Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 March 1893 — A NEW STYLE SERMON. [ARTICLE]

A NEW STYLE SERMON.

A Homily For the Press—*!‘Ke- i iigioa <i.t Home?* The Mothers of drcat Ulen—.To'Uina.S Kesolve—The* FtxtuJUy Altar—Dr. Ta 11.... .... th. ■ ma;e s Dtcourso. .. H— —— Rev. Dr. Talmage was in Ch eago last- Sunday, but did not preach, lie prepared for the press the ft How- J ing discourse? Subject: “Religion i •at Home.” Text: Joshua xxiv, 15 — “As for me and my house, we will serve ti-.e Lord. ” Al-.-u-.cl, Jr.shua! You will have ' no time for family rMlglr>TU _ 'Y7ml area military charuvtei. and y.iur time will be tala n up with a 'fairs connected, with the army. Yo i are the,'Washirgtor.. the Wellington, the McMahon of the Israelitish host: you w.ill.haiYesa..great many questions toJ cuttle: you will nave no time fdr re- I ligion. But Joshua, with the same woicir sun and moon to halt and stack Anns grcnmiTorlKe" i’.eavens.ma.giq.xfAs- for:'biri7aii?Hny house, wo will serve the Lord.” .i »’■ It is a groat d»-al easier to invite .a (iisagreeable gu-’St F:r.:i him. If you do not want 'religion you had better not ask ih to come, for after coming it mtsymlny a great. - while: —Isaac Wat ts went -to vis • t Sir Thomas and Lady Abney tit their place in Theobald and to stay a week, and stayed 35 years, and if r«.-ligion once gets into your household the probability is it will stay there forNow. the question I want to discuss is: What will religion do for ■<lio household? Question the. first! What -did- it- "do. for your fathers house if you were brought up in a Christian home? That whole scend has vanished, but it comes back to-day. . The hour for morning prayers came. You' were invited in. Somewhat fidgety, -you.sat and listened. Your fathermade no pretension of rhetorical reading, and lie just went through the chapter in a plain, straightforward way. Then you knelt. It was about the same prayer morning by morning and nigliy by night, for he had the same sins to ask pardonjor, and he had the same blessings for which to be-grateful day after day and year after year. Was that morning and evening exercise iii your father's house debasing or elevatingls it not among the most sacred reminiscences? Yqu were not as devotional as some of the older members of your father's house who ■were kneeling with you at the time, and you did not bow your, head as closely as they did, and you looked around and you saw just the posture your father and mother assumed while kneeling on the floor. The whole scene is so- photographed on your niofnery that if you. were an artist you could draw it now just as they knelt. The broken prayer of your father has had more, effect upon you than aii you ever read iir Shakespear ? and Milton and Tennyson and Dante. You have gone over mountains and across seas. You never for a moment got out of sight of that domestic altar. Oh, my friends, is it your opinion this morning that the ten or fifteen minutes subtracted from each day for family devotion was ait economy or waste of time in your father’s household? I think some of us are coming to the conclusion that the religion that was in our lather's house would be a very appropriate religion for our own ht-mes. If family prayers did not damage that household there is no probability they will damage our household. i ‘Washington’s mother was patriotic. Samuel Budget's mother was a thorough Christian. St. Bernard’s mother was noble minded. So you might have guessed from their children. Good men always have good mothers. There may once in ten or twenty years be an exception to the rule, but it is only an exception. Benjamin West’s, mother kissed him after she had seen his first sketch with the pencil.- Benjamin West afterward said, “That kiss made me a painter.” The young people may- makea wide curve from the straight path, but they are almost sure to come back to the right road. It may not be until the death of one of the parents. How often it is that we hear someone say, “Oh, he was a wild young man, but since his father’s death he has been different!" The fact is that his father's coffin, or the mother’s coffin, is often the altar of repentance for the child. Oh, that was a stupendous day, the day of father’s burial. It was not the officiating clergyman who made the chief impression, nor the sympathizing mourners; it is the father asleep in the casket. Oh, young man with cheek flushed with dissipation! how long is it since you have been out to your father’s grave? Will you not go this week? Perhaps the storms of the last few days have bent the headstone until it leans far over. You had better no out and see whether the lettering has been defaced. You had better go out and see whether the gate of the lot is closed. You had better go out and see if you cannot find- a sermon in the springing grass. Oh. young man, go out this week and see your father's grave! They do not know much about the Eobility of the western trapper. A traveler going along was overtaken by night and a storm,and he entered a cabm. He was alarmed. He had a large amount of raone.V with him,but •he did not dare venture out at night Into the storm. He did not like the

