Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 August 1890 — FOOD ENOUGH FOR ALL [ARTICLE]

FOOD ENOUGH FOR ALL

CHR4BT’B PANACEA FOR WOUND* EO HEARTS. , Hanger, Sorrow and Pain Relieved by Ifc— Dr. Talmage’* Sermon. Kev. Dr. Talnaageypreached at Long Branch last Sunday./ Text: Joshua v, 12. He said: Only those who Wave had something to do with the commissariat of an army knew what a Sob it is to feed and clothe five or six hundred thousand men. Well, there is such a host as that marching across the desert. They are cut off from all army supplies. There are no rail trains bringing down food or blankets. Shall they all perish? No. The lord comes down from heaven to the rescue, and he touches the shoes and the coats which in a year or two would have been worn to rags and tatters, and they become storm proof and time proof, so that, after forty years of wearing the coats and shoes are as good as new. Besides that, every morning there is a shower of bread, not sour and soggy, for the rising of that bread is made in heaven, and celestial fingers have mixed, it, and rolled it into balls, light, flaky and sweet, as though they were the crumbs thrown out from a heavenly banquet. Two batches of bread made every day in the upper mansion—one for those who sit at the table with the King, and the other for the inarching Israelites in the wilderness. I do not very much pity the Israelites for the fact that they had only manna to eat. It was, I suppose, the best food ever provided. I know that the ravens brought food to hungry Elijah, but I should not so well have liked those black waiters. Rather would I have the fare that came down every morning in buckets of dew—clean, sweet, God-provided edibles. But now the Israelites have taken their last bit of it in their fingers, and put the last delicate morsel of it to their lips. They look out, and there is no m%nna. Why this cessation of heavenly supply? It was because the Israelites had arrived in Canaan, and they smelled the breath of the harvest fields, and the crowded barns of the country were thrown open to them. All the inhabitants had fled, and in the name of the Lord of Hosts the Isrealitos took possession of everything. Well, the threshing floor is cleared, the eorn is scattered ever it, the oxen are

brought around in lazy and perpetual circuit until the corn is trampled loose; then it is winnowed with a fan, and it is ground, and it is baked, and, lo! there is enough bread for all the worn-out host. And the manna ceased on the morrow, after they had eaten of the old com of the land. From among the mummies of Egypt and Canaan have been brought grains of corn exactly like our Indian corn, and, recently plantod, they have produced the same kind of corn with whieb we are familiar So lam not sure which kind of grain my text refers to, but all the same is the meaning. The bisection of this subject leads me, first, to speak of especial relief for especial emergency, and, secondly, of the old corn of the gospel for ordinary circumstances. If these Israelites crossing the wilderness had not reoeived bread from the heavenly bakeries, there would, first, have been a long line of dead children half buried in the sand, then there would have been a long line of dead women waiting for the jackals, then there would have been a long line of dead men unburied, because there would have been no one to bury them. It wouly have been told in the history of the world that a great company of good people started out from Egypt for Canaan and were never beard • of, as thoroughly lost in the wilderness of sand as the City of Boston and the President were lost in the wilderness of waters. What use was it to them that there was plenty of corn in Canaan or plenty of corn in Egypt. What they wanted was something to eat right there, where there was not so much as a grass blade. In other words an especial supply for an especial emergency. That is what some of you want. The ordinary comfort, the ordinary direction, the ordinary counsel, do not seem to meet your ease. There are those who feel that they must have an omnipotent and immediate supply, and you shall have it. Is it pain and physical distress through which you must go? Does not Jesus know all about pain? Did He not suffer it in the most sensitive part of head, and hand, and foot? He has a mixture of comfort, one drop of which shall cure the worst paroxysm. It is the grace that soothed Robert Hall when, after writhing on the carpet in physical tortures, he cried out: • Oh! I suffered terribly but I didn't cry out while I was suffering, did IP Did I cry out?” There is no such nurse as Jesus—his hand the gentlest, his foot the lightest, his arm the strongest For especial pain especial help. Is it approaching sorrow? I» it long, shadowing bereavement that you, know is ooming, because the breath is short, and that the voice is faint, and tire cheek is pale? Have you been calculating your capacity or incapaoity to endure widowhood, or childlessness or a disbanded home, and cried, “I cannot endure it?” Oh, worried sonl. You will wake up amidst all your troubles and find arourd you the sweet consolation of the Gospel as thickly strewn as was the manna around about the Israelitish encampment! Espedhl solace for especial distress. Or is it a trouble past yet present? A silent nursery? A vacant chair opposite at the tableP A musing upon a broken family circle never again to be reunited? A choking sense of lonliness? A blet of grief so targe that 't

