Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1891-11-30
TABERNACLE PULPIT.
LET THE PEOPLE PRAISE THE
NAME OF THE LORD.

LET THE PEOPLE PRAISE THE
NAME OF THE LORD.
DIR. TaImage's Sunday Sermon-He Calls
the Attention of His Hearers to the
BountifuI TIarvests of 1S91-Thanks-
giving Decorations still in Place.
BROOKLYN. Nov. 29.-Dr Talmage's
sermon this morning had distinctly
Thanksgiving character. The appear
ance of the Tabernacle was in keeping
with it. The specimens of fruits and
harvest products with which the pulpit
and galleries were decorated for the
Thanksgiving day service were still
in their places. Cotton, rice, wheat,
sugar cane. rye, oats, corn and fruits,
and products from north south, east
and west, put before the audience as
by an object lesson the abundance of
the national harvest. The doctor S
text was taken from Psalm cxlviii, TO- II
and -. Beasts, and all cattle; creeping
things and flying fowl: both young men,
and maidens; old men, and children,
let them praise the name Of the Lord. "
What Il scene it was when last Thurs
day, at the call of the president and
governors, this nation assembled to
chant the praises of God. But the
dav was too short to celebrate the
divine goodness of such year. The
sun did not rise over Brooklyn until
one minute before seven o'clock that
morning and it set four o'clock and
thirty-five minutes that evening. What
a small space of time in which to med
itate upon twelve months of benefac-
tons. So 1 add to that day this Sab
bath morning services and with the
fruits and harvests of the earth still
clarifying the pulpit and the galleries
ask you to continue the rehearsal of
the divine goodness
BY q sublime egOtism man has come
to appropriate this world to himself,
when the fact is that our race is in a
small minority The instances of hu-
man life as compared with the in
stances of animal life are not one to a
million We shall enlarge our ideas of
Gods goodness and come to better
understanding of the text if, before we
come to look at the cup of our bless
ing, we look at the goodness of God to
the irrational creation.
HAPPINESS OF THE ANIMALS.
Although nature is out of joint, yet
even in its disruption | am surprised to
find the almost universal happiness of
10,
when the air and the grass are most
populous with life, you will not hear
sound of distress unless, perchance, a
heartless schoolboy has robbed birds
nest or a hunter has broken a birds
wing, or a pasture has been robbed of
a lamb, and there goes up a bleating
from the flocks.
The whole earth is filled with animal
delight-jOy feathered and scaled and
horned and hoofed The bee huns it,
the frog croaks it, the squirrel chatters
it, the quail whistles it, the lark carols
it, the whale spOuts it. The snail, the
rhinoceros, the grizzly bear, the toad,
the wasp, the spider the shellfish have
their homely delights-joy as great to
them as our joy is to us. Goat climb
ing the rocks anaconda crawling
through the jungle, buffalo plunging
across the prairie, crocodile basking in
tropical sun, seal putting on the ice,
ostrich striding across the desert are SO
many bundles of joy; they do not go
mOping or melancholy; they are not
only half supplied; God says they are
filled with good.
The worm squirming through the sod
upturned of plowshare and the ants
racing up and down the hillock are
happy by day and happy by night.
Take up a drop of water under the mi
croscOpe and you find that within it
there are millions of creatures that
swim in a hallelujah of gladness. The
sounds in nature that are repulsive to
our ears are often only utterances Of
jOy-the grOwl, the croak, the bark,
the howl. The good God made these
creatures, thinks of them ever and will
not let a plOwshare turn up a mole's
nest or fisherman's hook transfix a
worm until, by eternal decree, its time
has come. Gods hand feeds all these
broods. and shepherds all these f1ocks,
and tends all these herds.
He sweetens the clover top for the
ox's taste, and pours out crystalline
waters in messed cups of rock for the
hind to drink out of on his way down
the crags and pours nectar into the
cup of the hOneysuckle to refresh the
humming bird, and spreads a banquet
of a hundred fields of buckwheat and
lets the honey bee put his mouth to any
cup of all the banquet, and tells the
grasshOpper to go anywhere he likes,
and gives the fiocks of heaven the choice
of all the grain fields The sea anem-
one, half animal, half flower, clinging
to the rock in midocean, with its ten
tacles spread to catch its food, has the
owner of the universe to provide for it.
We are repulsed at the hideousness of
the elephant, but God, for the comfort
and convenience of the monster, puts
forty thousand distinct muscles in its
prObOscis.
THERE IS LIFE EVERYWHERE.
[ go down on the barren seashore
and say, mo animal can live in this
place of desolatiOn," but all through
the sands are myriads of little insects
that leap with happy life. I go down
by the marsh and say, I'm this damp
place and in these Ioathsome pools of
stagnant water there will be the quiet
ness of DEATH, " but Iol | see the turtles
on the rotten log summing themselves
and hear the boys quake with multi
tudinOus life. When the unfedged
robins are hungry, God shows the old
robin where she can get food to put
into their open mouths.
Winter is not allowed to come until
the ants have granaried their harvest
and the squirrels have filed their cellar
with nuts. God shows the hungry ich-
neumon where it may find the crocO-
dies eggs; and in arctic clines there
are animals that God so lavishIy clothes
that they can afford to walk through
in the finest sable and err
mine and chinchilla, and no sooner is
one set Of furs worn out than God
gives them q new one. He helps the
spider in its architecture of its gossamer
bridge and takes care of the color of