Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1900-02-01
DIR. TALMAGES SERMON.
SUNDAYS DISCOURSE BY THE NOTED
DIVINE.

Subject: New Year Thoughts-We Should
Make the Most of Our Brief Lives
Infidelity the Source of Much Woe
| Christ's Matchless Stories.
| copyright. Louis Klopsch. 1891
| WASHINGTON, D. C.-In this discourse DR..
| Talmage takes the opportunity of Offering
some very practical and useful suggestions;
| text, Psalms xc., 9, "We spend our years
| as tale that is told"
The Israelites were forty years in the
wilderness, and during thirty-eight years
of the forty nothing Is recorded of them,
and, suppose, no other emigrants had
| duller or more uninteresting time than
| they had. So they got to telling stories
| ing others; stories about the brick kilns of
Egypt, where they Lad toiled In slavery;
stories about how the waters OF the Red
| Sea piled up into palisades at their cross
ing; story of the lantern hung in the heav
ems to guide them by night; story of ihises
destroying the reptiles of the wilderness;
stories OF personal encounter. 1t must
have been an awful thing to have had moth
ing to do for thirty-eight years except to
| get lost every time they tried to escape
! from the wilderness. SO they whied away
the time in story telling. Indeed, there
were persons whose one business was to
narrate stories, and they were paid by
such trifles as they could pick up from the
!
our text refers when it says, eve spend
our years as tale that is told
At this tremendous passage from the
year 1899 to the year 1900 it will do US all
| good to consider that our whole life is a
| story told-a good story or bad story,
tragic story or mirthful story, wise
story or foolish story, n clean story or n
| filthy story, story of success or story OF
failure. eve spend our years as tale
that is told"
Tn %l,a ,n11 orI-t hrk
| PERSONS life is q very interesting story.
My text does not deprecate "a tale that is
| told" We have all OF us been entertained
by the story teller when snow bound in the
rail train, or in the group winters night
| in the farmhouse, or gathered around a
blazing hearth with some hunters at the
mountain inn. Indeed, it is praiseworthy
art to impersonate good story we'll. II
you doubt the practical and healthful and
inspiring use Of such story, take down
from the library Washington Irving's
Tales oil a Traveller or Nathaniel Haw-
thorne's "Twce Told Tales" But as in.
teresting as any of these would be the
story OF many an obscure life If the tale
were as we'll told. Why do we all like
biographies and autobiographies? Be-
cause they are stories Of eminent human
lives. But the story OF the life Of q back
wooGsman, of a man who looks stupid, OF
one about whom you never heard a word
must be just as thrilling on small scale
/ as on large scale is II Ire OI u SyTus, OF u
Cesar, or Pi2arro, or a Mark Antony, or
2 a Charlemagne.
II you get the confidence OF that very
plain man just come out of the backwoo oods
and can induce him to give the stirring ex-
periences OF his life, he will tell you that
which will make your blood curdle and
your hair stand on end; that night when Il
panther disputed his pathway on the way
home; that landslide, when the mountains
seemed about to come down on his cabin;
that accident to his household and no sur
geon within fifteen miles; that long storm
that shut them in aad the food was ex-
hausted; that contest at his doorway with
bandits, who thought there might be with
in something worth taking; that deathbed,
with no one but himself to count the tiut-
terlng pulses.
Oh, yes. while eve spend our years as
tale that is told - it is an interesting story.
1t is the story Of an imm ortal, and that
makes it interesting. He is launched on an
ocean OF eternal years, in a voyage that
will never terminate. He is striking the
KEYNOTE of an anthem or dirge that will
never come TO its last bar. That Is what
makes the devotional meetings of modern
times so much more interesting than they
used to be. They are filled not with dis
courses by laymen on the subject of justf-
fcation and disqualification, which lay dis
courses administer more to the facetious
than to the edifying, but with stories OF
what God has done for the soul-how every
thing suddenly changed; how the promises
became balsamic in times OF liberation;
how he wns personally helped out and
helped up and helped on. Nothing can
stand before such story of personal res
cue. personal transformation, personal
illumination. The mightiest and most
skillful argument against Christianity col
lapses under the ungrammatical but sim
cere statement. The atheistic professor of
natural philosophy goes down under the
story OF that backwoodsman's conversion.
All that elaborate persuasion of the old
folks of the folly of giving up active life
too soon means nothing as compared with
the simple incident you may relate to
them OF the fact that Benz amin Franklin
was Governor OF Pennsylvania at eighty
two years of age and that Dandolo, of Ven
ice, at ninety years of age, although his
eyesight had been destroyed through be-
ing compelled by his enemies to look into
u polished metal basin under the full blaze
of the sun until totally blind, yet this sight
less nonagenarian leading an army to the
successful besiegement of Constantipopie!
When an old man hears of such incidents
he puts aside his staff and ear trumpet and
starts anew.
The New Testament suggests the power
of the tale that is told" Christ was the
most effective story teller OF all the ages.
The parallels are only tales we'll told.
Matchless stories: That OF the traveller cut
ND by the thieves and the Samaritan pay
ing his board bill at the tavern; that of the
big dinner, to which the invited guests
sent in fictitious regrets; that Of the shep-
herd answering the bleat of the lost sheep
and all the rural neghbors that night help
ing him celebrate the fact that it was safe in
the barnyard; that OF the bad boy, reduced
to the swines' trough, greeted home with
such banqUeting and jewelry that 1t ctuffed
the older son with jealousy and disgruntle-
ment; that OF the Pharisee full of brngga.
docio and the publican shifting his breast
/. | mil OF a hrOnOht Y.
eEs in commiseration; stories about lep-
rosy, about paralysis, about catalepsy
about dropsy, about ories
that He so well told that they have rolled
down to the present and will roll down
through the entire future.
heard Daniel Baker, the wonderful
evangelist OF his time, preach what l sup
, posed was n great sermon, but l remem'
ber nothing of it except a story that he
told and that judge from the seeming
J effect, may that afternoon have brought
hundreds into the kingdom of God.
hearj Trnman Osborne preach several ser.