Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1892 — MOTHER OF ALL. [ARTICLE]

MOTHER OF ALL.

Dr. Talmags Presents a Novel View oi the Divine Love, rh« Old Standard* in Urammir Bare Lad To ° Many to Thlnt at QodatPWfclT— Masculine—Divine Attributes Are Feminine Also and Motherly. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn last Sunday. Subject: “The Mother of All.” Text, Isaiah Ixvi. 13. “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I support you.’> He said: The Bible is a warm letter of affection from a parent to a child, and yet there are many who see chiefly the severer passages. As there may be fifty or sixty nights of gentle dew ‘in one summer that will not cause as much remark as one hailstorm of half an hour, so there are those who nre more struck by those passages of the Bible that announce the in dignation of God than by those that announce his affection. There may come to a household twenty or fifty letters of affection during the year, and they will uot make as much excitement in that home as one sheriff’s writ, and so there are people who 'are more attentive to those passages which announce the judgment of hod than to those which announce his mercy and his favor. God is a lion, John says in the book of Revelation. God is a breaker, Micah announces in hisijroph 'cy; God is a rock. God is a king. But bear also that God is love. The text of this morning brnds with great gentleness and love over all who are prostrate in sin and trouble. It lights up with compassion. It melts with tenderness. It breathes upon us the hush of an eternal lullaby, for it announces that God is our Mother. I remark, in the first place, that God has a mother’s simplicity of instruction. A fiither does not know hoy? to teach a child the ABC. Mon are uot steilTfuTfri the primary department, but a mother has so much patience that she will tell a child for the hundredth time the difference between F. and G and between I and J. Sometimes it is by blocks; sometimes by the worsted work; sometimes by the slate; sometimes by the b >ok. She th us teachp- the child and has no awkwar nzss cf condescension in so do ng. So God, our Mother, stoops down to our infantile minds. Though we are told a thing a thousand times and we do not understand It, our heavenly Mother goes on, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little. God has been teaching some of us thirty years and some of us sixty years one fvord of one syllable, and Ve do not know it yet—faith, faith ! When we come to that word we stumble, we halt, we lose our place, wo pronounce it wrong. Still God’s patience is not exhausted. God, our Mother, puts us in the school of prosperity, and the figures are in sunshine, and we cannot spell them. God puts us in the school of adversity, and the letters are black, and we cannot spell them, if God-Were merely ,n kinghe would punish us ; if he were simply a father he would whip us ; but God is a mother, and so we arc borne with and helped all the way through. A mother teaches her child chiefly by pie-tares-.- K she-wants to- set forth to her child the hideousness of a quarrelsome disposition, instead of giving a lecture on that subject she turns over a leaf and shows the child two boys in a wrangle, and says, ** Doe s not that look horrible ? ”- If ■lie wants to teach her child the awfulness of war she turns over the picture book nud shows the war charger, the headless trunks of butchered men, the wild, bloodshot eye of battle rolling under lids of t£ime, and she says, “ That is war 1” The child understands it. In a great many bosks the best parts are the pictures. The style may be insipid, the type poor, but a picture alwuys attracts a child’s attention. Now God, our Moth r, teachss us almost everything by pictures. Is the divine goodness to be set forth ? How does God, our Mother, teach us ? By an autumnal picture. The barns arc full. The wheat stacks are rounded. The cattle are chewing the cud lazily in the sun. The orchards are dropping the ripe pippins into the lap of the farmer. The natural world that has been busy all summer seems now to be resting in great abundance. God wistaos to set forth the fact that in the judgment the good will bo divided from the the wicked. How is it done? By a picture, by a parable —a (ishiug scene. A gipup of hardy men, long bearded, geared for standing to the waist in water,sleeves rollod up. Long oar. sun gilt; boat battered as though it had been a play mate of the storm. A full net thumping about with the fish, which have just discovered their captivity, the worthless mossbunkers and the useful flounders all in thd same net. The fisherman puts his hand down amid the squirming fins, takes out the mossbunkers and throws them into the water and gathers the good fish into the pail. So, says Christ, it shall bo at the end of the world. The bad he will cast away, and the good he will keep. I remark again that God baß a mother's favoritism- A father sometimes shows a sort of favoritism; Here is a boy—strong, well, of high forehead and quick intellect. The father says, “I will take thatboy into my firm yet,” or, ,l I will give him the very 1 best possible education.” ,There are instance? where for the culture of the one all the others have been robbed. A sad favoritism, but

