Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 April 1890 — THE MOST PERFECT BOOK, [ARTICLE]

THE MOST PERFECT BOOK,

Dr. Tabnage’s Beautiful and Eloquent Tribute to the Bible. “A Living Dog is Better Than a Bead Lion”—Small Faculties Actively Used are of More/ Use Than Great Faculties Unemployed _____ Last Sunday morning Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage preached at the Academy of Mfisic, taking for his text, Eecles. 9:4 “A Lite Dog is better than a Dead Lion.” The eminent divine said:

The Bible is the strangest, the loveliest, the mightyest, the weirdest, the best of books. Written by Moses the lawyer, Joshua the soldier, Samuel the judge, Ezra the builder, Job the poet, David the Shepherd, Daniel the prime-minister, Amos the herdsman, Mathew the custom-house officer, Luke the doctor, Paul the scholar, John the exile; and yet a complete harmony from the middle verse of the Bible, which is the eight verse of the one hundred and seventeenth Psalm, both ways to the upper and lower lids, and the shortest passage, which is the thirty-fifth verse of the eleventh chapter of John, to the longest verse, w hich is ths ninth verse of the eighth chapter of Esther, and yet not an imperfection in all the 773,693 words which it Isjcomposed of. It not only reaches over the past, but over the future; has in it a ferryboat, as in second Rarnuel; and a telegraphic wire, as in Job; and a railroad train, & in Nahum; and introduces us to a foundryman by the name of Tubal Cain, and a ship-builder by the name of Noah, and an architect bythe name of Ahollab, and tells us bow many stables Solomon had to take care of his horses and how he paid for those horse*. But few things in this versatile and comprehensive book interests me so much as its apothegms, those short, terse, sententious, epigrammatic sayings, of which my text is one—“A living dog is better than a dead lion.” Here the lion stands for nobility, and the dog for meanness. You must know that the dog mentioned in the text is not one of our American or European or Scottish dogs that, in our mind, is a synonym for the beautiful, the graceful, the affectionate, the sagacious arid the true. The St. Bernard dog is a hero, and if you doubt it, ask the snows of the Alps, out of which he picked the exhausted traveler. The shepherd dog is a poem, and if you doubt it, ask the Highlands of Scotland. The Arctic dog is the rescue of explorers and if ycu doubt it, ask Dr. Kane's expedition. The watchdog is a living protection, and if you doubt it, ask ten thousand homesteads over whose safety he watched last night. But Solomon, the author of my text, lived in Jerusalem, and the dog he speaks of in the text was a dog iu Jerusalem. Last December I passed days and nights within a stone’s-throw of ~wfagre Solomon wrote his text, and from what I saw of the canines of Jerusalem by day, and heard of them oy night, I can understand t-ne slight appreciation my text puts upon the dog of Palestine. It is lean and snarly and disgusting, and afflicted with parasites, and takes revenge on the human race by filling the nights with clamor. All up and down the Bible, the most of which was written In Palestine or Syria, or contiguous lands, the dog is used in contemptuous comparison. Hazael said, “Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing!” In self-ab-negation the Syro-Phoenician woman said, “Even the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from the Master’s table.” Paul says, in Philippians, “Beware of dogs;” and St. John, speaking of heaven, says, “ Without are dogs.”

On the other hand the lion is healthy, strong, and loud-voiced, and at its roar the forests echo and the mountains tremble. It Is marvellous for strength, and when its hide is removed the muscular compactness is something wonderful, and the knife of the dissector bounds back from the tendons. By the clearing off of the forests of Palestine and the use of fire-arms, of whioh the lion is particularly afraid, they have disappeared from places where once they ranged, but they were very hold In olden times They attacked an army of Xerxes while marching through Macedonia. They were so numerous that one thousand lions were slain in forty years in tbe amphitheatre of Rome. The Barbary lion, the Cape lion, tbe Senegal lion, the Assyrian lion, make up a most absorbing and exciting chapter in natural history. As most of toe Bible was written in regions lionhaunted, this creature appears In almost all parts of toe Bible as a simile. David nnderstood its hahlts of night prowling and day slumbering; as is seen from his description: “The yonng lions roar after their prey and seek their meat from God. The sun ariaeth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens.” And again he cries out, “My soul is among lions.” Moses knew them and said,.“Judah Is couched like a lion.” Samson knew them, for he took honey from the carcass of a slain lion. Solomon knew them and says, “The king’s wrath is as toe roar of a lion.” and again, “The slothful man says, There is a lion in the way.” Isaiah knew them, and says, in the millennium, “The lion shall eat straw like an ox.” Eztktol knew them, and says, “The third was as the face of a lion.” Paul knew them, and tays: “I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.” peter knew them and says, “The devil ns a roaring lion walketh about.” St. John knew them, and says of Christ, “Behold the Lion of tho tribe of Judah 1”

