Connecticut western news., 1896-12-03
THE DYING CENTURY.
REV. DR. TALMAGE MAKES A CHEER
 FuL PROPHECY.


 FUL PROPHECY.
 He Reviews the Achievements of the Hun-
 dred Years About Closing-Great Prog
 ress In Art, Science and Relixion-work :, We'll Done.
 WASHINGTON, Nov. 29.-Considering the time and place of it's delivery, this sermon of Dr. Talmage is of absorbing and startling interest. It is not only na- tional, but international in its signifi- canoe. His subject was ''The Dying Century" and the text, II Kings xx, l, "Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die and not live"
 Ne alarm bell do ring in the utter ance of this text, for in the healthy glow of your countenances find cause only for cheerful prophecy, but shall apply the text as spoken in the ear of Heze- kiah, down with bad carbuncle, to the nineteenth century, now closing. It will take only four more long breaths, each year breath. and the century will ex- pire. My theme is ''The Dying Gen. tury." discuss it at an hour when our national legislature is about to assemble, some of the members now here present and others soon to arrive from the north, south, east and west. All the public con- veyances coming this way will bring i'm portant additions of public men, so that when on Dec. 2, at high noon, the gay eis of senate and house of representa- tives shall lift and fall, the destinies of this nation, and through it the destinies of all nations struggling to be free, will be put on solemn and tremendous trial. Amid such intensifying circumstances stand by the venerable century and ad- dress it in the words of my text, "Thus saith the Aord, Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die and not live"
 Plain Talk. Eternity is too big subject for us to understand. Some one has said it is great clock that says Trick" in one century and "Tackl' in another. But we can better understand old time, who has many children-and they are the centuries-and many grandchildren and they are the years. With the dying nineteenth century we shall this morn ing have plain talk, telling him some of the good things he has done, and then telling him some of the things he ought to adjust before he quits this sphere and passes out to join the eternities. We generally wait until people are dead before we say much in praise of them. Funeral eulogium is generally very pa thetio and eloquent with things that ought to have been said years before. We put on cold tombstones what we ought to have put in the warm ears of the living. We curse Charles Sumner while he is living and cudgel him into spinal meningitis and wait until, in the rooms where I have been living the last year, he puts his hand on his heart and cries "Oh" and is gone, and then we make long procession in his honor, Dr. Sunderland, chaplain of the American senate, accompanying, stopping long enough to allow the dead senator to lie in state in Independence hall, Philadel- phia, and halting at Boston statehouse, where not long before damnatory reso- lutions had been passed in regard to him, and then move on amid the toll ing bells and the boom of minute guns until we bury him at Mount Auburn and cover him with flowers five feet deep. What 8 pity he could not have been awake at his own funeral to hear the gratitude of the nationl What pity that one green leaf could not have been taken from each one of the mortuary garlands and put upon his table while he was yet alive at the Arlingtonl What a pity that out of the great choirs who ohanted at his obsequies one little girl, dressed in white, might not have sung to his living ear complimentary solol The post mortem expression contradict ed the antemortem. The nation could not have spoken the truth both times about Charles Sumner. Was it before or after his decease it lied2 No such in- justice shall be inflicted upon this ven- erable nineteenth century.
 A Century's Inventions.
 Before he goes we recite in his hearing some of the good things he has accom- plished. What an addition to the worlds intelligence he has madel Look at the old schoolhouse, with the snow sitting through the roof and the filthy tin cup hanging over the water pail in the cor ner, and the little victims on the long benches without backs, and the illiterate echoolmaster with his hickory gad, and then look at our modern palaces of free schools, under men and women cultured and refined to the highest excellence, so that, whereas in our childhood we had to be whipped to go to school, children now cry when they cannot go. Thank you, venerable century, while at the same time we thank Godl What an ad- dition to the worlds inventions-with- in our century the cotton gin, the agri- cultural machines for planting, reaping and thrashing; the telegraph; the pho- nograph, capable of preserving a human voice from generation to generation the typewriter, that rescues the world from worse and worse penmanship, and ste nography, capturing from the lips of the swiftest speaker more than 900 words a minute. Never was I so amazed at the facilities of our time as when, a few days ago, telegraphed from Washing ton to New York long and elaborate manuscript, and few minutes after, to show it's accuracy, it was read to me through the long distance telephone. and it was exact down to the last semi colon and comma. What hath God wrought Oh, am so glad was not born soonerl For the tallow candle the electric light; for the writhings of the surgeons table God given anesthetics, and the whole physical organism ex- plored by sharpest instrument and giv- ing not so much pain as the taking of a splinter from under child's finger nail {; ! for the numbering stagecoach the Him. , ited express train. And there is the spectroscope of Fraunhofer, by which our modern scientist feels the pulse of other worlds throbbing with light.
 Jenner's arrest by inoculation Of one