The Forrest City times., 1891-01-03
PEACE AND GOODWILL.
DR. TALMAGE'S SERMON ON THE NATIVITY OF THE SAVIOUR.

stances Connected With ChftSt'S Coming on Earth.-The Signifi- canoe of the First Christmas Gifts. BROOKLYN, N. r., Dec. 2S.-Dr. Tal- mages sermon today was appropriate to the season. Its subject was the Christmas Jubilee. A crowd which filled the Acad- emy of Music in every part listened to it in the morning and another enormous audience thronged the New York Academy of Music to hear it in the evening. His text was Luke 2:15, '.Let us now go even unto Bethlehem"
 Amid a thousand mercies we give each other holiday congratulations By long established custom we exhort each other to healthful merrment. By gift, by Christmas trees which blossom and fruit in one night. by early morning surprise, by clusters of lighted candles, by children'3 procession. by sound of instruments some times more blatant than musical. we wake up the night and prolong the day. The event commemorated is the gladdest of the centuries. Christ's cradle was as wonder ful as his cross. Persuade me of the first and am not surprised at the last. The
  dous as the door by which he went out
 Christ's advent was in the hostelry called the house of Chim Ham; the night with diamonded finger pointing down to the place; the door of heaven set wide open to look out; from orchestral batons of light dripping oratorios of the Messiah; on low stdoorstep of heaven the minstrels of God discoursing glory and goodwill. Soon after the white-bearded astrologists kneel, and from leathern pouch chin1 the skekels, and from open sacks exhale the frankncense and rustic out the bundles of myrrh The loosened star; the escaped doXoogy Of Ce. lestials; the chill December night a1uSh with May moon; our world lost star, and another star rushing down the sky that night to beckon the wanderer home again, shall yet make all nations keep Christmas.
 Are there no new lessons from the story not yet hackneyed by oft repeatal? Oh, yes. Know in the first place, it was sidereal appearance that led the way Why not black cloud i'll the shape of a hand ot finger pointing down to the sacred birth place? A cloud means trouble and the world had had trouble enough. Why not a shaft of lightning quivering and flashing and striking down to the sacred birthplaeei Lightning means destruction. shattering and consuming power, and the world wanted no more destruction.
 But it was a star. and that means joy that means hope, that means good cheer, that means ascendancy. A star Thai means creative power, for did not the morning stars sing together when the portfolio of the worlds was opened? 4 star! That means defense, for did not the stars fight in their courses against Sisera fA,, means brilliant continuance, for are not the righteous to shine as the stars forever and ever? A starl That means the open. ing of eternal joy. The day star in the heart. The morning star of tue Re deemer.
 Not black cloud of threat, but a eleam. ing star of hope is our glorious Christian. ity. One glimpse of that stellar appear. ance kindled up the soul of the sick and dying college student until the words flashed from his pale fingers and the staI seemed to pour it's light from his white lips as Kirke White wrote these immortal words
 When marsballed on the nightly plain
 The glittering hosts bestud the sky,
 One star alone of all the train
 Can fix the sinners wandering eye.
 Hark, hark to God, the chorus breaks,
 From every host from every gem,
 But one alone, the Saviour speaks,
 It is the Star of Bethlehem.
 Once on the raging seas rode,
 The storm was loud, the night was dark, And rudely blew the wind that tossed my
 laundering bark:
 Deep horror then my vitals froze,
 Death struck, l ceased the tide to stem When suddenly star arose.
 It was the Star of Bethelem.
 Notice also in this scene, that othet worlds seem to honor our Lord and master Bright star of the night, wheel ca thine orbit ''No," said the star. "l must come nearer and l must bend and must wat ch and see what you do with my Jesus Another world that night joined our world in worship. That star made a bow oi obeisance. I sometimes hear beople talk of Christs dominion as though it were tc be merely the few thousand mics of the worlds circumference; but l believe the millions and the billions and quadrillions oi worlds are all inhabited--if not by such creatures as we are, still such creatures az God designed to make, and that all these worlds are part of Christ's dominion. Isaac Newton, and kepler, and Hersche only went on Columbus voyage to hnd these continents of our King. domain.
 But this scene also impresses me with the fact that the wise men of the East came to Christ. They were not fools, they were not imbeciles. The record distinctly says that the wise men came to Christ We say they were the magi, og they were the alchemists or they were the astrologists, and we say it with depreciat- ing accentuation. Why they wctC the most splendid and magnificent men of the TNhnv bn Ot, If-t- ,,.l the scientists. They knew all that was known. You must remember that as. trology was the mother of astronomy. and that alchemy was the mother of chemistry, and because children are brighter than the mother you do not despise the mother
 It was the lifelong business of these as. trologers to study the stars Twenty-two hundred and fifty years before Christ was born the wise men knew the procession of the equinoxes and they had calculated the orbit and the return of the comets. Pro. lessor Smith declares that he thinks they understood the distance of the sd1 from the earth. We find in the book Of Job that the men of oiden times did not sap pose the world was flat us some have sad but that he knew and the men ot bis tima knew the world was globular. The pyra- mids were built for astrological and as tronomical study. Then the alchemists spent their lives in the study of metals and gases and liquids and solids. and in filling the worlds library with their wonder ful discoveries. They were vastly wise men who came from the east and tradition says the three wisest came, Caspar. a young man; Balthazar man in mid life and Melchior, an octogenarian. The three wisest men of all the century. They came