Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 July 1891 — DO YOU LIKE CHILDREN? [ARTICLE]

DO YOU LIKE CHILDREN?

Millions of the little Tots Dwell in Heaven. Thou Shalt be Missed Became Thy Seat' Is Empty—Dr. Talmage’s Sermon. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at Lakeside, Ohio, Sunday. Subject, -**The Vacant Chair.” Text: I Samuel xx, lj?. He said: In almost every house the articles of furniture take a living personality. That picture—a stranger would not see anything remarkable either in its design or execution, but it is more to you than all the pictures of the Louvre and the Luxembourg. You remember who bought it and admired it. And that hymnbook —you remember who sang out out of it. And that cradle —you remember who rocked it. And that Bible—you remember who read out of it. And that bed—you remember who slept in it. And that room — you remember who died in it. But there is nothing in all your house so eloquent as the vacant chair. I suppose that before Saul and his guests got up from this banquet there was a great clatter of winepitchers, but all that racket was drowned out by the voice that came up from the vacant chair at the table. Millions have gazed and wept at John Quincy Adams’ vacant chair in the House of Representatives, and at Henry Wilson’s vacant chair in the Vice-Presidency, and at Henry Clay’s vacant chair in the American Senate, and at Prince. Albert’s vacant chair in Windsor Castle, and at Thiers’ vacant chair in the Councils of the French nation; but all these chairs are unimportant to you as compared with the vacant chairs in your awn household. Have these chairs any lesson for us to learn? Are we any better men and women than when they first addressed us? First, I point out to you the father’s vacant chair. Old men always like to sit in the same place and in the same chair. They somehow feel more at home, and sometimes when you are in their place and they come into the room you jump up suddenly and say, ‘Here, father, here’s your chair.” The probability is it is an arm chair, for he is not so strong as he once, was and he needs a little upholding. His hair is a little frosty, his gums a little depressed, for in tiis early days there was not much dentistry. Perhaps a cane chad; and old-fashioned apparel, for though you may have suggested some improvement, but father does not want any of your nonsense. Grandfather never had much admiration for your newfangled notions.

But your father’s chair was a sacred place. The children used to climb upon the rungs of it for a goodnight kiss* and the longer he stayed the better you liked it. But that chair has been vacant now for some time. The furniture dealer would not give you fifty cents for it, but it is a throne of influence in your domestic circle. Igo a little further on in j’our house, and I find the mother’s chair. It is very apt to be a rocking-chair. She had so many cares and troubles to soothe that it must have rockers. I remember it well.. It was an old chair, and the rockers were almost worn out, for I was the youngest, and the chair had rocked the whole family. It made a creaking noise as it moved: but there" was music in the sound. Jt was just high to allow us children to put our heads into her lap. That was the bank where we deposited all our hurts and worries. Ah! what a chair that was. It was different from the father’s chair; it was entirely different. You ask me how? lean not tell; but we all felt it was different. Perhaps there was about this.chair more gentleness, more tenderness, more grief when we had done wrong. When we were wayward father scolded, but mother cried. It was a very wakeful chair. If the sick days of children other chairs could not keep awake; that chair always kept awake —kept easily awake. That chair knew all the old lullabies and all those wordless songs which mothers sing to their sick children —songs in itfhieh all pity, and compassion, and sympathetic influences are combined. That old chair has stopped rocking for a good many years. It may be set up in the loft or garret, but it holds a queenly power yet.

When at midnight you went into that grog shop to get the intoxicating draught, did you not hear a voice that saiat “My son, why go in there?” And louder than the boisterous encore of the place of sinful amusement, a voice saying: “My son, what do you do heres?” And when you went into the house of abandon meat, a voice saying: ‘ ‘ What would your mother do if she knew you were here?” And you were provoked with yourself, and you charged with superstition and fanaticism,and your head got hot with your own thoughts, and you went home and you went to bea, and no sooner had you went to bed, and no sooner had you touched the bed than a voice said: “What! a prayerless pillow? Man! what is the matter?” This: You are too near your mother’s rock-ing-chair. ' I go on a little further, and I come to the invalid’s chair. What! How long have you been sick? “Oh, I have been sick ten, twenty thirty years.” Is it possible? What a story of endurance. There are in many of the families of my congregation these invalid chairs. The occupants pf them think they are doing no good in the world, but that invalid’s chair is the mighty pulpit from which they

have been preaching all these years trust in God. The first time' I preached here at Lakeside, Ohio, among the throngs present there was nothing that so much impressed me as the spectacle of just one face—the face of an invalid who was wheeled in on her chair. I said to her afterward: “Madam, how loflg have you been prostrated?” for she was lying flat in nerchair. “Oh,” she said, I have been this way fifteen years. ’ ’ I said: “Do you suffer very touch?” “Oh, yes, I suffer very mrch; I suffer all the time; part of the time I was blind : I always suffer.” I said: “Can you keep your courage up?” “Oh, yes,” she said, “I am happy; very happy, indeed.” Her face showed it. She looked the happiest of any on the ground.

