Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 December 1892 — HUSKING TIME. [ARTICLE]

HUSKING TIME.

The Harvest and Thanksgiving Season Dr. Talmage’s Topic. The Ancients Were Acquainted With Our American Corn— The Year's Harvest Forshadows the Earth’s Harvest. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn last Sunday. Subject ‘The Ingathering of the Harvests.”' Text Job v. 20, “As a Shock of Coro" .Cometh in in His Season.” He said: • This is the time of the year for husking corn. If you have recently been in the fields of Pennsylvania, or New Jersey, or New York, cr New England, or in any of the country districts, you know that the corn is all cut. The sharp knife struck through the stalks and left them all along the iield uutil a man came with a bundle of straw and twisted a few of these wisps of straw into a band, and then, gathering up as much of the corn as he could compass with his arms, ho bound it with this wisp of straw, and then stood it in the field in what is called a shock. There are now at least two billion bushels of corn either standing in the shock or having been already husked. The farmers gather one day on one farm and then aqother day on another farm, and they put on their rough husking apron, and they take the husking peg, which is a piece of iron with a leathern loop fastened to the hand, and with it unsheath the coru from the hush and toss it into the golden heap. Then the wagons come along and take it to the corncrib. About corn as an important cereal or corn as a metaphor the Bible is constantly speaking, You know about the people in famine coming to buy corn of Joseph, and the foxes on fire running into the“standingcorn,” and about the oxen treading out the corn, and about the seven thin ears of corn that in Pharoah's dream devoured the seven good, ears, and the “parched corn” handed to beautiful Ruth byrthe harvesters of Bethlehem end Abigail’s five measures of* parched corn,” with which she hoped to appease the enemies of her drunken husband, and David’s description of the valleys “covered over with corn,” and “the huudful of corn in the earth,"and “the full corn in the ear,” and Christ’s Sabbath morning walk through corn fields, and the disciples “plucking ears of corn,” and so I am not surprised to find corn husking time referred to in my text, “As a shock of corn cometh in in his season." ... There is a difference of opinion as to whether the orientals know anything about the corn as it stands in our fields, but recent discoveries have found out that the Hebrew knew all about Indian maize, for there have • been grains of corn picked up out of ancient crypts and exhumed from hiding places where they were put flown many centuries ago, and they have been planted in our time and have come r up just such Indian maize as we rajse in New York and Ohio; so I am right when I say that mv text may refer to a shock of corn just as you and I bound it; just as you aud 1 husked it. It is high time that the King of Terrors were thrown out of the Christian vocabulary. A vast multitude of people talk of death as though it were the disaster of disasters, instead of being to a good man the blessings of blessings. It is moving out of a cold vestibule into a warm temple. It is migrating into groves of redolence and perpetual fruitage. It is a change from bleak March to roseate Juns. It is a change of matmeies for garlandss. It is the transmuting of the iron handcuffs of earthly incarceration into the diamond wristlets of a bridal party, or to use the suggestion of my text, it is only husking time. It is the tearing off of the rough sheath of the body that the n ight and the beautiful soul may go free. Coming in “like a shock of corn cuineth in in his season.” Christ broke up a fnn. era! procession at the gate of Nain by making a resurrection day for a young man and his mother/ and I would that 1 could break up your sadness and halt the long funeral procession of the world’s grief by some cheering and cheerful view of the last transition. We all know that husking time was a time of frost, Frost on the fence ; frost on the stubble ; frost on the ground ; frost cn the bare broaches of the trees , frost in the air ;"frost on the TiaocTs fifth uskers. You remember we used .to hide between the cornstalks eo as to keep pff the wind, but still j r ou remember now shivering was the body and how painful was the check, and how beuumbed were the hands. But after awhile the sun was high up, and all the frosts went out of the air, and hilarities awakened th*. echoes, and ioy from one corn shock went up, “ Aha, aha! ” and was answered by joy from another corn .shock, “ Aha, aha!” So we all realize that the death of our friend is the nipping of many expectations, the freezing, the chilling, the frosting of many of our hopes. It is far frfttn being a south wind. It comes out of the frigid north, and when they go away from us we stand benumbed in body and benumbed in mind and benumbed in soul. We stand among our dead neighbors, our dead families, and we say, “Will we ever get over it?’* Yes, we will get over it amid-the shoutings of heavenly reunion, and we.will'look bock to all these distresses of bereavemont only as the temporary distresses of* husking time. “ Weeping tuuy endure for a

