Connecticut western news., 1900-07-12
GODS SAVING GRACE.
LIKE SALT IN ITS PRESERvATIvE
 QUALITY.


 QUALITY.
 pr. Talma&e Draws Inspiration From Crystal-Relision a Purifier of Body and soul-No Sinner Beyond Its Influence.
 WASHINGTON, July 8.-Dr. Talmage Is now travelling in Norway, where he has been deeply interested in the nat ural phenomena and the quaint social life of that wonderful land. In his dis course this week he argues, contrary to the opinion of many, that religion is an active principle which works con- stantly for the welfare of body and mind and soul. His text Is Luke xiv, 34, Salt Is good"
 The Bible Is a dictionary of the fln- est similes. 1t employs, among liv- ing creatures, storks and eagles and doves and unicorns and sheep and cat tie; among trees, sycamores and tere- binths and pomegranates and almonds and apples; among jewels, pearls and amethysts and jacinths and chryso- prases. Christ uses no stale illustra- tions. The lilies that he plucks in his discourse are dewy fresh; the ravens in his discourses are not stuffed speci- mems 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 captured, but a-squirm in the wet net just 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 1t be- fore his congregation as an illustration of divine grace In the heart when he says what we all know by experiment, Salt Is good"
 Beauties of Salt.
 shall try to carry out the Saviour'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 underground passages reaching, I am told, 280 miles. Far underground there are chapels and halls of reception, the columns, the al- tars and the pulpits of salt. When the king and the princes come to visit these mines, the whole place Is illumi- mated, 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 that to find the beauty of salt. You live in land which produces millions of bushels of 1t in 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 water foam, with durability added. It 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 Ingenuity has ever demonstrated in an Alhambra or St. Peters.
 It would take all time. with an in- fringement upon eternity, for an angel of God to tell one-half the glories In a salt crystal. So with the grace of God; 1t Is perfectly beautiful. have seen 1t smooth out wrinkles of care from the brow: have seen 1t make an aged man feel almost young again; have seen 1t lift the stepping shoulders and put sparkle into the dull eye. Solomon discovered its therapeutic qualities when he said, Tt Is marrow to the bones." It helps to digest the food and to purify the blood and to calm the pulses and quiet the spleen, and in- stead of Tyndalps prayer test of 20 years ago. putting Q man in a philo- hophical hospital to be experimented upon by prayer. 1t keeps him so well that he does not need to be prayed for as m invalid. am speaking now of a healthy religion-not of that morbid religion that sits for three hours on a gravestone reading Hervey's "Medita- tions Among the Tombs"-a religion that prospers best In bad state of the liver! I speak of the religion that Christ preached. l suppose, when that religion has conquered the world, that disease will be banished and that a
 
 from business and say, "I am tired; think 1t must be time for me to go," and without one physical pang heaven will have him.
 But the chief beauty of grace Is in the soul. It takes that which was hard and cold and repulsive and makes it all over again. It pours upon one's na- ture what David calls "the beauty of holiness" It extirpates everything that Is hateful and unclean. If jeal- ousy and pride and lust and worldli- ness Turk about. they are chained and have a very small sweep. Jesus throws upon the soul the fragrance of a sum- mer garden as he comes In, saying, "I am the Rose of Sharon" and he sub merges it with the glory of a spring morning as he says, T am the light Oh. how much that grace did for the three Johns! It took John Bunyan, the foul mouthed, and made him John Bunyan, the immortal dreamer; 1t took John Newton, the inf1del sailor, and in the midst of the hurricane made him cry out, My mothers God, have mer. cy upon mew 1t took John Summer. field 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 elo quence which charmed thousands tG the Jesus whom he once despised. Ah you may search all the earth over fol anything so beautiful or beautifyfnf as the grace of Godl Go all througt the deep mine passages of Wieliczks and amid the underground Kingdoms of salt in Hallstadt and show me any thing so exquisite, so transcendentlJ beautiful as this grace of God fash toned and hung in eternal crystals.
 Power of Grace.
 Again, grace Is like salt in the fac that 1t Is a necessity of life. Man ant beast perish without salt What ar,