Connecticut western news., 1893-12-07
THE DIVINE BREATH.
REV. DR. TALMAGE BREACHES ON THE
 MISSION OF THE FROST.

REV. DR. TAlMAGE BREACHES ON THE
 MISSION OF THE FROST.
 A Sermon Appropriate to the Cold Weath-
 er-The Frost as a Painter. a Jeweler
 and an EvangelIst--The Lesson and the
 PerorMtion.
 BROOKLYN. Dec. 3.-Before the usual throngs that for nearly 90 years have gathered in the first, second and third Brooklyn Tabernacles successively, Dr. Talmage this forenoon preached this gospel sermon, after commenting upon an appropriate Scripture. lesson and giv- ing out the most inspiriting hymns. The subject was, ''The Mission of the Frost" Text-Job xxxvii, 10, By the breath of God frost is given"
 Nothing is more embarrassing to an organist or pianist than to put his finger on 8 key of the instrument and have it make no response. Though all the other keys are in full play, that one silence destroys the music. So in the great cathedral of nature, if one part fails to praise the Lord the harmony is halted and lost. While fire and hail, snow and vapor, respond to the touch of inspira- tion, if the frost made no utterance the orchestral rendering would be hopeless ly damaged and the harmony forever in- complete. nm more glad than 1 can tell that the white key of the frost sounds forth as nightly as any of the other keys. and when David touches it in the Psalms, it sounds forth the words, "He scattereth the hoar frost like ashes" and when Job touches it in my text it resounds with the words, By the breath of God frost is given"
 As no one seems disposed to discuss the mission of frost, depending on divine help undertake it. This is the first Sabbath of winter. The leaves are down. The warmth has gone out of the air. The birds have made their winged march southward. The landscape has been scared by the autumnal equinox. The huskers have rifled the cornshocks. The night sky has shown the usual meteoric restlessness of November. Three sea- sons of the year are past, and the fourth and last has entered. Another element now comes in to bless and adorn and in- struct the world. It is the frost. The palaces of this king are far up in the arctic. Their walls are glittering con- gelation. Windsor castles and Fuller -ies and winter palaces and Kenilworths and Alhambras of ice, temples with pendant chandeliers of ice, thrones of iceberg on which eternal silence reigns, theaters on whose stage eternal cold dramatizes eternal winter, pillars of ice. arches of ice, crowns of ice, chariots of ice, sepulchers of ice, noun tains of ice, dominions of ice-eternal frigidity! From those hard, white, burnished portals King Frost descends and waves his silvery scepter over our temperate zone. You will soon hear his heel on the skating pond. You already feel his breath in the night wind. By most considered an enemy coming here to benumb and hinder and slay, shall show you that the frost is friend, with lbenediction divinely pronounced, and charged and surcharged with lessons potent, benefcent and tremendous. The Bible seven times alludes to the frost, and we must not ignore it. By the breath of God frost is given" First think offrost as painter. He begins his work on the leaves and con- tinues it on the window panes. With palette covered with all manner of colors in his left hand and pencilof crystal in his right hand, he sits down before the hum- blest bush in the latter part of Septem- Der and begins the sketching of the leaves. Now he puts upon the foliage a faint pallor. and then touch of brown, and then hue of orange, and last 8 flame of fire. The beech and ash and oak are turned first into sunrises and then into sunsets of vividness and splendor. All the leaves are penciled one by one, but sometimes whole forest in the course Of afew days shows great velocity of work.
 Weenix. the Dutch painter, could make in summer day three portraits of life size. but the frost in 10 dayscan paint 10 mountains in life size. It makes the last days of an autumnal wood the days of it's chiefest glory-Luxembourgs in the Adirondacks, Louvres in the Sierra Ne vadas, Vaticans in the White mountains. The work of other painters you must see in the right light to fully appreciate, but the paintings of the frost in all lights are enchanting from the time when the cur tain of the morning lifts to the time when the curtain of the night drops.
 Michael Angelo put upon one ceiling his representation of the last judgment, but the frost represents universal con flagration upon 5000 miles of stretched out grandeur. Leonardo da Vinci put upon few feet of canvas our Lord'slast supper for all ages to admire, but the frost puts the gleaming chalices of the imperial glories of thelast supper of the dying year on the heights and lengths and breadths of the Alleghanies. When Titan first gazed upon sketch of Cor reggie, he was wrought up into such ec- stasy that he cried out, If were not Titan, I would be Correggio," and SC great and overpowerful are the autumn. nal scenes of our American forests that one force of nature might we'll exclaim to another, "If were not the sunlight, would be the frost"
 sRugendas, the German painter, suffer. IxOLl WO6AAOoo HI HID ndno, boriously learned to paint with his left hand, but the frost paints with bott hands. and has in them more skill thar all the Rembrandts and Rubens and E Vests and Poussins and Albert Durers
 and Paul Veroneses and Claudes gath
 cred in one long art gallery. But thu
 door of that great museum of autumna
 coloring is now closed for twelve
 month, and another spectacle, just a.
 wonderful, is about to open. I put yor
 on the alert and ask you to put you
 children on the alert.
 Tired of working on the leaves, tn,
 frost will soon turn to the window panes
 You will soon waken on a cold morning
 and find that the windows of your home
 have during the night been adorned witt
 curves, with coronets, with exquisite
 ness, with pomp, with almost super
 natural spectacle. Then you will appre