Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 December 1893 — THE LIFE STRUGGLE. [ARTICLE]

THE LIFE STRUGGLE.

Hopeful Words for Afflicted Humanity. The Dame and Kind and Deaf and Dumb May Btill Achieve Triumphs— . —— — L —Dr.Tulmagw’s Sermon. ii Dr. Talmage .preached at Nashville, Tenn., last Sunday. The text chosen was Isaiah xxxiii, 23. “The lame take the prey.” He said: The utter demolition of the Assyrian host was here predicted. Not only robust men should go forth and gather the spoils of conquest, but even iiieu crippled of arm and crippled of foot sbould go out and capture much that was valuable. TheiV physical disadvantages should not hinder their great enrichment. So it has been in the past, so it is now, so it will be in the future, so it is in all departments. Men laboring under seemingly great disadvantages and amid the most unfavorable circumstances, yet making grand achievements, getting great blessing for themselves, great blessing for the world, great blessing for the church. And so “the jame take the prey.” Do you know that the three great poets of the world were totally blind —Homer, Ossian, John Milton? Do you know that Mr. Prescott, who wrote that enchanting book, “The Conquest of Mexico,” never saw Mexico, and could not even see thepaper on which he was writing? A framework across the sheet, between which, up and down, went the pen immortal. Do you know that Gambassio, the sculptor, could not see the marble before bim, or the chisel with which he cut it into shapes bewitching? Do you know that Alexander Pope, whose poems will endure as long as the English language, was so much of an invalid that he had to be sewed up every morning in rough canvas in order to stand on his feet at all?

You know that a vast multitude of these men started under the disadvantage of obscure parentage—Columbus, the son of the weaver:. Ferguson, the astronomer, the son of the shepherd. America the prey of the one; worlds on worlds the prey of the other. But what is true in secular directions is more true in spiritual and religious directions, and I proceed to prove it. Many who are alert and athletic and swarthy linger in the wav. The lame take the prey—Robert Hall, an invalid, Edward Payson, an invalid. Richard Baxter, an invalid, Samuel Rutherford, an invalid. This morning, when you want to call to mind those wijo are Christlike, you think of some darkened room in your father’s house from which there went forth an influencepotentfor eternity. A step farther: Through raised letters the art of printing has been brought to the attention of the blind. You take up the Bible for the blind, and you close your eyes, and 3 r ou run your fingers over the raised letters, and you say: “Why, I npver could get any informatien in this way. What a slow, lumbrous way of reading! God help the blind!”

■ And yet I find among that class of persons—among the blind, the deaf and the dumb—the most thorough acquaintance with God’s word. Shut out from all other sources of information, no sooner does their hand touch the raised letters than they gather a prayer. Without hearing, they catch the minstrelsy of the skies. Dumb, yet with pencil or with irradiated countenance, they declare the glory of God. In the seventh century there was a legend of St. Modobert. It was said that his mother was blind, that one day, while lookingat his mother, he felt so sympathetic for her blindness that he rushed forward and kissed her blind eyes, and, the legend says, her vision came immediately. That was only a legend, but it is a truth, a glorious truth, that the kiss of God’s eternal love has brought to many a blind eye eternal illumination.

A stop farther: There are tho3e in all communities who toil mightily , for a livelihood. They have scant j wages. Perhaps they are diseased i and have physical infirmities, so they are hindered from doing a continuous day’s work. A city missionary finds them up the dark alley, with no fire, with thin clothing, with very coarse bread. They never ride in the street car; they can not afford the five cents. Yet many of them live.on mountains of transfiguration. At their rough table he who led the 5,000 breaks the bread. They talk often of the good times coming. This world has no charm for them, but heaven entrances their spirit. They oft n divide their scant crust with some forlorn wretch who knocks at their door at night, and on the blast of the night wind, as the door opens to let them in, is heard the voice of Him whosaid, “I was hungry and he fed me." No cohort of heaven will lie too bright to transport them. By God’s help they have vanquished the Assyrian host. They have divided among them the spo:ls. Lame, lame, yet they took the prey. A step farther: There are in all communities many orphans. During our late war and the years immediately following how many children at the North and South were heard to say, “Oh, my father was killed in the war!" Have you ever noticed — I fear you have not —bow well those children have turned out? Starting under the greatest disadvantge, no orphan asylum could do for them what their father would have done had he lived. They battled the way for their mother. They came on up, and many of them have already in

