Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 July 1895 — TALMAGE’S SERMON. [ARTICLE]

TALMAGE’S SERMON.

HE PREACHES ON A RELIGION FOR ORDINARY PEOPLE. He Asks Attention to the Rank and File Rather than to the Few—The Disadvantages of Being Conspicuous —The Blessing of Content. Gospel of Content. Rev. Dr. Talmage, who is still absent on his annual midsummer tour, preaching and lecturing, prepared for last Sunday a sermon on “Plain People,” a topic which will appeal to a very large majority of readers anywhere. The text selected was Romans xvi., 11, 15, “Salute Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hennas, Patrobas, Hermes, Philologus and Julia.” Matthew Henry, Albert Barnes, Adam Clark, Thomas Scott and all the commentators pass by these verses without any especial remark. The other twenty people mentioned in the chapter were distinguished lot something and were therefore {discussed by the illustrious expositors, but nothing is said about Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermas, Patrobas, Hermes, Philologus and Julia. Where were they born? No one knows. Where did they die? There is no record of their decease. For what were they distinguished? Absolutely for nothing, or the trait of character would have been brought out by the apofttle. If they had been very intrepid or opulent or hirsute or musical of cadence or crass of style or in anywise anomalous, that feature would have been caught by the apostolic camera. But they were good people, because Paul sent to them his high Christian regards. They were ordinary people, moving in ordinary sphere, attending to ordinary duty and meeting ordinary responsibilities.

What the world wants is a religion for ordinary people. If there be in the United States (15,000,000 people, there are certainly not more than 1,000,000 extraordinary, and then there are 04,000,000 ordinary, and we do well to turn our backs for a little while upon the distinguished and conspicuous people of the Bible and consider in our text the seven ordinary. We spend too much of our time in twisting garlands for renfarka- . hies, and building thrones for magnates and sculpturing warriors and apotheosiziug philanthropists. The rank anti file of the Lord’s soldiery need especial help. The vast majority of people to whom this sermon comes will never lead an army, will never write a State Constitution, will never electrify a Senate, will never make an important invention, will never introduce a new philosophy, will never decide the fate of a nation. You do not expect to; you do not want to. You will not bo a Moses to lead a nation out of bondage. You will not be a Joshua to prolong the daylight until you can shut five kings in a cavern. You will not be a St. John to unroll an apocalypse. You will not be a Paul to preside over an apostolic college. You will not be a Mary to mother a Christ. You will more probably be Asyncritus or Phlegon or Hermas or Patrbbas or Hermes or Pholologus or Julia. Heads- of Households, Many of you are women at the head of households. This morning you launched the family for the Sabbath observance. Your brain decided the apparel, and your judgment was final on all questions of personal attire. Every morning you plan for the day. The culinary department of your household is in your dominion. You decide all questions of diet. All the sanitary regulations of your house are under your supervision. To regulate the food, and the apparel, and the habits and decide the thousand questions of home life is a tax upon your brain and nerve and general health absolutely appalling If there be po divine alleviation. Jt does not help you much to be told that Elizabeth Fry did wonderful things mid the criminals of Newgate. It does not help you much to be told that Mrs. Judson was very brave among the Bornesian cannibals. It does not help you —much to be told that Florence Nightingale was very kind to the wounded in the Crimea. It would be better for me to tell you that the divine friend of Mary and Martha is your friend, and that he sees all the annoyances and disappointments and abrasions and exasperations of an ordinary housekeeper from inorn till night, nnd from the first day of the year to the last day of the year and at your call he is ready with help and re-en-forcement.

An unthinking man may consider it a matter of little importance—the cares of the household and the economies of domestic life—but I tell you the earth is strewn with the martyrs of kitchen and nursery. The health shattered womanhood of America cries out for a God who can help ordinary women in the ordinary duties of housekeeping. The wearing, grinding, unappreciated work goes on, but the same Christ who stood on the bank of Galilee in the early moruing and kindled the fire and had the fish already cleaned and broiling when the sportsmen stepped ashore, chilled and hungry, will help every woman to prepare breakfast, whother by her own hand or the hand of her hired help. The God who made in 2 destructible eulogy of Hannah, who made a coat for Samuel, her son, and carried it to the temple every year, will help every woman in preparing the family wardrobe. The God who opens the Bible with the story of Abraham’s entertainment of the three angels on the plains of Mamre will help every woman to provide hospitality, however rare and embarrassing. Premature Old Age, Then there are the ordinary business men. They need divine and Christian help. When we begin to talk about business life, we shoot right off and talk about men who did business on a large scale, and who sold millions of dollars of goods a year, but the vast majority of business men do not sell n million dollars of goodß, nor hajf a million, nor n quarter of a million, nor the eighth part of a million. Tut all the business men of our cities, towns and villages and neighborhoods side by side, and you will find that they sell leap than $50,000 worth of goods. All these men in ordinary business life want divine, help. You see how the wrinkles are printing on the countenance the story of worriment and care. ,<*f¥ou cannot tell how old a business man Is by looking at him. Gray hairs at 30. A man at 45 with the stoop of a nonogena- ’ rian. No time to attend to improved dentistry, the grinders cease because they are few. Actually dying of old age at 40 or 60 when they ought to be *at the meridian. Many of these business men have bodies liko a neglected clock. The human dock haa simply run down. And at the

