Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 October 1889 — A BLESSINC OR A CURSE. [ARTICLE]

A BLESSINC OR A CURSE.

Some writing 4,280 years old is on exhibition in Paris, and the ink looks aa fresh as on a thirty-day note for |IOO. _____ It now transpires that paste, such as is used in so many editorial departments in this country, was known 400 years B. C., but it had no editorial valueThe cutlery business is pushed to that extent in Germany that a fair pocket knife can be made for eleven cents. This is cutting it down 'to a —4hin edge. - - ; It is predicted that there won’t be a Shaker or Quaker left In the "United States twenty-five years hence. It is too inconvenient to try to be different from one’s fellow men. One day last month the gentle zephyrs swept over Pike’s Peak at a Speed of ninety-eight miles an hour, and the signal service men felt their hair loosen at the roots. There are over 600 one-armed men in the state of New York, and not over twenty of them were crippled in the war. The railroads and saw mills are responsible for the rest. The forco which a California pumpkin exerts while growing is equal to the strength of a large horse attached to a stick of timber. Don’t fool with • pumpkin if you want to keep right endup. If tou ache for literary fume write a novel which will go off like hoi oakes. Authors who have done this have made all the way from $5 to S4O on a book, or about half the wages of a wood sawyer. A South Carolina girl who was taking a surf bath had her heel bitten off by a shark, and a Charleston doctor is making her one of rubber. He •ays it will make her a light and graceful waltzer. Dom Pedro thinks the day may come in Brazil when a woman can walk the streets of a city and bo safe, but it is a good ways off yet. They do it in some countries, but it is a barbarous custom, he says. Evert European nation now has its little alliance with one or more other nations, and in case of war the whole of Europe must be embroiled. It is probably better to have one big general war and then quit. Dr. Agnew, of Philadelphia, says that old-fashioned cooking, such as our grandmothers used to do, and such as is lamented now and then by the thirds assistant editor, would make us a nation of dyspeptics inside of a year. Under the laws of Bulgaria if a patent medicine is warranted to cure a certain disease and fails to do it the manufacturer can be prosecuted and sent to prison. No cures for consumption can be found in that country. On a recent Sunday morning the rats entered a colored church at Natchez in such numbers that the congregation had to adjourn. It was estimated that 1,003 of tha rodents put in an appearance. Rats have beetT seen in white churches. The Vanderbilts own several farms, and each one is conducted ou strict business principles and an account kept Of all expenses and income. In this way turnips are raised at a cost of $3 per bushel, hay at $65 per ton and oats at about five times what they can be bought for at the feed stores. Gen. Hooker, congressman from Mississippi, lost his right arm during the war. He was on the confederate side. Maj. Powell, chief of the geological survey, lost his loft arm, he being on the union side. Now both theso gentlemen, who are intimate, buy one pair*of kid gloves between them, thenhands being the same size. Dr. Brown-Sequard has been interviewed in Paris apropos of the experiments of American physicians and tlm criticisms of the American press. Dr. Brown-Sequard is, disposed to regard American physicians as idiots, while he thinks American newspapers inc ipable of maintaining the mean between extravagant praise and vindictive censure. The famous John Hopkins university is reported in great financial distress —sad news to very many who are its friends throughout the west and knew it in its days of greit influence and power, Its future depends upon Baltimore and Ohio stock, in which all the endowment fund is invested, and railway stock is always an uncertain quantity. Many years ago Whitelaw Reid once went out for a stroll in a short, tightfitting velveteen jacket. As luck would have it, Sarony spied him and invited him to step in and have his photograph taken. Mr. Reid consented. He never wore the jacket again. But the photograph fell into the hands of a popular caricaturist, and from that day 4© this, whenever Mr. Reid figures in a cartoon he is made to wear the InniF A I mjm ufj A {■ VMS, 1011,4 Ull»|ruoU JttOttOl. nrevP*/A V.: a —a

Dr. Talmage on the Possibilities of the Coming World’s Pair. ill the Nation* of the Earth will Contribute to it —Their Product* Their Manufactures and their Vices —Welcome the Good and Shun the Bad. The sermon of Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage in Brooklyn Tabernacle last Sunday was listened to by the usual overflowing audience. His subject was “The Coming World's Fair. Shall It Be Made a Blessing or aCv .