The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1901-10-03
A SUMNER SERMON.
Discourse Full of the Breath OF
Hills and Fields.
DR.. Ta1mage Applies His Text to the
World in Which We Live-The
Need of Olive Branches In
Every Day Life.
a b hir,crf fcr

1ull or the breath OF the hills and
fields and is summer sermon: text,
Nehemiah viii, IS, go forth unto the
mount and fetch olive branches and
pine branches and myrtle branches
and palm branches and branches of
thick trees to make booths"
1t seems as if Mount Olivet were
unmoored. The people have gone in
to the mountain and have cut Off
tree branches and put them on their
shoulders, and they come forth now
into the streets of Jerusalem and on
the house tops, and they twist these
tree branches into arbors or booths.
Then the people come forth from
their comfortable homes and dwell
for seven days in these booths or
arbors. Why do they do that? we'll,
it is great festal time. 1t is the
feast of tabernacles, and these peo-
pie are going to celebrate the desert
travel of their fathers and their ce-
Lverance from their troubles, the ex-
perience of their fathers when, travel
ing in the desert, they lived in booths
on their way to the land of Canaan.
And so these booths also became hi gh-
ly suggestive-I will not say they are
necessarily typical, but highly sug-
gestive-of our march toward Heaven
and of the fact that we are only iv-
ing temporarily here, as it were, in
booths or arbors, on our way to the
Canaan of eternal rest. And what
was said to the Jews literally may
be said fguratively to all this au-
dience. Go forth unto the mountain
and fetch olive branches and pine
branches and myrtle branches and
palm branches and branches of thick
trees to make booths.
Yes, we are only here in a tenn
porary residence. We are marching
on. The merchant princes who used
to live in Bowling Green, New York,
have passed away, and their resi-
dences are now the fields of cheap
merchants. Where are the men who
80 years ago owned Washington and
New York? Passed on. There is no
use in our driving our stakes too
deep into the earth; we are on the
preceded US have gone SO far on that
we cannot even hear the sound of
their footsteps. They have gone
over the hill, and we are to follow
them. But, blessed be God, we are
not in this world left out of doors
and unsheltered. There are Gospel
booths or Gospel arbors in which our
- lo {oI
unto the mountain and fetch olive
branches and pine branches and
myrtle branches and palm branches
and branches of thick trees and build
booths.
Well, now we are readyto construct
q Gospel arbor or Gospel booth, and
how shall we construct it? Well, we
must get all the tree branches and
build. According to my text, we
must 60 up into the mount and
bring olive branches. What does
that mean? The olive tree grows
in warm climates, and it reaches the
height of ~ or % feet, a straight
stem and then an offshoot from that
stem. And then people come, and
they strip off these branches some
times, and when in time of war the
general of one army takes one of
these olive branches and goes out to
the general of another army, what
does that mean? Why, it means un-
saddle the war chargers. 1t means
hang up the war knapsacks. 1t is but
beautiful way of saying, Peace!
Now, if we are to-day going to
succeed in building this Gospl arbor
we must go into the mount of Gods
blessing and fetch the olive branches,
and whatever else we must have we
must have at least two olive
branches, peace with God and peace
with man. When I say peace with
God, l do not mean to represent God
as an angry chieftain, having a
grudge against us, but l do mean to
affirm that there is no more antag-
onism between a hound and hare,
between a hawk and a pullet, be-
tween elephant and swine, than there
is hostility between holiness and sin.
And if God is all holiness and we are
all sin there must be treaty, there
must be stretching forth of olive
branches.
There is great lawsuit G Ding on
now, and it is lawsuit which man is
bringing against his Maker. That
lawsuit is now on the calendar. 1t is
the human versus the Divine, it is ini-
guilty versus the immaculate, it is
weakness versus omnipotence. Man
began it. God did not begin the law
suit. We began it. We assaulted our
Maker, and the sooner we end this
part of the struggle, in which the
finite attempts to overthrow the in
finite and omnipotent-the sooner we
end it the better. Travellers tell US
there is no such place as Mount
Calvary, that it Is only a hill, only an
Insignificant hill, but l persist IN
ga allinp il the mount of God's divine