Highland recorder. (Monterey, Highland County, Va.) 1877-1972, 1894-02-02
REV. Dr., TALMAGE,
The Eminent Brooklyn Divine'S Sun
day Sermon.
Subject: "The Bare Arm of God"

holiness of metaphor in my text that | have
been for some time getting my courage up TO
preach from if. Isaiah, the evangelistic
prophet is sounding the iubilate of our
planet redeemed and cries out, "The Lord
hath made bare His holy arm" What over
whelming suggestiveness in that figure of
speech. "The bare arm of God" The peo-
pie Of Palestine TO this day wear much hinder
ing apparel and when they want to run a
special race. or lift a special burden, or fight
a special battle. they put off the outside
apparel, as in our land when man proposes
a special exertiOn he puts off his coat and
, rolls up his sleeves. Walk through our
foundres, our machine shops, our mines.
our factories. and you fill nnl that most of
the toilers have their coats off AMI their
sleeves rolled IN.
Isaiah saw that there must be a tremen-
dous amount Of work done before this world
becomes what it ought to be, and he fore
sees it all accomplished, and accomplished
by the Almighty, not as we ordinarily think
of Him, but by the Almighty with the sleeve
of His robe rolled back TO His shoulder,
'The Lord hath made bare His holy arm"
Nothing moro impresses me in tho Bible
than the ease with which God does most
things. There is such reserve OF power.
He has more thunderbolts than He has ever
flung more light than He has ever distrib-
uted, more blue than with which He has
overarched the sky, more green than that
with which He has emeralded the grass,
more crimson than that with which He has
burnside the sunsets. say it with rever-
ence. from all l can see, God has never half
tried.
You know as well as l do that many of the
most elaborate and expensive industries OF
our world have been employed in creating
artificial light. Half Of the time the world
is dark. The moon and the stars have their
glorious uses. but as instruments of ilumi
nation they are failures. They will not
allow you TO read a book or stop the ruffian-
ism of your great cities Had not the dark
ness been persistently fought back by artif-
cial means, the most of the worlds enter
prises would have halted half the time. while
the crime of our great municipalities woul
for half the time run rampant and unre-
buked hence all the inventions for creating
artificial light, from the flint struck against
steel in centuries past to the dynamo of our
electrical manufactures. What uncounted
numbers of people at WORK the year round in
making chandeliers and lamps and fixtures
and wires and batteries where light shall be
made, or along which light shall run, or
where light shall poise How many bare
arms OF human tOil--and some of those bare
arms are very tired-in the creation of light
and its apparatus, and after all the work the
greater part Of the continents and hems-
pheres at night have no light at all, except
perhaps the frefles flashing their small lam
terms across the swamp.
But see how easy Col made the light. He
did not make bare His arm He did not even
put forth His rO5ed arm He did not lift 50
much as finger The flint out of which He
struck the MONDAY sun was the word,
eight" 'Let there be light" Adam did
not see the sun until the fourth day for,
though the sun was created on the first day,
it took its rays from the first TO the fourth
day to work through the dense mass of fluids
by which this earth was comprised. Did you
ever hear OF anything so easy as thal2 SO
unique? Out of a word came tho blazing
sun. the father Of flowers, and warmth end
light Out of worl building a fireplace
for all the Nations of the earth to warm them
selves by Yea, seven other worlds. five of
them inconceivably larger than our own, and
seventy-ninO asteroids, or worlds on a
smaller scale The warmth and light for
this great brotherhood, great sisterhood,
great family OF worlds, eighty-seven larger
or smaller worlds, all from that one magnifS
cent fireplace, made out Of the one word
Light. The sun S86, 900 miles in diameter. [
do not know how much grander q solar sys-
TEN God could have created if He hal put
forth His robeJ arm, to say nothing of an
arm made barrel But this | know, that our
MONDAY sun was spark struck from the
anvil of one word. and that word "Light."
"But," says some one, edo you not think
that in making the machinery of the uni
verse, OF which our solar system is COM
paratively small wheel working into might
Ter wheels, it must have cost God some ex-
ertion? The upheaval OF an arm either
robed or an arm made bare?' Mo- we are
distinctly told otherwise. The machinery OF
a universe God made simply with His fingers.
David. inspired in night song, says So
''When | consider Thy heavens, the work OF
Thy fingers
A Scottish clergyman told me few weeks
ago of dyspeptic Thomas Carlyle walking
out with friend one starry night, and as
the friend looked up and said. "What a
splendid sky" Mr.. Carlyle replied as he
glanced upward, "Sai sight, sad sight p
Not so thought David as he read the great
Scripture of the night heavens 1t was
sweep Of embroidery, OF vast tapestry, Col
manipulated. Thai is the allusiOn Of the
psnlmst to the woven hangngs of tapestry
as they were known long before David's
time. Far back in the ages what enchaEt-
ment Of thread and color. the FlorentinS
velvets of silk and gold and Persian carpets
woven Of goats hair! II you have been in
alas, now no more you witnessed Won
drous things as you saw the wooden needle
or breach going back and forth and in and
ont YOU were tranStiXed with admiration at
the patterns wrought No wonder that Louis
XIV bought if, aud it became a possession OF
the throne, and for long while none but
thrones and palaces might have any of its
work What triumphs Of loom What
victory of skilled fingers So David says OF
the heavens that Gods fingers woye into
them the light that Gods fingers tapestried
them with stars that Gods fingers EN-
broiderel them with worlds
How much OF the immensely of the heavens
David Understood l do not know. Astronomy
was born in China 1900 years before Christ
was born. During the reign of HOanS-TI
astronomers were put to death If they made
wrong calculations about the heavens. JOB
understood the refractiOn of the suns rays
and said they were ''turned as the clay to the
seal" The pyramids were astronomical oo-
servatories, and they were so long ago butt
that Isaiah refers to one of them in his nine
teenth chapter and calls it the ''plllar at the
border" The first OF all the sciences born
was astronomy. Whether from knowledge
already abroad or from direct inspiration, 1t
seems TO me David had wide knowledge OF
the heavens. Whether he understood the
full force OF what he wrote know not but
the God who inspired him knew, and He
would not let David write anything but truth,
and therefore all the worlds that the tele-
scope ever reached or Copornicus or Galilei
or Kepler or Newton or Lapace or Herschel
or our own Mitchell ever saw were 50 easily
made that they were made with the fingers.
AS easily as with your fingers you mold the
wax, or tho clay, Or the dough to parti1-
ular shapes. so He decided the shape or
our world. and that it should weigh SIX SEX
tillion tons AMI appointed for all worlds
tbeir orbits and decided their cOlOr-the