night, but joy cometh in the morning. ” Of course the huskihg time made rough work with the ear of corn. The husking peg had to be thrust in, and the hard thumb of the husker had to come down on the swathing of the ear, and then there was a pull and there was a ruthless tearing, and then a complete snapping off before the corn was free, and if the husk could have spoken it would have said, .“ Why do you- lacerate me? Why do you wrench me?” Ah, nay friends, that is the way God has arranged that the ear and husk shall part, and that is the way that he has arranged that the body and the soul shall separate. You can afford to have your physical distresses when you know that they are only forwarding the soul’s liberation. Every rheumatic pain is only a plunge of the husking peg. Every neuralgic twinge is only a twist by the husker. There is gold in you that -must come out. Some way the shackle must be broken. Some way the ship must be launched for a heavenly voyage. You mustriet the Heavenly Husbandman husk off the mortality for the immortality. There ought to be great consolation in this for all who have chronic ailnients, since tfye Lord is gradually and more mildly taking away from you that which hinder’s your soul’s liberation, doing gradually for you what for many of us in robust health perhaps he will do in one fefl blow at last. At the close of every illness, at the close of every paroxysm you ought to say, “Thank God, that is all past now.” You will never suffer the same pain twice. You may have a new pain in an old place, but never the same pain twice. The pain does its work and then it dies. Just so many plunges of the crowbar to free the quarry stone for the building. Just so many strokes of the chisel to complete the statue. Just so many pangn to separate the soul from the body. You who have chronic ailments and disorders are*only paying in installments that which some of us will have to pay in one payment when we pay the debt of nature. Thank God, therefore, ye who have chronic disorders, that you have so much less suffering at the last. Perhaps this may be an answer to a question which I asked one Sabbath ixiorniiig but did not answer, Why is it that so many good people have so dreadfully to suffer? You often find a good man with enough pains and distresses, you would think, to discipline a whole colony, while you will fiud a man who is perfectly useless going about with easy digestion and steady nerves and shining health, and his exit from the world is comparatively painless. How do you explain that? Well. I noticed in the husking time that the husking peg was thrust into the corn, and then there must be a stout pull before the swathing was taken off the ear and the full, round, healthy, luxuriant corn was developed. while on the other hand there was corn that hardly seemed worth husking. We threw that into a place by itself and we called it nubbins. Some of it was mildewed and some of it was mice nibbled, and some of it was great promises and uo fulfillment. AH cobs and no corn. Nubbins! After the good corn had been driven to the barn we came around with the corn basket and picked up these nubbins. They were worth, saving, but not worth much. So all around us there are people who amount to comparatively nothing. They develop into no kind of usefulness. They are nibbled on one side by the world, and nibbled on the other side by the devil, and mildewed all over. Great promise and no fulfillment. All cobs and no corn, Nubbins! They are worth saving. I supEosemany of them will get to heaven, ut they are not worthy to be mentioned in the same day with those who went through great tribulations" into the kingdom of our God. Who would not rather have the pains of this life, the misfortunes of this life—who would not rather be torn and wounded and lacerated and husked and at last go in amid the very best grain of the granary—than to be pronounced -pot worth hulking at all. Heaven—one great neighborhood reunion! All kings and queens, all songsters, all millionaires, all banqueters. God the Father, with His children all around Him. 'No ‘ goodby” in all the air. No grave cut in ail the hills. River of crystal rolling over bed of pearl, under arch of chrysoprese, into seas of glass intermingled with fire. Stand at the gate of the granary and see the grain come in; out of the frosts into the sunshine, out of the darkness into •the light, out of the tearing, and the ripping, and the twisting, and the wrenching and lacerating, and the husking time of earth into the wide open door of the King's granary “like as a shock of coru cometh in in his season.” Yes, heaven is a great sociable with joy* like the joy of busking time. No one there feeling so big he declines to speak to some one that is not so large. Archangel willing to listen to smaller cherub. No bolting the door of caste at one heavenly mansion to keep out the inhabitant of a smaller mansion. David taking none of the ars of a giant killer; Joshua making no one halt until he passes because he madethe sun and moon halt; Paul , making no assumption over the most ordinary preacher of righteousness: Naaman, captain of the Syrian host: no more honored than the captive maid who told him where he could get a good doctor. Ob, my soul, what a country! The. humblest man a king, the poorest woman a queen, the incauest house a palace, the shortest lifetime And what is

more strange about it all is we may all get there. m I remember that in the husking time there was a great equality of feeling among the neighbors. There at one corn shock a farther would be at work who owned two hundred acres of ground. The man whom he was talking with at the next corn shock owned but thirty acres of ground, and perhaps all that covered by a mortgage. That evening at the close of the husking day, one man drove home a roan span so frisky, so full of life they got their feet over the traces. The other man walk home. Great difference in education, great difference in worldly means, but I noticed at the husking time they all seemed to enjoy each other’s society. They all seemed to be happy together in those good times. And so it will be in heaven. Our Father will gather his children around him, and the neighbors will come in. and the past will be rehearsed. And some one will tell of victory and we will celebrate, it. And some one will tell of a great struggle, and we will praise the grace that fetched him out of it. And some one will say: “Here is my old father that I put away with heartbreak. Just look at him! He is as young as any of us!” All the shocks of corn coming in in their season. Oh, yes, in their season. Not one of you having died too soon, or having died too late, or having died at haphazard. Planted at just the right time. Plowed at just the right time. Cut down at just the right time. Garnered at just the right time. Coming in in your season. Ob, I wish that the two billiorl bushels of corn now in the fields or on their wav to the seaboard might be a type "of the grand yield Of honor and glory and immortality when all the shocks come in,