The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1894-04-13
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
The Grandest Possible Adornment
the Religion of Jesus.
I1GdeIity and Christianity Contracted
The Peace of One, the Despair
OF the Other-Tke Dam
ger of Delay.

Rev. T, Dewitt Talmage delivered
the following sermon on THE Sustain
ing Power of Religion" in the Brook
Ign tabernacle, basing il on the text:
Though We have lain among the pots, yet
shall ye be as the wings OF a dove covered
with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.
Psalms, xviii, b.
suppose you known what the Is
raelites did down in Egyptian slavery.
The men made bricks. Amid the uten-
sis of the brick-kiln there were also
other utensils of cookery-the kettles,
the pots, the pans, with which they
prepared their daily food; and when
these poor slaves, tired of the days
work, lay down to rest, they lay down
among the implements of cookery and
the implements Of hard work When
they arose in the morning they found
their garments covered with the clay
and the smoke and the dust, and be-
Sun irched and begrimed with the uten-
sils of cookery. Put after awhile the
Lord broke up that slavery, and He
took these poor slaves into a land
where they had better garb, bright
and clean and beautiful apparel. No
more bricks for them to make. Let
Pharaoh make his own bricks. When
David, in my text, comes to describe
the transition of these poor Israelites
from bondage amid the brickkilns in
to the glorious emancipation which
God had prepared them, he says:
Though We have lain among the pots,
yet shall We be as the wings of dove
covered with silver, and her feathers
with yellow gold"
Miss Whately, the author of cele-
brated book, Life in Egypt" said
she sometimes saw people in the east
cooking their food on the tops of
houses, and that she had often seen,
just before shutdown pigeons and doves
which had during the heat of the day
been hiding among the kettles and
the pans with which the food was pre-.
pared, picking up the crumbs that
they might find; just about the hour
of sunset they would spread their
wings and fly heavenward, entirely
unsOiled by the region in which they
had moved, for the pigeon is very
clearly bird. And as the pigeons flew
away the setting sun would throw sill
yer on their wings and gold OF their
breasts. So you see it is not a far.
fetched smile, or an unnatural
comparison, when David in my text
says to these emancipated Israelites,
and says to all those who are brought
out of any kind of trouble into any
kind of spiritual joy; Though We have
lain among the pots, yet shall We be
as the wings of a dove covered with
silver, and her feathers with yellow
gold"
Sin is the hardest of all taslxmasters.
Worse than Pharaoh, it keeps us
drudging in q most degrading service;
but after awhile Christ comes and He
says, LET my people CO." and we
pass out from among the brick-kilns
of sin into the glorious liberty of the
Gospel; we put on the clean robes of a
Christian profession, ard when, at
last, we soar away to the warm nest
which God has provided for us in
Heaven, we shall go fairer than a dove,
its wings covered with silver, and its
feathers with yellow gold.
am going to preach something
which some of you do not believe, and
that is that the grandest possible or
nament is the religion of Jesus Christ.
There are great many people who
suppose that religion is a very differ
ent thing from what it really is. The
reason men condemn the Bible is be-
cause they do not understand the
Bible; they have not properly exam
ined it. DR.. johnson said that Hume
told a minister In the bishopric of
Durham that he had never particularly
examined the New Testament, yet all
his life warning against it. HALEY, the
astronomer, announced his skepticism
| to Sir Isaac Newton, and Sir Isaac
Newton said; Now, sir, have exam
| ined the subject and you have not; and
l am ashamed that you, protesting to
be a philosopher, consent to condemn
thing you never have examined. y
And so men reject the religion of Jesus
Christ because they really have never
| investigated it. They think it some
| thing undesirable, something that will
not work, something Peeksniffian,
something hypocritica1, something re-
pulsive, when it is so bright and so
beautiful you might compare it to a
chaffinch, you might compare it to a
rObin-redbreast, you might compare it
to dove, its wings covered with sill
yer and its feathers with yellow gold.
But how is it if a young man becomes
Christian? All through the club
rooms, where he associates, all through
the business circles where he isknown.
there is com miseration. They say:
What a pity that young man who
had such bright prospects should SO
have been despoiled by those Christians,
giving up all his worldly prospects for
something which is of no particular
present WORTH Here is a young
her voice, her face, her manners
the charm of the drawing-room.
Now, all through the fashionable cir
cles the whisper goes: What a pity
that such bright light should have
been extinguithed, that such grace
full gait should be crippled, that such
worldly prospects should be obliter-
atedm All, my friends, it can be
shown that religions ways are ways
of pleasantness, and that all her paths
are peace; that religion, instead OF
being dark and doleful and lachrymose
and repulsive, is bright and beautiful,
its wings covered with silver and its
feathers with yellow gold
See, in the first place, what religion
will do for mans heart. l care not
how cheerful man may naturally be
before conversion, conversion naturally
brings him up to a higher standard OF
cheerfulness. l do not say he will
laugh any louder; do not say but he
may stand back from some forms OF