Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1902-01-23
DIR. TALMAGES SERMON
SUNDAYS DISCOURSE sY THE NOTED
DIVINE.
Subject: Grasp Present Opportunities - A
Prediction That the New Year VIII,
Be One: of the Greatest of All Time -
Prepare For the Future.

Prepare For the Future.
| WASHINGTON, d. C.-In this, DR.. Tai
images first discourse for the new year he
speaks words of encouragement to all the
timid and doubling. The text is Exodus
XII, 2, This month shall be unto you the
beginning of months; it shall be the first
month Of the year to YOU
The last month of the old year has
passed out OF sight, and the first month OF
the new years has arrived. The midnight
entered. She deserves better name. for
she Is called after Janus, the heather
| deity who, they supposed, presided over
doors, and so might be expected to preside
at the opening of the year. This month
was Of old called the wolf month because,
through the severity of its weather, the
hungry wolves. came down seeking food
and devouring human life In the missals
of the middle ages January was represent
ed as attired in white, suggestive of the
snow, and blowing the fingers, as though
suffering from the cold, and having bun
die OF wood under the arm, suggestive Of
the warmth that must be kindled
Yes, January is the open door of the
year, and through that door will come
what long professions, some of them bear
Ing palm leaves and some myrtle others
with garlands of wheat and others with
cypress and mistletoe. They are coming,
| and nothing can keep them back-the
events of a twelvemonth. 1t will, think,
be one of the greatest years Of all time
It will abound with blessing and disaster.
National and international controversies
OF momentous import will be settled. Year
OF coronation and detbronement, year that
will settle Cuban and Porto Rican and
Philippine and South African and Chinese
destinies. The tamest year for many a
decade past has dug its millions of graves
and reared its millions of marriage aaitars
| We can expect greater events in this
year than ever before, for the worlds pop
ulation has so vastly increased there are
SO many more than in any other year to
laugh and weep and triumph and perish.
The miightier wheels of mechanism have
such wider sweep. The fires are kindled
IN furnaces not seven times but seventy
times heated. The velocities whirling
through the air and sailing the seas and
tunneling the mountains will make unpre-
| cedented demonstration.
Would to God that before the now open-
Ing year has closed the earth might cease
to tremble with the last cannonade and
the heavens cease to be lighted up with any
more, confiagration of homesteads and the
toundries. that make swords be turned
shares.
The front door of stupendous year has
opened. Before many of you there will be
twelve months of opportunity for making
the world better or worse, happier or more
miserable. Let US pray, that it may be
ton of the hemisphere. Would to God
that this might be the year in which the
! three great instruments now chiefly used
tor secular purposes might be put to their
mightiest use in the worlds evangeliza-
ton - the telegraph, the telephone, the
| phonograph. Electricity has such potent
tongue, such strong arm, such swift wing,
such lightning foot that it occurs to me
that it may be the angel that st. John saw
and heard in apocalyptic vision when he
started back and cried out, "I saw anoth-
er angel flying in the midst OF heaven hay
ing the everlasting gospel to preach unto
them that dwell on the earth and to every
nation and kindred and tongue and peo-
| Pile"
They were tongues O. fire that sat on
the heads of the disciples at the Pentecost,
and why not the world called to God by
tongue of electric fire? Prepare your bat
teries and make ready to put upon the
wires the world wide message of ''whoso-
ever will"
Furthermore, this month of January
has the greatest height and depth of cold.
The rivers are bound in crystal chains
The fountains that made highest leap in
the summer parks now toss not one jet,
for every drop would be a frozen tear
, The sleds craunch through the hard snow.
Warmest attire the wardrobe can afford
is put on that we may defend ourselves
against the fury of the elements. Hardest
of all the months for the poor, let it be
the season of greatest generosity on the
part of the prosperous. How much a scut-
tie OF coal or pair of shoes or coat or
shawl may do III assua3ement OF suffering
between the lst Of January and the lst of
February God only knows. Seated by our
warm registers or wrapped in furs which
make us independent of the cutting Janu
ary blast, let us not forget the hreless
hearth and the thin garments and the
hacking cough and the rheumatic twince
OF those who through .destitution find life
In winter an agony. Suppose each one OF
Us take under charge one poverty stricken
household or one disabled man or one in.
vallded woman. On our way home from
such charity, though the wind may be
howling and the night tempestuous, l
that was heard on Galilee and at the gates
of Main and by the pool OF Bethesda say
ing. "lnasmuch as ye did it to them, ye
did it to Me-
Oh, the might of the cold! The arctic
and antarctic invading the temperate zone!
The victories of the frost-as when the
Thames in 1905 became firm as any bridge
and the inhabitants crossed and recrossed
on the ice and booths and places of tenn
porary amusement were built on the hard
ened surface; as when many years ago
New York Harbor was paved with ice so
that the people passed on foot to the ad-
joining islands. But the full story of the
cold will never be known. The lips which
would have told il were frozen and the
fingers that would have written it were
benumbed. Only here and there fact ap-
Pears. In 1851 the cold was so terrific that
The wolves entered Vienna. In 1868 it was
so cold that wine was cut with hatchets
and distributed among the soldiers In
1894 whole forest was killed by the cold
at Ravenna. In 763 the Black Sea was
frozen over. As we go further back the
frosts, are mightier, but as we come fur
ther down the frosts lessen.
The worst seventies have been halted.
end the SHOWS have lost their depths, and
the thermometers announce less terrific
falls of temperature, and the time will
come when the year will be one long sum-
mer of foliage and bloom. While the
worlds normal condition will be reformed, |
the worst climates will be corrected You
coMld not have a millennium with a Jan |