Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 June 1893 — CELESTIAL SUNRISE. [ARTICLE]

CELESTIAL SUNRISE.

“Weeping May Endure or a Night but Joy Cometh in the Morning. it ■The Thrashing Machine” of Life's Trials— Dr. Talmage’s Sermon. v. Dr. Talmage preachea at Brooklyn last Sunday. Subject: “The Thrashing Machine.” the text being from Isaiah xxviii, 27, 28, “For the fitches are not threshed with a thrashing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin, but the fitches are beaten out with a staff and the cummin with a rod. Bread corn is bruised because he will not ever be thrashing it.” There are three kind of seed men tioned -fitches, cummin and corn. Of the last we all know. But it may be well to state that the fitches and the cummin were smalt seeds, like the caraway or chickpea. When these grains or herbs were to be threshed they were thrown on the floor and the workmen would come around with staff or rod or flail and beat them until the seed would be separated, but when the corn was to be thrashed that was thrown on the floor, and men would fasten horses or oxen to a cart with iron dented wheels. That cart wouM be drawn around the thrashing floor, and so the work would be accomplished.

—The great thought that the textimpresses upon us is that we all go through some kind of thrashing process. --Afhe fact that you may be devoting your life to honorable and noble purposes will not win you any escape. Wilberfarce, the Christian emancipator, was in his day derisively called “Dr. Cantwell.” All the small wits of London had their fling at John Wesley, the father of Methodism. Even amid the joys and hilarities of life trouble will sometimes break in. As when the people were assembled in the Charlestown theater during the revolutionary war, and while they were witnessing a farce and the audience was in great gratulation, the guns of an advancing army ,vere heard and the audience broke jp in wild panic and ran for their lives, so oftentimes while you are seated amid the joys and festivities of this world you hear the cannonr ade of some great disaster. My subject, in the first place,, teaches us that it is no compliment to us if we escape great trial. Yet there are men who suppose they are the Lord’s favorites simply because their barns are full, and their bank account is flush, and there are no funerals in the house. Next my text teaches us that God proportions our trials to what we can bear. The staff for the fitches. The rod for the cummin. The*iron wheel for the corn. Sometimes people in great trouble say, “Oh, I can’t hear it.” But you .did bear it. God would not have sent it upon you if He did not know that you could' bear if

You sometimes feel as if our world were full of bludgeons flying haphazard. Oh, no! They are thrashing instruments that God: just suits to your case: There is not a dollar of bad debts on your ledger, or a disappointment about goods that you expected to go up but that have gone down, or a swindle of your business partner, or a trick on the part of those who are in the same kind of business that you are, but God intended to overrule for your immortal help. Oh, my hearer, are you not ashamed to be complaining all this time against God? Who manages the affairs of this world anyhow? Is It an infinite Modoc, or a Sitting Bull savage, or an omnipotent Nana Sahib? No; it is the most merciful and glorious and wise- being in all the universe. Yon cannot teach Omnipotence anything. You have f retted and worried almost enough. Do you not think so? Some of you are making yourselves ridiculous in the sight of angels. Again, my subject teaches that God keeps trial on us until we let go. The farmer shouts “whoa!” to his horse as soon as the grain has dropped from the stalk. The fanner comes with his fork and tosses up the straw, and hesees that the straw has let go the grain and that the grain is thoroughly thrashed. So God. : Smiting rod and turning wheel both cease as soon as we let go. We hold on to this world with its pleasures and riches and emoluments, and our knuckles are so firmly set that it seems we could hold on forever. God comes along with some thrashing trouble and beats us loose.

We thought that friendship was a grand thing. In school we used to write compositions about friendship, and perhaps we made our graduating speech on commencement day bn friendship. Oh, it was a charmed thing, but does it mean as much to you as it used to? You have gone on in life, and one friend has betrayed you, and another friend has misinterpreted you, and another friend has neglected you, and friend ship comes how sometimes to mean to you merely another ax to grind. So with money. We thought if a man had a competency he was safe for all the future, but we have learned that a mortgage may be defeated by an unknown previous incumbrance; that signing ycrup name on the back of a note may be your business death warrant; that a new tariff may change the current of trade; that a man may be rich today and poor to-morrow. And God, by all these misfortunes, is trying to loosen our grip, but we still hold on.

God .smites us with a staff,, but we hold on. And he strikes is with a rod, and we hold on. And he sends over us the iron wheel of misfortune, but we hold on. Oh, let go! Let go! The best fortunes are in heaven. There are no absconding cashiers from that bank, no failing in promises to pay. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. Let go! Depend upon it that God will keep upon you the staff, or the rod, or the iron wheel until you do let go. Another thing my text teaches us is that Christian sorrow is going to have a sure terminus. My text says, “Bread corn is bruised because be will not be ever thrashing it.’ Blessed be God for that! Pound away, O flail! Turn on, G wheel! Your work will soon be done. “He will not be ever thrashing ft.’ T Now, the Christian has almost as ranch use in the organ for the stop tremulant as he has for the trumpet. But after a while he will put the last dirge into the portfolio forever. Sc much of us as is wheat will oe separated from so much as is chaff, and there will be no more need of pounding. They never cry in heaven because they have nothing to cry about. There are no tears of bereavement, for you shall have your friends all around about you. There are no tears of poverty because each one sits at the king’s table and has his own chariot of salvation and free access to the wardrobe where princes

get their array. No tears of sick-" ness, for there are no pneumonias on the air, and no malarial exhalations from the rolling river of life, and no crutch for the lame limb, and no splint for the broken arm, but the pulses throbbing with the healtn of the eternal God in a climate like our June before the blossoms fall, or our gorgeous October before the leaves scatter. , , ; Qh, my hearers, is there not enough salve in this text to make a plaster large enough to heal your wounds? When a child is hurt the mother is very apt to say to it, “Now, it will soon feel better.” And that is what God says when he unbosoms all the trouble in the hush of this great promise. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” You may leave your pocket handkerchief sopping wet with tears on your death but you will go up absolutely sorrowless. They will wear black; you will wear white. Cypresses for them, palms for you. It is sunrise! Glorious sunrise! 1 see the light now purpling the hills. and the clouds flame withthe cominc day. Then the gates of heaven will be opened, and the entranced soul, with the acuteness and power of the celestial vision, will look ten thou sands of miles down upon the ban nered procession—a river of shimmering splendor. Oh, that I could administer some of these drops of celestial anodyne to-those nervous and excited souls It you would take enough of it, it would cure all your pangs. The thought that you are going to get through with this after a while, ali this sorrow and all this trouble! We shall have a great many grand days in heaven, but I will tell you which will; be the grandest day of all the million ages of heaven. You say, “Are you sure you can tell me?” Yes, I can. It will be the day we get there. Some say heaven is growing more glorious. I suppose it is. but I do not eare much about that Heaven now is good enough for me.