Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 October 1892 — OBSERVATIONS ABROAD. [ARTICLE]

OBSERVATIONS ABROAD.

Dr. Talmage Preaches of Various Things Seen While Away. Sows Bather Kovel Views of the Czar— The Dreautfol Pamiue. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn Tabernacle last SundaySobject, “Observations To Russia and Great Britain. ” Text, Psalm cxxxix, 9. He said : You all know why I went to Rds-' sia this summer. There are' many thousands of people who have a right to say to me, as was said in the Bible parable, “ Give an account of thy stewardship. " Through The Christian Herald, which I have the honor to edit, we bad for months, in publisher’s, in reportorial and editorial columns, put before the people the ghastly facts concerning twenty million Russians who were starving to death, and subscriptions to the relief fund had come bv letters that seemed not so much written with ink as with tears, some of the letters practically saying, “ We find it har(J to get bread for our own families, but we can not ,stand this cry of hunger from beyond the seas, and so please to receive the inclosed;” And others had sent jewels from their hands and necks saying, “Sell these and turn them into bread. ” And another letter saidr “ Inclosed is an old gold piece. It was my mother’s. She gave it to me and told me never to part with it except fer bread, and now I inclose Jt. ” We had gathered thirty-five thousand dollars in money, which we-turned into three million pounds of flour.

When I went down to the board of trade at Chicago and left five thousand dollars of the amount raised with a prominent flour merchant, taking no receiDt and leaving all to Aim to do the' best thing and returned, it was suggested that I had not done things in a business way. How could we know what sort of flour would be sent ? There are styles of flour more fit for the trough of swine than the mouths of hungry men and women. Well, as is customary, when the flour came to New York it was tested, and we found indeed they had cheated us. They gave us better flour than we had bought. I bought in Chicsgo fine flour, but they sent us superfine. God bless the merchants of Chicago.

Now we know nothing about famine in America. The grasshoppers may kill the crops in Kansas,* the freshets may destroy the crops along the Ohio, the potato worm may kill the vines of Long Island, the rust may get into the wheat of Michigan, yet when there has been dreadful scarcity in some parts of the land there has been plenty in other parts. But in districts of Russia, vast enough to drop several nations into them, drought for six consecutive years has devastated, aad those districts were previously the most productive of all the empire.

It was like wbat we would have in America if the hunger fiend somehow got out of bgll and alighted in our land, and swept his wing over Minnesota and said, “Let nothing grow here," and over Missouri and said, “Let nothing grow here," and over New York state and said, “Let nothing grow here,” and over Ohio and Georgia and Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and Nebraska and Dakota and the Carolinas and said, “Let nothing grow here,” and the hungry fiend had swept the same withering and blasting wing over the best part of America in the years 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891 and 1892,,and finally all our.Jamilies were put on small allowance, and we all had risen from the table hungry, and after awhile the children had •only quarter enough, and after awhile only one meal a day, aud after awhile no good food at ail, but a mixture of wheat andchaff and bark of trees, and then three of -the children down with hunger typhus, and then all the family unable to walk, and then hands and knees, and then one dead in each room, and neighbors not quite so exhausted, coming in to bury tbeth, aud afterward the house becoming the tomb, with none to carry the dead to more appropriate sepucher—whole families blotted out.

That was what occurred in Russia in homes more than were ever counted, in homes that were once as comfortable and happy and bountiful as yours or mine, in homes as virtuous us yours or mine, in homes whero God is worshiped os much as in yours or mine. It was to do a little something toward beating back that archangel of wretchedness and horror that we went, and we have now to report that, according to the estimate of the Russian famine relief committee, we saved tho lives of 125,000 people. A's at the hunger relief stations the bread was banded out—for it was made-in to loaves and distributed—many people would halt befdre taking it and religiously cross themselves afld utter u prayer for tho donors. Boitieof them would come staggering book and say, “Piease tell us who sent this bread to us.” And when told that it came from America they would say, “What part of America? Please give us the names of those who sent it. ” Ah, God only knows the names of those who sent it, but He certwinly does know, and many r; flayer is going up, I warrant you, aay by day, for those who sent flour by the ship Leo. Perhups some of us at our tables rattle off a prayer that may meau nothing, altliougb'we call it “saying grace, ,r out I warrant when those people who received the bread which saved their lives “said grHce’’-it meaflkfomething. 5 ■ Our religion may not demand that wo “cross ourselves,” but I have learned that while crossing one’s self in some cases may mean nothing but n-cre form. I believe in most cases it. means, “Ob, thou of the suffering cress of Calvary, have mercy on me and accept my gratitude.” Prefor own' form of religion by all means, but do not depreciate the re-

