Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 January 1895 — KING DAVID'S HASTE. [ARTICLE]

KING DAVID'S HASTE.

His Compliments to the Human Race, rhe Dangers of Pessimistic Views Eloquently Depicted by Dr. Talmage. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at the Academy of Music, New York, last Sunday, to an audience such as is seldom seen in America. His subject was: “Dangers of Pessimism.” Text, Psalm, cxvi, 11 —“I said in my haste all men are iyars.” Swindled,- betrayed, persecuted, I)av.id, in a paroxysm of petulant-e ind rage, thus insulted the human race. David himself falsified when he said, “All men liars.” He apoligizes and Says he was unusually provoked, and that he was hasty when he hurled such universal denunciation. “I said in my haste,” and so on. It was in him only a momentary triumph of Pessimism. There is ever and anon, and never more than now, a disposition abroad to distrust everybody, and because some bank employes defraud to distrust all bank employes, and because some police officers have taken bribes to believe that all policemen take bribes, and because divorce cases are in the court to believe that most, if not all, marriage relations are unhappy. ' Although we are not very jubilant over a municipal reform that opens the exercises by a doxology ta rum, we have full faith in God and the gospel, which will yet _sink all iniquity as the Atlantic ocean melts a flake of snow. What we want and what I believe we will have is a great religious awakening that will,moralize and Christianize our great populations and make them superior to temptations, whether unlawful or legalized, So I see no cause for disheartenment. Pessimism is a sin, ind those who yield to it cripple themselves for the war on one side of which are all the forces of darkness, led on by Apollyon, and on the other side of which are all the forces of fight led on by the Omnipotent. I risk the statement that the vast majority of people are doing the best they can. Nine hundred and ninetv-ai-ne out of a thousand of the officials of the municipal and the United States governments are honest. Out of a thousand bank presidents and cashiers 299 are worthy the position they occupy. Out of a thousand merchants, mechanics and professional men 999 are doing their ditty is they yjidersta’nd it . Out of 1,000 engineers and conductors and switchmen 999 are true to their responsible’positions. It is seldom that people arrive at positions of responsibility until they have been tested over and over again. If the theory of the pessimist were accurate, -society nave gone to pieces, and civiliaution.would have been submerged with barbarism, and the wheel of the centuries would have turned back to the lark ages. A wrong impression is made that because two men falsify their bank accounts those two wrongdoers are blazoned: before the world, while nothing is said in praise of the : mid reds of bai.k clerks who rt hqvc stood at their desks year in and year cut until their health is well nigh gone, taking not a pin’s worth of that which belongs to others for themselves, though with, skillful stroke of pen they might have enriched themselves and built their ?ountry seats On the bank of the Hudson or the Rhine. 11 is a mean thing in human nature that men and women are not praised for doing well, but only excoriated when they lo wrong. By divine arrangement the most of the families of the earth ire at peace, and the most of those united in marriage have for each other affinity and affection. They may have occasional differences and icre and there a season of pout, but the vast majority-of-tho Te. imthe conjugal relation chose the most appropriate companionship and are happy ’n that relation. You hear nothing if the quietude and happiness of such homes, though nothing but Jeath .will them part. But one sound of marital discord makes the >ars of a continent, and perhaps of i hemisphere, alert. The one-letter :hat ought never to have been written, printed in a newspaper, makes nore talk than the millions of letters :hat crowd the postoffices and weigh iown the mail carriers with expressions of honest love, Look at the groat Bible picture gallery, where Isaiah has set up the pictures of aborescence, girdling the world with cedar and fir and pine md boxwood, and the lion led by a child, and St. John’s pictures of waters, and white horse ' cavalry, and tears wiped away, and trumpets blown, and harps [struck, and nations redeemed. [While there are ten thousand things 1 do not like, I nave not seen any\ discouragement for the cause of God for twenty-five years. The kingdom is coming. The ?arth is preparing to put on bridal irray. We need to be getting our mthems. and grand marches ready, (n our hymnology we shall have ■nore use. for “Antibeh" than for ‘Windham,” for “Ariel" than for ‘Naomi.” Let “Hark, from the Tomba Doleful Crv!” be submerged with “Joy to the World, the Lord Is ?ome!" Really, if I thought the hunan race were as determined to be ?ad, and getting worse, as the pestimists represent, I would think it ras hardly worth saving. If, after lundreds of yetirs of gospelization, io improvement has been made, let is give it up and go at something ■lse beside praying and preaching. If religion has been to you a peace, I defense, an inspiration and a joy. my so. Say it by word of mouth,

