The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-01-26
DR.. TALMAGE'S SERMON.

Dr. Talmage makes practical use of an occurrence in the Orient which has sell K,nt partSslar ;ron id
 A theological seminary In the valley or palms, near the river Jordan, had pc come so popular in the time of Elisha, were needed for the students. The class rooms and the dormitories must be en- larged or an entirely new building con- structed. What will they do? VIII they tributions for this undertaking? Will they send out agents to raise the money for 8 new theological seminary Hay. ing raised the money, will they seno the duarries where Ahab got the stone for the pillars and walls of his palace! No; the students propose to Duiio t themselves. They were rugged as r. boys: wnS snS who had never been weakened by the luxuries of city life. All they ask IS that Elisha, their professor and prophet: boss the job. They start for the work. Elisha and his students. Plenty of lum- ber in those regions along the Jordan. The sycamore Is stout. strong tree ana me If had seen in Palestine any syc- amore tree more beautiful than the one we stood under at Hawarden. told him I had not.
 The sycamores near the Jordan are now
 attacked by Elishas students. for they
 must have lumber for the new theological
 seminary. l suppose some of the students
 extemporized axmen. Stand from under!
 Crash goes one of the trees and another
 and another. But something now hap
 pens so wonderful I, that the & occurrence cusr e
 wonderful that many still think 1t never
 happened at all. One of the students.
 not able to own an ax, had borroweo
 one. You must remember that while the
 ax of olden time was much like our
 modern ax, 1t differed in the fact that
 instead of the helve or handle Deing
 thrust into a socket fin the iron head.
 the head of the ax was fastened on the
 handle by a leathern thong. and so 1t
 might slip the helve. A student Of the
 seminary was swinging his ax against
 one of those trees ana %hetner Si. rst stroSs mks
 and the chips flew or was after he had cut the tree from all sides so deep that it was ready to fall we are not old, but
 Being near the riverside, the !ax head
 dropped into the river and sank to the
 muddy bottom. Great was the student dismay. If it had been his own ax. It
 would have been bad enough, but the ax
 did not. belong to him. He had no means to buy another for the kind man who had loaned 1t to him, but God helps the
 helpless sooa ana ae sou and this case 1t was Elisha, who was m the woods and on the river bank at the time He did not see the ax head ny on, ana so he asked the student where it dropped He was shown the place where it went down into the river. Then Elisha broke off a branch of a tree and threw II into
 the river. and the ax head rose rom m the depths of the river and fioated to the bank so that the student had Just tol stoop down and take mp the restored | property. Now you see the meaning Of my text. "The Iron did swim.
 The Iron Did Swim. Suppose a hundred years ago some one I had told people that the time would come when hundreds of thousands Of | tons of iron would float on the Atlantic | and Pacific-iron ships from New York
 to southampton. from London 10 ntan Eai- l The, man making such a prophecy would have been sent to an asylum or carefully watched as incompetent to go alone. we Now, if man can make hundreds of tons | of metal float, lam, disposed to think
 that the Almighty could make an ax
 What" says some one would be the I use of such a miracleT' Of vast. of | infinite, of eternal imuortance. Those | students were preparing for the minis, | try. They had joined the theological | seminary to get all its advantages. They | needed to have their faith strengtnened; they needed to be persuaded that God | can do everything; they needed to learn that there is no emergency of life where | He Is not willing to help. Standing on | the banks of the Jordan. those students of that day of the recalled ax head naa ktheir faith re-euforced, and nothing that they had found out in the classrooms or that learned institution had ever done
 more in the way of fitting them for their
 I hear from different sources that there Is a great deal of infidelity in some of the theological seminaries of our day They think that the garden of Eden IS nA Mnaaa write the Pentateuch, and that the book of Job is only a drama, and that the book of Jonah is an unreliable fish story. and that water was not turned into wine, wine dilution turns wine into water. and that
 most of the 60 jailed miracles cf the
 Old and the New Testaments were
 wrought by natural causes. When those infidels graduate from the theological seminary and take the pulpits of Amer lea as expounders of the Holy Scriptures.
 what advocates they will be Of that gos. pei of the truth of which the martyrs died! Hall the Polycarps and Hugh Lat liners and John Knoxes of the twentieth century. believing the Bible Is true In
 spots! Would to God that some t,s great all the theological seminaries of this land. confirming the faith of the coming ex : pounders cf an entire Bible!
 The Right to Borrow.
 Furthermore, in that scrne of the text God sanctions borrowing and sets forth the importance of returning. do not think there would have been any miracle performed if the young man had owned the ax that slipped the helve. The young man cried out in the hearing of the prophet, Alas. master. for 1t was Dor rowedn' He had a right to borrow. There are times when we have not only a right to borrow, but 1t is duty to borrow. There are times when we ought to lend, for Christ in His sermon on the mount declared, From him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away" It is right that one borrow the
 young student of my text borrowed the
 ax. It Is right to borrow means Tor
 the forwarding of commercial ends. Most
 of the vast fortunes that now over
 shadow the land were matched out Of a
 borrowed dollar
 If in any assembly it were requested
 that those who had never borrowed hold
 up their hands. none would be lifted.
 or if here and there a hand were lifted
 inveracity. Borrow! Why. we are bor-
 rowing all the time. We borrow from
 the Ford the sunlight that shows us
 our way. the water that stakes our thirst,
 the food that refreshes us three times
 day, the pillow on which we slumber.
 We borrow gladness from our friends;
 we borrow all elevated surroundings.
 The church borrows all it's beauty from
 Christ who founded It. In our songs
 and sermons we borrow from the rap
 lures of Heaven.
 We borrow time; we will borrow eter-
 nity. and that constant borrowing im-
 niles a return For what we borrow from
 God we must pay back in hearty thanks
 and Christian service. in improvement