The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1893-03-03
A PROTECTING WING.
REV, DR.. TALMAeE's SERMON ON THE
HEN AND CHICKENS.

morning Rev. Or. IallnASe, IN GIVING
out a number of notices, dwelt upon the
fact that certain picture makers of
Brooklyn had used his name rs refer
ence in their advertisements and circu-
lars without his authority. Thousands
of letters of complaint have come to him
in this respect, and he Wanted it Distinct
ly understood that he knew nothing of
these people or sheir business methods,
The text selected for the morning sermon
was Matthew xiii, 81, LAS hen gath
ereth her chickens under her wings, and
ye would not"
Jerusalem was in sight as Christ came
to to the crest of Mount Olivet, height
of 700 feet. The splendors of the reli-
gious capital of the whole earth irradi-
ated the landscape, There is the tenn
pie. Yonder is the kings palace.
Spread out before his eyes are the pomp,
the wealth, the wickedness and the com.
ing destruction of Jerusalem, and he
bursts into tears at the thought of the
obduracy of place that he would gladl
have saved, and apostrophiaes; saying,
20 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often
would have gathered thy children to
gether, even as hen gathereth her
chickens under her wings, and We would
not"
why did Christ select hen and chick
ems as simile? Next to the Apostle
ness of the comparison think it was to
help all public teachers in the matter Of
illustration to get down off their stills
and use comparisons that all can under
stand. The plainest bird on earth is the
barnyard fowl. Its only adornments are
the red comb in its headdress and the
wattles under the throat 1t has no
grandeur of genealogy All we know is
that its ancestors came from India, some
of them from height of 1900 feet on
the sides of the Himalayas. 1t has no
pretenson of nest like the eagles eyrie.
1t has no luster Of plumage like the gold
finch. Possessing anatomy that allows
fight, yet about the last thing it wants
to do is to fv. and in retreat uses foot
almost as much as wing.
Musicians have written out in musical
scale the song of lark and robin red
breast and nightingale, yet the hen of
my text hath nothing that could be taken
tor a 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 chick
ems. Christ WIS thus simple in his teach
inss, and yet how hard it is for us, wNo
are Sunday school instructors and editors
and preachers and reformers, and those
who would gain the ears of audience
to attain that heavenly ili divine art of
simplicity.
We have to run a course of literary
disorders as children course of phys
ical disorders. We come out of school
and college loaded down with Gree.
mythologies and out of the theological
seminary Weighed down with what The
learned fathers said, and we fly with
wings of eagles and famingoes and alba
trosses, and it takes a good while before
we can come down to Christ's sinili-
tudes, the candle under the bushel the
salt that into 6af int lost its saver the net
eyes of the blind man and the hen 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 a
prima donna of the skies nor STRAIT of
beauty in the aisle of the forest. She
does not cut a circle under the sun like
the Rocky mountain eagle, but stays at
home to look after family affairs. She
does not swoop like the condor of the
Cordilleras to transport d rabbit from
the valley to the top of the crags, bu'
just scratches for living. How vigor
ously with her claws she pulls away the
ground TO bring up what is hidden be-
meath! When the breakfast or dining
hour arrives, she begins to prepare the
repast and calls all her young to partake.
UNDER OLD DoMINlCK'S WINGS.
am in sympathy with the unpreten-
tious old fashioned hen, because, like
most of us, she has to scratch for liv-
ing. She knows at the start the lesson
which most people of good sense are
slow to learn-that the gaining of a live
lihood implies work, and that successes
do not lie on the surface, but are to be
upturned by positive and continuous ef-
fort. The reason that society, and the
church, and the world are SO full of fail
ures, SO full. of loafers, so full of dead
haafc 10 hopansa 1,an,1n a1,a
enough to take the lesson which any hen
would teach them-that if they would
find for themselves and for those de-
pendent upon them anything worth hav-
ing they must scratch for it.
Solomon said, $50 to the ant, thou
sluggard." say, $50 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
| ly Spirit is compared to descending
ilove, but Christ, in sermon that begins
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
,Dorninick. Why the hen should be SC
disturbed we could not understand. We
looked about to see if neighbours dog
were invading the farm. We looked up
to see if a storncloud were lowering.
We could see nothing on the ground that
could terrorize, and we could see nothing
in the air to ruf1e the feathers of the hen
but the loud, wild, affrighted cluck which
brought all her brood at full run under
her feathers made us look again around
us and above us, when we saw that high
up and far away there was rapacious
bird wheeling round and round, and
down and down, and not seeing us as we
s.ood in the shadow it came nearer and
lower until W. saw its beak was curved
from base to tip, and it had two flames
OF is-a for eyes, and it was a hawk.
Eut all the chickens were under old
Doniinick's wing. and either the bird of
/ i'rey caught glimpse of us, or not
able to find the brood huddled under
wing darted back into the clouds. So
Christ calls with great earnestness to
tie young. Why, what is the mat
Ter? 1t is bright sunlight, and there can