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'
the su^my SOTTTR
TALMAGE.
THE GREAT BROOKLYN
PREACHER.
Brooklyn, Dec. 31.—In the forenoon
service at the Brooklyn Tabernacle today
Rev. Dr. Talmage preached on the subject
of “Shortened Lives; or, A Cheerful Good-
by to 1893.” The text selected was Isaiah
Ivii, 1, “The righteous is taken away from
the evil to come.”
We have written for the last time at the
head of our letters and business documents
the figures 1893. With this day closes the
year. In January last we celebrated its
birth. Today we attend its obsequies. An
other 12 months have been cut out of our
earthly continuance, and it is a time for
absorbing reflection.
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.
Muhlenberg 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 Bry
ant, the great poet, at 82 years of age, stand
ing in my house in a festal group, reading
“Thanatopsis” without spectacles, was jqst
as anxious to live as when at 18 years of age
he wrote the 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. Theophrastus writing a book
at 90 years of age was anxious to live to
complete it. Thurlow Weed at about 83
years of age found life as great a desirabil
ity as when he snuffed out his first politi
cian.
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 Methusaleh was out of
doors in a storm he was afraid of getting
his feet wet lest it shorten his days. In
deed I some time ago preached a sermon
on the blessings of longevity, but in this,
the last day of 1893, and when many are
filled with sadness at the thought that an
other chapter of their life is closing, and
that they have 365 days less to live, I pro
pose to preach to you about the advantages
Of an abbreviated earthly existence.
THE MORGUE OF THE UNIVERSE.
If I were au agnostic, I would say a 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 40 or
50 or 100 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.
But, my friends, you are not agnostics.
You believe in immortality and the eternal
residence of the righteous in heaven, and
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 men go to business at 7 o’clock in
the morning and return at 7 in the evening.
Othere 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 business;
others who are five hours; others who are
one hour. Tuey all do their work well.
They do their entire work, and then they re.
turn. Which position do you think the
most desirable? You say, other things be
ing equal, the man who is the shortest time
detained in business and who can return
home 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 childhood, 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, he 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, shoulder
ing his scythe and taking his pitcher from
under a tree, he makes a straight line for
the old homestead. All we want to be anx
ious about is to get our work done and well
done, the quicker the better.
MORAL DISASTER ESCAPED.
Again, there is a blessing in an abbre
viated earthly existence in the fact that
moral disaster might come upon the man if
he tarried longer. A man who had been
prominent in churches, and who had been
admired for his generosity and kindness
everywhere, for forgery was sent to state
prison for 15 years. Twenty years before
there was no more probability of that man’s
committing a commercial dishonesty than
that jou will commit commercial dishon
esty. The number of men who fall into
rum between 50 and 70 years of age is sim
ply appalling. If they had died 30 years be
fore, 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
right. You might as well say there is noth
ing wanting for a ship's safety except to
get it fully launched on the Atlantic ocean.
1 have sometimes asked those who were
schoolmates or college mates of some great
defrauder: “What kind of a boy was he?
What kind of a young man was he?” and
they have said: “Why, he was a splendid
fellow. I had no idea he could ever go into
such au outrage.” The fact is, the great
temptation of life sometimes comes far on
in midlife or in old age.
The first time I crossed the Atlantic
ocean it was as smooth as a millpond, and
1 thought the sea captains and the voyagers
had slandered the old ocean, and I wrote
home an essay for a magazine on “The
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 be very smooth,
the last may be a euroclydon. Many who
start life in great prosperity do not end it
in prosperity.
The great pressure 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 he
takes stimulants to keep himself up, until
the stimulants keep him down, or a man
has been going along for 30 or 40 years in
unsuccessful business, and here is an open
ing where by one dishonorable action he
can lift himself and lift his family from all
financial embarrassment. He attempts to
leap the chasm, and he falls into it.
