Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 September 1888 — A WORLD FULL OF WOE. [ARTICLE]

A WORLD FULL OF WOE.

FROM THE CRADLE TO THE GRAVEAREWE PURSUEO. I The HoumlK of Ma Are Alw»y» en Oar Track—Tne Hope of Kteinnl Kent i* the ItciUM* iff I* 1 HrUtiau. ~ B|v. Dr. Talnmge preached at the Brooklyn Tabernacle last Sunday. Text, —~ ‘-7 I have just come from the Adirondack*, and the breath of the balsam and spruce and piile is still on me. The Adirondacks are now populous with huntets, and ’the dCer are being slain by the score. Talking a few davs ago with aliupter, I thought I would like to see whethepjny text was accurate in its allusion, and as I heard the dogs haying a little way otf,>and supposed they were on the track of a reindeer, I said, to the hunter in rough corduroy: “Ro the deer always make for the water when they are pursued?” He said: “Oh, yes, Mister; you see they are a hot and thirsty animal, and they know where tlie water is, 1 " and when they hear danger in the-"distance they lift their antlers and snuff the breeze and start for the Racquet, or Loon, or Saranac; and we get into our cedar shell boat or stand by the ‘runway’ with rifle loaded ready to blaze away.” My friends, that is one reason why I like the Bible so much—its allusions are so true to nature. Its partridges are real partridges, its ostriches real ostriches, and its reindeer real reindeer. Glory of the text makes the hunters’s eve sparkle and his cheek glow and his respiration quicken. To say nothing of its usefulness, although it is the most useful of all game, its flesh delicious, its skin turned into human apparel, its sint w s lashioned into bowstrings, its antlers putting handles on cutlery, and shavings of its horns used as a restorative, taken from the name of the hart, and called hartshorn. But putting aside its usefulness, this enchanting enwfcure seems made out of gracefulness and elasticity. When, twenty miles from any settlement, it comes down at eventide to the lake’s edge to drink among the lily pads and, with its sharp-edged hoof, shatters tiie Krystal of Long toke, it is very picturesque. But only when after miles of pursuit, with heaving sides and lolling tongue, and eyes swimming in death,the stag leaps from the cliff into Upper Saranac, can you realize how much David suffered from his troubles, and how much he wanted God when he expressed himself in the words of the text. . The most of the men and women whom I happen to know at different times, if not now, have had trouble .after them, sharp,-mulled troubles, swift troubles, all-devouring troubles. Many of you have made the mistake of trying to fightthem. Somebody meanly attacked you, and you attacked them’; they depreciated you, and you depreciated them; or they overreached you in a bargain, and you tried, in Wall street parlance, to get a corner on them; or you had a bereavement, and instead of being submissive, you are fighting that bereavement; you charge on the doctors who failed to affect a cure; or you charge on the carlessness of the railroad company through which the accident occurred; or you are a chronic invalid, and you fret and worry and Scold and wonder why you cannot be well like other people, and you angrily charge on the neuralgia or the laryngitis or the ague or the sick headachy. The fact is you are a deer at bay. Instead of running to the waters of divine consolation, and slacking your thirst and cooling your body and soul in the good cheer of' the gospel, and sw immixjg away into the mighty deeps of God’s love, you are fighting a whole kennel of harriers. A few days ago I saw in the Adirondacks a dog lying across the road, and he seemed unable to get up, and I said to some hunters near bv: “YYTiat is the—matter with that dog?” They answered: “A deer hurt him.” And I saw he .had a great swollen paw and a battered head, showing where the antlers had struck him. And the probability is that some of you might give a mighty'" clip to your pursurers, you might s damage their business, you might worry them into ill-health, you might hurt them as much as they* hurt you, hut, after all, it is not worth while. You only have hurt a hound. Better be off for the Upper Saranac, into which the mountains of God’s eternal strength look'down and moor their shadows. As for your physical disorders, the worst) strychnine you can take is fretfulness, and the best medicine is religion. I know people who were only a little disordered, yet have fretted themselves into complete valetudinarianism, while others put their trust in' God and came up ’ from the very shadow of death, and have lived comfortably for seventy-two years, with only one lung. a man with but one lung, but God with him, is better off thanjagodlesg man wit h twojungs. Some of you have been for a lons?*time sailing around Gape Fear when you ought to have been sailing around Cape Good Hope, Db not turn back, but go ahead. The deer will accomplish liiorCAvith its.S-WUt loot than with its horns. I saw whole chains of lakes in the Adirondacks, and from 6ne height you can see thirty, and there are said to be over eight hundred in the great wilderness. So near are they to each other that—your mountain guide picks up and carries the boat from' lake to lake, the small- distance between them for that reason called a “carry.” And the realm of God’s word is one Ipng chain of bright, refreshing takes: each promise a lake, a very short carry between them, and though for ages the pursued have been drinking out of them they are full up to the top of the green banks, and the same David them, and they seem so near together that in three different places he-speaks of them as a continuous river. ~ But many of vou„have turned your back on that supply, and confront vour trouble, and: you are soured with your circumstances, and you are fighting society, and you are fighting a pursuing world and*troubles instead of driving you into the cool lake of heavenly comfort, have made you stop and turn round and lower vour head, and it is simply antler against tooth. I do not blame you. Probably under the same circumstances I would have done worse*. But you are all wrong. You need to do as the reindeer does in February and March—it sheds its horns. The Babbinical writers allude tojthis resignation of antlers by the stag when they say of a man who ventures his money in risky enterprises, he has hung it on the stag’s horns; and a proverb in the far East tells a into who has foolishly lost