Now, what does iny text mean when it puts a living dog and a dead lion aide by side, and says the former is better than the latterl It means that small faculties actively used are of more value than great faculty unemployed. How often you see it! Some man with limited capacity vastly useful. He takes that which God baa given him sad soys: “My mental endowment is not large and the world would not rate me high for my intelligence, and my vocabulary is limited, and my education was defective, but here goes what I have lor God and salvation, and the making of the world good and happy.” Ho puts in a word here and a word there, encourages a faint-hearted man, gives a Scripture passage lu consolation to some bereft woman, picks up a child fallen in tbe street and helps him brush off the lust and puts a five-cent piece in his band, telling hi n not to cry, so that the boy is singing before he gets around the corner; waiting on everybody that has a letter to carry or a message to deliver; comes Into s rail-train, or stage-coach, or depot, or shop, with a smiling face that sets everybody to thinkiug, “if that man can, with what appears small equipment in life be happy, why cannot I, possessing far more than he ham, be equally happy?” One day of that kind of doing things may not umount to much, but forty years of that—no one but God Himself can appreciate its immensity. There are tens of thousands of such people. Their circle of acquaintance is small. The man is known over at tbe store. He is clerk er weigher or drayman, and he is knotrn among tboee who sit near him clear back in the church under tbe galleries, and at the ferry gates where he comes in koockiug tbe snow from bis shoes, and threshing his arms around his body to .evtve cirvul-itioD, on so mo January morning. But If be sho lid die tomorrow there would not fca a hundred people who would anew about U. He will never have bis

in the newspapers but once, and that will be toe announcement of his death, if some one will pay for the insertion, so much a line for the two lines. But he will come up gloriously on the other aide, and the God who has watched him all through will give him a higher seat and a better mansion and a grander eternity than many a man who had on earth, before his name, toe word Honorable, and after his name LL. D. and F. R. S. Christ said in Luke, the sixth chapter, that in heaven some who had it hard here would laugh there. And X think a laugh of delight and congratulation will run around the heavenly circles when this humble one of whom I spoke shall go up and take the precedence of many Christians who in this world felt themselves to be of ninety-nine per oent. more importance. The whisper will go round the galleries of toe upper temple: “Can it be possible that that was the weigher in our store 1” “Can it he possible that that was toe car-driver on our street!” “Can It be possible that was the sexton of our church!” “Can it oe possible that is the man that heaved coal into our cellar!” “I never could have thought it What a reversal of things I We were clear ahead of him on earth, bat he is clear ahead of us m heaven. Why, we had ten times more brains than he had, we had a thousand times more money than he had, we had social position a mile higher than he bad, we had innumerable opportunities more than- he had, but it seems now that be accomplished more with his one talent than we did with our ten;” while Solomon, standing among the thrones, overhears the whisper, and sees the wonderment, and will, with benignant and all suggestive smile, say, “Yea, it Is as I told the world many centuries ago—better is small faculty active used than great talent unemployed, ‘better a living dojrthanadeadlion.'”

The simpler Tact Is that the world has been, and the world is now, full of dead lions. They are people of great capacity and large opportunity, doing nothing for the improvement of society, “ nothing for the overthrow of evil, nothing for the salvation of souls. Some of them are monetary lions. They have accumulated so many hundreds of thousands of dollars that you can feel their tread when they walk through any street or come into any circle They can by one financial move upset the money market. Instead of the ten percent, of their income which the Bible lays down as the proper proportion <ot their contribution to the oause of God, they do not give five per cent, or three per cent, or two per cent, or one per cent, or a half percent, or a quarter per cent That they are lions, no, one doubts. When they roar, Wall street, State street, Lombard street, and the Bourse tremble. In a few years they will lie down sad die. They will have a great funeral, and a long row of fine carriages, and mightiest requiems will roll from the organ, and polished shaft of Aberdeen granite will indicate whejrik their dust lies, but for all use to the world that man might as well have never lived. As an experiment as to how much he can carry with him, put a ten-cent piece in the palm of his dead hand, and five years after open the tomb, and you will find that he has dropped even the tencent piece. A lion! Yes, but a dead lion! He left all bis treasures on earth,and has no treasures in heaven. What shall the stoneeutter put upon the obelisk over him! I suggest, let it be the man’s name, then the date of his birth,then the date of his death, then the appropriate Scripture passage, “Better is a living dog than a dead loin.” But I thank God that we are having just now an outburst of splendid beneficence that is to increase until the earth 1b girdled with it It is spreading with the speed of an epidemic, but with just the opposite effect of an epidemic. Do you not notioe how wealthy men are opening free libraries, and building churches in their native village! Have you not seen how men of large means, instead of leaving great philanthropies in their wills for disappointed heirs to quarrel about, and the orphan courts to swamp, are becoming their own executors ■ and administrators! After putting aside enough for their families (for “he that provideth not for his own, and especially those of his own household is worse than an infidel”), they are saying: “What can 1 do, not after lam dead, but while living; and in full possession of my faculties, to properly- direct the building of the churches, or the hospitals, or the colleges, or the libraries that I design for the public welfare, and while yet I have full capacity to enjoy the satisfaction of seeing the good accomplished ! There are bad fashions and good fashions, and, whether good or bad, fashions are mighty. One of the good fashions now starting will sweep the earth—the fashion for wealthy men to distribute, while yet alive, their surplus accumulation. It is bring helped by the fact that so many large estates have, im-

