Chapter XXX (1)

XXX
XXX
XXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXX
XXX
XXX
XXX
XXX
XXX
XXX
XXX
XXX

ROCK OF AGES.

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee!
Let the water and the blood
From Thy riven side which flowed
Be of sin the double cure--
Cleanse from guilt and make me pure.

In my hand no price I bring;
Simply to Thy cross I cling.
Naked--come to Thee for dress;
Helpless--look to Thee for grace;
Foul--I to Thy fountain fly;
Cleanse me, Savior, or I die!

Not the labors of my hands
Can fulfill Thy law’s demands.
Could my zeal no respite know--
Could my tears for ever flow--
All for sin could not atone;
Thou must save, and Thou alone!

While I draw this fleeting breath,
When my eye-strings break in death,
When I soar to worlds unknown,
See Thee on Thy judgment throne--
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee!

WHERE HE LEADS I’LL FOLLOW.

Sweet are the promises, kind is the word--
Dearer far than any message man ever heard!
Pure was the mind of Christ--sinless I see;
He the great example is, and pattern for me.

Where He leads I’ll follow--
Follow all the way!
Where He leads I’ll follow--
Follow Jesus every day!

Sweet is the tender love Jesus has shown--
Sweeter far than any love that mortals have known!
Kind to the erring one, faithful is He;
He the great example is, and pattern for me!

Where He leads I’ll follow--
Follow all the way!
Where He leads I’ll follow--
Follow Jesus every day!

List to His loving words: “Come unto Me.”
Weary, heavy-laden, there is sweet rest for thee!
Trust in His promises--faithful and sure;
Lean upon the Savior, and thy soul is secure.

Where He leads I’ll follow--
Follow all the way!
Where He leads I’ll follow--
Follow Jesus every day!

BIBLE CHARACTERS

AS DEPICTED BY THE BRILLIANT AND NOTED PREACHER, T. DE WITT TALMAGE.

ATHALIAH

Grandmothers are more lenient with their children’s children than they were with their own.

At forty years of age, if discipline be necessary, chastisement is used; but at seventy, the grandmother, looking upon the misbehavior of the grandchild, is apologetic and disposed to substitute confectionery for whip.

There is nothing more beautiful than this mellowing of old age toward childhood. Grandmother takes out her pocket handkerchief and wipes her spectacles and puts them on, and looks down into the face of her mischievous and rebellious descendant, and says:

“I don’t think he meant to do it; let him off this time; I’ll be responsible for his behavior in the future.”

My mother, with the second generation around her--a boisterous crew--said one day: “I suppose they ought to be disciplined, but I can not do it. Grandmothers are not fit to bring up grandchildren.”

But here we have a grandmother of a different hue.

I have been at Jerusalem, where the occurrence that I shall describe took place, and the whole scene came vividly before me while I was going over the site of the ancient Temple and climbing the towers of the king’s palace.

Here is old Athaliah, the queenly murderess.

She ought to have been honorable. Her father was a king. Her husband was a king. Her son was a king. And yet we find her plotting for the extermination of the entire royal family, including her own grandchildren.

The executioner’s knives are sharpened; the palace is red with the blood of princes and princesses. On all sides are shrieks, and hands thrown up, and struggle and death groan. No mercy! Kill! Kill!

But while the ivory floors of the palace run with carnage and the whole land is under the shadow of a great horror, a fleet-footed woman--a clergyman’s wife, Jehosheba by name--stealthily approaches the imperial nursery, seizes upon the grandchild that had, somehow, as yet escaped massacre, wraps it up tenderly but in haste, snuggles it against her, flies down the palace stairs--her heart in her throat, lest she be discovered in this Christian abduction.

Get her out of the way as quickly as you can, for she carries a precious burden--even a young king.

With this youthful prize she presses into the room of the ancient Temple, the church of olden time, unwraps the young king and puts him down, sound asleep as he is, and unconscious of the peril that has been threatened; and there for six years he is kept secreted in that church apartment.

Meanwhile, old Athaliah smacks her lips with satisfaction and thinks that all the royal family are dead.

But the six years expire, and it is now time for the young Joash to come forth and take the throne, and to push back into disgrace and death old Athaliah.

The arrangements are all made for political revolution. The military come and take full possession of the Temple, swear loyalty to the boy Joash, and then stand around for his defense. See the sharpened swords and burnished shields! Every thing is ready.

Now Joash, half affrighted at the armed tramp of his defenders, scared at the vociferation of his admirers, is brought forth in full regalia. The scroll of authority is put into his hands, the coronet of government is put on his brow, and the glad people clap and wave, huzza and trumpet.

Athaliah is aroused, and asks:

“What is that? What is that sound over there in the Temple?”

She hurries out to see, and on the way they meet her and say:

“Why, haven’t you heard? You thought you had slain all the royal family, but Joash has come to light.”

Then the queenly murderess, frantic with rage, laid hold on her mantle and tore it to tatters, and cried out until she foamed at the mouth:

“You have no right to crown my grandson. You have no right to take the government from my shoulders. Treason! Treason!”

