The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1902-04-03
A HAVEN OF REFUGE,
Heaven Affords Comfort and Pro-
lection to the Trusting.
Dr. TalmaEe Draws a Sermon from
the Familiar Illustration from
the Barnyard-SimpleT Teach
inEs of Christ.

Copyright, 1902. by Louis Klopsch, N. VI
Washington,
A familiar illustration from the
barnyard is employed in this discourse
by DIR. Talmage to show the comfort
and protection that Heaven affords to
all trusting souls. The text is Mat
thew 23:37: Even as hen gathereth
her chickens under her wings and ye
would not
Jerusalem was in sight as Christ
came to the crest of Mount Olivet,
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 Gbduracy of place
that he would gladly have saved and
apostrophizes, saying: 80, Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, how often would l have
gathered thy children together, even
as hen gathereth her chickens under
her wings, and We would mott"
Why did Christ select hens and chick
ems as simile? Next to the Apostle
| ness of the comparison, l think it was
| to help all public teachers in the mat
ter of illustration to get down off
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. 1t 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. It has no
| pretension of nest like the eagles
eyrie. 1t has no luster of plumage
like the goldfnch. Possessing anat-
omy that allows flight 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 a 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 course of literary disorders as
children course of physicaldisorders.
| 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 flamingoes and albatrosses,
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 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 un-
der 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 a rabit from the valley to
the top of the crags, but just scratches
for living.
l am in warm sympathy with the
unpretentious 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
livelihood implies work and that
successes do not lie on the surface, but
are to be upturned by positive and con-
tinuous effort. The reason that soci
ETY. and the church and the world are
| 81 Idil VI 81 luil VI 1OdltTS, sc
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 behavio,
of old Dominick. Why the her
should be so disturbed we could not
understand. We looked about to set
if neighbor's dog were invading
the farm. We looked up to see i
a stormcloud were lowering w.
could see nothing on the ground tina
could terrorize, and we could set
nothing in the air to ruffle the feath
ers of the hen, but the loud, wild
affrighted cluck which brought all hel
brood at full run under her feather,
made US look again around and abov'
us. when we saw that high up aud fal