Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1893-12-07
AT THE TABERNACLE
DR.. TALMAeE FINDS MATERIAL FOR
MANY LESSONS IN THE FROST.


he First sabbath OF Winter-rhe AaFrsis
Of Frost Imagery Testify OF God-strIh-
inc fu,.,,.,,on.I, Ioh-Fro.. ...F-
"'s" % Ae'sfs'y-
BRooKlyN. Dee a-Before the usuai
thronpz that for nearly q5 wears have gath.
ered IN the first second and third Rrooklvn
Tabernacle. snccesxivelv Dr Talma0e mi.
forenoon nreached this gosneI sernon after
oommentino unon an annropr;ate Scrinture
lesson and giving ont the most insniriting
hvmns The subiect was ''The Mission of
the Frost.n Text-Job xxxyii, 10. ''By the
the breath of God frost IA piyen. -
Nothing Is more embarrassing 10 an or
ranist or uianist than To nut his finger on a |
kew of the instrument and have Il make no |
response. Though all the other KEYS are in |
full play. that one silence DESTROYS the mu- |
sic. So In the great cathedral OF nature. IL |
one mart fails To praise the Lord the har- |
mouy is halted and lost. While fire and |
hail. snow and vapor. respond to the touch |
of inspiration. II the frost made no utter |
anee the orchestral rendering would be |
hopelessly damaged and the harmony for |
ever INCOMPLETE. L am more glad than lean
tell that the white kew of the frost sounds
forth as nightly as apy 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 nv 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 southwark. The
landscape has been SCARED by the autum-
nal equinox. The huskers have rifled the
cornshocks. 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 ele-
ment now comes in to bless and adorn and
instruct the world. 1t is the frost The
palaces Of this king are far up in the
arctic. Their walls are glittering con-
gelation. 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 eter-
nal 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
friend, with benediction divinely pro.
nounced, and charged and surcharged with
lessons potent, beneficent and tremendous.
The Bible seven times alludes to the frost,
and we must not ignore it. by the breath
of God frost is given"
NATURES MARvELs IN ART.
First think of frost as painter He be-
gins his work on the leaves and continues
it on the window panes. With palette COW
cred with all manner of colors in his left
hand and pencil of crystal in his right
hand, he sits 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 hue of
orange and last flame of fire The beech
and ash and oak are turned first into sun
rises and then into sunsets of vividness and
splendor All the leaves are penciled one
by one, but sometimes 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 portraits of life
size, but the frost in 10 days can paint 10
mountains in life size. 1t makes the last
days of an autumnal wood the days of it's
chiefest tglory-Luxembourg in the Adiron-
dacks. Louvres in the Sierra Nevadas, Vat
leans in the White mountains. The work
of other painters you must see in the right
light to fully appreciate, but the paint
ings of the frost in all lights are enchant-
ing 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 represents universal confiagration
upon 5000 miles of stretched out grandeur.
Leonardo da Vinci put upon 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 in
the heights and lengths and breadths of
the Alleghanies. When Titan first gazed
upon sketch of Correggio, he was wrought
up into such ecstasy that he cried out, IF
! were not Titan, Iwould be Correggio,"
and so great and overpowering are the
autumnal scenes Of our American forests
that one force of nature might well ex-
claim to another, "If Iwere not the sun
light, would be the FROST"
Rugendas, the German painter, suffering
from weakness in his right hand, laborious-
ly 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 Pous-
sins and Albert Durers and Paul Veroneses
and Claudes gathered in one long art gal
lery But the door of that great museum