Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1898-05-11
SERMONS OF THE DAY,
The Subject of the Address "The Sword,
Its Mission and Its Doom'-Nighty
When Welded In n Righteous Cause
Great Achievements Wrought by Arms.

The Subject of the Address "The Sword
Its Mission and Its DoOm"-Nighty
When Welded In n Righteous Cause
Great Achievements Wrought by Arms.
TEXT: my sword shall be bathed in
heaven."-Isaiah, xxxiv., 5.
1T has come ut last-the war that we
nave prayed Almighty God might be
averted. The prows of the battle-ships are
cutting the seas, and troops from all the
States of the American Union are on the
way to the front. All the arts of diplomacy
have failed, and momentous questions are
10 be decided in battle on sea and land
Three results will be edemonstrated-the in
dependence of Cuba, the rebuke of Spanish
cruelty, and the triumph of the United
states army and navy.
Three hundred and fifty-one times does
the Bible speak of that sharp, KEEN curved,
ineXorable weapon, which flashes upon us
from the text-the sword. Sometimes the
mention is applaudatory, and sometimes
damDatory, sometimes as drawn, sOme-
times as sheathed. In the Bible, and in
much secular literature, the sword repre-
sents all javelins, all muskets all carbines
all guns, all police clubs, all battle-axes.
all weaponry for physical defense or attack.
1t would be AN interesting thing to give the
history OF the plow, and follow its furrow
all down through the ages, from the first
crop in Chaldea to the last crop in Mime
sofa. 1t would be interesting to follow the
pen as it has tracked its way on down
through the literature of nations, from its
first word in the first book to the last word
which some author last night wrote as he
closed his manuscript. 1t would be an in
teresting thing to count the echoes of the
hammer from the first nail driven down
through all the mechanism of centuries to
the last stroke in the carpenters shop OF
yesterday. propose to-day speaking of a
hnt l,.,s a =
plow nor pen nor hammer ever accom-
plished. My theme is the sword, its mis-
sion, and its doom.
The sword of the text was bathed in
heaven; that is, it was n sword of right
eousness, as another sword may be bat he'd
in hell, and the sword of cruelty and
wrong. There is great difference be-
tween the word of Winklereid and the
sword of Cataline, between the sword of
Leonidas and the sword of Benedict Arnold.
In our effort to hasten the end of war we
have hung the sword with abuses and exc
crations, when it has had divine mission,
as when in many crises of the worlds his
tory it has swung for liberty and Justice,
civilization and righteousness and God
At the very opening of the Bible and on the
east side of the Garden of Eden God placed
flaming sword to defend the tree of life
OF the officer of the law, st. Paul declares:
He beareth not the sword in vain >
Through Moses God comm andei: Put
every man his sword by his side David,
IN his prayer, says: 'Gird Thy sword upon
Thy thigh, o most mighty One of the
battle-shouts of the Old Testament was:
The sword of the Lord and Gideon
Christ, in great exigency, said that such
weapon was more important than a coat,
for he declared: He that hath no sword
let him sell his garment and buy one.
Again he declared: L come not to send
peace, but a sword OF Christ's second
coming, it is said: 'Out of His mouth went
a sharp, two-edged sword. Thus. some
times hguratively, but often literally the
divine mission of the sword is announced.
''What more consecrated thing in the
world than Joshuas sword, or Caleb,s
sword, or Gideon's sword, or David's
sword, or WashinSton's sword or Marion 5
sword, or Lafayette's sword, or Yelling
tons sword, or Garibaldi's sword, or hun
dreds of thousands of American swords
that have again and again been bathed in
heaven. Swords of that kind have been
the best friends of the human race. They
have slain tyrannies. pried open dungeons.
and cleared the way for nations in their
onward march. 1t was better for them to
take the sword and be free, than lie under
the oppressor's heel and suffer-
There Is something worse than death.
and that Is life III 1t must cringe and crouch
before the wrong. Turn over the leaves OF
the worlds history and find that there has
utNtI DctH IL StODptu or u DhrIOn
liberated except by the sword. am not
talking to you about the way things ought
to be, but about the way they have been.
What force drove back the Saracens at
Tours, and kept Europe from being over
whelmed by Mohammedanism. and, sub
sequently, all America given over to
MOhammedanism? The sword of Charles
Martell and his men. Who can deal enough
in infinities to tell what was accomplished
for the worlds good by the sword of Joan
of Arc? Years ago L looked off and saw in
the distance the battlefield of Marathon.
and l asked myself what was it that on
that most tremendous day in history
stopped the Persian hosts, representing not
only Persia, but Egypt, and Tripoli, and
Afghanistan, and Beloochis.an. and
Armenia; host that had Asia under foot
and proposed to put Europe under foot.
and, if successful in that battle, would
have submerged by Asiatic barbarism,
quence, in after time, American civiliza-
ton? The swords of Miltiades, and
Themostocles, and Aristides. At the waving
of these swords the eleven thousand Ian
GERS of Athens on the run, dashed against
the one hundred thousand insolent Persians
and trampled them down or pushed them
back into the sea. The swords of that day
saved the best part of the hemispheres n
trinity of keen steel flashing In the two
lights-the light of the setting sun of bar
barism, the light of the rising sun of civil
ization. Hail to these three great swords
bathed in heavenl
"What put an end to Infamous Louis
XVI.'s plan of universal conquest, by which
England would have been made to kneeI
on the steps of the Tuileries, and the Anglo
Saxon race would have been halted and all
Europe paralyzed? The sword Of Marl-
borough, at Blenheim. Time came when
t.: ;oman war eagles, whose beaks had
belA punched into the heart of nations,
must be brought down from their eyries.
All other attempts had disgracefully failed
but the Germans, the mightiest nation for
Drawn and brain, undertook the work, and
under God, succeeded. What drove back
the Roman cavalry till the horses wounded
flung their riders and the last rider per-
ished, and the Hercynian forest became the
scene of Rome's humiliation? The brave
sword the triumphant sword of Arminius.
"While passing through France my nerves
tingled with excitement, and L rose in the
car the better to see the tle-field of
Chalons, the mounds and breastworks still
visible, though nearly five hundred years
ago they were Shoveled uD. Here, Attila
the heather monster, called by himself the
'Scourge of God, for the punishment of
Christians his life n massacre of nations
came to ignominious defeat and he put int o
one great pile the wooden saddles of his
cavalry, and the spoils of the cities and
kingdoms he had sacked and placed on top
of this holocaust the woman who had ac-
companied him in his devastating march,
ordering that the torch be put to the pile.
What power broke that sword and stayed
that red scourge of cruelty that was rolling
over Europe? The sword Of Theodore
and Actius.
''To come down to later ages, ali intel
ligent Englishmen unite with all intelli-
gent Americans in saying that it was the
best thing that the American colonies
swung off from the government of Great
Britain. 1t would have been the worst
absurdity of four thousand years il this
continent should have continued in loyalty
"a. al l,ar Sil.. laf th4.