The Penn's Grove record., 1895-10-25
REY. Or. 7RLugGE.
The Brooklyn Divlne's Sunday
Sermon.


TEyr: Hast thou giventhe horse strength
Hast thou clothed his neck with thunderi
He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth; he
goeth on to meet the armed men. He saith
among the trumpets, ha, hal and he smelleth
the battle afar off, the thunder OF the cap.
tains, and the shoutinG."-Job xxx, 10,
q, %.
We have recently had long columns of in.
tellisence from the race course, and multi
tudns iockedto the watering places to wit
ness equine competition, and there is lively
discussion in all households about the right
and wrong of such exhibitions of mettle and
speed. and when there IL a heresy abroad
that the cultivation Of ahorse's f~eetness is
an iniquity instead Of a commenable virtue
at such a time n sermon is demanded OF
every minister who would like 20 defend
public morals on the one hand. and who is
not willing to see an unriGhteous abridg-
ment Of innocent amusement on the other.
in this discussion / shall follow no sermonic
precedent, but will give independently what
consider, the Christian and common sense
view of this potent. all absorbing aud agitat-
inG question of the turf.
There needs to be a redistribution Of cor
onets among the brute creation. For ages
the lion has been called the king of beasts.
I knock off its coronet and put the crown
upOnthe horse, in every way nobler, whether
in shape, or spirit; or sagacity, or intelli-
gence. or affection, or usefulness. He is
~semihuman, and known how to reason on a
small scale. The centaur of olden times,
part horse and part man. seems to be a sug-
gestion of the fact that the horse is sOme-
thing more than a beast. Job in my text
sets forth his strength, his beauty. his mai
esty. the painting of his %nostril, the paving
Of his hoOf and his enthusiasm for the bat
tie. What Rosa BOnheur did for the cattle
and what Lanlseer did for the dog job with
mightier pencil does for the horse. Eighty
eight times does the Bible speak of him. He
comes into every kincIy possession and into
every great occasion and into every triumph.
1t Is very evident that Job and David and
Isaiah and Ezekiel and jeremiah and John
We're fond of the horse. He comes into much
OF their imagery. A red horse-that meant
war. A black horse-that meant famine. A
pale horse that meant death. A white
hOrsr-that meant victory. Zoo Morderat
months him while Hannah holds the bit. The
church's advance in the Bible is compared
10 a company of horses of Pharaoh's chariot.
Jeremiah cries ont. "HOw canst thou con-
tend with horses" Isaiah SAYS. The horses
hnOfs shall be counted rs flint Miriam
claps her cymhals and sings. "The horse and
the rider hath he thrown into the sea-" st.
John describing Christ as coming forth from
conquest to conquest. represents Him as
seated on n white horse. In the parade of
heaven the Bible makes us hear the clicking
Of hoois On the golden pavement as it says.
"The armies which were in heaven followed
Hin on white horses" / s%hOuld'not wonder
il the horse. so banged, and bruised. and
beaten and outraged on earth, should have
some other place where his wrongs shall be
righted. do not assert it, but | say l
should not be surprised after all st. Johns
l.-,.svti.., 80 A. l.x-n, -, 1a,.-,, ,,-,nI
ont not altogether 20 be fgurative but some
what literal.
