Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 February 1898 — TALMAGES SERMON [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TALMAGES SERMON

IN this sermon of Dr. Talmage the character of a wise, sympathetic and self-denying sister is set forth as an example, and the story will set hundreds of men to thinking over old times; text, Exodus ii., 4, '"And his sister stood afar off to wit what would be dbne to him'.” Princess Thermutis, daughter of Pharaoh, looking out through the lattice of her bathing house, on the banks of the Nile, saw a curious boat on the river. It had neither oar nor helm, and they would have been useless anyhow. There was only one passenger and that a baby boy. But the Mayflower, that brought the pilgrim fathers to America, carried not so precious a load. The boat was made of the broad leaves of papyrus, tightened together by bitumen. Boats were sometimes made of that material, as we learn from Pliny and Herodotus and Theophrastus. all the Hebrew children born,” had been Pharaoh’s order. To save her boy, Jochebed, the mother of little Moses, t had put him in that queer boat and launched him. His sister Miriam stood On the bank watching that precious craft. She was far enough off not to draw attention to the boat, but near enough to offer protection. There she stands on the bank— Miriam the poetess, Miriam the quick wilted, Miriam the faithful, though very human, for in after time she demonstrated it. Miriam was a splendid sister, but had her faults, like all the rest of us. How carefully she watched the boat containing her brother! A strong wind might upset it. The buffaloes often found there might in a sudden plunge of thirst sink it. Some ravenous water fowl might swoop and pick his eyes out with iron beak. Some crocodile or hippopotamus crawling through the rushes might crunch the babe. Miriam watched and watched until Princess Thermutis, a maiden on each side of her holding palm leaves over her head to shelter her from the sun, came down and entered her bathing house. When from the lattice she saw that boat, she ordered it brought, and when the leaves were pulled back from thp face of the child and the boy looked up he cried aloud, for he was hungry and frightened and would not even let the princess take him. The infant would rather stay hungry than acknowledge any one of the court as mother. Now Miriam, the sister, incognito, no one suspecting her relation to the child, leaps from the bank and rushes down and offers to get a nurse to pacify the child. Consent is given, and she brings Jochebed, the baby’s mother, incognito, none of the court knowing that she was the mother, and when Jochebed arrived the child stopped crying, for its fright was calmed and its hunger appeased. You may admire Jochebed, the mother, and all the ages may admire Moses, but I clap my hands in applause at the behavior of Miriam, the faithful,. brilliant and strategic sister.

A Nonsuch in History. “Go home,” some one might have said to Miriam. “Why risk yourself out there aloue on the banks of the Nile, breathing the miasma and in danger of being attacked of -wild beast or ruffian? Go home!” No. Miriam, the sister, more lovingly watched and bravely defended Moses, the brother. Is he worthy her care and courage? Oh, yes; the sixty centuries of the world's history have never had so much involved in the arrival of any ship at any port as in the landing of that papyrus boat calked with bitumen! Its one passenger was to be a nonsuch in history—lawyor, statesman, politician, legislator, organizer, conqueror, deliverer. He had such remarkable beauty in childhood that, Josephus says, when he was carried along the road people stopped to gaze at him and workmen would leave their work to admire him. When the king playfully put his crown upon this boy, he threw it off indignantly and put his foot on it. The king, fearing that this might be a sign that the child might yet take down his crown, applied another test. According to the Jewish legend, the king ordered two bowls to be put before tire child, one containing rubies and the other burning coals, and if he took the coals he was to live and if he took the rubies he was to die. For some reason the child took one of the coals and put it in his mouth, so that his life was spared, ulthough it burned the tongue till he was indistinct of utterance ever after. Having come to manhood, he spread open the palms of his hands in prayer, and the lied Sea parted to let 2,500,000 people escape. And he put the palms of his hands together in prayer, and the lied Sea closed on a strangulated host. Miriam the Faithful. Oh, was not Miriam, the sister of Moses, doing a good thing, nn important thing, a glorious thing when she watched the bout woven of river plants and made water tight with nsphaltum, carrying its one hnssenger? I>id she not put all the ages of time and of n coming eternity nn3er obligation when she defended her helpleas brother from the perils aquatic, reptilian and ravenous? She it was that brought that wonderful babe and his mother together, so that he was reared to be the deliverer of his nation, when otherwise, if saved at all from the rushes of the Nile, he would have been only one more of the God defying pharaohs; for Princess Thennutis or the bathing house would have inherited the crown of Egypt, nnd as she had no child of her o\yn this adopted child would have come to coronation. Had there been no Miriam there would have been no Moses. What n garland for faithful sisterhood! For how many a lawgiver nnd how many a hero and how many a deliverer ami how many a saint are the world and the clpirch indebted to a watchful, loving, faithful, godly sister? Come up out of the farmhouses, come up out of the Hfconspicuous

