The Portland daily press., 1892-12-10
At THE TABERNACLE.
DR.. Talmage Finds Many Lessons in
the Tragedy Of Rizpah.

Dead Is but the Type of Millions of Suf-
fering and Sorrowing women-The Sons
Suffering for Their Fathers Crime.
BROOKLYN, Dec. 4.-This is one of
those discourses of DIR. Talmage deliv-
cred from texts which no one seems to
have used before. Important and prac-
teal lessons were drawn. The opening
hymn, in which many thousands Joined,
was:
Come ye disconsolate where'er ye 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 1 briefly
touched upon it, but must have a whole
sermon for that scene. The explosion
and flash of gunpowder have driven
nearly all the beasts and birds of prey
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 multitudes
of jackals and lions. Seven sons of Saul
had been crucifed on hill. Rizpah
was mother to two and relative to five
of the boys. What had these boys done
that they should be crucifed? Nothing
except to have 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 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
mother can stand anything?
DENIED EVEN A BURIAL PLACE.
Oh, if she might be allowed to hollow
a 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 up
on the rock shouting at wild beast glar-
ing from the thicket and at vulturous
brood wheeling i'll the sky. The thrill
ing story of Rizpah reaches David, and
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 let
down. All the seven are buried, and
the story ends. =
But it hardly ends before you cry out,
"What hard thing that those seven boys
should suffer for the crimes of father
and grandfather" Yes. But it is al
ways SO. Let every one who does wrong
know that he wars not only, as in this
case, against two generations, children
and grandchildren, but against all the
generations of coming time. That is
what makes dissipation and uncleanness
so awful. It reverberates in other times.
1t may skip one generation, but it is apt
to come up in the third generation, as is
suggested in the Ten Commandments,
which say, Visiting the iniquities CT
the fathers upon the children unto the
third and fourth generation"
Mind YOU, it says nothing about the
second generation, but mentions the
third and the fourth. That accounts
for what you sometimes see-very good
parents with very bad children. Go far
enough back in the ancestral line and
you find the source of all the turpitude.
ssVisiting the iniquities of the fathers
upon the children unto the third and
fourth generation If when Saul died
the consequences Of his iniquity could
have died with him it would not have
been SO sad. Alas, no! Look on that
hill few miles out from Jerusalem and
see the CHASTITY burdens of those seven
gibbets and the wan and wasted Rizpah
watching them.
Go today through the wards and aims
houses and the reformatory institutions
where unfortunate children are kept
and you will find that nine out of ten
had drunken or vicious parents. Yea,
day by day ON the streets of our cities
You find men and women wrecked of
evil parentage. They are moral corpses.
Like the seven sons of Saul, though
dead, unburied! Alas for Rizpah, who,
not for six months, but for years and
years, has watched them! She cannot
keep the vultures and the jackals off.
Furthermore, this strange incident in
the Bible story shows that attractiveness
of person and elevation of position are
4,o,,11o