The Forrest City times., 1892-05-27
A TREMENDOUS WORD.
SELAH" THE DIVIDING LINE
 OF ANTHEMS.
Dr. Talmage Analyzes a Word Ere quentiy Found in the old Testament-- T Will Hide Under the Covert of Thy Wings selah."

BRooKLyS, N. Y, May g, isss-The Rev. pr. Talmage to-day took for the subject Of his sermon single word of frequent occurrence | in the bible, and whose meaning is but little understood. From it he drew a profoundly i'm pressiye description of the varied and majestic | purposes of certain parts of scripture. and a | practical lesson for christians generally. The text was Psalms 6i: 1: 'Selah-"
 The majority of bible readers look upon this word of my text as of no inn portance. They consider it superfiu- ity, mere filling in, meaningless interjection, a useless refrain, an unde- | you that it is no scriptural accident. | It occurs seventy-four times in the | Book of Psalms and three times in the | Book of Habakkuk. You must not charge this perfect book with seventy | seven trivialities. Selah! It is an en- | throned word. If. according to an old | writer some words are battles, then l this word is Mara thon, a Thermopyle, | a Sedan, a Waterloo. It is word de- | cisive, sometimes for solemnitv, some- | times for grandeur, and sometimes for eternal import. Through it roll the | laundering chariots of the Omnipotent God.
 take this word for my text because | am so often asked what is it's mean ing, or whether it has any meaning at | all. It has an ocean of meaning, from I which shall this morning dip up only | four or five bucketfuls. I will speak | to you, so far as have time, of the Se- | lah of poetic significance, the Selah of | intermission, the Selah of emphasis. and the Selah of perpetuity.
 Are you surprised that speak of the Selah of poetic significance? Surely the God who sapphired the heavens l and made the earth a rosebud of beauty, with oceans hanging to it like drops of morning dew, would not make bible without rhythm, without redolence, without blank verse. God knew that eventually the bible would be read by great majority of young people, for in this world of malaria and casualty an octoge- marian is exceptional, and as thirty years is more than the average of human life, | if the bible is to be successful book it must be adapted to the young. Hence I the prosody of the bible-the drama of Job, the pastorial of Ruth, the epic of Judges, the dithyrambic of Hab- akkuk, the threnody of Jeremiah, l the lyric of Solomon's Song, the ora torio of the Apocalypse, the idyl, the strophe, and antistrophe and the Selah | of the Psalms.
 Wherever you find this word Selah, 1t means that you are to rouse up to | great stanza. that you are to open your I soul to great analogies, that you are to spread the wing of your imagination | for great flight. 'I answered thee in l the secret place of thunder: l proved | thee at the waters of Meribah. Selah. " 1.-The earth and all the inhabitants | thereof are dissolved; I bear up the | pillars of it. Selah'' "Who is this King of glory? The Lord of Hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah." Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah." "Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah." 1.-The Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah." ''Thou hast given | banner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth. Selah." ''I will hide under the covert of thy wings. Selah." 70, God, when thou wentest forth before thy people.
 when thou did'st march through the
 wilderness. Selah."
 Wherever you find this word it is a signal of warning hung out to tell you to stand off the track while the rush ing train goes by with it's imperial passengers. Poetic word, charged with sunrise and sunset, and tempest and earthquake, and resurrection and
 millenniums.
 Next come to speak of the Selah of
 intermission. Gesenius, Tholuck,
 Hengstenberg, and other writers agree
 in saying that this word Selah means rest in music; what the Greeks eall
 the solemn march of cantilla-
 tion. Every musician knows the importance of it. If you ever saw Julien, the great musical leader, stand
 before five thousand singers and play CTS upon instruments, and with one stroke of his baton smite the multitu- dinous hallelujah into silence, and
 then, soon after that, with another stroke of his baton rouse up the full orchestra to great outburst of har-
 mony, then you know the mig hty effect of a musical pause. 1t gives
 more power to what went before; it gives more power to what is to come after. So God thrusts the Selah into
 his bible and into our lives, compelling us to stop and think, stop and consider,
 stop and admire, stop and pray, stop
 and repent, stop and be sick, stop and die It is not the great number of times that we read the bible through that makes us intelligent in the script ares. We must pause. What though | it take an hour for one word? What though it take week for one verse? ane chapterP We must pause and measure the height, the depth, the length, the breadth, the universe, the | eternity of meaning in one verse. should like to see some one sail around | one little adverb in the bible, a little ad- verb of two letters, during one lifetime | the word ''so" in the new testament passage, God so loved the world 1" | Augustine made a long pause after the verse, Put ye on the Lord