Plattsmouth weekly herald. (Plattsmouth, Nebraska) 1882-1892, August 30, 1888, Page 6, Image 6
FLATTSMOIJTII WKJJk.V nrJrtA in if KSDtfi , AUGUST 30, 18 A TALMAGE IN CANADA. GREAT RESULTS SMALL MAY DEPEND EVENTS. Them Aro No Insignificance In Our 1.1 vo. The CttKiial, tlie Accidental, Are I'urt of a Jrrut rin-Th OmDlprnroce of a Motlier'a I'ruyers. Grimsby, Can., Aug. 20. Tho Rev. T. Do Witt Tannage, D.D., of Brooklyn, preached on tho camp ground at tin Ilaco today. All Canada is represented in the imnionso throngs assembled. Dr. Talmago has preached at (Jriiiisby many Mimniera. Thin closes his Huuinicr a! Bence. Ho lias preached, lectured and visited in thirteen states of the Union thia Kununer. hi.q audiences numljerijitr ten and fifteen thousand jK-ople. Tlio subject of his sermon hero to-dav was "Great IiesulU May Deiiend on Small Invents.' Dr. TaJmagotook for his text ".through a window, in a basket, was I let down by the wall." II Cor. ii, 33. llo said: Damascus in a city of white and glisten ing architecture sometimes called "the j " wiu easi, sometimes eaneu "a ( pearl Biirrounded by emeralds," at one ' timo distinguished for nwords of tho best material called Damascus blades, and upholstery of richest fabric called damasks. A horseman by tho namo of Paul, riding toward this city, had been thrown from tho saddle. Tlio horse had dropped under a Hash from tho eky, which at tho same time was 6o bright it blinded tho rider for many days, and I think bo permanently injured his eye Bight that thia defect of vision became tho thorn in the flesh he afterwards Icaks of. He started from Damascus to butcher Christians, but after that hard fall from his horso ho was a changed man and preached Christ in Damascus till the city was shaken to its foundation. The major gives authority for his ar rest, and the popular cry is "Kill him! Kill him!" Tho city is surrounded by a high wall, and the gates are watched by the polico lest the Cilician preacher escape. Many of the houses aro built on tho wall, and their balconies projected clear over and hovered above the gardens outside. It was customary to lower baskets out of these balconies and pull up fruits and flowers from tho gardens. To this day visitors at tho monastery of Mount Sinai aro lifted and let down in baskets. Detectives prowled around from houso to house looking for Paul, but his friends hid him now in one place, now in another. He is no coward, as fifty inci cents in his life demonstrate. Put ho feels his work is not done yet, and so ho evades assassination. "Is that preacher ' here?" the foaming mob shout at one houso door. "Is that fanatic here?" the police shout at another house door. Sometimes on the street incognito he passes through a cloud of clenched fists, and sometimes ho secretes himself on the housetop. At last tho infuriate popu lace get on sure track of him. They have positive evidence that ho is in tho liouso of one of the Christians, tho bal cony of whoto homo reaches over tho wall. "Hero he is! Here he is!" Tho vociferation and blasphemy and howl ing of tho pursuers aro at the front door. They break in. "Fetch out that Gospelizer, and let us hang his head on the city gate. "Where is he?" The emergency was terrible. Providentially there was a good stout basket in the house. Paul's friends fasten a roie to the basket. Paul steps into it. The basket is lifted to the edge of the balcony on the wall, and then while Paul holds on to tho ropo with both hands his friends lower away, carefully and cau tiously, slowly but surely, further down and further down, until the basket strikes the earth and the apostle steps our, ana aioot ana alone starts on that famous missionary tour, the story of which has astonished earth and heaven Appropriate entry m Pauls diarv of travels : 'Through a window, in a bas 1 ket, was I let down bv the wall." Observe, first, on what a slender tenure great results hang. The ropemaker who twisted that cord fastened to that lower ing basket never knew how much would depend on tho strength of it. How if it had been broken and the apostle's life had been dashed out? Yv hat would have be come of the Christian church? All that magnificent missionary work in Pam phiha, Cappadocia, Galatia, Macedonia would never have been accomplished All his writings that make up so indis pensable and enchanting a part of th JNew .testament would never have been written. Tho story of resurrection would never have been so gloriously told as ho told it. That example of heroic and triumphant