While she stood there, making this cry, the military started for her arrest, and she took a short cut through a back door of the Temple and ran through the royal stables; but the battle-axes of the military fell on her in the barn-yard, and for many a day, when the horses were being unloosed from the chariot after drawing out young Joash, the fiery steeds would snort and rear while passing the place, as they smelt the taint.

The first thought which I hand you from this subject is that the extermination of righteousness is an impossibility.

When a woman is good she is apt to be very good, and when she is bad she is apt to be very bad; and this Athaliah was one of the latter sort. She would exterminate the last scion of the house of David, through whom Jesus was to come. There was plenty of work for embalmers and undertakers. She would clear the land of all God-fearing and God-loving people. She would put an end to every thing that could in any wise interfere with her imperial criminality.

Athaliah folds her hands and says: “The work is done; it is completely done.”

Is it?

In the swaddling clothes of that church apartment are wrapped the cause of God and the cause of good government.

That is the scion of the house of David; it is Joash, the Christian reformer; it is Joash, the friend of God; it is Joash, the demolisher of Baalitish idolatry. Rock him tenderly; nurse him gently.

Athaliah, you may kill all the other children, but you can not kill him. Eternal defenses are thrown all around him, and this clergyman’s wife, Jehosheba, will snatch him up from the palace nursery, and will run up and down with him into the house of the Lord, and there she will hide him for six years, and at the end of that time he will come forth for your dethronement and utter obliteration.

DAVID.

David, the shepherd boy, is watching his father’s sheep.

They are pasturing on the very hills where afterward a Lamb was born of which you have heard much--“the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”

David, the shepherd boy, was beautiful, brave, musical and poetic. I think he often forgot the sheep in his reveries. There in the solitude he struck the harp-string that is thrilling through all ages. David the boy was at work gathering the material for David the poet and for David the man.

Like other boys, David was fond of using his knife among the saplings, and he had noticed the exuding of the juice of the tree; and when he became a man he said: “The trees of the Lord are full of sap.”

David the boy, like other boys, had been fond of hunting the birds’ nests, and he had driven the old stork off the nest to find how many eggs were under her; and when he became a man he said: “As for the stork, the fir trees are her house.”

In boyhood he had heard the terrific thunder storm that frightened the red deer into premature sickness; and when he became a man he said: “The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve.”

David the boy had lain upon his back, looking up at the stars and examining the sky, and to his boyish imagination the sky seemed like a piece of divine embroidery, the divine fingers working in the threads of light and the beads of stars; and when he grew up he wrote:

“When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers.”

When he became an old man, thinking of the goodness of God, he seemed to hear again the bleating of his father’s sheep across many years, and to think of the time when he tended them on the Bethlehem hills, and he cries out: “The Lord is my shepherd.”

There is one scene in the life of David that you may not have pondered.

You have seen him with a harp, playing the devil out of Saul; with a sling, smashing the skull of Goliath; with a sword, hacking to pieces the Philistines; with a scepter, ruling a vast realm; with a psalm, gathering all nations into doxology.

But now we have David playing the fool.

He has been anointed king, yet he is in exile and is passing incognito among the Gathites. They are beginning to suspect who he is, and they say:

“I wonder if this is not the warrior, King David? It looks like him. Is not this the man about whom they used to make poetry, and about whom they composed a dance, so that the maidens of the city, reeling now on one foot and now on the other, used to sing: ‘Saul has slain his thousands, but David has slain his tens of thousands’? Yes, he is very much like David; he must be David; he is David.”

David, to escape their hands, pretends to be demented; and he said within himself:

“If I act crazily, then these people will not injure me. No one would be so much of a coward as to assault a madman.”

So, one day, while these Gathites are watching King David with increased suspicion, they see him standing by the door, running his hands meaninglessly up and down the panels--scrabbling on the door as though he would climb up, his mouth wide open, drooling like an infant.

I suppose the boys of the streets threw missiles at him, but the sober people of the town said:

“This is not fair. Do you not see that he has lost his reason? Do not touch this madman. Hands off! Hands off!”

So David escaped. But what an exhibition he made of himself before all the ages!

There was a majesty in King Lear’s madness after Regan and Goneril, his daughters, had persuaded him to banish their sister, Cordelia, and all the friends of the drama have been thrilled with that spectacle.

The craziness of Meg Merrilies was weird and imposing, and formed the most telling passage in Sir Walter Scott’s “Guy Mannering.”

There was a fascination about the insanity of Alexander Cruden, who made the best concordance of the Bible that the world ever saw--made it between the mad houses.

But there was nothing grand, nothing weird, nothing majestic, nothing sublime about this simulation on the part of David. Instead of trusting in the Lord, as he had trusted on other occasions, he gathers before him a vast audience of all generations that were to come, and, standing on that conspicuous stage of history, in view of all the ages, he impersonates the slavering idiot.

Taking the behavior of David as a suggestion, I wish to show you how many of the wise, the brave and the regal sometimes play the fool. Those men as badly play the fool as did David who, in any crisis of life, take their case out of the hand of God.

