Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 November 1887 — CONCORD AND DISCORD. [ARTICLE]

CONCORD AND DISCORD.

i The World H-a* Become Discordant and Out of Tune, Hlu Came and Bw«et Houade Melted Away —The Boi>k ot •h« Morning Htam Will be Resumed Agiuntn th« Great Day. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at the I Brooklyn Tabernacle last Sunday. Subi ject, “Concord and Discord.” Text, Job xxxviii.; 6-7. He said: The fact is that the whole universe was a complete cadence, an unbroken dithyramb, a musical portfolio. The great sheet pf immensity had been spread out, and written on it were the stars, the smaller of them minims, he larger of them sustained notes. The metebrs fnarked the staccato passages the whole heavens a gamut, with all sounds, intonations and modulations, the space between the worlds a musiaal interval, trembling of. stellar light a quaver, the thunder a bass clef, the wind among trees a treble clef. That is the way God made all things a perfect harmony. But one day a harp string snapped in the great orchestra. One day a voice sounded out of tune. One day a discord, harsh and terrific, grated upon the glorious autophone. It was sin that made the dissonance, and that harsh discord has been sounding through the centuries. All tne work of Christians and philanthropists and reformers of all ages is tc stop that discord and get ail things back into the perfect harmony which was heard at the laying of the corner stone when the morning stars sang together. Before I get through, if lam divinely helped, I will make it plain that sin is discord, and that righteousness is harmony. That things in general are out of tune is as plain as to a musician’s ear is the unhappy clash of clarionet and bassoon in an orchestra rendering. The world’s health out of tune: Weak lungs and the atmosphere in collision, disordered eyes and the noonday light in quarrel, rheumatic limb and damp weather in struggle, neuralgias and imeumonias, and consumptions and spiepsies in flocks swoop upon neighborhoods and cities. Where you find one person with sound tbroatand keen eyesight, and alert ear, and easy .respiration, and regular pulsation, and supple limb, and prime digestion, and steady nerves, you find a hundred who have to be very careful, because this or that or the other physical function is disordered.

The human intellect out of tune: The judgment wrongly swerved, or the memory leaky, or the will weak, or the temper inflam cable, and the well balanced mind exceptional. Domestic life out of tune: Only here and there a conjugal outbreak of incompatibility of temper through t ie divorce courts, or a filial outbreak about a father’s will through the Surrogate’s Court, or a case of wile beating or husband poisoning through the criminal courts, but thousands of families with June outaide and January within. Society out of tune: Labor and capital, their hands on each other’s throat. Spirit of caste keeping those down in the social scale-in a struggle to get up, and putting those who are up in anxiety lest they have to come down. No wonder the old pianoforte of society is all out of tune, when hypocrisy, and lying, and subterfuge, and double dealing, and sycophancy, and charlatanism, and revenge have for six thousand years been banging away at the keys and stamping the pedals. On all sides there is a perpetual shipwreck of harmonies. Nations in discord. Without realizing wrong is the feeling of nation for nation that the symbols chosen are fierce and destructive. In this country, where our skies are full of robins, and doves, and morning larks, we have our national symbol, the fierce and filthy eagle, as immoral a bird as can be found in all the orni hological catalogues. In Great Britian, where they have lambs and fallow deer, their symbol is the merciless lion. In Russia, where from between her froxen north and blooming south all kindly beasts dwell, they chose the growling bear; and in the world’s heraldry a favorite figure is the dragon,which a winged serpent, ferocious and deathful. And so fond is the world of contention that we climb out through the heavens and baprije one of tbe other planets with tbe spirit of battle, and call it Mars, after the god of war, and we give to the eighth sign of the zodiac the name of the scorpion, a creature which is chiefly celebrated for its deadly sting. But.after all, those symbols are expressive of the way nation feels toward nation. Discord wide as the continent and bridging the seas. I suppose you have noticed how warmly in love dry-goods stores are with other dry-goods stores and how highly grocervmen think of the sugars of the grocerymen on the fame block. And in what a eulogistic w i ay allopathic and homeopathic doctors speak of each other, and. how ministers will sometimes put ministers on that, beautiful cooking ins:rument which the English call a spit, an iron roller with spikes on it, turned by a crank before a hot tire, and then if the minister being roasted cries out against it, the men who are turning him say: “Hush, brother! we are turning this spit for the glory of God and the good of your soul, and you must be quiet while we close the service with:

“ ‘Blest be the tie that binds Our hearts in Christian love.’ ” The earth is diametered and circumferenced with discord, and the music that was rendered at the laying oi the world’s cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, is not heard now; and though here and there, from this and that part of society, and from this and part of the earth, there comes up a thrilling solo of love, or a warble of worship, or a sweet duet of patience, they are drowned out by a discord that shakes the earth. But in this world things in general are out of tune to our frail ear, how much more s > to ears angelic and deities It takes a skilled artist fully to appreciate disagreement of sound. Many have no 'opacity to detect a defect of musical execution, and, though there were in one bar as many offenses against harmony as could crowd in between the lower F of the bass and the higher G of the soprano, it would give them no discomfort, while on the forehead of ttie- educated artist bead’s of perspiration would stand out as a result of the harrowing dissonance. While an. amateur ■-< as performing on a pianor and had just' struck the wrong cord. J.ibn Sebastian Bach, the immortal comp<ft-er, entered the- room, and- the amateur mse in emharrasment, knd Buch rushed "past the host, who stepped

forward to greet him, and, before the key-board had stopped vibrating, put his adroit hand upon the keys and changed the painfull inharmony into glorious cadence. Then Bach turned and gave salutation to the host who had invited him. But the worst of all discord < i« moral I discord. If society and the world are painfully discordant« to imperfect man, what must they be to a perfect God? People try to define what sin is. Ifrpeems to me that sin is getting out of harmony with God, a disagreement with His holiness, with His pnrity, with His love* with His commands, onr will clashing with His wil) the finite dashing against the infinite, the frail against the puissant, the created against the Creator. If a thousand musicians, with flute and cornet-a piston, and trumpet, and. violincello, and hautbois, and trombone, and all the wind and stringed instruments that ever gathered in a Dusseldorf jubilee should resolve that they would play out ot tune and put concord to the rack, and make the place wild with shrieking, and grating and rasping sounds x they could not make such a pandemonium as that which rages in a sinful soul when God listens to the play of its thoughts, passions, and emotions—discord, life long discord, maddening discord. The world pays more for discord than it does for consonance. High prices have been paid for music. One man gave two-hundred and twenty-five dollars to hear the Swedish songstress in New York, and another six-hun-dred and twenty-five dollars to hear her in Boston, and another six-hundred and fifty dollars to hear her in Providence. Fabulous prices have been paid for sweet sounds, but far more has been paid for discord. The Crimean war cost one billion seven hundred million dollars, and our American civil war over nine and a half billion dollars, and the war debts of professed Christian nations are about fifteen billion dollars. The world pays for this red ticket, which admits it to the saturnalia of broken bones and death agonies, and destroyed cities, and plowed graves, and crushed hearts, any amount of money Satan asks. Discord! Discord!

But I have to tell you that the song that the morning stars sang together, at the laying of the world’s cornerstone, is to be resumed again. Moaart’s greatest overture was composed one night when he was several times overpowered With sleep, and artists say they can tell the places in the music where he was falling asleep, and the places where he awakened. So the overture of the morning stars, spoken of in my text, has been asleep, but it will awaken and be more grandly rendered by the evening stars of the world’s existence than by the morning stars, and the vespers will be sweeter than the matins. The work of all good men and women, and of all good churches, and all reform associations, is to bring the race back to the original harmonv. The re- ’ bellious heart to be attuned social life to be attuned, commercial ethics to be attuned, internationality to be attuned, hemispheres to be attuned. But by whatjorce and in what wav? . -

