Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1896 — TALMAGE’S SERMON. [ARTICLE]

TALMAGE’S SERMON.

HE DELIVERS AN ELOQUENT MEMORIAL DAY DISCOURSE. Lessons from the Four Tears* War of the Rebellion —The Spirit of Treaty and the Spirit of War—Self-Defense and Its Duties. Mounds of the-Dead. What could be more appropriate or stirring than this discourse by the Rev. Dr. Talmage at the time of year when the friends of those w-ho wore the blue and the gray have decorated the mounds of the fallen? The text was Solomon’s song, It., 4, “The tbwer of David biiilfled for an armory, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men.” The church is here compared to an armory,, the walls hung with trophies of dead.heroes. Walk ill about this tower of David, and see the dented shields, and the twisted swords, and tne rusted helmets of terrible battle. So at this season, a month earlier at the South, a month later at the North, the American churches are turned into armories adorned with memories of departed braves. . Blossom and bloom, O walls, with stories of self•acrifiee and patriotism and prowess! By unanimous decree of the people of the United States of America the graves of all the Northern and Southern dead are every year decorated. Ail acerbity and bitterness have gone out of the national solemnity, and as the men and women of the South one month ago lloralized the cemeteries and graveyards, so yesterday we. the mea and women of the North, put upon the tombs of our dead the kiss of patriotic affection. Bravery always appreciates bravery, though it fight on the other side, and if a soldier of the Federal army had been a month ago at Savannah he would not have been ashamed to inarch in the floral processions to the cemetery. And if yesterday a Confederate soldier was at Arlington he was glad to put a sprig of heartsease on the silent heart of our dead. Brave Generosity. In a battle during our last war the Confederates were driving back the Federals, who were in swift retreat, when a Federal officer dropped wounded. One of his men stopped at the risk of his life and put his arms around the officer to carry him from the field. Fifty Confederate muskets were at the young man who was picking up the officer. But the Confederate captain shouted: “Hold! Don’t fire. That fellow is too brave to be shot.” And as the Federal officer, held up by his private soldier, went limping slowly off the field the Confederates gave three cheers for the brave private, and just before the two disappeared behind a barn both the wounded officer amj the brave private lifted their caps in gratitude to the Confederate captain. Shall the gospel be less generous than the wqrld? We stack arms, the bayonet of our Northern gun facing this way, the > bayonet of the Southern gun facing the other way, and as the gray of tire morning melts into the blue of noon so the typical gray and blue of old war times have blended at last, and they quote in the language of King James’ translation without any revision, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men.” Now, what do we mean by this great observance? First, we mean instruction to one whole generation. Subtract 1865, when the war ended, from our 1866, and you will realize what a vast number of people were borp since the war or were so young as to have no vivid appreciation. No one under 41 years of age has any adequate memory of that prolonged horror. Do you remember it? “Well,” you say, “I only remember that mother swooned away while she was reading the newspaper, and that they brought my father home wrapped in the flag, and that a good many people came in the house to pray, and mother faded away after that until again there were many people in the house, and they told me she was dead.” There are others who cannot remember the roll of a drum or the tramp of a regiment or a sigh or a tear of that tornado of woe that swept the nation again and again until there was one dead in each house. Now it is the religious duty of those who do remember it to tell those who do not. My young friends, there were such partings at rail car windows and steamboat wharfs, at front doors of comfortable homes as I pray God you may never witness. Ot, what a time it was, when fathers and mothers gave up their sons, never expecting to see them again and never did see them again until they came back mutilated and crushed and dead. A Glance at the Past. Four years of blood. Four years of hostile experiences. Four years of ghastliness. Fo.ur years of grawe-digging. Four years of funerals, coffins, shrouds, hearses, dirges. Mourning, mourning, mourning! It was hell let loose. What a time of waiting for news! Morning paper and evening paper scrutinized for intelligence from the boys at the front First, announcement that the battle must occur the next day. Then the news of the battle going on. On