The Brookhaven leader. [volume] (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1883-1891, 1890-04-10
"A DEAD LION"
The World Fun of Brilliant Talents
Going to Waste.
DIR. Talmage DIscourses on the Uses OF Our
Faculties, Small or Great, for the
Benefit Of the World and
the Glory Of God.

Brooklin Academy of Music, his text
being:
A living dog is better than dead lIon.-
Eccles. ix., q.
The Bible is the strangest, the love-
liest, the mightiest the weirdest the
best of books. Written by Moses the
lawyer, Joshua the soldier, Samuel the
judge, Ezra tie builder, Job the poet,
David the shepherd, Daniel the Prime
Minister, Amos the herdsman, Matthew
the custom-house officer, Luke the doc
tor, Paul the scholar, John the exile;
and yet a complete harmony from the
middle verse of the Bible, which is the
eighth verse of the one hundredth and
seventeenth Psalm, both ways to the
upper and lower lids, and from the
shortest passage, which Is the thirty
fifth verse of the eleventh chapter of
John, to the longest verse, which is the
ninth verse of the eighth chapter OF
Esther, and yet not an imperfection in
all the seven hundred and seventy-three
thousand, six hundred and ninety-tbree
words which it is composed of. 1t not
only reaches over the past, but over the
future; has in it ferry-boat, as in sec
ond Samuel; and telegraph wire, as in
Job; and a railroad train, as in Nahum.
and introduces us to foundryman by
the name of Tubal Cain, and ship
builder by the name of Noah, and an
architect by the name of Aholiab, and
tells how many stables Solomon had to
take care of his horses, and how much
he paid for those horses. But few
things in this versatile and comprehen-
sive Book interest me so much as its
apothegms, those short, terse, senten-
tious, epigrammatic sayings, of which
my text is one-"A living dog is better
than dead lion"
Here the lion stands for nobility, and
the dog for meanness You must know
that the dog mentioned in the text is
not one of our American or European or
Scottish dogs that, in our mind, is a
synonym for the beautiful, the graceful,
the affectionate, the sagacious and the
true. The st. Bernard dog is a hero,
and if you doubt it, ask the SHOWS of
the Alps, out of which he picked the ex-
hausted traveller. The shepherd dog is
a poem, and if you doubt it, ask the
Highlands of Scotland. The artic dog
is the rescue of explorers, and if you
doubt it, ask DIR. Kane's expedition.
The Watchdog is living protection.
and if you doubt it, ask ten thousand
homesteads over whose safety he
watched last night. But Solomon, the
author Of my text, lived in Jerusalem,
and the dog he speaks of in the text was
a dog in Jerusalem. Last December l
passed days and nights within a
stones throw of where Solomon wrote
this text, and from what l 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 disgusting, and afflicted with
parasites, and takes revenge on the hu-
man 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. Ha-
zael said: 'Is thy servant dog that
he should do this thing?" In self-abne-
CATION the Syro-P o-Phenician 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 Heav-
en-, says: without are dogs"
On the other hand the lion is healthy,
strong and loud-mouthed, and at its roar
the forests echo and the mountains
tremble. 1t is marvellous 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 Pales-
tine 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 amphitheater of
Rome. The Barbary lion, the Cape
lion, the Senegal lion, the Assyrian
lion make up most absorbing and ex-
citing 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 simile.
David understood its habits OF night
prowling and day-slumbering, as is seen
from his description: THE young lions
roar after their prey and seek their
meat from God. The sun ariseth, they
gather themselves together, and lay
them down in their dens." And again
he cries out: my soul is among lions"
Moses knew them, and said: Judah is
couched like lion." Samson knew
them, for he took honey from the carcass
of slain lion. Solomon knew them,
and says: ''The Kings wrath is as the
roar of a lion," and again: THE sloth-
full man says, There is a lion in the
way" Isaiah knew them, and says, in
the millennium, "The lion shall eat
straw like an OK" Ezekiel knew them,
and says: s'The third was as the face of a
lion." Paul knew them, and says: 81
was delivered out of the mouth OF the
lion." Peter knew them, and says:
.sThe devil as roaring lion walketh
about" st. John knew him, and says
of Christ: Behold the Lion of the tribe
of Judahp'
Now, what does my text mean when
it puts living dog and dead lion side
by side, and says the former. is better
than the latter? 1t means that small
faculties actively used are of more
value than great faculties unemployed.
How often you see It'll Some man with
limited capacity vastly useful He
takes that which God has given him
and says: my mental endowmeht is