The Fulton County news. [volume] (McConnellsburg, Pa.) 1899-current, 1902-03-06
THE MANY TEMPTATIONS.
Or. TaImage Says the Assailants OF
Virtue and Honesty Are
Numerous.
Needs For Divine Proteetiou--G Gods Crae:
Brlngetb Salvation.

tratlon IRON the barnyard Is emptOyeu IN
this discourse by Dr. Talmage to show
the comfort and protection that heaven af
fords to all trusting souls. The text il
Matthew xiii, 81, Even as a hen gather
eth her chickens under her wings, and "
would not"
Jerusalem was in sight as Christ came
TO the crest of Mount Olivet, height oi
700 feet The splendors of the religious
capital of the whole earth rradiated the
landscape. There is the temple. Yondei
Is the kings palace. Spread out before
His eyes are .he 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 place that
He would gladly have saved and apostro
phizes, saying, 20 Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
how often would | have gathered thy
children together. even as a hen gathereth
her chickens under her wings, and ye
would notg
Why did Christ select hen and chickens
as a simileg Next to the appositeness of
the comparison, think it was to help all
public teachers in the matter of illustra-
tion 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 its head-dress and the wattles un-
der the throat. II 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 pretension of nest
like the eagles eyrie. 1t has no lustre of
plumage like the goldfnch. 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 hat ha falr
song. but only cluck and cackle. Yet
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.
Christ was thus simple in His teach
ings and yet how hard it is for us who
are Snnday-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
p,icityl We have to run a course of lit
erary disorders as children course of ply
sical disorders. We come out of school
and college loaded down with Greek my
thologies and out of the theological semin-
arv 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 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.
She knows at the start the lesson which
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
affA he
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 il
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 a descending dove, but Christ
in a sermon that began with cutting sar-
casm for hypoerites 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 neighbor's dog
were invading the farm. We looked up to
see il n storm cloud were lowering. We
could see nothing on the ground that could
terrorize, and we could see nothing in the
air to ruffle 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 a rapacious bird
rl,er ipcx md
down. and not seeing us as we stood in
the shadow. 1t came nearer and lower un
til we saw its heak was curved from base
to tip and it had two flames Of fire fol
ewes, and it was a hawk. But all the
chickens were under Old Dominick's wings
and either the bird OF prey caught
glimUse Of US or not abe to find the brood
buddled 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 emphass
and urges haste and says not a second
ought to bt lost. Oh, do tell us what is
the matter. All. now | see; there arc
hawks OF temptation in the air, there are
vultures wheeling for their prey, there
are beaks OF death ready 70 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 men ga'hereth her chickens under
her wing"
1he 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 intidelities and
immoralities OF spiritualism, 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
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 vulture
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