extinguishes the light of sun, and puts ] out bloom of Sower, and makes you 1 reckless as to whether you live or die? j Especial comfort for that especial trial. You’re appetite has failed for everythingjilse. Oh, try a little erf this wilderness manna: “I will never forsake thee.” “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pftieth them thatfear Him.” Can* a woman forget her sucking child,' that she should not Lave compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.” You stand; some of you, in such a tragedy to-day. You cannot even ask him to stop,drinking. It quakes him cross, and he tells you to mind your own business. Is there any relidf in such a case? Not such as is found in the rigmarole of comfort ordinarily given in such cases. But there is a relief that drops in manna from th throne ol God. Oh, lift up your lacerated soul in prayer, and you will get omnipotent comfort! I do not know in what words the soothing influence may come, but I know that for especial grief there is especial deliverance. I £ive you two or three passages; try them on ; take that which best fits your soul: “Whom the Lord loweth he ohasteneth.” “All things work together for good to those who - lorn God.” “Weeping may endure for a. night, but joy Gometh in the morning. ” I know there are those who, when they try to comfort people always bring the same stale sentiment about the usefulness of trial. Instead of bringing up a new plaster for a new wound, and fresh manna for fresh hunger, they rummage their haversack to find some crumb of old consolation. When from horizon to horison the ground is white with the new-fal-len manna of God help not five minutes old! But after 14,60© consecutive days of falling manna—Sundays excepted—the manna ceased. Some of them were glad of it. You know that they had complained to their leader, and wondered that they had to eat manna instead of onions. Now the fare is changed. Those people in that army under 40 years of age had never seen a corn field, [and now, when they hear the leaves rustling and see the tassels waving, and the billows of green flowing over the plain as the wind touched them, it must have been a new and lively sensation. “Corn!” cried the old man, as he opened an ear. “Corn!” cried the children, as they counted the shining grains. “Corn!” shouted the vanguard Of the hdflt, as they burst open the granaries of the affrighted population, the granaries that had been left in the possession of the victorious Israelites. Then the fire was kindled, and the ears of corn were thrust into it, and fresh and crisp and tender, were devoured by the victors; and bread was prepared, and many things that can be made out of flour regaled the appetites that had been sharpened by the long march.” “And the maima ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land.”

Blessed be God, we stand in just such a field to-day, tbe luxuriant grain coming above the girdle, the air full of the odors of the ripe old corn of the Gospel Canaan. There are men here who hardly know what is the matter with them. They have tried to get together a f6rtune and a larger account at the bank, and to get investments yielding larger percentages. They are trying to satisfy their souls with a diet of mortgages and stocks. There are others here who have been trying to get famous, and have succeeded to a greater or less extent; and they have been trying to satisfy their souls with the chopped feed of magazines and newspapers. All these men are no more happy now than before they made the first thousandfjdollars; no more happy now than when they for .the first time saw their names favorably mentioned. They can not analyze or define their feelings; but I wiU tell them what is the matter—they are hungry for the old corn of the Gospel. That you must have, or be pinched and wan and wasted, and hollow-eyed and shriveled up with an eternity of famine.

The infidel scientists of this day are offering us a different kind of soul food; but they are of all men the most miserable. I have known many of them, but I have never known one of them who came within a thousand miles of being happy. The great John Stuart Mill provided for himself a new kind of porridge, but yet when he comes to die, he acknowledges that his philosophy never gave him any comfort in days of bereavement, and in a roundabout way he admits that h\s life was a failure. Soltis with all infidel eci>» entists. They are trying to live on telescopes and crucibles and protoplasms, and they charge us with cant, not realizing that there fs no such intolerable cant in all the world as this perpetual talk we are hearing about "positive philosophy,” and "the absolute,” and "the great to be,” and "the everlasting no,” and * ‘the higher unity,” and "the latent potentialities,” and "the cathedral of immensities.” I have been translating what these men have been writing and I have been translating what they have been doing; and I will tell you what it all means—it means that they want to kill God! And my only wonder is that God has not killed thorn. I have, in other days, fa«ted of their confections, and I come back and tell you to-day that there is no nutriment or life or health in anything hut the bread made out of the old corn of the Gospel. What do I mean by that? I mean that Christ is the bread of life, and taking Him you live and live forever. B-A you say corn is of but little practical use unless it is threshed and ground and baked. 1 answer, this Gospel corn has gone through the process. When on Calvary Ml the hoofs of human scorn came down on the heart of Christ, and ail tbe flails of