endurance at Philippi, in the Mediterranean euroclydon, under flagellation and at his beheading would not have kindled the courage of ten thousand martyrdoms. But that rope holding that basket, how much depended on it! So again and again great results have hung on what seemed slender cir cumstances. Did ever ship of many thousand tons crossing the sea have such important pas senger as had once a boat of leaves, from taffrail to stern only three or four feet, the vessel made waterproof by a coat of bitumen and floating on the Nile with the infant lawgiver of the Jews on board? What if some crocodile should crunch it? "What if some of tho cattle vvading in for a drink should sink it? Vessels of war sometimes cany forty guns looking through the port holes ready to open battle. Cut that tiny craft on the Nile seems to bo armed with all the guns of thunder that bom barded Sinai at tho law giving. On how fragile craft sailed how much of his torical importance ! The parsonage at Epworth, England, is on fire in tho night, and the father rushed through the hallway for the res cue of his children, Seven children are out and safo on tho ground, but one re mains in tho consuming building. That one wakes, and, finding his bed on fire and tlio building crumbling, comes to the window, and two peasants make a , ladder of their bodies, one peasant stand- j ing. on the shoulder of the other, and j down the human ladder the boy descends John "Wesley. If tou would know how much depended on that ladder of peas ants ask the iniilions of Methodists on both sides of the sea. As their mission Btations all around the world. Ask their hundreds of thousands already ascended to join their founder, whe would hare perished but for the living stairs of feasants' shoulders. An Knghbh ship siopcd at Pitcairn QN Island, ami right in tho midst of sur rounding canmU'thsm and squalor, the pitHscngors discovered a Christian colony of churches and schools and Ix'autiful bonu s and highest stylo of religion and ci in.auon. r or in ty years no mission ary and no Christian influence had landed . 1 t At . mere. wiry mis oasis ot liirlit amid a desert of heathendom? Sixty years le- foro a ship had met disaster, and one of the sailors, unable to save anything else, wi.'iino iiwiruiiK ana tooif out a ISiole which his mother had placed there, and swain ashore, the Bible held in his teeth. The lik w.'ls read on all sides until the 1 . . . rougn ana vicious iopulation were evangelized, and a church was started, and an enlightened common wealth established, and tho world's his tory h:is no more brilliant page than that which tells of the transformation of a nation by one look. It did not seem of much importance whether the sailor continued to hold the book In his teeth or let it fall in the breakers, but upon what small circumstances depended wnat mighty results! ijuciuai mierence: mere aro no in signilicances in our lives. Tho minutest thing is part of a magnitude. Infinity is made up of infinitesimals. Great things an aggregation of small things, ISethlehem manger pulling on a star in the eastern sky. One book in a drenched sailor's mouth tho evangelization of a multitude. Ono boat of papyrus on tho iue ireignteu with events for all ages The fate of Christendom in a basket let down from a window on the wall. What you do, do well. If you make a ropo mane ic strong ana true, tor you know A. 1 -1 . . not now mucn may uepena on your woiKmanship. it you fashion a boat let it l)e waterproof, for you know not who may sail in it. If you put a Bible in the trunk of your lxy as ho goes from home, let it be heard in your prayers, for it may have a mission as far reaching aa tho book which the sailor carried in his teeth to the Pitcairn beach. Tho plain esc man s iito is an island between two eternities eternity past rippling against his shoulders, eternity to come touching his brow. The casual, tho accidental, that which merely happens so, are parts of a great plan, and the rope that lets the fugitive apostle from the Damascus wall is tho cable that holds to its mooring tho si iip of the church in tho northeast storm of tho centuries. Again, notice unrecoprnized and unre corded services. Who snun the rnw? Who tied it to the basket? Who steadied the illustrious preacher as he stepped into i relaxed not a muscle of tho arm or dismissed an anxiou3 look from his f;ice until the basket touched the ground and discharged its magnificent cargo.' Not one of their names has come to us, but there was no work done that dav in