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STOKY OF A MARTYR. DR. TALMAGE DISCOURSES ON THE STONING OF STEPHEN. Fire Pictarw Dfcplayed-Stephen Gaeinr Into Heaven, Stephen Looking at Christ, Stephen Stoned, Stephen In Hie Dying Prayer and Stephen Asleep. ICopyrlght, 1898, at -^ e j rican PreßS Ass °- WASHWGTON, March 13.—The discourse of Dr. Talmage which we send out is a vivid story of martyrdom and a rapturous view of the world to come; text, Acts vii, 66-60, “Behold I see the heavens open ed, ” etc. Stephen had been preaching a rousing sermon, and the people could not stand it. They resolved to do as men sometimes would like to do in this day, if they dared, with some plain preacher of righteousness —kill him. The only way to silence this man was to knock the breath out of him. So they rushod Stephen out of the gates of the city, and with curse and whoop and bellow they brought him to the cliff, as was tho custom when they wanted to take away life by stoning. Having brought him to the edge of the cliff, they pushed ■ him off. After he had fallen they came and looked down, and, seeing that he was not yet dead, they began to drop stones upon him, stone after stone. Amid this horrible rain of missiles Stephen clambers, up on his knees and folds his bands, while the blood drips from his temples to his cheeks, from his checks to his garments, from his garments to the ground, and then, looking up, he makes two prayers— one for himself and one for his murderers. “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” That was for himself. “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge!” That was for his assail ants. Then, from pain and loss of blood, he swooned away and fell asleep. I want to show you today five pictures— Stephen gazing into heaven, Stephen look ing at Christ, Stephen stoned, Stephen in his dying prayer and Stephen asleep. Stephen’s Glimpse of Heaven. First look at Stephen gazing into heav en. Before you take a leap you want to know where you are going to land. Be fore you climb a ladder you want to know to what point the ladder reaches. And it was right that Stephen, within a few mo ments of heaven, should be gazing into it. Wo would all do well to be found in tho same posture. There is enough in heaven to keep us gazing. A man of large wealth may have statuary in the hall, and paint ings in the sitting room, and works of art in all parts of the house, but he has the chief pictures in tho art gallery, and there hour after hour you walk with catalogue and glass and ever increasing admiration. Well, heaven is tho gallery where God has gathered tho chief treasures of his realm. Tho whole universe is his palace. In this lower room where we stop there are many adornments—tessellated floor of amethyst, and on the winding cloud stairs arc stretch ed out canvases on which commingle azure and purple and eaffron and gold. But heaven is the gallery in which the Chief glories are gathered. There are the bright est robes. There are the richest crowns. There are the highest exhilarations. John says of it, " The kings of the oarth shall bring their honor and glory into it.” And I see tho procession forming, and in the. line come all empires, and the stars spring up into an arch for the hosts to march un der. The hosts keep step to the sound of earthquake and the pitch of avalanche from the mountains, and the flag they bear is the flame of a consuming world, and all heaven turns out with harps and trumpets and myriad voiced acclamation of angelio dominion to welcome them in, and so the kings of the earth bring their honor and glory into it. Do you wonder thatgood peopleoften stand, like Stephen, looking into heaven? We have many friends there. There is not a man in this house today so isolated in life but there is some one in heaven with whom he once shook hands. As a man gets older the number of his celestial acquaintances very rapidly multi- , plies. We have slot had one glimpse of them since the night we kissed them good by, and they went away, but still we stand gazing at heaven. As when some of our friends go across the sea we stand on the dock or on the steam tug and watch them, and after awhile the hulk of the vessel dis appears, and then there is only a patch of sail on the sky, and soon that is gone, and they are all out of sight, and yet wo stand looking in the same direction, so when our friends go away from us into tho future world wo keep looking down through the Narrows and gazing and gazing as though we expected that they would come out and stand on some cloud and give us