Sharp County record., 1891-06-11
NLENDING THEIR NETS.
Rev n. Dewitt Talmage Talks to
the Fishers of Men.
The Nets Wherewith Mankind are t. be
Drawn to Christ Should be Kept
lIended with Threads of Love
and Common Sense.

The following discourse was deliver
ed by Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage in the
new Brooklyn tabernacle, the text be-
ing;
James the son of Zebedee, and John, his
brother, in ship with Zebedee, their IA
ther, mendmg their nets-Matthew w., Il.
81 go fishing" cried Simon Peter to
his comrades, and the most of the apos-
ties had hands hard from fishing tackle.
The fisheries of the world have always
attracted attention. In the third CEN
tury the queen of Egypt had for pin
money four hundred and seventy thou
and dollars received from the fisheries
of Lake Moeris. And if the time should
ever come when the immensely of the
worlds population could not be fed by
the vegetables and meats Of the land,
the sea has an amount of animal life
that would feed all the populations OF
the earth and fatten them with food
that by its phosphorus would make a
generation brainy and intellectual be-
yond any thing that the world has ever
imagined. My text takes us among
the Galilean fishermen. One day Walter
Scott, while hunting in an old drawer,
found among some old fishing tackle
the manuscript OF his immortal book
"Waverly." which he had put away
there as no worth, and who knows but
that to-day we may find some unknown
wealth of thought while looking at the
fishing tackle in the text
1t is not good day for fishing and
three men are in the boat repairing the
broken fishing nets. If you are fishing
with hook and line and the fish will
not bite, it is good time to put the
angler'sapparatus into better condition.
Perhaps the last fish you hauled in was
so large that something snapped. Or if
you were fishing with a net, there was
a mighty tloundering Of the scales or an
exposed nail on the side of the boat
which broke some of the threads and
let part or all of the cartives of the
deep escape into their natural element.
And hardly anything is more provok-
ing than to nearly lard a score or a
hundred trophies from the deep,
and when you are in full glee
of hauling in the spotted treas
ures, through some imperfection of
the net they splash back into the wave.
That is too much of trial of patience
for most fishermen to endure and many
man ordinarily correct of speech in
such circumstances comes to an inten-
sity of utterance unjustifable. There
fore no good fisherman considers the
time wasted that is spent in mending
his net. Now the Bible again and again
represents Christian workers as fishers
of men, and we are all sweeping
through the sea of humanity some
kind of net. Indeed, there have been
enough nets out and enough fisherman
busy to have landed the whole human
race in the kingdom of God long be-
fore this. What is the matter? The
Gospel is all right and it has been a
good time for catching souls for thou
sands of years Why, then, the fail
ures? The trouble is with the nets,
and most of them need to be mended.
propose to show you what is the mat
ter with most of the nets, and how tc
mend them. In the text old Zebedee
and his two boys, James and John,
were doing a good thing when they sat
in the boat mendiug their nets.
The trouble with many of our nets
is that the meshes are too large. If a
fish can get his gills and half his body
through the network, he tears and
rends and works his way out and leaves
the place through which he squirmed a
tanglc of broken threads, The Bible
weaves faith and works tight together,
the law and the Gospel, righteousness
and forgiveness, Some Of our nets
have meshes 50 wide that the sinner
floats in and out and is not at any mo.
ment caught for the Heavenly landing
In our desire to make everything sc
easy we relax, we loosen, we widen
We let men after they are once in the
Gospel net escape into the world and &c
into indulgences and swim all around
Galilee from north side to south side
and from east side TO vest side, expect.
ing that they will come back again,
We ought TO make II easy for them tc
get into the Kingdom Of God and as
far as we can make 1t impossible FOR
them to get out, The poor advice
nowadays to many Isl "Go and dc
Just Us you did before you were cap
turcd for God and Heaven, The net
was not intended to be any restraint or
any hindcrNncc, What you did before
you were a Christian, do now. Go TO
all styles Of amusement, read all the
STYLES Of books engage in all the styles
Of behavior as before you were con.
vcrted." And so through these mcshcs
Of permission and laYity they wriggle
out, through this opening and that
opening tearing the net as they go,and
soon all the souls that we expected to
land in Heaven, before we know II are
b0cl, In the deep sea Of the world, Oh,
when we go Gospel fishing let us
make II Os easy rs possible for souls TO
get in, ard as hard as possible to get
out
Is the Bible language On unmconing
verblngc when II talks about self.dcninl