The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1900-07-25
DIR. TALMAGES SERMON.
SUNDAYS DiscoURsE BY 1.-THE NOTED
DIVINE.
Subject Gods Saving Grace-EeilGion IL
sn Active Principle Which Works
Constantly For the Welfare OF Eody
and Mind and Soul-Hope For Sinners.
copyright lgJU.

| copyright lsuul
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
wonderful land. In this sermon he ar
CUES, 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,
| 81. Salt is good"
The Bible is dictionary of the finest
SMILES 1t employs among living Great
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 iacinths
| and chrysoprases. Christ uses no stale
Illustrations. The lilies that He plucks in
| His discourse arc 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
| tured but a-squirm in the wet net just
| brought up on the beach Of Tiberias. In
nv text, which is the peroration of one of
His sermons, He picks UP crystal and
holds it before His congregation as an illus
tration of divine grace in the heart when
He saws what we all know by experiment,
'Salt is good" -
I 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 it's beauty.
In Gallicia there are mines of salt with ex-
cavations and underground passages reach.
there are channels and halls of reception.
the columns, 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 lamns needs words of crys-
| tai 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 it in 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,
v ith 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 clints them:
There is more architectural skin in one of
these crystals of salt than human iIge-
nuity has ever demonstrated in an Alham-
bra or st. Peter s. ". ~.
1t would take all time, with an infringe:
ment upon eternity: for an cngel of God
| to tell one-half the gories in salt crystal.
So with the grace of Cod; 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: I have seen It lift the stopping
shoulders and put snarile into the dull eve.
| Solomon discovered it's therapeutic quail
| ties when he said, Tt is marrow to the
bones" 1t helps to digest the food and
to nurifv the blood and to calm the pulses
and quiet the spleen. and instead of Tyn-
dall's prayer test of twenty wears ago. put
ting a man in philosophical hosnital to be
80 we'll that he does not need to be prayed
| for as an invalid. I am speaking now OF
healthy religion-not of that morbid relig-
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.
I supDose, when that religion has con-
| ouered the world, that disease will be ban:
ished, and that man l00 years of ace will
come in from business and say, Il am
tired: I think it must be time for me to
! 60" and without one physica! pang heaven
will have him.
But the chief beauty # grace is in the
soul. It takes that which was hard and
cold :and repulsive and makes it all over
again. 1t pours npon ones nature what
David calls "the beauty of holiness" 1t
extirpates everything that is hateful and
unclean. If jealousy and pride and lust
and worldiness lurk about, they are
chained and have very small sweep.
Jesus throws upon the soul the fragrance
of a summer garden as He comes in saw
ing, ri am the Rose of Sharon" and He
submerges it with the glory OF snring
morning, as He says; 81 am the light.
three Johns! 1t took John Bunvan the
foul mouthed, and made him John Bun
van. the immortal dreamer; it took John
Newton. the infdel sailor, and in the midst
of the hurricane made him cry out NV
mothers God, have mercy upon me-" 1t
took John Summerfeld from life of sin
and by the hand of Christian maker. OF
edge tools led him into the pulnit that
burns still with the light of that Christian
e'oouence which charmed thousands to the
Jesus whom Hc once despiscd. All, you
NAV search all the earth over for anything
sn beautiful or beautifying rs 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 rs 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 arc those paths
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 necessity of life. And
10 with the grace of God; you must have it
or die. / know great many sneak OF 1t
as mere adornment, a sort of shoulder
strap adorning a soldier, or light, froth-
ing dessert brought in after the greatest
part of the banquet of life is over, or a
medicine to be taken after powders and
mustard plasters have failed to do their
work, but ordinarily mere superauity, a
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 or
starve into an eternity of famine. 1t is
clothing, without which VIC 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 up into the
light 1t is a positive necessity for the
soul. You can tell very easily what the
effect would be if person refused to take
salt into the body. The energies would
fail, the lungs would struggle with the air,
slow fevers would crawl through the brain.
the heart would Autter, and the life would
be gone. Salt, a necessity for the Sfe Of
the body; the grace Of God, necessity
for the life of the soul!
Again, remark that grace is like salt in
abundance. God has strewn salt in vast
profusion all over the continents. Russia