Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 58, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 March 1898 — TALMAGE'S SERMON [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TALMAGE'S SERMON

THIS discourse of Dr. Talmage draws from an oriental scene some stirring lessons and points to wells of comfort in unexpected places; ’ text, Genesi.s xxi... 19. “And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water, and she went and filled the bottle with water and gave the lad drink.” Morning breaks upon Beersheba. There is an early stir in the house of old Abraham. There has been trouble among the domestics. Hagar, an assistant in the household, and her son, a brisk lad of 16 years, have become impudent and insolent, and Sarah, the mistress of the household, puts her foot down very hard and gays that they will have to leave the premises. They are packing up now. Abraham, knowing that the journey before his servant and her son will be very long across desolate places, in the kindness of his'hea-it sets about putting up some bread and a bottle with water in it. It is a very plain lunch tjiat Abraham pro-: rides, but I warrant you there would have been enough of it had they not lost their way. ‘‘God be with you,” said old Abraham as lie gave the lunch to Hagar and a good many charges as to how she should conduct the journey. Ishmael, the boy, I suppose, bounded away in the morning light. Boys always like a change. Poor Ishmael! He has no idea of the disasters that are ahead of him. Hagar gives one long, lingering look on the familiar place where she had spent so many happy days, each -scene associated with the pride and joy of her heart, young Ishmael. The scorching noon comes on. The air is stifling and moves across the desert with insufferable suffocation. Ishmael, the boy. begins to complain and lies down, but Hagar rouses him up, saying nothing about her own weariness or the sweltering heat; for mothers can endure anything. Trudge, trudge, trudge. Crossing the dead level of the desert, how wearily and slowly the miles slip! A tamarind that seemed hours ago to stand only just a little ahead, inviting the travelers to come under its shadow, now is as far off as ever or seemingly so. Night drops upon the*desert, and the travelers are pillowless. Ishmael, very weary, I suppose instantly falls asleep. Hagar, as the shadows of the night begin to lap over each other —Hagar hugs her weary boy to her bosom and thinks of the fact that it is her fault that they are iq the desert. A star looks out, and every falling tear it kisses with a sparkle. A wing of wind comes over the hot earth and lifts the locks from the fevered brow of the boy. Hagar sleeps fitfully, and in her dreams travels over the weary day and half awakes her son by crying out in her sleep: “Ishmael! Ishmael!” We Must Find Our Sphere. And so they go on day after day and night after night, for they have lost their way. No path in the shifting sands; no sign in the burning sky. The sack empty of the flour; the water gone from the bottle.. What shall she do? As she puts her fainting Ishmael under a stunted shrub of the arid plain she sees the bloodshot eye and feels the hot hand and watches the blood bursting from the cracked tongue, and there is a shriek in the desert of Beersheba: “We shall die! We shall die!” Now, no mother was ever made strong enough to hear her son cry in vain for a drink. Heretofore she had cheered her boy by promising a speedy end of the journey, and even smiled upon him when she felt desperately enough. Now there is nothing to do but place him under a shrub and let him die. She had thought that she would sit there and watch until the spirit of her boy would go away forever, and then, she would breathe out her own life on his silent heart, but as the boy begins to claw his tongue in agony of thirst and struggle in distortion and begs his mother to slay him she cannot endure the spectacle. She puts him under a shrub and goes off a bow shot, and begins to weep until all the desert seems sobbing, and her cry strikes clear through the heavens, and an angel of God comes out on a cloud and looks down upon the appalling grief and cries, “Hagar, what aileth tliee?” She looks up ami she sees the angel pointing to a well of water, whore she tills the bottle for the lad. Thank God! Thank God! 1 learn from this oriental scene, in the first place, what a sad thing it is when people do n< t know their place and get too proud for their business. Hagar was an assistant in that household, but she wanted to rule there. She ridiculed and jeered until her son. Ishmael, got the game tricks? She dashed out her own happiness and threw Sarah into a great fret, and if she bad staid much longer in that household she would have upset calm