the following day still going on. Then news of 30,000 slain and of the names of the great generals who had fallen, but no news about the private soldiers. Waiting for news! After many days a load of wounded going through the town or city, but no news from our boy. Then a long list of wounded and a long list of the dead and a long list of the missing. And among the last list our boy. When missing? How missing? Who saw him last? Missing! Missing! Was he imthe woods or by the stream? How was he hurt? Missing! Missing! What burning prayers that he may yet be heard from. In that awful waiting for news many a life perished. The strain of anxiety was too great. That wife’s brain gave way that first week after the battle, and ever and anon she walks the floor of the asylum or looks out of the window as though she expected some one to come along the path and up the steps as she soliloquizes: “Missing; missing.” What made matters worse, all this might have been avoided. There was no more need of that war than at this moment I should plunge a dagger through your heart. There were a few Christian philanthropists in those days, scoffed at both by North and South, who had the right of it. If they had been heard on both sides, we should have had no war and no slavery. It was advised by those Christian philanthropists, “Let the North pay in money for the slaves as property and set them free.” The North said, “We cannot afford to pay.” The South said, “We will not sell the slaves anyhow.!’ But the North did pay in war expenses enough to purchase the slaves, and the South was compelled to give up slavery anyhow. Might pot the North better have paid the money and saved the lives of 500,000 brave men, and might not the South better have sold out slavery and saved her 500,000 brave men? I swear you by the graves of your fathers and brothers and sons to a new hatred for the champion curse of the universe—war. O Lord God, with the hottest bolt of thine omnipotent indignation strike that monster down forever and ever. Imprison it in the deepest dungeon of the eternal penitentiary. Bolt it in with all the iron ever forged in cannon or molded into howitzers. Cleave U with all the sabers that ewtr glittered

in battle and wring its son! with *B the I pangs which it ever caused. Let it feel j all the conflagration* of the homesteads j it has ever destroyed. Deeper down let I it burn till it has gathered into its heart I all the suffering of eternity as well as | time. In the nanv of the millions of I graves of its victim*. X denounce it The | nations need more the spirit of treaty and ' less of the spirit of war. Why War Is Detestable. War is more now than once, not only because of the greater destructiveness of its weaponry, but because how it takes down the best men, whereas once it chiefly took down the worst Bruce, in 1717, in his "Institutions of Military Law,” said of the European armies of his day, “If all infamous persons and such as have committed capital crimes, heretics, atheists and all dastardly feminine men. were weeded out of the army, it would soon be reduced to a pretty moderate number.” Flogging and mean pay made them still more ignoble. Officers were appointed to see that each soldier drank his ration of a pint of spirits a day. There were noble men in battle, but the moral character of the army then was 95 per cent lower than the moral character of an army to-day. By so much is war now the more detestable because it destroys the picked men of the nations-. Again by this national ceremony we mean to honor courage. Many of these departed soldiers were volunteers, not conscripts, and many of those who were drafted might have provided a substitute or got off on furlough or have deserted. The fact that they lie in their graves is proof of their bravery. Brave at the front, brave at the cannon's mouth, brave on lonely picket duty, brave in cavalry charge, brave before the surgeon, brave in the dying message to the home circle. We yesterday put a garland on the brow of courage. The world wants more of it. The church of God is in woeful need of men who can stand under fire. The lion of worldly derision roars and the sheep tremble. In great reformatory movements at the first shot how many fall back. The great obstacle to the church’s advancement is the inanity, the vacuity, the soft prettiness, the namby pambyism of professed Christians. Great on a parade, cowards in battle. Afraid of getting their plumes ruffled, they carry a parasol over their helmet. They go into battle not with warriors’ gauntlet but with kid gloves, not clutching the sword hilt too tight lest the glove split at the back. In all our reformatory and Christian work the great want is -rilorßi backbone, more mettle, more daring, more prowess. We would in all our churches like to trade off a hundred do nothings for one do everything. “Quit