Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1892 — HOLIDAY AND HOLY DAY. [ARTICLE]

HOLIDAY AND HOLY DAY.

Yuletide Theology by Dr. Talmage. ' r Chrirtxnaa JtMional—lß9B to Be a Year of I Wonders—Tribate to the Dying Year. • v. - ‘ Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn last Sunday. Text, Colossians ii, 16: “In Respect of a holy day.” He said: I What the Bible here and elsewhere calls a holy day we, by change of one letter and change of pronunciation, call holiday. But by change of spelling anil accentuation we cannot change the fact that holidays have great significance. Whether you t take the old style of my text nnd ’call th.m holy days, or the modern style and call them holidays, they somehow set all my nerves a tingle and my deeper emotions in io prpfoundest agitation. i For years Christmas day, starting in the midst of one week, and New Year's day, starting io the midst of another week, we have been perplexed to know when the holidays begun and when they ended,and perhaps we may have begun them too soon or continued them too long. But this year they are bounded by two beaches of geld—Sabbath. Dec. 25, 1892, and Sabbath, lan. 1. 1893 I propose that we divide this holiday season, the two Sabbaths of the holiday and the six days between, into three chapters—the ’first part a chapter of illustrious birthday; the second part a chapter of an annual decadence; the third part a chapter of chronological introduction. First, then, a chapter of illustrious birthday. Not a day of any year but has been marked by the nativity of some good or great soul. But what are all those birthdays compared with December 25, for on or about that day was born one who eclipsed all the great names of the centuries — Jesus of Bethlehem, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus of Golgotha, Jesus of Olivet, Jesus of the heavenly throne. The greatest pictures have been made about scenes in his lifetime. The greatest sacrifices on fields of battle or in hospital or on long march or in martyrdom have been inspired by his self abnegation. The finest words of eloquence ever speken have been uttered in the proclamation of his gospel. The grandest oratorios that have ever rolled from orchestras were descriptive of his life and death. • No wonder we celebrate his birth —rro testant church,Catholic church, Greek church, St. Isaac’s of St. Petersburg, St Peters at Rome, the Madaleine at Paris, St. Paul’s in London, Joining all our American cathedrals and churches and log cabin meeting houses and homes in keeping .this pre.-eminent birth festival. Elaborate and prolonged efforts have been made to show that the star that pointed to the inanger in which Christ was born was not what . it appeared to be, but a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. Astronomers, you know, can calculate backward as well as forward, and as they can tell what will occur a hundred years from now among the heavenly bodies so they can accurately calculate backward and tell what occurred eighteen or nineteen hundred years ago. And it is true that seven years before Christ in Chaldea, about three hours before day dawn, there was a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. But I prefer the simple story of the Bible, that a light of some kind i —stellar or meteoric —pointed from the sky to the straw cradle.

When it is so easy for God to make a world that he puts eighteen millions of them within one sweep of the telescope, he could certainly afford one silvery or fiery signal of some kind to point the world to the place where the sovereign of the universe lay incarnated and infantile. * If a king at the birth of a son can have the palace illumined and couriers sent with swift dispatch to announce the gladness at the gates and wake up an empire with cannonade, lam not surprised that at the birth of the Son of God there was celertial agitation, and my only wonder is that.mstead of one star or one meteor giving signal, all worlds did not make demonstration. You see, the birth at Bethlehem must have been more novel and startling to the heavens than the crucifixion on Calvary. It was expected that Christ would be maltreated. The world always had maltreated its good and great friends. Joseph hurled into the pit, Shadrach put into the fiery furnace, Jeremiah lowered intoadungeon. David hounded from the throne, Elijah compelled to starve or take his food from the beak of a filthy raven, and Socrates condemned to death, so that the Calvarian massacre was in the same old line of malreatment. As the finger of light that Dec. 25 pointed to the straw cradle, now all the fingers of Christendom this moment, fingers of childhood and old age, fingers of sermon and song and, decoration and festivity, point to the’ great straw cradle. Am I not right in saying that the first of the three chapters of the holidays should be devoted to the illustrious birthday? As far as possible gather the children and grandchildren, but put no estopple on racket, whether of laughter or swift feet or toys in shape of rail trains or trumpets or infant effigy. Let the old folks for one day at least say nothing about rheumatism or prospect of early demise, or the degeneracy of modern times, or the poison in confectymery. If children and grandchildren can not have full swing during the holidays* when will they have it? They

