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THE PULPIT.
A SCHOLARLY SUNDAY SERMON BY
PROFESSOR HLGH BLACK.
Subject: Esau's Temptation. -
Brooklyn. N. Y.—Professor Hugh
Black, of Union Theological Semin
ary, preached Sunday in the Lafay
ette Avenue Presbyterian Church to a
large audience. His subject was,
“Esau’s Temptation." He took his
text from Genesis 25:32: “And
Esau said, Behold, I am at the point
to die; and what profit shall this
birthright do to me?” Professor
Black said:
We cannot suppress a natural sym
pathy with Esau in this scene be
tween the two brothers. He seems
as much sinned against as sinning,
and in comparison with the cunning,
crafty character of Jacob he appears
the better of the two. His very faults
lean to virtue’s side, we think, as we
look at his bold, manly, impulsive
figure. There is nothing of the cold,
calculating, selfishness, the astute
trickery, the determination to get
his pound of flesh, which make his
brother appear mean beside him.
With our swift and random and sur
face judgments we are inclined- to
think it unjust that Esau should be
set aside in the great history of grace
for one who could be guilty of both
malice and fraud in advancing his
own interests. We are not at present
dealing with the character of Jacob
or we would see that this hasty judg
ment, true so far as it goes, is some
thing less even than half the truth,
and that though he here and elsewhere
sinned and was punished through all
his life for his subtlety and selfishness,
yet he was not the monster of unbroth
erly mslicG morsly wiiicli tills scene
might suggest, and that he had qual
ities of heart and spirit which made
it inevitable that he, and not Esau,
should be chosen for the line of God’s
purpose. Our subject is Esau and his
weakness and fall in the presence of
his overmastering temptation.
Esau’s good qualities are very evi
dent, being of the kind easily recog
nized and easily popular among men,
the typical sportsman who is only a
sportsman, bold and frank and free
and generous, with no intricacies of
character, impulsive and capable of
magnanimity, the very opposite of
the prudent, dexterous, nimble man
of affairs, rather reckless indeed and
hot-blooded and passionate. His vir
tues are already, we see, dangerous
ly near to being vices. Being largely
a creature of impulse, he was, in a
crisis, the mere plaything of animal
passion, ready to satisfy his desire
without thought of consequences.
Without self-control, without spir
itual insight, without capacity even
to know what spiritual issues were,
judging things by immediate profit
and material advantage, there was
not in him depth of nature out of
which a really noble character could
he cut. This damning lack of self
control comes out in the passage of
our text, the transaction of the birth
right. Coming from the hunt hungry
and faint, he finds Jacob cooking
pottage of lentils and asks for it. The
sting of ungovernable appetite makes
him feel as if he would die if he did
not get it. Jacob takes advantage of
his brother’s appetite and offers to
barter his dish of pottage for Esau’s
birthright.
There would be more superstition
in the minds of both of them as to the
value of the birthright. Both of
them valued it as a vague advantage,
carrying with it a religious worth,
but it meant nothing tangible; and
here was Esau’s temptation, terribly,
strong to a man of his fiber. He was
hungry, and before his fierce desire
for the food actually before him such
a thing as a prospective right of birth
seemed an ethereal thing of no real
value. If he thought of any spiritual
privilege the birthright might be sup
posed to confer, it was only to dis
miss the thought as not worth con
sidering. Spiritual values had not a
high place in his standard of things.
He could not be unaware of the ma
terial advantages the possession of
the birthright would one day mean.
He must have known that it was
something to be recognized as the
eldest son, with special rights of in
heritance and precedence and author
ity after his father’s death. These
things were real enough to him, even
though he might have no notion of a
deeper meaning in being the heir of
the promise. But in the grip of his
appetite even these temporal advan
tages were too distant to weigh much.
In the presence of immediate satisfac
tion the distant appeared shadowy
and unreal and not worth sacrificing
present enjoyment for. He feels he
is going to die, as a man of his type
is always sure he will die if he does
not get what he wants when the
passion is on him; and supposing
he does die, it will be poor con
solation that he did not barter this
intangible and shadowy blessing of
his birthright. “Behold lam at the
point to die; and what profit shall
this birthright do to me?”