one glimpse of their blissful and transfigured faces. While you long to join their companion ship, and the years and the days go with such tedibrn that they break your heart, and the viper of pain and sorrow and be reavement keeps gnawing at your vitals, you stand still, like Stephen, gazing into heaven. You wonder if they have changed sinoe you saw them last. You wonder if they would recognize your face now, so changed has it been with trouble. You wonder if amid the myriad delights they have they care as much for you as they used to when they gave you a helping hand and put their shoulder under your bur dens. You wonder if they look any older, and sometimes in the evening tide, when the house is all quiet, you wonder if you should call them by their first name if they would not answer, and perhaps some times you do make tlje experiment, and when no one but God and yourself are there you distinctly call their names and listen and sit gazing into heaven. Stephen Looks Upon Christ. Pass on now and see Stephen looking upon Christ. My text says he saw the Son of Man at the right hand of God. Just how Christ looked in this world, just how ho looks in heaven, we cannot say. A writer in the time of Christ says, describ ing tho Saviour’s personal appearance, that he had blue eyes and light complexion and a very graceful structure, but I sup pose it was all guesswork. The painters of the different ages have tried to imagine the features of Christ and put them upon canvas, but we will have to wait until with our own eyes we see him and with our own ears we can hear him. And yet there is away of seeing and hearing him now. I have to tell you that unless you see and hear Christ on earth you will nev er see and hear him in heaven. Look I There he is. Behold the Lamb of God. Can you not see him? Then pray to God to take the scales off your eyes. Look that way—try to look that way. His voice comes down to you this day—comes down to the blindest, to the deafest soul, saying, “Look untowne, all ye ends of the earth, and be ye saved, for I am God, and there is none else.*’ Proclamation of universal emancipation for all slaves! Proclamation of universal amnesty for all rebels! Bel shazzar gathered the Babylonish noblee to bis table, George 1 entertained the lords of England at a banquet, Napoleon 111 1 welcomed the czar of Russia and tho sul tan of Turkey to his feast, the emperor of ; Germany was glad to have our minister, George Bancroft, sit down with him at his table, but tell me, ye who know most of the world’s history, what other king ever , asked the abandoned and tho forlorn and the wretched and the outcast to come and ’ sit beside him? ! Ob, wonderful invitation!. You cab take it today and stand at the head of the dark est alley in any city, and say: “Come! Clothes for your rags, salve for your sores, ’ a throne for your eternal reigning.” A Christ that talks like that and acts like that and pardons like that—do you won der that Stephen stood looking at him? I hope to spend eternity doing tbe same thing. I must see him; I must look upon that face once clouded with my sin, but now radiant with my pardon. I want to touch that hand that knocked off my shac kles. I want to hear that voice which pro nounced my deliverance. Behold him, little children, for if you livo to threescore years and ten you will see none so fair. Behold him, ye aged ones, for he only can shine through the dimness of your failing eyesight. Behold him, earth. Behold him, heaven. What a moment when all tho nations of the saved shall gather around Christ! All faces that way. All thrones that way, gazing on Jesus. His worth if all the nations knew Sure the whole earth would love him too. Stephen’s Martyrdom. I pass on now and look at Stephon stoned. Tho world has always wanted to get rid of good men. Their very life is an assault upon wickedness. Out with Ste phen through the gates of the city. Down with him over the precipices. Let every man come up and drop a stone upon his head. But these mon did not so much kill Stophen as they killed themselves. Every stone rebounded upon them. While these' murderers were transfixed by the scorn of all good men Stephen lives in the admira tion Os all Christendom. Stephen stoned, bnt Stephen alive. So all good men must be pelted. All who will live godly in Christ JeSus must suffer persecution. It is no eulogy of a man to say that every body likes him. Show me any one who is doing all his duty to state or church, and I will show you mon who utterly abhor him. If all men speak well of you, it is be cause you are