David, in this case, acted as though there were no God to lift him out of the predicament. What a contrast between his behavior, when this brave little man stood up in front of the giant ten feet in height, looking into his face, and this time, when he debased himself and bedraggled his manhood by affecting insanity in order that he might escape from the grip of the Gathites! In the one case, he played the hero; in the other case, he played the fool.

There came a time when David fled from his pursuers. The world runs very fast when it is chasing a good man. The country is trying to catch David, and to slay him. David goes into the house of a priest, and asks him for a sword or spear with which to defend himself.

The priest, not being accustomed to use deadly weapons, tells David that he can not supply him; but suddenly the priest thinks of an old sword that had been carefully wrapped up and laid away--the very sword that Goliath formerly used. He takes down that sword, and while he is unwrapping the sharp, glittering and memorable blade it flashes upon David’s mind that this is the very sword that was used against himself when he was in the fight with Goliath, and David can hardly keep his hand off it until the priest has unwound it.

David stretches out his hand toward that old sword, and says: “There is none like it; give it me.” In other words: “I want in my own hand the sword that has been used against me, and against the cause of the Lord.” So it was given him.

Here passes through these streets, as in imagination I see him, a wonderful man. Can it be that I am in the very city where lived and reigned David--conqueror, king and poet? David--great for power and great for grief!

He was wrapped up in his boy, Absalom, who was a splendid boy, judged by the rules of worldly criticism. From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot there was not a single blemish. The Bible says that he had such a luxuriant shock of hair that, when once a year it was shorn, what was cut off weighed over three pounds.

But, notwithstanding all his brilliancy of appearance, he was a bad boy, and broke his father’s heart. He was plotting to get the throne of Israel. He had marshaled an army to overthrow his father’s government.

The day of battle had come; the conflict was begun. David, the father, sat between the gates of the palace, waiting for tidings of the conflict.

Oh, how rapidly his heart beat with emotion! Two great questions were to be decided--the safety of his boy and the continuance of the throne of Israel.

After a while a servant, standing on the top of the house, looks off, and he sees some one running. He is coming with great speed, and the man on top of the house announces the coming of the messenger.

David watches and waits, and as soon as the messenger from the field of battle comes within hailing distance the father cries out. Is it a question in regard to the establishment of his throne? Does he say: “Have the armies of Israel been victorious? Am I to continue in my imperial authority? Have I overthrown my enemies?” Oh, no.

There is one question that springs from his heart to his lip, and springs from the lip into the ear of the besweated and bedusted messenger flying from the battle field--the question:

“Is the young man--Absalom--safe?”

When it was told to King David that, although his army had been victorious, his son had been slain, the father turned his back upon the congratulations of the nation, and went up the stairs of his palace, his heart breaking as he went, wringing his hands sometimes, and then again pressing them against his temples, as though he would press them in, crying:

“O Absalom! My son! My son! Would to God I had died for thee, O Absalom! My son! My son!”

* * * * *

Stupendous grief of David, resounding through all succeeding ages!

DEBORAH.

A text of five words, and four of them one and the same, is found in the fifth chapter and twelfth verse of Judges: “Awake, awake, Deborah; awake, awake!”

It seems that the men of Israel had lost their courage. Trampled into the dust by their oppressors, the cowards had not spirit to rise.

Their vineyards destroyed, their women dishonored, their children slain, the land was dying for a leader worthy of the cause.

A holy woman by the name of Deborah saw the desolation, and, putting her trust in the Lord, sounded the battle-cry, and by the help of General Barak launched into the plain ten thousand armed men.

The Canaanites, of course, came out with a larger force. They came out against Israel with nine hundred iron chariots, each of these iron chariots having attached to the sides of it long and sharp scythes, so that when these engines of war were driven down to battle, each one of the nine hundred was ready to cut two great swaths of death.

But, when God gives a mission to a woman, He also gives her strength and grace to execute it.

The nine hundred iron chariots of the Canaanites could not save them. They fly! They fly--horse and horseman, chariot and charioteer, officers and troops--in one wild and terrific overthrow. Sisera, their leader, is so frightened in the conflict that he can not wait until his team turns around. He leaps from the chariot and starts, full run, for the mountains.

Then this epic of the text was composed to celebrate the grand womanly triumph: “Awake, awake, Deborah; awake, awake!”

DORCAS.

Impressed as I am with the mosque at Joppa, the first I ever saw, and stirred as I am with the fact that this harbor once floated the great rafts of Lebanon cedar from which the Temple at Jerusalem was builded, Solomon’s oxen drawing the logs through this very town on the way to Jerusalem, nothing can make me forget that this Joppa was the birthplace of the sewing society that has blessed the poor of all succeeding ages in all lands.

The disasters to Joppa when Judas Maccabæus set it on fire and when Napoleon had five hundred prisoners massacred in this neighborhood can not make me forget that one of the most magnificent charities of the centuries was started in this seaport by Dorcas--a woman who with her needle embroidered her name ineffaceably into the beneficence of the world.

I see her sitting in the village home. In the door way and around about the building, and even in the room where she sits, are the pale faces of the poor.

She listens to their plaint.

She pities their woe.