Abraham's equilibrium. My friends, one-half of the trouble in the world to-day comes from the fact that people do not know their place or, finding their place, will not stay in it. When we come into the world, there is always a place ready for ns. A place for Abraham. A place for Sarah. A place for Hagar. A place for Ishmlicl. A place for you and it place for me. Our first duty, is to find our sphere; our second is to keep it. \\ c may be born in n sphere far off from the one for which God finally intends us. Sixtus V was born on the low ground and was swineherd. God called him up to wave a scepter. Ferguson- spent his early days in, looking after sheep. God called him up to. look after stars and be a shepherd watching the flocks of light on the hillsides of heaven, llojgnrth began by engraving pewter pots. God raised him to stand in the enchanted realm of a painter. The ahdtmnker's bench held Bloomfield for a little while, but God raised him to sit in the chair of a pblloaopbct ami < 'liristtan scholar. The sonp boiler of Ixirfdon could not keep his son in that business, for God had decided that Hawley was to be one

of the greatest astronomers of England. On the other hand, we may lie born in a sphere a little higher than that for which God intends us. Wp may be born in a castle, and play in a costly conservatory, and feed high bred pointers, and angle for goldfish in artificial ponds, and bo familiar with princes, yet God may better have fitted us for a carpenter’s shop, or dentist's forceps, or a weaver's shuttle, or a blacksmith’s forge. The great thing is to find just the sphere for which God intended us and then to occupy that sphere and occupy it forever. Here » a man God fashioned to make a plow. There is a man God fashioned to make a constitution. The man who makes the plow is just as honorable as the man, who makes

the constitution.’ There is a woman wlm> was made to fashion a robe, and yonder is one intended to be a queen and wear it. It seems to me that in the one case as in the other God appoints the sphere, and the needle is just as respectable in his sight as the scepter. Ido ifbt know but that the world would long ago have been saved if some of the men out of the ministry were in it and some of those who are in it were out of it. I really think that onehalf the world may be divided into two quarters—those who have not found their sphere and those who, haying found it, are not willing to stay there. How many are struggling for a position a little higher than that which God intended them! The bondswoman wants to be mistress, Hagar keeps crowding Sarah. The small wheel of a Watch which beautifully went treading its golden pathway wants to be the balance wheel, and the spafrow with chagrin drops into the brook because it cannot, like the eagle, cut a circle under the sun. Joy of Contentment. In the Lard's army we all want to be brigadier generals! The sloop says: “More mast, more tonnage, more canvas. Oh, that I were a topsail schooner, or a full rigged brig, or a Cunard steamer!” And so the world is filled with cries of discontent because we are not willing to stay in the place where God put us and intended us to be. My friends, be not too proud to do anything God tells you to do; for the lack of a right disposition in this respect tire world is strewn with wandering Hagar’s and Ishmaels. God has given each one of us a work to do. You carry a scuttle of coal up that dark alley. You distribute that Christian tract. You give SIO,OOO to the missionary cause. You for fifteen years sit with chronic rheumatism, displaying the beauty of Christian submission. Whatever God calls you to, whether it win hissing or huzza; whether to walk under triumphal arch or lift the sot out of the ditch; whether it be to preach on a Pentecost or tell some whnderer of the street of the mercy of the Christ of Mary Magdalene; whether it l>e to weave a garland for a laughing child on a spring morning and call her a }lay queen, or‘to comb out the tangled locks of a waif of the street and cut up one of your old dresses to fit her out for the sanctuary—do it, and do it right away. Whether it be a crown or yoke, do not fidget. Everlasting honors upon those who do theit work, and do their whole work, and arc contented in the sphere in which God has put them, while there is wandering and exile and desolation and wilderness for discontented Hagar and Ishmael. Again, I find in this oriental scene a lesson of sympathy with woman when she goes forth trudging in the desert. What a great change it was for this Hagar! There was the tent, and all the surroundings of Abraham's house, beautiful and luxurious, no doubt. Now she is going out into the hot sands of the desert. Oh, what a change it was! And in our day we often see the wheel of fortune turn. Here is’some one who lived in the very bright home of her father. She had everything possible to administer to her happiness—plenty at the table, music in the drawing room, welcome at the door. She is led forth into life by some one who cannot appreciate her. A dissipated soul comes and takes her out in the desert. Cruelties blot out all the lights of that home circle.