The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1891-06-12
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
The Brooklyn Preacher Delivers q
Memorial Day Discourse,
In which He Weaves GarIands for the LEv.
ing ms Wei as for the Heroic Dead
OF Both the North and
the south.


the following memorial sermon in the
new Brooklyn tabernacle. ON the sub
ject: Two Garlands for Northern and
Southern Graves" His text was:
viii say TO the north, give up, and to the
south, keep not ~back--Isiaah xiii, G.
Just what my text mean by the
north and south, i can not say, but in
the United States the two words are SO
point blank in their meaning that no
one an doubt They mean than
east and west, for although between
these two last there have been rival
ries and disturbing ambitions and in
felicities and silver bills and Worlds
fair controversies there have been be-
tween them no batteries unlimbered,
no entertainments dug, no long lines of
sepulchral mounds thrown up. 1t has
never been Massachusetts, Fourteenth
regiment against Wisconsin Zouaves;
it has never been Virginia artillery
against Mississippi rifles. East and
west are distinct words, and sometimes
may mean diversity of interest, but
there is no blood on them. They can
be pronounced without any information
Of wailing and death-groan. But the
north and the south are words that
have been sureharged with tragedies.
They are words which suggest that for
forty years the clouds had been gather
ing for a four years tempest, which
thirty years ago burst in a fury that
shook this planet as il had never been
shaken since swung out at the first
world building. i thank God hat the
words have lost some of the intensity
which they possessed three decades
ago; hat a vast multitude of northern
people have moved south and a vast
multitude of southern people have
moved north, and there have been in
termarriages by the ten thousand, and
northern colonies have married the
daughters of southern captains, and
Texas rangers have united for
life with the daughters of
New York a~bolitionists and their
children are half northern and
half southern. and altogether patriotic.
But north and south are words that
need to be brought into still closer har-
monization. / thought that now when
we are half way between presidential
elections and sectional animosities are
at the lowest ebb, and now, just after
a presidential journey, when our chief
magistrate, who was chiefly elected by
the north, has been cordially received
at the south, and now, just after two
memorial days, one of them a month
ago strewing flowers on southern
graves, and the other yesterday strew-
ing flowers on northern graves, it
might be appropriate and useful for me
to preach a sermon which would twist
two garlands, one for the northern dead
and the other for the southern dead,
and have the two interlocked in a
chain of flowers that shall bind the two
sections into one; and who knows but
that this may be the day when the
prophecy OF the text, made in regard to
the a~ncients, may be fulfilled in regard
TO this country, and the north give up
its preiudices and the south keep not
back its confidence. 81 will say to the
north, give up, and to the south, keep
not back"
But before I put these garlands on the
graves / mean to put them this morn
ing a little while on the brows of the
living men and women of the north and
south who lost husbands and sons and
brothers during the civil strife. There is
nothing more soothing to a wound than
a cool bandage, and these two garlands
are cool from the night dew. What a
morning that was on the banks of the
Hudson and the Savannah when the
son was to start for the warl What
fatherly and motherly COUNSEL What
tearsl What heart breaks! What
charges to write home oftenl What lit
tie keepsakes put away in the knapsaek
or the bundle that was to be exchanged
for the knapsack! The crowd around
the depot or the steamboat landing
shouted, but father and mother and
sister cried. And how lonely the house
seemed after they went home, and
what an awfully vacant chair there
was at the Christmas and Thanksgiv-
ing tablet And after the battle, what
waiting for newsl What suspense till
the long lists of the killed and wound
ed were made outi All along the
Penobscot, and Connecticut and
the St. Lawrence, and the
Ohio, and the Oregon, and the
James, and the Albemarle, and the AL
ALBANIA, and the Mississippi, and the
Sacramento there were lamentation
and great woe, Rachel weeping for her
children and refusing to be comforted
because they were not. The world has
forgotten il, but father and mother
have not forgotten it. They may be
now in the eighties or the ~nineties, but
it is a fresh wound and will always re-
main a fresh wound. Coming down the
steep of years the hands that would
have steadied those lettering steps have
been tw~enty-eight years folded into the
last sleep. The childlessness, the wild
owhood, the orphanage, who has a
measuring line long enough to tell the
heigh tot it? What amountain, what an
Alps, whats Himalay a of piled-up agony
of bereavement in the simple state-
ment hat three hundred thousand men
of the north were slain and five hun
dred thousand men of the south were
slain. and hundreds of thousands long
afterwards through the exhaustions
there suffered, going down to DEATH
/ detain from the top of the tomb
these two garlands that 1 am twisting
for a little while hat / may with them
soothe the brow of the living. Over the
fallen the people said: poor fellowl
What a pity he should have been struck
down. We did not, however, often
enough say: Poor father! Poor
motheri Poor wifel Poor childl' and
so I say il now. Have you realized that
by that wholesale massacre hundreds
of thousands of young people at the
north and the south have never had any
chance? We who are fathers stand be-