Connecticut western news., 1891-08-06
TABERNACLE PULPIT.
REV. DR. TALMAGE DESCRIBES A . HARVEST SCENE.

day, Aug. 2-Text of His Remarks,
 Ruth ii, 23-A Discourse That will Be
 Read with Interest.
 FLEETWOOD, Colo, Aug. PA ser mon redolent with the breath of the vast harvest fields of the west indicates that Dr. Talmage has found in the scenes through which he has been trav cling and in his present surroundings suggestions of Gospel lessons. His text is taken from Ruth ii, 3: And she went and came and gleaned in the field after the reapers; and her hap was to light on part of the field belonging unto Boaz, who was of the kindred of Elimelech."
 Within few weeks have been in North Carolina. Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Michigan, Canada, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, and they are one great harvest field, and no season can be more enchanting in any country than the season of har- vest
 The time that Ruth and Naomi ar rive at Bethlehem is harvest time. It was the old custom when a sheaf fell from load in the harvest field for the reaper to refuse to gather it up; that was to be left for the poor who might happen to come that way. If there were handfuls of grain scattered across the field after the main harvest had been reaped, instead of raking it up as farmers do now it was by the custom of the land left in it's place, so that the poor coming along that way might glean it and get their bread. But, you say, What is the use of all these har- vest fields to Ruth and Naomi? Naomi is too old and feeble to go out and toll in the sun; and can you expect that Ruth, the young and the beautiful, should tan her cheeks and blister her hands in the harvest field?'
 BOAZ SEES RUTH.
 Boaz owns large farm, and he goes out to see the reapers gather in the grain. Coming there, right behind the swarthy, sunbrowned reapers, he be- holds a beautiful woman gleaning-a woman more fit to bend to harp or sit upon a throne than to stoop among the sheaves An, that was an eventful day!
 It was love at first sight. Boaz forms an attachment for the womanly gleaner an attachment full of undying inter est to the church of God in all ages while Ruth, with an ephah, or nearly a bushel of barley, goes home to Naomi to tell her the successes and adventures of the day. That Ruth, who left her native land of Moab in darkness and journeyed through an undying affec- hon for her mother-in-law, is in the harvest field of Boaz, is afRanced to one of the best families in Judah, and becomes in after time the ancestress of Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory! Out of so dark night did there ever dawn SO bright morning2
 I learn in the first place from this subject how trouble develops charac- ter. It was bereavement, poverty and exile that developed, illustrated and announced to all ages the summit of Ruth's character. That is very un- fortunate man who has no trouble. It was sorrow that made John Bunyan the better dreamer and Dr. Young the better poet, and O'Connell the better orator, and Bishop Hall the better preacher, and Havelock the better soldier and Kitto the better encyclo- pedist, and Ruth the better daughter in-law.
 TENDERNESS COMES FROM TROUBLE.
 I once asked an aged man in regard to his pastor. who was very brilliant man, ''Why is it that your pastor, so very brilliant, seems to have so little 1 tenderness in his sermons?" Well, J he replied, the reason is, our pastor has never had any trouble. When mis. fortune comes upon him his style will l be different. After awhile the Lord l took child out of that pastors house, 1 and though the pastor was just as bril- | liant as he was before. oh, the warmth, l the tenderness of his discourses The | fact is that trouble is a great educator. You sometimes see musician sit down at an instrument, and his execution is cold and formal and unfeeling. The l reason is that all his life he has been prospered But let misfortune or be- reavement come to that man, and he sits down at the instrument, and you discover the pathos in the first sweep of the keys. Misfortune and trials arc great educators.
 | A young doctor. comes into a sick room where there is dying child
 Perhaps heeis very rough in his prescrip ton, and very rough in his manner
 and rough in the feeling of the pulse
 and rough in his answer to the moth
 CTS anxious question; but the year'
 roll on, and there has been one deac
 in his own house; and now he comes
 into the sickroom, and with fearful ey'
 he looks at the dying child, and h'
 says, "Oh, how this reminds me of my
 Charlie" Trouble, the great educator
 Sorrow-1 see it's touch in the grandes
 painting; linear it's tremor in the sweet
 est song; I feel it's power in the mighti
 est argument.
 Grecian mythology said that thu
 fountain of Hippocrene was struck ou
 by the foot of the winged horse Pega
 sus. I have often noticed in life tha
 the brightest and most beautiful foun
 tains of Christian comfort and spiritua
 life have been struck out by the iro1
 shod hoof of disaster and calamity.
 see Daniels courage best by the flash o
 Nebuchadnezzars furnace. Isee Paul
 ,rowess best when 1 find him on thu
 laundering ship under the glare of th
 lightning in the breakers of Melita
 God crowns his children amid the nowl
 ing of wild beasts, and the chopping O