Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1890-03-31

"A LIVING DOG is BETTER THAN A
DEAD LION.D


(. Has Is Worth More Than He of Great
Talent who Allows HIS Ability to Lie
Dormant.
BROOKLYN, March 3O.-There was the usual
difficulty in getting seats, or even standing
room, in the Academy of Music this morning
when the service commenced, the ordinary
Tabernacle congregation being increased by
throngs of persons eager to listen to the elo-
quent preacher The service opened with the
singing of the Long Metre doxology by the
immense audience. Dr. Tolmages subject
was GA Dead Lion,n and his text, Eccles
TX, A: "A living dog is better than a dead
lion" Following is a verbatim report of the
eermon:
The Bible is the strangest, the loveliest, the
mightiest, the weirdest, the best Of books.
Written by Moses the lawyer, Joshua the sol
der, 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 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-flfth
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 773,6 93 words which it is
composed Of. 1t not only reaches over the
past, but over the future; has in it a ferry
boat, as in second Samuel; and telegraph
wire, as in Job; and railroad train, as in
Mol nd ft,fr 70 "a o. 1tstyp
by the name of Tubal CAIN and a 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 comprehen-
2ive book interest me so much as its apo
thegms, those short, terse, sententious, cpl
grammatic sayings, Of which my text is one
"a living dog is better than dead lion"
THE DOGS AND LIONS OF THE BIBLE.
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 atfectionate, the sagacious,
and the true. The st. Bernard dog is a hero,
and If you doubt it, ask the SHOWS Of tho
Alps, out of which he picked the exhausted
traveller The shepherd dog Is poem, and
IL you doubt it, ask the highlands Of Scot
land. The Arctic dog is the rescue Of ex-
plorers, and if you doubt it, ask DR.. Kanes
expedition. The watch dog is a living pro-
lection, 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 dog In Jerusalem.
Last December | passed days and nights
within stones throw of where Solomon
wrote this text and from what I 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 disgust
ing, and afflicted with parasites, and takes
revenge on the human race by filling tho
nights with camor All up and down the
Bible the most of which was written In Pales
tine or Syria, or contiguous lands the dog is
used in contemptuous comparison. Hazaea
said: SIS thy servant a dog that he should do
this thingp In self abnegation the Syro-
Ph1nician 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 at its roar the
forests echo and the mountains tremble. IL
Is marvellous for strength, and when its hide
is removed the muscular compactneSs Is
something wonderful, and the knife of
the dssector bounds back from the ten
dons. By the clearing off Of the forests
of Palestine and the use of firearms, Of which
the lion is particularly afraid, they have dis
appeared 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 no numer-
GUS that one Thousand lions were slain IN forty
years In the amphtheatre of Rome. The Bar
barry lion, tho 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 a simile. David under
stood its habits of night proving and day
Numbering, 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 aud said, Judah is couched like
a lion" Samson knew them, for he took
honey from the carcass of a slain lion. Solo
mon knew them and says, "The kings wrath
il as the roar of a lion;' and again, 1.-THE
slothful man says, There is "A lion in the way"
Isaiah knew them, and says, in the millen-
num- "The lion shall eat straw like an OK"
Ezekiel knew them, and says, 1.-THE third
81, %, o poul
and SAYS: 81 was delivered out Of the mouth
of the lion" Peter knew them and says,
'The devil rs a roaring lion walketh about"
St John knew them, and says OF Christ,
"Behold the Lion of the tribe of JUDAH"
THE MEANING OF THE TEXT
Now, what does my text mean when it puts
a living dog and dead lion side by side, and
saws the former is better than the latteri IL
means that small faculties actively used are
OF more value than great faculties unem-
ployed. How often you see III Some man
with limited capacity vastly useful He takes
that which God has given him and says; My
mental endowment is not large and the world
would not rate me high for my intelligence,
and my vocabulary is limited, and my educa-
ton was defective, but here goes what have
for God and salvation, and the making OF the
world good and happy" He puts in word
here and 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 helps him 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, or shop,
with smiling face that sets everybody to
thinking, III that man can, with what ap-
pears small equipment in life, be happy, why
cannot |, possessing far more than he has, be