Rensselaer Republican, Volume 28, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 November 1895 — TAIMAGE’S SERMON. [ARTICLE]

TAIMAGE’S SERMON.

A Notrble Discourse Giving “Ad--77 vice to Young Women." ;<r- "**- v ' . .. -- T~-t i *. - ' * ■ • Tim ly Mit(fstlwa to the Stt Gsnerally-n-Ativenl of the'* “N>w .HV(pn*r>’\ lAx'Vomic Wonlen Gist Close to God. Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage took for the 6ubject of a recent sermon to his Wasli"Egton congregation: “A Word to Women,” basing it on the following letter lately received: Cincinnati, O.—Reverend Sir: You delivered a discourse, in answer lo a letter from six young men of Fayette, 0., requesting you to preach a sermon ou “Advice to Young Men.’’ ■ Are we justified in asking you to preach a sermon on “Advice to Young Women?” [Letter signed by six young women.] Christ, who took His text from a flock of birds flying overhead, saying! “Behold the fowls of the air,” and from the flowers in the valley, saying; “Consider the lilies of the field," and from the clucking of a barnyard fowl, saying: “As a hen gathereth her chickens under her wing,” and from a crystal of salt picked up by‘the road - side, saying: “Salt is good,” will grant us a blessing if, instead of taking a text lrom the Bible, I take for my text this letter from Cincinnati, which ia„ouly QXLe of. many letters which I have received from young women in New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, London, Edinburgh and from the ends of the earth, all implying that having some months ago preached the sermon on “Advice to Young, Alen,” I could not, without neglect of duty, refuse to preach a sermon on “Advice to Young Women.” It, is the more important that the pUlpit be heard on this subject, at this time when we are having such an illimitable discussion about what .is called the “New Woman,” as though Some ne w creature, of God. hail arrived - on earth, or were about to arrive. One theory is that she will be an athlete. ~ and box!ng-glove and foot-ball and pugilistic encounter will character- - * ize liejc. A nother theory _ is - •th at she will superintend ballot-boxes,. Bit in congressional ball, and through improved politics bring the millennium by the evil she will extirpate and the good she willinstall. Another theory is that she will adopt masculine attire and make sacred a vulgarisnism positively horrific. Another theory is that she will be ..so esthetic that, broom d andle and roll-ing-pin and coal scuttle will b; pictorialized with tints from soft skies or —Btrpgestions of —Rembrandt and Raphael. But, I titu.st he specific. This letter before me wants advice to young women

Advice the first: Get your soul right with God and you will be in the best attitude for everything that comes. New ways of voyaging by sea, new ways of threshing the harvests, new ways of printing books, and the patent office is enough to ejcchant a man who has mechanical ingenuity and knows a good deal of levers and wheels, and we hardly do anything as it used C to be done; invention after invention, invention on top of invention. Brit in the matter of getting right with God there lias not been an invention for pix thousand years. It’s on the same line of. repentance that David exercised about his siris, and the same old style of prayer that the publican used when he emphasized it by an inward Stroke of both hands, and the same faith in Christ that Paul suggested to tfTft jailer the night the penitentiary broke down. Aye, that is the reason I have more confidence in it It has been tried by more millions than I dare to state lest I come far short of the brilliant facts. All who through Christ earnestly tried to get right with God, are right and always will be right That gives the young women who gets that position superiority over all rivalries, all jealousies, all misfortunes, all health failings, all social disasters, nnd all the combined troubles of eighty years, if she shall live to be an octogenarian. If the world fails to appreciate her, she says: “God loves me, the angels in Heaven are in sympathy with me, and I can afford to be patient until the day when the imperial chariot shall wheel to my door to take me up to my coronation.” If health goes, she says, “I can endure the present distress, for I am 'on the way to a climate the first breath of* which will make me proof against even the slightest discomfort.” If she be jostled with perturbations of social life s>e can say: “Well, when I begin my life among the thrones of Heaven and the kings and queens unto God shall be *ny associates, it will not make much difference who on earth forgot me when the invitations to that reception Were made out.” All right with God you are all right with everything. Martin Luther, writing a letter of condolence to one of his friends who has lost his daughter, began by saying: “This is a hard world for girls.” It is for those who are dependent upon their own wits and the whims of the world, and the preferences of human favor, but those who take the JCternal God for their portion not hfter than fifteen years of age, and that is ten years later ..than it ought to be. will find that while Martin Luther’s letter of condolence was true in regard tc niany, jt not most, with respect tc those who have the wisdom, and promptitude, and the earnestness tc Cet right with God, I declare that this i a good world for girls. Advice the second: Make it n matter of religion to take care of yonr physical health. Ido not wonder that the 1 Greeks deified health and called Hyfsia a goddess. 1 rejoice that there eve been no many mode# of maintaining and restoring young womanly health invented In our time. They may have been known a long lime buck, but they have been popularised in our day—lawn tennis, croquet and golf and the bicycle. It alweya seemed | strange and inscrutable that out hu- * man race should be .so *lbw of loeomotion, When creatures of leas loiper-

