Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1891 — TO THIS END WAS I BORN. [ARTICLE]

TO THIS END WAS I BORN.

(Are We Preaching When We | Ought to Be Plowing? 1. ■' V, You Should Ask God About Your Worldly Business—Do the Right Thing and at the Right Time* Rev. Dr. Talmage preached to 7,000 people at Brooklyn last Sunday. Text: JohnMfcviii, 37. *He said: By the time a child reaches ten years of age the parents begin to discover that child’s destiny, but by the time he or she reaches fifteen years of age the question is on the child’s lips, “What am Ito be? What am I going to do? What was I made for?’ r It is a sensible and righteous question, and the youth ought to keep on .asking it until it is so fully answered ’that the young man or young woman :can _ say with as much truth as jts author, though on a less expansive scale: “To this end was I born.” ; There is too much divine skill ’shown thephysical. mental and moral constitution of the ordinary hpman being to suppose 110 was constructed without any divine purpose. First, I discharge you from all responsibility for most of your environments. You are* not responsible ‘for yoiir parentage, or grandparentage. You are not responsible for any of the cranks that may have lived in your ancestral line, and who n hundred years before you were born may have lived a style of life that more or less affects you to-day. You are not responsible for the fact that your temperament is sanguine, or nfelancholic, or billious or. lymphatic, or nervous. Neither are you responsible for theqjlace of your nativity, whether the granite hills of New England or the cotton plantations of Louisiana, or on the banks of the Clyde, or the Dniepar. or the Shannon, or the Seine. Neither are you responsible for the* religion taught i n yburTatlier’s TTotise. or the mbout what you can not help, or about circumstances that yon did not decree. Take things as they are and decide the question so that you shall be able to safely say: “To this end I was born.” How will you decide it? By direct application to the only being in the universe who is competent to tell you—the Lord Almighty. Do you know the reason why He is the only one who can tell? Because He «'an see everything between your cradle and your grave, though the grave be eighty years .off. besides that. He is the •>ply being who can see what has been happening for the last five hundred years in your ancestral line.and for thousands of years clear back to Adam, and there is not one person |u all that ancestral line of six thousand years but has somehow affected »our character, and even old Adam himself will sometimes turn up in JOur disposition. The only being who can take all things that pertain Io you into consideration is God, and He ope you can ask. Life is to short we have no time to experiment with pccupations and professions. The reason we have sq many ’lead failures is that parents decide lor the children what they shall do, or..children themselves, wrought on by some whim or fancy, decide for themselves without any impioration of divine guidance. So we have now (n pulpits men making sermons who bught to be in blacksmith shops makingjjlowshares, and we have in the law those who, instead of ruining the cases of their clients ought to be pounding shoe lasts. And doctors -whe avert he worst ft I lidranee to their patients’ convalenscence, and artists f rying to paint landscapes who ought io be whitewashing board fences. While there are others making bricks who ought to be remodeling " constitutions, or shoving planes who ought Io be transforming literatures. AskGod about what worldly business you shall undertake until you are so positive you can in earnest smite your hand on your plow handle, br your tarpenter’s bench, or your Blackstone’s “Commentaries,” or your medical dictionary, or your Dr. Dick’s “Didactic Theology,” saying, “for this end I was boyn.’ L . There are children who early develop national affinities for certain styles of work. When the father of the astronomer Forbes was going to London, he asked his children what present he should bring each one of them. The boy who was to be an astronomer cried out, “Bring me a telescope!” And there are children whom you find all by themselves drawing on their slates, or on paper, ships or houses or birds, and you know they are to be draughtsmen or artists of some kind. And you find others ciphering out difficult problems with rare interest and success, and you know they are to be mathematicians. And others making wheels and strange contrivances, and you know they are going to be machinists. And others are found experimenting with hoe and plow and sickle, and you know they will be farmers. And others are always swapping jack-knives or balls or bats apd making something by the bargain, and they arc going to be merchants. When Abbe de Rance had so advanced in studying Greek that he could translate Anacreon at twelve years of age there .was no doubt left that he was intended for a scholor. But in almost every lad there comes a time when he does notknow what he was made :tor, and his parents do not know, 'and it is a crisis that God only can (decide. Then there are those born ’for some especial work, and their ’fitness does not develop until ouite ‘•late. When Philip Dodbridge, whose (sermons and books have harvested" uncounted eouls for glory, began

to study the ministry, Dr. Calamy, one of the wisest and best men, advised him to turn his thoughts to some other work. ~ Isaac Barrow the eminent clergyman and Christian scientist —his books standard now though he has been dead over 200 years—was the disheartenment of his father, who used to say that if it pleased God to take any of his children away he hoped it might be his son Isaac. So some of those who have been? characterized for their stupidity in their boyhood or girlhood have turned out the mightiest benefactors or benefactresses of the human race. These things being so, am I not right in saying that in many cases God only knows what is the most appropriate thing for you to do, and He is the one to ask. And let all parents, and all schools, and all universities, and all colleges recognize this and a large number of those who spent their best years in stumbling about among businesses and occupations, now trying this and now trying that and failing in all, would be able to go ahead with a definite, decided and tremendous purpose, saying, “to this end was I born.- —7

