whose safety he
watched last night. But Solomon, the author
Of nv text lived in Jerusalem, and the dog
he speaks of in the text was dog IN Jerusa-
lem
Last December ! passed days and nights
within a stones throw Of where Solomon
wrote this text, and from what | saw of the
CANNES of Jerusalem by day, and heard of
them by night, l can understand the slight
appreciation my text puts upon the dog OF
Palestine. 1t is lean and snarly and disgust
ing, and afflicted with parasites, and takes re
venge on the human race by filling the nights
with clamor. All up and down the Bible, the
most of which was written in Palestine or
Syria, or contiguous lands, the dog is used in
contemptuous comparison. Hazael SAID: rs
thy servant dog, that he should do this
tbingT' In self abnegation the Syro-P hpni-
clan woman said: Even the dogs eat of the
crumbs which fall from the Masters table. "
Paul says, in Philippians: Beware of dogs;
and St John, speaking of heaven, says:
without are dogs"
On the other hand the lion is healthy,
strong, and loud voiced, and at its roar the
forests echo and the mountains tremble. Ii
is marvelous for strength, and when its hide
is removed the muscular compactness Is
something wonderful and the knife of the
dissector bounds back from the tendons. By
the clearing off of the forests OF Palestine
and the use of firearms, of which the lion IS
particularly afraid, they have disappeared
from places where once they ranged, but
they were very bold in olden times. They
attacked an army of Xerxes while marching
through Macedonia. They were so numerous
that one thousand lions were slain in forty
years in the amphiteatre of Rome. The
Barbary lion, the Cape lion, the Senegal hon,
the Assyrian lion, make up most absorbing
and exciting chapter in natural history. As
most of the Bible was written in regions
lion haunted, this creature appears in almost
all parts of the Bible as a smile.
David understood its habits of night
prowling and day slumbering, as is seen
from his description: 1.-THE young lions roar
after their prey and seek their meat from
God The sun ariseth, they gather them
selves together, and lay them down in their
dens.n And again he cries out My soul Is
among lions" Moses knew them and said,
Judah is couched like lion" Sampson
l.. Al.A,.
casS of a slain lion. Solomon knew them and
says, 'The Kings wrath is as the roar of a
lion" and again, The slothful man says,
There is a lion i'll the way" Isaiah knew
them. and says i'll the millennium, The
lion shall eat straw like an OK" Ezekiel
knew them, and says, THE third was AS the
face of lion Paul knew them, and says
Il was delivered out of the mouth Of the
lion Peter knew them, and says, The
devil as a roaring lion walketh about" St.
John knew them, ard says of Christ, BE
hold the Lion of the tribe of Judahm
Now, what docs my text mean when it
puts living dog and dead lion side by side,
AMI SAYS the former Is better than the latter?
Il means that small faculties actively used
are of more value than great faculties un-
employed. How often you see it, Some
man with limited capacity vastly useful.
lie takes that which God has given him and
says: MY mental endowment is not large
and the world would not rate me high for
my intelligence, and my vocabulary is
United and my education was defective
but here goes what | have for God and
salvation. and the making of the world
good and happy He puts in a
word here and word there, encourages
a faint hearted man, gives Scripture
passage in consolation to some bereft
woman. picks up a child fallen in the street
and help him brush off the dust and puts a
five cent piece in his hand, telling him not to
cry, so that the boy is singing before he gets
round the corner; waiting on everybody
that has a letter TO carry or a message to
deliver; comes into a rail train, or stage
coach, or depot or shop, with smiling face
that sets everybody to thinking: IF that
man can, with what appears small equip
ment in life be happy, why cannot l, pos
sessing far more than he has, be equally
happy One day of that kind of doing
things may not amount to much, but forty
years of that--no one but God Himself can
appreciate its immensely.
There are tens of thousands of such people.
Their circle of acquaintance is small. The
man is known over at the store. He Is clerk
or weigher or drayman, and he is known
among those who sit near him clear back In
the church under the galleries, and at the
ferry gates where he comes in knocking the
snow from his shoes, and threshing his arms
some January morning But it he should
die tomorrow there would not be a hundred
people who would know about it. He Will
never have his name i'll the newspapers but
once. and that will be the announcement OF
his death, if some one will pay for the in
sertion 50 much a line for the two lines.
| But he will come up gloriously ON the other
side, and the God who has watched him all
through will give him a higher seat and a
better mansion and a grander eternity than
| many a man who had on earth, before his
name, the word honorable and after his name
LID. and F. r. S Christ said in Luke, the
sixth chapter, that in heaven some who had
it hard here would laugh there.
And | think laugh Of delight and con-
graduation will run around the heavenly
circles when this humble one of whom [
spoke shall go up and take the precedence Of
many Christians who in this world felt them
| selves 20 be of ninety-nine per cent. more
importance. The whisper VIII go round the
galleries Of the upper temple: Can 1t be
possible that that was the weigher in our
store' Can il be possible that that was
the car-lriver on our street, Can IT be
possible that was the sexton OF our church,
'Can il be- possible that is tho man that
heaved coal into our cellar" II never
could have thought it. What n reversal of
! things We were clear ahead of him on
elrth. but he is clear ahead of us in heaven
why. we had ten times more brains
than he bad we had thousand times more
money than he had we had social position a
mile higher than he had. we had innumer-
able opportunities more than he had. but it
seems now that he accomplished more with
his one talent than we did with our ten, :"
while Solomon, standing among the thrones,
overhears the whisper, and sees the wonder
ment. ana VIII, with benignant and all-sug-
gestive smile, say, Yes it is as | told the
world many centuries ago-better is small
faculty actively used than great talent un-