will be still soon enough, and their feet will slacken their pace, and the burdens of life will bear them down. Houses get awfully still when the* children are gone. While they stay let them fill the room with resounding mirth that you can hear the echoe i twenty years after they are dead. The second chapter of the holidays must speak of annual decadence. This is the last Sabbath of the year. The steps of the year are getting short, for it is old now. When it waved the springtime blossoms the year was young, and when it swung the scythe and cradle through the summer harvest fields t|>e year was strong, but it is getting out of breath now. and after six more throbs of the pulse will be dead. We cannot stop this annual decadence. Set all the clocks back, set all the watches set a]! the th? chronometers back, but you set time back. For the old family clock you might suppose that time ’ would . have especial respect, and that if you took hold of these old hands on the faca of that centenarian of a time piece and pushed them back you might expect that time would stop or retreat for at least a few minutes. “No. no!” says the old family clock. “I must go on. I saw your father and mother on their wedding day. I struck the hour of your nativity. I counted the festal hours of the day in which you brought home a bride. I sounded the knell at your father's death. I tolled at your mother’s departure. Yea, I must sound your own going out of life. I must go on. I must go on. Tick, took! Tick, tockl” But there is a great city clock high up in the tower. There are so many wrongs in all our cities to bexighted, so many evils to be extirpated, so many prisons to be sanitaried—stop the city clock until all these things are done. Let Common Ccuicil and all the people of the great towp decree that ths City Hall clock shall stop. We do not want the sins of 1892 to be handed over to 1893. We do not want the young year to inherit the misfortunes of the old year. By ladders lifted to the tower and by strong hands take hold and halt the city clock. “No, no!” says the city clock. “I cannot “wait until you correct all evils or soothe all’ sorrow or drive out all sin, I have been counting the steps of your progress ss a city. I have seen your opportunities. I have deplored your neglects; but time wasted is wasted forever. I must go on. T must go on. Tick, tock! Tick, took!” But in the tower of the capitols at Washington and London and Berlin and Vienna and and all the great National capitals there are clocks. *

Suppose that by presidential proclamation and resolution of Senate and House of Representatives our national clock in the Capitol turret be ordered to stop. “Stop, O clock, until sectional animosities are cooled off, until our Sabbaths are better kept and drunkenness turns to sobriety, and bribery, fraud and dissipation quit the land! Stop, O clock in the tower of the great United States Capitol!” “No, no!” says the says the dock. “I have bean going on so long I cannot afford to stop. I sounded the birthday of American independence. I rang out the return of peace in 1865. I have seen many presidents inaugurated. I struck the hour of Lincoln’s assassination. I have beat time for eman-

cipation proclamation, .apd Chicago fire, and Charleston earthquake, and epidemics of fever, and cholera. Nations never stop. They march on toward salvation or demolition. And ( why should I stop? I chime for the national holidays. I toll for the mighty dead, I must go on. I must go on. Tick, tock! Tick, tock!” Sorry am I to have 1892 to depart this life. It has been a good year. What bright days! What starry nights! What harvests! What religious convocations! What triumphs of,art and science and invention and religion ! But, alas, how sacred it has been with sorrows! What pillows hot with fever that could not be cooled! What graves opening wide epough takedown beauty, strength, and usefulness! What octogenarians putting down the staff of earthly pilgrimage and taking the crown of heavenly reward! What children, as in Bible time, crying, “My head, my head! And they carried him to his mother, and he sat on her knees until noon and then died."