-so!” His text was Ezekiel xxvn, 12: “They traded in thy fairs.” He said; Fairs may be for the sale of goods or for the exhibition of goods on a small scale or ! a large scale, for county or city, for one nation or for all nations. My text Drings us to the fairs of ancient Tyre, a city that is now extinct. Part of the city was on an island, and .part on the mainland. Alexander, the conquerer, was much embarrassed when he found so much of the city was on an island, for he had no ships. But his military genius was not to be balk : ed. Having marched his army to the beach, he ordered them to tear up the city on the mainland and throw it into the water and build a causeway two hundred feet wide to the island, bo they took that part of the city which was on the mainland and with it built a causeway of timber and brick and stone, on which his army marched to the capture of that part of the city which was on the island, as though a hostile army should put Brooklyn into the East river, and over it march to the capture of Hew York. That Tyrian causeway of ruins which Alexander's army built, is still there, and by alluvial deposits has permanently united the island to the mainland, so that it is no longer an island but a promontory. The sand, the greatest of all undertakers for burying cities, having covered up for the most part Baalbec ana Palmyra and Thebes and Memphis and Carthage and Babylon and Luxor and Jericho, the sand, so small and yet, so mighty, is now gradually giving rites of sepulture to what was left of Tyre. But, oh, what a-magnificent city it once was! Mistress of the sea! Queen of international commerce! All nations casting their crowns at her feet! Where we have in our sailing vessels benches of wood, she had benches of ivory. Where we have for our masts of ships sails of coarse canvas, she had sails of richest embroidery. The chapter from which my text is taken after enumerating the richest countries in all the world says of Tyre: “They traded in thy fairs.” Look in upon a world’s fair at Tyre. Ezekiel leads us through oue department and it is a norse fair. Under fed and over drived lor ages, the horses of today give you no idea of the splendid animals which, rearing and plunging and snorting and neighing,.were brought down over the plank of the ships and led into tho world s fair at Tyre until Ezekiel, who was a minister of religion and not supposed to know much about horses, cried out in admiration: “They of the house of Togarmah traded in thy fairs with horses.” Here in another department of that world’s fair at Tyre, led on by Ezekiel the prophet, we find everything all ablaze with preciousstones- Like petrified snow are the corals; like fragments of fallen sky are the sapphires; and here is agate ablush with all colors. What is that aroma we inhale ! It is from chests of cedar which we open, and find them filled with all styles of fabric. But the aromatics increase as we pass do wn this lane of enchantment, and here are cassia and frankincense and balm. Led on by Ezekiel the we come to an agricultural fair with a display of wheat from Minnith and Panuag, rich as that of our modern Dakota or Michigan. And here is a mineralogical fair, with specimens of iron ana silver and tin and lead and gold. But halt, for here is purple, Tyrian purple, all tin tv and shades, deep almost unto the black and bright almost unto the blue; waiting for kings and queens to order it made into robes sos- coronation day; purple not like that which is now made from the Orchilla weed, but the extinct purple, the lost purple, which the ancients knew how to make out of the gasteropod mollusks of the Mediterranean. Oh, look at those casks of wine from Helbon! See those snow banks of wool from tl|p back of sheep that once pastured in Gilead. Oh, the be wildering rfehes and variety of that world’s fair at Tyro! But the world has copied these Bible mentioned fairs in all succeeding ages, and it has nad its Louis the Sixth fair at Dagobert, and Henry the First fair on St. Bartholomew’s day, and Hungarian fairs at Pesth, and Easteu fairs at Leipsic, and the Scotch fairs at Perth, (bright was the day when I was at one of them), and alter-, ward came the London world’s fair, and' the New York world’s fair, and the Vienna world s fair, and the Parsian world’s fair, and it has been decided that, in commemoration of the discovery of America in 1492, there shall be held in this country in 1893 a world's fair that shall eclipse all preceding national expositions. 1 say, God speed the movetn nt! Surely the event com memorated is worthy of all the architecture aud music and pyrotechnics and elo juent and stupendous nlauning and monetary expenditure and congressional appropriations which the most sanguine Christian patriot has ever dreamed of. Uas any voyage that the world ever heard of crowned with such an arrival as that of Columbus and his men! After they had been encouraged for the last lew days by flight of land birds and floating branches of red berries, and while Columbus was down in the cabin studying the sea chart, Martin Pinzon, standing on deck, and looking to the southwest, cried,: “Land! Land! Land!” And “Gloriain Excelsis”was sung in raining tears on all the three ships of the exped tion. Most appropriate and patriotic and Christian will be a commemorative world’s fair in America iu 1892- Leaving to others the discussion as to the site of such exposition —and I wonder not that some fiyo or six of our cities are struggling to have it, for it will give to any city to Which it is assigned an impulse of prosperity for a hundred years I say, leaving to others the selection of the particular locality to be thus honored, I want to say some things from the point of Christian patriotism which ought to be said, and the earlier the better, that we get thousands of people talking in the right direction, and that will make healthful public opinion. I beg you to consider