Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1892-12-05
At THE TABERNACLE.
DIR. TAI-MAGE FINDS MANY LESSONS
IN THE TRAGEDY OF RlZPAH

TN. Tsereaved Mother Watching by Her
Dead Is but the Type of Millions of suf-
ferxng and Sorrowing Women-The Sons
Suffering for Their Fathers Crime.
BROOKLYN, Dec. 4.-This is one of
those discourses of DR.. Talmage delv-
cred from texts which no one seems to
have used before. Important and prac-
teal lessons We're drawn. The opening
hy1nn, IN which many thousands joined,
was:
Come ye disconsolate where'er We languish-
The subject of the sermon was ''Riz-
pah on the Rock" the text selected be-
ing ii Samuel xxi, 10, "And Rizpah,
the daughter of Allah, took sackcloth
and spread it for her upon the rock,
from the beginning of harvest until
water dropped upon them out of heaven,
and suffered neither the birds of the air
to rest on them by day nor the beasts of
the field by night
Tragedy that beats anything Shake
spearean or Victor Hugoian. After re-
turning from the Holy Land l briefly
touched apon it. but must have whole
sermon for that scene. The explosion
and flash of gunpowder have driven
from those regions, and now the shrek
of the locomotive whistle which is daily
heard at Jerusalem will for many miles
around clear Palestine Of cruel claw and
beak But in the time of the text those
regions were populous with multltudes
of iackals and lions. Seven sons of Saul
had been crucifed on hill. Rizpah
was mother to two and relative to five
of the bows. What had these boys done
that they should be crucified? Nothing
except to have a bad father and grand
father. But now that the boys were
dead, why not take them down from the
gibbets? No. They are sentenced to
hang there.
So Rizpah takes the sackcloth-a
rough shawl with which in mourning
for her dead she had wrapped herself
and spreads that sackcloth upon the
rocks near the gibbets, and acts the part
of a sentinel, watching and defending
the dead. Yet every other sentinel is
relieved, and after being on guard for a
few hours some one else takes his place.
But Rizpah is on guard both day and
night and for half a year. One hundred
and eighty days and nights of obsequies-
What nerves she must have had to stand
that! All, do you not know that a
mother can stand anything?
DENIED EVEN A BURIAL PLACE.
Oh, if she might be allowed to hollow
n place in the side of the hill and lay
the bodies of her children to quiet rest
If in some cavern of the mountains she
might find for them Christian sepulture'
Oh, if she might take them from the
gibbet of disgrace and carry them still
farther away from the haunts of men,
and then lie beside them in the last long
sleep! Exhausted nature ever and anon
falls into slumber, but in a moment she
breaks the snare, and chides herself as
though she had been cruel, and leaps III
on the rock shouting at wild beast glar
ing from the thicket and at vulturous
brood wheeling in the sky. The thrill
ing story of Rizpah reaches David, an6
he comes forth to hide the indecency
The corpses had been chained to the
trees. The chains are unlocked with
horrid clank. and the skeletons are le
down. All the seven are buried, ani
the story ends.
But it hardly ends before you Cry out
sfWhat hardThing that those seven boy
should suffer for the crimes of a fathe
and grandfather Yes. But it is al
ways so. Let.every one who does wrong
know that he wars not only, as III thi
case. against two generations, children
and grandchildren, but against all tn
generations of coming time. That i
what makes dissipation and uncleannes
SO awful. 1t reverberates in other times
Tt may skip one generation, but tits alp
to come up in the third generation, as i
suggested in the Ten Commandments
which say, H'Visiting the iniquities 0
the fathers upon the children unto tn
third and fourth generation"
Mind you, 1t says nothing about tn
second generation, but mentions TIL
third and the fourth. That account
for what you sometimes see-very goo
parents with very bad children. Go ia
enough back in the ancestral line an
YOU find the source of all the turpitudt
ttVisiting the iniquities of the father
upon the children unto the third an
fourth generation IF when Saul die
the consequences of his iniquity coul
have died with him it would not hav
been so sad. Alas, no! Look on thu
hill few miles out from Jerusalem an
see the CHASTITY burdens of those seve
gibbets and the wan and wasted Rizpa
watching them.
Go today through the wards and aims
houses and the reformatory institution
where unfortunate children are keI
and you will find that nine out of tie
had drunken or vicious parents. Ye;
day by day ON the streets of our cite
you find men and women wrecked {
evil parentage. They are moral corpse
Like the seven sons Of Saul, thong
dead, unburied! Alas for Rizpah, wh'
not for six months, but for years an
years, has watched theml She cannt
keep the vultures and the jackals OF.