The Bible writers speak of Esau
always with a certain contempt, and
with all our appreciation of his gooi
natural qualities, his courage and
frankness and good humor, we can
not help sharing in the contempt.
The man who has no self-control,
who is swept away by every passion
of the moment, whose life is bounded
by sense, who has no appreciation of
the higher and larger things which
call for self-control —that man is,
after all, only a superior sort of ani
mal, and not always so very superior
at that. The author of the Epistle to
the Hebrews calls Esau “a profane
person, who for one morsel of meat
sold his birthright.” “Profane”
means not blasphemous, but simply
secular, a man who is not touched to
fine issues, judging things by coarse
earthly standards, without spiritual
aspiration or insight, feeling every
sting of flesh keenly, but with r.o
sting of soul toward God. Bold and
manly and generous and with many
splendid constitutional virtues hi may
be; but the man himself lacks sus
ceptibility to the highest motives of
life. He is easily bent by every wind
of impulse, and is open without de
fense to animal appetite. He is capa
ble of despising the intangible bless
ing of such a thing as a birthright,
even though he feel it to be a holy
thing, because he cannot withstand
present need. A profane, a secular
person as Esau, is the judgment of
the New Testament.
This scene w r here he surrenders his
birthright did not settle the destiny
of the two brothers; a compact like
this could not stand good forever, and
in some magical way substitute Jacob
for Esau in the line of God’s great
religious purpose. But this scene,
though it did not settle their destiny
in that sense, revealed their charac
ter, the one essential thing which
was necessary for the spiritual suc
cession to Abraham; and Esau failed
here in this test as he would fail
anywhere. His question to reassure
himself, “What profit shall this birth
right do to me?” reveals the bent of
his life, and explans his failure. True
self-control means willingness to re
sign the small for the sake of the
great, the present for the sake of the
future, the material for the sake of
the spiritual; and that is what faith
makes possible. Of course, Esau did
not think he was losing the great by
grasning at the small. At the mo
ment the birthright, just because it
was distant, appeared insignificant.
He had no patience to wait, no faith
to believe in the real value of any
thing that was not material, no self
restraint to keep him from instant
surrender to the demand for present
gratification.
This is the power of air appeal to
passion—that it is present, with us
now, to be had at once. It is claim
ant. imperious, insistent, demanding
to be satisfied with what is actually
present. It has no use for a far-off
good. It wants immediate profit.
This is temptation, alluring to the
eye, whispering in the ear, plucking
by the elbow, offering satisfaction
now. Here and now—not hereafter;
this thing, that red pottage there,
not an ethereal, unsubstantial thing
like a birthright. What is the good
of it if we die? and we are like to die
if we do not get this gratification the
senses demand. In the infatuation of
appetite all else seems small in com
parison; the birthright is a poor thing
compared with the red pottage.
It is the distortion of vision which
passion produces, the exaggeration, of
the present which temptation creates,
making the small look like the great,
and discrediting the value of the
thing lost. The vivid, lurid descrip
tion in the Proverbs of the young
roan, void of understanding, snared
in the street by the strange woman,
gives both these elements of the ef
fect of passion—the weak surrender
to impulse and the distortion of vis
ion which blinds to the real value of
what is given up for the gratification:
“He goeth straightway as an ox goeth
to the slaughter, till a dart strikes
through his liver; as a bird hasteth
to the snare, and knoweth not that
it is for his life.”
But it is not merely lack of self
control which Esau displays by the
question of our text. It is also lack
of appreciation of spiritual values.
In a vague way he knew that the
birthright meant a religious blessing,
and in the grip of his temptation that
looked to him as purely a sentiment,
not to be seriously considered as on
a par with a material advantage.
The profane man, the secular man,
may not be just a creature of im
pulse; he may have his impulses tn
good control, but he has no place
for what is unseen. He asks, natur
ally, What shall it profit? Men who
judge by the eye, by material re
turns only, who are frankly secular,
think themselves great judges of
profit; and they, too, would not make
much of a birthright if it meant only
something sentimental, as they would
call it. The real and not the ideal,
the actual and not the visionary, the
thing seen and not the thing unseen
-—they would not hesitate more than
Esau over the choice betw r een the
pottage and the birthright. They
judge by substance, and do not un
derstand about the faith which is the
substance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things not seen.