prayerfully what I feel called upon of i ,od as an American citizen and as a preacher of righteousness to utter. My first suggestion is that it is not wise, as certainly it is not Christian, to continue this wide and persistent attemnt of American cities to belittle and depreciate other cities, it has been going on for years, but now the spirit seems to culminate in this discussion as to where the World’s fair shuil be held, a style of discussion which has a tendency to injure the success of the fair as a great moral and patriotic enter-i prise, after the locality has boon deeded tipon. There is such a thing as healthful rivalry between cities, but you will bear ; me out in saying that there can be no i good to come from the uncanny things said about' each other by New York and Chicago, by Chicago and St Louis, by I St Paul a#d Minneapolis, by Tacoma and Seattle, and all through the states by almost every two proximate cities. All cities, like individuals, huvef their virtues and their vices. All our American < ities should be our exultation. What churches! What public libraries 1 What asylums of mercy 1 \V hat academies of music! What mighty men in law ana medicine and art anfl scholarship 1 VV fiat schools and colleges and universities! W hat women radiant and gra, cious and an improvement on all the genbr ations of women since Eve! What philanthropists who do not feel satisfied with their own charities until they get into the hundreds of thousands and the millions 1 W hat ‘ God's acres” for. the dead, gardens of beauty and palaces or marble for those who sleep the last sleep! Now stop your slander of American cities. Do you say they are the centers of crime and ruDtionf Please admit the fact that they are centers of intelligence and generosity and the mightiest patrons of architecture *94 sculpture and painting und. music and

reservoirs of religions influence for all the continent. It will be well for the country districts to cease talking against the cities of other localities. New York will not get the VV orld’s fair by depreciating Chicago, and Chicago will not get the World’s fair by bombarding New York. Another suggestion concerning the coming exposition: let not the materialistic and monetary idea overpower the moral and religious. During that exposition, the first time in all their lives, there will be thou sands of people from other lands who will see a country without a state religion. Let ns by an increased harmony among all denominations of religion, impress other nationalities, as they come here that year, with the superior advantage of having all denominations equal in the sight of government All the rulers and chief men of Europe belong to the state religion whatever it may be. Although our last two presidents have been Presbyterians, the previous one was an Episcopalian; and the two previous, Methodists; and going further back in that line of presidents, we find Martin Van Buren a Dutch Reformed; and John Quincy Adams a Unitarian; and a man’s religion in this country is neither hindrance nor advantage in the matter of political elevation. AH Europe needs that. All the world needs that. A man’s religion is something between himself and his God, and ft must not, directly or indirectly, be interferred with. . - - • -

Furthermore, during that exposition, Christian civilization will confront barbarism. We shall, as a nation have a greater opportunity to make an evangelizing impression upon foreign nationalities, than would otherwise be afforded us in a quarter of a century, Let the churches of the city where the exposition is held be open every day, and prayers be offered and sermons preached and doxologies sung. In the less thah three years between this and that world’s convocation, let us get a baptism of the Holy Ghost, so that the six months of that world’s fair shall he fifty Pentocosts in one, and instead of three converted, as in the former Pentecost, hundreds of thousands will be converted. You must remember that the Pentecost tioned in the Bible occurred when there was no printing press, no books, no Christian pamphlets, no religious newspapers, and yet the influence was tremendous. How many nationalities were touched ?- The account says: “Parthians and Medes and Elamites,” that is, people from the eastern countries; “Phrygia and Pamphylia,” that is,the western countries; “Gyrene and strangers of Rome, Oretes and Arabians,” that is, the southern countries; but they were all moved by the mighty spectacle. Instead of the sixteen or eighteen tribes of people reported at that Pentecost, all the chief nations of Europe and Asia, North and South America, will be represented at our world’s fair in 1892, and a Pentecost here and then would mean the salvation of the round world. But, you say, we may have at that fair tho people of all lands and all the machinery for gospelization. the religious printing presses and the churches, butall that would not make a Pentecost; wo must have God. Well, you can have him. Has he not been graciously waiting? and.nothing stands in the way but our own unbelief and indolence ana sin. May God break down the barriers 1 The grandest opportunity for the evangelization of all nations since Jesus Christ died on the cross will be the World’s exposition of 1*92. G6d may take us out of the harvest field before that, but let it be known throughout Christendom that that year, between May and