The Camden chronicle. (Camden, Tenn.) 1890-current, 1902-04-11
DR.TALnAdE's sERnON
The Eminent Divlne's Sunday
DlscOnrse.

Subjects Temptations FOR the YounE-Ths
AssaiIants Of Virtue and Honesty Are
Nunerous-Nsed For Divine Protection
Gods Grace Rringsth Salvation.
WAsHTNorov. d. CA familiar illus.
tration from the barnyard is employed in
this discourse by DR.. Talmage 10 show
the comfort and protection that heaven of.
fords TO all trusting souls. The text Is
Matthew xiii. ~, Even az a hen gather
eth her chickens under her wings, and ye
would not"
Jerusalem was in sight rs Christ came
TO the crest Of Mount Olivet, q height Of
700 feet. The splendors of the religious
capital Of the whole earth irradiated the
landscape. There il the temple. Yonder
is the kings palace. Spread out before
His eyes are .he pomp, wealth, the wick
edness and the coming destruction Of Je-
rusalem, and He bursts into tears at the
thought OF the obduracy Of a place that
He would gladly have saved and apostr0-
pixies, .saying, 20 Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
how often would / have gathered thy
children together even as a hen gathereth
her chickens under her wings, and ye
would not"
Why did Christ select hen and chickens
as a bimile? Next TO the apposteness of
the comparison, / think it was TO help all
public teachers in the matter of ilustra-
ton TO get down of their stills and use
comparisons that oil can understand. The
plainest bird on earth is the barnyard
fowl. It's only adornments are the red
comb in its head-dress and the wattles un-
der the throat IL has no grandeur of
genealogy. All we know is that its anoes-
tors came from India, some Of them from
a height of 1000 feet on the sides Of the
Himalayas. 1t has no pretension of nest
like the eagles eyrie It has no lustre of
plumage like the goldhnch Possessing
anatomy 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 IL musical
scale the song Of lark and robin redbreast
and nightingale, yet the hen Of my text
hath nothing that could be taken for
song, but only cluck and cackle. Yet
Christ in the text uttered while looking
upon doomed Jerusalem declares that what
He had 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 editors
and preachers and reformers and those
who would gain the ears of audiences to
attain that heavenly and divine art of sim
plieityl We have to run course Of lit
erary disorders as children a course Of ply
steal disorders. We come out of school
and college loaded down with Greek my
thologies and out Of the theological semin-
airy weighed down with what the learned
fathers said, and we fly with wings of
eagles and hamingoes and albatrosses, and
it takes O good while before we can come
down to Christ's similitudes, the candle
under the bushel. the salt that has lost it's
SAVIOR, the net thrown into the sea, the
spittle on the eyes of the blind man and
the hen and chickens.
I am in warm sympathy with the UMPIRE
tentious old fashioned hen because, like
most OF us, she has to scratch for a living.
She knows at the start the lesson which
most people of good sense are slow to
learn--that the gaining of a livelihood i'm
plies work, and that successes do not lie
on the surface, but are to be upturned by
positive and continuous effort The rea-
son that society and the church and the
world are so full Of failures, so full of loaf
ers, 80 full Of deadbeats is because people
are not wise enough TO take the lesson
which any hen would teach them that il
those dependent upon them anything worth
having they must scratch for It. Solo.
mon said, GO to the ant, thou sluggard."
say, Go to the hen, thou sluggard. In
the Old Testament God compares Himself
to an eagle stirring up her nest. and in
the New Testament the Holy Spirit is
compared to a descending dove, but Christ
in sermon that began with cutting sar-
casm for hypocrites and ends with the
paroxysm of pathos in the text compares
Himself to a hen.
One day in the country we saw sudden
CONSERVATION in the behavior of Old Dom
mick. Why the hen should bs so dis
turbed we could not understand. We
looked about to see if a neighbours dog
were invading the farm. We looked up to
see if a storm cloud were lowering. We
could see nothing on the ground that could
terrorize, and we could see nothing in the
air to ruf1e the feathers 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 there was q rapaclous bird
wheeling round and round and down and
down, and not seeing Us as we stood in
the shadow, it came nearer and lower un'
til we saw its bea6 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 Domlnlcks wings
and either the bird Of prey caught a
glimpse of Us or not able to find the brood
huddled under wing, darted back into the
clouds.
So Christ calls with great oarncstness to
IL is bright Sunlight. and there can be nc
danger. Health is theirs. A good home
is theirs. Plenty Of food is theirs. Pros
pcot of long life is theirs. But Christ con
tinues to call, calls with more emphasis
ard urges haste and says not q second
ought to be lost, Oh, do tell US what is
the matter. All, now I see; there are
hawks Of temptation in the air, there arc
vultne3 wheeling for their prey, there
are bcalls of death ready to plunge, there
are claws of allurement ready to clutch
Now / see the peril. Now l understand
the urger cy. Now l see the only safety
Would that Christ might this day talk
our sons and daughters into His shelter
"as hcn galhereth her chickens under
her wing"