Connecticut western news., 1899-01-05
THE DAWNING YEAR.
DR. TALMAGE GIVES OUT SOME APT
 NEW YEAR THOUGHTS.


 Should It Be Measured by Misfor-
 tune-wealth Makes Very Poor
 Ynrdstick.
 ICopyright. 1898, by American Press Asso-
 ciation.l
 WASHINGTON, Jan. 1.-Appropriate to the exit of one year and the entrance of another year are the practical sug- gestions which Dr. Talmage puts in this discourse, which propose different mode of measuring time from that or dinarily employed; text, Genesis xvii, 8, "How old art thouf'
 The Egyptian capital was the focus of the worlds wealth. In ships and barges there had been brought to 1t from India frankincense and cinnamon and ivory and diamonds; from the north, marble and iron; from Syria, purple and silk from Greece, some of the finest horses of the world and some of the most brilliant chariots, and from all the earth that which could best please the eye and charm the ear and gratify the taste. There were temples afame with red sandstone, entered by the gateways that were guarded by pill lars bewildering with hieroglyphics and wound with brazen serpents and adorned with winged creatures, their eyes and beaks and pinions glittering with pre- oious stones; there were marble col umps blooming into white flower beds; there were stone pillars, at the top bursting into the shape of the lotus when in full bloom.
 Along the avenues, lined with sphinx and fane and obelisk, there were princes who came in gorgeously upholstered palanquins, carried by servants in scar iet or elsewhere drawn by vehicles, the snow white horses, golden bitted and six abreast, dashing at full run. On floors of mosaic the glories of Pharaoh were spelled out in letters of porphyry and beryl and flame. There were orna- ments twisted from the wood of tama- risk, embossed with silver breaking into foam. There were footstools made out of single precious stone. There were beds fashioned out of orouched lion in bronze. There were chairs spot ted with the sleek hides of leopards There were sofas footed with the claws of wild beasts and armed with the beaks of birds. AS you stand on the level beach of the sea on 8 summer day and look either way, and there are miles of breakers, white with the ocean foam, dashing shoreward, so it seemed as if the sea of the worlds pomp and wealth in the Egyptian capital for miles and miles flung itself up into white breakers of marble temple, mau soleum and obelisk.
 It was to this capital and the palace of Pharaoh that Jacob, the plain shep- herd. came to meet his son Joseph, who he'd become prime minister in the royal apartment. Pharaoh and Jacob met, dignity and rusticity, the gracefulness of the court and the plain manners of the field. The king, wanting to make the old country man at ease and seeing how white his beard is and how feeble his step, looks familiarly into his face and says to the aged man, "How old art thou?"
 Last night the gate of eternity opened to let in amid the great throng of de- parted centuries the soul of the dying year. Under the twelfth stroke of the brazen hammer of the city clock the patriarch fell dead, and the stars of the uikub W6Td tu6 IuD6Tdl tUICu6S. u IS most fortunate that on this road of life there are go many milestones on which we can read just how fast we are going toward the journeys end. I feel that 1t is not an Inappropriate question that I ask today when 1 look into your faces and say, as Pharaoh did to Jacob, the patriarch, "How old art thou?"
 How Life Is Measured.
 People who are truthful on every other subject lie about their ages, so that I do not solicit from you any literal response to the question I have asked. would put no one under temptation, but simply want this morning to see by what rod it is we are measuring our earthly existence. There is right way and wrong way of measuring door, or wall, or an arch, or tower, and so there is right way and a wrong way of measuring our earthly existence. It is with lSference to this higher mean ing that confront you this morning with the stupendous question of the text and ask, "How old art thou?"
 There are many who estimate their life by mere worldly qualification. When Lord Dundas was wished happy new year, he said, Ut will have to be happier year than the past, for hadn't one happy moment in all the 12 months that have gone. :" But that has not been the experience of most of us. We have found that though the world is blasted with sin it is very bright and beauti- ful place to reside in. We have had joys innumerable. There is no hostility between the gospel and the merriments and the festivities of life. I do not think that we fully enough appreciate the worldly pleasures God gives us. When you recount your enjoyments, you do not go far enough back. Why do you not go back to the time when you were an infant in your mothers arms, look ing up into the heaven of her smile; to those days when you filled the house with the uproar of boisterous merri- ment when you shouted as you pitched the ball on the playground; when on the cold, sharp winter night, muffied up, on skates you shot out over the re- sounding ice of the pond? Have you for gotten all those good days that the Lord gave you! Were you never boy? Were you never a girl? Between those times and this how many mercies the Lord has bestowed upon youi How many joys have breathed up to you from the flowers and shone down to you from the stars and chanted to you with the voice of soaring bird and tumbling cascade and booming sea and thunders that with bayonets of fire charged down the noun tain sidel Joyl Joyi Joy If there is any one who has right to the enjoy ments of the world, it is the Christian, for God has given him lease of every thing in the promise, "All are yours. But have to tell you that man who estimates his life on earth by mere worldly qualification is a most unwise man. Our life is not to be game of { L.