Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-06-02
A SOLDIERS MISSION.
DR.. Talmage breaches on the Good
and Evil Results of War.
LIBERTY, JUSTICE AND PEACE
ALI Gained in Times Past by the Blood of
Brave Patriots.
SWORDS SURELY DOOMED TO DlSUSE
LIBERTY, JUSTICE AND PEACE
SWORDS SURELY DOOMED TO DlsUSE
nrrcrAL TELEGRAM TO THE prsr.roH.,

ment, IN the Academy oil Music. Inc sian
officers and members of the regiment were
Immediately in front of the platform, and
their friends thronged the galleries. The
hymn sung was the national air:
Ny country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty.
The subject of the sermon was: "The
Sword-Its Mission and Its Doom" The
text, Isaiah 1x1iv:5: my sword shall be
bathed in heaven"
Three hundred and ifty-one times does the
Bible speak of that sharp. keen, curved, mex.
orable weapon, which flashes upon us from the
text-the sword. Sometimes the mention is
applaudatory and sometimes damnatory,
sometimes as drawn. sometimes as
eheathed. In the Bible, and in much
secular literature, the sword represents
all javelins all muskets all carbines, all guns,
all police clubs all battle axes all weaponry for
physical defense or attack. II would be an in.
teresting thing to give the history OF the Plow,
and follow its furrow all down through the
ages, from the first crop in Chaldea to the last
crop in Minnesota 1t would be interesting to
follow the Pen as it has tracked its way on
down through the literature of nations, from
Its first wo-d in the first book to the last word
which some author last night wrote as he
closed his manuscript. 1t would be an interest
ing thing to count the echoes of the Hammer
from the first nail driven, down through all the
mechanism of centuries to the last stroke in the
carpenters shop yesterday. But in this, my
annual sermon as chaplain of the Thirteenth
Regiment, propose taking up a weapon that
has done a work that neither Plow nor Pen nor
Hammer ever accomplished. My theme is the
Sword-its mission and its doom.
The sword of the text was bathed in heaven;
that is, it was sword of righteousness, as an
sword of cruelty and wrong. There is great
difference between the sword of Winklereid
and the sword of Cataline, between the sword
of LeoIidas and the sword of Benedict Arnold.
hung the sword with abuses and e1ecrations,
when it has had
A DIVINE MISSION,
and when in many crises of the worlds history
it has swung for liberty and justice, civilization
and righteousness and God. At the very OPEN
ing of the Bible and on the east side of the
Garden Of Eden, God 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: 'Gi-d thy
sword upon thy thigh. o most mighty" One
of the old battle shouts Of the Old Testament
was, The sword of the Lord and of Gideon %
Christ. in great exigency said that such a
weapon was more important than a coat for
He declared: He that hath no sword, let him
clared: - come not to send peace but a sword I"
OF Christ's second coming It is said: rOut of
His mouth went sharp, two-edged sword :"
Thus. sometimes iguratively, but oftener
literally, the divine mission of the sword is an
nouneed.
What more consecrated thing in the world
than Joshua's sword, or Csleb's sword or Gid
cons sword. or David's sword or Washington's
sword or Marion's sword or Lafayette's sword
or Wellington's sword, or Kosciusko's sword or
Gar1baldfs sword. or hundreds of thousands of
American swords that have again and again been
Dathed 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 up
ward 1t 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 il must cringe and
crouch before the wrong. Turn over the
leaves OF the worlds history and find that there
mas never been tyranny stopped a nation
liberated except by the sword. / am not talk
ing to you about the way things ought to be,
but about the way they have been. What force
drove back the Saracens at Tours and kept
Europe from being overwhelmed by Moham-
mechanism, and, subsequently, all America
given over to Moham mechanism? The sword of
Charles Martel and his men. Who can deal in
infniries enough to tell what was accomplished
for the worlds good by the sword of Joan of
Arc?
NOBLE WARRIORS SWORDS.
In December last looked off and saw in the
distance the battlefield of Marathon and
asked myself what was it that, on that most
tremendous day in history, stopped the Per-
sian hosts, representing not only Persia. but
Egypt, and Tripoli, and Afghanistan, and Be
loochistan, and Armenia; a host that had Asia
under foot and proposed to put Europe under
foot, and, if successful in that battle. would
have submerged by Asiatic barbarism Euro
pean civilization, and as a consequence In after
time, American civilization? The swords of
Miltlades, and Themistocles, and Aristides At
the waving of these swords the IL 00O lancers
insolent Persians and trampled them down or
pushed them back into the sea. The sword of
that day saved the best part of the hemis-
pheres a trinity of keen steel flashing in the
two lighss-the light of the setting sun of bar
barism. the light of the rising sun of civiliza-
aon. Hail TO those three great swords bathed
in heaveni
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 England paralyzed?
The sword of Marlborough, at Blenheim. 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 attempts had disgracefully failed but the
Germans, the mightiest nation for Drawn and
brain, undert ok the work, and under God,
What drove back the Roman
cavalry till the horses, wounded. flung their
dercynian forest became the scene of
Home's humiliation? The sword, the brave
sword, the triumphant sword of Arminius.
While passing through France last JAN
lary my nerves tingled with excitement and:I
-ose in the car, the better 10 see the battlefield
If Chalons, the mounds and breastworks still
Iisible, though nearly 500 years ago they were
hoveled up. Here, AttiIa the beathen mon.
ter, called by himself the ''Scourge of God,
or the punishment of Christians" his life a
massacre OF natlons. came to ignominious de-
eat. and he put into one great pile the wooden
adde's of his cavalry and the spoils of the
titles and Kingdoms he had sacked and placed
N top of this holocaust the women who had
accompanied HIM in bis devastating march or
lering that the torch be put to the pile. What
'Ower broke that sword, and STAYED that red
courge of cruelty that was rolling over
Europe? The sword of Theodore and Acttus.
REVOLUTION AND LIBERTY.
To come down to later ages, all intelligent
Inglishmen unite with all intelligent Ameri.
ans in saying that it was the best thing that
he American colonies swung of from the Egov-
rnment of Great Britain. 1t would have been
he worst absurdity of 1900 years if this con-
inent should have continued in loyalty to |
hrone on the other side of the sea. No one |
,ould propose a Governor General for the |
Inited States as there is Governor General |
or Canada We have had splendid queens in |
ur American Capitol, but we could hardly be |
rought to support a queen on the other side |
I the Atlantic, lovely and good as Victoria is. |
he only use we Lave for earls and lords and |
ukes in this country is TO treat them well |
hen they pass through to their hunting |
rounds of the Far West, or when their for |
1nes have failed, reinforce them by wealthy |
latrlmonlal alliance. Imagine this nation yet /
part of English possessions!
The trouble the mother country.has to-day
nlh Ireland would be a paradisaic condition
olnpared with the trouble she would have |
nth us. England and the United States make
Kcellent Deighbors, but the two families are
20 large 70 I'VE IN the same house. What a
odsend that we should have parted and
arted long agol But can think OF no other
ay IN which we could have possibly achieved
merlean independence. George Ill, the half
,azy . hIngi IN % would not have let us go. Lord