She makes garments for them, and she adjusts the manufactured articles to suit the bent form of this invalid woman and to that cripple who comes crawling upon his hands and knees. She gives a coat to this one and sandals to that one. With the gifts she mingles prayers and tears and Christian encouragement.

Then she goes out to be greeted on the street corners by those whom she has blessed, and all through the way of her walk the cry is heard: “Dorcas is coming!”

The sick look up gratefully in her face as she puts a hand on the burning brow, and the lost and the abandoned start up with hope as they hear her gentle voice, as though an angel had addressed them; and as she goes out the lane, eyes half put out with sin think they see a halo of light about her brow and a trail of glory in her pathway.

That night a half-paid shipwright climbs the hill and reaches home. There he sees his little boy well clad, and he asks: “Where did these clothes come from?” They tell him: “Dorcas has been here.”

In another place, a woman is trimming a lamp; Dorcas brought the oil.

In another place, a family that had not been at table for many a week are gathered now, for Dorcas brought them bread.

But there is a sudden pause in that woman’s ministry. They say: “Where is Dorcas? Why, we have not seen her for many a day. Where is Dorcas?”

Then one of these poor people goes up and knocks at the door, and finds the mystery solved. All through the haunts of wretchedness the news comes:

“Dorcas is sick!”

No bulletin flashing from the palace gate, telling the stages of a king’s disease, is more anxiously waited for than the news from this sick benefactress. Alas for Joppa! There is weeping and wailing. That voice which has uttered so many cheerful words is now hushed; that hand which had made so many garments for the poor is cold and still; that star which had poured light into the midnight of wretchedness is dimmed by the blinding mists that go up from the river of death.

In every God-forsaken place in that town; wherever there is hunger and no bread; wherever there is guilt and no commiseration; wherever there is a broken heart and no comfort--there are despairing looks, streaming eyes and frantic gesticulations as they cry:

“Dorcas is dead!”

They send for the apostle, Peter. He edges his way through the crowd around the door, and stands in the presence of the dead. What expostulation and grief all about him!

Here stand some of the poor people, who show the garments which this good woman had made for them. Their grief can not be appeased.

Peter, the apostle, wants to perform a miracle. He will not perform it amid the excited crowd, so he kindly orders that the whole room be cleared. The door is shut against the populace.

The apostle stands now with the dead. Oh, it is a serious moment, you know, when you are alone with a lifeless body! The apostle gets down on his knees and prays, and then he comes to the lifeless form of this one all ready for the sepulcher, and in the strength of Him who is the resurrection he exclaims:

“Tabitha, arise!”

There is a stir in the fountains of life; the heart flutters; the nerves thrill; the cheek flushes; the eye opens; she sits up!

We see in this subject Dorcas the disciple, Dorcas the benefactress, Dorcas the lamented, Dorcas the resurrected.

If I had not seen that word disciple in my text, I yet would have known this woman was a Christian. Such music as that never came from a heart which is not both chorded and strung by Divine grace.

Before I show you the needle-work of this woman, I want to show you her regenerated heart--the source of a pure life and of all Christian charities.

I wish that the wives and mothers and daughters and sisters of this congregation would imitate Dorcas in her discipleship. Before you sit with the Sabbath class, before you cross the threshold of the hospital, before you carry a pack of tracts down the street, before you enter upon the temptations and trials of tomorrow, I charge you, in the name of God and by the turmoil and tumult of the Judgment Day, O women, that you attend to the first, last and greatest duty of your life--the seeking for God and being at peace with Him.

Now, by the courtesies of society, you are deferred to, and he were far less than a man who would not oblige you with kind attentions; but when the trumpet shall sound, there will be an uproar, and a wreck of mountain and continent, and no human arm can help you. Amidst the rising of the dead, and amidst the boiling of the seat and amidst the live, leaping thunders of the flying heavens, there will be no chance for these courtesies.

But, on that day, calm and placid will be every woman’s heart who has put her trust in Christ; calm, notwithstanding all the tumult, as though the fire in the heavens were only the gildings of an autumnal sunset--as though the peal of the trumpet were only the harmony of an orchestra--as though the awful voices of the sky were but a group of friends bursting through a gateway at eventime with laughter, and shouting: “Dorcas the disciple!”

Would to God that every Mary and every Martha would this day sit down at the feet of Jesus!

Further, we see Dorcas the benefactress.

History has told the story of the crown; the epic poet has sung of the sword; the pastoral poet, with his verses full of the redolence of clover-tops and arustle with the silk of the corn, has sung the praises of the plow. I tell you the praises of the needle.

From the fig-leaf robe prepared in the Garden of Eden to the last stitch taken last night on some garment for some church fair, the needle has wrought wonders of kindness, generosity and benefaction. It adorned the girdle of the high priest; it fashioned the curtains in the ancient Tabernacle; it cushioned the chariots of King Solomon; it provided the robes of Queen Elizabeth; and in high places and in low places, by the fire of the pioneer’s back-log and under the flash of the chandelier--everywhere, it has clothed nakedness, it has preached the Gospel, it has overcome hosts of penury and want with the war-cry of: “Stitch, stitch, stitch!” The operatives have found a livelihood by it, and through it the mansions of the employers have been constructed.

