Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 August 1891 — BRAVE MEN. [ARTICLE]

BRAVE MEN.

Men Who Do Exploits Should Be of Great Soul. They Are Worshipped by All Mankind— Should Be of Christ-Like Mould — Dr. Talmage’s Sermon. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at Ocean ©rove, N. J., Sunday. Text: Daniel xi, 32. He said: Antiochus Epiphanes, tjie old sinner, came down three times with his army to desolate the Israelites, advancing one time with a hundred and two elephants swingings their trunks this way and that, and 62,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry troops and they were driven back. Then, the second time, he advanced with 70,000 armed men and had been again driven back. But the third time he laid successful siege until the navy, of Rome came in with the flash of their long banks of oars and demanded that the siege be lifted.' And Antioehus Epiphanes said -he wanted time to consult with his friends about it, and Popilius, one of the Roman embassadors, took a staff and made a circle on the ground around Antiochus Epiphanes and compelled him to decide before he came out of that circle, whereupon he lifted the siege. Some of the Hebrews had submitted to the invader, but some of them resisted valorously, as did Eleazer when he had swine’s flesh forced into his mouth, spit it out, although he knew he must die for it, and did die for it; and others, as my text says, did exploits An exploit I would define to be a heroic act, a brave feat, a great achievement. ‘•Well,” you say, “I admire such things, but there is no chance forme; mine is a sort of hum-drum life. If I had an Antiochus Epiphanes to fight I also could do exploits.” You are right so far as great wars are concerned. There will probably be no opportunity to distinguish yourself in battle. The most of the Brigadier-generals of this country would never have been heard of if it had not been for the war.

Neither will you probably become an inventor. Nineteen hundred and ninety-nine out of every two thousand inventions found in the Patent Office at Washington-never yielded their authors enough money to pay for the expenses of securing the patent. You will probably never be a Morse, or an Edison, or a Humphrey Davy, or Eli Whitney. There is not much probability that you will be the one out of the hundred who achieves extraordinary success in the commercial or legal or medical or literary spheres. What then? Can you have no opportunity to do exploits? lam going to show that there are three opportunities open that are grand, thrilling, far-reaching, stupendous ami overwhelming. They are before you now. In one, if not all three of them, you may do exploits. The three greatest things on earth to do are to save a man or save a woman or save a child. During the course of his life almost every man gets into an exigency, is caught between two fires, is ground between two millstones, sits on the edge of some precipice, x>r in some other way comes near demolition’. It may he a financial or a moral or a domestic or a social or a political exigency. You sometimes see it in courtrooms, Some young man has got into bad company and he lias offended the law, and"he is arraigned. All blushing and confused, he is in the presence of judge and jury and lawyers. He can be sent right on in the wrong direction. He is feeling disgraced, and he is almost desperate.

Let the district attorney overhaul him as though he were an old offender; let the ablest attorneys at the bar refuse to say a word for Mm because he can not afford a considerable fee; let the judge give no opportunity for presenting the mitigating circumstances, hurry up the ease and hustle him off to Auburn or Sing Sing. If he should live seventy years, for seventy years he will be a criminal, and eacirdeeade of bis life will be blacker than its predecessor. In the interegnums of prison life he can get no work, and be is glad to break a window pane, or blow up a safe, or play the highwayman, so as to get back within the walls where he can get something to eat and hide himself from the gaze of the woi’ld. Why don’t his father come and help him? His father is dead. Why don’t his mother aome and help him?. She is dead. Where are all the ameliorating and salutary influences of society? They do not touch him. Why did not some one long ago in the case understand that there was an for the exploit which would be fam-

ous in heaven a quadrillion of years after the earth had becorpe scattered ashes in the last whirlwind? Why did not the District Attorney take that young man into his private office and say: “My son,-I see that you are the victim of circumstances. This is your first crime. You arc sorry. I will bring the person you wronged into your presence, and you will apologize and make all the reparation you can, and I will give you another chance.” , Or that young man is presented in the court room,and he has no friends present, and the Judge says: “Who is your counsel?” And he answers: “I have none.” And the Judge says: “Who will take this young man’s case?” And there is a dead halt,and no one offers, and after awhile the Judge turns to some attorney, who never had a good case in all his life, and never vyill, and whose advocacy would be enough to secure the condemnation of innocence itself. And the professional incompetent crawls up beside the prisoner, helplessness

to rescue despair, when theie ought to be a struggle among all the best men of the profession as to who should have the honor of trying to help that unfortunate. How much would such dn attorney have received as his fee for such an advocacy? Nothing in dollars, buti much every way in a happy consciousness that would make his own life brighter, and his own dying pilldw sweeter, and his own heaven happier—the consciousness that he had saved a man! There sometimes comes exigencies n the life of a woman. One morning a few years ago 1 saw in the newspaper that there fvas a young woman in New York, whose pocketbook containing $37.33 had been stolen, and she had been left without a penny at the beginning of winter, in a strange city, and no work. And although she was a stranger T did not allow the 9 o’clock mail to leave the lamp-post on our corner without carrying the $37.33; and the case was proved genuine. Now I have read all Shakspere’s tragedies, and all Victor Hugo’s tragedies, and all Alexander Smith’s tragedies, but I never read a tragedy more thrilling than that case, and similar cases by the hundreds and thousands in all our large cities; young women without money and without home and without work in the great maelstroms of metropolitan life. When, such a case comes under your observation, how do you treat it? “Get out of my way, we have no room in our establishment for any more hands. I don’t believe in women any way; they are a lazy, idle, worthless set. John, please show this person out the door.” Or do you compliment herpersoiial appearance, and sqy to her things which if any man said to your sister or daughter you would kill him on the spot? That is one way and it is tried every day in the large cities, and many of those who advertise for female help in-fac-tories, and for governesses in families, have proved themselves unfit to be in any place outsidejof hell. But there is another way, and I saw it one day in the Methodist Book Concern in New York, where a young woman applied for work, and the gentleman in tone and manner said in substance: “My daughter, we employ women here, but I do not know of any vacant place in our department. "You had better inquire at such and such a place, and I hope you will be successful in getting something to do. Here is my name and tell them I sent you.” The embarrassed and humiliated woman seemed to give way to Christian confidence. She started out with a hopeful look that I think must have won for her a place in which to earn her bread, I rather think that considerate and Christian gentleman save a woman.