' ---p--— < 1 looks of the ho.seMld. After awhile the father—the western trapper—camein, gun on shoulder, and when the traveler looked at him he was still more affrighted,' ' After awhile the.fam ly were whisp-~ ■'erihg togethcr in hfeek-ebrner of the room, and the j traveler thought to himself, “Oh! now hiy.time ha. come: the night rather than here, ” But the swarthy man came up to him and said: “air, we are rough peopk: we get our living by bu:.ting, and we are very tired when night .<•bines,’ but before going to bed v. e have a habit of asking prayers, and I think w<> will have our usual ‘ cusioin tonight, and if you don’t believe in that kind of.thing .if you will just .step outside the door for a little whi 1e I will be much obi iged to you. ’ ’ There was in my ancestral line an incident so strangely impressive that it seems more like, romance than reality. It has sometimes been so inaccurately put forth that 1 nov/ give you the true incident. My grandfather and .grandmother, living at Somerville, N. J., v.-ent to Basking Ridge under the Rev. Dr. Finley. They came home so impressed with what they had seen that they resolved on the sjialya--tion-of-their children. - ■ _ The. young people of the house were to go off for an evening party, and my grandmother said: "Now, when you are all ready for the. party, come to my~room, for I have something very important to tell you.” All ready for departure, they came to her room, and she said to them, “Now, I want you to remember, while you-two away-this cv en’ing, that I am all the time in this room praying for your salvation, and J shall not cease praying until you get back. ” The young people went to the party, but amid the loudest hilarities of the night they could nbt forget tliat their mother vz>s praying for them. The evening passed, and the night passed. The next day. my grandparents heard an outcry in an adjoining room and they went in and found their daughter imploring the salvation of the gospel. The daughter told them that her brothers were at the barn and at thft wagon house under powerful conviction of sin. They went to the barn. They found my uncle Jehiah, who afterward bdcame a minister of the gospel, crying to God for mercy. They went to the wagon house. They found their son David, who afterward became my father, imploring God’s pardon and mercy. Before a great while the whole family were saved, and David went and told the story to a young woman to whom he was affianced, who, as a result of the story, became a Christian, and from her own lips—my mother’s—l received the incident. There were twelve of us children. I trace the whole line of mercy back to that hour when my Christian grandmother sat in her room imploring the blessing of God upon her children. Nine of her descendants'became ministers of the gospel. Many of her descendants are in heaven, many of them still in the Christain (•outiict. Did it pay for her to spend the whole evening in prayer for her household? Ask her before, the throne of God surrounded by her children. Jn the presence of the Christian* church to-day I make this record of ancestral piety. Oh, there is a beauty and a tenderness and a sublimity in family religion. Oh, that family Bible! The New Testament in small type i s not w’orthy of being called by that name. Have a whole Bible in- large type, with the family record of marriages and births and deaths. What if the curious should turn over the leaves to see how old you are? You are younger now than you will ever be again> The curious will find out from those with whom you have played in your childhood how' old you are. Have a family Bible. It will go down from generation to generation full of holy memories. A hundred years after you are dead it will be a benediction to those who come after you. Other books worn out or fallen apart will be flung to the garret or the cellar, but this will be inviolate, and it will be your protest for centuries against iniquity and in behalf of righteousness. There are two arms to this subject. The one arm puts its hand on all parents. It says to them: “Don’t interfere with your children’s welfare. Don’t interfere with their eternal happiness. Don’t you by anything you do put out your foot and trip them into ruin. Start them under the shelter, the insurance, the everlasting help of Christian parentage. Catechisms will not save them, though catechisms are good. The rod will not save them, though the rod may be necessary. Lessons of virtue will not save them, though they are very important. Becoming a through and through, up and down, out and out Christian yourself will make them Christians.” The other arm of this subject puts its hand upon those who had a pious bringing up, but who as yet have disappointed the expectations excited in regard to them. I said that children brought up in Christian households, though they might make a wide curve, were very apt to come back to the straight path. Have you not been curving out long enough, and is it not most time for you to begin to curve in? I feel anxious about you; you feel anxious about yourself. Oh, cross over into the right path! If your parents prayed for you twice a day —each of them twice a day for 20 years—tliat would make 20,000 prayers for you. Think of them! By tlie m’einory of the cradle in which your childhood was rocked with the foot that long ago ceased

to move, by the crib in which your own children slumber night by by the two graves in which sleep, those tvzo old hearts that beat with love so long for your-welfare, and by the two graves- in. .which you. nowthc .living father and mother, will find your last repose, I urge you to tlig* of ynny (Infry. .Ok, you departed Christian ancestry .fathers ar d mothers of glory, bend from the ski?s to-day and give new emphasis to what you told us on earth with many te=ifs and anxieties! Keep a place for us by your blissful side, for to-day, in the presence of earth and heaven and hell, and by the help of the cross, and amid overwhelming and gracious memories, we^resolve, each one for himself,. “As for me and my house, wo will servo the Lord.”