The age-herald., 1902-03-09


 lustration from the barnyard Is employed in this discourse by Dr. Talmage to snow the comfort and protection that heaven affords to all trusting souls. The text IS Matthew xxiii, S7, "Even as hen gath cred her chickens under her wings and ye would not"
 "Terusalem was in sight as Christ came to the crest of Mount Olivet height of 7oo feet. The splendors of the religious oan;+al of the whole earth irradiated inc landscape. There is the temple. Yon- der Is the kings palace. Spread out be- fore his eyes are the pomp, the wealth the wickedness and the coming destruc- tion of Jerusalem. and he bursts into tears at the thought of the obduracy of a place that he would gladly have saved and apostrophizes. saying, 70 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gath cred thy children together, even as hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
 Why did Christ select hen and chickens as a simile? Next to the appositeness of the comparison, l think it was to help all public teachers in the matter of illus tration to get down off their stilts and use comparisons that all can understand. The plainest bird on earth is the barn. yard fowl It's only adornments are the red comb in its headdress and the Wattles under the throat It has no grandeur of genealogy. All we know is that it's ancestors came from India some of them from a height of 40O0 feet on the sides of the Himalayas. It has no pretenslon of nest like the eagles eyrie. It has no he sessing anatomy that allows flight, yet about the last thing it wants to do is to fy 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, yet the hen of my text hath nothing that could be taken for song, but only chuck and cackle. Yet Christ in the text uttered while looking upon doomed Jerusalem de- clares that what he had wished for that city was like what the hen does for her chickens
 = Christ's Simple Teachings.
 Christ was thus simple in his teach ings, and yet how hard 1t Is for us who are Sunday school instructors and ed- itors and preachers and reformers and those who would gain the ears of audi ences to attain that heavenly and di-
 
 a course of literary disorders as chill dren 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 witN what the learned fathers said, and we fly with wings of eagles and fiamingoes and albatrosses, and it takes a good while before we can come down to Christs similitudes, the candle under fIaf savor the net thrown into the sea, the spittle on the eyes of the blind man and the hen and chickens.
 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 suggestive of good things than many that fly higher and wear brighter colors. She is not a prima donna of the skies nor a strut of beauty in the aisle of the forest She does not cut circle under the sun like the Rocky Mountain eagle, but stays at home to look after family affairs. She does not swoop like the condor of the cordilleras to transport rabbit from the valley to the top of the crags, but just scratches for a living.
 I am In warm sympathy with the un- pretentious old-fashioned hen because like most of us, she has to scratch for a living. She knows at the start the les son which most people of good sense are slow to learn-that the gaining of a livelihood implies work and that sue cesses do not lie on the surface, but are to be upturned by positive and continuous effort. The reason that society and the church and the world are so full of failures, so full of loafers, so full of deadbeats is because people are not wise enough to take the lesson which any hen would teach them, that if they would find for themselves and for those dependent upon them anything worth having they must scratch for it. Solomon said. "Go to the ant, thou sluggard." l 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 com pared to a descending dove, but Christ in a sermon that began with cutting sarcasm for hypocrites and ends with the paroxysm of pathos in the text com pares himself to a hen.
 Hawks of Temptation.
 One day in the country we saw sud- den consternation 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 look ed up to see 1T a SIOrmclOuu were nov ering. We could see nothing on the ground that could terrorize, and we could see nothing in the air to ruffle 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 round and above us, when we saw that high up and far away there was a rapacious biro wheeling round and round and down and down. and. not see ing us as we stood in the shadow, 1t came nearer and lower until we saw its beak was curved from base to tip, and it had two flames of fire for eyes, and 1t was a hawk But all the chickens were under old Dominick's wing, and either the bird of prey caught a glimpse of us or, not able to find the brood huddled un- der wing, darted back into the clouds. So Christ calls with great earnestness to all the young. Why, what is the mat ter? It is bright sunlight, and there can be no danger. Health is theirs. good home is theirs. Plenty of food is theirs. Prospect of long lie is theirs. But Christ continues to call, calls with more em- phasis and urges haste and says not second ought to be lost. Oh, do tell us what Is the matter. An, now I see; there are hawks of temptation in the air. there are vultures wheeling for their prey