The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1890-04-10
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
Weekly Discourse of the Great
Brooklyn Preacher.

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
yet 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-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 ii3, 693
words Which it Is composed Of; II not only
reaches over the past, but over the future;
has in it a ferrybOat, as in second Samuel;
and Geographic wire, as in job and a rail
road train, as in Nahum; and introduces us
to foundryman by the name Of Tabul Cain,
and n 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 his horses, and how much he paid for
those horses. But few things in this versatile
and comprehensive 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 mist know that the
dog mentioned In the text is not one of our
American or European or Scottish dogs that
in our mind, isa synonym for the beautiful
the graceful, the affectionate the sagacious
and the true. The st. Bernard dog isa 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
If you doubtit, ask the Highlands of Scot
land The Arctic dog is the rescue of ex-
plorers, and if you doubt it, ask DR., Kane's
expedition. The watch dog is living pro"
lection, and if you doubt it, ask ten thou
sand 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 dog III Jeruss-
lem.
Last December | passed days and nights
within 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 | 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: Us
thy servant dog; that he should do this
thingw In self abnegation the Syro Phoeni-
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 Digs"
On the Other hand, the lion is healthy,
strong and loud voiced, and at its roar the
forests echo and the mountains tremble 1t
smarvelous 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 50 numerous
that one thousand lions were slain in forty
years in the amphiteatre of Rome. The
Barbary lion, the Cape lion, the Senegal lion,
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 smile.
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 them
selves together, and lay them down in their
dens" And again he cries out, MY soul is
among lions" Moses knew them and said,
A1eshhl''D''
knew them, for he took honey from the car
cass of slain lion. Solomon knew them and
SAYS, ''The Kings wrath is as the roar of a
iiop.a and again, 1.-THE slothful man says,
There is 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, The third was as the
face of a lion." Paul knew them, and says,
II was delivered out of the mouth of the
lion" Peter knew them, and says, The
devil as a roaring lion walketh about" ~.
John knew them, and says of Christ, BE
hold the Lion of the tribe of Judah"
Now, what does my text mean when it
puts living dog and dead lion side by side,
AMI says the former is better than the latter!
1t means that small faculties actively used
are of more value than great faculties I'M
employed. How often you see It'll Some
man with limited capacity vastly useful.
He takes that which God has given him and
saws; my mental endowment is not large
and the world would not rate me high for
my intelligence, and my vocabulary is
limited, and my education was defective,
salvation, and the making of the world
good and happy" He puts in a
word here and a word there, encourages
a faint hearted man, gives a Scripture
passage in consolation to some bereft
woman, picks up child fallen in the street
and helphim 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 letter to carry or a message to
deliver; comes into a rail train, or stage
coach, or depot, on shop with smiling face
that sets everybody to thinking: IF that
man can, with what appears small equip
ment in lite, be happy, why cannot l, pos
sessing far more than he has, be equally
happy2' One day of that kind of doing
things may not amount to much, but forty
years of that--no one but God Himself car
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 clerE
or weigher or drayman, and he is known
among those who sit near him clear back IL
the church under the galleries, and at the
ferry gates where he comes in knocking the
snow from his shoes and threshing his arm:
around his body to revive circulation, or
some January morning. But ii he shoulc
die tomorrow there would not be a hundred
people who would know about it. He vii
never have his name in the newspapers but
once, and that will be the announcement OF
his death, if some one will pay for the in
sertion. so much 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 higher seat and a
better mansion and grander eternity than
many 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 l 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 i'll this world felt them
selves to be OF ninety-nine per cent. more
Importance The whisper will go round the
galleries of the upper temple: "Can it be
possible that that was the weigher in our
store?' ''Can it be possible that that was
the car-driver on our streetg 'Can it be
possible that was the sexton of our church,
"Can it be possible that is the mnn that
heaved coal into our cellarf' II never
could have thought it. What reversal o
things We were clear ahead of him OF
earth, but he is clear ahead of us in heaven
Why, we had ten times more brain
than he had, we had a thousand times NOR,
money than he had, we had social position
mile higher than he had. we had innumer
able opportunities more than he had, but /
seems now that he accomplished more will
his one talent than we did with our ten: :
while Solomon, standing among the thrones
overhears the whisper. and sees the wonder
ment, and WILL with benignant and all-sug
gestive smile, say, Eyes, it is as l told tht