homes, come up from the banks of the Hudson and Penobscot and the Savannah and the Mobile and the Mississippi and all the other Niles of America, and let us see you, the Miriams who watched and protected the leaders in law and medicine and merchandise and art and agriculture and mechanics and religion! If I should ask all physicians and attorneys and merchants and ministers of religion and successful men of all professions and trades who art? indebted to an elder sister for good influences and perhaps for an education or a prosperous start to let it be known, hundreds would testify. God knows how many of our Greek lexicons and how much of our schoolings were paid for by money that would otherwise have gone ’ for the replenishing of a sister’s wardrobe. While the brother sailed off for a resounding sphere, the sister watched him from the banks of self-de-nial. The Elder Sister’s Guiding Hand. Miriam was the eldest of the family; Moses and Aaron, her brothers, were younger. Oh, the power of the elder sister to help decide the brother’s character for usefulness and for heaven! She can keep off from her brothel- more evils than Miriam could have driven back water fowl or crocodile from the ark of bulrushes. The older sister decides the direction in which the cradle boat shall sail. By gentleness, by good sense, by Christian principle she can turn it toward the palace, not of a wicked Pharaoh, but of a holy God, and a brighter princess tlign Thermutis should lift him out of peril, even religion, whose ways sire ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace. The older sister, how much the world owes her! Born while yet the family was in limited circumstances*she had to hold and take care of her younger brothers. And if there is anything that excites my sympathy it is a little girl lugging round a great fat child hud getting her ears boxed because she cannot keep him quiet. By the time she gets to young womanhood she is pale and worn oulfe and her attractiveness has been sacrificed on the altar of sisterly fidelity, and she is consigned to celibacy, and society calls her by an unfair name, but-fin heaven they call her Miriam. In most families the two most undesirable places in the record of births are the first and the last—the first l>ceause she is worn out with the cares of a home that cannot afford to hire help, and the last because she is spoiled ns a pet. Among the grandest equipages that sweep through the streets of heaven will be those occupied by sisters who sacrificed themselves for brothers. They will have the finest Of the Apocalyptic white horses, and many who on earth looked down upon them will have to turn out to let them pass, the charioteer crying; “Clear the way! A queen is coming!”

Blessing or Curse. Let sisters not begrudge the time and care bestowed on a brother. It is hard to believe that any boy that you know so well as your brother can ever turn out anything, very useful. Well, he may not be a Moses. There is only one of that kind needed for 0,000 years. But I tell you what your brothel' will be—=-either a blessing or a curse to society .and a candidate for happiness or wretchedness. He will, like Moses, have the choice between mines and living coals, and your influence will have much to do with his decision. He may not, like Moses, be the deliverer of a nation, but he may, after your father and mother are gone, be the deliverer of a household. What thousands of homes to-day are piloted by brothers! There are properties now well invested and yielding income for the support of sisters and younger brother because the older brother rose to the leadership from the day the father lay down to die. Whatever you do for your brothers will come back to you again. If you set him an ill-natured, censorious, unaccommodating example, it will recoil upon you from his own irritated and despoiled nature. If you, by patience with his infirmities and by nobility of character, dwell with him in the few years of your companionship, you will have your counsels reflected back upon you some day by Jiis splendor of behavior in some crisis where he would have failed but for you. Don't snub him. Don’t depreciate his ability. Don't talk discouragingly about his future. Don’t let Miriam get down off the bank of the Nile and wade out and upset the ark of bulrushes. Don’t tease him. Brothers and sisters do not consider it any harm to tease. That spirit abroad in the family is one of the meanest and most devilish. There is n teasing that is pleasurable and is only another form of innocent raillery, but that which provokes and irritates and makes the eye flash with anger is to be reprehended. It would be less blameworthy to take a bunch of thorns and dra\g them across your sister’s cheek or to take a knife and draw its sharp edge across your brother's hand till the blood spurts, for that would damage only the body, but tensing is the thorn and the knife scratching and lacerating the disposition and the soul. It is the curse of innumerable households that the brothers tease the sisters and the sisters the brothers. Sometimes it is the color of the hair, or the shape of the feutures or an nffnir of the heart. Sometimes it is by revealing a secret or by a suggestive look or a guffaw or an “Ahem!” Tease! Tease! Tease! Tease! For mercy's sake, quit it. Christ says, “He thut hnteth his brother is a murderer." Now, when you, by tensing, make your brother or sister hate, you turn him or her into a murderer or murderess. -Beware of Jculousy. Don’t let jealousy ever touch a sister's soul, ns it so often does, because her brother gets more honor or more means, i Even Miriam, the heroine of the text, was struck by that evil passion of jealousy. She had possessed unlimited influence over Moses, and now he marries, and not only so, but marries a black woman from Ethiopia, and Miriam is so disgusted and outraged at Moses, first because lie had married at nil, and next because he had practiced miscegenation, that she is drawn iuto a frenzy, and then begins to turn white and gets white as a corpse and then whiter than a corpse. Her complexion is like chalk—the fact is, she has the Egyptian leprosy. And now the brother whom she had defended on the Nile comes to her rescue in a prayer that brings her restoration. Let there be no room in nil your house for jealousy either to sit or stand. It, Is a leprous abomination. Your brother’s success, O sisters, is your success! His victories will be

