The Bossier banner., 1891-10-29
GREAT DEEDS.
A Camp Sermon at Ocean
Grove, n. j., by DR.. Talmage.
The Mighty works which christians May
Find Constant Opportunity for Doing
No Lack of Material to Work
Upon or With.

by Rev. f. Dewitt Talmage in the pres
ence of an immense congregation in the
auditorium at the Ocean Grove IN. j.
camp-meeting. His text was:
The people that do know their God shall
be strong and do exploits.-Daniel H., 30,
Antiochus Epiphanes, the old sinner,
came down three times with his army
to desolate the Israelites, advancing
one time with. one hundred and two
trained elephants, swinging their trunks
this way and that, and sixty-two thou
sand infantry and six thousand cavalry
troops, and they were driven back.
Then, the second time, he advanced
with seventy thousand armed men, and
had been again defeated. But the third
time he laid successful siege until the
navy of Rome came in with the flash of
their long banks of oars and demanded
that the siege be- lifted And Antiochus
Epiphanes said he wanted time to con-
suit with his friends about it, and PO-
pilius, one of the Roman ambassadors,
took a staff and made circle on the
ground around Antiochus Apiphanes,
and compelled him to decide before he
came out of that circle, whereupon he
lifted the siege. Some of the Hebrews
had submitted to the invader, but some
of them resisted valorously, as did
Eleazer when he had swine's flesh
forced into his mouth, spit 1t sout,
although ne knew he must die for it,
and did die for it; and others, as my
text says, did exploits.
An exploit l would define to be
heroic act, brave feat great achieve
ment. Well" you say, II admire
such things, but there is no chance, for
me; mine is>a sort of humdruTh life! IF
had an Aptiochus Epiphanes to fight,
] also could do exploits" You are
right, so far as great wars are CON
cerned. There will probably be no op-
portunity to distinguish yourself in bat
tie. The most of the brigadier gener-
ais of this country would nevea4 have
been heard of had it not been, for the
war.
Neither will you probably become a
great inventor. Nineteen hundred and
ninety-nine outsof every two Atliousdnd
inventions, found in the. patent office
db w JOA hCNC4 y JiC1NSAl OAlCAA
thors enough money to pay for the e&E
penses Of securing the patent, So ryou
will probably never be a Morse or an
Edison or Humphrey Davy or an Eli
Whitney. There is not much probabil-
ity that you will be the one out of the
hundred who achieves extraordinary
success in commercial or legal or med
ical or literary spheres. What then?
Can you have no exploits? / am going
to show you that there are -three-op@
portunities open that are grand, thrill
ing, far-reaching, stupendous and over
whelming. They are before you now
In one, if not all three of them, you
may do exploits. The three greatest
things on earth to do are to save a man,
or save a woman, or save child.
During the course of his life almost
every man gets into an exigency, is
caught between twoshres, is ground be-
tween two millstones, sits on the edge
of some precipice, or in some other way
comes near demolition. It may be
financial or moral or domestic or
asocial or a political exigency. You
sometimes see it in court rooms. A
young man has got into bad company
and he has offended the law, and he is
l arraigned. All blushing and confused,
he is in the presence of judge and jury
and lawyers. He can be sent right on
in the wrong direction. He is feeling
disgraced, and he is almost desperate.
Let the district attorney overhaul him
as though he were an offender, let the
ablest attorneys at the bar refuse to
say word for him, because he can not
afford considerable fee; let the Judge
give no opportunity for representing
the mitigating circumstances, hurry up
the case, and hustle him up to Auburn
or Sing Sing. If he live seventy years,
for seventy years he will be a criminal,
and each decade of his life will be
blacker than its predecessor. In the in
terregnums of prison life he can get no
work, and he is glad to. break a. wia-
dow-glasss or blow up "a safe, or play
the highwayma3, SO as to get back
within the walls where he can get
something to eat and hide himself from
the gaze Of the world -
Why don his father come and help
him? His father Is dead. Why don't his
mother come and help him? She is
dead. w here are all the ameliorating
and salutary Influences. OF society?
They do not touch him. Why. did not
some one long ago in the case under
stand that there was an opportunity
for the explicit which would be famous
in Heaven quada,il lion years after elie