What mingling of emotions in this closing year! What orange blossoms for the marriage altar, and what myrtle for the tombs of the dead! Hosannas and lamentations in col* lision. Anthem and dead march mounting from the same ivory keys. I advised that you divide this season into three chapters —the first a chapter of illustrious birthday, the second a chapter of annual decadence, the third a chapter of chronological introduction, and this last chapter we have reached. In olden times there the was a style of closing an old year and opening a new one that was very suggestive. TBo family would sit up until twelve o'clock at night, and when the clock struck twelve the family would all go to the front door of the house, take down the bar and turn back the lock and swing the door wide open to let the old year out and the new year in. And that is what we are going to dp. With the same measured step that time has kept since it started it will come tp outdoor in the closing night of this week. “Why?” you ask. “Have you any forebodings or premonitions?” No! “Are you expecting the millennium this year?” Nol “Why, then, say this about the coming year?” For the simple reason that I find as the years go by they become more and

more eventful. Compare the Nine teen th century with the last half. The surges of'this ocean of times are rolling higher and higher. And so I expect that'lß93 will be a greater year than 1892. Its wed ding bells will be merrier. Its ob sequies will be sadder. Its scientific discoveries more brilliant. Its pros perities more significant. Its open ing more grand. Its termination more stupendous. In what mood shall we open the door of the new year? With faith, strong faith, buoyant faith, tri umphant. God will see you through His graei will prove sufficient if you trust him.■ You can go to him at any time and .find sympathy. He will console and help in every crisis. Come, now, let me unstrap that knapsack of care from your shoul ders. Come prosperity or adversity, come wadding or burial, come health or sickness, come life or death, com? time or eternity, all’s well, ftU’s weU. If you keep your lica.t right, all else will be right. Living and dying, may it all be his! Thus in three chapters I have counseled that the holidays be grouped. May nothing interfere with their felicities. May they be so spent that they will be food for pleasant reminiscence further on. You know that after awhile the old homestead will be broken up. For years and years. the children come home td spend the holidays, and the house is rummaged from garret to cellar, and the scenes of childhood are rehearsed, and we laugh till the tears come as we talk over some boyish or girlish freak or cry over some old trouble ended, but the heart swings back again to mirth, for it does not take a half second for tear of the eye to strike the smile of the lip. For a few years the grandchildren make the holidays merry. One of the many uses of grandchildren is to keep old folks young. Then after a few years the annual gathering at the old homestead is half broken up, for father or mother is gene. About two years after (for there are generally about two years between the time of their going) the other half of the holiday season is

broken up. Then the old house goes into the possession of strangers, and the sons and daughters by that time have homes of their own. They plant theirown Christmas trees, and nang up their own children’s stockings, and twine their own holly and mistletoe, and have their own good times.

Meanwhile we. their parents and '▼’’andnarent’!. will. I ♦hS'Mir.h the atonement of our blessed Lord, be keeping holidays livelier and higher up—in the presence of the very Christ whose birth the earthly Christm&s.conimemorates, ana oi cue “Ancient of Days” who saw the first year open and will see the last year close, in companionship with the ever widening circle of heavenly kindred, manj' already there and many soon to come, and the tables of that festivity will purple with the grapes of Eschol, and redden with “the new wine of the kingdom,” and glow with “twelve manner of fruits” from the trees of life, and the gifts of those holidays will be mansions and thrones and crowns of glory that never fade away. Oh. that these delightful holidays of earth may fit us for those more delightful holidays of heaven!

Mosquitoes in Texas. St. Louis Globe-Democrat. “Speaking of mosquitoes,” said F« JL. Goodwin, a guest of the Southern, “reminds me of an expenenceT once had at Galveston, Tex. I arrived at the Island City late one night, very tired, and was soon sleeping soundly. About 4 o’clock in the morning I awoke, fully convinced that I was being roasted alive. 1 discovered that my bed had no mosquito bar and that several thousand of those ravenous songsters had been presenting their bills. A mosquito bite is rank poison to me, and cause: a swelling resembling a boil. By daylight my eyes were swelled shut, my hands were puffed up like a prizefighter’s after a mil), and from head io heel 1 was in about the same condition to which the devil reduced Job. It was two days before I could leave my room. Galveston , island and the low land of the coast is a great breeding ground of the mosquito. When tlqere is a strong oreeze from the sea they are blown into the bay, and the city is thus kept during the greater part of the year comparatively free from these pests. They are always to be found, however, and it is necessary to sleep under bars even during the months of January and February. Bai!road brakemen in south Texas are sometimes compelled to wear mosquito netting over their faces while on duty."