How easy it is for all of us to drift
Into the class of the profane, the sec
ular, persons as Esau, to have our
spiritual sensibility blunted, to lose
our appreciation of things unseen, to
be so taken up with the means of liv
ing that we forget life itself and the
things that alone give it security
and dignity! How easy, when soul
wars with sense, to depreciate every
thing that is beyond sense,and let the
whole moral tone be relaxed! There
is much cause for the apostle to warn
us to “Look diligently lest there be
among us any profane person as
Esau who for one morsel of meat
sold his birthright.”
We, too, can despise our birthright
by living far below our privileges
and far below our spiritual opportun
ities. We have our birthright as
sons of God, born to an inheritance
as joint heirs with Christ. We be
long, by essential nature, not to the
animal kingdom, but to the kingdom
of heaven; and when we forget it and
live only with reference to the things
of sense and time, we are disinherit
ing ourselves, as Esau did. The sec
ular temptation strikes a weak spot
in all of us, suggesting that the spir
itual life, God’s love and holiness,
the kingdom of heaven and His right
eousness, the life of faith and prayer
and communion, are dim and shad
owy things, as in a land that is very
far off. “What profit shall this birth
right do to me?”
What shall it profit? seems a sane
and sensible question to be consid
ered in a business-like fashion. It
is the right question to ask; but it
has a wider scope and another appli
cation. What profit the mess of pot
tage, if I lose my birthright? What
profit the momentary gratification
of even imperious passion, if we are
resigning our true life and losing the
clear vision and the pure heart?
What profit to make only provision
for the flesh, if of the flesh we reap
but corruption? What profit the
easy self-indulgence, if we are barter
ing peace and love and holiness and
joy? “What shall it profit a man if
he gain the whole world (and not
merely a contemptible mess of pot
tage) and lose his own soul?” What
profit if, in the insistence of appetite,
men go like an ox to the slaughter,
knowing not that it is for their life?
■’Thus Esau despised his birthright.”
JUSTICES LAMBASTED BY DUNN.
California Court of Appeals Was Biased in
the Schmitz Decision.
Regarding the opinion of the Califor
nia court of appeals setting aside the
conviction of Abe Ruef and ex-Mayor
Schmitz, Judge Dunne of the supreme
court, who heard their cases, is quoted
as saying:
“It is to be regretted that the hear
ing of this appeal came up before a
court whose members have relatives
and intimate friends against whom
many indictments were returned by
the grand jury that returned these true
bills.
“In view of these facts I do not be
lieve that the court was in proper
frame of mind to give this matter an
impartial consideration and judge it
strictly upon its merits. I am certain
the evidence warranted the verdict
which was given by the grand jury.”
TRIAL OF THAW UNDER WAY.
Cowardly Murder Claimed by State; Insan
ity Claimed by Defense.
The Thaw trial moved with a rush
at New York Monday. After the state
had presented its direct case and As
sistant District Attorney Garvan had
characterized the killing of Stanford
White as “a premeditated, deliberate
and cowardly murder,” Martin W. Lit
tleton, for the defense, made the open
ing plea for the prisoner. He prom
ised to forge a chain of circumstances,
and to produce a line of testimony,
which will prove Harry K. Thaw, un
deniably Insane at the time of the hom
icide.
MEMORIAL TO GENERAL CUSTER.
Widow of Indian Fighter to Erect Home
for Aged Literary Women.
Mrs. Elizabeth Custer, widow of
General Custer, who was killed in the
Indian masacre in the west of 1876,
intends to erect a home for aged lit
erary women as a memorial to her
husband. She has purchased sixteen
lots in Bronxville, Westchester county,
New York, and will erect the home
there.
Mrs. Custer has written several
books, and has long been interested
in literary women.
