Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1887 — A CHRISMAS SERMON. [ARTICLE]

A CHRISMAS SERMON.

LeßßOue Drawn from the Birth of the Savior.« A Cnkdln Which Wn» to Haan Mora Than th* •rare—A Prayar for M*r*y anti Klodnaaa u> All Livlnr Thing*—Bleated Motherhood. Rev. Dr. Talinage preached at the Brooklyn Taberfiacle on the 15th, taking aa the subject ofJJhis sermon, “The Barn and Its Surroundings.” Text Luke ii. 15: ‘‘The shepherds said one to an other, Let us now go even ip to Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass.’ 1 He said: One thousand years of the world’s existence rolled painfully and wearily along, and no Christ. Tao thousand years, and no Christ. Three thousand tears, and no Christ. Fonr thousand years, and no Christ. “Give n- sCTinm!” diad;, cried. Aeeyrign. and ,l. < rwiiin and Chaidead and Egyptian civilizations,but the lips of the earth and the lip.; bi the skv nia*j£ no answer. feut (lie slow century anil the alow year and the slowfi.outh and the slow hour at Igat 'srrived. The . black win-dow-shutters of a December night were thrown open, and some ’of the best Singers of a wcrid where they al! sing, stood there am., puttingbac k the drapers- of cloud,cheated a peace anthem, until all the echoes of bill and valley applauded and echoed the hallelujah chorus. At last the world has a Christ, and just the Christ it needs. Come let us go into that Christmas scene as though we had never before worshiped at the manger. Here is a Madonna worth looking at. I wonder not that the most frequent name in all lands and in all Christian centuries is Mary. And there are Afar vs in palaces and Marya-in cabins, and though German and French and Italian and Spanish and English pronounce it differently, they are all namesakedof the one women we find on a l>ed of straw, with her pale face against the soft cheek oi Christ in the night of the Nativity. All thegreat painters have tried on canvas to present Mary and her child and the incidents of that most famous night of the world’s history. Raphael, in three different master-pieces, celebrateu them. Tintoret and Guirlandjo surpassed themselves in the Adoration of the Magi. But all the gall ries of Dresden are forgotten when I think of the small roo m of that gallery containing the Sistine Madonna. ' Behold, in the first place, that on the first night of Cnrist’slife God honored the brute creation. You cannot get in to that Bethlehem barn without going paetthe camels, the mules, the dogs, the oxen: The brutes of that stable heard the fi-st cry of th e infant Lord. Have you ever thought that Christ came' among other things toalleviate the sufferings of the brute creation? Was it not appropriate that He should, during the first few days and nights of His life on earth, be surrounded by the dumb beasts whose moan and plaint and bellowing have for ages been a prayer to God for the arresting of their tortures and the righting of their wrongs? It did not merely “happen so” that the unintelligent creatures of God should have been that night in close neighborhood. Not a kennel in all the centuries, not a bird’s nest, not a worn-out horse on tow path, not a herd freezing in the poorly built cow pen, not a freight car in summer time bringing the beeves to market without water, ’ through a thousand miles of agony, not a surgeon’s room witnessing the struggles of fox, or rabbit, or pigeon or dog in the horrors of vivisection but has an interest in the fact that Christ was born in a stable surrounded by brutes. He remembers that night, and the prayer He heard in their pitiful moan He will answer in the punishment of those who maltreat the dumb brutes. They sure ly have as much right in this world as we have. In the first chapter of Genesis you may see that they were placed on the ear h before man was, the fish and fowl createil the filth, -day. and the quad r u ped the morning of the sixth day, and man not until the afternoon of that day. The whale, the eagle, the lion, and all the lesser creatures of their kind were predecessors of the human family. They nave the world by.right of possession. They have also paid rent for the places they occupied. What an army of defense all over the land are the faithful waten dogs. And who can tell what the world owes to horse, and camel, and ox for transportation? And robin and lark have by the cantatas with which they have filled orchard and forest more than paid for the few grains they have picked up for their sustenance. Standing then, as I imagine now I do, in that Bethlehem night, with an infant Christ on the one side and the speechless creatures of God on the other,l cry. Look out how you strike the rowel into that horse’s hide. Take off that curbed bit from the bleeding mouth. Remove that saddle from the raw back, bhuot not for fun that bird that is too small for food. Forget not to put water into tl cage of that canary. Throw out so e crumbs to those birds caught too hr north in the winter's inclemency. Arrest that man who is making that one horse draw a load of heavv enough for three._ Rush in upon that scene boys are torturing a eat or transfixing a butterfly and grasshopper. Drive not off that old robin, lor her neßt is.it J mother’s cradle and under her wing there may be three or four prima don n>ts of the sky in training. And in your i families ami in your schools teach tho coming generation more mercy than the present generation has ever shown, and in this marvelous Bible picture of the Nativity; while you point on to them the angel, show them also the camel, and while they hear the celestial chant e ! them also bear the cow's moan. No ijmore did Christ show interest in the botanical world when he said, “Consider the lilies,” then he showed sympathv for the ornithological when he said,“Beholdthe fowls of the air,' and the Quarfrupedai world when he allowed himself to be called in one place a lion and in another place a lamb. Meanwhile,may the Christ of tbe Bethlehem cattle-pen have mercy on the suffering stock yards that are preparing diseased ahd fevered meat for American bouse holds. Behold also in this Bible scene how on that Christmas night God honored childhood, Christ munt have made his first visit to our world in a cloud, as He will des< end on His next visit in a cloud.

