Connecticut western news., 1900-01-04
NEW YEAR THOUGHTS
DR. TALMAGE MAKES SOME PRAC-
 TlcAL SUGGESTIONS.

TicAL SUGGESTIONS.
 We Should Make the Most of Oar
 Brief Lives-Inadelfty the Source
 of Much woe-Chri.t'm Matchie..
 Stories.
 tCopyright. Louis Klopsch. lsse.l
 WASHINGTON, Dec. 31.-In this holi. day discourse Dr. Talmage takes the opportunity of offering some very prac- tical and useful suggestions: text, Psalms xc, 9, We spend our years as . tale that Is told"
 The Israelites were 10 years in the wilderness, and during 3S years of the 40 nothing Is recorded of them, and, 1 suppose, no other emigrants had a duller or more uninteresting time than they had. So they got to telling stories stories concerning themselves or con- cerning others; stories about the brick kilns of Egypt. where they had toiled in slavery; stories about how the wa ters of the Red sea piled up into pal isades at their crossing; story of the lantern hung In the heavens to guide them by night, story of ibises destroy ing the reptiles of the wilderness. stories of personal encounter. It must have been an awful thing to have had nothing to do for 3S years except to get lost every time they tried to escape from the wilderness. So they whiled away the time in story telling. In deed. there were persons whose one business was to narrate stories, and they were paid by such trides as they could pick up from the surrounding listeners. To such instances our text refers when 1t says, We spend our years as a tale that is told"
 At this tremendous passage from the year 1899 to the year 1900 1t will do us all good to consider that our whole life Is a story told-a good story or bad story, a tragic story or mirthful story, . wise story or foolish story, clean story or a filthy story, story of sue cess or a story of failure. We spend our years as a tale that is told"
 In the first place, remark that ey- cry persons life Is very interesting story. My text does not depreciate "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 a winters night In the farmhouse. or gathered around a blaz- ing hearth with some hunters at the mountain inn. Indeed, 1t Is a praise worthy art to impersonate good story well. If you doubt the practical and healthful and inspiring use of such a story, take down from the library Washington Irying's 'Tales of a Tray eler" or Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales" But as interesting 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 autobiographiesy Because they are stories of eminent human lives. But the story of the life of a back ;woodsman, of a man who looks stupid, of one about whom you never heard word, must be just as thrilling on a small scale as on large scale Is a life of a Cyrus, or a Caesar, or a Pizarro, or Mark Antony, or Charlemagne.
 Life Experiences.
 If you get the confidence of that very plain man just come out of the back woods and can induce him to give the stirring experiences of his life, he will tell you that which will make your blood curdle and your hair stand on end: that night when panther dis puted 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 surgeon within 15 miles; that long storm that shut them in and the food was exhausted: that contest at his doorway with bandits, who thought there might be within something worth taking; that deathbed, with no one but himself to count the fiuttering pulses.
 Oh, yes, while i've spend our years as . tale that Is told" 1t is an interest ing story. It Is the story of an i'm mortal, and that makes 1t interesting. He Is launched on an ocean of eternal years, In a voyage that will never ter minate. He Is striking the keynote of an anthem or a dirge that will never come to its last bar. That Is what makes the devotional meetings of mod ern times so much more interesting than they used to be. They are filled not with discourses by laymen on the subject of justification and sanctifica- ton, which lay discourses administer more to the facetious than to the edi- flying, but with stories of what God has done for the soul-how everything suddenly changed; how the promises became balsamic In times of lacera- ton; how he was personally helped out and helped up and helped on. Nothing can stand before such a story of per sonal rescue, personal transformation, personal illumination. The mightiest and most skillful argument against Christianity collapses under the un- grammatical but sincere statement. The atheistic professor of natural phi losophy goes down under the story of that backwoodsman's conversion.
 Start Anew. ! All that elaborate persuasion of the pad folks of the folly of giving up ac- tive life too soon means nothing as compared with the simple incident you may relate to them of the fact that Benjamin Franklin was governor of Pennsylvania at s2 years of age and that Dandolo of Venice at 90 years of age, although his eyesight had been destroyed through being compelled by his enemies to look into a 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 Constan- tinople!. 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 parables are only tales we'll told Matchless stories: That Of the traveller cut up by the thieves and the Samaritan paying his board bill at the tavern; that of the big dinner, to which the invited guests sent in fictitious regrets; that of the