- Harsh words wear out her spirits. The high hope that shone out over the marriage altar while the ring was being set, ami the vows given, and the benediction pronouncial, have all faded with the orange blossoms, and there she is to-day broken hearted, thinking of past joys ami present desolation and coming anguish. Hagar in the wilderness! Woman's Responsibilities. Here is a beautiful home. You cannot think of anything that can be added to it. For years there has not been the suggestion of a single trouble. Bright and happy children fill the house with laughter and song. Books to read. Pictures to look at. Lounges to rest on. Cup of domestic joy full and running over. Dark night drops. Pillow hot. Pulses flutter. Eyes close. And the foot whose wellknown stops on the doorsill brought the whole household out nt eventide crying, “Father’s coming!" will never sound on the doorsill again. A long, deep grief plowed through all that brightness of domestic life. Paradise lost. Widowhood. Hagnr in the wilderness! How often is it we see the weak arm of woman conscripted for this battle with the rough world. Who is she going down the street in the early light of the morning, pah l with exhausting work, not half slept out with the slumbers of last night, tragedies of suffering written all over her face, her lusterless eyes looking far ahead, ns though for the coming of some other trouble? Her parents called her Mary or Bertha or Agnes on the day when they held her up to the font and the Christian minister sprinkled on the infant's face the washings of a holy baptism. Her name is changed now. I hear it in the shuttle of the wornout shoes. I sec it in the figure of the faded calico. I find it in the lineaments of the woX I'egone countenance. Not Mary nor Hertha nor Agnes, but Hagar in the wilderness. May God have mercy upon woman in her toils, her struggle, her hardships, her desolation, and may the great heart of divine sympathy Incloee her forever! You say, "That isn't an unusual scene, a mother lending her child by the hand.” Who is it that she is leading? Ishmael, you say. Who is Ishmael? A great nation is to be founded—-a nation so strong that it is to utand for thousands of years against alfthe armies of the world. Egypt and Assyria thunder against it, but in rain. Gaulns brings up h|s army, and his army is smitten. Alexander decides up: on n campaign, brings up'his hosts and dies. For a long while that-nation mo-

nopolizes the-learning of the world. It is the nation of the Arabs. Whp founded it? Ishmael, the lad that Hagar led into the wilderness. She had no idea she was leading forth such destinies. Neither does any mother. You pass along the street and see and pass boys and girls who will yet make the earth quake with their influence./ “ As the Twig Is Bent.” / Who is Aidt boy at Sutton pool, Plymouth, England, barefooted, wading down into the slush and slime until his bare foot conies upon a piece of glass and he lifts it, bleeding and pain struck? That wound hi the foot decides that he be sedentary in his life, decides that he be a student. That wound by the glass in the foot decides that she shall be John Kitto, who shall provide the best religious encyclopedia the world has ever had provided, and with his other writings as well throwing a light upon the word of God such as has come from no other man in this century O mother, mother, that little hand that’wonders over your face may yet be lifted to hurl thunderbolts of war or drop benedictions! That.little voice may blas-pheme-God in the grogshop or cry “Forward!” to the Lord's hosts as they go out for . their iqst victory. -My mind this morning leaps thirty years ahead, and I see a merchant prince of New York. One stroke of his pen brings a ship out of Cariton. Another stroke of his pen brings a ship into Madras. He is mighty in all the money markets of the world. Who is he? He sits on Sabbaths beside you in church. My mind leaps thirty years forward from this time and I find myself in a relief association. A great multitude of Christian women have met together for a generous purpose. There is one woman in that crowd who seems to have the confidence of all the others, and they all look up to her for her counsel and for her prayers. Who is she? This afternoon you wiil find her in the Sabbath school, while the teacher tells her' of that Christ who clothed the naked and fed the'hungry and healed