Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 November 1897 — THE LOST CHILDREN. [ARTICLE]

THE LOST CHILDREN.

TALMAGE'S CONSOLING SERMON FOR BEREAVED PARENTS. The Shorter the Voyage the Leas Chance for a Cyclone—Temptation in Old Age-What the Lad Dying at Sixteen la Spared. Our Weekly Sermon. From an unusual standpoint Dr. Talmage offers comfort at the loss tof children, and this sermon must be a balsam for many wounds. His text is Isaiah IviL, 1, “The righteous is taken away from the evil to come.” 1 We all spend much time in panegyric of • longevity. We consider it a great thing ■to live to be an octogenarian. If any • one dies in youth, we say, “What a pity!” Dr. Muhlenbergh, in old age, said that the hymn written in early life by his own ' hand no more expressed his sentiment when it said: “I would not live alway.” If one be pleasantly circumstanced, he ’ never wants to go. William Cullen Bryutit, the great poet, at 82 years of age, • standing in my house in a festal group, evading “Thanatopsis” without spectacles, was just as anxious to live as when at 18 years of age he wrote that immortal • threnody. Cato feared at 80 years of age that he would not live to learn Greek. Monaldesco, at 115 years, writing the history of his time, feared a collapse. Theo- ' phrastus, writing a book at 90 years of age, was anxious to live to complete it. Thurlow Weed, at about 86 years of age, found life as great a desirability as when he snuffed out his first politician. Albert Barnes, so well prepared for the next world at 70, said he would rather stay here. So it is all the way down. I suppose that the last time that Methuselah was out of doors in a storm he was afraid of getting his feet wet lest it shorten his days. Indeed I some time ago preached a sertnoo on the blessings of longevity, but I «ow propose to preach to you about the blessings of an abbreviated earthly existence. If I were an agnostic, I would say * man is blessed in proportion to the number of years he can stay on terra firma, ■because after that he falls off the docks, and if he is ever picked out of the depths it is only to be set up in some morgue of the universe to see if anybody will claim him. If I thought God made man only to last forty or fifty or a hundred years and then he was to go into annihilation, I would say his chief business ought to be to keep alive and even in good weather to be very cautious and to carry an umbrella and take overshoes and life preservers and bronze armor and weapons ■of defense lest he fall off into nothingness and obliteration. The Quick Return Home. But, my friends, you are uot agnostics. You believe in immortality and the eternal residence of the righteous in heaven, stud therefore I first remark that an abbreviated earthly existence is to be desired and is a blessing because it makes one’s life work very compact. Some meu go to business at 7 o’clock in the morning and return at 7 in the evening. Others go at 8 o’clock and return at 12. Others go at 10 and return at 4. I have friends who are ten hours a day in F business, others who are five hours, others who are one hour. They all do their work well. They do their entire work and then they return. Which position do you think the most desirable? You say, • other things being equal, the man who is ' the shortest time detained in business and who can return borne the quickest is the • most blessed. Now, my friends, why not carry that ■ good sense into the subject of transference from this world? If a person die in child’faood, he gets through his work at 9 •o'clock in the morning. If he die at 45 years of age, he gets through his work at 12 o’clock noon. If he die at 70 years -of age, he gets through his work at 5 o'clock in the afternoon. If he die at 90, ibe has to toil all the way on up to 11 ■o’clock at night. The sooner we get through our work the better. The harvest all in barrack or barn the farmer 'does not sit down in the stubble field; but, shouldering his scythe and taking his pitcher from under the tree, he makes a •straight line for the old homestead. All ■ we want to be anxious about is to get our work done and well done, and the quicker ■ the better.

Saved from the Cyclone, Perhaps. Again, there is a blessing in an abbreviated earthly existence in the fact that •’moral disaster might come upon the man if he tarried longer. Recently a man who had been prominent in churches, and who had been admired for his generosity and kindness everywhere, for foregry was sent to State prison for fifteen years. Twenty years ago there was no more probability of that man’s committing a commercial dishonesty than that you will commit commercial dishonesty. The number of men •who fall into ruin between 50 and 70 years of age is simply appalling. If they lhad died thirty years before, it would '.have been better for them and better for their families. The shorter the voyage the less chance for a cyclone. There is a wrong theory abroad that if one's youth be right his old age will be jrtghL You might as well say there is •nothing wanting for a ship’s safety except to get it fully launched on the Atlantic ocean. I have sometimes asked those who were schoolmates or college mates of some great defaulter: “What kind of a boy was he? What kind of a young man was he?’’ ▲nd they have aid: “Why, he was a splendid fellow. I had no idea he could ever go Into such an outrage.” The fact is the (rent temptation of life sometimes comes Xar on in midlife or in old age. 'The first time I crossed the Atlantic •ocean it was as smooth as a mill pond, and . ;I thought the sea captains and the voy:agers had slandered the old ocean, and I ■wrote home an essay for a magazine on -cThe Smile of the Sea," but I never afterward could have written that thing, for before we got home we got a terrible shaking up. The first voyage of life may ke very smooth. The last may be a euroelydon. Many who start life in great prosperity do not end it in prosperity. The great pleasure of temptation comes •sometimes in this direction. At about 45 years of age a man’s nervous system •changes, and some one tells him he must take stimulants to keep himself up, and tie takes stimulants to keep himself up until the stimulants keep him down, or a ■nan has been going along for thirty or forty years in unsuccessful business, and here is an opening where by one dishonorable action he can lift himself and his Ounily from All financial emba.'*susment.