New York and Brooklyn ground up last year about 30,000 young women and would like to grind up as many this year. Out of all that long procession of women who march on with no hope for this world or the next, battered and bruised and scoffed at, and flung off the precipice, not one but what might have been saved for home aud God aud heaven. But good men and good women are not in that kind of business. Alas for the poor thing! Nothing but the thread of that sewing girl’s needle held her, and the thread broke. I have heard men tell in public discourse what a man is. But what is woman? Until some one shall give a better defination. I will tell you what woman is. Direct from God a sacred and delicate gift, with affections so great that no measuring line short of that of the infinite God can tell their bound. Fashioned to refine and soothe and lift and irradiate home and society and the world. Of such value that no one can appreciate it, unless his mother lived long enough to let him understand it, or who in some great crisis of life, when all else failed him, had a wife to reinforce him with a faith in God that nothing could disturb. Speak out, ye cradles, and tell of the feet that rocked you and the anxious faces that hover over you! Speak out, ye nurseries of all Christdendom, and the homes, whether desolate or still in full bloom with the faces of wife, mother and daughter, and help me to define what woman is. But of the sea correspond with the heights of the mpuutains. I have to tell you that a good womanhood is not higher up than bad womanhood is deep down.

The grander the place the more awful the conflagration that destroys it. The grander the steamer Oregon the more terrible her going down just off the coast. Now I should not wonder if you tremble a little with a sense of responsibility when I say that there is hardly a person in this house but may have an opportunity to save a woman. It may in your case be done by good advice, or by financial help, or by trying to bring to bear some one of a thousand inflyenceSi If. for instance, you find a woman in financial distress and breaking down in health and spirits try ing to support her children, now that her husband is dead or an invalid, doing that very important and honorable work —but which is little appreciated—keeping a boarding house, where all the guests, according as they pay small board, or propose, without paying a/jy board at all, to decamp, are critical of every thing and hard to please, busy yoursplf m trying to get her more patrons, and teli her of divine sympathy. Yea, if you see a woman favored of fortune and with all kindly surroundings, finding in the hollow flatteries of the world her chief regalement. living;Jprherself and for time as if their were no eternity, strive to bring her into the kingdom of God. There is another exploit you can

do, and that is to save a child. A child does not seem to amount to much. It is nearly a year old before it can walk at all. For the first year and a hall it cannot speak a word. For the first ten years it would starve if it had to earn its own food. For the first fifteen years its opinion on any subject is absolutely valueless. And then, there are sp-many of them. My, what lots of children! And. some people have contempt for children. They are good for nothing but to wear out the carpets and break things and keep you awake nights crying. Well, your estimate of a child*is quite different from that Tnother’s estimate who lost her child this summer. They took it to the salt air of the sea shore and to the tonic air of the mountains, but no help came, and the brief paragraph of its life is ended. Suppose that life could be restored by purchase, how much would that bereaved mother give? She would take all the jewels from her fingers and neck and bureau and put them down. And if told that that was not enough, she would take her house and make over the deed for it, and if that was not enough, she would call in all her investments and put down all her mortgages and bonds, and if told that was not enough, she would say: “I have made over all my property and if I can have that child back I will now pledge that I will now toil with my hands and carry with my own shoulders in any kind of hard work, and live in a cellar and die in a garret. ' Only give me back that lost darling!” I am glad there are those who know something of the value of a child. Its possibilities are tremendous. What will those hands yet do? Where will those feet yet walk? Toward what destiny will that never dying soul betake itself? Shall those lips be the throne of blasphemy or benediction? Come chronologist, and calculate the decades on decades, the centuries on centuries, of its lifetime. Oh, to save a child! Am I not right in putting that among the great exploits? But what are you going to do with those children who are worse off than if their father and mother had died the day they were born? There are tens of thousands of such. Their parentage was against them. Their name is against them. The structure of their skulls is against them. Their nerves and muscles contaminated by the inebriety or dissoluteness of their parents; they are practically, at their birth, laid out ou a a plank in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, in an equinoctial gale, and told' to make for shore. What to do with them is the question often asked. There is another question quite as pertinent, and that is, what are they going to do with us? They will, tea or eleven years from now, have as many votes as the same number of well-born children, and they will hand this land over to anarchy and political damnation just as sure as we neglect them. Suppose we each one of us save a boy or save a girl. You can do it. Will you? I will. How shall we get ready for one or all of these three exploits? We shall make a dead failure if in our own strength we try to save a man or woman or chili. But my text suggests where we are to get equipment. “The people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits,” We must know him through Christ in our own salvation and then we shall have his help in the salvation of others. And while you are saving strangers you may save some of your own kin., You think your brothers and sisters and children and grandchildren are safe, but they are not dead and no oneTs safe till he is dead. My friends, let us start out to save some oi.e for time and eternity, some man, some woman, some child. And who knows but it may, directly or indirectly, be the salvation of one of our own kindred, and that will bo an exploit worthy of celebration when the world itself is wrecked 3ftd the sun has gone out like a spark from a smitten anvil and all the stars are dead.