St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1902-04-12
A HAVEN OF REFUGE.
Heaven Affords Comfort and Pro-
lection to the Trusting.
DR.. TalmaEe Draws . Sermon from,
the Familiar Illustration from
the Barnyard-SimpIeT Teach
inxs of Christ.
copyright, 1902, by Louis Klopsch. N. Y
chi Tor

copyright, 1902, by Louis Kiopsch. N. y
Washington,
A familiar illustration from the
barnyard is employed in this discourse
by DR.. Talmage to show the comfort
and protection that Heaven affords to
all trusting souls. The text is Mat
thew 1881: Even as hen gathereth
her chickens under her wings and We
would not
Jerusalem was in sight as Christ
came to the crest of Mount ollVet,
height of 700 feet. The splendors OF
the religious capital of the whole earth
irradiated the landscape. There Is the
temple. Yonder is the kings palace.
Spread out before his eyes are the
pomp, the wealth, the wickedness and
the coming destruction of Jerusalem
and he bursts into tears at the
thought of the obduracy Of place
that he would gladly have saved and
apostrophizes, saying: 80, Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, how often would l have
gathered thy children together, even
DIS a llCH SdUhCl III I'LL
her wings, and ye would not!'
Why did Christ select hens and chick
ems as smile? Next to the apostle
ness of the comparison, think it was
to help all public teachers in the mat
ter of illustration to get down oil
their stills and use comparisons that
all can understand. The plainest bird
on earth is the barnyard fowl. Its
only adornments are the red comb in
It's headdress and the wattles under
the throat. It has no grandeur of
genealogy. All we know is that its an
cestors came from India, some OF
them from height of 1000 feet on
both sides of the Himalayas. 1t has no
pretension of nest like the eagles
eyrie. It has no luster of plumage
like the goldfinch. Possessing anat-
omy that allows fight yet about the
last thing it wants to- do is to fly, and
in retreat uses foot almost as much
as wing. Musicians have written out
in musical scale the song Of lark and
robin redbreast and nightingale, and
yet the hen of my text hath nothing
that could be taken for song, but
only the cluck and cackle. Yet Christ
in the text uttered while looking upon
doomed Jerusalem declares that what
he wished for that city was like what
the hen does for her chickens.
Christ was thus simple in His teach
ings, and yet how hard it is for us who
are Sunday school instructors and ed
itors and preachers and reformers
and those who would gain the ears of
audiences to attain that Heavenly and
Divine art of simplicity! We have to
run a course of literary disorders as
children a course of physical disorders.
We come out of school and college
loaded down with Greek mythologies
and out of the theological seminary
weighed down with what the learned
fathers said, and we fly with wings of
eagles and famingoes and albatrosses,
and it takes a good while before we
can come down to Christ's simifitudes,
the candle under the bushel, the salt
that has lost it's SAVIOR, the net thrown
into the sea, the spittle on the eys of
the blind man and the hen and chick
ems.
There is not much poetry about this
winged creature of God mentioned in
my text, but she is more practical
and more motherly and more suggest
i've of good things than many that fly
higher and wear brighter colors. She
is not prima donna of the skies nor
a strut of beauty in the aisle of the
forest. She does not cut circle I'M
der the sun like the Rocky mountain
eagle, but stays at home to look after
family affairs. She does rot swoop
like the condor of the cordileras to
transport RABBIT from the valley to
the top of the crags, but just scratches
for living.
am in warm sympathy with the
unpretenttous and old fashioned hen
because, like most. of us, she has to
scratch for a living. She knows at the
start what most people of good sense
are slow to learn-that the gaining Of
a livelihood implies work and that
are to be upturned by positive and con-
tinuous effort. The reason that soci-
ETY. and the church and the world are
so full of failures, so full of loafers, so
full of deadbeats is because the peo-
pie are not wise enough to take the
lesson which any hen would teach
them that if they would find for them
selves and for those dependent upon
them anything worth having they must
scratch for it.
One day in the country we saw
sudden CONSERVATION in the behavior
Of old Dominick. Why the hen
should be so disturbed we could not
understand. We looked about to see
if a neighbours dog were invading
the farm. We looked up to see if
a stormcloud were lowering. We
could see nothing on the ground that
could terrorize, and we could see
nothing in the air to ruffle the feath-
ers of the hen, but the loud, wild,
affrighted cluck which brought all her
brood at full run under her feathers
made us look again around and above
us, when we saw that high up and far
away IucTe was IdPdClouS DlIu
wheeling round and round and down
and down, and, not seeing us as we
stood in the shadow, it came nearer
and lower until we saw it's beak was
curved from base to tip and it had
two flames of fire for eyes and it
was a hawk. But all the chickens
were under old Dominick's wings, and
either the bird of prey caught
glimpse of us or, not able to find
the brood huddled under her wing,
darted back into the clouds. So
Christ calls with great earnestness
to all the young. Why, what is the
matter? 1t is bright sunlight, and
there can be no danger. Health is