Amidst the greatest triumphs in all ages and lands, I set down the conquests of the needle.

I admit its crimes; I admit its cruelties. It has had more martyrs than the fire; it has butchered more souls than the Inquisition; it has punctured the eye; it has pierced the side; it has struck weakness into the lungs; it has sent madness into the brain; it has filled the potter’s field; it has pitched whole armies of the suffering into crime, wretchedness and woe.

But, now that I am talking of Dorcas and her ministries to the poor, I shall speak only of the charities of the needle.

This woman was a representative of all those women who make garments for the destitute, who knit socks for the barefooted, who prepare bandages for the lacerated, who fix up boxes of clothing for Western missionaries, who go into the asylums of the suffering and destitute bearing that Gospel which is sight for the blind and hearing for the deaf, and which makes the lame man leap like a hart, and brings the dead to life with immortal health bounding in their pulses.

What a contrast between the practical benevolence of this woman and a great deal of the charity of this day!

Dorcas did not spend her time planning how the poor of Joppa were to be relieved; she took her needle and relieved them. She was not like those persons who sympathize with imaginary sorrows, and go out in the street and laugh at the boy who has upset his basket of cold victuals; nor was she like that charity which makes a rousing speech on the benevolent platform, and goes out to kick the beggar from the step, crying: “Hush your miserable howling!”

The sufferers of the world want not so much theory as practice; not so much tears as dollars; not so much kind wishes as loaves of bread; not so much smiles as shoes; not so much “God bless yous!” as jackets and frocks. I will put one earnest Christian man, who is a hard worker, against five thousand mere theorists on the subject of charity.

There are a great many who have fine ideas about church architecture who never in their lives helped to build a church. There are men who can give you the history of Buddhism and Mohammedanism who never sent a farthing for the evangelization of the adherents of those religions.

There are women who talk beautifully about the suffering in the world who never had the courage, like that of Dorcas, to take up the needle and assault it.

I am glad that there is not a page of the world’s history which is not a record of feminine benevolence. God says to all lands and peoples: “Come, now, and hear the widow’s mite rattle down into the poor-box.”

The Princess of Conti sold all her jewels, that she might help the famine-stricken. Queen Blanche, wife of Louis VIII. of France, hearing that there were some persons unjustly incarcerated in the prisons, went out and took a stick and struck the door, as a signal that all might strike it; and down went the prison door, and out came the prisoners. Queen Maud, the wife of Henry I., went down amidst the poor and washed their sores, and administered to them cordials. Mrs. Retson, at Matagorda, appeared on the battle field while the missiles of death were flying around, and cared for the wounded.

But why go so far back? Why go so far away?

Is there a man or woman in this house who has forgotten the women of the sanitary and Christian Commissions? Has any one forgotten that, before the smoke had gone from Gettysburg and South Mountain, the women of the North met the women of the South on the battle field, forgetting all their animosities while they bound up the wounded and closed the eyes of the slain? Have you forgotten Dorcas, the benefactress?

I come now to speak of Dorcas the lamented. When death struck down that good woman, oh, how much sorrow there was in Joppa!

I suppose there were women living in Joppa possessing larger fortunes; women, perhaps, with more handsome faces; but there was no grief at their departure like this at the death of Dorcas. There was not more turmoil and upturning in the Mediterranean Sea, dashing against the wharves of that seaport, than there were surgings to and fro of grief in Joppa because Dorcas was dead.

There are a great many who go out of life and are unmissed. There may be a very large funeral; there may be a great many carriages and a plumed hearse; there may be high-sounding eulogiums; the bell may toll at the cemetery gate; there may be a very fine marble shaft reared over the resting place. But the whole thing may be a falsehood and a sham.

By this demise the Church of God has lost nothing; the world has lost nothing. It is only a nuisance abated; it is only a grumbler ceasing to find fault; it is only an idler stopped yawning; it is only a dissipated fashionable parted from his wine cellar--while, on the other hand, no useful Christian leaves this world without being missed. The Church of God cries out like the prophet: “Howl, fir tree, for the cedar has fallen.” Widowhood comes and shows the garments which the departed had made. Orphans are lifted up to look into the calm face of the sleeping benefactress. Reclaimed vagrancy comes and kisses the cold brow of her who charmed it away from sin, and all through the streets of Joppa there is mourning--mourning because Dorcas is dead.

I suppose you have read of the fact that when Josephine was carried out to her grave there were a great many men and women of pomp and pride and position that went out after her; but I am most affected by the story of history that on that day there were ten thousand of the poor of France who followed her coffin, weeping and wailing until the air rang again, because when they lost Josephine they lost their last earthly friend.

Oh, who would not rather have such obsequies than all the tears that were ever poured in the lachrymals that have been exhumed from ancient cities! There may be no mass for the dead; there may be no costly sarcophagus; there may be no elaborate mausoleum. But in the damp cellars of the city, and through the lonely huts of the mountain glen, there will be mourning--mourning because Dorcas is dead.

