Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 December 1893 — TYPICAL FROST. [ARTICLE]

TYPICAL FROST.

"Charity suffereth long and is Mnd” and sometimes “sets’em up.” «»■■£■ ■!”!■■ ...U. .' ,HB» “Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power ot thine hand to do it* Ths Columbian Museum at Chicago, the movement for which was inaugurated by Marshall Field, is receiving maqy gifts of great value from departing exhibitors at the World’s Columbian Exposition. Somk people will joke on the edge «f the grave. Even the horrible anarchistic massacre of the happy theater goers at Barcelona, Spain, has furnished the American punster with material for his absurd mind to work with, and he has startled the public with the statement that the dynamite bombs thrown among the wretched victims were “Lap-laud-

• A Lomdom burlesque company has incurred the displeasure of the SubIme Porte —otherwise known as the government of the Sultan. The Turkish Ambassador at the Corirt of St. James has objected to the burtesquing of his imperial master and the Lord Chamberlain of London has wielded the authority of his office and dipped the character of the Sultan bodily from the play. There K does not appear to be a super-abund-ance of, freedom ‘ ‘over there. ”

A prominent young banker of Lafayette, not especially known as an authority on horse flesh, recently purchased a hag which he imagined would soon become a rival o f Maud 8. in the records of the turf. While expatiating on’the merits of his “critter” he made the statement that he could “go” seventeen miles an hour. “What,” exclaimed a jockey standing near, “seventeen miles an hour! la that all you can get out of •f that horse? Why, when he was a eoltthe lightning killed the old mare and chased the colt all round the pasture, and never got within ten rods of him.”

The courts of Michigan and Now York have recently rendered de«sions adverse to the hopes of ardent advocates of womans’ alleged . right to vote. In other States the •ourts have been acting in a similar •old-blooded and ungallant manner. Yet female suffragists are not disheartened, and comfort themselves with the thought that the passage of the laws which have been annulled ; - by the courts was of itself a sign of ■ a great change in public sentiment, j They recollect that constitutions ■ can be changed in this conn try when a publicsentiment sufficiently strong has been created, and to that end their labors in the future will be directed.

The French love variety and •hange— even in scan dels. The Panama business became stale. The' “rascals were all turned out” —of, prison and fought duels to amuse the populace as long as they could invent excuses f6r so doing. Now . the French government has secured ’ the popular attention by the pardon . of the traitor Turpin, who was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment for selling the secret of the manufacture of melinlite to foreign gouernments. The dispatches state that the French people are astonished and indignant, and at this distance it looks as though that was the end desired by the powers in control in order to distract attention from the corruption in high places which the Panama scandal disclosed to view.

Thi sandbag as a weapon of oftense and means of highway robbery j is celebrated in the records of police courts everywhere, but it has been reserved for a cituen of Indianapo- ' Ms to introduce an innovation in weapons of defense. A gentleman! bearing the distinguished name oil Le Marr through the obsctfre streets •f that city was ordered to ‘‘Hold up your hands!” by an enterprising thug. while returning home from the meat market. Instead of complying with the modest req-iestof the highwayman, he threw the 10-ccnt porkchop intended for the family breakfast square into the scoundrel’s £-ce. This sudden action so disconcerted the thief that he took to his heels and was pursued bv the valiant Le at the rule, hastily ket and lev>f, instead ol rayman was b station as was subso eent to thr grand jury