He attempts to leap the chasm, and he falls into it. The Soldier on Guard. Then it is in after life that the great temptation of success comes. If a man make a fortune before 30 years of age, he generally loses it before 40. The solid and the permanent fortunes for the most part do not come to their climax until in midlife or in old age. The most of the bank presidents have white hair. Many of those who have been largely successful have been flung of arrogance or worldliness or dissipation in old age. They may not have lost their integrity, but they have become so worldly and so selfish under the influence of large success that it is evident to everybody that their success has been a temporal calamity and an eternal damage. Concerning many people it may be said it seems as if it would have been better if they cbuld have embarked from this life at 20 or 30 years of age. Do you know the reason why the vast majority of people die before 30? It is because they have not the moral endurance for that which is beyond the 30 and a merciful God will not allow them to be put to the fearful strain. Again, there is a blessing in an abbreviated earthly existence in the fact that one is the sooner taken off the defensive. As soon as one is old enough to take care of himself he is put on his guard. Bolts on the doors to keep out the robbers. Fireproof safes to keep off the flames. Life insurance and fire insurance against accident. Receipts lest you have to pay a debt twice. Lifeboat against shipwreck. Westinghouse airbrake against railroad collision and hundreds of hands ready to overreach you and take all you have. Defense against cold, defense against heat, defense against sickness, defense against the world's abuse, defense all the way down to the grave, and even the tombstone sometimes is not a sufficient barricade. If a soldier who has been on guard, shivering and stung with the cold, pacing up and down the parapet with shouldered musket, is glad when some one comes to relieve guard and he can go inside the fortress, ought not that man to shout for joy who can put down his weapon of earthly defense and go into the king’s castle? Who is the more fortunate, the soldier who has to stand guard twelve hours -or the man who has to stand guard six hours? We have common sense about everything but religion, common sense about everything but transference from this world.

Many Bereavements Escaped. Again, there is a blessing in an abbreviated earthly existence in the fact that one escapes so many bereavements. The longer we live the more attachments and the more kindred, the more chords to be wounded or rasped or sundered. If a man live on to 70 or 80 years of age, how many graves are cleft at his feet! In that long reach of time father and mother go, brothers and sisters go, children go, grandchildren go, personal friends outside the family circle whom they had loved with a love like that of David and Jonathan. Besides that, some men have a natural trepidation about dissolution and ever and anon during forty or fifty or sixty years, this horror of their dissolution shudders through soul and body. Now, suppose the lad goes at 16 years of age? He escapes fifty funerals, fifty caskets, fifty obsequies, fifty awful wrenchings of the heart. It is hard enough for us to bear their departure, but is it not easier for us to bear their departure than for them to stay and bear fifty departures? Shall we not by the grace of God rouse ourselves into a generosity of bereavement which will practically say, “It is hard enough ifor me to go through this bereavement, but how glad I am that be will never have to go through it.” So I reason with myself, and so you will find it helpful to reason with yourselves. David lost his son. Though David was king, he lay on the earth mourning and inconsolable for some time. At this distance of time, which do you really think was the one to be congratulated, the short lived child or the long lived father? Had David died as early as that child died he would, in the first place, have escaped that particular bereavement, then he would have escaped the worse bereavement of Absalom, his recreant son, and the pursuit of the Philistines, and the fatigues of his military campaign, and the jealousy of Saul, and the perfidy of Ahithophel, and the curse of Shimel, and the destruction of his family at Ziklag, and, above all, he would have escaped the two great calamities of his life, the great sins of uncleanness and murder. David lived to be of vast use to the church and the world, but so far as his own happiness was concerned, does it not seem to you that it would have been better for him to have gone early? Now, this, my friends, explains some things that to you have been inexplicable. This shows you why when God takes little children from a household he is very apt to take the brightest, the most genial, the most sympathetic, the most talented. Why? It is because that kind of nature suffers the most when it does suffer and is most liable to temptation. God saw the tempest sweeping up from the Caribbean and he put the delicate craft into the first haibor. “Taken away from the evil to come.”

