The Grenada sentinel. [volume] (Grenada, Miss.) 1868-1955, 1900-07-14
RELIGION OF CHRIST.
Dr.. Talmage Says 1t Is a Preven-
tive of This Worlds Ills.
An Active Principle which constants
ly works for the Welfare OF
Pody. Mind and Soul-A
Mighty Antiaeptic.
copyright, 1900, by Louis Klopsch.1
WASHINGTON.

Dr.. Talmage Is now travelling in Nor
way, where he has been deeply inter
ested in the natural phenomena and
the quaint social life of that wonder
full land. In his discourse this week
he argues, contrary to the opinion OF
many, that religion is an active princi-
pie which works constantly for the
welfare of body, mind and soul. His
text is Luke 1894: salt is good"
The Bible is a dictionary of the finest
SMILES. 1t employs, among living crea-
lures, storks and eagles and doves and
uniforms and sheep and cattle; among
trees. sycamore and terebinths and
pomegrarates and almonds and ap-
pies; among jewels, pearls and anne
thysts and jacinths and chrysoprases.
Christ uses no stale illustrations. The
lilies thatH He plucks for His sermons are
dewy fresh; the ravens in His dis
courses are not stuffed specimens of
birds, but warm with life from wing
| tipt to wing tip; the fish He points to are
not dull about the gills, as though long
| captured, but a-squ:rm in the wet net
| lust brought up on the beach Of Tiberi-
as. In my text. which is the perora-
ton of one of His rermons, He picks up
a crystaland holds ii before His congre-
CATION as an illustration of divine
| grace in the heart, when He says what
we all know by experiment: salt is
good"
shall try to carry out the S%aviour's
idea in this text and in the first place
say to you that grace is like salt in its
beauty. In Galicia there are mines of
salt, with excavations and under
ground passages reaching, | am told,
$50 miles. Far under ground there are
chapels and halls of reception, the col
umns, the affairs and the pulpits of salt.
When the king and the princes come
to visit these mines, the whole place is,
illuminated, and the glory of crystal
walls and crystal ceilings and crystal
floors and crystal columns, under the
glare of the torches and the lamps,
needs words of crystal to describe it..
But you need not go so far as thai to
find the beauty of it. You live in n
land which produces millions of bush
els of it in a year, and you can take the
morning rail train and in a few hours
get to the salt mines and salt springs.
And YOU have this article morning,
noon and night on your table. Salt has
all the beauty of the snowflake and wa
ter foam with durability added. 1t is
beautiful to the naked eye, but under
the glass o see the stars and dia-
monds and the white tree branches and
the splinters and the bridges of fire as
the sun glints them. There is more
architectural skill in one of these crys-
tails of salt than human ingenuity has
ever demonstrated in an Alhambra or
ST. Peters.
1t would take all time, with an in
fringement upon eternity, for an an
gel of God to tell one-half the glories in
a salt crystal. So with the grace OF
God. 1t is perfectly beautiful. have
SCENT smooth out wrinkles of care from
the brow. l have seen it make an ageo
man feel almost young again. 1 have
seen it lift the STOPPING shoulders ant
put sparkle into the dull eye. Solomon
/ discovered its therapeutic qualitieswhe
he said: SIT is marrow TO the bones
: 1t helps to digest the food and to purif,
3 the blood and to calm the pulses ant
quiet the spleen, and instead of Tyn
dal's prayer test of 20 years ago, put
{ ting a man in a philosophical hospita
to be experimental upon by prayer,
keeps him so well that he does not nee'
to be prayed for as an invalid. l an
. speaking now of a healthy religion
b. not of that morbid religion hat sit
for three hours on a gravestone read
= ing Harvey's "Meditations Among tn
= Tombs"-a religion that prospers hes
o in a bad state of the liver! l speak o
= the religion that Christ preached.
suppose when that religion has cor
quered the world that disease will b
v banished and that a man a hundre
years of age will come in from bushes
and say: ~ feel tired. / think it mus
Y be time for me to GO" and without on
physical pang Heaven will have him.
But the chief beauty of grace is j
= the soul. 1t takes that which wa
hard and cold and repulsive an
. makes it all over again. 1t pour
upon ones nature what David cal
o "the beauty of holiness" 1t exit
9 pates everything that is hateful an
unclean. If jealousy and pride an
e lust and worldliness Turk about, the
Il are chained and have a very sma
sweep. Jesus throws upon the Sol
the fragrance of q summer garden {
He comes in, saying, II am the rose
+ Sharon" and He submerges it wit
70 the glory of a spring morning as +
TT says: 81 am the light" Oh, no
ic much that grace did for the thrs
Johns! 1t took John Bunyan, II
foul mouthed, and made him job
10 Bunyan, the immortal dreamer.
G, took John Newton, the lnfidel sailo
er and in the midst of the hurricar
ty made him cry out: "My mother
ig God, have mercy upon mel" 1t toe
John Summerfield from a life of s
and, by the hand of a Christian max
a. of edge tools, led him into the pulp
I'd that burns still with the light of tn
80 -lI -