I speak to you of Dorcas the resurrected. The apostle came to where she was, and said: “Arise!” And “she sat up.” In what a short compass the great writer put that: “She sat up!”

Oh, what a time there must have been when the apostle brought her out among her old friends! How the tears of joy must have started! What clapping of hands there must have been! What singing! What laughter! Sound it all through that lane! Shout it down that dark alley! Let all Joppa hear it! Dorcas is resurrected!

You and I have seen the same thing many a time--not a dead body resuscitated, but the deceased coming up again after death in the good accomplished. If a man labors up to fifty years of age, serving God, and then dies, we are apt to think that his earthly work is done. No! His influence on Earth will continue till the world ceases. Services rendered for Christ never stop.

Here is a Christian woman. She toils for the upbuilding of a church through many anxieties, through many self-denials, with prayers and tears, and then she dies. It is fifteen years since she went away. Now the Spirit of God descends upon that church; hundreds of souls stand up and confess the faith of Christ.

Has that Christian woman, who went away fifteen years ago, nothing to do with these things? I see the flowering out of her noble heart. I hear the echo of her footsteps in all these songs over sins forgiven--in all the prosperity of the church. The good that seemed to be buried has come up again. Dorcas is resurrected.

After a while all these womanly friends of Christ will put down their needles for ever. After making garments for others, some one will make a garment for them; the last robe which we shall ever wear--the robe which is for the grave.

You will have heard the last cry of pain. You will have witnessed the last orphanage. You will have come in worn out from your last round of mercy. I do not know where you will sleep, nor what your epitaph will be; but there will be a lamp burning at that tomb and an angel of God guarding it, and through all the long night no rude foot will disturb the dust. Sleep on--sleep on! Soft bed, pleasant shadows, undisturbed repose! Sleep on!

EHUD.

Ehud was a ruler in Israel. He was left-handed, and, what was peculiar about the tribe of Benjamin, to which he belonged, there were in it seven hundred left-handed men; and yet, so dextrous had they all become in the use of the left hand, the Bible says they could sling stones at a hair’s breadth and not miss.

Well, there was a king by the name of Eglon, who was an oppressor of Israel. He imposed upon them an outrageous tax.

Ehud, the man of whom I first spoke, had a divine commission to destroy that oppressor. He came, pretending that he was going to pay the tax, and asked to see King Eglon. He was told the king was in the Summer house, the place to which his majesty retired when the heat was too great to sit in the palace. This Summer house was a place surrounded by flowers, springing fountains and trees--the latter filled with warbling birds.

Ehud entered the Summer house, and said to King Eglon that he had a secret errand with him. Immediately all the attendants were waved out of the royal presence. King Eglon rises up to receive the messenger. Ehud, the left-handed man, puts his left hand to his right side, pulls out a dagger, and thrusts Eglon through until the haft went in after the blade. Eglon falls.

Ehud comes forth to blow a trumpet of right amidst the mountains of Ephraim; and a great host is marshaled, and proud Moab submits to the conqueror, and Israel is free.

I learn first, from this subject, the power of left-handed men. There are men who, by physical organization, have as much strength in their left hand as in their right hand; but there is something in the writing of the fifteenth verse of the third chapter of Judges that implies Ehud had some defect in his right hand, which compelled him to use the left.

Oh, the power of left-handed men! Genius is often self-observant, careful of itself, not given to much toil, burning incense to its own aggrandizement; while many a man, with no natural endowments, actually defective in physical and mental organization, has an earnestness for the right, a patient industry, an all-consuming perseverance, which achieve marvels for the kingdom of the Lord. Though left-handed as Ehud, they can strike down a sin as imperial as Eglon.

But I do not suppose that Ehud, the first time he took a sling in his left hand, could throw a stone a hair’s breadth, and not miss. I suppose it was practice that gave him the wonderful dexterity.

Go forth to your spheres of duty, and do not be discouraged if, in your first attempts, you miss the mark. Ehud missed it.

ESAU.

Esau had the birthright given him.

In the olden times this meant not only temporal but spiritual blessing.

One day Esau took this birthright and traded it off for something to eat. Oh, the folly! But let us not be too severe upon him, for some of us have committed the same folly.

After Esau had thus parted with his birthright, he wanted to get it back. Just as though you, tomorrow morning, should take all your notes and bonds and government securities, and should go into a restaurant, and in a fit of restlessness and hunger throw all those securities on the counter and ask for a plate of food, making that exchange.

This was the exchange Esau made.

He sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, and he was very sorry about it afterward; but “he found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.”

There are sins which, though they may be pardoned, are in some respects irrevocable; and you can find no place for repentance, though you seek it carefully with tears. After wasting forty years, you can not get back the neglected advantages of boyhood and youth.

FELIX AND DRUSILLA.

A city of marble was Cesarea--wharves of marble, houses of marble, temples of marble. This being the ordinary architecture of the place, you may well imagine something of the splendor of Governor Felix’s residence.

In a room of that palace--floor tesselated, windows curtained, ceiling fretted, the whole scene affluent with Tyrian purple, and statues, and pictures, and carvings--sat a very dark-complexioned man by the name of Felix, and beside him sat a woman of extraordinary beauty, whom he had stolen by breaking up another’s domestic circle.