FROM HIRE OF HER CONVICTS
State of Georgia Will Get Nearly SIOO,OOO
of Last Quarter of 1907.
Nearly SIOO,OOO will be collected by
the state of Georgia this month for
the hire of convicts leased, for the
quarter ending December 31, 1907.
Captain Goodloe Yancey of the state
prison commission has completed a
statement, which he has furnished
Comptroller General Wright for collec
tion.
This statement shows that there are
thirteen lessees in the state owing an
aggregate of $94,368.10.
NEGRO MOB LYNCHES NEGRO.
Colered Citizens of a North Carolina Town
Resent Being Buncoed.
A long distance telephone message
from Selma, N. C., reports the lynching
at Pine Level, Johnston county, of a
strange negro at the hands of a negro
mob.
The strange negro, purporting to be
advance agent of a “big show,” faked
the negro residents into attendance on
what turned out to be a one-man per
formance by the strange darkey him
self. His body was found at daylight
on the Southern railroad tracks.
GOOD SHOWING FOR BANKS.
New York Institutions Now Holding More
Than the Legal Reserve.
The statement of clearing house
banks in New York for the week shows
that the banks hold $6,084,050 more
than the requirements of the 25 per
cent reserve. This is an increase of
$17,593,600 in the proportionate cash
reserve as compared with last week,
when there was a deficit of $11,509,550.
PLOT ALLEGED
BY ROOSEVELT
Thinks Nevada Governor Scheemed
to Get Tioops to Goldfield.
RULED BY MINE OWNERS
Soldiers Will Be Withdrawn When Legis
lature Assembles Declares President.
Acts on Report of Investigators.
President Roosevelt has determined
to withdraw the federal troops from
Goldfield, Nevada, shortly after the
legislature begins its special session.
This intention was made known at
the white house Sunday when the re
port of the special investigating com
mission was made public, together with
a letter from the president to Governor
Sparks, dated January 4. The pres
ident says he shall be governed by the
recommendatiens in the case unless
the governor can show that the state
ments of the report are not in accord
ance with their facts. The report says:
“The conditions did not support the
general allegations in the governor’s
request for troops, nor were his spe
cific statements established to any such
extent as to justify his use of these
statements for the purpose of getting
federal troops.
It concludes with this recommenda
tion:
“But we also must firmly believe that
upon the assembling of the legislature,
or within a few days thereafter, the
troops should be removed, regardless
of any request for their retention that
may be made either by the legislature
or the governor of Nevada, it being
essential that the state of Nevada
shall understand this situation com
pletely, shall recognize the fact that
the state government the responsibil
ity of keeping order, and that recog
nizing this possibility, it may take such
action as is the duty of the state and
as will be sufficient in the premises.
In his letter to Governor Sparks, af
ter reviewing the steps so far taken in
the Goldfield mining trouble, the pres
ident continues:
"I have just received the report of
these three gentlemen (Murray, Smith
and Neill) which sets forth in the most
emphatic language their belief after a
careful investigation on the ground,
that there was no warrant whatever for
calling upon the president for troops,
and that the troops should not be kept
indefinitely at Goldfield. The report
further states that there was no in
surrection against the power of the
state at the time the troops were call
ed for, that nobody supposed that there
was such an insurrection.”
“The signers of the report express
their conviction that the troops should
remain in Nevada until the assembling
of the legislature, so as to preserve the
status quo in order that the legisla
ture may deal with the situation as it
exists; but that shortly thereafter the
troops should be removed.
“I agree with the recommendations
of this report, of which I enclose a
copy, and shall act accordingly. Un
less it can be shown that the state
ments of the report are not in accord
ance with the facts, it will be incum
bent upon the legislature of Nevada,
when it convenes, itself to provide for
enforcing the laws of the state. The
state of Nevada must itself make a
resolute effort in good fatih to per
form the police duties incident to the
existence of a state.”
