Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1901-03-21
DIR. TALMAGE'S SERMON
SUNDAYS DISCOURSE eY THE NOTED
DIVINE.
Subject: The Ministry of Tears - If Our
Misfortunes Are Borne in the Right
Spirit They May Prove to Be Advan-
tages-Soul Chastened by Sorrow.

ouJect Tie ministry Of Tears III Our
Misfortunes Are Borne I'm the Right
Spirit They May Prove to Be Advan-
tages-soul Chastened by Sorrow.
copyright 1soI.l
NEW YORK CITY. A vast audience
city to hear DR.. Talmage.. Discoursng on
'The Ministry OF Tears he put forth the
misfortunes of life in a cheerful light,
showing that if they were borne in the
right spirit they might prove to be advan-
tages. 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 We're in tears! Queen Vic
toria ascended from the highest throne on
earth to throne in heaven. The prayer
more often offered than any prayer for the
and God did save the Queen. All round
the world the bells were tolling, and the
minute. guns were booming at the obse-
quies of the most honored woman of many
centuries. As near four years ago the
English. and American nations shook
hands in congratulation at the Queens
jubilee: so in these times two nations
shook hands in mournfu sympathy 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 Bri.
tain. Those ancestors played in childhood
on 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 mere shall
low. There are over there bone of our
bone and flesh of our flesh. 1t is our Will
berforce, our Coleridge, our De Quincy,
our Robert Burns, our John Wesley, our
John Knox, our Thomas Chalmers, our
Walter Scott, our Bishop Charnock, our
our Daniel O,Connell, our Havelock, our
Ruslan, our Gladstone, our good and great
and glorious 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 Shakespeare drama,
tized and Richard Baxter prayed and
George Whitefeld thundered. The Prince
of Wales, now King, paid reverential visit
to Washington's tomb at Mount Vernon,
| and Longfellow's statue adorns Westmins-
ter Abbey, and Abraham LINCOLN in
bronze looks down upon seotland's capi-
tai. 1t was natural that these two ma
tions be in tears. But l am not going to
| speak of national tears, but of individual
tears and Bible tears.
Riding across Western prairie, wild
| flowers up to the hub of the carriage
wheel and while long distance from any
shelter, there came sudden shower, and
while the rain was falling in torrents the
sun was shining as brightly as l 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.
You remember that bottle which David
| labeled as containing tears and Mary's
| tears and Paul's tears and Christ's 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 are born and as to
the place of their grave.
! Tears of bad men are not kept. Alex
| ander 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 Alex
| ander's tears. | speak of the tears of
Gods children. Alas, me, they are falling
all the time
In summer you sometimes hear the
| growing thunder, and you 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 a
shower OF trouble somewhere all the time.
| Tears, tears!
What is the use of them. anyhow? Why
not substitute laughter? Why not make
this world where all the people are well
and eternal strangers to pains and aches
| What is the use of an eastern storm when
wemight have perpetualnor 'wester? Why,
when a family is put together, not have
! them all stay, or, if they must be trans
| planted to make other homes, then have
them all live, the family record telling a
story of marriages and births, but of no
I deaths? Why not have the harvests
chase each other without fatiguing toll?
| Why the hard pillow, the hard crust, the
hard struggle? 1t is easy enough to eX-
! plain smile or a success or a congratula-
| tion, but come now and bring all your die
tionaries and all your philosophers and all
| A chemist will tell you that it is made
mp of salt and lime and other component
| parts, but he misses the chief ingredients
| the acid of a soured life, the viperine
sting of a bitter memory, the fragments of
broken heart. | will tell you what tear
| is. 1t is agony in solution. Hear then,
| while l discourse of 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 II were not
for trouble, this world would be good
enough heaven for us. You and l would
be willing to take lease of this life for a
hundred million years if there were no
| trouble. The earth, cushioned and up
holstered and pillared and chandeliered at
such expense, no story of other worlds
could enchant lis. We would say: Let
well enough alone. If you want to die and
have your body disntegrated in the dust
and your soul go out on celestial adven-
ture, 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 him to hasten off
to the picture galleries of Venice or Flor
enee. "Why," he would say. what is the
use of my going there? There are Rem
brandts and Rubenses and 1'tians here
that | have not looked at yet" No man
wants to go out of this world or out of
any house until he hts a better house.
To cure this wish to stay here God must
somehow create disgust for our surround
ings. How shall He do it? He cannot af-
ford to eiface His horizon, or to tear off a
fiery panel from the sunset. or to subtract
an anther from the water lily, or to Danish
the pungent aroma from the mignonette.
or to drag the robes OF the morning in
mire.
You cannot expect a Christopher Wren
to mar his ST. Pauls cathedral, or Mi
chae Angelo to dash out his own Last
Judgment" or a Handel To discorl his