Damascus nr in all tho earth compared with the im portance of their work. What if they had in the agitation tied a knot that could slip? What if the sound of a mob at the door had led them to sav; "Paul must take caro of himself, and wo will take care of ourselves." No, no! They held the rope, and in doing so did more for the Christian church than any thousand of us will ever accomplish. But Cod knows and has made eternal record of their undertaking. And they know. How exultant they must have felt w lien they read his letters to the Romans, to the Corinthians, to the Gala tians, to the Ephesians, to the Philippi ans. to the Colossians. to the Thessaloni ans, to Timothy, to Titus, to Philemon, to tho Hebrews, and when they heard how he walked out of prison with tho earthquake unlocking the door for him, and took command of tho Alexan drian corn shin when the sailors wn ..1 . . 1 A . 1 , 1 , . ut-rtij scureu 10 ueain, aud preached a sermon that nearly shook Felix off his judgment seat. I hear the men and wo men who helped him down through the window and over the wall talking in private over the matter, and saying: 'How glad I am that we effected that rescue! In coming times others may get the glory of Paul's work, but no one shall rob us of the satisfaction of knowing that we held the rope." There are said to be about sixty-nine thousand ministers of religion in this country. About fifty thousand I war rant canio from early homes which had to struggle for the necessaries of life. The sons of rich bankers aud mer chants generally become bankers and merchants. The most of those who be come ministers are the sons of those who had terrific struggle to get their every day bread. The collegiate and theolog ical education of that son took every luxury from the parental table for eight years. The other children were more scantily appareled. The son at college every little while got a bundle from home. In it were the socks that mother had knit, sitting up late at night, her sijht r.ot as good as once it was. And there also were some delicacies from the sister's hand for the voracious appetite of a hungry student. The father swung the heavy cradle through the wheat, the sweat rolling from his chin bedewing every step of the way, and then sitting down under tho cherry tree at noon thinking to himself: "l"am fear fully tired, but it will pay if lean once see that boy through college, and if lean know that he will be preaching the Gospel after I am dead." The vouneer children want to know whv thev can't save this and that as othersdo. and the mother says; "Be patient, my children, until your brother graduates, and then you thall have more luxuries, but we must see that boy through." The years go by and the son has been crc!a;::ed and is preaching the glorious Gospel, and a great revival comes, and souls by scores and hundreds accept the Cospi-1 from the lips of that young preacher, and father and mother, quite old now, are visiting the son at tho vil lage parsonage, and at the close of a Sabbath of inierhtv blessinsr father and mother retire to their room, the son lighting the wav and asking them if ho i l i l it i . couiu uo anyuung to mate them more comfortable, saying if they want any thing in the night just to knock on the wall. And then all alone father and mother talk over the gracious influences of the day and say: "Well, it was worth all we went through to educate that boy. It was a hard pull, but we held on till the work was done. The world may not know it, but, mother, we held the rope, didn't we?" And the voice, trem- ! ulous with joyful emotion, responds: "Yes, father; we held tho ropo. I feci my work is done. Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." "Pshaw! nays the father, "I never felt so much like living in my life as now. I want to see what that fellow is going on to do, ho h:is begun so well." Something occurs to me quite personal. I was tho youngest of a large family of children. My parents were neither rich nor ioor; four of the sons wanted col legiate education, and four obtained it, but not without great homo struggle. We never heard tho old jeopla sav once that they were denying themselves to effect this, but I reniemljer now that my parents always looked tired. I don't think that they ever got rested until they lay down in the Summer ville cemetery. Mother would sit down in tho evening, and say: "Well, I don't known what makes mo feel so tired!" Father would fall immediately to sleep, seated by the evening stand, overcome with