Herald and news. [volume] (West Randolph, Vt.) 1878-1943, 1892-01-07
ON THE NEW YEAR.
DR.. TALmAeE breaches A SERMON
ABOUT 1892.

Tabernacle congregation, meeting for the
first Sunday service of the new year, found
the pastor disposed TO serious reflections
on the flight of time. The opening hymn
gave the keynote in,the familiar words;
My days are gliding swiftly by.
And |. pilgrim stranger
Would not detain them as they fly.
Those hours of toll and danger.
DR.. Talmage read several passages relat-
ing to antediluvian longevity, making char
acteristic comments as he read, and then
preached from the ominous words. Jere-
miah xviii. l6 This year thou shalt
die"
Jeremiah, accustomed to saying bold
things, addressed Hananiah in these words.
They proved true In sixty days Hananiah
had departed this life.
This is the first Sabbath of the year. 1t
is a time for review and for anticipation.
A man must be genius at stupidity who
does not think now. The old year died in
giving birth to the new, as the life of Jane
Seymour, the English queen, departed
when that of her son, Edward vi, dawned
The old year was queen. The new shall
be king. The grave of the one and the
cradle of the other are side by side. We
can hardly guess what the child will be-
1t is only two days old. but prophesy for
titan eventful future Year of mirth and
madnessl Year of pageant and conhagra-
tionl 1t will laugh; it will sing; it will
groan: it will die
Is it not a time for earnest thought? The
congratulations have been given. The
Christmas trees have been taken down or
have we'll nigh cast their fruit. The
friends who came for the holidays are gone
in the rail train. While we are looking
forward to another twelve months of in
tense activities the text breaks upon us
like bursting thunderhead, "This year
thou shalt der
TRUE on SOME OF Us.
The text will probably prove true of
some of us. The probability is augmented
by the fact that all of us who are over
thirty-five years of age have gone beyond
the average of human life. The note is
more than due. 1t is only by sufferance
that it is not collected. We are like a
debtor who is taking the "three days
grace" OF the banks. Our race started
with nine hundred years fora lifetime. We
read of but one antediluvian youth whose
early death disappointed the hopes Of his
parents by his dying at seven hundred and
seventy seven years of age, The world then
may have been ahead of what it is now,
for men had SO long time in which to
study and invent and plan
If an artist or philosopher has forty
years for work, he makes great achieve
ments; but what must the artists and
philosophers have done who had nine
hundred years before them2 In the nearly
two Thousand years before the food, con-
sidering the longevity of the inhabitants,
there may have been nearly rs many peo-
pie as there are now. The flood was not
freshet, that washed few people off a
plank, but disaster that may have swept
away thousand million. If the Atlantic
ocean by lurch of the earth tonight
should drown this hemisphere and the Pa
cific ocean by sudden lurch of the earth
should drown the other hemisphere, leav-
ing about rs many beings as could be got
in one or two ocean steamers, il would give
you an idea Of what the ancient flood was
At that time God started the race with
a shorter allowance of life. The nine hun
dred years were hewn down until, in the
time of Vespasian a census was taken and
only one hundred and twenty-four persons
were found one hundred years old and three
or four persons one hundred and forty years |
old. Now "A man who has come to one hun |
dred years of age is curiosity, and we go |
miles to see him. The vast majority of the |
race passes of before twenty years. Toevery |
apple there are five blossoms that never get |
TO be apples In the country church the |
sexton rings the bell rapidly until almost |
through and then tolls it. For awhile the |
bell of our life rings right merrily, but with |
some of you the bell has begun to toll, and |
the adaptedness Of the text to you is more
and more probable, This year thou shalt
die"
OCCUPATION AND CLIMATE DRIVE US on.
The character of our occupations adds to
the probability. Those who are in the pro
fessions are undergoing a sapping of the
brain and nerve foundations Literary
men in this country are driven with whip
and spur to their topmost speed. Not one
brain worker out of a hundred observes
any moderation. There is something so
in our climate that if John
Brown, the essayist of Edinburgh, had
lived here. he would have broken down at
thirty five instead of fifty-five and Charles
Dickens would have dropped at forty.
There is something in all our occupations
which predisposes to disease. If we be
stout, to disorders ranging from fevers to
apoplexy II we be frail, to diseases rang
ing from consumption to paralysis. Print
ers rarely reach fifty years. Watchmakers,
in marking the time for others, shorten
their own. Chemists breathe death in their
and potters absorb paralysis.
Painters fall under their own brush. Foun-
drymen take death in with the filings
pound away their own lives on
the last Overdriven merchants measure
off their own lives with the yardstick.
Millers grind their own lives with the grist.
Masons dig their graves with the troweL
And in all our occupations and professions
there are the elements of peril
Rapid climatic changes threaten our
lives. BY reason Of the violent fits of the
within two days we live both
in the arctic and the tropic. The warm
south wind finds US with our furs on. The
wintry blast cuts through our thin ap-
parel The hoof. the wheel. the firearm,
the assassin. wait their chance to put upon
US their quietus. ! announce it as an i'm
possibility that three hundred and sixty
five days should pass and leave us all as
we now are In what direction to shoot
l. =. - I