Connecticut western news., 1901-01-31
WITH SILKEN CORDS.
so SHOULD THE, FISHERS OF MEN
 MEND THEIR NETS.

Dr. Talmage Warns Christians
 Against Harsh Criticism - He De-
 plorcs Dcnominationnl Strife In
 Gospel Work.
 WASHINGTON, Jan. 2T.-In this dis course Dr. Talmage describes the gos- pei ret and how it is to be repaired aft er being damaged; text. Matthew iv, 21, James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, in ship with Zebe- dee, their father, mending their nets."
 Il go a-fishingr' 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 cen tury the queen of Egypt had for pin money $470,OOO received from the fish cries 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 food that by its phosphorus would make q generation brainy and intellec- tual beyond anything that the world las ever imagined. My text takes us among the Galilean fishermen. One day Walter Scott, while hunting in an old drawer, found among some old fish, ing tackle the manuscript of his i'm mortal booK, :.Waverley," which he had put away there as of no worth, nnd who knows but that today we may Gnd some unknown wealth of thought while looking at the fishing tackle In the text.
 It is not a good day for fishing, and three men are in the boat repairing the broken fishing nets. If you are fishing with hook and line, and the fish will not bite, it is good time to put the anglers apparatus into better condi- ton. Perhaps the last fish you hauled in was so large that something snap pcd. Or, if you were fishing with net, there was a mighty foundering of the scales or an exposed nall on the sitfe of the boat which broke some of the threads and let part or all of the captives of the deep escape into thelr natural element. And hardly anything is more provoking than to nearly land a score or hundred of 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 a man ordinarily correct of speech in such circumstances comes to an in- nf rrff Therefore no good fisherman considers the time wasted that Is spent in mend- ing his net Now, the Bible again and again represents Christian workers as fishers of men, and we are all sweep ing through the sea of humanity some kind of net. Indeed there have been enough nets out and enough fishermen busy to have landed the whole human race in the kingdom of God long be- fore this. What Is the matter? The gospel is all right, and it has been a good time for catching souls for thou sands 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 a good thing when they sat in the boat mending their nets.
 Fault of the Nets.
 The trouble with many of our nets Is that the meshes are too large. If a 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 intended to be any re- 
 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 before 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 fish ing, let us make it as easy as possible for souls to get in and as hard as pos sible to get out.
 Is the Bible language an unmeaning verbiage when it talks about self de- nial, and keeping the body under, and about walking the narrow way, and entering the strait gate and about car rying the cross2 Is there to be no way of telling whether a man is a Chris tian except by his taking the com munion chalice on sacramental day? May a man be as reckless 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 1t gets IS bad as the world it will be worse than the world by so much, as it will add hypocrisy of most appalling kind to it's other defects.
 Room For All.
 Furthermore, many of our nets arc torn to pieces by being entangied with other nets. It is a sad sight to see fish ermen fighting about sea room, and pull ing in opposite directions each to get his net, both nets damaged by the struggle and losing all the fish. In this land, where there are more than TO- 100000 people, there are at least S0,- O00,OO0 not in the Sunday schools and