Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1896 — TALMAGE'S SERMON. [ARTICLE]

TALMAGE'S SERMON.

TALKS ON WOMAN’S WRONGS AND HER OPPORTUNITIES. Vashti the Veiled, the Silent and the Righteous—The Bald Woman and the Modest Woman—Waiting for the Divine Hand to Soothe. * Woman Sacrificed. In his sermon last Sunday, starting from a brilliant Bible scene, Dr. Talmage discoursed upon woman's opportunities and the wrongs she sometimes suffers. His text was Esther i., 11, 12: "To bring Vashti the queen before the king with the crown royal to show the people and the princes her beauty, was fair to look on. But the queen \ ashti refused to come at the king’s commandment by his chamberlains, therefore was the king very wroth, and his auger burned in him." We stand amid the palaces of Shushan. The pinnacles are aflame with the morning light. The columns rise festooned and wreathed, the wealth of empires flashing from the grooves, the ceilings adorned with images of bird* and beast and scenes of prowess and conquest. The walls are hung with shields and emblazoned until it seems that the whole round of splendors is exhansted. I.'ach arch is a mighty leap of architectural achievement. Golden stars shining down on glowing arabesque. Hangings of embroidered work in which mingle the blueness of the sky, the greenness of the grass, and the whiteness of the sea foam. Tapestries hung on silver rings, welding together the pillars of marble. Pavilions reaching out in every direction. These for repose, filled with luxuriant couches, into which weary limbs sink until all fatigue is submerged. These for carousal, where kiugs drink down a kingdom at one swallow. Amazing spectacle! Light of silver dripping down over stairs of ivory on shields of gold. Floors of stained marble, sunset red and night black, and inlaid with gleaming pearL Why, it seems as if a heavenly vision of amethyst and jacinth and topaz and chrysoqrasus had descended and alighteu upon Shushan. It seems as if a billow of celestial glory had dashed clear over heaven's battlements upon this metropolis of Persia. In connection with this palace there is a garden where the mighty men of foreign lands are seated at a banquet. Under the spread of oak and linden and acacia the tables are arranged. The breath of honeysuckle and frankincense tills the air. Fountains leap up into the light, the spray struck through with rainbows falling in crystalline baptism upon flowering shrubs, then rolling dowif* through channels of marble and widening out here and there into pools swirling with the finny tribes of foreign aquariums, bordered with scarlet anemones, hypericums and many colored ranunculus. Meats of rarest bird and beast smoking up nmid wreaths of aromatics. The vases tilled with apricots and almonds. The baskets piled up with apricots and dates and tigs and oranges and pomegranates. Melons tastefully twined with leaves of acacia. The bright waters of Euiaeus tilling the urns and sweating outside the rim in flashing beads amid the traceries. Wine from the royal vats of Ispahan and Shiraz in bottles of tinged shell and lily shaped cups of silver and flagons and tankards of solid gold. The rnusie rises higher, and the revelry breaks out into wilder transport, and the wine has flushed the cheek and touched the brain, and louder than all other voices are the hiccough of the inebriates, the gabble of fools and the song of the drunkards. Vashti the Sacrificed. In another part of the palace Queen Vashti is entertaining the princesses of Persia at a banquet. Lirunken Ahasuerus •ays to his servants, “iou go out and fetch Vashti from that banquet with the women and bring her to this banquet with the men and let me display her beauty.” The servants immediately start to obey the king's command, but there was a rule in oriental society that no woman might appear in public without having her face veiled. Yet here was a mandate, that no one dare dispute, demanding that Vashti come in unveiled before the multitude. However, there was in Vnshti’s soul a principle more regal than Ahasuerus, more brilliant than the gold of Shushan, of more wealth than the realm of Persia, which commanded her to disobey this order of the king, and so all the righteousness and holiness nnd modesty of her nature rises up into one sublime refusal. She says, rt l will not go into the banquet unveiled.” Of course Ahasuerus was infuriate, and Vashti, robbed of her position and her estate, is driven forth in poverty and ruin to suffer the scorn of a nation, and yet to receive the applause of after generations who shall rise up to admire this martyr to kingly insolencet Well, the last vestige of that feast is gone, the last garland has faded, the last arch has fallen, the last Tankard has been destroyed, and Shushan is a ruin, but ai long as the world stands there will be. multitudes of men and women familiar with the Bible who will come Into this picture gallery of God and admire the divine portrait of Vashti the queen, Vashti the veiled, Vashti the sacrifice, Vashti the silent.