mediately after the testator’s death, gone into litigation. Attorneys with large fees are employed on both sides, and to# case goes on month after month, and year after year, and after one court decides, it ascends to another court and is decided in the opposite direction, and then new evidence is found, and the trials ore all repeated. The children, who at the father’s funeral seemed to have an uncontrollable grief, after the will is read go into elaborate process to prove that the father was crazy, and therefore incompetent to make a will; and there are men on toe jury who think that tbe fact that the testator gave so much of his money to the Bible Society, and the mis-' sionary society, or the opening of n free library is proof positive that he was insane, and that he knew not what he was signing when he subscribed to the words: “In the name of God, amen. I, being of sound mind, do make this my last will and testament.”

The torn wills, the fraudulent wills, the broken wills hare recently been made such s spectacle to angels and to men that all over the land successful men are calling la architects and spying to them: “How much would it cost for me to build a plo-ture-gallery for our town!” or, “What plans cun you draw me out for a concert hall!” or, “1 am especially interested in the Incurables,’ and how large a building would accommodate three hundred of such patients!” or, “The Church of Ood has been a great help to me all my life, and I want you to draw me a plan for a church, commodious, beautiful, well ventilated,and with plenty of windows to let in the light; I want you to get right at work in making out plans of such a building, for, though 1 am well now, life is uncertain, and before I leave the world 1 want to see something done that will be an appropriate acknowledgment of the goodness of God to me and mine; now when can I hear from you!” In our city we have many examples of this. What a grandeur of beneficence has onr fellow-citizen, Mr. Pratt, demonstrated, building educational institutions which will put their hands on the nineteenth century, and the twentieth century,and all the centuries! All honor to such a man I Do not say so when he is dead, say it now. It would be a good thing if some pf the eulogies we chisel on tombstones were written on paper in time for; the philanthropists to read them while yet they are alive Less post-mor-tem praise, and more ante mortem. My text also means that an opportunity of the living present is better than a great A— sstumtjr pawed. We much of

our time In saying: “If I only bad.” We can all look back and see some occasion where we might have done a great deed, or might have effected an important reacne, or we might have dealt a stroke that would have accomplished a vast iesult. Through stupidity or lack of appreciation of toe crisis, or through procrastination, we let the chance go by. How much time we have wasted in thinking of what we might have said or might have done! We spend hoars and days and years in walking around that dead lion. We cannot resuscitate it. It will never open its eyes again. There will never be another spring in its paw. Dead as any feline terror of South Africa, through Whose heart thirty years ago Gordon Gumming sent the slug. Don’t let us give any more time to the deploring of the dead past There are other opportunities remaining: They may not be as great, but they are worth our attention. Small opportunities all around, opportunities for the saying of kind words and the doings of kind deeds. Helplessness to be helped. Disheartened ones to be encouraged. Lost ones to be found. Though the present may be insignificant as compared with the past. “Better is a living dog than a dead lion.” The most useless and painful feeling is the one of regret Repent of lost opportunities we must, and get pardon we may, bat regrets weaken, dishearten, and cripple for future work. If a sea-captain who once had charge of a White star steamer across the Atlantio ocean, one foggy night runs on a rock off Newfoundland, and . the passengers and ship perish,shall he refuse to take command of a small boat up tbe North River and say, “I never will go on the water again unless 1 can run one of the White Star line!” Shall the engineer of a lightning express, who at a station mis-read the telegram of a train dispatcher and went into collision, and for that has been put down to the work of engineering a freight train, say, “1 never will again mount an engine unless I can run a vestibule express”! Take what you have of opportunity left. Do your best of what remains. Your shortest winter day is worth more to you than can be the longest day of a previous summer. Your opportunity now, as compared with previous opportunities, may be small as a rat-terrier compared with the lion which at Matabosa, fatally wounded by the gun of David Livingstone, in its death agony leaped upon the missionary explorer, and with its jaws crushed the bone of his arm to splinters, and then rolled over and expired, but, “Better is a living dog than a dead lion”

