Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1898-11-14
DIVINE DIRECTION.
FOLLOW GODS GUIDANCE, SAYS THE
REV. DR.. TALMAGE.


Your Sphere of UsefuIness-Do Not
Bother About What Cannot Be
HeIped-A ChiId's Destiny.
copyright 1885, by American Press Asso-
ciation.l
WASHINGTON, Nov. 13.-To all those
who feel they have no especial mis-
sion in the world, this sermon of DR..
Talmage will come as a cheering rev.
elation; text, John xviii, 81, "To this
this end was I born"
After Plate had suicided, tradition
says that his body was thrown into the
Tiber, and such storms ensued on and
about that river that his body was TAX
en- out and thrown into the RhOne, and
similar disturbances swept that river
and its banks Then the body was taken
out aud moved to Lausanne, and put in
deeper pool, which Immediately be-
came the center of similar atmospheric
and aqueous distur Dances. Though these
are fanciful and false traditions, they
show the execration with which the
world looked upon Plate. It was be-
fore this man when he was in full life
and power that Christ was arraigned as
in a court Of oyer and terminer. Plate
said to his prisoner, "Art thou a king,
them" and Jesus answered, "To this
end was I born. =" Sure enough, al
though al, earth and hell arose to keep
him down, he is today empalaced, en-
throned and cCroneted king of earth
and king Of heaven. That is what he
came for, and that is what he accom-
plished.
By the time child reaches ten years
of age the parents begin to discover
that child's destiny, but by the time he
or she reaches fifteen years of age the
question is on the child's lips: "What
shall l do? What am | going to be?
What was I made for?' It is a sensible
and righteous question, and the youth
ought to keep asking it until it is SO
fully answered that the young man, or
young woman, can say with as much
truth as its author, though on a less eX-
pansive scale, ''To this end was l
born. "
There is too much divine skill shown
IN the physical, mental and moral con-
stitution OF the ordinary human being
to suppose that he was constructed
without any divine purpose. If you
take me out On some vast plain and
show me pillared temple surmounted
by a dome like st. Peters, and having
floor of precious stones and arches
that must have taxed the brain of the
greatest craftsman to design and walls
scrolled ard niched and paneled and
wainscoted and painted, and 7 should
ask you what this building was put up
for, and you answered, For nothing
at all, " how could I believe you? And
1t is impossible for me to believe that
any ordinary human being who has il
his muscular, nervous and cerebral Or
ganiZation more wonders than Christie
pher Wren lifted in st. PauI's or
Phidias ever ohiseled on the Acropolis
and built in such way that it shall
last long after St. Paul's cathedral is
as much a ruin as the Parthenon-that
such q being was constructed for no
purpose and TO execute no mission and
without any divine intention toward
some end. The object of this sermon is
TO help you to find out what you are
made for and help you find your sphere
and assist you into that condition where
you can say with certainty and en-
phasis and enthusiasm and triumph
''To this end was born
Selecting an Occupation.
First, discharge you from all re-
sponsibility for most of your environ
ments. You are not responsible for your
parentage or grandparentage You are
not responsible for any of the cranks
that may have lived in your ancestral
line and who 100 years before you were
born may have lived style of life that
more or less affects you today. You are
not responsible for the fact that your
temperament is sanguine or melancholic
or bilious or lymphatic or nervous
Neither are you responsible for the
place of your nativity, whether among
the granite hills of New England or the
cotton plantations of Louisiana or on
the banks of the Clyde or the Dneiper
or the Shannon or the Seine. Neither
are you responsible for the religion
taught in your fathers house, or the
irreligion. Do not bother yourself about
what you cannot help or about circum-
stances that you did not decree.
Take things as they are and decide
the question so that you shall be able
safely to say, ITO this end was born.
How will you decide it? By direct ap-
plication to the only Being in the uni
verse who is competent to tell you-the
Lord Almighty. Do you know the rea-
son why he is the only one who can tell?
Because he can see everything between
your cradle and your grave, though the
grave be 80 years off, and besides that
he is the only Being who can see what
has been happening in the last 500 years
In your ancestral line, and for thou
sands of years clear back to Adam, and
there is not one person in all that an
cestral line of 5000 years but has some
how affected your character, and even
old Adam himself will sometimes turn
I'M in vour disnosifinn The only Raincr