News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1892-10-06
DEEP SEA FISHING.
DR.. TALMAGE TELLS WHY CHRIST
CHOSE FISHERMEN.

BROOKLYN, Oct. 2.-Since his return
from Europe DR.. Talmage has faced
audiences unusually large and enthu
siastic, who are attracted to the Taber.
nacle no less by the potent eloquence OF
the preacher than through a desire tC
hear from his own lips the message OF
thanks intrusted to him by the car to
the contributors of The Christian Herald
famine cargo, which he and Mr.. Klopsch
conveyed to Russia in the steamer Leo.
1t is understood that DIR. Talmage has
in preparation a full account of the mis-
sion to Russia, as well as his own preach
ing tour to Germany, England, Scotland
and Ireland. The text this morning
was taken from Luke V, 4, Launch
out into the deep"
Christ, starting on the campaign of
the worlds conquest, was selecting his
staff officers. There We're plenty of stu
dents with high foreheads, and white
hands, and intellectual faces, and refined
tastes in Rome and in Jerusalem. Christ
might have called into the apostleship
twelve bookworms, or twelve rhetori-
clans, or twelve artists. Instead he takes
a group of men who had never made a
speech; never taken d lesson in bellies
lettres; never been sick enough to make
them look delicate-their hands broad,
clumsy and hard knuckled. He chose
fishermen, among other reasons, 1 think,
because they were physically hardy.
Rowing makes strong arms and stout
chests. Much climbing of ratlines makes
ones head steady. A Galilee tempest
wrestled men into gymnasts.
The opening, work of the church was
rough work Christ did not want
twelve invalids hanging about him,
complaining all the time how badly they
felt. He leaves the delicate students at
Jerusalem and Rome for their mothers
and aunts to take care of, and goes down
to the seashore, and out of the toughest
material makes an apostleship. The
ministry need more corporal vigor than
any other class. Fine minds and good
intentions are important, but there must
be physical force to back them. The
intellectual mill wheel may be well built
and the gri.t good, but there must be
enough blood in the mill race to turn
the one and to grind the other.
He chose fishermen also because they
were used to hard knocks. The man
who cannot stand assault is not fit for
the ministry. 1t always has been and
always will be rough work, and the man
who, at every censure or caricature, sits
down to cry had better be at some other
work. 1t is no place for ecclesiastical
doll babies. A man who cannot preach
because he has forgotten his manuscript
or lost his spectacles ought not to preach
at all. Heaven deliver the church from
a ministry that preach in kid gloves and
from sermons in black morocco coversI
These fishermen were rough and ready.
They had been in the severest of all col
leges.
When they were knocked over by the
main boom of the ship they entered the
Sophomore; when washed off by
great wave they entered the Junior;
when floating for two days without
food or drink on a plank they came to
the Senior, and when at last their ship
dashed ON the beach in a midnight hur-
ricane they graduated with the first
honor.
JESUS ON SHIPBoARD.
My text finds Jesus on shipboard with
one of these bronzed men-Simon by
name. This fisherman had been sweep
ing his net in shoa1 water. "Push out"
says Christ; what is the use of hugging
the shore in this boat? Here is lake
twelve miles long and six wide, and it is
all populated just waiting for the
sweep of your net. Launch out into the
deep"
The advice that my Lord gave to ST.
mon is as appropriate for us all in a
spiritual sense. The fact is that most of
us are just padding along the shore.
We are afraid to venture out into the
great deeps of God and Christian ex-
perience. We think that the boat will
be upset, or that we cannot "clew down
the lnizzen topsail," and our cowardice
makes lis poor fishermen. think 1 hear
the voice of Christ commanding us, as
he did Simon on that day when bright
cIalilee set in among the green hills of
Palestine, like water flashing in an
EMERALD cup, Launch out into the
deep"
This divine council comes first to all
those who are padding in the margin of
Bible research. Ny father read the
Bible through three times after he was
eighty years of age and without specta-
cles-not for the mere purpose of saying
he had been through it so often, but for
his eternal profit. John Colby, the
brother-in-law Of Daniel Webster,
learned to read after he was eighty-four
years of age in order that he might be-
come acquainted with the Scriptures.
There is no book in the world that de-
mands so much of our attention as the
Bible. Yet nine-tenths of Christian
men get no more than ankle deep. They
think it is good sign not to venture foo
far. They never ask how or why, and
if they see some Christian becoming in
quisitive about the deep things of God
they say, ''Be careful; you had better
not go ont SO far from Shore"
Ny answer is: The farther you 90
from shore the better if you have the
right kind of ship. If you have mere
worldly philosophy for the hulk, and
pride for sail, and self conceit for the
helm, the first squall via destroy you.
But if you take the Bible for your craft,
he farther you go the better, and after
yoN have gone ten thousand furlongs |
Christ will sill command, "Launch out |
INTO the deep" Ask some such question
Is WHO is CODY and go ON for ten years |
lsl<ing it. Ask it at the gate of every |
parable; amid the excitement of every
by the solitariness of every pa
thrashing floor; amid the white
faces of Sennacherib's slain turned up
nto the moonlight; Snid the flying
;hariots of the Golden City.
Ask who Jesus is, and keep on asking
t of every Bible lily, Of every raven, of
very star, of every crazed brain cured,
If every blind man come to sunlight, of
,very coin in a fish's mouth, of every
oaf that got to be five lOaves, of every
vrathful sea pacified, of every pulseless
Urn stretched forth in graduation; ask
t of his mother, of Augustus, of Herod,
If the Syrophoenician woman, of the
lamsel that woke ap from the death
sleep, of Joseph, who had him buried,
IF the angel posted as sentinel at his
,omb, of the dumb earth that shook and
yroaned and Numbered when he died.
THE BIBLE IS STAFF.
A missionary in France offered Bible
IN an humble dwelling. The man took
It, tore out a dozen pages and with them
began to light his pipe. Some years after
the missionary happened in the same
house. The family had just lost their
son in the Crimean war, and his Bible |
had been sent back home. The mission |
Try took it up and saw that it was the
very same Bible that he had left in the
house and from which the leaves had |