The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-11-08
DR. TALMAGE'S SERMON.
BY THE REV. FRANK DE WITT rALMAoE. D. Q.

Chicago, November 1.-The consolation and encouragement that religion affords in the sorrowful and distressing lot of widowhood are pointed out by the preach CT in this sermon on the text Luke viii 12, And she was a widow"
 The rich widow Who ever heard of such a title for a sermon on this text? Better call her "the poor widow the friendless widow" "the hopeless widow" the dying widow"-anything but the rich widow" This funeral procession winding it's way out of the Syrian city Is one of the most pathetic speetaeles of the gospel history. How much heartbreak is contained in those three phrases "A dead man. the only son of his mother and she was a widow" In Arizona is noun tain aptly named starvation peak. There the Indians many decades ago drove the Spaniards and hemmed them in and kept them until for the want of food the little band of living men were changed into a band of decomposing corpses. So this text is one of the starvation peaks among the gospel hills. It is the place where q wife first lost her husband, her breadwinner. Then it is the place where during the struggle of widowhood, the mother had raised her boy so that he could be her support in her declining years. And now d wife without her hus- band and a mother with only cold body for her son is slowly vending her way to the cemetery. She was a wife and mother only of the grave. .'The rich widow?" Nonsense Change the title. Call it "the poor widow of Starvation peak"
 A Fitting Title.
 No. my brother, 1 want to keep the title I have chosen. l want to show how even a woman so desolate as the one in the text may find consolation in life and in the performance of her duty and in the sympathy of humanity, ana, more than all in the resources of divine power her life may become rich for herself and for others. have seen too many adiectives hitched to this heroic and conquering nominative. 1 believe thousands and tens of thousands of mothers who have been bereft of the companion who once stood with them at the marriage altar have attained true and abiding wealth. They have been rich in all that makes life truly happy great and good, rich in their opportunities to do a double service in life. To their children they have become father as well as mother; rich in their in- spring examples of duties well done; rich in the faith with which their trials led them to test the goodness and greatness of God; rich in the heights and depths and lengths and breadths of their love, and, above all, rich in eternal as well as tenn poral rewards. It is in order to gather few 'buebells from off the graves of the dead husbands and fathers that l preach this sermon. ] would ring these floral trophies in great paean of praise that the widows, the numberless widows of the present day, who are facing the battle of life alone, might renew their strength and go on winning victory after victory for themselves, their little ones and for Christ.
 The widow is rich in her opportunities of maternal usefulness; rich because all the physical, mental and spiritual re- sources of her nature are developed in the struggle which her loneliness involves; rich because for her children every word she speaks and every thought she thinks and every deed she performs shall bring forth its maximum of results for good or evil For her offspring every mountain which she has to climb can become good mine, and every thicl1et into which she has to plunge bank of roses, and every
  tumbling fountain, and every land for her can become harvest field of yellow grain or of white checked sweet scented clover tops. Literally, by taking away a wife s husband, God makes it possible for widow with children to make more out of her life. in maternal sense than in any other way. At once, by the mere fact of widowhood, she becomes the father, the mother, the breadwinner, the guide and the all in all for her offspring.
 Honored by God.
 Now. every one should want to make the most out of his life. Therefore, o widow, ought you not feel honored be- cause God has singled you out as one of his favorite daughters for great and vital work? We stand upon Little Round Top, on the battlefield of Gettysburg and look with pride at the monument erected there to the memory of Major General Gouyer- neur Warren. At that critical point he saved the federal lines from being cut in twain by the Confederate forces With the keen eye of a military engineer he saw that Little Round Top was the one spot about which the mortal struggle of Lee and Meade must be finally decided And so, upon his own authority, he en- trenched those heights and perhaps then and there saved the unity of our republic which now stretches from sea to sea. Shall you not feel today. widow, that as General Warren was chosen to stand on Little Round Top and save the federal government, so God has placed you on the little round top of your husbands grave to save your home? A few years ago the United States-north. east south and west-united in many voices in praising the greatest of American jurists. John Marshall, who year after year as chief justice of the supreme court rendered the decisions which made it possible for inc United States government at Washington