Milford chronicle., 1892-01-08
ON THE NEW YnSAR.
DR.. TALMAeE BREACHES A SERMON
ABOUT 1892.


Text Of His Discourse, ''rhis Year Tho'
Shalt DE- from Jeremiah xviii, i6
Lessons Of Importance Dwelt Upon b.
the Talented Preacher.
BBoOKLYN, Jan. 8.-This morning th'
Tabernacle congregation, meeting for the
frs, Sunday service of the new year, found
the pastor disposed 70 serious reflections
on the flight Of time. The opening hymn
gave the keynote in the familiar words;
Ny days are gliding swiftly by,
And I, pilgrim stranger,
Would not detain them as they hS
Those hours Of toll and danger,
DR.. Talmage read several passages relat
ing to antediluvian longevity, making char
acteristic comments as he read, and theI
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. It
IS a time for review and for anticipation.
| A man must be a 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.
y le old year was a queen. The new shall
"a king. The grave of the one and the
[adle of the other are side by side. We
an hardly guess what the child will be.
1 It is only two days old, but / prophesy for
it an eventful future. Year Of mirth and
madnessi Year of pageant and conhagra-
tionl It will laugh; it will sing; it will
groan; it will die.
Is it not time for earnest thOughtf The
congratulations have been given. The
Christmas trees have been taken down OF
have well 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 a bursting thunderhead, This yeal
thou shalt diei''
TRUV OF SOME OF US.
The text will probably prove true OF
some of us. The probability is augmented
bgY.AA feet aee5s-th that all Of >ads who are over
thirty-ive years OF 2gEs have gone beyond
the average of human Iife. The note is
more than due. It is only by sutferanee
that it is not collected. We ere like
debtor who is taking the ''thEee days
grace" of the banks. Our race starCed
with nine hundred years for lifetime We
read of but one antediluvian youth whose
early death disappointed the hopes of his
parents by his dying at seven hundred AMI
seventy-seven years of age. The world then
may have been ahead of what it is now
for men had so long a 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 them? In the nearly
two thousand years before the flood, con
sidering the longevity Of the inhabitants,
there may have been nearly as many peO-
pie as there are now. The flood was not a
freshet, that washed few people off
plank, but disaster that may have swept
away a thousand million. If the Atlantic
ocean by a lurch of the earth tonight
should drown this hemisphere and the Pa
cific ocean by a sudden lurch of the earth
should drown the other hemisphere, leav-
ing about as many beings as could be got
in one OF two ocean steamers, it 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 off before twenty years. TOevery
appIe 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 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
lived here, he would have broken down at
thirty-fve instead of ffty-five, and Charles
Dickens would have dropped at forty.
There is something In all our occupations
which prsdisposes to disease. If we be
stout. to disorders ranging from fevers to
apoplexv If 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
laboratories, and potters absorb paralysis.
Painters fall under their own brush. Foun-
dryme1i take death in with the filings.
pound away their own lives on
the last. Overdriven merchants measure
off their own lives with the yardstick.
Adiilers grind their own lives with the grist.
Masons dig their graves with the trowel.
And in ali our occupations and professions
are the elements of peril.
Rapid climatic changes threaten our
lives. BY reason Of the violent fits of the
thermometer, 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-
DareI. The hoOf, the wheel, the firearm,
the assassin, wait their chance to put upon
us their duietus announce 1t as an i'm
possibility that three hundred and sixty
Ave days should pass and leave us all as
we now are In what direction to shoot
the arrow know not and so | shoot it at
a venture. "This year thou shalt die"
WORDS OF ADVICE.
In view Of this, advise that you have
YOUR temporal matters adjusted. Do not
leave your worldly affairs at the mercy Of
administrators Have your receipts prop
erly pasted, and your letters filed, and
YOUR books balanced. If you have trust
fund.-" see that they are rightly deposited
and aceoupted for. Let no widow or or.
phan scratch ON your tombstone, This
man wronged me OF my inheritance."
Many a man has died, leaving a COMP
tency, whose property has, through his own
carelessness, afterward been divided be-
tween the administrators, the surrogate,
the lawyers and the sherifls. ] charge you,
before many days haFe gone, as far as pos
dble, have all your worldly matters made