Then it is in after life that the great
temptation of success comes. If a man
mal e 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 mid
life or in old age. The most of the bank
presidents have whife hair. Many of those
who have been largely successful have been
full of arrogance or worldliness or dissi
pation 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 every
body 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 it they
could have embarked from this life at 20 or
30 years of age. Do you know why the
vast majority of people die before 35? It is
because they have not the moral endurance
for that which is beyond the 30, and a mer
ciful God will not allow them to be put to
the fearful strain.
Again, there is a blessing in an abbrevi
ated 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 door to keep out the robbers. Fireproof
safes to keep off the flames. Life insurance
and fire insurance against accident. Re
ceipts lest you have to pay a debt twice.
Lifeboat against shipwreck. Westinghouse
airbrake against railroad collision. There
are many ready to overreach you and take
all you have. Defense against cold, de
fense 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, shiv
ering and stung with the cold, pacing up
and down the parapet with shouldered mus
ket, 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 de
fense and go into the king's castle? Who
is the more fortunate—the soldier who has
to stand guard 12 hours or the man who
has to stand guard six hours? We have
common sense about everything but re
ligion, common sense about everything but
transference from this world.
A FORTUNATE ESCAPE.
Again, there is a blessing in an abbrevi
ated earthly existence in the fact that one
escapes so many bereavements. The longer
we live the more attachments and the more j
kindred, the more chords to be wounded or j
rasped or sundered. If a man live on to 70 !
or SO years of age, how many graves are j
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 40 or 50 or 00 years this horror
of their dissolution shudders through soul
and body. Now, suppose the lad goes at 16
years of age. lie escapes 50 funerals, 50
caskets, 50 obsequies, 50 awful wrenehings
of the heart. It is hard enough for us to ;
bear their departure, but is it not easier for I
us to bear their departure than for them to !
stay and bear 50 departures? Shall we not, ;
by the grace of God, rouse ourselves into a j
generosity of bereavement which will prac- 1
tically say, “It is hard enough for me to go
through this bereavement, but how glad I
am that he will never have to go though 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 in
consolable for some time. At this distance
of time, which do you really think was the
one to be congratulated—the short lived
chilli or the long lived father? Had David
died as early as that child died he would,
in the first place, have escaped that partic
ular bereavement; then he would have es
caped the worse bereavement of Absalom,
his recreant son, and the pursuit of the
Philistines, and the fatigues of his military
campaigns, and the jealousy of Saul, and
the perfidy of Ahithophel, and the curse of
Shimei, and the destruction of his family
at Ziklag, and, above all, he would have es
caped 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,pwn happi
ness 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 sweep
ing up from the Caribbean, and he put the
delicate craft into the first harbor. “Taken
away from the evil to come.”
GOD’S FAVORITE THE CIRCLE.
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 uni
verse swings around some great center.
Any one who has studied the earth and
studied the heavens knows that God’s fa
vorite figure in geometry is a circle. When
God put forth his hand to create the uni
verse, he did not strike that hand at right
angles, but he waved it in a circle and kept
on waving it in a circle until s3’stems 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, that center is heaven.
That is the capital of the universe. That
is the great metropolis of immensity.
Now, does not our common sense teach
us that in matters of study it is better for
us to move out from the center toward the
circumference rather than to be on the cir
cumference, where our world now is? We
are like those who study the American con
tinent 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 pi^ce 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 we are studying under such great
disadvantage.
Millions of dollars for observatories to
study things about the moon, about the
sun, about the rings of Saturn, about tran
sits and oecultations and eclipses, simply
because our studio, our observatory is poor
ly situated. We are down in the cellar try
ing to study the palace of the universe,
while our departed Christian friends have
gone up stai.s amid the skylights to study.
Now, when one can sooner get to the cen
ter 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 wacan in five minutes of interriew
with a friend get more accurate idea of him _
than we can by studying him 50 years what they should pay for the provisions,
through pictures of words. The little child “Ah, " says the captain, “my lads, you
that died last night today knows more of can't pay me anything. All I have on board
plowed with graves, with dead angels un
der the furrow. Oh, I want to break up
my own infatuation and I want to break up
your infatuation for 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 ab
breviated earthly existence.