have powers of velocity, wing of bird or of antelope, leaving us far behind,.and while it seems so important that we‘be in many places in a short whilq, w’e were-weighed down with injfndmost men if Dief^htu i femilfi exh&fsted or dead Mwl • hamstjpiA was'left until th^last,-. decaff of give the speed which we see whirliug through all our cities and along the country roads, and with that speed comes health. The women tithe next decade will be healthier than at any time since the world was created. while the invalidism which has so often characterized womanhood will pass over to mftnhood, which by its posture on the wheel, is coming to curved spine and cramped chest and a deformity for whicli another fifty years will not have power to make rescue. Young man, sit up straight when you,.ride. Darwin says the human ra.ee is descended from the monkey, but the bicycle will turn a hundred thousand men of the present generation in physical condition, from man to monkey. For good womanhood, I thank God that this mode of recreation lias been invented. Use it wisely, modestly, Christianly. No good woman needs to be told what attire is proper and what behavior is right. If anything be doubtful, reject it. A hoydeoish,—boisterous, masculine Woman is the detestation of all, and every revolution of the wheel she rides is toward depreciation and downfall. Take care of your health, 0 woman; of your nerves, in not reading the trash which makes up ninetynine out of one hundred novels, or by eating too many cornucop as of confectionery. Take* care pf your eyes by not reading at hours when you ought to btL&lsjeping.. Hake care of your ears -by stopping them..against the tides of gossip that surge through every neighborhood’. Health! Only those know its value who have lost it. The earth is girdled with pain, aud a vast proportion of it is the • price paid for early recklessness. I close this though with the salutation/from Macbeth: Now good digestion wait on appetite Advice the third: Appreciate your mother while you have her. It is the almost universal testimony of young women who have lost mothers, that they did not realize what slie was to them until a ter her exit from this life. Indeed, mother is in the appreciation of many a youug lady a hindrance. The maternal inspection is often considered an obstacle. Mother has many notions about p/uprr and that which.is improper. It is astounding lmw much lnorcr many girts know at eighteen than their mothers at forty-five. With what an elaborate argument, perhaps spiced with some temper, the youngling tries to reverse the opinion of the oliOing. The sprinkle of gray on the maternal forehead is rather ah indication to the recent graduate of the female seminary ’ that the circumstances of to-day or to-night are not fully appreciated. What a wise boarding school that would be if the mothers were the pupils and the daughters the teachers. How well the teens would chaperone the fifties. Then mothers do not amount to ipuch anyhow. They are in the way, and are always asking questions about postage marks of letters, and asking: “Who is that Mary D.?” and '‘where did you form that acquaintance, Flora?” .and where did you get that ring, Myra?” For mothers have such unprecedented means of knowing everything—they say “it was a bird in the air” that told them. Alasl for that bird in the air. Will not some one lift his gun and shoot it? It would take whole libraries to hold the wisdom which the daughter knows more than her mother. “Why can not I have this?” “Why can not I do that?” And the question in many a group has been, although not plainly stated: “What shall we do with the mothers, anyhow? They are so far behind the times.” Permit me to suggest that if the mother had given more time to looking alter herself and les- time to looking after you, she would have been as fully up-to-date as you, in music, in syle of gait, iu esthetic taste, and in all sorts of information. I expect that while you were studying botany, and chemistry, and embroidery, and the new opera, she was studying household economies. But one day from overwork, or sitting up of nights with a neighbor’s sick child, or a blast of the east wind, on which pneumonias are horsed, mother is sick. Yet the family think she will soon be well, for she has been sick so often, and always has got well, and the physician comes three times a da3*. and tnere is a consultation of the doctors, and the news is gradually broken that recovery is impossible, given in the words “while there is life there is hope.” And the white pillow over whici) are strewn the locks a" little tinted witli snow. Incomes the point around which all tmp family gather, some standing, some kneeling, and the pulse beats the last throb, and the bosom tremble* with the lsst breath, and the question is asked in a whisper by all the group: “Is she gone 7” And all ia over. Mow come the regrets. Mow the daughter reviews her former criticism of maternal supervision. For the first time she realizes what it ia to have a mother, and what it ia. to lose a mother. Tell me, men and women, young and old, did any of na appreciate how mnch mother was to ns until she wae gone? Yonng woman, yon will probably never have a more disinterested friend than your mother. When she says anything la nnaare or imprudent, yon had better believe it Is unsafe or imprudent. When she dcelsree ia la something yon ought to do, 1 think yon had better do it Ska has seen more of the world than yon have. Do you think she would have any mercenary or contemptible motive in what she advises yon? She would give her life for you if i| were called for. Do yon know of any one else whe would do more titan that for yon? Dt

