The Banner-Democrat. [volume] (Lake Providence, East Carroll Parish, La.) 1892-current, 1893-04-22
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
Ohrists simile Of the Hen and Her
Chickens and It's Lessons.
Invisible Dangers Lurh Unseen-Thc vari-
Gus Temptations OF Life--Christ .
Strong, Protecting Wing
for All.


for ALL
Rev. 7. Dewitt Talmage delivered
the following discourse in the Brooklyn
tabernacle. taking for his text:
As hen gathereth her chickens under her
wings, and Sc would not.-Matt. xiii, 81.
Jerusalem was in sight as Christ
came to the crest of Mount .Olivet, a
height of seven hundred feet The
splendors of the religious capital of
the whole earth irradiated the land
scape. There is the temple. Yonder
is the kings palace. Spread out be-
fore his eyes are the pomp. the wicked
ness and the coming destruction of
Jerusalem. and He bursts into tears at
the thought of the obduracy OF place
that He would gladly have saved, and
apostrophizes, saying: "Oh, Jerusa-
lem, how often would have gathered
thy children together, even as hen
gathereth her chickens under her wings,
and We would not."n
Why did Christ select hen and chick
ems as a smile? Next to the Apostle
ness of the comparison, think it was
to help all public teachers in the mat
ter of illustration to get down off their
stills and use comparisons that all can
understand. The plainest bird on earth
is the barnyard fowl. Its only adorn-
ments are the red comb in its head
dress and the wattles under its throat.
1t has no grandeur of genealogy. All
we know is that its ancestors came from
India. some of them from a height of
four thousand feet on the sides of the
Himalayas. 1t has no pretension of
nest like the eagles eyrie. it has no
luster of plumage like the goldfinch.
Possessing anatomy that allows fight,
yet about the last thing it wants to do
is to fly, and in retreat uses foot almost
as much as wing. Musicians have writ
ten out in musical scale the song of
lark and robin redbreast and nightin-
gale, yet the hen of my text hath moth
ing that could be taken for song. but
only cluck and cackle. Yet Christ, in
the text uttered while looking upon
doomed Jerusalem, declares that what
He had wished for that city was like
what the hen does for her chickens.
Christ was thus simple in His teach
ings. and yet how hard it is for us,
who are Sunday-school instructors
and editors and preachers and re-
formers. and those who would
gain the ears of audiences, to attain
that heavenly and Divine art of sim
plicity. We have to run course of
literary disorders as children course
of physical disorders. We. come out of
school and college loaded down with
Greek mythologies. and out of the
theological seminary weighted down
with what the learned fathers said,
and we fly with wings of eagles and
hamingoes and albatrosses, and it
takes a good while before we can come
down to Christ's similitudes. the candle
under the bushel, the salt that has lost
it's SAVIOR, the net thrown into the sea,
the spittle on the eyes of the blind
man, and the hens and chickens. There
is not much poetry about this winged
creature of God mentioned in my text,
but she is more practical and more
motherly and more suggestive of good
things than many that fly higher and
wear brighter colors She is not q
prima donna of the skies. nor strut of
beauty in the aisle of the forest. She
does not cut circle under the sun like
a Rocky mountain eagle, but stays at
home to look after family affairs. She
does not swoop like the condor of the
Cordilleras to transport rabbit from
the valley to the top of the crags, but
just scratches for living. How vigor-
ously with her claws she pulls away
the ground to bring up what is hidden
beneath! When the breakfast or din
ing hour arrives she begins to prepare
the repast, and calls all her young to
partale.
am in sympathy with the unpreten-
tious, old-fashioned hen, because. like
most of us, she has to scratch for q liv-
ing. She knows at the start the lesson
which most people of good sense are
slow to learn-that the gaining of q
livelihood implies work, and that sue
cesses do not lie on the surface, but
are to be upturned by positive and
continuous effort. The reason that So
ciety and the church and the world are
so full of failures, so full of loafcrs, SO
full of deadbeats, is because people are
not wise enough to take the lesson
which any hen would teach them, that
if they would find for themselves and
for those dependent upon them any
thing worth having they must scratch
for it. Solomon saida. Go,to the ant thou
sluggard." l say, go to the hen thou
sluggard. In the Old Testament God
compares Himself to an eagle stirring
up her nest, and in the New Testament
the Holy Spirit is compared to de-
scending dove, but Christ in sermon
that began with cutting sarcasm for
hypocrites and ends with the paroxysm
of pathos in the text, compares Himself
to hen.
One day in the country we saw sud-
den CONSERVATION in the behavior of
old Dominick. Why the hen should be
so disturbed we could not understand.
We looked about to see if neighbours
dog were invading the farm. We
looked up to see If a storm cloud were
lowering. We could see nothing on
the ground that could terrorize, and we
could see nothing in the air to ruffie
the feathers of the hen. but the loud,
wild, affrighted cluck, which brought
all her brood at full run under her