tho days's fatigues. One of the four brothers, after preaching tho Gospel for about fifty years, entered upon his ueaveiuy rest, .another or the lour is now on tho other side the earth, a mis sionary of the cross. Two of us are iii this land in the holy ministry, and I think all of us are willing to acknowl edge our obligation to the old folks at home. About twenty-two years ago tho one, and aIout twenty-four years ago tho other, put down the burdens of this life, but they still hold the rope. O men and women here assembled. you brag sometimes how you have fought your way in the world, but I think there have l)een helpful influences that von have never fully acknowledged. Has there not been some influence in your early or present homo that the world cannot see? Does there not reach to you from among the Canadian hills, or west ern prairie, or from southern plantation. or from English or Scottish or Irish home a cord of influence that has kept you right when you would have gone astrav. and which, after you had made a crooked track, recalled vou? The may be as long as thirty years, or five hundred miles long, or three thousand miles long, but hands that went out of mortal sight long ago still hold the rope. You want a very swift horse, and you need to rowel him with sharpest spurs, ami to let the reins lie loose upon the neck, and to give a shout to a racer, if you are going to ride out of reach of your mother's prayers. Why, a ship crossing the Atlantic in seven days can't sail away from that! A sailor finds them on tlio lookout as ho takes his place, and finds them on the mast as ho climbs the ratlines to disentangle a ropo in the tempest, and finds them swing ing on the hammock when he turns in. Why not be frank and acknowledge it tho most of us would long ago have been dashed to pieces had not gracious and loving hands steadily and lovingly and mightily held the rope. But there must come a time when we shall find out who these Damascene were who lowered Paul in the basket, and greet them and all those who have ren dered to God and the world unrecognized inu unrecorded services. That is goin"- to be one of the glad excitemenfn of heaven the hunting uu and picking out of those who did good on earth and got no credit for it. Here the church has been going on nineteen centuries, and this is probably the first sermon ever recogniz ing the services of the people in that Damascus balcony. Charles G. Finnev said to a dyint Christian: "Give my love to St. Paul wi.cn vou meet him." When you and I meet him, as we will. I shall ask him to introduce me to those neonlri who got him out of the Damascene peril. Y e go into long sermon to prove that wo will be able to recognize neonle in , ... . neaven, when there is one reason we fail to present, and that is better than all God will introduce us. We shall have them all pointed out. You would not be guilty of the impoliteness of having friends in your parlor not introduced, and celestial politeness will demand that we bo made acquainted with all the heavenly household. What rehearsal of old times and recital of stirring reminis cences. If others fail to give in troduction, God will take U3 through, and before our first twenty-four hours in heaven if it were cal culated by earthly time pieces have passed, we shall meet and talk with more heavenly celebrities than in our entire mortal "state we met with earthly celebrities. Many who made great noise of usefulness will sit on the last seat by the front door of the heavenly temple, while right up within arm's reach of the heavenly throne will be many who, though they could not preach themselves or do great exploits for God, nevertheless held the rope. Come, let us go right up and accost those on this circle of heavenly thrones C 1 . . i 1. i. 1 l .-it i - ... .juici mejf uiubi nave Kmea m oat tie a million men. Surely they must have been buried with all the cathedrals sounding a dirge and all the towers of all tho cities tolling the national grief. Who art thou, mighty one of heaven? "I lived by choice the unmarried daugh ter in an humble home that I might take care of my parents in their old age, and I endured without complaints all their querulousness and administered to all their wants for twenty years." Let us pass on round the circlo of thrones. Who art thou, mighty one of heaven? "I was for tlurty years a Chris tian invalid, and suffered all the while, occasionally writing a note of sympathy for those worse off than I, and was gen eral confidant of all those who had trouble, and onco in a while I was strong enough to make a garment for that poor family in the back lane." Pass on to another throne. Who art thou, mighty one of heaven? 