The age-herald., 1902-02-02
Dr. Talmage's Sermon.


 other figure that helps describe your age l have high hopes about you. Look out for that figure g.. Watch It's continuance with as much earnestness as you ever watched anything that promised you sal vation or threateRed you demolition. What a critical time-the twenties! While they continue you decide your occupation and the principles by which you will be guided; you make your most abiding friendships; you arrange your home life; you fix your habits. Lord God Almighty for Jesus .Christ's sake sake, have m ercy on all the men and women in the twen- 3 ties! M
 The Waiting Age.
 Next I accost those in the thirties. You are at an age when you find what tough thing it Is to get recognized and established in your occupation or profess sion. Ten years ago you thought all that was necessary for success was to put on your shutteR the sign of physician or dentist or. attorney or broker or agent and you would have plenty of business How many hours you sat and waited for business, and waited in vain, three per sons only know-God, your wife and yourself. In commercial life you have not had the prom otion and the increase in salary you anticipated, or the place
 
 not been vacated. The produce of the farm with which you expected to support yourself and those depending on you and to pay the interest on the mortgage has been far less than you anticipated. or the prices were down, or special expenses for sickness made drafts on your re- sources that you could not have expected. In some respects the hardest decade of life is the thirties, because the results l. 1Aw-1 Al1tw tions. It Is very rare indeed that young man does as did the young man one Sun day night when he came to me and said: T have been so marvelously prospered since I came to this country that l feel as a matter of gratitude that I ought to dedicate myself to God" Nine-tenths of the poetry of life has been knocked out of you since you came into the thirties. men in the different professions and occu- pations saw that you were rising and they must put an estoppel on you or you might somehow stand in the way They think you must be suppressed. From thirty to forty Is an especially hard time for young doctors, young lawyers, young merchants young farmers, young me. chanics, young ministers. The struggle of the thirties is for honest and helpful and remunerative recognition. But few old people know how to treat young peo-
 
 hand or snubbing them on the other Oh, the thirties Joseph stood before Phar- aoh at thirty; David was thirty years old when he began to reign: the height of Sol- omons temple was thirty cubits; Christ entered upon his active ministry at thirty years of age; Judas sold him for thirty pieces of silver. Oh, the thirties. What a word suggestive of triumph or disaster!
 Your decade is one that will probably |. k11A A- tory because there Is the greatest neces- sity for struggle Read the worlds his tory and learn what are the thirties for good or bad. Alexander the Great closed his career at thirty-two; Fred erick the Great made Europe tremble with his armies al thirty-f1ve; Cortes conquered Mexico at thirty-flve: Grant fought Shiloh and Donelson when thirty eight; Raphael died at thirty-seven; Lu- ther was the hero of the reformation at thirtyfive; Sir Philip Sidney got through by thirty-two. The greatest deeds for God and against him were done within the thirties, and your greatset battles are now and between the time when you cease expressing your age by putting first figure 2 and the time when you will cease expressing 1t by putting first a figure 3. As 1t Is the greatset time Of the struggle, I adjure you, in Gods name Dy dOu grace Udke IL the greatest achievement. My prayer Is for all those in the tremendous crisis of the thirties. The fact Is that by the way you decide the present decade of your history you decide all the following decades.
 The Decade of Discovery.
 Next I accQst the forties. Yours is the decade of discovery. ' do not mean the discovery of the outside, but the discov- cry of yourself No man knows himself until he is forty. He overestimates or underestimates himself. By that time he has learned what he can do or what he cannot do. He thought he had commer- cial genius enough to become a million aire, but now he Is satisfied to make comfortable living. He thought he had rhetorical power that would bring him into the United States senate; now he is content if he can successfully argue a common case before a petit jury He thought he had medical skill that would make him a Mott or a Crosse or a Will lard Parker of Sims, now he finds his