Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1888 — CONTENTMENT. [ARTICLE]

CONTENTMENT.

THE GREAT LUXURY TO MAN.KIND IS HEALTH. It Biter Thill Than Wealth With In.llßotl n and Otnbbadnir*-.—A Heart llisht to <i»d and Ran U Alway* Happy-r-Weal h I. Not Always Snt ifying, Nor !• Fover.y Aiwa)* Keßretful. The Itev. Dr. Talmage took for his subject. Sunday, “In Good Humor Wit£ Our Circumstances.” Hebrews xiii., o: “Be content with sucl*, .things as ye have.” lie said: If I should ask some one, “Where is .Brooklyn to-day?,’ he would say, “At Brighton Beach, or East Hampton, or Shelter Island.” “Where is New York to-dav?” “At Long Branch,” Where is Philadelphia?” “Cape May.” "Where is. Boston?” “At. Martha’s Vineyard.” “Where is Virginia?” “Atthe Sulphur Springs." “Where the great multitude from ail parts of the lard?” At Saratoga,” tlie modern Bethesda, where the angel of health* is ever stirring the waters. But, my friends, the largest multitude are at home, detained by business or circumstances. Among them the newspaper men, the hardest-worked and the least-compensated; city railroad employes, and ferry masters, and the police, and the tens of thousands of clerks and merchants waiting for their turn of absence; and households with an invalid who cannot be moved, and others hindered by stringent circumstances, and the great multitude of well-to-do people who stay at home because they like home better than any other place, refusing to go away simply because it is the fashion to go. When the express wagon, with its mountain of trunks directed to the Catskills or Niagara, goes through the street we stand at our window envious and im-patient,-and wonder why we cannot go as well as others. Foolb that we are, as though one could not be as happy at home as anywhere else! Our grandfathers and grandmothers had as good a time as we have long before the -first spring was bored at Saratoga or the first deer shot in the Adirondacks. They made their wedding tour to the next farm-house, or, living in New York, they celebrated the event toy an extra walk on the “Battery.”

Now, the genuine American is not happy until he is going somewhere, and the passion is so great that there are Christian people with their families detained in tne city, who do not come to the house of God, trying to give people the idea that they are out of town, leaving the door-plate unscoured for the same reason, and for two months keeping the front shutters closed while they sit in the hack part of the house, the thormometer at ninety! My friends, if it is best for us to stay’ at home, let us stay at home and be happy. There is a great deal of good common sense in Paul’s advice to the Hebrews: “Be content with such things as ye have.” To be content is to he in good humor with our circumstances, not picking a quarrel with our obscurity, or with our poverty, or our social position. There are four or five grand reasons why we should be cohtent with such things as we have. The first reason that 1 mention as leading to this spirit advised in the text, is the consideration that the poorest of us have ail that is indispensable! in life. We make a great ado about our hardships, but how little we talk of our blessings. Health of body, which is given in largest quantity to those who have never been petted, and fondled, and spoiled by fortune, we take as a matter of course. Rather have this luxury, and have it alone, than, without it, look out of a palace window upon parks of deer stalking between fountains and statuarv.

The dinner of herbs tastes better to the appetite sharpened on a woodman’s ax or reaper's scythe than wealthy indigestion experiences seated at a table covered with partridge and venison and pineapple. The grandest luxury God ever gave a man is health. He who trades that off for all the palaces of the earth is infinitely cheated. We look bayk at the glorv of the last Napoleon, but who would have taken his Versailles and his Tuilleries if with them we had been obliged to take his gout! What is a sunset on a wall compared with a sunset hung in Joops of fire on the heavens? What is a cascade silent on canvas compared with a cascade that makes the mountain-tremble, its spray ascending like the departed spirit of the water slam on the rocks? Oh! there is a great deal of hollow affectation about the fondness for pictures on the part of those who never appreciate the original from which the pictures are taken. As though a parent should have no regard for his child, but go into ecstasies over its photograph. Bless the Lord to-dav, 0, man! 0. woman!, that though you may be shut out from the works of a Church, a Bierstadt, a Ruebehs, and a Raphel, you will have free access to a gallery grander than the Lottvre, or the Luxemburg, or the Vatican—the Royal gallery of the noonday heavens, the King’s gallery of the midnight sky.