The Breath of God Made Visible by Cold. Fruita An . i>( MWHlty-lt’ Sanitary Mluioti—Dr. Tai. nuagt'a Svrinnii. Dr. Talmage preached at the Brooklyn Tabernacle last Sunday. Subject---“ The Mission of the Frost.” Text--Job xxxvii, 10, “By the breath of God frost is given.” As no one seems disposed to discuss the mission of frost, depending on divine help I undertake it. This is the first Sabbath of winter. The leaves are down. The warmth has gone out of ti e air. The birds have made their winged march southward. The landscape has been scarred by the autumnal equinox. Thehuskers have rifled the cornshocks. The night sky hits shown the usual meteoric restlessness of November. Three seasons of the year are past, and the fourth and last has entered. Another element now comes in to bless and adorn and instruct the world. It is the frost. The palaces- of this king are far up in the arctic. Their walls are glittering congelation. Windsor castles and Tuileries and winter palaces and Kenilworths and Alhambrasof ice, temples with pendant chandeliers of ice, thrones of iceberg on which eternal silence reigns, theaters on whose stage eternal cold -dramatizes eternal winter, pillars of ice, arches of ice, sepulchers of ice, mountains of ice. crowns of ice, chariots of ice, dominions of ice—eternal frigidity! From those hard, white, burnished portals King Frost descends and waves his silvery scepter over our temperate zone. You will soon hear his heel on the skating pond. You already feel his breath in the. night wind. By most considered an enemy coining here to benumb and hinder and stay, I shall show you that the* frost is a friend, with benediction divinely pronounced, and charged and surcharged with lessons potent, beneficient and tremendous. The bible seven times alludes to the frost, and we must not ignore it. “By the breath of God frost is given." Next I speak of the frost as a physician. Standing at. the gates of New York harbor autumn before last, the frost drove back the cholera saying, “Thus far shalt thou come and no farther.” From Memphis and New Orleans and Jacksonville he smote the fever plague till it reeled back and departed. The frost is a physician that doctors cities, nations and continents. He medicines the world. Quinin? for malaria, an-ti-febrile for typhoids, sulphonal for sleeplessness, antispasmodic for disturbed nerves, bpt in all therapeutics there is uo remedy like the small pellets prepared by the cold, and no physician so successfull as the frost. thank God for the frost! It is the best of all germicides. It is the only hope in bacteriology. It is the medicament of continents. It is the salvation of our temperate zone. It is the best tonic that God ever gave the human race. It is the only strong stimulant which has no reaction. The best commentary on it I had wljile walking near here one cool morning with my brother John who spent the rnest of his life as a missionary in China, and in that part of it where there are no frosts. He said there was a tingling gladness in his nerves indescribable, and an almost intoxication of delight from the fact that it was the first time for years he had felt the sensation of frost. We complain of it, we scold it, we frown upon it, when we ought to be stirred by it to gratitude and hoist it on a doxology. But I must go farther and speak of the frost as a jeweler. As the snow is frozen rain, so the frost is frozen dew. God transforms it from a liquid into a crystal. It is the dew glorified. In the thirty-eighth chapter of that inspired drama, the book of Job, God says to the inspired dramatist with ecstactic interrogotion, “The hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?” God there asks Job if he knows the parentage of the frost. He inquires about its pedigree. He suggests that Job study up the genealogical line. A minute before God had asked about the parentage of a rain-drop, in words that years ago gave me a suggestive text for a sermon, “Hath the rain a father?” But now the Lord Almighty is catechising Job about the frost. He practically says: “Do you knovrits father? Do you know its mother? In what cradle of the leaves did the wind rock it? ‘The hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?’ ”.

First I think of frost as a painter. He begins his work on the leaves and continues it on the window panes. With palette covered with all manner of colors in his left hand and penoil of crystal in his right hand, he sits down before the humblest bush in the latter part of September and begins the sketching of the leaves. Now he puts upon the foliage a faint pallor, and then a touch of brown, and then a hue ,pf orange, and last a flame of fire. The beech and ash and oak are turned first into sunrises and then into sunsets of vividness'and splendor. AU the leaves are penciled one by one, but sometimes a whole forest in the course of a few days shows great velocity of work. Tired of working on the leaves the frost will,soon turn to th£ window panes. You will soon waken on a cold morning and find that the windows of your home hafvc during the night been adorned with curves, with coronets, with exquisiteness,

with pomp, witn almost supernatural spectacle. Then you will appreciate what my text says as it declares, “By the breath of God frost is given.” You will see on the window pane, traced there by the frost, whole gardens of beauty— ferns, orchids, daffodils, heliotropes, china asters, fountains, statues, hounds on the chase. roebucks plunging into the stream, battle scenes with dying and dead, catafalques of kings, triumphal processions and as the morning sun. breaks through you will see cities on fire and bombardment with bursting shell, and illumihations as for some great victory, coronations aud angels on the wing. Standing here between the closed doors of the pictured woods and the opening doors of -the transfigured window glass, I want to cure my folly and your folly of longing for glorious things in the distance, while we neglect appreciation of glorious things near by. “Oh, if I could only go and see the factories of lace at Brussels!” says some one. Why, within twenty feet of where you awaken some December tnorning you will see richer lace in terwoven for your window panes by divine fingers. “Oh, if I could only go and see the factories of silk at Lyons!” says some one. Why, without leaving your home on the north side of your own house on Christmas morning you may see where the Lord has spun silken threads about your windows this way and that—embroideries such as no one but God

