The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1891-12-10
WHAT WEARE HERE FOR
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage Strives
to Make the Matter Plain.
Each Has a Mission to Accomplish, on the
Results of which Depend Much of
Earthly and All of Hcav-
emily Happiness.

A congregation of fully seven thou
sand persons listened to the following
discourse by Rev. r. Dewitt Talmagc
in the Brooklyn tabernacle. The text
was:
To this end was l born.-John xviii, 81.
After PLATE had suicided, tradition
says that his body was thrown into the
Tiber, and such storms ensucd on and
about that river that his body
was taken out and thrown into
the Rhone, and similar disturb
ances swept that river and its
banks. Then the body was taken out
and removed TO Lausanne and out in a
deeper pool, which Immediately be-
came the center of similar atmospheric
and aqueous disturbances. Though
these are fanciful and false traditions
they show the excavations with which
the world looked upon PLATE. 1t was
before this man when he was in full
life and power that Christ was arraigned
as in a court of oyer and terminer.
Plate said to his prisoner: Art thou
a king, then?" and Jesus answered:
ITO this end was born" Sure enough,
although all earth and hell arose to
keep Him down. lie is to-day empal-
aced, enthroned and coronetcd King of
earth and King of Heaven. ITO this
end was l born" That is what He
came for, and that was what He ac-
complished.
BY the time child reaches ten years
of age the parents begin to discover
that child's destiny, but by the time he
or she reaches fifteen years of age the
question is on the child's lips: "What
am to be? What am l going to be :?
What was made for 2" 1t is a sensi-
bic and righteous question, and the
youth ought TO. keep on asking it until
it is so fully answered that the young
man or the young woman can sag with
as much truth as it's author, though on
less expansive scale. ITO this end
was born"
There is too much Divine skill shown
In the physical, mental and moral con-
stitution of the ordinary human being
to suppose that he was constructed
without any Divine purpose. If you
take me out on some vast plain and
show me pillared temple surmounted
by dome like st. Peters, and having a
floor of precious stones, and arches
that must have taxed the brain of the
greatest draughtsman to design, and
walls scrolled and niched and paneled
and wainscoted and painted. and l
should ask you what this building was
put up for, and you answered.:
For nothing at ALL" how could
l believe you? And it is i'm
possible for me to believe that
any ordinary human being who has in
his muscular, nervous and cerebral or
gauization more wonders than Christie
phor Wren lifted in St. Paul's or Phi
dias ever chiseled on the Acropolis, and
built in such way that it shall last
long after st. Paurs cathedral is as
much ruin rs the Pavthenon-that
such being was constructed for no
purpose, and to execute no mission, and
without any Divine intention toward
some end. The object of this sermon
is to help you to find out what you are
made for. and help you find your
sphere, and assist you into that condi-
ton where you can say with certainty
and emphasis and enthusiasm and
!. triumph: To this end was | born"
First, | discharge you from all re-
sponsibility for most of your environ
ments. You are not responsible for
your parentage and grand parentage.
You are not responsible for any of the
cranks that may have lived in your an
cestral line, and whom a hundred wears
before you were born may have lived a
style of life that more or less affects
you to-day. You are not responsible
for the fact that your temperament is
sanguine, or mclancholic, or bilious, or
Emphatic, or nervous Neither arc
you responsible for the place of your
nativity, whether among the granite
hills of New England or the cotton
plantations of Louisiana, or on the
banks of the Clyde, or the Dnieber, or
the Shannon, or the Seine. Neither are
you responsible for the religion taught
in your fathers house, or the irrelipion.
DO not bother yourself about what
you can not help, or about circum-
stances that you did not decree.
Take things as they a~e and decide
the question SO that you shall be
able safely to say: ITO this end was
born" How will you decide it? By
direct application to the only being in
the universe who is competent to tell
you-the Lord Almighty Do You know
the reason why lie is the only Que who
can tell? Because He can see every.
thing between your cradle and YOU,
grave, though the gave be eighty
years off. And besides that He is thu
only being who can see what has beer
happening for the last five hundred
wears in your ancestral line, and fol
thousands of years. clear back to Adam
and there is not one person in all thai
ancestral line of six thousand wears
but has somehow affected your char
acter, and even old Adam himself will
sometimes turn up in your disposition
The only being who can take al
things that pertain to you into consid
Grafton is God, and He is the one vor
can ask. Life is so short we have NJ
time to experiment with occupation,
and professions.
L.