Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1900-08-09
DIR. TALMAGES SERMON .
SUNDAYS DISCOURSE BY THE NOTED
DIVINE.

Subject Gods Saving Grace-Religion is
| an Active Principle Which Works
Constantly For the Welfare OF Body
and Mind and Soul-Hope For sinncrs.
rCopyright 1901
WASHINGTON, D. Cdr. Talmage is
now travelling in Norway, where he has
been deeply interested in the natural phe-
nomena and the quaint social life of that
gues, contrary to the opinion of many,
that religion is an active principle which
works constantly for the welfare of body
and mind and soul. His text is Luke xiv,
"a. Salt is good"
The he Bible is dictionary Of the finest
ures storks and eagles and doves and uni
corns and sheep and cattle; among trees,
sycamores and terebinths and pomegran-
ates and almonds and apples; among jew
els, pearls and amethysts and jacinths
and chrysoprases. Christ uses no stale
illustrations The lilies that He plucks in
| His discourse are dewy fresh; the ravens
! in His discourses are not stuffed specimens
| of birds, but warm with life from wing tip
to wing tip; the fish He points to are not
dull about the gills, as though long cap
brought up on the beach of Tiberias. In
| my text, which is the peroration of one of
| His sermons, He picks up a crystal and
! holds it before His congregation as an illus
| tration of divine grace in the heart when
He says what we all know by experiment,
"Salt is good"
| idea in this text and in the first place say
| to you that grace is like salt in it's beauty.
| In Gallicia there are mines of salt with ex-
| cavations and underground passages reach
| ing am told, $50 miles. Far underground
there are chapels and halls of reception:
the columns, the. altars 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 crys-
tai to describe it, But you need not &C, so
| far as that to find the beauty of salt. You
| live in land which produces millions of
| bushels of it in a year, and you can take
| the morning rail train and in 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 water foam,
with durability added. 1t is beautiful to
the naked eye, but under the glass you see
the stars, and the diamonds, 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 crystals of salt than human inge
1T
I bra or st. Peters.
| 1t would take all time, with an infringe
| ment upon eternity. for an angel of God
to tell ne.half the gories in a salt crystal
So with the grace of God; it is perfectly
| beautiful. I have seen it smooth out wrin-
kles of care from the brow; have seen it
make an aged man feel almost young
again: / have seen it lift the STOPPING
! shoulders and put sparkle into the dull eye.
Solomon discovered its therapeutic quail
ties when he said, at is marrow to the
bones 1t helps to digest the food and
and quiet the spleen, and instead of Tyn-
dalps prayer test of twenty years ago, put
ting man in philosophical hospital to be
experimental upon by prayer, it keeps him
so well that he does not need to be prayed
for as an invalid. am speaking now of
ion that sits for three hours on grave
stone reading Hervey's "Meditations
Among the Tombs"-a religion that pros.
pers best in a bad state Of the liver! l
| speak of the religion that Christ preached.
l suppose, when that religion has con-
quered the world, that disease will be BAN
ished, and that man 100 years of age will
come in from business and say, Il am
tired think it must be time for me to
CO. and without one physical pang heaven
will have him.
But the chief beauty of grace is in the
SOUL 1t takes that which was hard and
cold and repnlsive and makes it all over
David calls "the beauty of holiness" 1t
extirpates everything that is hateful and
unclean. If jealousy and pride and lust
and worldliness Turk about, they are
chained and have very small sweep.
Jesus throws upon the soul the fragrance
ing, II am the Rose of Sharon" and He
submerges it with the glory OF spring
morning, as He.says. II am the light"
Oh, how much that grace did for the
three Johns! 1t took John Bunyan, the
foul mouthed, and made him John Bun
Newton. the infdel sailor, and in the midst
of the hurricane made him cry out, My
mothers God. have mercy upon mel! 1t
took John Summerfield from life of sin
and by the hand of Christian maker of
edge tools led him into the pulpit that
burns still with the light of that Christian
eloquence which charmed thousands to the
Jesus whom He once despised All, you
may search all the earth over for anything
so beautiful or beautifying as the grace OF
God! Go all through the deep mine pas
sages of Wieliczka and amid the under.
ground kingdoms of salt in Hallstadt and
show me anything so transcendenty beau.
tiful as this grace of God fashioned and
hung in eternal crystals.
Again, grace is like salt in the fact that
it is necessity of life Man and beast
perish without salt. What are those paths
across the western prairie? Why, they
were made there by deer and buffalo going
to and coming away from the salt clicks. .
Chemists and physicians all the world over
tell us that salt is a necessity OF life. And
so with the grace of God; you must have il
or die. know great many speak Of il
as a mere adornment, sort of shoulder
strap adorning soldier, or light, froth
ing dessert brought in after. the greatest
part of the banquet of life is over, or g
medicine to be taken after powders and
mustard plasters have failed to do theil
work, but ordinarily mere superhuity. q
string of bells around horses neck while
he draws the load and in nowise helping
him to draw it. So far from that declare
the grace Of God to be the first and the
last necessity. 1t is food we must take ol
clothing, without which we freeze to the
mast Of infinite terror. 1t is the plank
and the only plank, on which we can float
shoreward. 1t is the ladder, and the only
ladder on which we can climb I'M into the