But my subject now mounts into the momentous. Let me say that you are made for usefulness and for heaven. I judge this from the way you are built. You go into a shop where there is only one wheel turning and that by a workman’s foot on a treadle, and you say to yourself: “Here is something good being done, yet on a small scale;” but if you go into a factory covering’" many acres and find thousands of bands pulling on thousands of wheels and shuttles Hying, and the whole scene bewildering with activities, driven by water or steam or electric power, you conclude that the factory was put up to do great work and on a vast scale Now, I look at you, and if I should find that you only had one faculty of the body, only one muscle, only one nerve, if you could see but not hear, or coukl hcar but not see, if you had the use of only one foot or one hand, "and asto’your higher nature, if you had only one mental faculty, and you had memory but no judgment, or judgment but no will, and if you had a soul with only one capacity, I would say not much is expected of you. But stand up, oh, man, and let me look you squarely in the face. Eyes capable of seeing everything. Ears capable of hearing everything. Hands capable of grasping everything. Mind with more wheels than any factory ever turned, more power than ever CoSiss engine ever moved. A soul that will outlive all the universe except heaven, and would outlive heaven if the life of other immortals were a moment short of the eternal. Now, what has the world a right to expect of you? What has God a right to expect of you? What has God a right to demand of you? God is the greatest of economists in the universe, and He makes nothing uselessly, or for what purpose did He build your body, mind and soul as they are built? There are only two beings in the universe who can answer that question. The angels do not know. The schools do not know. Your kindred can not certainly know. God knows, and you ought to know. A factory running at an expense of $500,000 a year; and turning out goods worth seventy cents a year would not be such an incongruity as you, oh man, with such semi-infinite equipment doing nothing, or next to nothing, in the way of usefulness. “What shall I do?” you ask. My brethren, my sisters, do not ask me. Ask God. There’s some path of Christian usefulness open. — It may be arough path, or it may be a smooth path, a long path, or a short path. It may be on a mount of conspicuity, or in a vallev unobserved, but it is a path on which you can start with such faith and such satisfaction and such certaiiity that you' ean cry out in the face of earth and hell and heaven: “to this end was I born?’ Do not wait for extraordinary qualifications. Philip, the Conqueror, gained his greatest victories seated on a mulb, and if you wait for some comparisoned Bucephalus to ride into the conflict, you will never get into the world wide fight at all. Samson slew the Lord’s enemies with the jawbone of the stupidest beast created. Shamgar slew 600 of the Lord’s enemies with an ox goad. Under God, spittle cured the blind man’s eyes in the New Testament story. Take all the faculty you have and say: “O Lord, here is what I have, show me the field and back me up by omninitent power. Anywhere any how, any time for God.” And now I come to the climacteric consideration. As near as I can tell you were built for a happy eternity, all the disasters which have happened to your nature to be overcome by the blood of the Lamb if you will heartily accept that Christiy arrangement. We are all rejoiced at the increase in human longevity. People live, as near as I can observe about ten years longer than they used to. The modern doctors do not bleed their patients on all occasions as did the former doctors. In those times if a man had fever, they bled him, if he had consumption they bled him, if he had the rheumatism they bled him, and if they could not make out exactly what was the matter they bled him. Olden time phlebotomy was death’s coadjudor. All this has changed. From the way I see peoFle skipping about at 80 years of age conclude that life insurance companies will have to change their table of ssks and charge a man no more premium at 70 than they used to do at 60, and no more premium at 50 than when he was 40. By the advancement of medical science and the wider

acquaintance with the laws of health and the fact that people know better how to take care of themselves human life is prolonged. But do you realize what, after all, is the brevity of our earthly state? In times when people jived seven and eight hundred vears the patriarch Jacob said that his years were few. Looking at the Life of the youngest person in this assembly and supposing he lived to be a nonagenarian how short the time and soon gone, while banked up in front of us is an eternity so vast tba? arithmetic has not figures enough to express its length, or breadth, or depth or height. For a happy eternity you were bopn unless yourun yourself against the Divine intentions. If standing in your presence my eye should fall upon the feeblest soul here as that soul will appear when the world lets it up and heaven.entrances it I suprose I would be so overpowered that should drop down as one dead. In the seventeenth century all Europe was threatened with a wave of Asiatic barbarism, and Vienna was especially besieged. The King and his Court had fled, and nothing could save the city from being overwhelmed unless the King of Poland. John Sobieski, to whom they had sent for help, should-wi’h his army come down for their relief, and from every roof and tower the inhabitants of Vienna waited and watched and hoped, until on the morning of September 11 the rising sun threw an. unusual and unparalleled brilliancy. It was the reflection on the swords and shields and helmets of John Sobieski and his army coming down over the hills to the rescue, and that day not only Vienna, but Europe, was saved. And see . you not, oh, ye souls besieged with sin and sorrow, that light breaks in, the swords and the shields and the helmets of divine rescue bathed in the rising sun of heavenly deliverance? Let everything else go rather than let heaven go. What a strange thing it must be to feel one’s self born to an earthly crown, Kut born for a throne on which you may reign after the last monarch of all the earth shall have gone to dust. I invite you to start now for your own coronation, to come in and take the title deeds to your everlasting inheritance. Through an impassioned prayer take heaven and all of its raptures. What a poor farthing is all that this world can offer you compared with a pardon here and life immortal beyond the stars, unless this side, of them there beaplacc large enough and beautiful enough and grand enough for all the ransomed. Wherever it be, in what world, whether near by or far away, in this or some other constellation, hail home of light and love and bless edness! Through the atoning mercy of Christ, may we all get here!