Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1891-05-21
TABERNACLE PULPIT.
DIR. TALMAGE breaches A SER
MON ON MENDiNG NETS.

Christians Should LOOK to 1t That Iheir
Nets for Souls Are Kept in Good
Ordcr-Some Hints That Will Be of
Value.
DR.. Talmage's text was Matthew iv.
81; James the son of Zebedee, and
John his brother, in ship which Zebedee
their father, mending their nets"
II go a-fishing," cried Simon Peter to
his comrades, and the most of the apOs-
ties had hands hard from fishing tackle.
The fisheries Of the world have always
attracted attention. In the Third CEN
fury the queen of Egypt had for pin
money four hundred and seventy thou
sand dollars, received from the fisheries
of Lake MOeriS. And if the time should
ever come when the immensely of the
worlds population could not be fed by
the vegetables and meats of the land, the
sea has an amount of animal life that
would feed all the populations of the
earth, and fatten them with food that
by it's phosphorus would make genera
ton brainy and intellectual beyond any
thing that the world has ever imagined.
Ny text takes us among the Galilean
fishermen. One day Walter Scott, while
hunting in an old drawer, found among
some old fishing tackle the manuscript
of his immortal book ''WaVerlV," which
he had put away there as Of no worth,
and who knows but that to-day we may
find some unknown wealth of thought
while looking at the fishing tackle in the
text?
1t is not good day for fishing, and
three men are in the boat repairing the
broken fishing nets. If you are fishing
with hook and line and the fish will
not bite it is Il good time to put the
anglers apparatus into better condition.
Perhaps the last fish you hauled in was
so large that something snapped. Or if
you were fishing with a net there was a
mighty laundering of the scales, or an
exposed nail on the side Of the boat which
broke some of the threads and let part
or all of the captives of the deep escape
into their natural element. And hardly
anything is more provoking than to
nearly land a score or a hundred OF
trophies from the deep and when you are
in the full glcc of hauling in the spotted
treasures through some impcrtectiOn Of
the net they splash back into the wave.
That is too much Of trial OF patience
for most fishermen to endure, and many
man ordinarily correct of speech in
such circumstances comes to an intensity
of uttcrance uniustfiablc. Therefore no
good fisherman considers the time wasted
that is spent in mending his net. Now
the Bible again and again represents
Christian workers as fishers of men, and
we are all sweeping through the sea Of
humanity some kind of net. Indeed,
there have been enough nets out and
enough fishermen busy to have landed
the whole human race in the Kingdom OF
God long before this. What is the mat
ter? The Gospel is all right, and it has
been a good time for catching souls for
thousands of years. Why, then, the fail
ures? The trouble is with the nets, and
most of them need to be mended. pro-
pose to show you what is the matter with
the most of the nets and how to mend
them. In the text old Zebedee and his
two boys, James and John, were doing a
good thing when they sat in the boat
mending their nets.
The trouble with many of our nets is
that the meshcs are too large. If Il fish
can get his gills and half his body
through the network. he tears and rendS
and works his way out and leaves the
place through which he squrmed a tan
gle of broken threads. The Bible weaves
faith and works tight together, the
law and the Gospel, Righteousness and
forgiveness. Some of the nets have
meShes so wide that the sinner floats in
and out and is not at any moment caught
for the heavenly landing In our desire
to make everything so easy, we relax, we
loosen, we widen. We let men after
they are once in the Gospel net escape
into the world and go into indulgenceS
and swim all around Galilee, from north
side to south side and from east side to
west side, expecting that they will come
back again. We ought to make it easy
for them to get into the Kingdom of God,
and, and as far as we cam, make it i'm
possible for them to get out
The poor advice nowadays to many is:
go and do just as you did before you
were captured for God and Heaven. The
net was not intended to be any restraint
or any hindrance. What YOU did before
You were a Christian, do now. Go to all
styles of amusement, read all the styles
of books, engage III all the styles OF be-
havior as before you We're converted"
And so through these mesheS of permits
sion and laXity they wrggle out through
this opening and that opening, tearing
the net as they go, and soon all the souls
that we expected to land in Heaven be-
fore we know it are back i'm the deep sea
of the world. Oh, when We go a-gospcl
fishing let us make it as easy as possible
for souls to get in, and as hard as posi-
bic to get out.
Is the Bible language an unmeaning
verbage when it talks about self-denial
and keeping the body under and about
walking the narrow way and entering
the strait gate, and about carrying the
cross? Is there to be no way of telling
whether a man is a Christian except by
his taking the communion ehalice on sac
ramental day? May d man be as reck-
less about his thoughts, his words, about
his temper about his amusements, about
his dealings after conversion as before
conversion. One-half the Gospel nets