My text also means that the condition of the most wretched man alive is better than that of themost favored sinners departed. The chance of theso last is gone. Where they are they cannot make any earthly assets available. After Charlemagne was dead he was set in an ornamented sepulchre on a golden throne, and a crown was put on bis cold brow, and a sceptre in his stiff hand, but that gave him no dominion in the next world. One of the most intensely interesting things I saw last winter in Egypt was Pharoah of oiden time* the very Pharoah who oppressed the Israelites. The inscriptions on his sarcophagus, and the writing on his mummy bandages, prove beyond controversy that he was the Pharoah of Bible times. All the Egyptologist* and the explorations agree that it is the old scoundrel himself. Visible are the very teeth with which he gnashed against the Israalitish brick-makers. There are the sockets of the merciless eyes with which he looked upon the overburdened people of God. There is the hair that floated in the breeze off tbe Red Sea. There are the very lips with which he commanded them to make bricks without straw. Thousands of years afterward, when the wrappings of the mummy were unrolled, old Pharaoh lifted up his arm as If iu imploration, but his skinny bones cannot again clutch bia. shattered sceptre. He is a dead lion. And is not any man now living, In the fact that he has opportunity of repentance and salvation, better off than any of those departed ones who, by authority or possessions or influence, were positively leonine, and yet wicked. What a thing to congratulate you on Is your life! Why, it is worth more than all tbe gems of the universe kindled’ into one precious stone lam alive! VVbat does that mean! Why, it means that I •till have all opportunity of being sated* myself, and helping others to be saved. T*<f be alive! Why, it means that I have yet another chance to correct my past mistakes, and make sure worn for heaven. Alive, are we? Come, let us celebrate it by new resolutions, new self-examination, new consecration, and * new career. The smallest and meet insignificant to-day is worth to us more than Eve handled yesterdays. Taking advantage of the present, let us get pardon for all the past, and security for all tbe future. Where are our forgiven sins) I don’t know. God don’t know, either. He says “your sins aid iniquities will I remember no more.” What encouragement in the text for all Christian workers! Despair of no one’s salvation, U hile there is life there is hope. W hen in England a young lady asked for a class in a Sunday-school, the superintendent said, “Better go oat on tbe street and get your own class.” She brought in a ragged and filthy hoy. The superintendent gave him good appareL In a few Sundays he absented himself. Inquiry discovered that in a street fight be had bis decent apparel torn off, He was brought in and a second time respectably dad. After a few Sundays he again disappeared, and it was found that he was again ragged and wretched. “Then,” said the teacher, “we can do nothing with him.” But the superintendent fitted him up again and started him again. After a while tbe gospel took hold of him and his heart changed. He started for the ministry and became a foreign missionary and on heathen grounds lived, and translated the Scriptures, and preached, until among the most illustrious names of the Church on earth and in heaven is the name of glorious Robert Morrison. Go forth and save the lost, and remember however depraved, however ragged, and however filthy and undone a child is. or a man is, or a woman is, they sre worth an effort I would rather have their opportunity than any that will ever be given to those who lived In magnificent sin and splendid unrighteousness and then wrapped their gorgeous tapestry around them and without a prayer expired. “Better is a living dog than a dead lion.” In the great day it will be found that the last shall be first. There are in the grogshops and in the haunts of iniquity to-day those who will yet be models of holiness and preach Christ to the people. In yonder group of young men who came here with no useful purpose, titers is one who will yet live for Christ and perhaps die for Him. In a pulpit stood a stranger, preaching, and he said: “The last time I was* in church was fifteen years ago, sad the circumstances were peculiar. Three young men had coma, expecting to disturb the service, and they had stones in their pockets which they expected to hurl at the preacher. One of the young mon referred to refused to take part in the assault, and the others In disgust at his cowardice, left tbe building. One of the three was ha need for forgery. Another Is in prison, condemned to death for murder. I was the third, but tbe grace of God saved me.” My hearer, give no one up. The case may seem desperate, but the grace of God likes to undertake a dead lift I proclaim it this, day tbailtbepeoDlo-Kree Grace! Living and dying, be that my theme—Free Dace! across tbe seas—rree uncsi open out those words in flowers, lift tern In arches, build them in thrones, roll them in orato-rios-Free Grace! That wlifaet Edeutse the earth and people heaven with nations