The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1907-06-07
Cal111aQe
Sermon
By Rev.
FraHS. De Witt Talrnage, d. d.


matchless architectural skill, the pa
thence, industry and wisdom of the
spider a material as well as a spiritual
lesson. The text is Proverbs xxx, %
"The spider taketh hold with her
hands and is in kings palaces"
Have you ever been through any Of
the famous royal palaces of Europe
Have you ever had a guide take you
through Windsor castle, where the Eng
fish king and queen live, or through
the Tuileries and Versailles, where the
French rulers have lived, or through
Peterhof, built by Peter the Great,
where the Russian crowned heads
lived, or through the Quirinal, where
the italian rulers live, or through the
imperial palaces fanking Inter den
Linden, where the emperor Of Ger
many and the members of the Hohen-
Zollern family live? These palaces are
something more than domiciles for
kings and queens and princes and prin-
cesses. They are treasures of art and
literature. They contain great art gal
leries and museums. They are great
less historical relics. And they are
built in the midst of beautiful gardens,
where the tossing, tumbling fountains
have myriads of rainbOws reflected
from their falling waters by day and
where the statues carved by the great
est of sculptorS and the most exquisite
of flowers are revealed to the guests
by the many lights by night which
make the midnight as light as the
midday.
King SolomOn's palaces were the best
examples of architectural beauty of his
time. Thus when Solomon was using
in my text the symbol Of the kings
palace he was practically saying: "The
kings palace is a treasure house.
There come the greatest of architects
and the most wonderful of sculptors
to work their skill in stone. There
come the finest artists to paint their
pictures. There come the magicians
of the loom to bring their offerings of
Damascene rugs and their most ex-
quisite tapestries There come the
most wonderful horticulturlsts to lay
out their gardens. All that wealth and
beauty and human power can give is
to be found in the kings palaces"
One morning early King Solomon is
walking through the rooms of his pal
ace. Suddenly he stops and begins to
study something very carefully. 1t is
SPIDERS web. During the night the
spider has crawled into the house and
swung a suspension bridge and there
gone to work. Up and down he has
crawled. He lowered himself from the
ceiling and climbed up from the win
dow sills. He knotted his thread here
and spun his network there. Then a
servant comes into the room and with
a broom he is about to brush this
spiders web away. Leave it alone"
Solomon says. 81 never studied one
before. How marvellous is the work
manship of this silken web! Why, in
all the splendors of my palace there is
not greater wonder than this spider
web" Then King Solomon takes out
his notebook and writes down the
words of my text, "The spider taketh
hold with her hands and is in kings
palaces" If the wisest of all men
could afford to study the spider build !
ing her web, surely we have a right |
to make a sermon upon the life's work |
Of royal spider.
Royal Occupation.
In the first place, the spider has
royal occupation. She is a threadmak-
er, weaver, spinner. She has the
faculty of producing a thread inside
of her own body and drawing it out,
the only living creature that has the
ability to construct with that thread
those wonderfully designed webs which
are seen in the houses and barns, on
the roads, in the grasses and trees ev-
cry summer morning before the dews
have evaporated under the rising sun.
The silkworm may be able to spin a
cocoon, but the spider does more than
that The spider has the power to
stand upon the branch of tree and
emit from her body a thread; then as
this thread grows longer and longer
1t is carried backward and forward by
the winds until it touches another
branch, where it is anchored. Then
the spider, having connected the two
architect bridges the sides of a river
by a cable strand, goes above that
strand and drops down and goes be-
low that strand and climbs up and
winds around and around and around
in circles after she has united her
main threads until she finishes the
web. Never did a human weaver do
such symmetrical and delicately de-
signed work as does the spider.
This work of the spider in King Sol
omon's time was the more marvellous
because it was like the human weaving
of that time, only more rapid. Then
oil the weaving was done by hand and
In the most primitive style. If wo-
man wished to make garment, in the
beginning she had to make her own
thread. She would take a handful of
wool and stretch it out into a strand
about two yards long. Then she would
attach a bobbin to that strand and
spin it round and round. Then, after
she had twisted that strand into a
thread, she would wind It up and
stretch out another strand of wool and
spin it into a thread She made each
thread alone. 1t took the woman in
plden times as long to make one thread
as it does now for a bobbin boy in
one of our factories to make 400
threads Then she would stretch the
warp threads perpendicularly up and
down Then with her own hands she
would put in the filings, winding
them horizontally in and out until the
cloth was made. Thus it was a weary,