that is not the mother's favorite. I will tell von her favorite. There is a child who at two years of age had a fall. He has never got heart scarlet fever mtiSigd was. That child has caused the mother more anxious nights than all the other children. If he coughs in sleep and goes to him. The last thing she does when going out of the house is to give a charge in regard to him. .The first thing on coming in is to ask in regard to him. Why, the children of the family all know that be is the favorite, and says: “Mother, you let him do just as he pleases, and you give him a gre-at many things which you do not give us. He is your favorite.” The mothers smile; she knows it is so. So he ought to be, for if there is any one in the world needs sympathy more than another..'it *is an invalid child; weary on the first mile of life's ourney; carrying an aching head, a weak side, au irritated lung. So the mother ought to make him a favorite. ■ God, our Mother, has favorites. “Whom the Lord loveth lie chasteneth”—that is, oue whom he especially loves he chasteneth, God loves us, but is there one weak and sick arid sore and wounded and suffering and faint? That is the one who lies nearest and more perpetually on the great loving heart of God, Why, it never coughs but our Mother—God—hears it. It never stirs a weary limb in the bed but our Mother —God —knows of it. There is no such a watcher as God. The best nurse may be overborne by fatigue and fall asleep in the chair; but God, our Mother, after being up a year of nights with a suffering child, never slumbers nor sleeps. , “Oh,” says one, “I cannot under-, stand all that about affliction!” A refiner of .-diver once explained it to a Christian lady, “I put the silver on the fire, and -1 keep refining it and tryingit till I cans e my face in it and then I take it out.” Just so it is fee *ps his dear children in the furnace till the divine image may be seen in them, then they are taken out of the lire. “Well,” says some one, “if that is thi way God treats his favorites, I do not want to be a favorite,” There is a barren field on autumn day just wanting to be let alone. There is bangjat the .bars and a rattle of whiffletre.s and clevises. The field says, “What is the farmer going to do with me now?” The farmer puts the plow in the ground, shouts to the horses, the colter goes tearing through the sod and the furrow soon reaches from fence to fence. Next day there is a bang- at tire bars and the rattle of whiiffetrees again. The field says, “I wonder what the farmer is going to do now?” The farmer hitches the horses to the harrow and it goes bounding and tearing across the field. Next day there is a rattle at the bars again, and the field says, “What is the fanner going to do now?” lie walks heavily across the field, scattering seed as h' walks. Ater awhile a cloud comes. T'he field says, “What, more trouble!” It begins to rain. After awhile the wind changes to the northeast and it begins to snow. Savs the field, “Is it not enough that I have been trampled upon and drowned? Must I be snowed under?” After awhile spring comes oeft of the gates of the south and warmth and bandages the gashes of the wheat field, and a July morning drops a crown of gold upon the head of. the “Oh,” says the field, “now I know the use of the plow, of the harrow, of the heavy foot, of the shower and of the snow storm. It is well enough to be trodlen and trampled and drowned and snowed under if in the eud I can yield such a glorious harIvcst.” ■ When I see God especially busy in troubling and trying a Christian I know that out of that Christian's character there is to come some especial good. A quarryman goes down into the excavation, and with strong-handed machinery bores into the rock. The rock says, “What do you do that for?” He puts powder in; he lights a fuse; there is a thundering crash. The rock says; “Why, the whole mountain is going to 1 pieces. ” The crowbarnr plunged; the rock is dragged out. After awhile it is taken to the artist’s studio. It says: “Well, now I have got to a good, warm, comfortable place at last.” But the sculptor takes the chisel and mallet, and he digs for the eyes, and he cuts for the mouth, nnd he bores for the ear, and he rubs