As the Bible makes a favorite of the horse,
the patriarch, andthe prophet, and the evan
Celist. and the apostle stroking his sleek hide
and patting his rounded neck, and tenderly
lifting his eXquisitely formed hoof, and
listening with a thrill to the champ Of his
bit, so all great natures in all ages have
spoken of him in encomiastic terms. Virgil
in his Georges almost seems to plagiarize
from this description in the text, so much
are the descriptions alike-the description
of Virgil and the description of Job. The
Duke of Wellington would not allow any one
irreverently TO touch his old warhorse Cop
enhagen, on whom he had ridden fifteen
hours without d~ismOunting at Waterloo,
and when old Copenhagen died his master
ordered a military salute fired over his
grave. John Howard showed that he did
not exhaust all his ~sympathies in plying the
human race, for when sick he writes home,
"Has my old chaise horse become sick or
spOiled?" There is hardly any passage of
French literature more pathetic than the
i.amentation over the death of tho war charg-
err Marchegay. Walter Scott had so much
admiration for this divinely honored crea-
ture of God that in "St. Romans We'll" he
orders the girth slackened Inc the blanket
thrown over the smoking 1anks. Edmund
Burke. walking in the park at Beaconsield,
musing over the past. throws his arms
around the wornout horse of his dead son
Richard, and weeps upon the horses neck,
the horse seeming to sympathize in the mem
cries. Rowland Hill, the great English
preacher, was c~aricatured because in his
family prayers he supplicated for the recov-
cry of a sick horse, but when the horse got
well, contrary to all the prophecies Of the
~farriers, the prayer did not seem quite so
much of an absurdity.
But what shall l say Of the maltreatment
Of this beautiful and wonderful creature of
IGod2 If Thomas Chalmers In his day felt
called upon to preach a sermon against CRU
city to animals, how much more in this day
Is there a need of reprehensive discourse!
ALI honor to the memoryo of Professor Bergh,
the chief apostle for the brute creation, for
the mercy he demanded and achieved for this
king OF beasts. A man who owned 1000
horses, and some say 40, 900, wrote in tho
Bible, "a righteous man ~regardeth the life
of his beast" Sir Henry L~awrence's care OF
the horse was beautifully Christian. "He
SAYS: az expect we shall lose Conrad, though
l have taken so much care OF him that he
NAV come in cool. l always walk him the
last four or five miles, and as ! walk myself
the first hour, 1t is only in the middle of the
Journey we get over the ground" The Ett-
rick Shepherd In his matchless "Ambrosial
Nights speaks Of the maltreatment OF tho
-.,..foa hHaanla.,- 40 NOT
believe in the TRANSPORTATION OF souls. but l
cannot very severely denounce the idea, for
when | see men who cut and bruise n
yhack and welt and strike and maui n out
rage and insult the horse, that beautiful
servant of the human race. who carries our
burdens and pulls our plows and turns our
thrashers and our mills n runs for our
d~octOrs-when | soo men thus beating and
abusing ard o%utraging that creature, ii seems
to me that it would be only fair that the
doctrine OF TRANSPORTATION of souls should
prove true, and that for their punishment
they should pass over into some poor miser.
able brute and be beaten and whacked and
cruelty treated aud frozen and heated and
Z oyerridden-into an everlasting stage horse,
an eternal traveller on a towpath, or tied to
an eternal post, in an eternal winter, smlt-
ten with eternal ~epiZoOticsl
There is a delusion abroad In the world
that a thing must be necessarily good and
Christian ii it is slow and dull and plodding.
There are very few good people who seem to
imagine It is humbly pious to drive a
spawned. CALLED, glandered, spring halted,
blind staggered Jade. There is not 50 much
virtue in a Rosinante as In a Bucephalus.
We want swifter horses, and swifter men,
and swifter enterprises, and the church OF
God needs to get of its jog trot. Quick tenn
pests, quick ~lightnings, quick steams; why
not Quick horsesf In the time of war the
cavalry service does the most execution, and
Rs the battles of the world are probably not
all past, our Christi"n patriotism demands
that we be interest," / in equinal velocity.
We might as we'll have poorer guns in our
a|rsenals and clumsier ships In our navy
wards than other Nations as to have under
our cavalry saddles and before our par&s Of
artillery slower horses. From the battle OF
Granicus, where the Persian horses drove
The Macedonian infantry into the river,
clear down TO tho horses on which Philip
Sheridan and Stonewall Jackson rode into
the fray. this arm OF the military service
has been recognized. Hamilcar, Hanni'
bal, Gustavus A%dOlphus, Marshal Ney We're