Connecticut western news., 1899-12-21
PILLARS OF SMOKE.
TRIALS OF TRUTH EXPRESSED WITH
 A BIBLICAL SYMBOL.

TRIALS OF TRUTH EXPRESSED WITH
 A BIBLICAL SYMBOL.
 Rev. Dr.. TalmaGe Sets Forth the Suf-
 fering of the Church of God In a Powerful sermon-A Plea For Unity of EndeavOr.
 tCopyright, Louis Klopsch, 1soo.l
 WAsHINGToN, Dec. IT. = The trials through which the truth has struggled are by Dr. Talmage here set forth un- der a Bible symbol of great suggestive ness and power; text, Solomon's Song, iii, 6, "Who Is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoker
 The architecture of the smoke is won- lrous, whether God with his finger curves 1t into a cloud, or rounds it into dome, or points it in spire, or spreads it in a wing, or, as in the text, hoists 1t in pillar. Watch 1t winding up from the country farmhouse in the early morning, showing that the pas toral industries have begun, or see 1t ascending from the chimneys of the city, telling of the homes fed, the fac tories turning out valuable fabrics, the printing presses preparing book and newspaper and all the 10000 wheels of work in motion. On clear day this yapor spoken of mounts with such buoyancy, and spreads such delicate veil across the sky, and traces such graceful lines of circle and semicircle, and waves and losses and sinks and soars and scatters with such afhuence of shape and color and suggestiveness that, if you have never noticed 1t, you are like a man who has all his life l1v- ed in Paris and yet never seen the Luxembourg, or all his life in Rome and never seen the Vatican, or all his life at Lockport and never seen Niagara. Forty-four times the Bible speaks of the smoke, and 1t is about time that somebody preached sermon recogniz- ing this strange, weird, beautiful, eias- tic, charming, terrific and fascinating vapor. Across the Bible sky floats the smoke of Sinai, the smoke of Sodom, the smoke of Ali, the smoke of the pit, the smoke of the volcanic hills when God touches them, and in my text the glorious church of God coming up out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke.
 In the first place, these pillars of smoke in my text indicate the suffer ing the church of God has endured. What do I mean by the church? mean not a building, not sect, but those who in all ages and all lands and of all beliefs love God and are trying to do right. For many centuries the heavens have been black with the smoke of martyrdom. If set side by side, you could girdle the earth with the fires of ersecution-Rowland Fay Tor burned at Hadleigh, Latimer burn ed at Oxford, John Rogers burned at Smithfeld, John Hooper burned at Gloucester, John Huss burned at Con- stance, Lawrence Saunders burned at Coventry, Joan of Arc burned at Rouen.
 Catholics and Protestants.
 Protestants have represented Cath Olics as having monopoly of perse- cutOrs, but both Protestant and Cath ollie have practiced infamous cruelties. The Catholics during the reign of Hun neric were by Protestants put to the worst tortures, stripped of their cloth
 
 weights suspended from their feet, then let down, and ears and eyes, nose and tongue were amputated, and red hot plates of iron were put against the tenderest part of their bodies.
 George Bancroft, the historian, says of the state of Maryland: "In the land which Catholics had opened to Prot estants mass might not be said public ly, no Catholic priest or bishop might utter his faith in voice of persuasion, no Catholic might teach the young. If Q wayward child of a papist would but become an apostate, the law wrest- ed for him from his parents a share of their property. Such were the meth ods adopted to prevent the growth of popery."
 Catholicism as well as Professionalism has had its martyrs. 1t does seem as If when any one sect got complete dominancy in any land the devil of per secution and cruelty took possession of that sect. Then see the Catholics after the Huguenots. See the gentiles after the Jews in Touraine, where a great pit was dug and fire lighted at the bottom of the pit, and 160 Jewish victims were consumed. See the Pres byterian parliament of England, more tyrannical in their treatment of op- ponents than had been the criminal courts. Persecution against the Bap- lists by P@do-Baptists,- persecution of the Established church against the Methodist church, persecution against the Quakers, persecution against the Presbyterians. Under Emperor Diocle- tian 144,0OO Christians were massa- cred, and 100000 more of them died from punishment and exposure.
 Witness the sufferings of the Wal denses, of the Albigenses, of the Nes- torians. Witness St. Bartholomew's massacre. Witness the Duke of Ava : driving out of life 18,0O0 Christians. Witness Herod and Nero and Decius and Hildebrand and Torquemada and Earl of Montfort and Lord Claver- house, who, when told that he must give account for his cruelties, said, 'I have no need to account to man, and as for God I will take him In my own hands," A red line runs through the church history of l 300 years, a line of blood. Not by the hundreds of thou sands, but by the millions, must we count those slain for Christ's sake. No wonder JohA Milton put the groans of the martyrs to an immortal tune, writ ing:
 Ayenge, o Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose
 bones
 Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold.
 The smoke of martyrs homes and martyrs bodies if rolling up all at once would have eclipsed the monday sun and turned the brightest day the world ever saw into a midnight. "Who is this that cometh up out of the wilder ness like pillars of smokew
 Has persecution ceaseuT ASK that young man who is trying to be a Christian in a store or factory, where from morning to night he Is the butt of