Connecticut western news., 1892-12-08
AT THE TABERNACLE,
DR. TALMAGE FINDS MANY LESSONS
 IN THE TRAGEDY OF RlzPAH


 IN THE TRAGEDY OF RlzPAH The Bsreaved Mother Watching by Her
 Dead h but the Type of Millions of suf-
 fering and Borrowing women-The Sons
 Suffering for Their Fathers Crime.
 BROOKLYN, Dec. 4.-This is one of those discourses of Dr. Talmage deliv- cred from texts which no one seems to have used before. Important and prac- tical lessons were drawn. The opening hymn, in which many thousands joined, was:
 Come 70 disconsolate whereer 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 I briefly touched upon it, but must have whole sermon for that scene. The explosion and flash of gunpowders have driven nearly all the beasts and birds of prey from those regions, and now the shriek 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 8 hill. Rizpah was mother to two and relative to five of the boys. What had these boys done except to have bad father and grand father. But now that the boys were dead, why not take them down from the gibbetsi No. They are sentenced to hangsthere ss .4Sh8t>tes.
 So Rizpah takes the sackcloth-a rough shawl with which in mourning for her dead she had wrapped herself and spreads that sackcloth npons the rock3 near the gibbets, and acts the part of . sentinel, watching and defending the dead. Yet every other sentinel is relieved, and after being on guard for 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 thati sAh, do you not know that a mother can stand anything?
 DENIED EVEN BURIAL PLACE.
 Oh, if she might be allowed to hollow . place in the side of the hill and lay tho bodies of her children to quiet restl If in some cavern of the mountains she might find for them Christian sepulturei 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 sleepi Exhausted nature ever and anon falls into slumber, but in 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- brood wheeling in 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 50 awful. It reverberates in other times. It may skip one generation, but it is apt to come up in the third generation, as is suggested in the Ten Commandments, which say, 'sVisiting the iniquities of 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. ''Visiting 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 1t would not have been so sad. Alas, moi Look on that hill few miles out from Jerusalem and see the ghastly burdens of those seven gibbets and the wan and asted 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, unburiedi Alas for Rizpah, who, not for six months, but for years and years, has watched themi She cannot keep the vultures and the jackals of.
 Furthermore, this strange incident in of person and elevation of position are no security against trouble.
 SORROWS. OF THE GREAT.
 Who is this Rizpah sitting in desola- ton2 One of Saul's favorites. Her per- sonal attractions had won his heart. She had been caressed of fortune. With a mothers pride she looked on her prince ly children. But the scene changes. Behold her in banishment and bereave- ment-Rizpah on the rockl
 Some of the worst distresses have come to scenes of royalty and wealth. What porter at the mansions gate has not let in champing and lathered steed bringing evil dispatch2 On what tes- sellated hall has there not stood the sol emn bier? Under what exquisite fresco has there not been enacted @ tragedy of