The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-10-02
DIR. TALMAGE'S SERMON.


Los Angeles, Cal, September 25-At the close of the vacation season and the opening of a new period of activity in the churches this sermon comes as call to arms to all who are eager for spiritual conquest. The text is Revela- tion iii. 8, q have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it
 Have you ever roamed over any of tho great battlefelds of the world? Have you ever stood upon Lookout mountain and had an old Federal or Confederate soldier point out to you the chief places where the great battle above the clouds' was fought2 Have you ever walked along the stone fence of F'reder- icksburg, toward which Fighting Joe" Hooker drove his troops in three heroic charges, but near to which that great giant of war, James Longstreet, had planted his cannon? Have you ever walk ed over the historic sites of Bull Run or Antietam or Shiloh or Fair Oaks or vicksburg? Well, if you have and at the same time if you have studied these bat tlefields intelligently, you have been im- PltSSSQ Nllll OllC 6lbeliAiC ioOeAs A eteNNio field is not, as a rule, a mere haphazard place of meeting where two great armies wrestle in mortal combat, but a careful ly chosen position, affording opportuni- ties for attack or defense. Thus the Japanese armies have been concentrating for weeks and months to acquire com manding position at Port Arthur and have been seizing strategic points from which they could drive the Russian ar mics which were being sent to it's re- lief. These strategic movements are planned in advance with the utmost care in selection of the ground so as to get the advantage of elevated positions from which to fire upon the enemy. The gen. erals on both sides are aware that the conquest of the region depends in no small degree on the skill exercised in this important matter.
 Months before an invading army moves for the subjugation of a country trained military minds study it's natural fea- lures and intuitively settle the strategic points which it Is essential to capture and to hold and the course which the va rious corps must take to cooperate in the general scheme. It is related that before our own civil war, as far back as the po- litical campaign which resulted in Lin- coln's election and when a war was but
 
 be pursued in the event of hostilites was considered. William T. Sherman, with one of his fellow officers, George Henry Thomas, afterward nieknamed the Rock of Chickamauga," was visiting his broth er the late Senator John Sherman of Ohio. John Sherman, in his subsequent biography, relates that at that time these two soldiers placed a map of the south ern states upon the floor. Then upon this map they practically traced out ev cry important military movement which was to follow. With one line they showed how the great army of the west must fight its mighty battles before Shiloh and VicksbErg to open the gateway of the Mississippi With another line they traced the movements of a central army fighting on to Atlanta, and on to the sea, where William T. Sherman was to win immortal fame although, as Henry w. Grady, the great Georgian orator. once quaintly put it, Some people did think that he showed himself a little careless with fire" With another line they traced the movements of the Army of the Potomac, fighting it's way from Arlington heights to Richmond. All these movements of these different armies were carefully traced by the two soldiers. studying the map of the southern states,