might hnve rolled dawn the. *ky, eseort- [ e<i bj mounted cavairy, with iMiming lui druwu sword. E jah hadu eanugi 'of fire to take him up. Why nor Jesus a carriage oi fire to fetch him do* , ‘down? Or over fi t atehed bridge of a rainbow the Lord might Or Christ might ha»e. Lad hi o mortality built up on earth out of the dust of a garden, as was Adam, in full manhood at the start, without the introductory feebleness of infancy. No, no! childhood was to be honored by that event He must have a child’s right limb’s and a child’s dimbled hand, and a child’s beaming eye and a child’s flaxen hair, and babyhood was to be honored (or all time to come and a cradle was to mean more than a grave Mighty God,’ mav the reflection of that one child lacebe seen in all infantile faces. Enough have all those fathers and mothers on hand if they have a child in the house. A throne, a crown, a scepter, a kingdom tinder charge. Be careful how you strike him acroßS the head, jarring the braib What you say to him will he centennial and millennial,a and hundred years ami a thousand years will not stop the echo . and re-echo. - Yea, in all ages God has honored childhood. He makes almost every picture a failure unless there be a child either playing on the floor, or looking through the window, or seated-on t ie lapgaxing into the face of its mother. It was a child in Naaman’s kitchen that told the great Syrian warrior where be might go and get cured of the leprosy, which at hiA seventh plunge iff the Jordan was left at the bottom of the river. It was to the cradle of leaves, in which a child was laid, rocked by the Nile, that God called the attention of history. It was a sick child that evoked Christ’s curative sympathies It was * child I that Christ set in the midst of the

squabbling disciples to teach the lesson oi humility. We are informed that wolf and leopard and lion shall be yet so domesticated that little child shall lead them. A child decided Waterloo, showing the army of Blucher how they could take a short cut through the fields, when, if the old road had been followed, the Prussian General would have come up too late to save the destinies <>f Europe. It was a child that decided Gettysburg, he having heard two Con federate Generals in a conversation in which they decided to march for Gettysburg instead of Harrisburg, and this, reported to Governor Curtin,the Federal forces started to meet their opponents at Gettysburg, and.the child of to-day is to decide all the great battles, make all thedaws, settle all the destinies, and usher in tbe world’s salvation or destruction. Men, women, nations, all earth and all heaven, behold the child! Is there any velvet so soft as a child’s neck? Is there aiiy sky so blue as a child’s eye? Is there, any music so sweet as a child’s voice? Is there plume so wavy as a child’s hair? Notice, also, that in this Bible night scene God honored science. Who are the three wiee men kneeling before the Divine infant? Not boors, not ignora muses, but Caspar, Beithasar and Melchoir, men who knew all that was to be known. They were the Isaac Newtons and Herschels and Faradays of their time. Their alchemy was the forerunner of the suolime chemistry of our day, tneir astrology the mother of our magnificent astronomy. They had studied s'ars, studied physiology, studied every thing. And when I see these scientists bowing before the beautiful babe I see the prcphecy of the time when ail the telescopes and micro scopes, and ali the Leyden jars, and all the electric batteries, and all the observatories, and all the universities shall bow to Jesus. It is much that way already. Where is the college that does have morning prayers, thus bowing at the manger? Who have been the greatest physicians? To day the greatest doctors and lawyers of Brooklyn and New York, and of all this land, of all lands, revere the Christian religion, and are not ashamed to say so before juries, and Legislatures and Senates. All geology will yet bow before the Rock of Ages. All botany will yet worship the Rose of Sharon. All astronomy will yet fecog-niß-i the Star of Bethlehem. Behold also in that first Christmas night that God honored the fields. Corpe in, shepherd boys of Bethlehem, and see chechild. “No,” they say, “we are not dressed good enough to come in.” “Yes, you are, come in.” Sure enough, the storms, and the night dew, and the brambles have made rough work with i heir apparel, but none have a better right to come in. They were the first to hear the music of that Christmas night.

The first announcement of a Savior’s birth was made to those men in the fields. There were wiseacres that night in Bethlehem and Jerusalem snoring in deep sleep, and there were salaried officers of government who, hearing of it afterward, may have thought that they ought to have had the first news of such a great event—some one dis mounting from a swift camel at their door, and knocking till at some sentinel’s question, “Who comes there?” the great ones of the palace might have been told of the celestial arrival. JSo; the shepherds heard the firtt two bars of the music, the first in thq, tiainor key, and the last in the subdued minor: “uloiy to God in the, highest, and on earth p< ace, to men” Ah. yet; the fi-lds were honored' Cuiiit- b ;ek, mother, this ChristmasDay, and take your old place, and, es ten, or twenty or fittv years ago, come and open the old Bible you used to read.and kneel in the eame place where you used mpray, and look upon ns as of old, when you wished us a Merry Cnnetmas or a Happy New Year. B it, nc! That would not be fair, to call you back. You had troubles enough, and aches enough,and bereavements enough, while you were here. Tarry by tfie .throne, mother, till we joiq you there, your prayers all answered, and in the eternal homestead of our God we shall sgain ke* p Christmas jubilee together. But hpeak from your thrones, all you glorified mothers, and say to all these, y on r sons and daughters; -words of love, words of warning, words of cheer. Thev need vour voice,, for tbev have traveled far, and with many a heartbreak. since you left them, and you will do w¥li to catHrom theheigfits nf heaven to the valleys of earth. Hail, enthroned ancestry! We are co i.ing. Keep a place for us right beside you at the banquet. ?