Highland recorder. (Monterey, Highland County, Va.) 1877-1972, 1902-03-07

DR.. Talmage Says the Assaiianis Of
Virtue and Honesty Are
Numerous.
Needs For Divine Protection-dods Trace
Brngeth Salvation.

WASHINGTON, ~. " i"1i
,ration from the barnyard is employed in
This discourse by DR.. Talmage to show
the comfort and protection that heaven at
fords to all trusting souls. The text is
Matthew xiii, 81, even as a hen gather
eth her chickens under her wings, and We
would not"
Jerusalem was in sight as Christ came
Co the crest of Mount Olivet, a height OF
zoo 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 ewes are the pomp, wealth, the wick
edness and the coming destruction OF Je-
rusalem, and lie bursts into tears at the
thought of the obduracy of place that
He would gladly have saved and apostro-
phizes. saving, 20 Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
how often would | have gathered 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 Smile? Next to the appositeness of
the comparison, think it was to help all
public teachers in the matter of illustra-
ton to get down off their stills and use
comparisons that all can understand. The
p,ainest bird OH earth is the barnyard
fowl. Its only adornments are the red
comb in its head-dress and the wattles un.
der the throat. 1t has no grandeur Of
genealogy. All we know is that its ances-
tors came from India, some of them from
height Of 1000 feet on the sides Of the
Himalayas. 1t has no pretension of nest
like the eagles eyrie. 1t has no lustre of
plumage like the goldfnch. 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 in musical
scale the song of lark and robin redbreast
and nightingale. vet the hen OF my. text
hath nothing that could be taken for
song, but only cluck and cacile. Yet
Christ in the text uttered while looking
upon doomed Jerusalem declares that W hat
He had wished for that city was like what
the hen does for her chickens.
Christ was thus simple in His teach
incs. and vet 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
piicity! We have to run course OF llt-
crary disorders as children 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 famineoes and albstrosses, and
it takes a good while before we can come
down to Christ's similitudes, the candle
under the bushel. the salt that has lost ITS
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 unpre-
tentious old fashioned hen because, like
most of us, she has to scratch for living.
She knows at the start the lesson which
most people OF good sense are slow to
learn--that the gaining Of a livelihood inn
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. 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 1T. SOLO,
mon said, "Go to the ant, thou s)uggard:"
/ say, Go to the hen, thou sluggard. In
the Old Testament God compares Himself
the New Testament the Holy Spirit is
compared to descending dove, but Christ
in a sermon that began with cutting sar-
casm for hypocrites and ends with the
paroXysm of pathos in the text compares
Himself to hen.
One day in the country We saw sudden
CONSERVATION in the behavior of old DOM
mick. Why the hen should be so DIS
turhed we could not understand. We
looked about to see if neighbours dog
were invading the farm. We looked up to
see ii a storm cloud were lowering. We
could see nothing on the ground that could
terrorize, and we could see nothing III the
air to ruffle the feathers of the hen, but
the loud, wild, affrighted clucE which
brought all her brood at full run under
her feathers made US look again around
ard above us, when we saw that high up
and far away there was 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-
Ii. we saw its 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 a
glimpse of Us or not able to find the brood
huldled under wing, darted back into tn"
CO rds.
50 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 theirs. A good home
is theirs. Plenty Of food is theirs. Pros
pcct of long life is theirs. But Christ con-
TIMES to call, calls with more emphasis
and urges haste and says not a second
ought 10 bt lost Oh, DO tell us what is
the matter. All, now | see; there are
hawks Of temptation in the air, there are
vu!ures wheeling for their prey, there
are beaks of death ready to plunge, there
are claws of allurement ready to clutch
Now / see the peril. Now | understand
the urgency. Now | see the only safety
Would that Christ might this day take
our sons and daughters into His shelter
"as hen ga'hereth her chickens under
her wing
The fact is that the most of them vii;
never mind the shelter unless while they
are chickens. 1t is a simple matter Of IN
eXorable statistics that most of those who
do not come to Christ in youth never come
at all What chance is there for the
young without divine protection? There
are the grogshops, there are the gamb..
ling hclls, there are the infdeities and
immoralities of spiritualism, there are the
bad books, there are the impurities, there
are the business rascalities, and so numer'
Gus are THESE aSSallantS Jnat III is WOlueI
that honesty and virtue are not lost arts.
The birds of prey, diurnal and nocturnal,
of the natural world are ever on the alert.
They are assassins of the sky; they have
varieties of taste. The eagle prefers the
flesh of the living animals; the vuture
prefers the carcass; the falcon kills with
one stroke, while other styles of beak
give prolongation of torture. And so the
temptations of this life are various.
Fathers, mothers, older brothers and
sisters and Sabbath-school teachers, be
quick and earnest and prayerful and i'm
Fortunate and get the chickens under wing.
May the Sabbath schools of America and
Great Britain within the next three months
sweep all their scholars into the kingdom.
Whom they have now under charge is I'M
certain. Concerning that scrawny, puny
child that lay in the cradle many years
ago. the father dead, many remarked,