the sick. My mind leaps forward thirty years from now, ahd I find myself in an African jungle, and there is a missionary of the cross addressing the natives, and their dusky countenances are irradiated with the glad tidings of great joy and salvation. \Vho is he? Did yo-u not hehr his voice to-day in the opening song of your church service? Child Follows Parent. A Christian mother a good many years ago sat teaching lessons of religion to her child, and he drank in those lessons. She never knew that Lamphier would come forth and establish the Fulton street prayer meeting, and by one meeting revolutionize the devotions of the whole earth and thrill the eternities with his Christian influence. Lamphier said it was his mother who brought him to Jesus Qhrist. She never had an idea that she was leading forth such destinies. But, oh, when I see a mother reckless of hen influence, rattling on toward destruction, garlanded for the sacrifice with unseemly mirth and godlessness, dancing on down to perdition, taking her children in the same direction, preparing them for a life of frivolity, a death of shame and an eternity of disaster, I cannot help but say, “There they go, there they go—Hagar and Ishmael!” I tell you there are wilder deserts than Beersheba in many of the fashionable circles of this day. Dissipated parents leading dissipated children. Avaricious parents leading avaricious children. Prayerless parents leading prayerless children. I learn one more lesson from this oriental scene, and that is that every wilderness has a well in it. Hagar and Ishmael gave up to die. Hagar’s heart sank within her as she heard her child crying: “Water! Wafer! Water!” “Ah,” she says, “my darling, there is no water! This is a desert.” And then God’s angel said from the cloud, “What aileth thee, Hagar?” And she looked up and saw him pointing to a well of water, where she filled the bottle for the lad. Blessed be God that there is in every wilderness a well, if you only know how to find it —fountains for all those thirsty souls! On that last day, on that great day of the feaet, Jesus stood and cried, “If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink.” All these other fountains you find are mere mirages of the desert. Paracelsus, you know, spent his time in trying to find out the elixir of life—a liquid, which, if taken, would keep one perpetually young in this world and would change, the aged back again to youth. Of. course he was disappointed. He found not the elixir. But here 1 tell you of the elixir of everlasting life bursting from the “Rock of Ages,” and that drinking that water you shall never get eld, and you will never be sick,' and you will never die. “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters!” Ah, here is a man who says, "I have been looking for that fountain a great while, but can’t find it.” And here is some one else who says, “I believe all you say, but I have been trudging along in the wilderness and can’t find the fountain.” Do you know the reason? I will tell you. You never looked in the right direction. “Oh,” you say, “I have looked everywhere. I have looked north, south, east and west, and I haven’t found the fountain.” Why, you are not looking in the right direction at all. A Well in Every Desert. Look up, where Hagar looked. She never would have found the fountain at nil, but when she heard the voice of the angel she looked up and she saw the finger pointing to the supply. And, O soul, if to-day with one earnest, intense prayer yon wotitd only I<m>lc up to Christ, he would |>oint you down to the supply in the wilderness. “Look unto me, all ye ends of the entth, and be ye satT'd; for I am God, and th<-re is none else!” Look! Look, ns Hagar looked! Y’ea, there is n well for every desert of bereavement. If you have lived in the country, you have sometimbea taken hold of the rope of the old well swts'p, and you know how the bucket came up. dripping with bright, cool water. And I lay hold of the rope of God’s mercy, nnd I begin to draw on that goapel well sweep, and I ace the buckets coming up. Thirsty soul! Here is one laicket of life! Come nnd drink of it. "Whosoever will, let him come and take of the water of life freely," I pull nwny again nt the rope, nnd another bucket comes up. It is this promise: "Weeping may endure for n night, but joy cometh in the morning.” I lay hold of the rojie again, nnd I pull away with nil my strength, nnd the bucket comcH.up, bright pnd beautiful nnd cool. Here is the promise:-“Cotnc unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Oh, come this hour to the fountain! I will tell you the whole’ story ki two or three smitences. I’ardon for all sin. Comfort for all trouble. Light for all darkness. And every wilderncs- has n well In it. • , Copyright, IK.B.