Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1895-10-30
REY. Oh. TaLQgGE.
Tho Brooklyn Divine's Sunday
Sermon.
Subject: "The Designations of tbs
Race Course"

goeth on to meet the armed men. He saith
among the trumpets. ha, ha! and he smelleth
the battle afar of, the thunder of the cap
tains. and the shouting. xxx, 49,
81. 25.
We have recently had long columns of in
telligence from the race course, and multi
tudes focked to the watering places to wit
ness equine con're ION. and there is lively
discussion in ALI nOu..-,.v.,.s, about the right
and wrong of such exhibitions of mettle and
speed. and when there is a heresy abroad
that the cultivation of a horses feetness ID
an iniquity instead of a commenable virtue
at such time sermon is demanded OF
every minister who would like to 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 and 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.
knock off its coronet and put the crown
upon the 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
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 Landseer did for the dog Job with
mightier pencil does for the horse. Eighty
eight times does the Bib'e speak of him. He
comes into every kingly possession and into
every great occasion and into every triumph.
1t Is very evident that Job and David aud
Isaiah and Ezekiel and jeremiah and John
were fond of the horse. He comes into much
OF their imagery. red horse-that meant
war. black horse-that meant famine. A
pale horse that meant death. A white
horse--that meant victory. Good Mordecai
months him while Haman 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. 1.-The horse :
hoofs shall be counted as flint" Miriam
clapS her cymbals 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 white horse. In the parade of
heaven the Bible makes us hear the clickinc 2
of hoofs on the golden pavement as it saws
''The armies which We're in heaven followed
Him on white horses. shOuld'nOt wonder
if the horse. so banged. and bruised. and
beaten and outraged on earth. should have
some ptntF place Wnert his wrongs Snall De
righ;ed. L do not assert it, but | say /
should not be surprised if after all ST. Johns
description of the horses in heaven turned
ont not altogether 20 be figurative but some
what literal.
As the Bible makes n favorite of the hOrsn
the patriarch. and the prophet, and the evan
gelist. and the apostle strokinG his sleek hide
and patting his rounded neck. and tenGerlv
lifting his eXquisitely formed hoof and
listening with 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 aiike-the description
of Virgil and the description of Job. The
Duke of Wellington would not allow any one
irreverentIy 20 touch his old warhorse Cop
enhagen, on whom he had ridden fifteen
hours without dismOunting 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 pitying 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
amentation over the death of the war charg-
er Marchegay. Water Scott had so much
admiration for this divinely honored crea-
ture of God that in ''St. Romans Weil'' he
orders the girth slackened and the blanket
tuIoWh ONtE tllt SillDhluS Ell.iullfl
Burke. walking in the park at Beaconsfeld,
musinS 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
ories. Rowland Hill, the great English
preacher, was caricatured because in his
family prayers he supplicated for the recov-
cry of 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 aSsurdity.
But what shall say of the maltreatment
of this beautiful and wonderful creature of
God? If Thomas Chalmers in his day felt
called upon to preach a sermon against ocu-
city to animals, how much more in this day
is there a need of reprehensive discourse.
ALI honor to the memory 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
Bible, "a righteous man regardeth the life
of his beast" Sir Henry Lawrence's care OF
the horse was beautifully Christian. "He
says: 81 expect we shall lose Conrad, though
have taken SO much care of him that he
may come in cool. I 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 the
horse as a practical blasphemy. 1 do not
believe in the transmigration of souls. but
cannot very severely denounce the idea. for
when l see men who cut and bruise and
whack and welt and strike and maui and 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 and runs for our
doctors-when l seq men thus beating and
abusing ard outraging that creature. it seems
to me that it would be only fair that the
doctrine Of transmigration 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
overridden-into an everlasting stage horse,
an eternal traveller on a towpath, or tied to
an eternal post, in an eternal winter, smit-
ten with eternal epizootics!
There is a delusion abroad in the world
that thing must be necessarily good and
There are very few good people who seem to
imagine it is humbly pious to drive q
spawned. CALLED, glandered, spring halted,
blind staggered jade. There is not so much
virtue in a Rosinanto as In a Bucephalus.
We want swifter horses, and swifter men,
God needs to get offits jog trot. Quick tenn
pests. quick lightnings, quick steams; why
not quick horses2 In the time of war the
cavalry service does the most execution and
as the battles of the world are probably not
all past, our Christian patriotism demands
that we be interest in equinal velocity.
We might as we'll have poorer guns in our
arsenals and clumsier ships in our navy
yards than other Nations as to have under
our cavalry saddles and before our parks OF
artillery slower horses. From the battle OF
Granicus. where the Persian horses drove
the Macedonian infantry into the river.
clear down to the horses on which Philip
Sheridan and Stonewau Jackson rode into
the fray. this arm OF the military service
has been recognized. Hamilcar, Hanni-
bal. Gustavus Adolphus, Marshal Ney were
cavalrymen. In this arm of the service
Charles Martel at the battle of Poitiers beat
back the Arab invasion. The Carthaginian
cavalry, with the loss Of only 7U0 men, over
threw the Roman army with the loss of TO-
900. In the same way the Spanish chivalry
drove back the Moorish hordes. The best
way to keep peace in this country and in all
&oH -zI g.