it with sandpaper, until the rock says: “When will this torture be ended?” A sheet is thrown over it; it stands in darkness. After awhile it is taken out. The covering is removed. It stands in the sunlight, in the presence of ten thousand applauding people. as they greet the statue of the poet, or the prince, or the conqueror. “Ah,” says the stone, “now I understand it. I am a great deal better off now standing as the statue of a conqueror than I would have been down in the quarry.” So God finds a man down in the qarry of ignorance and sin. How to get him up? He must be bored and blasted am} chiseled and scoured and stand sometimes in the darkness. But after awhile the mantle of affliction will fait off and he will be greeted by the one hundred and forty-four thousand and the thousands of thousands as more than conqueror. Oh. my friends, God. our Mother, is just as kiud in our afflictions as in our prosperities. God never touches us but for our goo I. i if a field clean and cultured is better off than a barren field, and if a stone

that, has become a statue is better ofi than the marble in the quarry, then the soul that God chastens may be His favorite. I remark that God has a mother's -capacity for attending to little hurts. The father is shocked at the broken bone of a child, or at the sickness that sets the eradleon fire with fever, biit jt takis themother to sympathize with all the little ailmen ts and bruises of thaolrild. -If the- child have a splinter in its 1 hand it wants the mother to take it out, and not the fathfer. The father says, “Oh, that is nothing,” but the mother knows it is something, and that a little hurt is sometimes very great. So with God, our &.'o her; a'l our annoynn < 3 are important enough to look at anti sympathize with. Nothiug with God is something. There are uo eipheis In God’s arithmetic. And if we were onTy good enough of sight we COulcl see as much through a microscope as through a telescope _ Those that iriuv .be impalpable and intlnitessimal ’o u> may be pronounced arid infinite to God. A mathematical point is deflned a; having no parts, no magnitude. It is to small you cannot imagine it, and yei a mathematical point may b?a start ing point for a great eternity. God's surveyors carry a very loug chain. A scale must be very delicate th it can weigh a grain, but God’s scale is so delicate that he can weigh with it that wh'ch is so small that a grain is a million times heavier. I remark further that God has a mothers patience for the er» ing. If one does wrong, first his associates in life east him off ; if he goes on in the wrong wav. his business partner casts him off ; if he goes on, his best friends cast him off—his father casts him off. But after all others have cast him off, where does he go? Who holds no grudge and forgives the last time as well as the first ? Who sits by the murderer’s counsel all through the long trial? Who tarries the longeit at,the windows of a culprit’s cell ? Who, when all others think ill of a man. keeps on thinking well of him ? It is his mother. God bless her gray hairs if she be still alive, and bless her gray hairs if she be gone! And bless the rocking chair in which she used to sit, and blessthe cradle that she used to rock, and bless the Bible she used to read ! So God. our Mother, has patience for all the erring. After everybody else has cast a man off, God, our Mother, comes to the rescue. God leaps to take charge of a bad case. After all the other doctors have got through the heavenly Physician comes in. Human sympathy at such a time does not amount to much. Even the sympathy of the church, I am sorry‘to say, often does not amount to much. I want to say finally that Go ! has a mother’s way of putting a child to sleep. You know there is no cradle 9ong like a mother’s. After the excitement of the evening it is almost impossible to get the child to sleep. If the rocking chair stop ft moment the eyes are wide open, but the mother’s patience and the mother’s soothing manner keep on until after awhile the angel of slumber puts his wing over the pillow. -Well, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, i the time will come when we will bo wanting to put to sleep. The day of our life will be done, and the shadows of the night of death will be gathering around us. Then wo want God to soothe us, to hush us to sleep. Let the music at our going not be the dirge of the organ, or the knell of the church tower, or the drum ming of a “dead march,” but let it be the hushof a mother’s .uUaby. Oh,: the cradle of the grave will be soft with the pillows of the promises! When we are being rocked into that last slumber I want this to be the cradle song, “As one whom a mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.”