November, will be the mountain of Christian advantage, the Alpine and Himalayan height of opportunity overtopping all others for salvation. Instead of the slow process of having to send the gospel to other lands by our own American missionaries, who have difficult toil in acquiring i the foreign prejudices, what a grand thing to have able and influential foreigners converted during their visit in • America and then have them return to their native lands with the glorious tidings 1 Oh, for an overwhelming work of grace for the year 1892, that work beginning in the autumn of 1889! Another opportunity, if our public men see it, and it is the duty of pulpit and printing press to help them to see it, will be the calling at that time and place of a great peace congress for all nations. The convention of representatives from the governments of North and South America, now at Washington, is only a type of what we may have yn & vast and a world wide scale at the international exposition of 1893. By one stroke the gorgon of war might be slain and buried so deep that neither .trumpet of human dispute or -of archangel’s blowing could resurrect it. When the last Napoleon called such a congress of nations many did not respond, and those that did respond gathered wondering what trap that wily destroyer of the French republic and the builder of a Fren h mon- ! archy might spring on them. But what if i the most popular government on earth—l mean the United States government—should practically say to at nations: On the American continent, in 1892, we will hold a world’s fair, and all nations will send to it specimens of their products, their manufactures and their arts, and we invite all the governments of Europe, Asia ana Africa to send representatives to a pe_a.ee convention that shall be bnld-at-the-j same time and place, and that shall estaH- | lish an internationaT arbitration commis- I sion to whom shall be relerred all controversies between nation and nation, their i decision to be final, and so alt nations would j be re ieveil from the expense cf standing j armies and naval equipment, war having been made an ever asting impossibility. All the nations of the earth worth consideration would como to it, mighty men of England and Germany and France and Russia and all the other great nationalities, Bismarck who worships the Lord of Hosts, and Gladstone who worships' the God of Peace, and Boulumier who .worships himself. The fact is that the nations are sick of drinking out of chalices made out of tinman skulls and filled with blood. The United States government is the only government in the whole world that could successfully call such a congress. Suppose Franco : should call it, Germany would not come; or i Germany should call it. France would ! not come; or Russia should call it, | Turkey would not conn ; or England i should call it, nations long jealous of her ; overshadowing power in Europe would not j come. America, in favor with all nationali- : ties, standing out independent and alone, is ! the spot and 1.4)2 will be the time. May it please the president of the United States. \ may it please the secretary of state, may ft \ please the cabinet, may it pleaSh the senate and house of representatives, may it please tne printing presses and the churches aud j the people who lift up and put down our j American rulers! To them 1 make this timely and solemn and Christian appeat. Do you not think people die fast enough,without this wholesale butchery df .war! Do. ,you not think that we can trust*! o pneumonias and consumptions and aipplexios. and palsies And yellow fevers aho Asiatic choleras the work of killing them fast enough; Do you not think that the greedy, wide open iaws of the grave ought to be satisfied if filled by natural causes with hundreds of thousands of corpses a y eat ? Do you ndt think we can do something better with men than to dash their lite out against casements or blow them into fragments by torpedoes or send them out i a 111 the world., where thsy neqd all. their faculties, footless, armless, eyeless! Do you not think that, women might be appointed to"an easier place than the edge of a grave .trench to wring their pale hands and woop out the r eyesight iu w.dowhood and childlessness! Üby, the last glory has gone out of war. There was a time whe y it, demanded that quality- which we all admire—namely, courage—-for a man had to si and at the hilt of his stvofd when the point pier ed the foe, and while ho was slaying another tne other might sjay him; or it was bayonet charge. But now it is cool aud deliberate murder, and-olear out ut sea a bombshell can be hurled miles away into a city, or while thousands of private soldiers, who hare no interest’ In the contest, for they were conscripted, _ace Joskig thoir lives, I tlieir general may sit smoking one of tho ( best Havana cigars after a dinner of trend on-toast, it may be nMrchough Tor graduating students of colleges on com mencemont day to orate about the poetry of war. but do not talk about the poetry of war to th* mou of tho Federal or Con-