•atonic fury beat him long and fait,' was not tbe eorn threshed? When th« mills of God’s indignation against sins caught Christ between the upper and) nether rollers, was pot the coral' ground? When Jesus descended into hell, and the flames of the lost world wrapped him all about, was not the corn baked? Ob, yes! Christ la ready. His pardon all ready; His peace all ready; everything ready in' Christ. Ase you ready for Him? There is another characteristic about; bread, and that fs, you never get tired of it. There are people here 70 years of age who find it just as appropriate for their appetite as they did when in boyhood, their mother cut a slice of it clear around the loaf. You have not got tired of bread, and that is a characteristic of the Gospel. Old Christian men, are you tired of Jesus? If so, let us take His name out of our Bible, and let us with pen and ink erase that' name wherever we see it. Let us cast it out of our hymnology, and let “There is a Fountain” and “Rock of Ages" go into forgetfulness. Let us tear down the communion-table where we celebrate His love. Let us dash down the baptismal bowl where we were consecrated to Him. Let us hurl Jesus from our heart, and ask some other hero to come in. Let us say, “Go away, Jesus; I want another companion, another friend, than thou art.”' Could you do it? The years of your past life, aged man, would utter a protest against it, and the graves of your: Christian dead would charge you with, being an ingrate, and your little grandchildren would say, “Grand- 1 father, don’t do that Jesus is the one> to whom we say our prayers at night and who is to open heaven when we die. Grandfather, don’t do that” Tired of Jesus? The Burgundy rose you pluck from the garden 1b not so fresh and fair and beautiful. Tired of Jesus? As well get weary of the spring morning, and the voices of the mountain runnel, and the quiet of your own home, and the gladness of your own children. -Jesus is bread, and tbe appetite for that is never obliterated. , I notice in regard to this article of food, you take it three times a day. It is ou your table morning, neon and> night.; and if it is forgotten you say;; “Where is the bread?” Just so certainly you need Jesus three times a day. Oh, do not start out without 1 Him; do not dare to go out of the' front door; do not dare to go off the front steps, without having first com-| muned with Hhn. Before noon therej may be perils that w ill destroy body, j mind and soul forever. You can not) afford to be without him. Yon will,i during tbe day, be amidst sharp hoofs; and swift wheels and dangerous scafJ foldings threatening the body, and) traps for the soul that have taken somej who are more wily than you.- When! they launch a Ship they break against! the side of it a bottle of wine. That) is a sort of superstition among sailors. But oh, on tbe launching of every day, i that we might strike against it at 1 least one earnest prayer for divine pro-, teetion! That would not be superstition; that would be Christian. Then at the apex of the day, at the. tip-top of the hours, equidistant from) morning and night, look three ways, j Look backward to the forenoon; look! ahead to the afternoon; look up to that* Savior who presides over all. You want bread at noon. You may find no' place in which to kneel amidst the cot-' ton bales and tbe tierces of rice; but if: Jonah could find room to pray in the ; whale’s belly, most certainly you willj never be in such a crowded place that! you can not pray. Bread at noon!' When the evening hour comes, and your head is buzzing with the day’s engagements, and your whole nature is sore from the abrasion of rough life, and you see a great many duties you have neglected, then commune with Christ, asking His pardon, thanking Him for His love. That would be a! queer evening rqpast at which there, was no bread. This is the nutriment! and life of tbe plain Gospel that I* recommend you. | □But alas for the famine-struck! Enough corn, yet it seems you have no; sickle to cut it, no mill to grind it, no fire to bake it, no appetite to eat it., Starving to death, when the plain is' golden with a magnificent harvest! 1

1 rode some thirteen miles to see the Alexander, a large steamship that was beached near Southampton, Long ls-‘ land. It was a splendid vessel. As I> walked up and down the decks and ini the cabins, I said, ‘ ‘What a pity that this vessel should go to pieces, or be, lying here idle!” The cogst-wreckersi had spent ISO, 000 trying to get her offJ and they succeeded once; hut she camel back again to the old place. While I ! was walking on deck every part of thet vessel trembled with the beating of that surf on one side. Since then I heardl that that vessel, which was worth' hundreds of thousands of dollars, was* sold for <3,500 and knocked to pieces.) They had given up the idea of getting her to sail again. How suggestive all. that is to me! There are those here who are aground in religious things. Once you started for heaven, hut you are now aground. Several times it was thought yon had started again heavenward, but you soon got back to the old place, and there is not much prospect that you will ever reach the harbors of the blessed. God's wreckers, I fear, will pronounce yon a helpless case. Beached for eternity! And then it will be written in heaven concerning some one of your size, and complexion, and age, and name, that he was invited to be saved, but refused the offer, and starved to death within sight of the fields and graneries full of the Old Corn of Canaan.