yourselves like men; be strong.” Thy saints in all this glorious war Shall conquer, though they die. They see the triumph from afar And seize it with their eye. b'elf Sacrifice. Again we mean by this national observance to honor self-sacrifice for others. To all these departed men home and kindred were as dear as our home and kindred are to us. Do yop know how they felt? Just as you and I would feel starting out tomorrow morning with nine chances out of ten against our returning alive, for the intelligent soldier sees not only battle ahead, but malarial sickness and exhaustion. Had these men chosen, they could have spent last night in their homes and to-day have been seated where you are. They chose the camp, not because they liked it better than their own house, and followed the drum and fife, not because they were better music than the voices of the domestic circle. South Mountain and Murfreesboro and the swamps of Chickahominy were not playgrounds. These heroes risked and lost all for others. There is no higher sublimity than that. To keep three-quarters for ourselves and give one-quarter to others is honorable. To divide even with others is generous. To keep nothing for ourselves and give all for others is magnanimity Christ-like. Put a girdle around your body and then measure the girdle and see if you are fifty or sixty inches round.. And is that the circle of your sympathies—the size of yourself? Or, to measure you around the heart, would it take a girdle large enough to encircle the land and encircle the world? You want to know what we dry theologians mean when we talk of vicarious suffering. Look at the soldiers’ graves and find out. Vicarious! pangs for others, wounds for others, homesickness for others, blood for others, sepulcher "for others. Those who visited the national cemeteries at Arlington Heights and at Richmond and Gettysburg saw one inscription on soldiers’ tombs oftener repeated than any other—“ Unknown.” When, about twenty-one years ago, I was called to deliver the oration at Arlington Heights, Washington, I was not so much impressed with the minute guns that shook the earth or with the attendance of President and cabinet and foreign ministers and general* of the army and commodores of the navy as with the pathetic and overwhelming suggestiveness of that epitaph on so many graves at my feet. Unknown! Unknown! It seems to me that the time must come when the Government of the United States shall take off that epitaph. They are no more unknown. We have found them out at last. They are the beloved sons of the republic. Would it not be well to take the statue of the heathen goddess off the top of the capitol (for I have no faith in the morals of a heathen goddess) and put one great statue in all our national cemeteries—a statue of Liberty in the form of a Christian woman, with her hand on an open Bible and her foot on the Rock of Ages, with the other hand pointing down to the graves of the unknown, saying, “These are my sons, who died that I might live.” Take off the misnomer. Everybody knows them. It is of comparatively little importance what was the name given them in baptism of water. In the holier and mightier baptism of blood we know them, and yesterday the nation pfit both arms around them and hugged 1 thefo to her heart, crying, “Mine forever?"?' Future Defense. Again, by this national ceremony we mean the future defense of this nation. By every wreath of flowers on the soldiers’ graves we say, “Those who die for the country shall not be forgotten,” and that will give enthusiasm to our young men in case our nation should in the future need to defend itself in battle. We shall never have another war between North and South. The old decayed bone of contention, American slavery, has been cast out, although here and there a depraved politician takes it up to see if he can’t gnaw something off it. We are floating off farther and farther from the possibility of sectional strife. No possibility of civil war. But about foreign invasion I am not so certain. When I spoke against war I said nothing against self-defense. An inventor told me that he had invented a style of weapon which could be used in self-defense, but not in aggressive warfare. I said, “When you get the nations to adopt that weapon, you have introduced the millennium.” I have no right to go on my neighbor’s premises and assault him, but if some ruffian break into my house for the assassination of my family, and I can borrow a gun and load it in time and aim it straight enough I will shoot him. There is no room on this continent for any other nation—except Canada, and * better neighbor no one ever had. If you don’t think so, go to Montreal and Toron-