'I was the motJier who raised a whole family of children for God, and they are out in the world Christian merchants, Christian mechanics, Chris tian wives, and I have had full reward of all my toil. " Lotus pas3 on in the circle of thrones. "I had a Sabbath school class, and they were alwavson my heart, and they all entered the kingdom of God, and I am waiting for their ar rival." But who art thou, the mighty one of heaven on this other throne? "In time of bitter persecution I owned a house in Lamuscus, a House on me wall. A man who preached Christ was hounded from street to street, and I hid him from the assassins, and when I found them break ing in my house and I could no longer keep him safely, I advised him to flee for his life, and a basket was let down over the wall with tho maltreated man in it, and I was ono who helped hold the rope." And I said: "Is that all?" and he answered, "That is all." And while I was lost in amazement, 1 heard a strong voice that souudt.tl as though it might onco have been hoarso from many exposures and triumphant as though it might have be longed to one of tho martyrs, and it said: "Not many mighty, not many no ble are called, but God "hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound tho things whiVh are mighty, and hasc things of the world and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not to bring to naught tilings which are, that no flesh should glory in his presence." And I looked to see from whence the voice came, and lo! it was the very ono who had said: "Through a window, in a basket, was I let down by the wall." Henceforth think of nothing as insig nificant. A little thing may decide 3-our all. A Cunarder put out from England for New York. It was well equipped, but in putting up a stove in tho pilot box a nail was driven too near tho com pass. You know how that nail would affect the compass. The ship's officer, deceived by that distracted compass, put the ship two hundred miles off her right course, and suddenly tho man on tho lookout cried, "Land ho!" and the ship was halted within a few j-ards of her demolition on Nantucket shoals. A six penny nail came near wrecking a Cu narder. Small ropes hold mighty des tinies. A minister seated in Boston at his table, lacking a word puts his hand behind his head and tilts back his chair to think, and the ceiling falls and crushes the table and would have crushed him. A minister in Jamaica at night by the light of an in sect, called tho candle fly, is kept from stepping over a precipice a hundred feet. F. W. Robertson, the celebrated English clergyman, said that ho entered the ministry from a train of circum stances started by the barking of a dog. Had the wind blown one way on a certain day the Spanish Inquisi tion would havo been established in En"-- land; Put it blew the other way, and that dropped tho accursed institution with 75.000 tons of shipping to tho bot tom of tho sea or flung the splintered logs on the rocks. Nothing unimportant in your life or mine. Three noughts placed "on the right side of the figure one makes a thousand, and six noughts on tho right side of the figure one a million, and our nothingness placed on the right 6ide may bo augmen tation illimitable. All the ages of time and eternity affected by the basket let down from a Damascus balcony. Mrs. Dart's Triplets.' President Cleveland's Prize for thn three Uvt l.al.len at tho Aurora County Fair, In 1RK7, was given to these triplet. Mollle, Mil, uml Kay, children of Mrs. A. K. Kurt, lhuiil.urh, N. V. Hie writes: "I.at August the little ones U-ranie very nli k, and aa I could ret no other food that WOU.U ak'ree ah thnn, I commenced the line ot Laetatcd Food. It helped them Imme diately, and they were soon us well hh ever, and I conaidcr It very largely duo to the Food that they are now bo well." I.aetuted Food is the bcM Food for lttle-led l.ahieH. It keejn them well, and is Ix-lter than medicine, when (hey are nick. Three wizcM : ., Wie., Sl.ixi. At Unifc-gisU. t'abiaet photo, of these triplet sent lree to tho mother of any huhy tioru thin year. Address WELLS, RICHARDSON & CO. Burlington, Vt. 13 e n 1 1 e 'I'M to the kinds fact that of Fruita Will call your attention they are headquarters for all and Vegetables. We are receiving Fresh Ct rather r i es eve da' Oranges, Lemons and Esncnss constantly hand Jus t received , We have Fure Maple variety tugar Cerr.e cup 0 cf and r.o rr, istake TUTT. Jon A.TII AN llATT. J. W. JVIaktmis. e i" mm it25 a w d BVBBM S3 BWS Im!l lEis HITHER AND THITHER. Tho hardest of all church debts to get rid of is the spiritual mortgage held by some jiowerful and mean predecessor. An infirmary for dumb animals is to be established in Philadelphia. The pur pose of the organization is the mainte nance of a society for the care of ill, aged and injured animals. Ono of the curiosities on exhibition at the Cincinnati centennial is a petrified watermelon, which was found near the quarries of the Southern Granite com pany, at Lithonia, Oa. At an Italian weddinsf the other dnv ono of the gift3 presented to the brido was a necklace representing tho national tri color, composed alternately of lace, diamonds, rubies and emeralds. A Tennessee negro has been selling large numbers of common glass marbles to negroes as a protection against light ning. Ho says there would be lots of money in the business if he could only get out of jail. Tho Ukraine national committee have issued a proclamation "complaining of Russian oppression exercised upon a people of 23,000,000, and denouncing the Great Russians as orthodox Tartars and mere pretenders to Slavonic name." A council on tubercular diseases has just sjtt in Paris. There were represen tatives from nearly every European coun try except Germany. The invited Ger man doctors are said to have sent very -unparliamentary ' refusals. Workmen in a gravel bed on the "West ern railway of Alabama recently came upon the skeleton of what they think was an Indian princess. On it was found a silver coronet, silver bracelets, a neck lace made of silver buckles, tied together with a silk ribbon, and a peculiar knife with a saber blade. The length of pipe laid in Paris for the distribution of power by compressed air already exceeds thirty miles. The com pressing engines are of 3,000 horse power, and about 3,000,000 cubic feet of air are compressed daily to a pressure of eighty pounds per square inch, at an expendi ture of fifty tona of coal. The Pittsburg Steel Casting company Lave produced a cast steel shell, the first aver made in the world. Steel shells have been made in England, but they were cut from a forged ingot and then bored, necessarily making them very ex pensive. The company has received an experimental order for 500 shells. Fall River has one conscientious citizen, lie has a mare for sale, and instead of telling the public that the animal is kind and gentle, suitable for ladies to drive and a household pet, he states frankly that her disposition is so sour that she hates herself, and that he would recom mend the creature to nobody unaccus tomed to horses. A baker in Bloomsbury, England, sued a man for $12.50 for bread fur nished. The man entered a counter claim for $45 for the value of a dog. The evidence was that the baker's boy leav ing bread left the e-ate of the customer open, and the dog ran out and was lost. The court held that if the man could not take caro of the dog himself ho ought not to expect the baker's bov to do it. and judgment was for the baker. PORK PACKERS and dkai.ehs in R UTTER AND EGGS. BEEF, PORK, MUTTON AND VEAL. THE BEST THE MARKET AFFORDS ALWAYS ON HAM). bugar Lured ftieals, Hams. Bacon, Lard, &c., dc ot our own make. The best hr.-nids of OYSTERS, WHOLESALE AND RETAIL. in cans and bulk, at The i H II L W. lOft'Eft, Proprietor HAS T Carriages for Pleasure and Short Drives Always 2cpt Hoady. Ccr. l-th. and Vino - lattsrao-utli. IS THE Oldest feicultura In Cass ueaier. County. UK KlIKI'S N HANI) A I I I. I, LINK OF M8IPI1I Til e k s. A &n E HUBS! i.C To suit all reasons of the ear. Xo Better Than Before. "Whoever would live liis life over acain that he might live a better life would do well to remember that he would do no better than he is now doins. If vou want to begin over again begin now, and don't think to order a new cradle and begin being a baby over again. CLris- He keeps tho JJuelceye, .UinntapohV and McCormic .Hinders, Nichols .and Shefard Tln-eshii.r. AfadiiiM s. Peter Shelter and ah ic.tuiii agon ami jjiicries kept const;. nth- on hand. seeping water, uesure ami tail on Ind bel L iattsmouth or "Weeping "Water. !laUsiiioict!a maI Weeping lore you the the Jhaneh House buy, either at Water, Nebraska r n rRiCKt & COwj (Sl'CCESSOK TO J. 31. HOliEKS ) 'ill keep constantly n hand a fu'.l ami complete stock of pure Drugs Medicies, Paints, tian at Worlc and PUR E L IQUORS, Oils 1 f cn