Another consideration leading" us to a spirit of contentment is the fact that our happiness is not dependent"upon outward circumstances. You see people happy and miserable amid all circumstances. In a family whete the last loaf is on the table, and the last stick of wood on the fire, you sometimes find a cheerful confidence in God, while in a \-ery fine place you will see and hear discord sounding her Avar-whoop, and hospitality freezing to death'in a cheerless parlor. I stopped one day on BroadAA-ay at the head of Wall street, at the foot of Trinity Church, to see who seemed the happiest people passing. I judged from their looks the happiest people were not those who went down into Wall 6treet,. for they had on .their brow the anxiety of the dollar they expected to make; nor the people who came out of Wall street, for they had on their brow the anxiety of the "dollar they had lost, nor the people who swept by in splendid equipage, for they met a "carriage that was finer than theirs. The happiest person in all that crowd, judging from the countenance, was the woman who sat at the applestand knitting. I belie A’e real happiness oftener looks out of the window of an humble home, than through the opera-glass of the gilded box of a theater. I find Nero growling on a throne. I find Paul singing in a dungeon. I find King Ahab going to bed at noon through melancholy, Avhile near by is Nabath contented in the possession of a vineyard. Hainan, Prime Minister of Persia, frets himself almost to death

and Ahithophel, one of the greatest lawyers of Bible times, through fear of dying, hangs himself. The wealthiest man, forty years ago, in New York, when congratulated over his large estate, replied: “Ah! you don’t know how much trouble 1 have In taking ' care of it” Byron declared in his last hours that he had HteVer seen more than twelve happy days ii» his life. Ido not believe he bad seen twelve minutes of thorough satisfaction. Napoleon I. said: “I turn with disgust from the cowardice and selfishness of mart. I hold life a horror; death a repose. What I have suffered the last twenty-four days is beyond human comprehepsion.” The heart right towarcPGod and man, we are are happy; the heart wrong toward God and man, we are unhappy. Another reason why we should come to this spirit inculcated in the text is the fact that all the differences >of earthly condition are transitory. The houses you build, the land you culture, the places in'which you barter, are soon to go into other hands. However hard you mav have it now, if you are a Christian the scene will soon end. Pain, trial, persecution never knock at the door of the grave. A coffin made out of pine boards is just as good a resting-place as one made out of silver-mounted mahoganv or rosewood. Go down among the resting-places of the dead and you find that though people there had a great difference of worldly circumstances, now they are all alike unconscious. The hand that greeted the Senator and the President and the King is still as the hand that hardened on the mechanic’s hammer or the manufacturer’s w heel. It does not make any difference now whether there is a plain stone above them, from" which, the traveler pulls aside the weeds to read the name, or a tall shaft springing into the heavens as though to tell their virtues to the skies.

