Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1890-03-31
WORK DURING YOUR LIFE
DR.. TALMAGE SOUNDS A NOTE OF
WARNING TO THE SLOTHFUL.

DR.. TACMAGE SOUNDS NOTE OF
WARNING TO THE SLOTHFUL.
Better Than "a Dead Lion'-NOw Is the
Time for Good Works.
BROOKLYN, March .3O.-There was
the usual difficulty in getting seats, or
even standing room, in the Academy
of Music this morning when the ser
vice commenced, the ordinary Taber-
nacle congregation being increased by
throngs of persons eager to listen to
the eloquent preacher. The service
opened with the singing of the Long
Metre DoxOlogv by the immense au-
dience. DR.. Talmage's subject was,
GA Dead Lion, and his text, Eccles.
iX, 4: "A living dog is better than a
/ dead lion" Following is a verbatim
report Of the sermon:
The Bible is the strangest, the love
/ lest, 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,
Matthew the custom house officer,
1 Luke the doctor, Paul the scholar,
i John the exile; and vet 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 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 i'm
perfection in all the 773, 693 words
which it is composed of. It not only
reaches over the past, but over the fu-
ture; has in it ferry boat, as in sec
ord Samuel; and a Geographic wire,
as in Job; and a railroad train, as in
Nahum; and introduces US to foun-
dryman by the name Of Tubal Cain,
and a ship builder 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 in
terest me SO much as its apothegms,
those short, terse, sententious. cpl
granmatic sayings, of which my text
is one-''A living dog is better than
dead lion"
THE LION AND THE DOG.
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 sa-
gacious 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 exhausted traveller The
shepherd dog is a poem, and if you
doubt it, ask the Highlands Of Scot
land. The Arctic dog is the rescue of
explorers, and if you doubt it ask Dr.
Kane's expedition. The watch dog 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 Jeru-
salem.
Last December 1 passed days and
nights within a stones throw of where
Solomon wrote this text, and from
what | saw Of the CANNES Of Jerusa-
lem 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 disgusting, and afflicted with
parasites, and takes revenge 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 contemptu>
GUS comparison. HaZael said: els
thy servant a dog, that he should do
this thing" In self abnegation the
Syro-PhWnician 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
mountains tremble. It is marvellous
moved 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 fire
arms, 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 amphitheatre Of Rome.
The Barbary lion, the Cape lion, the
Senegal lion, the Assyrian lion. make
up a 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: 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 HON" Sam
son knew them, for he took honey
from the carcass of a slain lion Solo
mon knew them and says, THE kings
wrath is as the roar of a lion, p" and
again, The slOthful man says, There is
a liOnin the way" Isaiah knew them,
and says, in the millennium, The
lion shall eat straw like an OK" Eze-
liel knew them, and says, THE third
was as the face of q lion" Paul knew
them, and says, L was delivered out
of the mouth of the lion" Peter knew
them, and says, The devil as roar
ing lion walketh about" st. John
knew them, and says of Christ, BE
hold the Lion of the tribe of Judahr'
Now, what does my text mean when
it puts living dog and a dead lion
side by side, and says the former is
better than the latter2 It means that
small faculties actively used are of
more value than great faculties unem-
ployed. How often you see it! Some
man with limited capacity vastly use
full. He takes that which God has
given him and says: my mental en-
dowment is not large and the world
would not rate me high for my intelli-
gence, and my vocabulary is limited,
and my education was defective, but
here goes what l have for God and