The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-09-10
DIR. TALMAGE'S SERMON.


shoe department does not wait upon you patiently and kindly, you leave that store in disgust. In a large dry goods store as an ordinary customer you never meet the manager or the great European buyer or the owner of the store. You deal with the common one talent clerk. Nearly all the goods in a large retail store are sold by one talent clerks and the way those clerks treat their employers customers decides how much those customers will buy. Is not this illustration an over whelming proof to you of the mighty in pie?
 The one talent clerk may say: 'T am only an insignificant atom in my em- pioyers business. I am only a drop of water in great ocean, two and one-half miles deep and 5000 miles wide. I am only leaf amid a whole forest of autumnal fohage l am only a little flickering can de light in a horizon ablaze with the naming chariots of the noontide sun. 1 do not amount to anything" Oh, yes, my brother, you do. As a clerk in the store, as typewriter or a salesman or saleswoman you are not an insgnif- cant atom, though you may be occupy ing a small place. You are not a drop or water amid an ocean of heaving bill lows You are not leaf or a candle light dimmed by the glory of the noontide sum- but you are the cogs of wheel which are absolutely essential to make the wheel move. If the little cogs are gone then the wheel stops. If the wheel stops then all the vast machinery of the fac- tory is halted. In the great railroad en- zine the boiler, generating the steam Which draws the long line of freight cars is absolutely essential but are not the piston rods and driving wheels and the truck and the coal tender and the fur mace and all the other parts of the loco motive just as eSsentiaI2
 Not to Be Despised
 What would you think of the long branches of a great tree looking down in disgust at the roots just exposed when the sod is turned over by the farmers spade? What would you think if those branches would say: "Oh, you filthy, dirty roots. Why are you in wonder darkness? Can you not array yourselves in my coat of many colors? I will have none of you" Well, today the owner of the great dry goods store can no more be independent of his clerks than the tree branch can be independent of the tree root. What would you think of the wood of the tall mast despisng the wood of the ships keel? Can the hand say to the wrist, T have no need of thee?' Can the foot say to the eye, T have no need of thee?" Can the heart say to the lung q have no need of thee?' Neither can the glass office say to the counter, "I have no need of thee" The one talent clerk Is just as essential for the mar vicious developments of the mercantile world as is the ten talent merchant or the ten talent capitalist. The Hebrew talent is no insignificant capital which God places in the hands of the ordinary everyday, commonplace clerk, who sells us our goods over the store counter.
 But if we speak well of the one talent clerk shall we not also speak well of the worldwide influence of the one talented mechanic and the one talented laborer and the one talented engineer and the one talented carpenter and the one talented mason and all the one talented men who Wleld saw and strike hammer and drop plumbline and push plane? Is not the workman whose delft fingers make the piano just as essential for the worlds melodies as the musicians whose sensi- tive touch make the great bellows of har- mony rear themselves and dash them selves into white foam upon the coral reefs of white ivory keys? Shall we not honor today the Stradivarius who man. ufactures the violins as well as the Pag- aninis and the Ole Bulls who can make the strings weep and wall or laugh and sing when they wave over them the touch of their magic bows? Are not Gut enbergs disciples who give to us the printed page just as essential for the dissemination of knowledge as the brain or Galilei or the sacred pen of Thomas a Kempis or the rugged eoquence of Thomas Carlyle or the matchless literary creations of William Shakespeare or the fireside songs of Henry Longfellow or Eugene Field?
 The chisel of the one talented stone cutter writes whole pages in the chap ters or the worlds progress as well as the pen Of the statesman, the architect and the social sage. Henry Ward Beech- CT some years ago In sermon vividly de- scribed an expert stone cutter coming into this country as an emigrant He knows no one and no one knows him, but when he applies for work at one of the pig stone yards in Brooklyn the foreman gives him a stone to cut. Here is a auerl or fern; there is branch of what is to be noWer. He works on and on pa- tlently. After awhile, when the work on that block is done, the foreman comes and gives to him another stone. After awhile that stone and still another are taken away. He has no idea what use will be made of those stones. but one day walking down the street in front of the art gallery, over the doorway he sees the stones upon which he has worked He did not know what those stones were for but the architect did, and as he stands looking at his work, which is the beattv of the whole street. the tears drop down from his eyes and he says, q am glad did it well,'' and every day as he passes that way he says to himself exultantlv: 'I did 1t well! An, I am glad I did it well"' An yes, that stone cutter had a right to exultantly cry, q did it we'll" for had he not done his work well the design of the architect would have been utterly helpless without his execution Thus today find every stone wall and every printing press and every paved street and every house and every rail- road and every ship and every bridge and every tower and every acqueduct pull pit for the one talented man. The car penters and the masons and the mechan- ics and the laborers are all calling to us from these rostrums: 'T made these tall buildings. Without me they could not have been lifted. I made them. I am the one talented mechanic. Did not do my work well?' An, ye laborers and me- chanics in overals. never neglect the es- sential work God has given you to do.
 Talents of Servants.
 But I must speak to another class of one talented folks They are the house. hold servants. whom the parable of my text mentions by name. They are the servants, the tried servants, who, as King Solomon expressed it. "were born in my house." They grow up under the very eye of their master. Because he felt ne could trust them he delivered unto them his precious possessions.
 Let me illustrate the parable The mas ter IS about to leave for the country All the different men and women about the farm and the fields are gathered into one