many lands, but I tell yon plainly, asil told Emperor Alexaner 111 in the palace at Peterhoff, that I had never been so impressed with the fidelity to their religion of any people as by wbat I haa seen in Russia, and especially among her public men--1 said respectfully to a Russian when I saw him cross himself, “What do you do that for?” “Oh,” he said, “when Ido that I always say, ‘God have mercy eh me!’ ” I hold ip my hand something very suggestive. What does that black and uncomely thing look like? That is what is. called hunger bread from Russia; that is what millions of people lived on for months before help came from England, Scotland, Ireland and America; that is a mixture which seems to have in it not one grain of sustenance. It is a mixture of a pig weed and chaff and the sweepings of stables. That is something which, if dropped in the street, your dog or cat might sniff at. but would not,eat. That was the only food on which millions of men and women lived. You must look at that hunger bread of Russia before you can get proper appreciation of What an attractive and beautiful thing a good loaf of bread is. It is so common to us we cannot realize its meaning. Stop and look at it iu a bakery window or see it on your family table—l mean an honest loaf of bread, white as a ball of packed snow, with a crust brown as the autumnal woods, and for a keen appetite more aromatic than flowers —a loaf of bread as you remember it in childhood, when the knife in the hand of vour father or mother cut cleau through, from crust to crust, and put before you, not a quarter of a slice or a half a slice, but a full, round slice, and another and another, just suited to a boy always ready to eat and for the most time hungry, even in a well supplied house/ X remember and you remember, it you had a healthy childhood, just how it tasted. My! My! Plum pudding does not taste as good now as that plain bread then. It was then bread at the table, and bread between meals, and bread before breakfast, and bread before going to bed.

But I have been asked by good people in Great Britain and America, again and again, why did not the prosperous people of Russia stop that suffering themselves, making it useless for other nation's to help, And lam always glad when I hear the question asked, because it gives me an opportunity of explaining. Have you any idea what it requires to feed twenty million people? There is only one being in the universe who can do it, and that is the Being who this morning breakfasted sixteen hundred million of the human race, The nobility of Russia have not only contributed mo3t lavishly, but many of them went down and staid for months apnid the gastliness, and the horror, and the typhus fever, and the smallpox that they might administer to the suffering.

The emperpr has made larger contributions toward this relief fund than any monarch ever made for any cause since the world stood, aud the superb kindness written atl over the faces of the emperor and empress and crown prince is demonstrated in what they have already done and are doing for the sufferers of their own country. When a few days ago I read in tho papers that the emperor and empress, hearing an explosion, stopp’d the royal rail train to find out what had happened, and the empress knelt down by the side of a wounded laborer and held his head until pillows and blankets could be brought, and the two wounded men were put upon the royal train to be carried to a place where they could be better cared for, I said tp my wife, just like her." When I saw a few days ago in the papers that the emperor ana empress had walked through the wards of the mo6t virulent cholera, talking with the patients, shaking hands with them and cheering them up. 'lt was no surprise to me, for I said to thyself, “That is just liko them." Anyone who has ever seen the royal family will believe any thing in the way of klndnes ascribed to them, and wiil join me in the execration of that too prevalent opinion that a tyrant is on the throne of Russia. If God spares my life I will yet show by facts beyond dispute that the most slandered and systamatlcally lied about nation on earth is Russia, and that no ruler ever lived more for the elevation of his people in education and morals and religion than, Alexander the Third. So I put all the three prayers together—God save the President of the United States! God save the queen of England! God save the emperor and empress of Russia! I will, whether in sermons or lectures, I have not yet decided, show that nineteen-twentieths of oil things written and published against Russia are furnished by men who have been hired by other countries to “writeup" or rather write down Russia, so as to divert commerce from that empire or becahsoof international Jealousies, - - ...

1 must tell you of a'picture of pathos and moral power impressed upon my mind, so that neither time nor occrnity may effaco it. The ship Leo swung to the dooks a few miles below, bt. Petersburg loaded with flour from America. The sailors on board buzzard as they came to the wharf. From a yacht on which we had descended the river to the sea citizens v of St. Petersburg disembarked. The bank was crowded by prosperous, citizens, who stood on tho wharf, aud back of them by poor laborers, who had comedown to offer their services free of all chargo for the removal of the breadstuffs from the ship to the imperial freight train that took the flour to the interior free of charge. While we stood there the long freight train rumbled down to the docks, the locomotive and each ear decorated with a flag—the American flag aad the Russian flag alternating. Though a Bag to some eyes is only a floating rag, you ought to see how the American flag looks five thousand miles from home. It looked that day like a section of heaven let ddfffr mr'.vJtt&XiNHL.. 'niunß ‘ Aq«

