The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1901-03-22

NEW YORK, March 1U.-A vast audi
ence crowded the Academy of Music in
this city today to hear DR.. Talmage.
Discoursing on The Ministry of Tears
he put the misfortunes Of life in a cheer
full light, showing that if they were borne
in the right spirit they might prove to be
advantages. His text was Rev. vii, II,
"And God shall wipe away all tears from
their eyes,"
What a spectacle a few weeks ago
when the nations were in tears! Queen
Victoria assembled from the highest
throne on earth to a throne in heaven.
The praye more often offered than any
prayer for the last GA years had been an
swered, and God did save the queen. All
round the world the bells were tolling,
u the minute guns were booming at
the obsequies of the most honored wo-
man of many centuries. AS near fou
years ago the English and American ma
tons shook hands in coagratulation at
the queens jubilee so in these times two
nations shook hands in mournful sympa-
thy at the queens departure. No people
outside Great Britain so deeply felt that
mighty grief as our people. The cradles
of many Of our ancestors were rocked in
Great Britain. Those ancestors played
in childhood IN the banks of the Tweed
or the Thames or the Shannon. Take
from our veins the English blood or the
Welsh blood or the Irish blood or the
Scotch blood and the stream of our life
would be n mere shallow. They are over
there bone of our bone and flesh of our
flesh. 1t is our Wilberforce, our Cole
ridge. our De Quincy, our Robert Burns,
our John Wesley, our John Knox, our
Thomas Chalmers, our Walter Scott, our
T.-L-- TL--~1- z,- 49, .-- Dbl
ley, our Robert Emmett, our Daniel
O'COnnell, our Havelock, our Ruskin, our
Gladstone, our good and great and glo-
rious Victoria.
The language in which we offered the
English nation our coincidence is the
same language in which John Bunyan
dreamed and Milton sang and Shake
speare dramatized and Richard Baxter
prayed and George Whitefeld thunder
ed. The Prince OF Wales, now king,
paid r%everential visit to Washington's
tomb at Mount Vernon, and Longfellow's
statue adorns Westminster abbey, and
Abraham Lincoln in bronze looks down
upon Scotland's capital. 1t was natural
that these two nations be in tears. But
] am not going to speak of national tears,
but of individual tears and Bible tears.
Riding across a western prairie, wild
uO"tIS up ~ Iuc nuD VI Iue CdIIldSc
wheel. and while a long distance from
any shelter, there came a sudden shower,
and, while the rain was falling in tor
rents, the sun was shining as brightly as
/ ever saw it shine, and / thought, What
a beautiful spectacle is this! So the
tears of the Bible are not midnight
storm, but rain on pansied prairies in
Gods sweet and golden sunlight.
The Ministry of Tears.
You remember that bottle which David
labeled as containing tears, and Mary's
tears and Paurs tears and Christs tears,
and the harvest of joy that is to spring
from the sowing of tears. God mixes
them; God rounds them; God shows
them where to fall; God exhaleS them.
A census is taken of them, and there is
a record as to the moment when they
were born and as to the place of their
grave. Tears of bad men are not kept.
Alexander in his sorrow had the hair
clipped from his horses and mules and
made a great ado about his grief, but in
all the vases of heaven there is not one
Of A~lexander's tears. i speak of the
tears of Gods children. Alas, me, they
are falling all the timei In summer you
sometimes hear the growing thunder,
and o see there is a storm miles away,
but you know from the drift of the clouds
that it will not come anywhere near you.
So, though it may be all bright around
about you, there is q shower of trouble
somewhere all the time. Tears, tears!
What is the use Of them anyhow?
Why not substitute laughter? Why not
make this a world where all the people
are well and eternal strangers to pains
and aches? What is the use of al east
ern storm when we might have a per-
petual nor'wester? Why, when a family
is put together, not have them all stay,
or, If they must be transplanted to make
other homes, then have them all live,
the family record telling a story of mar
riages and births, but of no deaths?
Why not have the harrests chase each
other without fatiguing toll? Why the
hard pillow. the hard crust, the hard
struggle? 1t is easy enough to explain
q smile or q success or a congratulation,
but come now and bring all your diction-
aries n all your PHILOSOPHERS and all
you religions and help me explain a
tear. A chemist will tell you that it is
made up Of salt and lime and other COM
poneut parts, but he misses the chief in
g~redients-the acid Of a soured life, the
yiperine sting Of a bitter memory, the
fragments of a broken heart. / will tell
you what q tear is. 1t is agony in solu-
uOn- near. lueHr "AlIS Il ulSSOuISc VI
the ministry Of tears or the practical
uses OF sorrow:
First, it is the design of trouble to keep
this world from being too attractive.
Something must be done to make us will
ing to quit this existence. II it were not
for trouble, this world would be a good
enough heaven for Us. You and I would
be willing to take a lease Of this life for
a hundred million years il there were no
trouble. The earth, cushioned and up
holstered and pillared and chandeliered
at such expense. no story Of other worlds
could enchant us. We would say: Let
well enough alone. If you want to die
and have your body disintegrated in the
dust and POUR soul go out on a celestial
adventure. then you can go, but this
world is good enough for me-" You
might as well go to a man who has just
entered the Louvre at Paris and tell lin
to hasten off to the picture galleries Of
Venice or Florence. why" he would
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