Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1893-12-14
MISSION OF THE FROST.
Rev. DR.. Talmage Warns UP on a
Chilly Subject.
The Frost, Generally Considered as an
Enemy to Mankind, Shown to BE,
Like the Grace of God, Po-
tent for Publication.

Rev. L. Dewitt Idlmdge ID his Brook
lyn tabernacle, from the text:
BY the breath of God frost is given.-Job
9xxyii., 10
Nothing is more embarrassing to an
organist or pianist than to put his fin
ger on a key of the instrument and
haV- 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 har-
monv is halted and lost While fire
and hail. snow and vapor respond to
the touch of inspiration, if the frost
made no utterance the orchestral rend
ering would be hopelessly damaged
and the harmony forever incomplete.
] am more glad than | 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 dis
cuss 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 southwark.
The landscape has been SCARED by the
autumnal equinox. The huslSerS have
rifed the corn shocks. The night sky
has shown the usual meteoric FESTIVE
ness of November. Three seasons 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. 1t is the frost. The
palaces of this king are far up in the
Arctic. Their walls are glittering
congelation. Windsor castles and Tuil-
leries and Winter palaces and Ken
ilworths and Alhambras of ice.
Temples with penchant chandel-
iers of ice. Thrones of ice
berg, 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.
Mountains of ice. Dominions of ice
Eternal frigidity! From those hard,
white, FURNISHED 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 Stay, | shall show you that
the frost is a friend, with benediction
divinely pronounced, and charged and
In "a
cent 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, | notice Frost as a painter.
He begins his work on the leaves, and
continues it on the window-panes.
With palette covered with all manner
of colors in his left hand, and pencil
of crystal in his right, he sits down be-
fore the humblest bush in the latter
part of September, and begins the
slletching of the leaves. Now he puts
upon the foliage faint pallor, and
then a touch of brown, and then hue
of orange, and then a flame of fire
The beech and ash and oak are turned
first into sunrise and then into sunsets
of vividness and splendor. All the
leaves are penciled one by one, but
sometimes whole forest in the course
of few days shows great velocity of
work. Weenix, the Dutch painter,
could make in a summer day three por-
traits of life size, but the Frost
in ten days can paint ten mountains
in life size. 1t makes the last days
of an autumnal wood the day of it's
chiefest glory. LuXembourgs in the
Adirondacks, Louvres in the Sierra
Nevadas, Vaticans in the White mount
aims. The work of other painters YOU
must see in the right light to fully APP
preciate, but the paintings of Frost in
all lights are enchanting, and from the
time when the curtain 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 rep
rescnts universal confagration upon
three hundred miles of Stretched-out
grandeur Leon ardo de Vinci put upon
a few feet of canvas our Lords Last
Supper" for all ages to admire, but the
Frost puts the cleaning chalices of the
imperial glories of the Last Supper of
the dying year on the heights and
lengthsa and breadths of the Alleghanies.
When Titan first gazed upon a sketch
of Correggio he was wrought up into
such an ecstasy that he cried out: ''It
! were not Titan | would be Cor
reggie" and so great and overpower-
ing are the autumnal scenes of our
American forests that one force of ma
ture might well exclaim to another:
IF I were not the sunlight would be
the frost. Rugendas, the German
painter, suffering from weakness in his
right hand laboriously learned to
paint with his left hand, but the Frost
paints with both hands, and has in
them more skill than all the Rem
brandts, and Rubens, and Vests, and
Poussins, and Albert Durers, and Paul
Veroneses, and Claudes gathered in
one long art gallery.
Next | speak of the frost as a physi
clan. Standing at the gates of New
York harbor autumn before last the
frost drove back the cholera, saving;
Thus far shalt thou come and no far
Their" From Memphis and New Or
leans and Jacksonville he smote the fe-
yer plague till it reeled back and de-
parted. The frost is physician that
doctors Cities nations and continents
He medicines the world Quinine fol
malaria, antifebrile for typhoids, sal
phonal for sleepleSSneSS, antiSpasmodiC
for disturbed nerves. but in al
hn1 : 4