Noble Women. In the first place, I want yon to look upon Ynshti the queen. A blue ribbon, rayed with white, drawn around her forehead, indicated her queenly position. It was no small honor to be queen in such a realm as that. Hark to the rustle of her robes! See the blaze of her jewels! And yet, my friends, it is not necessary to hare palace and regal robe in order to be queenly. When I see a woman with strong faith in God putting her foot upon all meanness and selfishness and godless display, going right forward to serve Christ and the race by a grand and glorious service, I say, “That woman is a queen,” and the ranks of heaven look over the battlements upon the coronation, and whether she come up from the shanty on the commons or the mansion of the fashionable square I greet her with the shout: “All hail! Queen Yashti!” What glary was there on the brow of Mary of Scotland,' or Elizabeth of England, or Margaret of France, or Catherine of Russia eompared with the worth of some of our Christian mothers, many of them gone into glory; or of that woman mentioned in the Scriptures who put all her motley into the Lord's treasury; or of Jephthah’s daughter, who made a demonstration of-unselfish patriotism; or of Abigail, who rpscued the herds and flocks of her husband; or of Ruth, who toiled under a tropical sun for poor, old, helpless Naomi; or of Florence Nightingale, who went at midnight to stanch the battle wonnds of the Crimea; or of Mrs! Adoniram Judson, who kindled the lights of salvation amid the durkuhss of Burma; or of Mrs. Homans, who poured out her holy soul in words which will forever be associated with hunter’s horn, and captive’s chain, and bridal hour, and lute’s thirob, nnd curfew’s knell at the dying day, and scores ;and hundreds of women unknown on earth who have given water to the thirsty and bread to the hungry and medicine to the sick and smiles to the discouraged—their footsteps heard along dark lane and in government hospital and in almshouse corridor and by prison gate? There may be no royal robe; there may be bo palatial surroundings. She does not

need them, for all charitable men will unite with the crackling lips of fever struck hospital and plague blotched lazaretto in greeting her as she passes: "Hail! Hail! Queen Vashti!” Vashti Veiled. Again, I want you to consider Vashti the Veiled. Had she appeared before Ahasuerus and his court on that day with her face uncovered she would have shocked all the delicacies of oriental society, and the very me- who in their intoxication demanded that she come in their sober moments wouid have despised her. As some flowers seem to thrive best in the dark lane and in the shadow and where the sun docs not seem to reach them, so God appoints to mast womanly natures a retiring and unobstrnsive spirit. God once in awhile does call an Isabella to a throne, or a Miriam to strike the timbrel at the front of a host, or a Marie Antoinette to quell a French mob, or a Deborah to stand at the front of an armed battalion, crying out: “Up! Up! This is the day in which the Lord will deliver Sisera into thine hand.” And when women are called to such outdoor work and to such heroic positions, God prepares them for it, and they have iron in their souls and lightning in their eye, and whirlwinds in their breath, and the borrowed strength of the Lord omnipotent in their right arin. They walk through furnaces as though they were hedges of wild flowers and cross seas as though they were shimmering sapphire, and all the harpies of hell down to their dungeon at the stamp of her womanly indignation. But these are the exceptions. Generally Dorcas would rather make a garment for the poor boy, ltebecca would rathe- till the trough for the camels, Hannah would rather make a coat for Samuel, the Hebrew maid would rather give a prescription for Naaman’s leprosy, the woman of Sarepta would rather gather a few sticks to cook a meal for furnished Elijah, Phebc would rather carry a letter for the inspired apostle, Mother Lois would rather educate Timothy in the Scriptures.

