The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1890-08-07
MISSION OF THE SWORD.
DR.. Talmage Discourses to the Thir-
teenth Regiment.
Used in Righteousness the Sword is Pc
tent to Redress WrOng-In the
Hands of n Tyrant it Be-
comes a Thing of Evil.


the Brooklyn Academy of Music before
the Thirteenth Regiment, from the
text:
My sword shall be bathed in Heaven
Isaiah XxXiv, 5.
Three hundred and fifty-one times
does the Bible speak of thatsharp, keen,
curved, inexorable weapon, which
flashes upon US from the text-the sword.
Some times the mention is applaudatory
and sometimes damnatory, sometimes as
drawn, sometimes as sheathed. In the
Bible, and in much secular literature,
the sword represents all javelins, all
muskets, all carbines, all guns, all po-
lice clubs, all battle-axes, all weaponry
for physical defense or attack. Itwould
be an interesting thing to give the his
tory of the pillow, and follow its furrow
all down through the ages, from the first
crop in Chaldea to the last crop in Min
nesota. 1t would be interesting to fol-
low the pen as it has traced its way on
down through the literature of nations,
from its first word in the first book to
the last word which some author last
night wrote as he closed his manuscript.
1t would be an interesting thing to count
Che echoes of the hammer from the first
nail driven, down through all the mech
anism of centuries to the last stroke in
the carpenters shop yesterday. But in
this, my annual sermon as chaplain of the
Thirteenth Regiment, l propose taking
up weapon that has done 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 another sword may
be bathed in hell, and the sword of
cruelty and wrong. There is great
difference between the sword of Wink
elried and the sword of Catalina, be-
tween the sword of Leonidas and the
sword of Benedict Arnold. In our effort
to hasten the end of war, we have hung
the sword with abuses and excavations,
when it has had Divine mission, and
when in many crises of the worlds his
tory it has swung for liberty and Justice,
civilization and righteousness and God.
At the very opening 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:
''Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, o most
mighty" One of the old battle-shouts
of the Old Testament was: 1.-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 thas hath no
sword let him sell his garment and buy
one." Again He declared: 81 come
not to send peace but sword" Of
Christs second coming it is said: ''Out
of His mouth went sharp, two-edged
sword" Thus, sometimes figuratively,
but oftener literally, the Divine mission
of the sword is announced.
What more consecrated thing in the
world than Joshua's sword, or Caleb's
sword, or Gideon's sword, or David's
sword, or Washington's sword, or
Marion's sword, or Lafayette's sword,
sword, or Garibaldis sword, or hun
dreds of thousands of American swords
that have again and again been bathed
in Heaven. Swords of that kind have
been the best friends of the human
race. They have slain tyrannies, priei
open dungeons, and cleared the way for
nations in their march upward. 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 it
must cringe and crouch before the
wrong.
Turn. over the leaves of the worlds
history, and find that there has never
been tyranny stopped or a nation lib
Grated except by the sword. I am not
talking to you about the way things
ought to be, but about the way things
have been. What force drove back the
Saracens at Tours, and kept Europe
from being overwhelmed by Moham-
mechanism, and, subsequently,, all Amer
lea given over to Mohammedanism?
The sword of Charles Martel and his
men. Who can deal enough infinities
to tell what was accomplished for the
worlds good by the sword of Joan of
Arc. 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 Persian hosts rep
resenting not only Persia, but Egypt,
and Tripoli, and Afghanistan, and Be-
loochistan, and Armenia; host thaA
had Asia under foot and proposed to
put Europe under foot, and, if success
full in that battle, would have sub
merged by Asiatic barbarism Eu-
ropean civilization, and, as conse-
quence in after time, American civili-
cation? The swords of Miltiades, and
Themistocles. and Aristides. At the
waving of these swords the eleven
thousand lancers of Atheus on the run.
dashed against the one hundred thou
sand insolent Persians, and trampled
them down or pushed them back into
the sea. The sword of that day saved
the best part of the hemispheres, a
trinity of keen steel flashing in the
two lights-the light of the setting sun
of barbarism, the light of the rising