you know qf any one who would do as much?.—Again, aud-again siic ha.s alreadv endangered t.hat life during six weeks of diphtheria or scarlet fever, and .she never once- up ’ the SSnSSon of Tttag, breathing day qAd tee eqnf A hfi fal|k>f 'moffiers who died takfTfg/jeare offßrfr’ children. Better appreciate yotir mother before ’/your appreciation of her will be no kindness to’ her, and the post-mortem regrets will be more and more of an agony as the years pass on. Big headstones of polished Aberdeen, and the best epitaphs which the family- put together could compose, and a garland of whitest roses from the conserva-tory-are often the • attempt to atone, for the thanks we ought to have uttered ih living ears, and the kind words that would have done more good than all the calls lilies ever piled up on the silent mounds of the cemeteries. ? . Advice the fourth: Allow no time to pass without brightening one’s life. Within five minutes’ walk of you there is some one in a tragedy compared with which Shakspeare’s King Lear or Victor Hugo’s Jean Valjean has no power. Go out and brighten somebody’s life with a cheering worcT. dr smile, or a- flower. Take a good book and read a chapter to that blind_ man. Go up that dark alley and make that invalid woman laugh with some good story. Go to that house from which that child has been taken by death and tell the father and mother what an escape the child has had from the winter of earth in the springtime of Heaven. For God’s sake, make some one happy for ten minutes, if’.for ■TnrplTSTrgiTr-a "ttiagr ” A yotMlEr wuiiiau

bound on such a,mission, what might she not .accomplish. Oh, i there are thousands of these 'manufacturers of sunshine. They-are “King's Daughters” whether inside or' outside that delightful organization. They do more good before they are -twenty years of age than selfish women who live ninety/ and they are so happy just because they make others happy. Compare such a young woman who feels she has such a mission with one who lives a round of vanities, card case in hand calling on people for whom she does not care, except for some social advantage, and insufferably bored when the c:dl is returned, and trying to look young after they are old, and living.a -life of insincerity and hollowness, and dramatization And sham. Young woman! live to make others happy and you will be happy: Live for yourself and you wi 1 be miserable. There never has been an exception to the rule; there never will be an exception.

Advice the fifth: Plan out your life on a big scale, .whether you a farmer’s daughter, or a shepherdess among the hills, or the flattered pet of a drawing room filled with statuary, and pictures, and briq-a.-brac. Stop whei’e you iire and make a plan for your lifetime. You can not be satisfied with a life of .frivolity, and giggle, and indirection. Trust the world, and it will cheat you if it does not you. The Redoubtable was the.name of an enemy’s ship that Lord Nelson spared twice from demolition, but that same ship afterward sent the ball that killed him. and the World on which you . smile may aim at you its deadliest weapon. Be a God’s woman. This moment mnke as mighty a change as .did a college student of England. He had neglected his studies, rioting at night with dissipated companions and sleeping in the class room when he ought to have been listening. A fellow student came into his room one morning before the young man I am speaking of had arisen from his pillow, and said to him- "Paley, you area fool! You are wasting your opportunities. Do not throw away your life.” Paley said: “I was so struck with what lie said that I lay in bed until I had formed my plan for life, I ordered my fire to be always laid over night I arose at five and read steadily all day. Allotted to each portion of t!:e day its proper branch of study, and become the senior wrangler.” What an hour that was when a resolution definitely placexl changed a young man', from a reckless and time-wasting student to a consecrated man who stopped not until all time and all eternity shall be debtoto his pen and influence.

Young women! draw out, and decile what you will be, and do, God helping. Write it out in a plain hand, not line the letters which Josephine received from Napoleon in Italy, the writingso scrawling and scattered that it was sometimes taken as a map of the seat of war. Put th j plan on the wall of your room, or write it in the opening of a blank book, or put it where you will be compelled often to see it. A thousand questions of vour coming life you can not settle now, but there is one question you can settle Independent of man, woman, angel and devil, and that is that you will be a God's woman now, henceforth and forever. ClasD hands with the Almighty. Pythagoras, represented life by the letter Y, because it easily divides into two ways. Look ont for opportunities of cheering, inspiring, rescuing and saving all the people you can. Make a league with the Eternities. I seek your present and everlasting safety. David Brewster said that a comet belonging toour system called Lexell's comet £a lost, as it ought to have appeared thirteen times, and has not appeared at all. Alas! it is not only the lost comets, but the lost stars, and what were considered fixed stars. Some of the most brilliant and steady Minis have disappeared. One whe has known In storms to sell 1 ha vs on beard; Above tho roering a t the gale, Ihearnij Lord. He holds me when the billow 1 smllo; 1 shall not fall: U short 'tts sharp, if lon/ 'tie light; > Ho tempers all. Docnmra is nothing but the skin of' truth .vt up and stuffed.—B. W. Beecher.