She was only eighteen years of age, a princess by birth, and unwittingly waiting for her doom--that of being buried alive in the ashes and scoria of Mount Vesuvius, which in sudden eruption, one day, put an end to her abominations.

Well, one afternoon Drusilla, seated in the palace, weary with the magnificent stupidities of the place, says to Felix:

“You have a very distinguished prisoner, I believe, by the name of Paul. Do you know he is one of my countrymen? I should very much like to see him, and I should very much like to hear him speak, for I have heard so much about his eloquence.

“Besides that, the other day, when he was being tried in another room of this palace, and the windows were open, I heard the applause that greeted the speech of Lawyer Tertullus, as he denounced Paul. Now, I very much wish I could hear Paul speak. Won’t you let me hear him speak?”

“Yes,” said Felix, “I will. I will order him up now from the guard room.”

The clank of a chain is heard coming up the marble stairway, there is a shuffle at the door, and in comes Paul--a little old man, prematurely old through exposure--only sixty years of age, but looking as though he were eighty.

Paul bows very courteously before Governor Felix and the beautiful woman by his side. They say:

“Paul, we have heard a great deal about your speaking. Give us, now, a specimen of your eloquence.”

Oh, if there ever was a chance for a man to show off, Paul had a chance there!

He might have harangued them about Grecian art, about the wonderful water-works which he had seen at Corinth, about the Acropolis by moonlight, about prison life in Philippi, about “What I Saw in Thessalonica,” or about the old mythologies.

But, instead, Paul said to himself: “I am now on the way to martyrdom, and this man and woman will soon be dead; so this is my only opportunity to talk to them about the things of eternity.”

And, just there and then, there broke in upon the scene a peal of thunder. It was the voice of Judgment Day speaking through the words of the decrepit apostle. As the grand old missionary proceeded with his remarks, the stoop begins to go out of his shoulders, and he rises up, and his countenance is illumined with the glories of a future life, and his shackles rattle and grind as he lifts his fettered arm, and with it hurls upon his abashed auditors the bolts of God’s indignation.

Felix grew very white about the lips. His heart beat unevenly. He put his hand to his brow, as though to stop the quickness and violence of his thoughts. He drew his robe tighter about him, as under a sudden chill. His eyes glare and his knees shake, and, as he clutches the side of his chair in a very paroxysm of terror, he orders the sheriff to take Paul back to the guard room.

“Felix trembled, and said: ‘Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.’”

I propose to give you two or three reasons why I think Felix sent Paul back to the guard room and adjourned this whole subject of religion.

The first reason was: He was unwilling to give up his sins. He looked around; there was Drusilla. He knew that, when he became a Christian, he must send her back to Azizus, her lawful husband; and he said to himself: “I will risk the destruction of my immortal soul sooner than I will do that.”

Delilah sheared the locks of Samson; Salome danced Herod into the pit; Drusilla blocked up the way to Heaven for Felix.

Another reason why Felix sent Paul back to the guard room and adjourned this subject was: He was so very busy. In ordinary times he found the affairs of state absorbing, but those were extraordinary times. The whole land was ripe for insurrection. The Sicarii, a band of assassins, were already prowling around the palace, and I suppose he thought: “I can not attend to religion while I am so pressed by affairs of state.” It was business, among other things, that ruined his soul.

Aye, with thousands of the present day, it is the annoyance of the kitchen, and the sitting room and the parlor--the wearing economy of trying to meet large expenses with a small income. Ten thousand voices of “business” drown the voice of the Eternal Spirit.

GALLERY OF CHARACTERS.

I see the Gallery of the Prophets and Apostles.

Who are those mighty ones up yonder? Hosea, Jeremiah, Daniel, Isaiah, Paul, Peter, John and James.

There sits Noah, waiting for all the world to come into the ark.

Moses is waiting till the last Red Sea shall divide.

Jeremiah is waiting for the Jews to return.

John of the Apocalypse is waiting for the swearing of the angel that Time shall be no longer.

Glorious spirits! Ye were howled at; ye were stoned; ye were spit upon. They have been in this fight themselves, and they are all with us. Daniel knows all about lions. Paul fought with beasts at Ephesus. For Joseph, a pit; for Daniel, a wild beast den; for David, dethronement and exile; for John the Baptist, a wilderness diet and the executioner’s ax; for Peter, a prison; for Paul, shipwreck; for John, desolate Patmos; for Vashti, most insulting cruelty.

In that gallery, prophetic and apostolic, they can not keep their peace. Daniel cries out: “Thy God will deliver thee from the mouth of the lions!” David exclaims: “He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.” Isaiah calls out: “Fear not! I am with thee. Be not dismayed.” Paul exclaims: “Victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!”

I see the Angelic Gallery. There they are. There is the angel that swung the sword at the gate of Eden, the same whom Ezekiel saw upholding the throne of God, and from which I look away, for the splendor is insufferable. Here are the guardian angels. That one watched a patriarch; this one protected a child. That one has been pulling a soul out of temptation. All these are messengers of light. Those drove the Spanish Armada on the rocks. This turned Sennacherib’s living hosts into a heap of one hundred and eighty-five thousand corpses. Those, yonder, chanted the Christmas carol over Bethlehem, until the chant awoke the shepherds. These, at Creation, stood in the balcony of Heaven, and serenaded the new-born world wrapped in swaddling clothes of light.