The Center in Heaven. Again, my friends, there is a blessing in an abbreviated earthly existence in the fact that it puts one sooner in the center of things. All astronomers, infidel as well as Christian, agree in believing that the universe swings around some great center. Any one who has studied the earth and studied the heavens knows that God’s favorite figure in geometry is a circle. When God put forth his hand to create the universe, he did not strike that hand at right angles, but he waved it in a circle, and kept on waving in a circle until systems and constellations and galaxies and all worlds took that motion. Our planet swinging around the sun, other planets swinging around other suns, but somewhere a great hub, around which the great wheel of the universe turns. Now the center is heaven. That is the capital of the universe; that is the great metropolis of immensity. Does not our common sense teach us that in matters of study it is better for us to inove out from the center toward the circumference rather than to be on the circumference. where our world now is? We are like those who study the American continent while standing on the Atlantic beach. The way to study the continent is to cross it or go to the heart of it. Our standpoint in this world is defective. We are at the wrong end of the telescope. The best way to study a piece of machinery is not to stand on the doorstep and try to look in, but to go in with the engineer and take our place right amid the saws and the cylinders. We wear our eyes out and our brain out from the fact that we are studying unde.* such great dtrpdvan-

tage. Millions of dollars for observatories to study things about the moon, about the sun, about the rings of Saturn, about transits and occultations and eclipses, simply because our studio, our observatory is poorly situated. We are down iu the cellar trying to study the palace of the universe while our departed/ Christian friends have gone upstairs amid the skylights to study. Now, when one can sooner get to the center of things, is he not to be congratulated? Who wants to be always in the freshman class? We study God in this world by the Biblical photograph of him, but we all know we can in five minutes of interview with a friend get more accurate idea of him than we can by studying him fifty years through pictures or words. The little child that died last night knows more of God than all Andover, and all Princeton, and all New Brunswick, and all Edinburgh, and all the theological institutes in Christendom. Is it not better to go up to the very headquarters of knowledge? On the Rim of the Wheel. Does not our common sense teach us that it is better to be at the center than to be clear out on the rim of the wheel, holding nervously fast to the tire lest we be suddenly hurled into light and eternal felicity? Through all kinds of optical instruments trying to peer in through the cracks and the keyholes of heaven, afraid that both doors of the celestial mansion will be swung wide open before our entranced vision, rushing about among the apothecary shops of this world, wondering if this is good for rheumatism, and that is good for neuralgia, and something else is good for a bad cough, lest we be suddenly ushered into land of everlasting health, where the inhabitant never says, “I am sick.”

What fools we all are to prefer the circumference to the center! What a dreadful thing it would be if we should be suddenly ushered from this wintry world into the May time orchards of heaven, and if our pauperism of sin and sorrow should be suddenly broken up by a presentation of an emperor’s castle surrounded by parks, with springing fountains and paths up and down which angels of God walk two and two. We are like persons standing on the cold steps of the National picture gallery in London, under umbrella in the rain, afraid to go in amid the Turners and the Titians and the Raphaels. I come to them and say, “Why don’t you go inside the gallery?” “Oh,” they say, “we don’t know whether we can get in.” I say, “Don't you see the door is open?” “Yes,” they say, “but we have been so long on these cold steps we are so attached to them we don’t like to leave.” “But,” I say, “it is so much brighter and more beautiful in the gallery; you had better go in.” “No,” they say, “we know exactly how it is out here, but we don’t know exactly how it is inside.” So we stick to this world as though we preferred cold drizzle to warm habitation, discord to cantata, sackcloth to royal purple, as though we preferred a piano with four or five of the keys out of tune to an instrument fuWy attuued, as though earth and heaven had exchanged apparel, and earth had taken on briday array and heaven had gone into deep mourning, all its waters stagnant, all its harps broken, all chalices cracked at the dry wells, all the lawns sloping to the river plowed with graves, with dead angels under the furrow. Oh, I want to break up my own infatuation and I want to break up your infatuation with this world! I tell you if we are ready and if our work is done the sooner we go the better, and if there are blessings in longevity I want you to know right well there are also blessings in an abbreviated earthly existence.

“Taken from the Evil to Come.” If the spirit of this sermon is true, how consoled you ought to feel about members of your family that went early! “Taken from the evil to come,” this book says. What a fortunate escape they had! How glad we ought to feel that they will never have to go through the struggles which we have had to go through! They had just time enough to get out of the cradle and run up on the springtime hills of this world and see how it looked, and then they started for a better stopping place. They were like ships that“put In at St. Helena, staying there long enough to let passengers go up and see the barracks of Napoleon’s captivity, and then hoist sail for the port of their own native land. They only took this world in transitu. It is hard for ns, but it is blessed for them. And if the spirit of this sermon is true, then we ought not to go around sighing and groaning when another year is goings but we onght to go down on one knee by the milestone and see the letters and thank God that we are 365 miles nearer home. We ought not to go around with morbid feelings about our health or about anticipated demise. We ought to- be living not according to that old maxim which 1 used to hear in my boyhood that you must live as though every day were the last; you must live as though yon were to. live forever, for you will. Do not be nervous lest you have to move ont of a shanty into an Alhambra.