can work. Oh, these regalias and diadems of beauty flung out of heaveq! Kings and queens on celebrative days have come riding through the streets throwing handfuls of silver and gold among the people, but the queen of the winter morning is the only queen rich enough to throw pearls, and the king of frost the only king rich enough to throw opals and sapphires and diamonds. Homer describes a necklace of amber given to Penelope, but the frost necklaces a continent. The carcanet of precious stones i given to Harmonia ha 1 pinions of orange iaspergnd white moonstones and Indian agate, but it was a misfortune to any one who inherited it, and its history, generation after generation, was a history of disaster, but the regalia of frost is the good fortune of every morning 'hat possesses it. But I go a step farther and speak of the frost as an evangelist, and a. text of 'scripture is not of much use to rue unless I can find the gospel in it. The Israelites in the wilderness breakfasted on something that resembled frozen dew. The ma’nna fell on the dew and the dew evaporated • and left a pulverized material, white and looking like frost, but it was manna, and bf that they a»c. So now this morning, mixed with the frozen dew of my text, there is manna on whith we can breakfast our, souls. You say the frost kills. Yes, it kills some things, but we have already seen that it gives life and health to others. The gospel is the savor of life unto life and death unto death. Mild doses of medicine will do for I mild sickness, but violent pains need strong doses, and so I stand over you and count some drops that will alleviate you’ 1 worst troubles if you will only take the medicine, aud here it is: “in the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.” “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Thank God for frosts! What helped make Washington the greatest of generals? The frosts of Valley Forge. What made it appropriate for one passing John Bunyan’s grave to exclaim. “Sleep on, thou prince of dreamers!” The frosts of imprisonment. The greatest college from which we can graduate is the college of frosts. Especial trial fits for especial work. Just now watch and you will see that trouble is preparative and educational. That is the grindstone on which battle axes are sharpened. I have always noticed in my own case that when the Lord had some special work for me to doit was pi eceded by especial attaek upon file. This is so proverbial in my own house that if for something I say or do I get poured upon me a volley of censure and abuse, my wife always asks: “I wonder what new opportunity of usefulness is about to open. Something good and grand is surely coming."

For many years poets and essayists have celebrated the grace and swiftness of the Arabian horses. The most wonderful exhibition of horsemanship that I ever witnessed was just outside of the city of Jerusalem—an Arabian steed* mounted by an Arab. Do you know where these Arabian horses got their fleetness and poetry of motion? Long centuries ago Mohammed, with 30,000 cavalry on the march, could find for them not a drop of water for them. Coming to the top of a hill, a river was in sight. With wild dash the 30,000 horses started for the stream. A minute after an armed host was seed advancing, and at Mohammed’s command 100 bugles blew.for the horses to fall in line, but all the 30,000 continued the wild gallop to the river except five, and they, almost perishing with thi ret, wheeled into line of battle. Nothing in human bravery and self-sacrifice excels that bravery and self-sacrifice of those five Arabian war ho-ses. Those five splendid steeds Mohammed chose for his own use, and from those five came that race of Arabian horses'for ages the glory of the equestrian world. And let me say that in this great war of truth against error, of holiness against sin and heaven against hell, the best |war horses are descended ■ .

from those who, under pain and selfdenial and trouble, answered the gospel trumpet and wheeled into line. Out of great tribulation, out of great fires, out of great frosts, they came. And let me say it will not take long for God to make up to you in the next world al! you have suffered in this. As you enter heaven He may say: “Give this man one of those towered and colonnaded palaces on that ridge of gold overlooking the sea of glass. Give this woman a home among those amaranthine blooms and between those fountains tossing in the everlasting sunlight. Give her a couch canopied with rainbows to pay her for all the fatigues of wifehood and motherhood and housekeeping, from which she had no rest for forty years.

Cupbearers of heaven, give these newly arrived souls from earth the costliest bevciuges and roll to their, door the grandest chariots and hang on their walls the sweetest harps that ever thrummed to fingers seraphic. Give to them rapture on rapture, celebration on celebration, jubilee on jubilee, heaven on heaven. They had a hard time on earth earning a livelihood, or nursing sick children, or waiting on querulous old age, or battling falsehoods that were told about them, or were compelled to work after they got short breathed and rheumatic and dim sighted. Chamberlains of heaven! Keepers of the King’s robes! Banqueters of eternal roi’alty ! Make up to them a hundredfold, a millionfold for all thev suffered from swaddling clothes to shroud, and let all those who, whether on the hills, or in the temples, or on the thrones, or on jasper wall, wore helped and sanctified and prepared for this heavenly realm by the mission of the frosts stand up and wave their scepters!” And I looked, and behold! nine-tenths of the ransomed rose to their feet, and nine-tenths of the. scepters"swayed to and fro in the light of the sun that never sets, and then I understood far Petter than I ever did before that trouble comes for beneficent purposes, and that on the coldest nights the aurora is brightest in the northern heavens, and that “by the breath of God frost is given.”