kneading board to oven. From oveq i ttrthe whito and quivering lips ol ' the dying. Upon all who, whether by contribution small or large, helped make that scene possible may i there come the benediction of him who declared, “I was hungry and ve fed me.” But I must also give a word of report concerning my other errand—the preaching of the Gospel in Great Britain last summer. It was a tour I had for many years anticipated. With the themes of the Gospel I confronted inert people than everhefore in the same length of time—multitudes after multitudes beyond anything I can describe. The throngs in all the cities were so great that they could be controlled only by platoons of police, so that none should be hurt by the pressure, each service indoors followed by a service for the waiting throng"' outdoors, and both by handshakings to the last point of physical endurance. From the day in which I arrived at noon in Liverpool, aud that night addressing two vast assemblages, until I got through my evangelistic journey, it was a scene of blessing to my own soul and I hope to others. I missed but three engagements of all the summer, and those from being too tired to stand up. At all the assemblages large collections were taken—the money being given to the local charities, feeble churches, orphan asylums or Young Men’s Christian Associations—my services being entirely gratuitous". what a summer! There must have been much praying here and elsewhere for my welfare, or no mortal could have gone through all that I went through.

Only one thing I saw in the chapels and churches I did not like. That is a lack of appreciation of each other as between the national church and the dissenters. Now each is doing a great work that the other cannot do. God speed them all—they of the episcopacy and they ol the dissenters! Some need the ritual of the national church and others the spontaneity of the Wesleyan. In the kingdom of God there is room for all to work and each in his own Way. Some people are born Episcopalians and others Methodists and others Baptists and others Presbyterians, and do not let us force our notions on others. . _.;

As for myself, I was born so near the line that I feel as much at home in one denomination as another, and when in the Episcopal church the liturgy stirs my soul so that I cannot keep back the tears, and it overwhelms me with its solemnity and its power. Whein in an old fashioned Methodist church the responses of “Amen!” and “Hallelujah!” lift me until, like Paul, I am in blessed bewilderness as to “whether in the body or out of the body, God knoweth.” And as for the Baptists, though I have never been anything but sprinkled, 1 have immersed hundreds and expect to immerse hundreds more in the baptistry under this pulpit where I now stand. If thepessmists would get out of the way—the people who snivel and groan and think everything has gone to the dogs or is about to go—l say if these pessimists would onlv get out of the wav, the world would soon see the salvation of God. Christian 1 ity is only another name for elevated optimism. Was Isaiah an optimist? See the deserts incarnadined with red roses and snowedj'under with white lilies and his lamb asleep between the paws of a lion. Was St. John an optimist? Read the uplifting splendors in the Apocalypse and the hallelujah chorus With which the old book which they cannot kill, closes. The greatest thing I can think of would be to have a triple alliance of America, England and Russia 4aharmonizatton, and then to have upon all of them come a deluge of the Holy Ghost. Let the defamation of other nations cease. Peace and good will to men! For that glorious oonsum m atlon .whichiiiar WTjWrtnriSmr we think, let us pray, remembering that God can do more in five, minutes than man can do in five centuries. If the consummation is not effected in our day I shall ask the privilege of coming out from heaven a little while to look at this old world when it shall have put on its millennial beauty. I think God will let us come out to see it at least once in its perfected state before it is burned up. I should not wonder if all heaven would adjourn for an excursion to this world to see how a shipwrecked planet was got off the breakers and set afloat again amid the eternal harmonies. Meanwhile let us do all we can to make it better, and it will somehow tell in the final result, though it be only a child’s sob bushed or a trickling tear wiped from a pale face, or a thorn extracted from a tired foot, or a sinful soul washed white os the wool. May God help us to help othersl And ao these lessons of gratitude and sympathy and helpfulness and vindication I have brought you an the views of this morning. j All those beautiful German beer mugs of blue earthenware have a little hole drilled near the top of the handle. This is designed to make it easy to have lids fitted to the mugs t No German regards his mug as complete without a lid, but many of the mugs are imported in that condition. A not uncommon East Side trade h that of the man who tits lids of Britannia ware to mugs mid beer pitchers. He usually casts and shapes his own lids, and, with a charcoal fire, solder and soldering irons, rapidly caps the mugs and pitchers. Once ; a mug is supplied with a lid no German drinking in company with his friends can safely leave his mug open lest it suddenly be closed with the bottom of a neighbor's mug. which process necessitates a now round of beer at the expense of the man who has neglected to keep tho lid of his mug down. "jl . ' Emperor William, of Germany,, has sent a gold watch, bearing a flattering inscription, to the Marquis Manoel Mancebo, a Brazilian Ifcval