The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1893-06-30
TALMAGE's SERMON.
Great Clusters Of Grapes From the
Land of Canaan
The Glorious Prospects and Christian Con
ISOLATION Which Give Appetite For
the Heavenly EschoI-The
Resurrection.

ter OF grapes. and they bare # between two
upon stan.-Numbers xiii:23
The long trudge of the Israelites
across the Wilderness was almost ended.
They had come to the borders of the
promised land. OF the six hundred
thousand adults who started from
Egypt from Canaan how many do you
suppose got there? Five hundred thou
sand? Oh, no. Not two hundred thou
sand, not one hundred thousand,
only two men, oh, it was a ruin
Gus march that Gods people made;
but their children were living,
and they were on the march,
and now that they had come up to the
borders of the promised land they were
curious to know what kind of a place
IL was, and whether IL would be safe to
go over. So scouting party is sent
out to reconnoiter, and they examine
the land, and they come back bringing
specimens of its growths. just as you
came back from California, bringing to
your family basket of pears, or plums
or apples, to show what monstrous
fruit they have there, so this scouting
party cut off the biggest bunch of
grapes they could find. 1t was so large
that one man could not carry it, and
they thrust a pole through the clus-
ter, and there was one man at
either end of the pole, and so the
bunch of grapes was transported.
was, some time ago, in a luxuriant
vineyard. The vine-dresser had done
his work. The vine had clambered up
and spread its wealth all over the ar
Dor. The sun and shower had mixed a
cup which the vine drank until with
flushed cheek it lay slumbering IN the
light, cluster against the cheek of
cluster. The rinds of the grapes
seemed almost bursting with the juice
in the warm lips of the autumnal day,
and it seemed as if all you had to do
was to lift chalice toward the cluster
and its life blood would begin to drip
away. But, my friends, in these rig
orous chimes we know nothing about
large grapes. Strabo states that in
Bible times and in Bible lands there
were grape vines so large that it took
two men with outstretched arms to
reach around them, and he says there
were clusters two cubits in length, or
tip of the long finger. And Achaicus,
dwelling in those lands, tells us that
during the time he was smitten with
fever one grape would Stake his thirst
for the whole day. No wonder, then,
in these Bible times two men thought
it worth their while to put their
strength together to carry down one
cluster of grapes from the promised
land.
But this morning bring you larger
cluster from the heavenly Eschol-a
cluster of hopes, a cluster of prospects,
a cluster of Christian consultations; and
I am expecting that one taste of it viii
rouse up your appetite for the heavenly
Canaan. During the past winter some
of the congregation have gone away
never to return. The aged have put
down their staff and taken up the
scepter. Men in mid-life came home
from Office or shop, and did not go
back again, and never will go back
again. And the dear children, some
of them, have been gathered in Christ's
arms. He found this world too rough
a place for them, and SO He has gath
cred them in. And oh, how many
wounded souls there are-wounds for
which this world offers no medicant,
and unless from the Gospel of our Lord
Jesus Christ there shall come a consola-
ton, there will be no consolation at all.
Oh, that the God of comfort would help
me while preach, and that the God of
all comfort would help you while you
hear.
First, console you with the divinely
sanctioned idea that your departed
friends are as much yours now as they
ever were. ! know you sometimes get
the idea in your mind, when you have
this kind of trouble, that your friends
are cut off from you, and they are no
longer yours; but the desire to have all
our loved ones in the same lot in the
cemetery is natural desire, univer-
sal desire, and therefore a God-im-
planted desire, and is nightly sug-
gestive of the fact that death has no
power to break up the family relations.
If our loved ones go away from our
possession, why put fence around our
lot in the cemetery? Why the gather
ing of four or five names on one family
monument? Why the planting of one
cypress vine so that it covers all the
cluster of graves? Why put the hus-
band beside the wife, and the
children at their feet? Why
the bolt on the gate of our
lot, and the charge to the keepers of
the ground to see that the grass is cut,
and the vine attended to, and the flow
ers planted? Why not put our de-
parted friends in one common field or
grave? Oh, it is because it is ours.
That child, o! stricken mother, is as
much yours this morning as in the SOL
emn hour when God put it against
your heart, and said as of old: ''Take
this child and nurse it for me, and 1
will give thee thy wages" 1t is no
mere within. 1t is a divinely-planted
principle in the soul, and God certainly
would not plant lie, and He would
not culture a lie. Abraham would not
allow Sarah to be buried in a stran-
gers grounds, although some beauti-
full ground was offered him
free gift; but he pays four
hundred shel1els for Machpelah,
the cave, and the trees over
shadowing it The grave has been
well kept, and to-day the Christian
traveller stands in thoughtful and ad-
miring mood. gazing upon Machpelah,
where Abraham and Sarah are taking
their long sleep of four thousand years
Your father may be sleeping under the
tinl1ling bell of the Scotch kirk. Your
brother may have gone down in the
ship that foundered off Cape Hatteras-