by pen in your right hand, by face illumined with a divine satisfaction. If this-wofld to be' taken for God, it will not be by groans, but by hallelujahs. If we could present the ' Christian religion as it really is in its true attractiveness, all the people would accept it and accept it right away. The cities, the nations would cry out:—faGive tis that! Glvf it-so-us in all its holy magnetism and gracious power! Put that salve on our wounds! Throwback the shutters for that tnorning light! Knock off these chains with that silver hammer! Give us Christ —His pardon, His peace, His comfort, His heaven! Give us Christ in sermon, Christ in bookpChrist in living example!” y ' ' There is an old-fashioned mother in a farmhouse. Perhaps she is somewhere in the seventies; perhaps seventy-five or seventy-six. ..It is the early eveniag hour. Through spectacles No. 8 she is reading a newspaper until toward bedtime, when she takes up a well worn book, called the Bible. I know from the illumination in her face she is readingone of the thanksgiving psalms, or in revelation the story of the twelve pearly gates. After awhile she closes the book and folds her hands and thinks over the past and seems whispering the names of her -children, some of them on earth, and some of them in heaven. Now a smile is on her face and now a tear. The scenes of a long life come back to her. One minute she sees all the children smiling around her, with their toys and* sports and strange questionings.' Then she remembers seveVUt of them down siefc with infantile disorders. Then she sees a short grave, but over it cut in mar- * ble, “Suffer them to come to Me.” Then there is the wedding hour, and the neighbors in, and the promise of n I wiU,” and the departure from the old homestead. Then a scene of hard times and scant bread -anfi struggle. Then she thinks of a few years with gush of sunshine and flittihgs of dark shadowsand vicissitudes. Then she kneels down slowly, for many years haye stiffened the joints, and the illnesses of a life-: time have made her less supple. Her prayer is a mixture of thanks for sustaining grace during all those years and thanks for children good and Christian and kind, and a prayer for the wandering boy, whom she hopes to see come home before her departure. And then her trembling lips speak of the land of reunion, where she expects to meet her loved ones already translated, and after telling the Lord in very simple language how much she loves Him and trusts Him and hopes to see Him soon I hear her pronounce the quiet “Amen,” and she rises up—a littlemore difficult- effort than kneeling down. And then sEe?puts"HerTjead on the pillow for the night, and the angels of safdty and peace stand sentinel about that cduch in the farmhouse, and her face ever ,a_nA_anon shows signs - or dreams abou t the heaven she read of before retiring. In th_e morning the day’s work has begun down stairs, and seated at the table the remark is made, “Mother must have overslept herself.” And -theo grandchildren also notice that ■graadmbtheb is absSa£ f renn bee usual place at the table. One of the grandchildren goes to the foot of the stairs and cries, “Grandmother!’ But there is no answer. Fearfog something is the matter they go up to see, and all seems right—-the speetae’es and the bible on the stand, and the covers on the bed are smooth, and the face is calm, her white hair on the white pillow case like snow on snow already fallen. But her soul is gone up to look upon the things that the night before she bad been reading of in the scriptures. What a transporting look on the dear old wrinkled face! She has seen the “King in His beauty.” She lias been welcomed by the “Lamb who was slain.” And her two oldest sons, having hurried up stairs, look and whisper, Henry to George, “That is religion!" and George to Henry, “Yes, that is religion!” There is a man seated or standing very near you. Do not look at him, for it might be unnecessary embarrassment. Only a few minutes ago : he came down off the steps of as hapny a home as there is in this or any other city. Fifteen years ago, by reason of his dissipated habits, his home was a horror to wife and children. 4 What that woman went | through With in order to-qjre= serve respectability, and hide her i husband’s disgrace is ’ a tragI edy' which it would require Shakspeare or Victor Hugo to ; write out in five tremendous acts. ; Shall I tell it? He struck her! Yes, I the one .who at the altar he had ■ taken with vows so solemn they ! made the orange blossoms tremble! jHe struck Tier! He made the bcau- ; tiful holidays “a reign of terror.’-’ I Instead of his supporting hei* she ; supportshim. The children had often . heard him speak the name of God, but never in prayer, only in profanity. It was the saddest thing on earth that I can think of—a destroyed home! Walking, along the street One day, an impersonation of all wretchedness, he saw a sign at the door of a Young Men’s Christian Association, “Meeting for Men Ohly.", He went in, hardly knowing why he did so, and sat down by the door, and a young man was, in a broken voice and poor grammar, telling how the Lord had saved him from a dissipated life, and the man back by the door said to himself, “Why cannot I have the Lord do the sam? thing for me?" and he put hid ha’pds, all atrembte, over hi’s bloated face and said; “OGod, I want that! I must have that!" and God said, “You shah' have it, and you have it now:” And the man came out and went home a changed man, and though

I the childyeji at first shrunk back and looked to the mother and began to cry with fright, they soon saw that the father was a changed man. That home was turned-from “Paradise Lost,” to “Paradise Regained.” Why. my hearers from all parts of the earth, do you not get this bright and beautiful and radiant and triurn phant an dbl iss fu 1 thing for yourseives, then go home telling all your neighbors on the Pacific, or in Nova Scotia, or in Louisiana, or Maine, or Brazil, or England, or Italy, or any part of the round World, that they may have it too; have it for the asking. |jave it now? Mind you, I do not start from the pessimist standpoint that David did when be got mad and said in his haste, “all men are liars!” br from the creed of others that every man is as bad as he can be. I rather think from your looks thaLyou are going about as well as you can in the circumstances in Iwhich you are placed, but I want to invite you up into bights of safety and satisfaction and holiness, as much higher than those which the world affords as Everest, the highest mountain in all the earth, is higher than your front door step. Here he comes now. Who is it? I might be alarmed and afraid if I had not seen him before and heard his voice. I thought he would come before I got through with this sermon. Stand back and malm Way for him. He comes with sears all around his forehead; scars in the center of both hands stretched out- to greet you; scars on the instep of both the feet with which he advances; scars on* the breast under which throbs the great heart of sympathy which feels for -you. I announce him. I introduce him to you, Jesus of Bethlehem and Olivet and Golgotha, .Why comest thou hither this winter day. thou of the springtime► and summery heavens? He answers; To give all this audience pardon for guilt, condolence fo'* grief, whole regiments of.help for day of battle and eternal life for the dead! What response shall I give him? In your behalf and in my own behalf I fiail Him with the ascription: “Unro Him Who hath loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood and hath made us kings and priests un-to God and his Father —to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” .