either a laggard or a dolt. If a steamer makes rapid progress through the waves,, the water will boil and foam all around it. Brave soldiers of Jesus Christ will hear tho carbines click. When I see a man with voice and money and in fluence all on the right side and some car icature him and some sneer at him and some denounce him and men who pretend to bo actuated by right motives conspire to cripple him, to cast him out, to destroy him, I say, “Stephen stoned!” Whon I see a man in some great moral or religious reform battling against grog shops, exposing wickedness in high places, by active means trying to purify the church and better the world's estate, and I find that some of the newspapers anathe matize him and men—even good men— .oppose him and denounce him because, though he does good, he does not do it in their way, I say, "Stephen stoned!” The world, with infinite spite, took after John Frederick Oberlin and Paul and Stephen of the text, but you notice, my friends, that while they assaulted him they did not . succeed really in killing him. You may assault a good man, but you cannot kill him. On the day of his death Stephen spoke before a few people in tho sanhedrin. Now he addresses all Christendom. Paul the apostle stood on Mars hill addressing a handful of philosophers who knew not so much about science as a modern school girl. Today ho talks to all the millions of Christendom about the wonders of justifi cation and the glories of resurrection. John Wesley was howled down by the mob to whom he preached, and they threw bricks at him, and they denounced him, and they jostled him, and they spat upon him, and yet today, in all lands, ho is ad mitted to bo the great father of Metho dism. Booth’s bullet vacated the presiden tial chair, but from that spot of coagulated blood on the floor in the box of Ford’s theater there sprang up the new life of a nation. Stephen stoned, but Stephen alive! Stephen’s Dying Prayer. Pass cn now and see Stephen in his dying prayer. His first thought was not how the stonos hurt his head, nor what would become of his body. His first thought was about his spirit. “Lord Jesus, re ceive my spirit!” The murderer standing on the trapdoor, the black cap being drawn over his head before the execution, may grimace about the future, but you and I have no shame in confessing some anxiety about where we are going to come out. You are not all body. There is within you a soul. I see it gleam from your eyes and I see it irradiating your countenance. Sometimes I am abashed before an audi ence not because I come under their phys ical eyesight, but because I realize tho truth that I stand before so many immor tal spirits. The probability is that your body will at last find a sepulcher in some of the cemeteries that surrotmd your town or city. There is no doubt but that your obsequies will be decent and respectful, and you will be able to pillow your head under the maple, or the Norway spruce, or the cypress, or tho blossoming fir, but this spirit about which Stephen prayed— what direction will that take? What guide will escort it? What gate will open to re ceive it? What cloud will be cleft for its pathway? After it has got beyond the light of our sun, will there be torches lighted for it the rest of the way? Will the soul have to travel through long des erts before it reaches the good land? It we should lose our pathway, will there be a castle at whose gate we may ask the way to the city? Oh, this mysterious spirit within us! It has two wings, but it is in a cage now. It is locked fast to keep it, but let the door of this cage open tho least, and that soul is off. Eagle’s wing could not catch K. Tbe lightnings are not swift enough to take up with it. When the soul leaves the body, it takes 50 worlds at a bound. And have I no anxiety about it? Have you no anxiety about it? I do not care what you do with my body when my soul is gone or whether you be lieve in cremation or inhumation. I shall sleep just as well in a wrapping of sack cloth as in satin lined with eagle’s down. Yut my soul—before this day passes I will Bnd out where it will land. Thank God ’ for the intimation of my text, that when we die Jesus takes us. That answers all questions for me. What though there were massive bars between hero and tho city of light, Jesus could remove them. What though there were great Saharas of dark ness, Jesus could illume them. What though I get weary on the way, Christ could lift me on his omnipotent shoulder. What though there were chasms to cross, his hand could transport me. Then let Stephen’s