Newport weekly independent., 1901-09-06
A SUMMER SERMON.
Discourse Full of the Breath of
 Hills and Fields.
Or. TaImage Applies His Text to the World in Which We Liye-The Need of Olive Branches in
 Every Day Life.

This discourse of Dr. Talmage is full of the breath of the hills and fields and is a summer sermon: text, Nehemiah viii, 15, ''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"
 It 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? Well, 1t is a great festal time. It is the feast of tabernacles, and these peo- pie are going to cele ebrate the desert travel O their fathers and their Ge- Averanc4 from their troubles, the eX- perienCa of their fathers when, travel
 
 on tieir way to the land of Canaan. AnI so these booths also became high 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 liv- ing temporarily here, as it were, in booths or arbors, on our way to the of ptn nd Jybo 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 ana 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 50 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 march. The generations that have 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 souls are to be comforted. Go forth unto the mountain and fetch olive branches and pine branches and myrtle branches and palm branches and branches of thick trees and build booths.
 We'll, now we are ready to construct . Gospel arbor or Gospel booth, and must get all the tree branches and build. According to my text, we must go 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 70 or 22 feet, a straight stem and then an offshoot from that
 
 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. It means hang up the war knapsacks. It is but n f11 of 60
 Now, if we are to-day going to succeed in building this Gosp-I 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, do not mean to represent God as an angry chieftain, having grudge against us, but l do mean to affirm that there is no more antag- onism between a hound and a hare, between a hawk and a bullet, 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 a treaty, there must be a stretching forth of olive branches.
 There is great lawsuit going on now, and it is a lawsuit which man is bringing against his Maker. That 1awsu uit is now on the calendar. It is the human versus the Divine, it is ini- quity versus the immaculate, it is
 
 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-