The free press. (Poplarville, Miss.) 1890-19??, 1902-03-13
DIR. TALMAGES SERMON
SUNDAYS DISCOURSE BY THE NOTED
DIVINE.
subject: Temptations For the Young-The
AssaiIants of Virtue and Honesty Arc
Numerous-Need For Divine Protection
Gods Grace Bringeth Salvation.


Numerous-Need L or Divine Protection
Gods Grace Bringeth Salvation.
WASHINGTON, D. CA familiar illus
tration from the BARNARD is employed in
this discourse by DR.. Talmage to show
the comfort and protection that heaven at
fords to all trusting souls. Ihe text Is
Matthew xii, 81, Gwen as a hen gather
eth her chickens under her wings, and We
would not"
Jerusalem was in sight as Christ came
to the crest of Mount Olivet, height OF
Zoo feet. The splendors OF the religious
capital of the whole earth lrradlated the
! landscape There is the temple. 4onder
is the kings palace. Spread out before
His eyes are the ponp, wealth, the wick
| edness and the coming destruction OF Je-
rusalem, and He bursts into tears at the
| thought of the obduracy of place that
He would gladly have saved and apostro-
phizes, saying, 80 Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
| how often would l 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 smile? Next to the apposlteness OF
the comparison, l think 1t 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 on 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
a height of 1000 feet on the sides of the
| Himalayas. 1t has no pretenslon or 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. yet the hen OF my text
hath nothing that could be taken Tor
SOLE but only clucl; and cackle. \ ct
| 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.
l Christ was thus simple in His teach
Tings, 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
plicity! We have to run course of lit
| erary disorders as children course OF ply
steal disorders. We come out o. school
and college loaded down with Greek my
thologies and out of the theological semln-
airy weighed down with what the learned
fathers said, and we fly with wings OF
| eagles and hamingoes and albatrosses, and
it takes 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.
/ am in warm sympathy with the unpre-
tentious old fashioned hen because, like
! most Of us, she has to scratch for living.
| lo bo VI
most people of good sense are slow to
| learn-that the gaining of 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, 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. 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 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 be 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 ruff1e 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 raDaclous bird
| wheeling round and round and down and
| down, and not seeing us as We stood IN
the shadow, it came nearer and lower I'M
| til we saw its beak was curved from base
| to tip end it had two flames of fire for
ewes, 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
huddled under wing, darted back into the
clouds.
So Christ calls with great earnestness to
all the young. Why, what is the matter?
it is bright sunlight. and there can be no
danger Health is theirs. A good home
is theirs. Plenty OF food is theirs. Pros
pect of long life is theirs. But Christ con-
tinues to call, calls with more emphasis
ard urges haste and says not second
ough: to be lost Oh, do tell us what is
the matter. All. now / see; there are
hawks of temptation in the air, there are
vultures wheeling for their prey, there
are bealls of death ready to plunge, there
are claws of allurement ready to clutch;
Now l see the peril. Now l understand
the urgency. Now / see the only safety.
Would that Christ might this day take
our sons and daughters into His shelter
, ''as men gathereth her chickens under
her wing
rhe fact is that the most of them will
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 hells, there are the infdelties and
immoralities of spirituahsm, there are the
bad books, there are the impurities, there
are the business rascalities, and SO numer-
GUS are these assailants that it is wonder
that honesty and virtue are not lost arts
The birds of prey, ,diurnal and nocturnal,