Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1896-11-30
THE DYING CENTURY.
REV. DR.. TALMAGE MAKES A CHEER
Full PROPHECY.

ress In Art, Science and feisgion-yorl
Well Done.
WAsHINGToN, Nov 20 Considering
the time and place of IFS delivery, this
sermon of Dr. Talmage is of absorbing
and startling interest. It is not only ma
tional, but international in its signifi-
cance His subject was The Dying
Century, and the text. II Kings Xxx, 1,
f'Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house
in order, for thou shalt die and not
live .
No alarm bell do J. ring in the otter
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 q breath. and the century will ex-
pire. My theme is THE Dying Cen
fury. discuss it al 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, 50 that
when on Dec. z, at high noon, the CAV
els 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 adj
dress it in the words of my text, THUS
c.-1f I, Ia Co+ 4, So
for thou shalt die and not live =
Plain Talk
Eternity is too big subject for us to
understand Some one has said it is a
great clock that says Tick in one
century and "Tack!'' liz 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 a 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
thetic 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
crIpC ss0ht'' and 1c xuQ
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 hating at Boston statehouse,
where not long before damnatory reso-
buttons 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 pity he could not have
been awake at his own funeral to hear
the gratitude of the natiOni What a pity I
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 Arlington What
a pity that out of the great choirs who
chanted at his obsequies one little girl,
dressed in white, might not have sung
to his living ear a complimentary soloi
The post mortem expression contradict
ed the antenlortem. The nation could
not have spoken the truth both times
about Charles Sumner. Was it before !
or after his decease it lied? No such in
justice shall be inflicted upon this ven
cradle nineteenth century,
A Century's Inventions.
Before he goes we recite in his hearing
some of tho good things he has accom-
plished What an addition to the worlds
intelligence he has madel Look at tho
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 |
schoolmaster with his hickory CAD, 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 God! What an adj
dition to the worlds inventions-wlth |
in our century the cotton gin. the agri-
cultural machines for planting, reaping
and thrashing; the telegraph; the pho
nograph, capable Of preserving human
voice from generation to generation; the
typewriter, that rescues the world fros,
worse and worse penmanship, and ste
biography. capturing from the lips Of the
swiftest speaker more than 900 words /.
minute. Never was I SO amazed at the |
facilities of our time as when, q few