The Grenada sentinel. [volume] (Grenada, Miss.) 1868-1955, 1901-02-02
MENDING THE NETS.
DR.. Talmage breaches Sermon on
the Story of the Fishermen.
Christ's Disciples ms Fishers of Men
The Gospel Net and How 1t
Should De Kept in
Repair.
copyright, 1901, by Louis Klopsch.1
Washington,


scribes the Gospel net and how it is to
be repaired after being damaged;
text, Matthew 4:21, "James, the son of
Zebedee, and John, his brother, in a
ship with Zebedee, their father, mend
ing their nets"
II 90 a-fishing!" cried Simon Peter
to his comrades, and the most of the
apostles had hands hard from fishing |
tackle. The fisheries of the world have |
always attracted attention. In the |
third century the queen of Egypt had |
for pin money $4,000, 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 vegeta bles and
meats OF the land. the sea has an
| amount of animal life that would feed
all the population OF. the earth and fat
ten them with a food that by its phos-
| phorus would make generation
'brany and intellectual beyond any
thing that the world has ever imag-
| ined. Ny text takes us among the Cali
lean fishermen. One day Walter Scott,
while hunting in an old drawer. found
among some old fishing tackle the
manuscript of his immortal 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 look
ing at the fishing tackle in the text.
1t is not 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 not bite, it is a good time to
put the anglers apparatus into better
condition. Perhaps the last fish you
hauled in was so large that something
snapped, or, if you were fishing with a
net, there was mighty foundering g
of the scales or an exposed nail on the
side of the boat which broke some of
! the threads and let part or all of the
captives of the deep escape into their
natural element. And hardly any
thing is more provoking than to nearly
land a score or a hundred trophies
from the deep, and when you are in the
full glee of hauling in the spotted
treasures, through some imperfectior
of the net they splash back into the
! wave. That is too much of trial o1
, patience for most fishermen to endure
and many a man ordinarily correct oi
> speech in such circumstances comes tC
( an intensity of utterance unjustifia bic
). Therefore no good fisherman consid
ers the time wasted that is spent il
1 mending his net Now, the Bible agaiI
v and again represents Christian work
= ers as fishers of men, and we are al
sweeping through the sea of humanit,
: some kind of a net. Indeed there hav,
| been enough nets out and enough fish
ermen busy to have landed the whole
human race in the kingdom of Goo
: long before this. What is the matter
n The Gospel is all right, and it has beer
0 good time for catching souls for thou
sands of years. Why, then, the fail
. ures? The trouble is with the nets
; and most of them need to be mended.
propose to show you what is the ma
n ter with most of the nets and how t
mend them. In the text old Zebede
l, and his two boys. James and John
o were doing good thing when they sa
>, In the boat mending their nets.
" The trouble with many OF our net
a is that the meshes are too large. ]
y fish can get his gills and half hi
q body through the network. he tear
] and rends and works his way out, an
u leaves the place through which h
al squirmed tangle Of broken threads
,e In our desire to make everything S
easy we relax, we loosen, we wider
We let men after they are once i
L the Gospel net escape into the worlt
D. and go into indulgences and swim a
- around Galilee, from north side t
81 south side, and from east side to ives
st side, expecting that they will com
re back again. We ought to make it cas-
:, for them to get into the Kingdom {
- God, and, as far as we can, make
III impossible for them to get out. I'll
ut poor advice nowadays to many /.
ld go and do just as you did before yo
were captured for God and Heave,
The net was not intended to be an
Ill restraint or any hindrance. What yo
Ia did before you were Christian {
pr now. Go to all styles of amusemen
nc read all the styles of books, engaf
in all styles of behavior as before yc
were converted. Ana so, throus
these meshes of permission and laxit
they wrigg!e out through this ope
er ing and that opening, tearing the n
ar as they go, and soon all the souls tn
ay we expected to land in Heaven, b
ne fore we know it, are back in the de-
m. sea of the world. Oh, when we
lie a-Gospel fishing, let us make it as ca
of as possible for souls to get in and
ey bard as possible to get out,
Is the Bible language an unmeanil
,erbiage when it talks about self-t
~ ~ nal, and keeping the body under a
about walking the narrow way a
- entering the strait gate and abo
es carrying the cross? Is there to be
~ way of telling whether a man is
Christian except by his taking