The semi-weekly messenger., 1901-02-08
MENDING THE NE.
SUCCESSFUL CHRISTIAN WORK T
FLED BY GALILEAN FISHERMEN.

DR.. TaImage Describes the Gospel
Net and How 1t Should De Kept In
Repair-Chrfsts Disciples as Fish
ers of Men.
WASHINGTON, Jan. q In this dis
course DR.. Talmage describes the gospel
net and how it is to be repaired after be-
ing damaged; text, Matthew iv, q,
~James, the SON OF Zebedee, and John,
his brother, in ship with Zebedee. their
father, mending their nets"
"I go a-fishingi' 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
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 vegetables and meats of the land, the
sea has an amount Of animal life that
would feed all the populations OF the
earth and fatten them with a food that
by its phosphorus would make a genera
ton brainy and intellectual beyond any
thing that the world has ever imagined.
My text takes US among the Galilean fish
ermen. One day Walter Scott, while hunt
ing 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 today we may find
some unknown wealth of thought while
looking 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 q hook and line, and the fish will
not bite, it is q good time to put the an
gler's apparatus into better condition.
Perhaps the last fish you hauled in was
so large that something snapped, or, il
you were fishing with net, there was
mighty foundering of the scales or an ex-
posed 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 hundred trophies from
the deep, and when you are in the full
glee of hauling in the spotted treasures,
through some imperfection of the net
they splash back into the wave. That is
too much of a trial of patience for most
fishermen to endure, and many man or
dinarily correct of speech in such circum-
stances comes to an intensity of utter
ance unjusti6able. Therefore no good
fisherman considers the time wasted that
is spent in mending his net. Now, the
Bible again and again represents Chris
tan workers as fishers of men, and we
are all sweeping through the sea Of hu-
manity some kind of net. Indeed there
have been enough nets out and enough
fishermen busy to have landed the whole
ht1rnan in hn l-inyInrp Of Cod lOnU
before this What is the matter? The
gospel is all right, and it has been a. 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 the boat mending their
nets.
Easy to Get In.
The trouble with many of our nets is
that the meshes are too large. If 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 Galilee, from north side to
south side, and from east side to west
side, expecting 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 before you were captured for
God and heaven. The net was not in
tended to be any restraint or any him
drance. What you did before you were
Christian do now. Go to all styles of
amusement, read all the styles of books,
engage in all the styles of behavior as be-
fore you were converted" And so.
through these meshes of permission and
laxity, 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 heaven, before we
know it, are back in the 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
verbiage when it talks about self denial.
and keeping the body under. and about
walking the narrow way and entering
the strait gate and about carrying the
cross? Is there to be no way of telling
whether q man is Christian except by
his taking the communion chalice on sac
ramental day? May a man be as reck-
less 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 after 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 hy-
pocrisy of a most appalling kind to its
other defects.
Furthermore, many OF our nets are torn
to pieces by being entangled with other
nets. 1t is sad sight to see fishermen