Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1901-09-26
DIR. TALMAGES SERMON
SUNDAYS DISCOURSE BY THE NOTED
DIVINE.
Subject:Nothingi < Is observation-disclosures
of on What II Slender Thread Great Re
suits Hang-A Little Thing May Decide
Your Fate-The Importance Of Trifles.

Your Fate-The Importance of Trifles.
Copyrght 1901
| WASHINGTON d. CA Bible incident
| not often noticed is here used by DR.. Tai
| mage to set forth practical and beautiful
| truth; text, ii. Corinthians xi, 33,
! Through window in a basket was L let
| down by the wall"
| Sermons on Paul in Jail, Paul on Mars
| hill, Paul in the shipwreck, Paul before
the sanhedrin, Paul before Felix, are
! plentiful, but in my text we have Paul IN
| a basket.
Damascus is city of white and glisten-
ing architecture, sometimes called ''the
| eye of the East" SOMETIMES called "a
pearl surrounded by emeralds," at one
| time distinguished for swords of the best
| material called Damascus blades and ND
holstery of richest fabric called damask.
A horsennan of the name of Saul riding
toward this city had been thrown from
the saddle. The horse had dropped under
flash from the sky which at the same
time was so bright it blinded the rider for
many days, and I think so permanently
! injured his eyesight that this defect of
vision became the thorn in the flesh he
| afterward speaks of. He started for Da-
mascus to butcher Christians, but after
that hard fall from his horse he was a
changed man and preached Christ in Da-
| mascus till the city was shaken to its
| foundation.
The mayor gives authority for his ar
rest, and the popular cry is, Kill him,
| kill him." The city is surrounded by a
high wall, and the gates are watched by
the police lest the Cilician preacher es-
cape. Many of the houses are built on the
wall, and their balconies projected clear
over and lowered above the gardens out
side. 1t was customary to lower baskets
out of these balconies and pull up fruits
and flowers from the gardens. To this
day visitors at the monastery. of Mount
Sinai are lifted and let down in baskets.
Detectives prowled around from house to
| house looking for Paul, but his friends
| hid him now in one place, now in another.
He is no coward, as fifty incidents in his
life demonstrate, but he feels his work is
not done yet, and so he evades assassina-
ton. = Is that preacher here?' the foam
ing mob shout at one house door. rs
other house door Sometimes on the
street incognito he passes through a crowd
| of clinched fists, and sometimes he secretes
himself on the house top. At last the in
! furiate populace get on sure track of him.
They have positive evidence that he is in
the house of one of the Christians, the bal
cony of whose home reaches over the
wall. Here he is! Here he is" The vo-
ciferation and blasphemv and howing of
the pursuers are at the front door. They
break in. Fetch out that gospeiizer and
let us hang his head on the city gate
bic. Providentially there was a good
stout basket in the house. Paul's friends
fasten a rope to the basket. Paul steps
into it. The backet is lifted to the edge
of the balcony on the wall, and then while
Paul holds the rope with both hands his
friends lower away carefully and cautious
ly, slowly but surely, farther down and
farther down. until the basket strikes the
| earth and the apostle steps out and afoot
and alone starts on that famous mission
airy tour the story of which has astonshed
earth and heaven. Appropriate entry in
| PauPs diary of travels: Through win
dow in basket was / let down by the
wall"
] observe first on what a slender tenure
great results hang. The ropemakers who
twisted that cord fastened to that lower
ing basket never knew how much would
depend upon the strength of it. How if it
had been broken and the apostles life
had been dashed out? What would have
become of the Christian Church? All that
magnificent missionary work in Pamphy
liza. Cappadocia, Galatia, Macedonia, would
never have been accomplished. All his
writings that make up so Indispensable
and enchanting part of the New Testa-
ment would never have been written.
The story of resurrection would never
have been so gloriousy told as he tod it.
That example of heroic and triumphant
endurance at Philippi; in the Mediterra.
| mean IuTOClNuOU, unupT IdEeIldIlOn ana
at his beheading would not have kindled
the courage of 10000 martyrdoms. But
that rope holding that basket how much
depended on it! So again and again great
results have hung on slender circum-
stances.
Did ever ship of many thousand tons
crossing the sea have such an important
passenger as had once a boat of leaves
from taffrail to stern only three or four
feet, the vessel made waterproof by coat
of bitumen and floating on the Nile with
the infant lawgiver of the Jews on board
What if some crocodile should crunch it?
What ii some of the cattle wading in for
a drink should sink it?
Vessels of war sometimes carry forty
guns looking through the portfolios, ready
to open battle But the tiny craft on the
Nile seems to be armed with all the guns
of thunder that bombarded Sinai at the
lawgiving. On how fragile craft sailed
how much of historical Importance!
The parsonage at Epworth England. is
on fire in the night, and the father rushed
through the hallway for the rescue of his
children Seven children are out and safe
consuming building. That one awakes
and, finding his bed on fire and the build.
ing crumbing, comes to the window, and
two peasants make ladder of their bod
les, one peasant standing on the shoulder
of the other, and down the human ladder
t0e BOY ueScenuS-JOnn w esleV.
If you would know how much depended
on that ladder of peasants, ask the mill
ions of Methodsts on both sides OF the
sea. Ask their mission stations all around
the world. Ask their hundreds of thou
sands already assembled to join their foun-
der, who would have perished but for the
living stairs of peasants shoulders.
An English ship stopped at Pitcairn
Island, and right in the midst OF surround
ing cannibalism and squalor the passen-
gers discovered Christian colony of
churches and schools and beautiful homes
and highest style of religion and civiliza.
ton. For fifty years no missionary and
no Christian influence had landed there
Why this oasis of light amid desert of
heathendom? Sixty years before ship
had met disaster, and one of the sailors,
unable to save anything else, went to his
trunk and took out a Bible which his
mother had placed there and swan ashore,
the Bible held in his teeth. The book was
read on all sides until the rough and Vi
cious population We're evangelized, and
church was started, and an enlightened
commonwealth established and the worlds