Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1892-12-12
THE MOTHER OF ALL.
DR.. TALMAGE PRESENTS A NOVEL
VIEW OF THE DIVINE LOVE.

The Old Standards In Grammar Have Led
Too Many to Think of God as Purely
ACCOMMODATIONS Attributes Are Fem
inine Also and Motherly.
BROOKLYN, Dec. 1l.-Rev. DR.. Talmage
today, in selecting a subject for his SER
mon, chose an aspect of the divine charac-
ter which is seldom considered. To an un-
usually large audience he discoursed on
God as "The Mother of All" the text be-
ing taken from Isaiah Xvi, 49, "As one
whom his mother comforteth, so will
Z comfort you"
The Bible is warm letter of affection
from parent to child, and yet there are
many who see chiefly the severer passages.
As there may be fifty or sixty nights of
gentle dew in one summer that will not
cause as much remark as one hailstorm of
half an hour, so there are those who are
more struck by those passages of the Bible
that announce the Indignation of God than
by those that announce his affection. There
may come to a household twenty or fifty
letters Of affection during the year, and
they will not make as much excitement
in that home as one sheriff's writ and so
there are people who are more attentive to
those passages which announce the judg-
ments of God than to those which an
nounce his mercy and his favor.
God is a lion, John says in the book of
Revelation. God is breaker, Micah an
nounces in his prophecy. God is rock.
God is king. But hear also that God is
love, A father and his child are walking
out in the fields on summers day, and
there comes up thunderstorm, and there
is fash of lightning that startles the
olt 70 HMu daar th at
is Gods eye" There comes peal of thun-
der, and the father says, "My dear, that is
Gods voice" But the clouds go off the
sky, and the storm is gone, and light floods
the heavens and floods the landscape, and
the father forgets to say, THAT is Gods
smile"
The text of this morning bends with great
gentleness and love over all who are pros
trate in sin and trouble. 1t lights up with
compassion 1t melts with tenderness. 1t
breathes upon us the hush of an eternal
lullaby, for it announces that God is our
Mother. GAS one whom his mother com
forteth, so will | comfort you"
THE MATERNAL INSTINCT.
remark, in the first place, that God has
mothers simplicity of instruction. A
father does not know how to teach a child
the A b G. Men are not skillful in the
primary department, but mother has so
much patience that she will tell child for
the hundredth time the difference between
+ and G and between and j. Sometimes
it is by blocks sometimes by the worsted
work; sometimes by the slate; sometimes
by the book. She thus teaches the child
and has no awkwardness of condescension
In so doing. So God, our Mother, stoops
down to our infantile minds.
Though we are told thing thousand
times and we do not understand it, our
heavenly Mother goes on, line upon line,
precept upon precept, here little and
there a little. God has been teaching some
of us thirty years and some of us sixty
years one word of one syllable and we do
not know it yet-faith faithl When we
come to that word we stumble, we halt,
we lose our place, we pronounce it wrong.
Still Gods patience is not exhausted. God,
our Mother, outs us in the school of pros
perity, and the letters are in sunshine, and
we cannot spell them. God puts us in the
the school of adversely, and the letters are
black, and we cannot spell them. If God
were merely u king he would punish us; if
he were simply father he would whip us;
but God is a mother, and so we are borne
with and helped all the way through.
A mother teaches her child chiefly by
pictures. If she wants to set forth to her
child the hideousness of quarrelsome
spirit, instead of giving lecture upon that
subject she turns over q leaf and shows the
child two boys in a wrangle, and says,
'Does not that look horribeP" If she
wants to teach her child the awfulness of
war she turns over the picture book and
shows the war charger the headless trunl
of butchered men, the wild, bloodshot eve
A 1
she saws. ''That is warp The child under
stands il.
In n great many books the best parts are
the pictures. The STYLE may be insipd, the
tyne poor, but picture always attracts a
cbld's attention. Now God, our Mother,
teaches MS almost everything by pictures.
Is the divine goodness to be set forthP How
does God orr Mother. teach usP By an
autumnal picture, The barns are full.
The wheat stacks are rounded The cattle
ore chewing the cud laZily in the sun. The
orchards are droppiua the ripe pippins into
the Ian of the farmer. The natural world
TINT has been busy all summer seems now
to be resting in great abundance We look
at the nicture and saw. "Thou crownest the
wear with thy goodness, and thy paths
dron fairness u
A PICTURED IrrDcNFNT
Our family comes around the breakfast
tahle II has baen very cold night. but
the children are all bright because they
slent under thick coverIets and they are
now in the warm blast NJ tho oman roeistar
md their nnnetites make luyuries ont of
the plaiuest fare. and we look mt the pic-