The free press., 1893-12-21
REV. DIR. TALMAGE.
THE uROOKLYN DIVINE'S SUN
DAY SERMON.
Subject: "The Mission of the Frost" :"

gicen." Job xxxvii., TO-
Nothing is more embarrassing to an organ
tst or pianist than to put his finger on key
of the instrument ard have it make no re-
sponse. 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-
ton. If the frost made no utterance the
orchestral rendering would be hopelessly
damaged and the harmony forever incom-
plete | 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 soattereth 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 rifed the corn
shocks. The night sky has shown the usual
meteoric restlessness 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 instruct the
world. It is the frost The palaces OF this
king are far up in the arctic. Their walls
are glittering congeation. Windsor castles
and Tuileries 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,
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
slay, L shall show you that the frost is a
friend, with benediction divinely pro-
nounced. and charged and surcharged with
lessons potent, beneiicent and tremendous.
The Bible seven times alludes to the frost,
and we must not ignore il. by the breath
OF God frost is given"
First [ think of frost as a painter. He be-
gins 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 hand he
gits down before the humblest bush in the
latter part of September and begins the
sketching of the leaves. Now he puts upon
the foliage faint pallor. and then touch of
brown, and then Il hue of orange, and last Il
flame of fire. The beech and ash and ok are
turned first into sunrses and then into sun
sets of vividness and splendor. Allthe leaves
are penciled one by one, but sometimes a
whole forest in the course OF a few days
shows great velocity Of work.
Weenix, the Dutch painter, could make in
a summer day three POI rats of life size, but
the frost in ten days can paint ten noun
tains in life size. 1t makes the last days of
an autumnal wood the days of its chiefest
glory Luxenbourgs in the Adirondacks.
Louvres in the Sierra Nevddas, 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 curt9in of the morning lifts to
the time whom the curtain of the night drops
Michael Angelo put upon one ceiling his
representation of the last Judgment but the
frost represents universal coniiagration
upon 5000 miles OF stretched out grandeur
Leonardo da Ninci put upon few feet OF
canvas our Lords last supper for all ages to
admire, but the frost puts the cleaning chal-
ices of the imperial glories of the last sup
per of the dying year in the heights and
lengths and breadths of the Alleghanies
When Titan first gazed upon a sketch of
Correggio, he was wrought up into such
ecstacy that he cried out, "If / were not
Titan, | would be Correggio," and so great
and overpowering are the autumnal scenes
OF our American forests that one force of
nature might well exclaim to another. 'If |
were not the sunlight, | would be the frost"
RugendaS, the German painter, suffering
from weakness in his right hand faboriously
learned to paint with his lett hand, but the
frosts paints with both hands, and has in
them more skill than all the Rembrandts and
Rubens and Vests and Poussns and Albert
Durers and Paul Veroneses and Claudes
gathered in one long art gallery. But the
door of that grent museum of autumnal col
oring is now closed for Il twevemonth, and
another spectacle Just as wonderful is now
open. l put YOU on the alert and ask you to
put your children on the alert.
Tired OF working on the leaves, the 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 with curves, with
coronets, with eXquisiteness, with pomp,
with almost supernatural spectacle Then
you will appreciate what my text says as it
declares, "By the breath of God frost is
given You will see on the window pane
traced there by the FROST whole gardens oil
beauty-ferns, orchids, daffodils, heliotropes
china asters, fountains. statues, hounds on
tle cuiSe rOeDuckS pluuSlnV INTO the stream
battle scenes with dying and dead, cata
falques OF kings, triumphal processions-an
as the morning sun breaks through you viii
see cities ON fire, and bombardment witt
bursting she'll and illuminations as for some
great victory, coronaticns and angels on the
wing.
All night long while you were sleeping the
frost was working, and you ought not lei
the warmth obliterate the scene until you
have admired it, studied it, absorbed it, sci
it up in your memory for perpetual refresh
ment and realized the force and magnitude
and intensity OF my text. "By the breath Of
God frost is given Oh, what a God we
have What resources are implied by the fact
that he is able TO do that by the finger Of the
frost fifty times in one winter and on Il hun
dred thousand window panes for thousands
of winters
The great art galleries of Venice and Ma.
pies and Dresden are carefully guarded
and governments protect them, for once lost
they can never be reproduced, but God sets
up in the royal galleries of the frost pictures
such rs no human art could ever produce
hundreds of thousands of them, only fol
four or five hours, and then ruls them out
making the place clear Tor display just as
magnificent the next morning. No one bu
God could afford to do that. 1t would
bankrupt everything but indnity and omni
potence.