In that silent land there are no titles for grea r men. and there are no rumblings of chariot wheels, and there is never heard the foot of the dance. The Egyptian guano which is thrown on the fields in the East for the enrichment of the soil is the dust raked out from the sepulchers of Kings and Lords and mighty men. 0! the chagrin of those men if they had ever known that in the after ages of the world they would have been called Egyptian guano. Of how much worth now is the crown of Cuesar? Who bids for it? Who cares now any thing about the Amphictyonic Council or the laws of Lveurgus? Who trembles now because Xerxes crossed the Hellespont on a bridge of boats? Who fears because Nebuchadnezzar thundersat the gates of Jerusalem? Who cares now whether or not Cleopatra marries Antony? Who crouches before Ferdinand, or Boniface, or Aleric? Can Cromwell dissolve the English Parliament now? Is William, Prince of Orange, King of the Netherlands? No; no! However much Elizabeth may love the Russian crown she must pass it to Peter, and Peter to Catherine, and Catherine, to Paul, anil Paul to Alexander, and Alexander to Nicholas. Leopold puts the German scepter into the hand of Joseph, and Philip comes down off the Spanish throne to let Ferdinand go on. House of Aragon, house of Hapsburg, house of Stuart, house of Bourbon, quarreling about everything else, hut agreeing in this: “The fashion of the world passeth away.” But have all the dignitaries gone? * Can they not be called back? I have been in assemblages where I have heard the .roll called and many distinguished men have answered. If I should call the roll to-day of some of those mighty ones who have gone, I wonder if they would nos answer. I will call the roll of the Kings first: Alfred thg Great! William the Conqueror! Frederick II.! Louis XVI.! No answer. I will eall the roll of the i>oets: Robert Southey! Thomas Campbell! John Keats! George Crabbe! Robert Burns! No answer. I call the roll of artists: Michael Angelo! Paul Veronese! William Turner! Christopher Wren! No answer. Eyes closed. Ears deaf. Lips silent. Hands palsied. Scepter, pencil, pen, sword, put down forever. Why should we struggle for such baubles?

Another reason why we should culture this spirit of cheerfulness is the fact that God knows what is best for His creatures. You know what is best for your child. He t hinks you are not as liberal with him as you ought to be. He criticises your discipline, but you look over the whole field, and you, loving that child, do what, in your deliberate judgment, is best for him. Now, God is the best of fathers. Sometimes His children think that He is hard on them, and that He is not as liberal with them as He might be. But children do not know as much as a father. I can tell you why you are not largely affluent, and why you have not been grandly successful. It is because you can not stand the temptation. If your path had been smooth you would have depended upon your own surefootedness; but God roughened that path, sovou have to take hold of His' hand. If the weather had been mild you would have lingered along the wa-ter-courses; but at the first howl of the storm you quickened your pace heavenward, and wrapped around you the warm robe of a Savior s righteousness.

Another consideration leading ustd the spirit of the text is the assurance that the Lord will provide somehow. Will He who holds the Avater in the hollow of His hand allow His children to die of thirst? Will He Avho owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and all the earth's luxuriance of grain anti fruit, allow His children to starve? Go out tomorrow morning at five o’clock into the Avoods and hear the birds chant. They have had no breakfast: they know not where they will dine; thev nave no idea Avbere thev will sup; but hear the birds chant at five o’clock in the morning; “Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are you not much better than they?” Seven thousand people, in Christ’s time, Avent into the desert. Thev were the most improvident people I ever heard of. They deserved to stance. They might-faaA'e taken . food enough to last them until they got back. Nothing did they take. A lad, who had more wit than all of them put togetheV, asked his mother that morning for some loaves of bread and some fishes. They Avere put into his sachel. He went out into the desert . From this provision the seven thousand were fed, amt the more' they ate the larger the loaves grew, until the provision that the boy brought in one satchel was —multiplied —so that he could not have carried the fragments home in six satchels. “Oh!” you say, ‘‘times have changed, and the day of miracles has gone.” I reply that,what

God did then by He does now By some other way, and by natural laws. Yet, my friends, notwithstanding all these inducements to a spirit of contentment, I have to tell you this morning the human race js uivided into two classes, those who scold and those who gfet scolded. The carpenter wants to be any thing hut a carpenter, and the mason any thing but a mason, aRd the hanker any thing but a banker, and the lawyer ahy thing hut,a lawyer, and the ministerlany thing but a minister, and every Wily would be happy if lie were only* somebody else. The anemone wants to be a sunflower, and the apple orchards throw down their blossoms because they are not tall cedars, and the scow wantH to be a seventy-four pounder, and parents have the worst children that ever were, and every body has the greatest misfortune, and every thing is upside down, or going to be. Ah! my friends, you never make any advance through such a spirit as that. You can not fret yourself up; you may fret yourself ilhwn. Amid all this grating of tone I strike this string of the gospel harp: “Godliness with contentment is great gain. We brought nothing into the world, and it is very certain that we can carry nothing out; having food and raiment, let us therewith be content.”