Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1901-02-14
DIR. TALMAGES SERMON
SUNDAYS DISCOURSE BY THE NOTED
DIVINE,
Subject: Wit, SilEen Cords-So Should
the Fishers of Men Mend Their Nets
Christians Warned Against Harsh
Criticism-Gospel Strife Deplored.
Copyright 1891. !

Criticism-Gospel Strife Deplored.
copyright 1sol.l
WASHINGTON, d. C.-In this discourse
DR.. 1almage describes the gospel net and
how it is to be repaired after being dam
aged; text, Matthew iv, 81, "James, the
son of Zebedee. and John. his brother, in
a ship with Zebedee, their father, mend
ing their nets"
II go a-fishing!" cried Simon Peter to
his comrades, and the most of the apos-
ties had hands hard from fishing tackle
The fisheries of the world have always at
tracted attention. In the third century
the Queen of Egypt had for pin money
1000 received from the fisheries of Lake
Moeris. And if the time should ever
come when the immensity of the worlds
population could not be fed by the vege-
tables and meats of the land, the sea has
an amount Of animal life that would feed
all the populations of the earth and fat
ten them with food that by its phospho-
rus would makeAa generation brainy and
intellectual beyond anything that the
world has ever imagined. My text takes
us among the Gallilean fishermen. One
day Walter Scott. while hunting in an old
drawer, found among some old fishing
book, "Waverley," which he had put
away there as of no worth, and who knows
but that to-day we may find some un-
known wealth of thought while looking at
the fishing tackle in the text.
1t is not a good day for fishing, and
three men are in the boat repairing the
broken fishing nets. If you are, fishing
with hook and line. and the fish will
r ute, it is a good time to put the ang-
| apparatus into better condition. Per-
the last fish you hauled in was so
y e that something snapped. Or, if you
" e fishing with a net, there was
m shty foundering of the scales or an ex-
yni,c .,1 10 Is tl,a hoo VIII, Ok
broke some of the threads and let part or
all of the captives of the deep escape into
their natural element. And hardly anv-
thing is more provoking than to nearly
land a score or hundred of trophies from
the deep, and when you are in the full
glee of hauling in the spotted treasures,
through some imperfection os the net
they splash back into the waves. That is
too much of trial of patience for x,ost
fishermen to endure, and many man or
dinarily correct of speech in such crcum
stances comes to an intensity OF utterance
uniustifable. Therefore no good fisher
man considers the time wasted that is
spent in mending his net Now, the
Bible again and again represents Christian
workers as fishers of men, and we are all
sweeping through the sea of humanity
some kind of net Indeed there have
been enough nets out and enough fisher
men busy to have landed the whole hu-
! man race in the kingdom of God long be-
fore this. What is the matter? The gos-
pei is all right. and it has been good
time for catching souls for thousands of
years. Why then, the failures? The
trouble is with the nets. and most of them
need to be mended. [ propose to show
you what is the matter with most of the
nets and how to mend them. In the text
old Zebedee and his two boys, James and
| John, were doing good thing when they
| sat in their boats mending their nets.
| The trouble with many of our nets is
| that the meshes are too large. If a fish
| can get his gills and half his body through
| the network, he tears and rends and
works his way out, and leaves the place
through which he squirmed tangle OF
| broken threads. In our desire to make
everything so easy we relax, we loosen, we
widen. We let men after they are once
in the gospel net escape into the world
and go into indulgences and swim all
around Gallilee, from north side to south
side, and from east side to west side, ex-
| pecting that they will come back again.
| We ought to make it easy for them to get
into the kingdom of God, and, as far as
we can, make it impossible for them to
| get out. The poor advice nowadays to
| many is: "Go and do just as you did be-
fore YOU were captured for God and heav-
en-. The net was not intended to lie any
! restraint or any hindrance. What you
| Oll before you were Il AnFlSllau Go now.
Go to all styles of amusement, read all
the styles of books, engage in all the
| styles of behavior as before you were con-
verted." And so through these meshes
! of permission and layity they wriggle out,
through this opening and that opening,
tearing the net as they go, and soon all
the souls that we expected to land in
deep sea of the world. Oh, when we go
a-gospel fishing, let us make it as easy as
| possible for souls to get in and as hard
| as possible to get out.
Is the Bible language an unmeaning YER
biage when it talks about self denial, and
keeping the body under, and about walk
ing the narrsw way. and entering the
straight gate, and about carrying the
cross? Is there to be no way of telling
whether n man is a Christian except by
| his taking the communion chalice on sac
ramental day? May a man be as reckless
about his thoughts, about his words, about
his temper, about his amusements, after
conversion as before? Alas, the words of
| Christ are so little needed when He said.
"Whosoever doth not bear his cross and
come alter Me cannot be My disciple"
The church is fast becoming as bad as the
world, and when it gets as bad as the
world it will be worse than the world by
SO much, as it will add hypocrisy of a
most appalling kind to its other defects.
| many vi Jul lictS lOIIl
to pieces by being entangled with other
nets. 1t is sad sight to see fishermen
fighting about sea room, and pulling in
opposite directions each to get his net,
both nets damaged by the struggle and
losing all the fish. In this land, where
there are more than 70,0O0000 people,
there are at least 30,0OO,c00 not in the
Sunday-schools and churches. In such an
Atlantic Ocean of opportunity there is
room for all the nets and all the boats and
all the fishermen and for millions more.
There should be no rivalry between
churches. Each one does work peculiar
to itself. But there are cities in this coun-
| try where there is now going on an awful
ripping and rending and tearing of fishing
nets. Indeed, all over Christendom at
this time there is great war going on be-
tween fishermen, ministers against minis
| ters.
Now, l have noticed man cannot fish
and fight at the same time. He either
negects his net or his musket. 1t is
amazing how much time some of the fish
ermen have to look after other fishermen.
1t is more than l can do to take care OF
my own net You see the wind is just
right, and it is such good time for fish
| nj tl,s.H Het =