time when the steady hand opght to be pointing to the industrious hours on a clear and sunlit dial the whole machinery of body, mind and earthly capacity stops forever. The cemeteries have thousands of business men who died of old age at 30, 35, 40, 45. The Heat Kind of Grace. Now, what is wanted is grace—divine grace for ordinary business men, men who are harnessed from morn till night and all the days of their life—harnessed in business. Not grace to lose SIOO,OOO, but grace to Jose $lO. Not grace to supervise 250 employes in a factory, but grace to supervise the bookkeeper and two salesmen and the small boy that sweeps out the store. Grace to invest not the SSO,000 of net profit, but the $2,500 of clear gain. Grace not to endure the loss' of a whole shipload of spices from the Indies, but grace to endure the loss of a paper of collars from the leakage of a displaced shingle on a poor roof. *> Grace not to endure the tardiness of the American Congress in passing a necessary law, but grace to endure the tardiness of an errand boy stopping to play marbles when he ought to deliver the goods; such a grace as thousands of business men have to-day, keeping them tranquil :wh%ther goods sell or do not sell, whether customers pay or do not pay, whether the tariff is up or tariff is dovqi, whether the crops are-luxuriant or a dead failure, calm in all circumstances and amid all vicissitudes—that is the kind of grace we want. Millions of men want it, and they may have it for the asking. Tillers of the Soil. Then there are all the ordinary farmers. We talk about agricultural life, and we immediately shoot off to talk about Cincinnatus, the patrician, who went from the plow to a high position, and after he got through the dictatorship in twenty-one days went back again to the plow. What encouragement is that to ordinary farmers? The vast majority of them, none of them, will be patricians. Perhaps none of them will be Senators. If any of them have dictatorships, it will be over forty or fifty or one hundred acres of the old homestead. What those men want is grace to keep their patience while plowing With balky oxen and to keep cheerful amid the drought that destroys the com crop and that enables thorn to restore the garden the day after the trampled out the strawberry bed and gone through the lima bean patch and eaten up the sweet corn in such large quantites that they must be kept from the ..water lest they swell up and die; grace in catching weather that enables them without, imprecation to spread out the hay the third time, although again and again and again it has been almost ready for the mow; a grace to doctor the cow with a hollow horn, and the sheep with the footrot, and the horse with the distemper, and to compel the unwilling acres to yield a livelihood for the family, and schooling for the children, and little extras to help the older boy in business, and something for the daughter’s wedding outfit, nnd a little surplus for the time when the ankles will get stiff with age and the breath will be a littje Bhort, and the swinging of the cradle through the hot harvest field will bring on the old man’s Vertigo. Better close up stout Cincinnatus. I know 500 farmers just as. noble as he was.

What they want is to know that they have the friendship of that Christ who often drew his similes from the farmer’s life, as when ho said, “A sower went forth to sow,” as when he built his best parable out of the scene of a farmer’s boy coming back from his wanderings, and the old farmhouse shook that night with rural jubilee, and who compared himself to a lamb in the pasture field, and who said the eternal God is a farmer, declaring, “My Father is the husbandman.” Those stonemasons do not want to hear about Christopher Wren, the architect, who built St. Paul’s Cathedral. It would be better to tell them how to carry the hod of brick up the ladder without slipping, aud how on a cold morning with the trowel to smooth off the mortar and keep cheerful, and how to be thankful to God for the plain food taken from the pail by the roadside. Carpenters standing amid the adz, and the bit, and the plane, and the broadax need to be told that Christ was a carpenter, with his own hand wielding saw and hammer. Oh, this is a tired world, and it is an overworked world, and it is an underfed world, and it is a wrung out world, and men and women need to know that there is rest and recuperation in God and in that religion which was not so much intended for extraordinary people as for ordinary people, because there are more of them. Healers of the Sick. The healing profession has had its Abercrombies and its Abernethys and its Valentine Motts and its Willard Par-, kers, but the ordinary physicians do the most of tho world’s medicining, and they need to understand that while taking diagnosis or prognosis or writing prescription or compounding medicament or holding the delicate pulse of a dying child they may have the presence and tho dictation of the almighty doctor who took the case of the madman, nnd after he had torn off his garments in foaming dementia clothed him again, body and mind, nnd who lifted up the woman who for eighteen years had been bent almost double with the rheumatism into graceful stature, nnd who turned the scabs of leprosy into rubicund complexion, nnd who rubbed the numbness out of paralysis, and who swung wide open the closed windows of hereditary or accidental blindness until the morning light came streaming through the fleshly easements, nnd who knows all the diseases and all the remedies and all the herbs and all the cathollcons, and Is monarch of pharmacy nnd therapeutics, nnd who has sent out 10,000 doctors of whom the world makes no record, but to prove that they are angels of mercy 1 invoke the thousands of men whose ailments have been assuaged and the thousands of women to whom in crises of pain they have bocu next to God in benefaction.

