News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1891-04-23
BETTER THAN CRYSTAL.
DR.. TALMAGE'S SERMON ABOUT RE-
LIGIOUS ExCELLENCES.

Mountain and the Queen OF the Cave,
but the Crystal of Religion ExceIs
Everything.
NEW YORK, April 19.-The eagerness
to hear DIR. Talmage's sermons at The
Christian Herald services on Sunday
evenings, in this city, continues I'M
abated. As usual there was this even
ing dense mass of people waiting out
Size the Academy of Music long before
the hour for commencement, and every
seat in the huge building was occupied
in . few minutes after the doors were
ope. red DIR. Talmage had preached to
an immense audience in the morning
in the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
His text was THE crystal cannot equal
it, Job xviii, y.
Many of the precious stones of the
Bible have come to prompt recog-
milton But for the present I take up
the less valuable crystal. Job, in my
text, compares saving wisdom with a
specimen of topaz. An infidel chemist
or mineralogist would pronounce the
latter worth more than the former, but
Job makes an intelligent comparison,
crystal, and pronounces the former as
of far superior value to the latter, ex-
claiming in the words of my text,
1.-The crystal cannot equal it.
THE ExACTNEss OF RELIGION.
Now, it is not part of my sermonic
design to depreciate the crystal, whether
it be found in Cornish mine or Hartz
ling among the pendants of the chan
deliers of a palace. The crystal is the
star of the mountain; it is the queen
of the cave; it is the eardrop of the
hills; it finds its heaven in the dia-
mond. Among all the pages of nat
ural history there is no page more in
teresting to me than the page crystallo
graphic But want to show you that
Job was right when, taking religion in
one hand and the crystal in the other,
he declared that the former is of far
more value and beauty than the latter,
recommending it to all the people and
to all the ages, declaring, 1.-THE crystal
cannot equal it.
In the first place, 1 remark that re-
igion is superior to the crystal in exact
ness. That shapeless mass of crystal
against which you accidentally dashed |
your foot is laid out with more exact |!
ness than any earthly city. There are !
six styles of capitalization, and all of |
them divinely ordained. Every crystal
has mathematical precision. Gods ge-
ometry reaches through it, and it is a
square, or it is a rectangle, or it is a
rhomboid, or in some way it hath
mathematical figure. Now, religion
beats that in the simple fact that spirit
ual accuracy is more beautiful than
material accuracy.
Gods attributes are exact Gods |
law exact. Gods DEGREES exact Gods
management of the world exact. Never
counting wrong, though he counts the
grass blades, and the stars, and the
sands and the cycles. His providences
never dealing with us perpendicularly
when those providences ought to be
oblique, nor lateral when they ought
to be vertical. Everything in our life
arranged without any possibility of
mistake. Each life q six sided prism.
Born at the right time, dying at the
right time. There are no E.happen so'sv
IN our theology. If / thought this was |
a sHpshOd universe / would go crazy. |
God is not an anarchist. Law, order, .
symmetry, precision, a perfect square, !
a perfect rectangle, perfect rhomboid, ,
a perfect circle The edge of Gods /;
robe of government never trays out. 8
There are no loose screws in the worlds :
machinery. q
Itdid not just happen that Napoleon
was attacked with indigestion at Boro-
dino so that he became incompetent for :
the day. 1t did not just happen that Z
John Thomas, the missionary, ON a
heather island, waiting for an outfit a
and orders for another missionary tour, c
received that outfit and those orders in Z
a box that fioated ashore, while the I
ship and the crew that carried the box I
were never heard of. The barking of
+. w. Robertson's dog, he tells us, led c
to a line of events which brought him l
from the army into the Christian min l
istry, where he served God with world {
renowned usefulness. 1t did not mere L
ly happen so. | believe in a particular G
providence. 1 believe Gods geometry v
may be seen in all our life more beauti- Q
fully than in crystallography. Job was L
right. THE crystal cannot equal it." $
THE TRANSPARENCY OF RELIGION.
Again l remark that religion is supe-
rior to the crystal in transparency. We
know not when or by whom glass was
first discovered. Beads of it have been c
found in the tomb of Alexander Sc d
verus. Vases of it are brought up from C
the ruins of Herculaneum. There were C
female adornments made out of it three o
thousand years ago-those adornments o
found now attached to the mummies q
of Egypt. A great many commenta- 0
tors believe that my text means glass r
What would we do without the crystal? IL
The crystal in the window to keep out e
the storm and let in the day; the crys- Il
tai over the watch defending its deli Il
cate machinery, yet allowing us to see II
the hour; the crystal of the telescope Sc
by which the astronomer brings dis If
tant worlds SO near he can inspect st
them. Oh, the triumphs of the crys- III
tails in the celebrated windows of Rouen
and Salisbury je
But there is nothing so transparent N
III u CT ySldI ITS III our uOly FellglOH 1t 40
is a transparent religion. You put it OF
to your eye and you see man-his sin, aC
his soul, his destiny You loc% at God ~
and you see something of the grandeur A.
of his character. 1t is a TRANSPARENT -
religion. Infidels tell us it is opaquel M
DO you know why they tell us it is -
Opaque3 1t is because they are blind. TT
The natural man receiveth not the =.
things of God because they are spiritu- -
ally discerned. There is no trouble =,
with the crystal the trouble is with A.
The eyes which try to look through it. AZ
We pray for vision, Lord, that our 90
eyes might be opened. When the Of
Eye salve cures our blindness then we 80
ind that religion is transparent. Al
1t is a transparent Bible All the ~,
Mountains of the Bible come out he
Sinai, the mountain of the law; Pisgah, w
he mountain of prospect; Olivet the M,
mountain of instruction; Calvary, the Fl
mountain of sacrifice. All the rivers or
# the Bible come Out-Hidekel, or the
liver of paradisaical beauty; Jordan, nj,
r the river of holy chrism; Cherith, II,
r the river of prophetic supply; Nile, tio
r the river of palaces, and the pure M,
lver of life from under the throne, s;c
lear as crystal. While reading this nj,
,IDlp after our avae houa baav 4ouobo1