If the spirit of this sermon is true, how
consoled you ought to feel about members
of your families 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 the springtime hills of this world
and see how it looked, and then they start
ed for a better stopping place. They were
like ships that put in at St. Helena, stay
ing there long enough to let passengers go
up and see the barracks of Napoleon’s cap
tivity and then hoist sail for the port of
their own native land. They only took this
world “in transitu.” It is hard for us, but
it is blessed for them.
MANY MILES NEARER HOME.
And if the spirit of this sermon is true,
then we ought not to go around sighing and
groaning because another year has gone,
but we ought 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 antici
pated demise. We ought to be living r it
according to that old maxim which I used
to-fcear in my boyhood, that you must live
as though every day were the last. You
must live as though you were to live for
ever, for you will. Do not be nervous lest
you have to move out of a shanty into an
Alhambra.
One Christmas morning, one of my neigh
bors, an old sea captain, died. After life
had departed his face was illuminated as
though he was just going into harbor. The
fact was he had already got through the
“Narrows.” In the adjoining room were
the Christmas presents waiting for his dis
tribution. Long ago, one night when he
had narrowly escaped with his ship from
being run down by a great ocean steamer,
he had made his peace with God, and a
kinder neighbor or a better man you would
not find this side of heaven. Without a
moment’s warning, the pilot of the heaven-
ly harbor had met him just off the light
ship.
The captain often talked to me of the
goodness of God, and especially of a time
when he was about to go into New Y’ork
harbor with his ship from Liverpool, and he
was suddenly impressed that he ought to
put back to sea. Under the protest of the
crew and under their very threat he put
back to sea, fearing at the same time
he was losing his mind, for it did seem so
unreasonable that when they could getinto
harbor that night, they should put back to
sea. But they put back to sea, and the cap
tain said to his mate, “You call me at 10
o’clock at night.”
At 12 o’clock at night the captain was
aroused and said: “What does this mean?
I thought I told you to call meat lOo’clock,
and here it is 12.” “Why,” said the mate.
“I did call you at 10 o’clock, and you got
up, looked around and told me to keep
right on the same course for two hours, and
then to call you at 12 o'clock.” Said the
captain: “Is it possible? I have no remem
brance of that.”
A HUNDRED SOULS SAVED.
At 12 o’clock the captain went on deck,
and through the rift of the cloud the moon
light fell upon the sea and showed him a
shipwreck with 100 struggling passengers.
He helped them off. Had he been anv ear
lier or any later at that point of the sea, he
would have been of no service to those
drowning people. On board the captain’s
vessel they began to band together as to
what they should pay for the rescue and
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God than all Andover, and all Princeton,
and all New Brunswick, and all Edinburgh,
aud all the theological institutions in Chris- i
tendom. Is it not better to go up to the ,
very headquarters of knowledge?
MAYTIME ORCHARDS OF HEAVEN.
Does not our common sense teach us that
it is better to be at the center than to be
clear out on tbe rim of the wheel, holding
nervously fast to the tire lest we be sudden- :
ly burled into light aud eternal felicity?
Through all kinds of optical instruments
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like him. He never got any pay except that
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Oh, that the old sea captain's God might
be my God and yours. Amid tbe stormy
seas of this life may we have always some
one as tenderly to take care of us as the
captain took care of the drowning crew and
the passengers. Aud may we come into
the harbor with as little physical pain and
with as bright a hope as he had, and if it
should happen to be a Christmas morning,
when the presents are being distributed,
and we are celebrating the birth of him
who came to save our shipwrecked world,
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rushing about among the apothecary shops : better, for what grander, brighter
of this world, wondering if this is good for Christmas present could we have °than
rheumatism, and that is good for neural
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cough, lest we be suddenly ushered into a
land of everlasting health, where the in
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M hat fools we all are to prefer the cir
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the Maytime orchards of heaven, and if our
pauperism of sin and sorrow should be sud
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We stick to the world as though we pre
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cord to cantata, sackcloth to royal purple—
as though we preferred a piano with four or
five keys out of tune to an instrument fullv
attuned—as though earth and heaven had
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