“The report further says:
“ ‘There is absolutely no question
that if the state of Nevada and the
dounty of Esmeralda exercised the
powers at their disposal they can main
tain satisfactory order in Goldfield;
that, so far, these authorities have
done nothing but rely on federal aid,
and their attitude how is expressly that
of refusing to do anything and desir
ing to throw their own burdens upon
the federal government for the main
tenance of those elementary conditions
or order for which they, and they only,
are responsible.’ ”
Reviewing the conditions leading up
to the present strike and since the
strike began, November 27th last, the
report draws this conclusion:
“The action of the mine operators
warrants the belief that they had de
termined upon a reduction in wages
and the refusal of employment to mem
bers of the Western Federation of
Miners, but that they feared to take
this course of action unless they had
the protection of federal troops, and
that they accordingly laid a plan to
secure such troops and then put their
program into effect”
TAFT A CINCH
THINKS TEDDY
President Figures That War Sec
retary Will Win in Convention.
COUNTS ON 600 VOTES
Taft Makes His First Campaign Speech in
New York-Address Devoted in Part
to Placating Labor.
A Washington special says: Presi
dent Roosevelt made the prediction
Friday to callers that Secretary Taft
will get 600 votes in the republican
national convention on the first ballot
aud be nominated without a contest.
This is the first positive statement in
the shape ot a forecast given out from
the white house, and is taken to mean
that the president is entirely satisfied
with the outlook. The friends of the
war secretary are elated. The president
went into the matter in detail aud
showed where the secretary was go
ing to get on the first ballot 600 of
the 980 votes which will bo represent
ed at the convention.
110 has recently received advices
that make him confident that Secretary
Taft can count on the delegations from
the solid south, the solid west, many
of the middle western states and one
half ot the New England states. Ho
thinks several votes from states sup
porting “favorite sons” will go to Taft
and that if Go*/ernor Hughes persists
in his present attitude, Secretary Taft
can count on one-half of New York. It
is known that every influence is being
exerted from the white house to insure
the nomination of Taft.
Taft Speaks in New Lork.
For the first time since he became
a recognied candidate for the repub
lican presidential nomination, Secreta
ry of War William H. Taft, Friday
night, faced a New York audience, set
forth in detail his stand on the perti
nent questions of the relative interests
and rights of labor and capital, and
in tarn submitted to a rapid fire at
tack from the audience, which quizzed
him keenly and in a somewhat contro
versial spirit, according to the prac
tice of the People’s Institute, whose
guest he was. The secretary proved
equally effective in attack and de
fense.
Not less than 2,000 persons, its ca
pacity, had crowded into Cooper Union
when police reserves were summoned
to clear the walks in front of the build
ing, where a thousand or mroe had
congregated.
In his prepared address the secretary
pointed out the dependence one upon
the other of capital and labor. He de
clared that great aggregations ot prop
erly employed wealth widened the field
of labor and were to be welcomed,
while improperly used wealth was to
be condemned. He advocated uinonism
in so far a 3 sympathy and the result
ant co-operation made for the com
mon good. He said, in part:
“The conclusion I seek to reach is
that the workingman who entertains a
prejudice against the lawful capitalist
because ho is wealthy, who votes with
unction for the men who are urging un
just and unfair legislation against him,
and who make demagogic appeals to ac
quire popular support in what they are
doing, is standing in his own light, is
blind to his own interests and is cut
ting off the limb on which he sits. It is
to the direct interest of the working
man to use careful discrimination in
approving or disapproving proposed
legislation of this kind and to base
his conclusion and vote on the issue
whether the provision is fair or just,
and not on the assumption that any
legislation that subjects a corporation
to a burden must necessarily be in the
interest of the workingman.”
FOUR FIREMEN MEET DOOM.
Disastrous Blaze Totally Wrecks a Big
Sky-Scraper in New York.
Four firemen went to their deaths
Friday when they responded to a fire
that ruined a twelve story business
structure in New York. Fought by
half the firemen ot Manhattan and
aparatus that blocked the streets for
blocks, the flames were never con
trolled. Floor after floor gave way
and beneath these crumbling walls no
less than thirty firemen were caught.
The fire was one of the most spectac
ular, as well as disastrous, in recent
years. From start to finish its course
was marked by heartrending scenes,
sensational escapes and flashes of hero
ism. The loss is estimated at $1,500,*
000.