Ins fortune to go and find where the deer shed her horns. My brother, quit the antagonism of your circumstances, quit misanthropy; quit complaint, quit pitching into your pursuers, be as wise as n?x spring will be all the reindeer of the Adirondack*. Shed your horns. But very many, of you who are wronged or the world —and if in anv assembly between Sandy Hook,New York, and Golden Gate, San Francisco, it were • asked ting all those that had been sometimes badly treated should raise 'hblh hands, and full response should be made, there would be twice as many hands lifted as persons present—l say many of you would declare: “YVe have always done the best we could, and tried to be useful, and why we should become the victims of malignrnent,or invalidism, or mishap, is inscrutable.” YVhv, do you not know that the finer a deer! and the more elegant its proportions, and the more beautiful its hearing, the more anxious the hunters and the hounds are to capture it? . Had that roebuck a ragged fur and broken hoofs and an obliterated eve and a limping gait, the hunters would have said: “Pshaw! don’t let us waste our ammunition on a sick deer.” And 41k5 hounds - would have given a few sniffs of the track, and then darted off in another direction for better game. But when they see a deer with antlers lifted in mighty challenge to earth and sky, and the sleek hide looks as if it had been smoothed by invisible hands, and the fat sides inclose the richest pasture that could be nibbled from the bank of rills so clear that they seemed t o have drooped out of heaven, and the stamp of its foot defies the jackshooting lantern and the rifle, the horn and the hounds, that deer they will have if they must needs break their neck in the rapids. So if there were no noble stuff in your make-up, if you were a bifurcated nothing, if you were a forlorn failure, you would he allowed to go undisturbed; but the fact that the whole pack is in full cry after you is proof positive that you are splendid game and worth capturing. Therefore sarcasm draws on you its “finest bead.” Therefore the world goes gunning for you with its best Maynard Breech-loader. Highest compliment is it to your talent, or your virtue, or your usefulness. You will be assailed in proportion to your great achievements. The best and the mightiest being the world ever saw had set after him all the hounds, terrestrial and diabolic, and they lapped his blood after the Calvarean massacre. The world paid nothing to its Redeemer but a bramble and a cross. Many who have done their best to make the world better have had such a rough time of it that all their pleasure is in anticipation of the next world. Yes; for some people in this world there seems to be no let up. They are pursued from youth to manhood, and from manhood into old age. Very distinguished are Lord Stafford’s hounds, and Earl Of Yarborough’s hounds, and the Duke of Rutland’s hounds, and Ciueen Victoria pays $8,500 per year to her Master of Buckhounds. But all of them put together do not equal in number, or speed, Or power to hunt down the great kennel of hounds of which Sin and Trouble are owner and master. But what is a relief for all those pursuits of trouble, and annoyance, and pain, and bereavement? My text gives it to you in a word of three letters, but each letter is a chariot if you would triumph, or a throne if you want to be crowned,'or a lake if you would slake your thirst—yea, a chain of three letters —G-o-d, the One for whom David longed. and the One whom David found. Yon might as well meet a stag, which, after its sixth mile of running at the topmost speed through thicket and gorge, and with the breath of the dogs on its heels, has come in full sight of Scroon Lake, and tried to cool its projecting and blistered tongue with a drop of dew from a blade of grass, as to attempt to satisfy an immortal soul, when flying from trouble and sin. with any thing less deep. an<l high and broad.and immense, and'infinite, and eternal than God. His comfort, why it embosoms all distress. His arm, it wrenches off all bondage. His hand, it wipes away all tears. His Christlv atonement, it makes us all right with the past. andjalLiigfct with the future, and all right with God, -all right with man, and all right forever. foFhim I thirst; for His grace I beg; on His promise I build my all. Without Him I can not be happy. I have tried the world, and it does well enough as far as it goes, but it is too uncertain a world, too evanescent a world. I am not a prejudiced witness. I have nothing against this world. I have been one of the most fortunate, or, to use a more Christian word, one of the most blessed of men, blessed in my parents, blessed in the place of my nativity, blessed in mv health, blessed in my field of work, blessed in my natural temperament, blessed in m’y family, blessed in my opportunities, blessed in a comfortable livelihood, blessed in the hope that my soul will go to heaven through the pardoning mercy of God,, and my body, enless it be lost at sea or cremated in somg conflagration, will lie down in •. the gardens of Greenwood among my kindred and friends, some already gone and others to come after me. Life to many has been a disappointment, but to me it has been a pleasant surprise; and yet I declare that if I did not feel that God was now my friend and ever-pres-ent help I should be wretched and ter-ror-struck. But I want more Him. I have thought of this text and preached this sermon to myself until with all the aroused energies of my body, mind and soul I can cry out: “As the hart panteth after the water-brooks so panteth my soul after Thee, O, God.” Through Jesus Christ make this God your God, and you can withstand anything and everything, and that which affrights others will inspire you._ 0! Christian men and women, pursued of annoyance and exasperations, remember that this hunt, whether a still hunts or a hunt in full cry, will soon be over. If ever a whelp looks ashamed and ready to slink out of sight it is when in the Adirondacks a deer, by one long:, tremendous plunge into Big Tupper I-ake, gets away from him. The disappointed canine* swims in a little wav, but, defeated, swims out again, and cringes with humiliated yawn at the feet of his master. And how abashed and ashamed will all your earthly troubles be when yon havg dashed Into the river from under the thrbne of God, and the heights and depths of heaven are between you and your pursuers. Two good citizens of Pipestone, Mich., have made a novel agreement. In case Cleveland, is elected one is to attend church every Sunday; if Harrison is elected the other is to oil th% wind-mill of the village water-works regularly.