Oh, what a means of grace to the world, these invalid chairs. On that field of human suffering the grace of God gets in its victory. Edward Payson, the invalid, and Richard Baxter, the invalid, and Robert Hall, the invalid, and the ten thousand of whom the world has never heard, but of whom all heaven is cognizant. The most conspicuous thing on earth for God’s eye and the eyes of the angels to rest on is not a throne of earthly power, but it is the invalid’s chair. Of these men and women who are always suffering but never complaining—these victims of spinal disease and neuralgic torture, and rheumatic excruciation will answer to the rolleall of the martyrs, and rise 40 the martyr’s throne, and will wave the martyr's c ,palm. But when one of these invalid’s chairs becomes vacant how suggestive it is! No more bolstering up of the weary head. No more changing from side to side to get an easy position. No more use of the bandage, and the cataplasm and the prescription. That invalid’s chair may be folded up, or taken away, or'set away, but it will never loose its queenly power;* it will always preach of trust in God and cheerful submission. Suffering all ended now. With respects to that invalid the woi-ds of my text have been fulfilled, “Thou shalt bo missed because thy seat willbe emp ty.” I pass on, and I find oue more vacant chair. It’s a high chair. It is the child’s chair. If that chair be occupied,l think it is the most potent chair in all the. household. All the chairs wait on it; all the chairs are turned toward it. It means more than David’s chair and Saul’s banquet. At any rate it makes more racket.

That is a strange house that can be dull with a child in it. How that child breaks up the hard worldiness of the place, and keeps you young to 60, 70 and 80 years of age. If you have no child of your own,adopt one; it will open heaven to yourj soul. It pays its way. Its crowing in the morning will give the day a cheerful starting, and its glee at night will give the day a cheerful close. You do not like children! Then you had better stay out of heaven. For there are so many there they would fairly make you crasy! Only about 500,000,000 of them! The old crusty Pharisees told the mothers to keep the children away from Christ. “You bother him,” they said: “you trouble the master.” Trouble him! He has filled heaven with kind of trouble. A pioneer in California says that for tne first year or two after his residence in Sierra Nevada county there was not a single child in all the reach of one hundred miles, but the Fourth of July came and the miners were gathered together, and they were celebrating the Fourth with an oration, and poem and a boisterous brass band. And while the band was playing an infant’s voice was heard crying and all the miners were startled, and the swarthy men began to think of their homes on the Eastern coast and of their wives and children far away, and their hearts were thrilled with homesickness as they heard the babe cry. But the music went on and the child cried louder and louder, and the brass band played louder and louder, trying to drown out the infantile interruption, when a swarthy miner, with the tears rolling down his face, got up and shook his fist and said: “Stop that noisy band and give the baby a chance.” Oh, there was pathos in it as well as good cheer in it. There .is nothing to arouse, and melt, and subdue the soul like a child’s voice. But when it goes away from you the high Chair becomes a higher chair and there is a desolatioh all about you. In three-fourths of the homes of this congregation, there is a vacant high chair. Somehow you never get over it. There is no one to put to bed at night; no one to ask strange questions about God and heaven. On, what is the use of that chair? It is to call you higher. What a drawing upward it is to haye children in heaven!

And theq, it is such a preventive against sin. If a father Is going awayjiato sin he leaves bis living dm dren with their mother; but if a father is going away into sin, what is he going to do with his dead children floating about him, and hovering over his every wayward step? Oh, speak out, vacant high chair, and say: “Father come back from sin: mother come back from worldliness, lam watching 'you. I am waiting for you.” With respect to your child. The works of my text nave been fulfilled: “Though sbalt be missed, because thy seat will be empty.” v Mv hearers, I have gathered up the voices Of your departed friends and tried to intone them* into one invitation upward. I set in array all the vacant chairs In your homes and of your social circle, and I bid them cry out this morning ‘‘Time is short.

Eternity is now. Take mv Savior. Be at piece with my Godi- Come up where! am. We lived together on this earth,oome let us live in heaven.” We answer that invitation. We come. Keep a seat for us, as Sato kept a seat for David, but the seat shall not be empty. And oh! when we are all through with this world' and we have shaken bands all around for the last time, and a 1 oar chairs in the home circle and in the outside world shall be vacant, - may we be worshiping God in that place from which we shall go out no more forever.

—Lthank God there will be no vacant chairs in heaven. There we shall meet again and talk over our earthly heartbreaks. How much you have been through since you saw them last! On the shining shore you will talk it all over. The heartaches; the loneliness; the sleepless nights; the weeping until you had no power to weep, because the heart had withered and dried up. Story of empty cradle and little shoe only half worn out, never to be worn again, just the shape of the foot that once pressed it. And dreams, when you thought the departed had come, back again, and the room seemed bright with their faces, and you started up to . greet them, and in the effort the. dream broke and you found yourself standing amid-room in the midnight —alone. Talking it all over, and then, hand in hand, walking up and down in the light. No sorrow, no tears, no death. On, heaven! beautiful heaven! Heaven where our friends are. Heaven where we expect to be. In the East they take a cage of birds and bring it to the tomb of the dead, and then they open the door of the cage, and the birds, flying out, sing. And I would to-day bring a cage of Christian consolation to the tomb of your loved ones, and I would open the door and let them fill all the air with the music of their voices. Oh, how they bound in these spirits before- the throne! Some shout with gladness. Some break forth into uncontrollable weeping for joy. Some stand speechless in tneir shock of delight. They sing. They quiver with excessive gladness. They gaze on the temples, on the palaces, on the waters, on each other. They weave their joy Into garlands, they spring it into triumphal arches, they strike it on timbrels, and then all the loved ones gather in a great circle around the throne of God—fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, lovers and friends, hand to hand around about the throne of God —the circle ever widening —hand to hand, joy to joy, jubilee to jubilee, victory to victory, until the day break and the shadows flee away. Turn thou, my beloved, and be like a roe or a young heart upon the mountains of Bether.