The enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 188?-1899, 1893-03-01
HEN AND CHICKENS.
Peculiar Title Of a Sermon by Rev.
7. Dewitt Talmage, D. d.
The Temptations Of Life Described In q
Graphic Manner Young Manhood and
Young womanhood Especially
l' Needs the Protecting Wing
OF Christ.

Rev. DIR. Talmage preached the fol-
lowing discourse at the Brooklyn Taber-
nacle recently, taking for his text Matt.
xiii 81: 'As hen gathereth her
chickens under her wings, and ye would
not"
Jerusalem was in sight as Christ came
to the crest Of Mount Olivet a 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 coming destruction of Jerusalem,
and he bursts into tears at the thought
OF the obduracy of q place that He
would gladly have saved, and apostro-
phizes, saying: 20 Jerusalem, Jerusa-
lem, how often would have gathered
thy children together, even as hen
gathereth her chickens under her
wings, and ye would not"
Why did Christ sele ct hen and chick
ems as a simile? Next to the opposite.
ness of the comparison, / think it was
TO help all public teachers in the mat
ter of Illustration to get down or their
stills and use comparisons that all can
understand. The plainest bird on earth
is the barnyard fowl. Its only adorn-
ments sre the red CO NIB In its head-dress
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 a height oi
four thousand feet on the sides of the
Himalayas. 1t has no pretension OF
nest like the eagles eyrle. 1t has nc
luster of plumage like the goldfinch.
Possessing anatomy tn at allows fight,
yet about the last thin g It wants to do
is to fly, and in retreat, uses foot al
most as much as wing. Musicians have
written out in musical scale the song
Of lark aud robin redbreast and night
ingale, yet the hen Of my text hath
nothing that could be taken for a
song, but only clucl and caclsle. Yet
Christ in the text, uttered while look
ing upon doomed Jerusalem, declares
that what He had wished for that city
was like what the hen does for her
chickens Christ was thus simple in
His teachings, and yet how hard IL is
for us, who are Sunday.school ,nstruc-
tors and editors and preachers and re-
formers, and those who would gain the
ears of audiences, TO attain that heav-
emily and divine art of simplicity. We
have to run course of literary disor-
/. ders, as children n course of physical
disorders We come out OF school and
college loaded down with Greek my
thologies, and out of the theological
seminary weighed down with what the
learned fathers said, and we fly with
wings Of eagles and hamingoes and nj
batrosses, and it takes good while be
fore we can como down to Christs sim
ilitudes, the candle under the bushel
the salt that has lost its SAVIOR, the net
thrown into the sea, the spittle on the
eyes Of the blind man, and the hen and
chickens There is not much poetry
about this winged creature Of God men
toned in my text, but she is more prac
teal and more motherly and more sug
gestive OF good things than many tina
fly higher and wear brighter colors
She Is not prima donna Of the skies
nor strut of beauty in the aisle of th'
forest She does not cut a circle undei
the sun like the Rocky Mountain eagle
but stays at home TO look after family
affairs. She does not swoop like thu
condor Of the Cordilleras TO transport |
rabbit from the valley TO the top OF th'
crags, but just scratches fora living
How vigorously with her claws sh'
pulls away the ground TO bring nj
what is hidden beneathl When tn
breakfast or dinner hour arrives sh
begins TO prepare the repast and call
dll her young TO partake.
lam In sy mpathy with the unpreten
tious old fashioned hen, because, lilS
most of us, she has to scratch 70
living. She knows at the start tn
lesson which most people Of good sens
are slow TO learn-that the gaining OF
livelihood implies work, and that sue
cesses do not lie on the surface, but ar
to be up turned by positive and continr
ous effort The reason that society an
the church and the world are so full c
failures so full of loafers, so full c
deadbeats, Is because people are nc
wise en- ough TO take the lesson whic
any hen would teach them, that II the
would find for them selves, and fo
those depe ndent upon them anythin
worth having they must scratch for i
Solomon said; go 10 the ant tho
sluggard." say, go TO the hen, tho
slugpard. In the Old Testament Go
compares Himself to an eagle stirrin
M her nest, and in the New Testamer
the Holy Spirit Is compared 10 a d.
seending dove but Christ, In q sermo
that began with cutting sarcasm fc
hypocrites and ends with the paroxysl
OF pathos In the text, compares Himse
10 hen.
One day in'the country, we saw SUI
den CONSERVATION In the behavior OF oil
Dominiclt Why the hen should be s
disturbed we could not understand W
looked about TO see II n neighbor's dc
were invading the farm. We looked u
10 see II n storm cloud were hoverinl
We could see nothing on the groun
that could terrorize, aud We could SC
nothing in the air to ruffie the feather
OF the hen. but the loud, wild, affrights
clucls, which brought all her brood I
full run under her feathers, made !
look again around us and above MS, whe
we saw that high up and far away the
was d rapacious bird wheeling rour
and round, and down and down, or
not seeing us as we stood In the shadoy
IL came nearer and lower, until we sa
It's beak was curved from base 10 u
and II had two flames Of fire for eye