Orange County observer. [volume] (Hillsborough, N.C.) 1880-1918, 1902-03-13
FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
0R. Tall WAGE'S Sun AY SERMON

'N. lhL HAUL y DIN al CLKMUVl
Many Temptations That Reset the
y oung-We Should Carefully Guaro
Our Conduct.
WASHINGTON, D. ca familiar illus
this discourse by DR.. Talmage to show
the comfort and protection that heaven al
fords to all trusting souls. The text is
Matthew xiii, 81, Gwen as a hen gather
eth her chickens under her wings, and ye
would not"
Jerusalem was in sight as Christ came
to the crest of Mount Olivet, a height OF
capital of the Whole earth irradiaEed the
landscape. There is the temple. Yonder
is the kings palace. Spread out before
His eyes are the pomp, wealth, the wick
edness and the coming destruction Of Je-
rusalem, and He bursts into tears at the
thought of the obduracy OF a pace that
He would gladly have saved and apostro-
how often would I have gathered thy
children together, even as a hen gathereth
her chickens under her wings, and We
would not?"
Why did Christ select hen and chickens
Is a simiie? Next to the appositeness of
the comparison, 1 think it was to help all
public teachers in the matter Of ~illustra-
ton to get down off their stills and use
comparisons that al can understand. The
p~,ainest bird on earth is the barnyard
fowl. It's only adornments are the red
comb in its head-dress and the watGles I'M
der the throat. It has no grandeur Of
genea,ogy. 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
like the eagles eyrie. It has no lustre of
plumage, like the go'd6nch. Possessing
anatomy 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, vet the hen of my text
hath nothing that could be taken for a
song, but only cluck and cackle. Yet
upon doomed Jerusalem declares that what
He had wished for that city was like what
the hen dues 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 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 lave to run a course Of lit
erary disorders as children a 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, aud we fly with wings of
eagles and hamingoes 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 it's
SAVIOR, the net thrown into the sea-, the
Spite on the eyes of the blind man and
the hen and chickens.
l am in warm sympathy with the unpre-
t~entious old fashioned hen because, like
most of us, she has to scratch for a living.
She knows at the start the lesson which
most people of good sense are slow to
learn-that the gaining of a 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
those dependent upon them anything worth
having they must scratch for it. Solo,
mon said, eco 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
compared to a descending dove, but Christ
in a sermon that began with cutting sar-
casm for hypocrites and ends with the
paro1ysm 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 %neighbor's dos
were invading the farm. We looked up tc
see if a storm cloud were lowering. We
could see nothing on the ground that coult
terrorize, and we could see nothing in the
air to rnf1e the feathers of the hen, but
the loud, wild, aGrighted cluck which
brought all her brood at full run under
her feathers made us look again arounc
and above us, when we saw that high w
and tar away there was a rapacious bire
wheeling round and round and down ant
down. and not seeing us as we stood il
the shadow. it came nearer and lower un
I'll we saw it's beak was curved from bas'
to tip and it had two flames of fire TO
eyes, and it was a hawk. But all tn
chickens were under old Dominick's wings
and either the bird of prey caught
glimpse Of us or not able to find the broo,
huddled under wing, darted back into tn
clouds.
So Christ calls with great earnestness t
all the young. Why, what is the matter
It is bright sunlight, and there can be n
danger. Health is theirs. A good HON
is theirs. Plenty Of food is theirs. Pros
pect of long life is theirs. But Christ cor
tinues to call, calls with more emphasi
and urges haste and says not a secon
ought to be lost. Oh, do tell us what
the matter. All, now / see; there ar
hawks of temptation in the air, there ar
v~ultures wheeling for their prey, Their
are beaks of death ready to plunge, ther
are claws of allurement ready to c,utcl
Now l see the peril. Now 1 understan
the urgency. Now I see the only safet,
Would that Christ might this day tax
our sons and daughters into His she,te
"as a men gathereth her chickens unde
her wing"
The fact is that the most of them Wi
never mind the shelter unless while the
are chickens. It is a simple matter of il
exorable statistics that most of those WI
do not come to Christ in youth never CON
at all. What chance is there for tt
young without divine protection? The
are the grogshops, there are the gam
ling hells, there are the infdelities an
immoralities of spiritualism, there are tt
bad books, there are the impurities, the
are the business rascalities, and so hume
Gus are these assailants that it is a wond,
that honesty and virtue are not lost art
The birds of prey, diurnal and nocturna
Of the natural world are ever on the a]er
They are assassins of the sky; thew hay