Come, now, let us have a religion for ordinary people in professions, in occupations, in agriculture in the household, in merchandise, in everything. I salute across tho centuries Asyneritus, Phlegon, Hernias, Patrobas, Hermes, Philologus and Julia. ""First of all, if you feel that you are ordinary, thank God that you are not extraordinary. lam tired and sick and bored almost to death with extraordi- i nary people. They take all their time to tell us how very extraordinary they really are. You know as well as I do, my brother and sister, that the most of the 'useful work of tho world is dono by unpretentious people who toll right on, by people who do not get much approval, and no one seems to sar. “That is well done.”

Phenomena are of hot little use. T|dag« that are exceptional cannot be depended on. Better trust the smallest plaDet that swings on its orbit than ten comets shooting this way and that, imperiling tho longevity of worlds attending to their own business. For steady illumination better is a lamp than a rocket. Then, if you feel that you are ordinary, remember that your position invites the less attack. Conspicuous people—how they have to take it! How they are misrepresnted and abused and shot at! The higher the horns of a roebuck the easier to track him down. What a delicious thing it must be to be a candidate for President of the United States! It must be so soothing to tho nerves! It must pour into the soul of a candidate such a sense of serenity when he reads the blessed newspapers! The Abused. I came into the possession of the abusive cartoons in tho time of Napoleon 1., printed while he was yet alive. The retreat of the army from Moscow, that army buried in tho snows of Russia, one of the most awful tragedies of the centuries, represented under the figure of a monster called General Frost shaving the French Emperor with a razor of icicle. As Satyr and Beelzebub he is represented, page after page, page after page, England cursing him, Spain cursing him, Germany cursing him, Russia cursing him, Europe cursing him, North and South America* cursing him, the most remarkable man of his day and the most abused. All those men in history who now have a halo around their name on earth wore a crown of thorns. Take tho few extraordinary railroad men of our time and see. what abuse conies upon them while thousands of stockholders escape. All the world took after Thomas Scott, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, abused him until he got under the ground. Thousands of stockholders in that company. All the blame on one man. The Central Pacific Railroad. Two or three men get all the blame if anything goes wrong. There are 10,000 in that company. I mention these things to prove it is extraordinary people who get* abused while the ordinary escape. The weather of life is not so severe on the plain as it is on the high peaks. The world never forgives a man who knows or gains or does more than it can know or gain or do. If, therefore, you feel that-you are ordinary, thank God for the defenses and the tranquility of your position.

' Contented Spirit. Then remember, if you have only what is called an ordinary home, that the great deliverers of the world have all come from such a home. And there may be seated reading at your evening stand a child who shall be potent for the ages. Just unroll the scroll of men mighty in church .and state, and you will find they nearly all came fro log cabin or poor homes. Genius almost always runs out in the third oj, fourth generation. You cannot find in all history an instance where the fourth generation of extraordinary people amount to anything. Columbus from a weaver’s hut, Demosthenes from a cutler’s cellar, Bloomfield and Missionary Carey from a shoemaker’s bench, Arkwright from a barber’s shop, and he whose name is high over all in earth and air and sky from a manger. Let us all be content with such things as we have. God is just as good in what he keeps away from us as in what he gives us. Even a knot may be useful if it is at the Cud of a thread. Oh, Wat we might be baptized with a contented spirit! The spider draws poison out of a.flower; the bee gets honey out of ,a thistle, but happiness is a heavenly elixir, and tho contented spirit extracts it not from the rhododendron of the hills, but from the lily of the valley.