Now, our world can never be attuned by an imperfect instrument. Heaven has ordained the only instiument, an d it is made out of the wood of the cross, and the voices that accompany it are imported voices, cantatrices of the first Christmas night, when heaven serenaded the earth with: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good-will to men.” Lest we start too far off, and get lost in generalities, we had better begin with ourselves, get cur own hearts and life in harmony with the eternal Christ. Oh, for His almighty spirit to attune us, to chord our will with His will, to modulate our life with His life, and bring us into unison with all that is pure,and self-sacrificing and heavenly. The strings of our nature are all broken and twisted, and the bow is so slack it can not evoke any thing mellifluous. The instrument made for heaven to play on has been roughly twanged and struck by influences vorldly and demoniac. O, master hand of Christ, restore this split, and fractured, and despoiled, and unstrung nature until first it shall wall out for our sin and then trill with divine pardon. The whole world must also be attuned by the same power. A few days ago I was in a great factory, six hundred hands, and they have never had a strike. Complete harmony between labor and capital, the operatives of scores of years in their beautiful homes near by the mansions of the manufacturers, whose invention and Christian behavior made the great enterprise. So all the world over labor and capital will be brought into euphony. You may have heard what is called the “Anvil Chorus,” composed by Verdi, a tune played by hammers, great and small, now withmighty stroke, and now with heavy stroke, beating a great iron anvil. That is what the world has got to come to—anvil chorus, yard-stick chorus, shuttle chorus, trowel chorus, crowbar chorus, pick ax gold-mine chorus, rail-track chorus, locomotive chorus. It can be done, and it will he done. So all social life will be attuned by the gospel harp. There will be as many classes in society as now, but. the classes will not be regulated by birth, or wealth, or accident, but by the scale of virtue and benevolence, and people will be assigned to their places as good, or very good, or most excellent. So, also, commercial life will be attuned, and there will be twelve in every dozen, and sixteen ounces in every pound, and apples at the bottom of the barrel will be as sourd as those on the top, and silk goods will not be cotton, and sellers will not have to cha ge honest people more than the right price because others will not pay, and goods will come to you corresponding with the sample by which you purchased them, and coffee will not be chicoried, and sugar will not be sanded, and milk will not be chalked, and adulteration of food will be a state s prison offense. Aye, all {things shall be attuned Elections in England and the United States will no more be a grand carnival of defalcatiotTand scurrility, bat the elevation of righteous men in a righteous way. Heaven is to have a new Song, entirely new song; but I should not wonder if at some time 1 on earth a tune is fashioned out of many tunes or it is one tune with the variations. so some of the songs of the redeemed may have playing through them the songs of earth, and how thrilling as coming through the great anthem of the saved, accompanied by harperswith their harps and trumpeters with their trumpets, we shoul 1 hear some of the strains of Antioch. and . Mount Pisgah, and Corona-

| tion, and L-nox, and St* Martin’s, and' Fountain, and Ariel, aud O d Hundred! How they would bring to mind the praying circles, and communion days, i and the Christmas festivals, and the ; church worship in which on earth wc mingled! I have no idea that when we i bid farewell to earth we are to bid fare-, well to all these grand old Gospel, hymns, which melted arid raptured our! souls for so many years. Now, my i friends, if sin is discord and righteous I ness is harmony, let us get out of the one and enter the other. After our dreadful civil war was over and in the summer of 1869 a great national peace jubilee was held in Boston, and as an elder; of this church had been honored by the selection of sqme of his music, to be rendered on that occasion, I accompanied him to the jubilee. Forty thousand people sat and stood in the great Coliseum erected for that purpose. Thousands of wind and stringed instruments. Twelve thousand trained voices. The masterpieces df all ages rendered, hour after hour, and day after day—Handel’s “Judas Maccgbwus,” Spohr’s “Last Judgment,” Beethoven’s “Mount of Olives,” Hayden’s “Creation,” Mendelssohn’s “Elijah.” Meyerbeer’s “Coronation March” rolling on and up in surges that billowed against the heavens. The mighty cadences within were accompanied on the outside by the ringing of the bells of the city and cannon on the commons, in exact time with the music dis charged by electricty, thundering their awful bars of a harmony that astounded all nations. Sometimes I bowed my head and wept. Sometimes I stood up in the enchantment, and sometimes the effect was so overpowering I felt I could not endure it. W hen all the voices were in full chorus, and all the batons in full wave, and all the orchestras in full triumph, and a hundred anvils under mighty hammers were in full clang, and all the towers in the city rolled in their majestic sweetness, and the whole building quaked with the boom of thirty cannon, Parepa Rosa, with a voice that will never again oe equaled on earth until the archangelic voice proclaims that time shall be no longer, rose above all other sounds in her rendering of our National air, “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It was too much for a motral, and quite enough for an immortal, to hear, and while some fainted, one womanly spirit, released under its power, sped away to be with God. O Lord, our God, quickly usher in the whole world’s peace jubilee, and all the islands of the sea join the five continents, afid all the voices and musical instruments of all nations combine, and all the organs that ever sounded requiem of sorrow sound only a grand march of joy, and all the bells that rang for burial ring for resurrection, and all the cannon that eve# hurled death across the nations sound to eternal victory, and over all the acclaim of earth and minstrelsy of heaven there will be heard one voice sweeter and mightier than any human or angelic voice, a voice once full of tears, but then full of triumph, the voice of Christ saying: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” Then, at the laying of the top-stone of the world's History,the same voices shall be heard as when at the laying of the world’s corner-stone “the morning stars sang together.”