federate armies who were at the front, or to some of us who, as members of the Christian commission, saw the ghastly 1 hospitals at Antietam and Hagerstown. Ah! you may worship the Lord of Hosts. I •worship the “God of Peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Chnst, that great Shepherd of the sheep.” War is an. accursed monster and it was born in the lowest cavern of perdition, and I pray that it may speedily descend to the piece from which it arose, its last sword and shield and musket rattling on the bottom of the red hot marl of heli. ..Let there be called a peace convention 6f 1892, with delegates sent by all the decent governments of Christendom, and while they are in session, if you should some night go out und look into the sky above the exposition buildings,you may find that the old gallery of crystal,that was taken down after the Bethlehem anthem of eighteen centuries ago was sung out,, is rebuilt again in the clouds, and the same angelic singers are. returned with the same librettos of light to chant “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men.” Again, I suggest in regard to tho World’* fair that, while appropriate places are prepared for all foreign exhibits, we make no room for the importation of foreign vices. America has enough of its owu, and we need no now installments of that kind, A world's fair will bring all kinds of people, good and bad. The good we must prepare to welcome, the bad we must prepare to shun. The attempt will again be made iu 1892, as in 1876, to break us our American Saboaths. The American Sabbath is the best kept Sabbath on earth. We do hot want it broken down, and substituted in the place thereof the Brussels Sabbath, tho Vienna Sabbath, the St. Petersburg Sabbath, of any of the foreign Sabuaths, which are uo Sabbaths at all. I think the Lord is more than generous in asking only fifty two days out of the 36b for his service. You let the Sabbath go and with it will go your Bible, and after that your liberties, and your children or your grandchildren will be here in America under a despotism as bad as iu those lands where they turn tbe Lord's day into wassail and frolic. Amoug those who come there will be, as at other expositions, lordly people who will bring their vices with them. Among tho dukes and duchesses and princes and princesses of other lands are some of the uest men and women of all the earth. Remember Earl of Kin tore, Lord Cairns and Lord Shaftesbury. But there is a snobbery and flunueyism in American society that runs after a grandee, a duke, a lord or a priuce, though ne may be a Walking lazaretto and. his breath a plague. It makes the fortune of some of our queens of society to dance one cotillion with one of ihese princely lepers. Some people cannot got their hat off quick enough when they see such a foreign lord approaching, and they do not care for the mire into which they drop their kness as they bow to worship. Let no splendor of ped gree or any pomp and paraphernalia of circumstance make him attractive. There is only one set of Ten Commandments that 1 ever heard of, and no class of then or women in all the world are excused front obedience to those laws written by finger of lightning on the granite surface of Mount Sinai. Surely we have enough American vices without making any drafts upon European vices for 4692. . _ JY! By this sermon I would have the nation made aware of its opportunity and ge,t I ready to improve it, and of some perils anil get ready to combat them. I rejoice to believe that the advantages will overtop everything in tho world's fair. V\ hat an introduction to each other of communities, of states, of republics, of empires, or zones, of hemispheres! What doors of information will be —swung wide open for the boys and girls now on tiro threshold! What national and international education! What crowning of Industry with sheaves Df grain, and what imperial robing of her with embroidered fabrics! What scientific apparatus! What telescopes for the infinitude above and microscopes for the infinitude beneath, aud the instruments to put nature to the torture until she tells her last, secret I What a display of the munificence of the God who has grown enough wheat to make a loaf of good bread large enough for the human race, and enough cotton to stocking every foot, and enough timber to shelter every head, making it manifest that it is net God’s fault, but either man's oppression or indolence or dissipation if there he any without supply. Under the arches of tho chief building of that exposition let Capital and Labor, too long estranged, at least, be married, each taking the hand of each in pledge of eternal fidelity, while representations of all nations stand round rejoicing at the nuptials, and saying: “What God hath joined together ler, not man put asunder,’-’ Then snail the threnody of the needle woman no longer bo heard: Work, work, work! j TUI ilie brain begins to swlin; 1 Work, work, work! Till the eves are heavy and dim. Seam and gusset ami band. Bund and gusset an l seam, Till over the buttons I fall asleep, And sew them on in adream O, Christian America! Make ready for tho grundoot exposition ever seen under llltt T sum! —H a vebibles enough bound. Have churches enough established. Have scientific halls enough endowed. Have printing presses enough set up. Haver-re-vivals of religion enough in full bl-ast. I believe you will. “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!” Through the tinrsh voices of our day A low. sweet preln le Hnds Its wuy; Through clouds of dotfbt and creeds of fear A light is breaking ca,m and clear. That sung of love, now low and far, • Ere long shall swell from s,ar to star: That light, the breaking day, which tips The golden spired Apocalypse!