When I see a woman going about her daily duty—with cheerful dignity presiding at the table, with kind and gentle but firm discipline presiding in the nursery, going out into the world without any blast of trumpets, following in the footsteps of him who went about doing good—l gny, “This is Vashti with a veil on.” But when 1 see a woman ot unblushing boldness, loud voiced, with a Tongue of infinite, clitter clatter, with arrogant look, passing through the streets with the step of a walking beam, gnyly arrayed in a very hurricane of millinery. I cry out, “Vashti has lost her veil!” When I see a woman of comely features, and of ndroitness of intellect, and endowed with all that the schools can do for one, and of high social position, yet moving in society, with superciliousness and hauteur, as though she would have people know their place, and an undefined combination of giggle and strut and rhodomontade, endowed with allopathic quantities of talk, but only homeopathic infinitesimals of sense, the terror of dry goods clerks and railroad conductors, discoverers of significant meanings in plain conversation, prodigies of badiuage and innuendo, I say: “Look! Look! Vashti has lost her veil!” A Broken Heart. Again, I want you to consider Vashti the sacrifice. Who is this I see coming out of that palace gate of Shushan? It seems to me that I have seen her before. She comes homeless, houseless, friendless, trudging along with a broken heart. Who is she? It is Vashti the sacrifice. Oh, what a change it was from regal position to a wayfarer’s crust! A little while ago, approved and sought for; now, none so poor as to acknowledge her acquaintanceship. Vashti the sacrifice! Ah, you and I have seen it many a time! Here is a home impalaced with beauty. All that refinement and books and wealth can do for that home has been done, but Ahasuerus, the husband and the father, is taking hold on paths of sin. He is gradually going down. After awhile he will flounder and struggle like a wild beast in the hunter’s net —farther away from God, fnrther away from the right. Soon the bright apparel of the children will turn to rags; soon the household song will become the sobbing of a broken heart. Thy old story over again. Brutal centaurs breaking up the marriage feast of Lapithae. The house full of outrage and cruelty and abomination, while trudging forth from the palace gates are Vashti and her children. There are homes that are in danger of such a breaking up. Oh, Ahasuerus, that you should stand in .a home by a dissipated life destroying the peace and comfort of that home! God forbid that your children should ever have to wring their hands and have people point their finger at them as they pass down the street and say, “There goes a drunkard’s child.” God forbid that the little feet should ever have to trudge the path nnd uproot that garden and with a lasting, blistering, all consuming curse shut forever the palace gate against Vashti and the children! During the tyar I went to Hagerstown to look at the army, and 1 stood in the 4 night on a hilltop and looked down upon then). I saw the camp fires all through the valleys and all over the hills. It was a weird spectacle, those camp fires, and 1 stood and watched them, and the soldiers who were gathered around them were no doubt talking of their homes and of the long march they had taken and of the battles they were to fight, but after awhile I saw these camp fires begin to lower, and they continued to lower until they -Acre all gone out and the army slept. It was imposing in the darkness when I thought of that great host asleep. Well, God looks down from heaven, and he sees the firesides of Christendom nnd the loved ones gathered around these firesides. These are the camp fires where we warm ourselves at the close ot the day and talk over the battles of life we have fought and the battles that are yet To come. God grant that when at last.these fires begin to go out and continue to lower until finally they are extinguished and the ashes of consumed hopes streyv the hearth of the old home-dead it may be because we have

Gone to sleep that last long sleep From which none ever wake to weep. Now we are an army on the march of life. Then we will be an army bivouacked in the tent of the grave. A Hops and It. Fulfillment. Once more 1 want you to look at Yashti the silent. You do hoi hear any outcry from this woman as she goes forth from the palace gate. From the very dignity of her nature you know there will be no vociferation. Sometimes in life it is necessary to resist, but there are crises when the most triumphant thing to do is to keep silence. The philosopher, confident in his newly discovered principle, waiting for the coming of more intelligent generations, willing that men should laugh at the lightning rod and cotjon gin and steamboat, waiting for long years through the scoffing of philosophical schools in grand and magnificent silence. Galilei, condemned by mathematicians and scientists, caricatured everywhere, yet waiting and watching with his telescope to see the coming up of stellar reinforcements, when the stars in their courses would fight for the Copernican system, then sitting down in complete blindness and deafness to wait for the coming on of the generations who would build his monument and bow at his grave. >.i The reformer, execrated by his contemporaries, fastened in a pillory, the slow

fires of public contempt burning undo him, ground under the cylinders of the printing press, yet calmly waiting for the day when purity of soul and heroism of character will get the sanction of earth and the plaudits of heaven. Affliction, enduring without any complaint the sharpness of the pang and the violence of the storm, and the heft of the ehaln'and of the darkness of night. Waiting until a divine hand shall be put forth to soothe the pang and hush the storm and release the captive. A wife abused, .persecuted and a perpetual exile ftom every earthly comfort—waiting, waiting until the Lord shall gather all his dear children in a heavenly home and no poor Vashti will ever be thrust out from the palace gate. Jesus, in silence and answering not a word, drinking the gall, bearing the cross, in prospect of the rapturous consummation when Angels thronged his chariot wheel And bore him to his throne. Then swept their golden hasps and sung The glorious work is done. O woman, does not ttys story of Vashti the queen. Vashti the veiled, Vashti the sacrifice, Vashti the silent, more your soul! My sermon converges into the one absorbing hope that none of you may be shut out of the palace gate of heaven. You can endure the hardships and the privations nnd the cruelties and the misfortunes of this life if you can only gain admission there. Through the blood of the everlasting covenant, you go through these gates or never go at all. God forbid that you should at last be banished from the society of angels and banished from the companionship of your glorified kindred and banished forever. Through the rich grace of our Lord Jesus Christ may you be enabled to imitate the example of Ilachel and Hnnnnh nnd Abigail nnd Deborah and Alary and Esther and Vashti. Amen.