prayer be my dying litany, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” It may be in that hour we will be too fepbie to say a iong prayer It may lie in tint hour wo will not be able to say the “Lord’s Prnyer, ” for it has seven petitions. Per haps we may be too feeble even to say tho infant prayer our mothers taught us, which John Quincy Adams, 70 years of ago, said every night when be put his head upon his pillow: Now I lay inc down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. We may bo too feeble to employ either of these familiar forms, but thia prayer of Stephen is so short, is so concise, is so sarnest, is so comprehensive, we surely will be able to say that, "Lorti Jesus, re ceive my spirit” Oh, if that prayer is answered, how sweet it will bo to die! This world is clever enough to us. Per haps it has treated us a great deal better than we deserve to be treated, but if on the dying pillow there should break tbe light of that better world we shall have no more regret about leaving a small, dark, damp house for one large, beautiful and capacious. That dying minister in Phila delphia some years ago beautifully depict ed it when in the last moment ho threw up his hands and cried out, “I move into the light!” S>tephen Asleep. Pass on now, and I will show you one more picture, and that is Stephen asleep. With a pathos and simplicity peculiar to the Scriptures the text says of Stephen, “He fell asleep.” “Oh,” you say, “what a place that was to sleep! A hard rock under him, stonos falling down upon him, tbe blood streaming, the mob howl ing. What a place it was to sleep!” And yet my text takes that symbol of slumber to describe his departure, so sweet was it, so contented was it, so peaceful was it. Stephen had lived a very laborious life. His chief work had been to care for tbe poor. How many’loaves of bread bo dis tributed, how many bare feet he had san daled, how many cots of sickness and dis tress he blessed with ministries of kind ness and love I do not know, but from the way ho lived and the way he preached and the way he died I know he was a laborious Christian. But that is all over now. He has pressed the cup to the last fainting lip. He has taken the last insult from his enemies. The last stone to whose crush ing weight he is susceptible has been hurl ed. Stephen is dead! Tho disciples coma They take him up. They wash away the blood from tho wounds. They straighten out tho bruised limbs. They brush back the tangled hair from tbe brow, and then they pass around to look upon the calm countenance of him who had lived for the poor and died for the truth. Stephen asleep! I have seen tho sea driven with the hur ricane until tbe tangled foam caught in tho rigging, and wave rising above wave seemed as if about to storm the heavens, and then I have seen the tempest drop and the waves crouch and everything become smooth and burnished as though a camp ing place for the glories of heaven. So I • have seen a man whoso life has been toss ed and driven coming down at last to an infinite calm, in which there was the hush of heaven’s lullaby. Stephen asleep I I saw such a one. He fought all his days against poverty and against abuse. They traduced bls name. They rattled at the doorknob while he was dying with duns for debts he could not pay, yet the peace of God brooded over his pillow, and while the world faded heaven dawned, and tho deepening twilight of earth’s night was* only the openihg twi light of heaVen’s morn. Not neigh; not a tear; not a struggle. Hush! Stephen asleep! I have not the faculty to tell the weather. I can never tell by the setting sun whether there will be a drought or not. I cannot tell by the blowing of the wind whether it will be fair weather or foul on the mor row, but 1 can prophesy, and I will proph esy, what weather it will be when you, the Christian, come to die. You may have it very rough now. It may be this week one annoyance, the next another an noyance. It may be this y throne bereave ment, tbe next another bereavement. Be fore this year has passed you may have to beg for bread or ask for a scuttle of coal or a pair of shoes, but at the last Christ will come in, and darkness will go out, and, though there may bo no hand to close your eyes and no breast on which to rest yoiir dying bead and no candle to lift the night, the odors of God's hanging garden will regale your soul, and at your bedside will halt the chariots of the King. No more rents to pay, no more agony because flour has gone up, no more struggle with “the world, the flesh and tho devil,” but peace —long, deep, everlasting peace. Stephen asleep I Asleep in Jesus! Blessed sleep, From which none ever wake to weep! A calm and undisturbed repose, Uninjured by the last of foes. Asleep in Jesus! Far from thee Thy kindred and their graves may be, But there is still a blessed sleep From which none ever wake to weep. You have seen enough for one morning. No one can successfully examine more than five pictures in a day. Therefore we stop, having seen this cluster of divine Raphaels—Stephen gazing into heaven, Stephen looking at Christ, Stephen stoned, Stophen in his dying prayer, Stephen asleep. A New Word Coined. Philadelphia has invented a word that is not without its merits as a convenient sub stitute for phrases more or less long and complicated. In that city, so Tbe North American reveals, “a person who has been a jolly good fellow and who has reformed” is called a "gink.” No light on tbe word’s etymology is given, and there is not even a hint as towhat practical utility it can be to tbe Philadelphians. But the first of these points is unimportant, and as to the second any outside criticism would, of course, be resented by our sensitive neighbors. It were best to take for granted, there fore, the fact that certain residents of tbe Quaker City, at some period or other iu their lives, have been jolly good fellows. Obviously they deserve to be styled “ginks,” and we hasten to add, as Tbe North American does, that “the word is expressive of contempt or admiration, ac cording to the company you are In.” This is most interesting, both absolutely and be cause it throws new light on the inhabit ants of that little understood community. The editors and orators of Philadelphia have hitherto almost ignored the wealth of ethnological material that lies around them, but of late they, too, have “reform ad,” to the great edification of the general public.—New York Times. Stone Soles on Shoes. An inventor has hit upon a method of putting stone soles on boots and shoes. He mixes a waterproof glue with a suitable quantity of clean quartz sand and spreads it over tho leather sole used as a founda tion. These quartz soles are said to be very flexible and practically indestructible and to give the foot a firm bold even on tbe most slippery surface. HUMAN BRAINS. < • $ • How Science Views the Difference Between Men and Wesson. The,weightier brain would seem also to indicate, a priori, tho greater intel lectual power, and thia, too, i» borne out by undoubted facta Women, it has often been said, have yet to produce their Newton, their Dante, their Aris totle, their Pascal, their Goethe. The assertion is very feebly met by the con tent ion that women's education has been for centuries neglected. It was not education which enabled Pascal as a child to see his way through problems which not one man in 1,000 can understand after prolonged mental drill It was not education which gave the race its great meh poets. “They lisped in numbers for the numbers came.” Bnt where are their feminine equals? Wo will, however, take an art in which women have enjoyed far more training than men—the art of music. There are Some excellent women pianists and vio linists, bnt where are the female Bachs, Beethovens, Mozarts and Wagners? Na ture only can explain tho absence of great women composers ns of the femi nine compeers of Titian and Raphael, the technique of whose art seems pecul iarly fitted to women. Nature tells us that she cannot form tho matrix out of which commanding intellectual geniuses of the female sex would proceed. Why this is so we may partly guess, but cannot wholly know. We see that nature has divided the world into sexes for her own purposes, and that to each sex peculiar functions are assigned. We see that the physio logical functions of woman necessitate a different anatomy from that of man, aiid we infer that these functions and this structure preclude, speaking gener ally, the kind of effort which we call supreme genius, as also that kind of effort which we call sustained executive power. While women are not so far differentiated from men that theyscan not enter with pleasure into men's works, and, often in a great measure, share in their production, it remains a fact that it is man’s particular organi zation which is alone capable either of the highest manifestations of Menius or the most sustained exhibition cl energy. Whether it will always be so we do not know, for we cannot peer into the fu ture. It is sufficient that, it not only is so now, but that it always has been so, and that science does give us some good grounds for believing that the fact is deeply rooted in the very structure of* sex.