to and see how well they wiH treat yom Other than that there is absolutely ns room for any other nation. I have been across the continent again and again, and know that we have not a half-inch of ground for the gouty foot of foreign despotism to stand on. But lam not so sure that some of the arrogant nations of Europe may not some day challenge us. I do not know that those forts around New York bay are to sleep all through the next century. I do not know that Barnegat lighthouse will not yet look off upon a hostile navy. Ido not know but that a half-dozen nations, envious of our prosperity, may want to give us a wrestle. During our civil war there were two or three nations that could hardly keep their hands off us. It is very easy to pick national quarrels, and if our nation escapes much longer it will be the exception. If foreign foe should come, we want men like those of 1812 and like those of 1862 to meet them. We want them all up and down the coast, Pulaski and Fort Sumter in the same chorus of thunder on Fort Lafayette and Fort Hamilton. Men who will not only know how to fight, but how to die. When such a time comes, if it ever does come, the generation on th* stage of action .will say: “My country will care for my family as they did in the soldiers’ asylum for the orphans in th* civil war, and my country will honor my dust as it honored those who preceded me in patriotic sacrifice, and once a year at any rate, on Decoration day, I shall be resurrected into the remembrance of those for whom I died. Here I go for God and my country! Huzza 1” If foreign foe should come, the old sectional animosities would have no power. Here go our regiments into the battlefield: Fifteenth New York Volunteers, Tenth Alabama Cavalry, Fourteenth Pennsylvania riflemen, Tenth Massachusetts artillery, Seventh South Carolina sharp shooters. Ido not know but it may require the attack of some foreign foe to make us forget our absurd sectional wrangling. I have no faith in the ery, “No North, no South, no East, no West” Let all four sections keep their peculiarities and their preferences, each doing its own work and not interfering with each other, each of the four carrying its part in the great harmony—the bass, the alto, the tenor, the soprano—in the grand march of Union. Just One Flower. Once more, this great national ceremony means the beautification of the tombs, whether of those who fell in battle or accident, or who have expired in their beds or in our arms or on our laps. I suppose you have noticed that many of the families take this season as the time for the adornment of their family plots. This national observance has secured the aboriculture and floriculture of the cemeteries, the straightening up of many a slab planted thirty or forty years ago, and has swung the scythe through the long grass and has brought the stone cutter to call out the half obliterated epitaph. This day is the benediction of the resting place of father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister. It is all that we can do for them now. Make their resting places attractive, not absurd with costly outlay, but in quiet remembrance. You know how. If you can afford only one flower, that will do. It shows what you would do if you could. One blossom from you may mean more than the Duke of Wellington’s catafalque. Oh, we cannot afford to forget them. They were so lovely to us. We miss them so much. We will never get over it. Blessed Lord Jesus, comfort our broken hearts. From every bank of flowers breathes promise of resurrection. In olden times the Hebrews, returning from their burial place, used to pluck the grass from the field three or four times, then throw it over their heads, suggestive of the resurrection. We pick not the grass, but the flowers, and instead of throwing them over our heads we place them before our eyes, right down*over the silent heart that once beat with warmest love toward us, or over the still feet that ran to service, or over the lips from which we took the kiss at the anguish of the last parting. But stop! We are not infidel*. Our bodies will soon join the bodies of our departed in the tomb, and our spirits shall join their spirits in the land of the rising sun. We cannot long be separated. Instead of crying w.ith Jacob for Joseph, “I will go down into the grave unto my son, mourning,” let us cry with David, “I shall go to him.” On one of the gates of Greenwood is th* quaint inscription, “A night’s lodging on the way to the city of the New Jerusalem.” Comfort one another with these words. May the hand of him who shall wipe away all tears from all eyes wipe your cheek with its softest tenderness. The Christ of Mark and Martha and Lazarus will infold you in his arms. The white robed angels who sat at the tomb of Jesus will yet roll the stone from the door of your dead in radiant resurrection. The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout and the voice of the archangel. So the “Dead March" in “Saul” shall become the “Hallelujah Chorus.”