The Banner-Democrat. [volume] (Lake Providence, East Carroll Parish, La.) 1892-current, 1896-04-25
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
A Discussion Apropos of the Part
ing Blizzard Of Winter.
The Warmth of Christ's righteousness
and Love-How the World Shall
be Heated-The Benign Pow
er OF Saving Grace.

Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage took q
timely topic during the recent freez
ing storms that swept the country, APP
parently as the parting blizzard Of
winter. He took for his text:
Who can stand before His colds-Psain
cxivii., IL.
The almanac says that winter is
ended and spring has come, but the
winds, and the frosts, and the Their
mometer, in some places down to zero,
deny it. The Psalmist lived in a more
genial 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 describes the congealment of low
est temperature. We have all studied
the heat. How few of us have studied
the power of the frost! who can
stand before his cold?" This
challenge of the text has many
times been accepted. October 10,
1912, Napoleon's great army
began its retreat from Moscow. One
hundred and fifty thousand men, 50,-
900 horses, 600 pieces of cannon, 10000
stragglers. 1t was bright weather
when they started from Moscow, but
soon something wrathier than the Cos
sacks swooped upon their tanks. An
army Of arctic blasts, with icicles for
bayonets and hailstones for shot, and
commanded by voice of tempest,
marched after them. The flying ar
tillery OF the heavens in pursuit. The
troops at nightfall would gather into
circles and huddle themselves 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 snow drifts, and on the hard sur
faces of the chill rivers, and into the
inaws of the dogs that had followed
them from Moscow. The freezing hor-
ror which has appalled, history was
proof to all ages that it is vain thing
for any earthly power to accept the
challenge of my text: "Who could
stand before His cold?'
In the middle of December, TIT, at
Valley Forge, 1900 troops were, with
frosted ears and frosted hands and
frosted feet, without shoes, without
blankets, lying on the white pillow of
the snow bank. As during our civil
war the cry was: ION to Richmond"
when the troops were not ready to
march, so in the revolutionary war
there was demand for wintry cam
paign until Washington lost his equi-
librium and wrote emphatically: II
assure those gentlemen it is easy
enough seated by good fireside and
in comfortable homes to draw out
campaigns for the American army;
but l tell them it is not so
easy to lie on bleak hill
side, without blankets and without
shoes" Oh, the frigid horrors
that gathered around the American
army in the winter of 1777l Valley
Forge was one of the tragedies of the
century. Benumbed, senseIess, dead!
'sWho can stand before His cold?" mot
we," say the frozen lips of Sir John
Franklin and his men, dying in Arctic
''Not we," answer
Schwatka and his crew, falling back
from the fortress of ice which they
had tried in vain to capture. ''Not
we," say the abandoned and crushed
decks of the Intrepid, the Re-
ristance and the Jeanette. mot
we,. say the procession of Amer
can martyrs returned home
FOR American sepulture, De Long and
his men. The highest pillars of the
sarth are pillars of ice-Mont Blanc,
Jungfrau, the Matterhorn. The larg-
Est galleries of the world are galleries
If ice. Some of the mighty rivers
much of the year are in captivity of
ce. The greatest sculptors of the
lges are the glaciers, with arm and
,and and chisel and hammer of ice.
The cold is imperial and has crown
If glittering crystal, and is seated on
! throne of ice, with footstool of |
ce and scepter of ice. Who can
ell the sufferings of the winter of |
433, when all the birds of Germany
,erished? Or the winter of 1858 in En-
,land, when the stages rolled on the |
Thames, and temporary houses of mer-
were built on the ice? Or the |
winter of 1921 in America, when New |
FORK harbor was frozen over and the |
teams crossed on the ice to |
staten Island? Then come down to |
'ur own winters, when there have |
'een so many wrapping themselves in
urs, or gathering themselves around |
Tres, or threshing their arms about |
hem to revive circulation-the mil |
ions of the temperate and the arctic
ones who are compelled to confess:
None of us can stand before His
old
One-half of the industries of our day
ire employed in battling inclemency
# the weather. The furs of the north, |
he cotton of the south, the fax of our
'wn fields, the wool of our own fiocks,
he coal from our own mines, the wood
rom our own forests, all employed |
n battling these inclemencies, and
still every winter, with blue lips and
SCATTERING teeth, answers: None of
Is can stand before His cold" Now.
his being such a cold world, l am
glad that the God of the frost is the
Tod of the heat; that the God
# the snow is the God of the
White blossoms; that the God of