—London Spectator. THE HEALTHY PALATE. It Does Not Crave Condiments, but the Food Must Possess Flavor. While a perfectly sound and healthy palate does not crave for condiments, even prefers to do without them, yot the majority of digestions require to be humored and kept in order, and their peculiarities must be studied. Dr. Brun ton says: "Savory food causes the digestive juices to be freely secreted. Well cooked and palatable food is therefore more di gestible than the unpalatable. If food lacks savor, a desire naturally arises to supply it by condiments, not always well selected or wholesome. ” As commerce brought them within reach of the people condiments, in sim ple or complicated forms, came greatly into favor, and foreign spices were add ed to the wild herbal growths of the fields and hedgqs. In our early history the “spicery” was a special department of the court and had its proper officers. In the fourteenth century spices were both costly and rare, most of them com ing from the Levant. Chaucer mentions many by name—canella, macys, clowes (cloves), grains of paradise, nutmegs; , caraway and spikenard. The anciejrts, especially tho Greeks and Romans in the luxurious period of their history, used condiments very freely. An old English historian, referring to the earlier Roman court, says, "The best magistrates of Rome allowed but the ninth day for the city and publick business, the rest for the country and the sallet garden. ” From this it would seem as though the education of taste was accounted of some consequence in those day a—Exchange. “Professor..” The misuse of the title "professor,” when it is applied indiscriminately to musicians in general, finds an amusing example in the following story, credited to Bandmaster Sousa and printed iu The Musical Age .* Some years ago Sousa was leading a band at a small country festival The advent of the band had been awaited with intense interest by the audience, and when they arrived the bandsmen were quickly surrounded by a surging crowd which hemmed them in so that it was difficult for them to keep on playing. Sousa appealed to one of the commit tee to keep the crowd away and said that unless his men had more room they could not play. The committeeman shook his hand warmly, and, turning to the asembled multitude, bawled out: "Gentlemen, step back and give the purfesser’spurfessers a chance to play I” O Aggravation Below Staira. Mrs. Greene—Really, I think that girls in domestic service have a pretty comfortable time of it One of Them—But we have our trials, mum. Just as like as not, when we have got a bonnet or a gown that is particularly becoming, first thing we know our mistress comes out with something exactly like it —Boston Transcript French billiard tables have six legs instead of four, as in America. There are no strings for marking; score is kept by chalking the figures on a slate set in the side of the table or on a me chanical reckoner inserted in the Mme place. _ Nearly £500,000 worth of artificial flowers are sold in London yearly. AN OPEN LETTER To MOTHERS. I WE ARE ASSERTING IN THE COURTS OUR RIGHT TO THE EXCLUSIVE USE OF THE WORD "CASTORIA,” AND “PITCHER’S CASTORIA,” as our trade mark. Z, DR. SAMUEL PITCHER, qf Hyannis, Massachusetts, was the originator qf “PITCHER'S CASTORIA," the same that has borne and does now s/f/s s'"* on bear the facsimile signature qf wrapper, ||| This is the original - PITCHER’S CASTORIA,’’ which has been used in the homes of the Mothers of America for over thirty gears. LOOK CAREFULLY at the wrapper and see that it is you 00 and has the signature of wrap- per. No one has authority from me to use my name ex cept The Centaur Company of which Chas. H. Fletcher is President. /> „ March 8,1897. Do Not Be Deceived. Do not endanger the life of your child by accepting a cheap substitute which some druggist may offer yo” . (because he makes a few more pennies on it), the in gredients of which even he docs not know. “The Kind You Have Always Bought” BEARS THE FAC-SIMILE SIGNATURE OF x J Jr fJ* J a J J Jew Insist on Having The Kind That Never Failed You.' vmi (unwa aaaiMMiv. 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IflVtn tMpnhrilOamLr Atlanta „ ...Ar IBR US»a BltS ills ISS ;SS ■ Itßg •Daily, texoept Bunday. ' Train for Mewnan and Qsmnton waveeGrtfla at »5S an, and Iyt pw daily exwpt Sunday. Beturnln<, arrives in Gri«n • M p m and 12 40 p m daily except Bunday. For further infonnatlon apply to K, R. HINTON. TraMo Manager, Savannah. Ga. j ■ .