the, years since the war taken poSitM(| in church and state, North and South. While many of those who suffered nothing during those times have had sons go out into lives of indolence and vagabondage, these who started under so many disadvantages because they were so early bereft, these are the lame who took the prey. rA step farther: There are those who would like to be good. They say, “Oh, if I only had wealth, or if I had eloquence, or if I had high social position, how much I would accomplish for God and the church!” I stand here to-day to tell you that, you have great opportunities for usefulness. The trouble is that in the army of Christ we all want to be captains and colonels and brigadier generals. We are not willing to march with the rank and file and do duty with the private soldier. We want to belong to the reserve corps and read about ; the battles while warming ourselves | at the campfires or on a furlough at | home, our feet upon an ottoman, we sagging back into an arm chair, j There’are thousands of ministers of whom you have never heard —in log cabius at the West, in mission chapels in the East—who are warring against | the legions of darkness—successfully warring; tract distributors month I by month undermining the citadels of sin. You do not know their going I or their coming, but the footfalls of : their ministry arc heard in the palj aces of heaven. Who are the workers ! in our Sabbath schools throughout | this land to-day? Men celebrated, men brilliant, men of va3t estate? For the most part not that at all. Oh, this work of saving the youth of our country —how few appreciate what it is! This generation tramping on to the grave— we will soon all be gone.' What of the next? Oh, my friends, I want to impress upon myself and upon you that it is not the number of talents we possess, but the use we make of them. One step farther: There are a great many people discouraged q&out getting to heaven. At my desk—in the Christian Herald office I am in daily receipt of numerous letters from people brought up in good families and who had -Christian par

entage, but who frankly tell me they are astray, a thousand miles from the right track, and fear their case is hopeless. My brothers, it is to you I want to preach now. I have been looking for you. I will tell you how you got astray. It was not ; maliciousness on your part. It was ; perhaps through the geniality and sociality of ydur nature that you fell into sin. You wandered away -from your duty; you unconsciously left the house of God. You admit ; the gospel to be true, and yet you | have so grievously and so prolongedly wandered you say rescue is impossible. < . It would take a week to count up the names of those in heaven who were on earth worse than you tell me you are. They went the whole round | of iniquity; they disgraced themselves; they disgraced their household; they despaired of return because their reputation was gone, their property was gone, everything i was gone. Biit in some hour like this they heard the voice of God, and they threw themselves on the divine compassion, and they rose up more than conquerors. And I tell you there is the same chance for you. j That is one reason why I like to preach this gospel, so free a gospel, so tremendous a gospel. It takes a .man all wrong and makes him all right. J. — Oh, start on the road to heaven today! Ypu are not happy. The : thirst of your soul will never be ! 6laked by the fountains of sin. You turn everywhere but to God for help, j Right where you are, call on him. IHe knows you. He knows all about ; you. He knows all the odds against I which you have been contending in life. Do not go to him with a long i rigmarpie of a prayer, but iust look up and say, “Help! Help!” Yet you say, “My hand trembles so from my dissipations I can’t e\en take hold of a hymn book to sing.’’ Don’t worry about that, my brother, r I will give out a hymn at the close so familiar you can sing it without a book.. But you say, “I have such ' terrible habits on me I can’t get rid of them.” My answer is, “Almighty gra>ce can break up that habit and will break it up.” But you say, “The wrong I did was to one dead and in heaven now, and I can’t correct that i wrong.” You can correct it. By the grace of God. go into the presence of that one, and the apologies you ought to have made on earth make in heaven.

Years ago, on a boat on the North river, the pilot gave a very sharp ring to the bell for the boat to slow up, Thu engineer attended to the machinery, and then he came u® with some alarm ou deck to see what was the matter. He saw it was a moonlight night, and there were no obstacles in the way. He went to the pilot and said: “Why did you ring the bell in that way? Why do you want to stop? There’s nothing the matter." And the pilot said to him: “There is a mist gathering on the river, don’t you see that? And the night is gathering darker and darker, and I can’t see the way.” Then the engineer, looking around and seeing it was bright moonlight, looked.into the face of the pilot and saw that he was dying and then that he was dead. God grant that when our last moment comes we may be found at our pos j doing our whole duty, an : l when the mists of the river of death gather on our eyelid* may the good Pilot take the wheel from our hands and guide us into the harbor of eternal rest!. Drop lbo anchor, fori the sail, I am awe wlthlu the vale.