your victories. For while Moses (he brother led the vocal music after the crossing of the Bed Sea, Miriam the sister, with two sheets of shining brass uplifted and glittering in the sun, led the instrumental music, clapping the cymbals till the last frightened neigh of pursuing cavalry horse was smothered, in the wave and the last Egyptian helmet went under. Do Your Part. If you only knew it, your interests are identical. Of all the fafuilies of the”earth that ever stood together perhaps the most conspicuous is the family of the Rothschilds. As Mayer Anselm Itothschild was about to die, in 1812, he gathered his children about him—Anselm, Solomon, Nathan, Charles and James —and made them promise that they Would alwaysrbe united on 'Change. Obeying that injunction, they have been the mightiest commercial power on earth, and at the raising or lowering of their scepter nations have risen or fall* en. That illustrates how much, on a large scale and for selfish purposes, a united family may achieve. But suppose that instead of a magnitude of dollars as the object it be doing good and making salutary impression and raising this sunken world, how much more ennobling! Sister, you do your part and brother will do bis part. If Miriam will lovingly watch the boat on the Nile. Moses will help her when leprous disasters strike. When father and mother are gone—and they soon will be, if they have not already made exit—the sisterly and fraternal bond will be the only ligament that will bold the family together. How many reasons for your deep and unfaltering affection for each other! Booked in the same cradle; bout over by the same motherly tenderness; toiled for by 1 the same father's weary arm and aching brow; with common inheritance of all the family secrets and with names given you by parents who started you with the highest hopes for your happiness and prosperity, I charge you be loving and kind and forgiving. If the sister see that the brother never wants a sympathizer, the brother will see that the sister never wants an escort. Ob, if the sisters of a household knew through what terrific aud damning temptations their brother goes in city life, they would hardly sleep nights in anxiety for his salvation! And if you would make a holy conspiracy of kind words and gentle attentions and earnest prayers, that would save his soul from death and bide a multitude of sins. But let the sister dash off in one direction in discipleship of the world, and the brother flee off in am other direction and dissipation, and it will not be long before they will meet again at the iron gate of despair, their blistered feet in the hot ashes of a consumed lifetime. Alas, that brothers and sisters though living together for years very often do not know each other, and that they see only the imperfections and none of the virtues! Know Thy Brother.

General Bauer of the Russian cavalry had in early life wandered off with the army, and the family supposed he was dead. After he gained a fortune he encamped one day in Husam, his native place, and made a banquet, and among the great military men who were to dine he invited a plain miller and his wife who lived near by and who, affrighted, came, fearing some harm would be done them. The miller and his wife were placed one on each side of the general at the table. The general asked the miller all about his family, and the miller said that he had two brothers and a sister. “No other brothers?” “My younger brother went Off with the army many years ago and no doubt was long ago killed.” Then the general said, “Soldiers, I am this man’s younger brother, whom he thought was dead.” And how loud was the cheer and how warm was the embrace! Brother aud sister, you need as much of an introduction.to each other as they did. l'ou do not know each other. You think your brother is grouty and cross and queer, and he thinks you are selfish and proud and unlovely. Both wrong. That brother will be a prince in some woman’s eyes, and that sister a queen in the estimation of some man. That brother is a magnificent fellow, and that sister is a morning in June. Come, let me,introduce you: “Moses, this is Miriam. Miriam, this is Moses.” Add 75 per cent to your present appreciation of each other and when you kiss good morning do not stick up your cold cheek, wet from the recent washing, as though you hated to touch each other's lips in affectionate caress. Let it have all the fondness and cordiality of a loving sister’s kiss. To Part No More. Make yourself as agreeable and helpful to each other os possible, remembering that soon you part. The few years of boyhood aud girlhood will soon slip by, ami you will go out to homes of your own and into the battle with the world and amid ever changing vicissitudes and on paths crossed with graves and up steeps hard to climb and through shadowy ravines. But, Omy God and Saviour, may the terminus of the journey be the same as the start—namely, at the father's and mother's knee, if they have inherited the kingdom. Then, as in boyhood and girlhood days, we rushed in after the day's absence with much to tell of exciting adventure, and father and mother enjoyed the recital as much as we who made it, so we shall on the hillside of heaven rehearse to them all the scenes of our earthly expedition, and they shall welcome us home, as we say, “Father and mother, we have come and brought our children with us.” The old revival hymn described it with glorious repetition: Brothers and sisters there will meet, Brothers and sisters there will meet, Brothers and sisters these will meet, Will meet to part no more. Copyright, IMW.