The free press. (Poplarville, Miss.) 1890-19??, 1901-03-21
REV DIR. TALMAEG
DISCOURSE BY THE EMINENT d.
VINE LAST SUNDAY.
Subject The Ministry of Tears IF Our
Misfortunes Are Borne in the Right
Spirit They May Prove to BE Advan-
tases-Soul Chastened by Sorrow.


crowded the Academy of Music in this
city to hear DR.. Talmage. Discoursing 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 spectacle a few weeks ago when
the nations were in tears! Queen Vic
toria assembled from the highest throne on
earth to a throne in heaven. The prayer
more often offered than any prayer for the
last slxtyfour years had been answered,
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 mournful 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 ofthe Tweed or the Thames
or the Shannon.A 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
Latimer, our Ridley our Robert Emmett,
our Daniel O'Connell, our Havelock, our
Ruskln, ourGladstone, our good and great
and glorious Victoria.
The language in which we offered the
English nation our coincidence is the same
language i1Awhich John Bunyan dreamed
and Milton sang and Shakespeare drama
TIED and Richard Baxter prayed and
George Whitefeld Numbered. 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 Scotland's CAPT.
tions be in tears. But 1 am not going to
speak of national tears, but of individual
tears and Bible tears.
Riding across a Western prairie, wild
flowers up to the hub of the carriage
wheel and while long distance from any
shelter. there came a sudden shower, and
while the rain was falling in torrents 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
pansed praiEies in Gods sweet and golden
sunlight.
You remember that bottle which David
labeled as containing tears and Mary S
tears and Pauls 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 a world where all the people are well
and eternal strangers to pains and aches!
|. What is the use OF an eastern storm when
Five might have perpetual nor wester? Why,
when a family is put together, pot 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
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 congratuia-
ton but come now and bring all your die
tionaries and all your PHILOSOPHERS and all
your religions and help me explain tear.
A chemist will tell you that it is made
up of salt.and lime and other Component
parts, bsatfhe misses the chief ingredients
acid of a soured life, the viperine
sting of bitter memory, the fragments OF
broken heart. ! will tell you what tear
is 1t is agony In solution. Hear. then,
while ! discourse of the ministry OF tears
or the practical uses Of sorrow:
First, it is. the design of trouble to Keep
this .worldf ffrom being too attractive.
Som 4thing Must be done to make lis. viii
ing toAquit This existence. If it werasnott
for trouble, this world would be good
be Wiling tJstal5e a lease Of this life for a
hundred million years if there were no
trouble. The earth, cushioned and up
holstered and pilared and chandeliered at
suchyexpense, no story of other worlds
could enchant us. We would say: LET
well enough atpne If you want to die and
have your body disntegrated in the dust
and your soul go out on celestial adyen-
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
ence. WHY" he would say. what is the
use Of my going there? There ags.R sm-
brandts and Rubenses AND IitiaSthere
that / have not looked at&et." No man
wants to so out of this world or out of
any house until he has a better house.
To cure this wish to staY4here God must
somehow create disgust for our surround
ngs How shall He do it? He cannot af-
ford to efface 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. Paul's cathedral, or a Mi
chael Angelo to dash out his own Last
Judgment" or a Handel to discord his
Israel in Egypt" and you cannot expect
God to spoil the architecture and music of
His own world. How, then. are we to be
made willing to leave? Here is where
trouble comes in
After man has had a good deal of
trouble he saws. "Well | am ready to go.