The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-12-03
DIR. TALMAGE'S SERMON
BY THE REV. FRANK DE WITT TALMAeE, D. D.
os ANGELES. Cal, November 26.

F OS ANGELES, cal, NoVemper zo.- For inc countless material blessings
 l-I peculiar to this progressive age, as well as for the many spiritual blessings of our day. the preacher in this sermon gives expression to the nations thankful ness. The text is Ecclesiastes vii, 29,
 "They have sought out many inventions.
 A new star has arisen in the artistic Armament Meteorlike a new star has flashed it's light over the western horizon. A new star has come to lead us down to the manager of Bethlehem of Judaea. What Gen. Lew Wallace has done with the novelist's pen young Byam Shaw IS doing with the painters brush. The h. diana author and the young English ar tist, the latter born in Madras and edu- eated in European studios, have both been bold. strong powerful and independent interpreters of religious themes Lew Wallace's Ben Hur," 'The Prince of h. dia" and "The Boyhood of Christ teach lessons similar to those of Byam Shaw "The Comforter" "rhe Outcast' and "Neither Hath He Power In the Day of Death" With the touch of true masters
 
 tist both teach that the only true com forter in times of earthly trouble IS that Saviour whom we lovingly call Jesus, the Prince of Peace."
 But, though Byam Shaw has painted many pictures, there is one, based upon the book of Ecclesiastes, which has spe- cially impressed me. It is one illustfat- ing the theme of my text. The young artist in his original way seems to open for us one of the rooms of the British museum. In the foreground of his pie ture he places q Londoner British afls- tocrat, dressed in the height of fashion of the time of Dsraeli Then he seems to surround this man, clothed in kid gloves, silk hat and and immaculate linen, with the mighty British library of over 2000,- coo volumes, in which are recorded the scientific and social triumphs of past ages. As you gaze on that picture, in im- agination you seem to hear the whistle Of factory, the click of trowel the signal of the railroad engine. and the hoarse voice of the great Cunarder's fog horn sending her warning call among the mists of Newfoundland, and the ringing of the telephone bell. and we seem to see the flash of the electric spark. Then, under this powerful picture with it's up to date Bible application, the young English ar tist has written the words of my text, ''So this only have I found that God hath made men upright, but they have sought out many inventions" Never did these Solomonic words burn more deeply than when l saw them in the brilliant colors of Byam Shaw's strange and yet powerful and startling picture.
 Modern Inventions.
 But when studying that picture l asked myself these questions: Do all modern inventions truly make men wretched and miserable, as King Solomon implies? Did King Solomon himself mean that all mod ern inventions were bad? Of course the greater opportunities of life, which come through the revolving wheels of machinery and the concentration of capital, do natur ally offer greater opportunities for wicked men to do evil. but are all great inventions agents of evl2' "No,' I answered. "As greater opportunities of life offer greater evils for wicked men, so greater oppor- tunites of machinery and inventions af- ford greater opportunities of good for good men" Thus on this Sabbath pre- ceding our national Thanksgiving day I will catalogue some of the blessings which, in good sense, come to good men from the sewing machine the railroad, the fac tory, the telephone. the typewriter, the printing press and from all the other in- ventions that have made the past century
 
 of all the ages.
 Most blessed of inventions. in the first place, those that deal with health, among which we class the sewerage pipes, by which a great city is kept pure and clean, and the great acqueducts through which 1t is supplied with life giving water to drink What Vipsanius Agrippa tried to do when he built the famous aqueduct of Mines, which brought the water of the Fountain D'Eure, twenty miles away, to | the baths of Diana: what the Emperor Claudus did when he carried the water l from the Alban hills down to the capital of the Caesars which aqueduct still bears | his name; what King Solomon did when | he built his three famous pools, from which reservoirs he carried the water by sub l terraneon passages to the city of Jerusa- l lem; what Tarquinus Priscus did 600 years l before Christ when he built the famous | canal Cloaca Maxima the oldest and the most famous drainage canal in the world | and which is still used to carry the re- | fuse out of the city of Rome to the Tiber. the great engineers on an enlarged scale are doing for our own cities. These engi-
 neers may not have the title M D. affixed to their names, but they are the
 greatest of all preventers of disease, Truly
 they have done their work well.
 Underground Works.
 l they | have succeeded, then study underground | New York or Chicago or Philadelphia or St. Louis or Boston. Marvellous, stag | gerng, wonderful and almost inconceiv- | able are the sights you there can wit | ness. Some years ago it was my privilege l to see underground New York being ex- | cavated for the great subway railroad. have seen the noted Cmcago drain- | age canal. built at the expense of many l millions of dollars. My ravorite walk l when a student upon the banks of the l Hudson was over the noted Croton aque- l duct, through which the water was I brought from over thirty miles away to | quench the thirst of the 100000 nhabi- | tants of the metropolis But, after all, I the excavations for the New York un- l derground railroad impressed me more | than all the engineering feats I ever saw. l As 1 looked down into those big subways l always felt as though were Tn an op- erating room and seeing the surgeon s | knife cutting its way. Those excavations | were to me a vast laparotomic operation l upon the great city of New York.
 There 1 could see hundreds of pipes | running in every direction Water pipes sewer pipes, gas pipes were all there ex- posed to view. Those different pipes seemed to resemble the blood vessels ana the alimentary canal of the human frame. They seemed more-they seemed like the great long stems of lilies lifting thelI These stems go down, down. down, until l |