The Iola register., 1896-03-20
WARNING THE WORLD.
DR.. Talmage Wants to See More
Christian Sympathy.
a Great Furnace Needed In All ths
Churches to Warm Up the People to
Their Duty-Old Time Enthu-
siasm Invoked.

Rev. 7. De Witt Talmage in Washing
ton on the need of more warmth and
zeal among Christian people. His text
was from Psalms l47;17: ''Who can
stand before His cold" DR.. Talmage
said:
The almanac says that winter is end
ed and spring has come, but the winds
and frosts, and the thermometer, in
some places down to zero, deny it.
The Psalmist lived in a more congenial
| climate than this, and yet he must
sometimes have been cut by the sharp
weather. In this chapter he speaks of
/ the snow-like wool, the frost-like ashes,
the hailstones like marbles, and de-
scribes the congealment of lowest tenn
perature. We have all studied the
power of the heat. How few of us
have studied the power of the frost?
"Who can stand before His coldP'
This challenge of the text has many
times been accepted. October 19, 1872,
Napoleon's great army began its re-
treat from Moscow. One hundred
and fifty thousand men, $4,000
horses, 600 pieces of cannon,
10000 stragglers 1t was bright
weather when they started from Mos
COW, but soon something wrathier
than the Cossacks swooped upon their
fanks. An army of Arctic blasts, with
icicles for bayonets and hailstones for
shot, and commanded by voice of
tempest, marched after them. The
flying artillery of the heavens in pur-
suit. The troops at nightfall would
gather into circles and huddle them
selves together for warmth, but when
the day broke they rose not, for they
were dead, and the ravens came for
their morning meal of corpses. The
way was strewn with the rich stuffs of
the east, brought as booty from the
Russian capital. An invisible power
seized 100, 900 men and hurled them
dead into the snowdrifts, and on the
hard surfaces of the chill rivers, and
into the maws of the dogs that had
followed them from Moscow.
The freezing horror which has ap-
palled history was proof to all ages
that it is vain thing for any earthly
power to accept the challenge of my
text: "Who can stand before His cold?"
In the middle of December, 1777, at
Valley Forge, 1000 troops were, with
frosted ears and frosted shoes, without
blankets, lying on the white pillow of
the snow bank. As during our civil
war the cry was ION to Richmondr'
when troops were not ready to march,
SO in the revolutionary war there was
a demand for wintry campaign until
Washington lost his equilibrium and
wrote emphatically: 81 assure those
gentlemen it is easy enough, seated by
a good fireside and in comfortab BILE
homes, to draw out campaigns for the
American army; but 1 tell them it is
not easy to lie on bleak hillside with.
out blankets and without shoes" Oh,
the frigid horrors that gathered around
the American army in the winter OF
1777! Valley Forge was one of the trag'
edies of the century. Benumbed, sense.
less, dead! "Who can stand before His
cold?" Not we," say the frozen lips
of Sir John Franklin and his men,
dying in Arctic exploration. mot
we," answer Schwatka and his crew,
falling back from the fortresses of ice
which they had tried in vain to cap
ture. mot we," say the abandoned
and crushed decks of the Intrepid, the
Resistance and the Jeanette. mot
we," say the procession of American
martyrs returned home for American
sepulture, DeLong and his men. The
highest pillars of the earth are pillars
of ice: Mont Blanc, Jungfrau, the Mat
| 90 ho lor nf no
world are galleries of ice. Some OF
the mighty rivers much of the year are
in captivity of ice. The greatest sculp-
tors of the ages are the glaciers, with
arm and hand and chisel and hammer
of ice The cold is imperial and has a
crown of glittering crystal and is seat
ed on throne of ice, with footstool of
ice and scepter of ice. Who can tell
the sufferings of the winter of 1888,
when all the birds of Germany per-
ished? or the winter of 1858 in En-
gland, when the stages rolled on the
Thames and temporary houses of mer-
chandise were built on the ice? or the
winter of 1921 in America, when New
York har Dor was frozen over and the
| heaviest teams crossed on the ice to
Staten island?
Then come down to our own winters,
whes there have been so many wrap
ping themselves in furs, or gathering
themselves around fires, or threshing
their arms about them to revive circu-
lation-the millions of the temperate
and the Arctic zones who are compelled
to confess, none of us can stand be-
fore His cold"
One-half of the industries of our day
are employed in battling inclemency
of the weather. The furs of the north,
the cotton of the south, the fax of our
own fields, the wool of our own f1ocks,
the wood from our own forests, all en-
ployed in battling these inciemencies,
and still every winter, with blue lips
and chattering teeth, answers: None
of us can stand before His cold" Now
this being such cold world, God sends
out influences to warm it am glad
that the God of the frost is the God of
the heat; that the God of the snow is
the God of the white blossoms; that
the God of January is the God of June.