And there, holier and mightier than all, is Michael, the archangel. To command an earthly host gives dignity; but this one is leader of the twenty thousand chariots of God, and of the ten thousand times ten thousand angels.

I think God gives command to the archangel, and the archangel to the seraphim, and the seraphim to the cherubim, until all the lower orders of Heaven hear the command and go forth on the high behest.

GIDEON.

The seventh chapter of the Book of Judges contains a detailed report of the strangest battle ever fought.

God had told Gideon to go down and thrash the Midianites, but his army is too large; for the glory must be given to God, and not to man. And so proclamation is made that all those of the troops who are cowardly, and want to go home, may go; and twenty-two thousand of them scampered away, leaving only ten thousand men.

But God says the army is too large yet; and so He orders these ten thousand remaining to march down through a stream, and commands Gideon to notice in what manner these men drink of the water as they pass through it. If they get down on all-fours and drink, then they are to be pronounced lazy and incompetent for the campaign; but if, in passing through the stream, they scoop up the water in the palm of the hand and drink, and pass on, they are to be the men selected for the battle.

Well, the ten thousand men march down into the stream, and the most of them come down on all-fours, and plunge their mouths, like a horse or an ox, into the water and drink; but there are three hundred men who, instead of stooping, just dip the palm of their hands in the water and bring it to their lips--“lapping as the dog lappeth.”

Those three hundred brisk, rapid and enthusiastic men are chosen for the campaign. They are each to take a trumpet in the right hand and a pitcher in the left hand, and a lamp inside the pitcher; and then at a given signal they are to blow the trumpets, throw down the pitchers and hold up the lamps. So it was done.

It is night. I see a great host of Midianites, sound asleep in the valley of Jezreel.

Gideon comes up with his three hundred picked men, and when every thing is ready the signal is given, and they blow the trumpets, throw down the pitchers and hold up the lamps.

The great host of Midianites, waking out of a sound sleep, take the crash of the crockery and the glare of the lamps for the coming on of an overwhelming foe; and they run, and cut themselves to pieces, and most horribly perish.

The lessons of this subject are very spirited and impressive. This seemingly valueless lump of quartz has the pure gold in it. The smallest dewdrop on the meadow at night has a star sleeping in its bosom, and the most insignificant passage of Scripture has in it a shining truth. God’s mint coins no small change.

HEZEKIAH.

Luxurious living is not healthy. The second generation of kings and queens and of lords and princes is apt to be brainless and invalid.

The second crop of grass is almost always short.

Royal blood is generally scrofulous. You will not be surprised, then, to hear that King Hezekiah had disorders which broke out in a carbuncle, virulent and deathful. The Lord told him he must die.

But Hezekiah did not want to die. He turned his face to the wall, so that his prayer would not be interrupted, and cried to God for his life.

God heard the prayer and answered it, saying: “Behold, I will heal thee.” But there was human instrumentality to be employed.

This carbuncle needed a cataplasm. That is a tough word that we use to show how much we know. If in the pulpit we always used words the people understood, we never should have any reputation for learning.

Well, this carbuncle needed a cataplasm, which is a poultice. Your old mother, who doctored her own children in the time when physicians were not as plentiful as they are now, will tell you that the very best poultice is a fig, and that was what was used upon the carbuncle of King Hezekiah. The power of God, accompanied by this human instrumentality, cured the king.

In this age of discovery, when men know so much it kills them, and write so wisely it almost kills us, it has been found out that prayer to God is a dead failure. All things are arranged according to inexorable law.

Ah, my friends, have we been so mistaken? Does God hear and answer prayer, or does He not? Why come out with a challenge in this day, and an experiment, when we have here the very experiment?

Hezekiah was sick unto death; he prayed for his life; God heard him, and added fifteen years to that lifetime. The prayer saved him, the lump of figs applied being merely the God-appointed human instrumentality.

JEHOIAKIM.

We look in upon a room in Jerusalem. Two men are there.

At the table sits Baruch, the scribe, with a roll of parchment and an iron pen in his hand. The other man is walking the floor, as if strangely agitated.

There is an unearthly appearance about his countenance, and his whole frame quakes as if pressed upon by something unseen and supernal.

This is Jeremiah, in the spirit of prophecy. Being too much excited to write with his own hands the words that the Almighty pours upon his mind about the coming destruction of Jerusalem, he dictates to Baruch, the scribe. It is a seething, scalding, burning denunciation of Jehoiakim, the king, and a prophecy of approaching disasters.

Of course, King Jehoiakim hears of the occurrence, and he sends Jehudi to obtain the parchment and read its contents.

It is winter. Jehoiakim is sitting in his comfortable winter house, by a fire that glows upon the hearth and lights up the faces of the lords, princes and senators who have gathered to hear the reading of the strange document.

Silence is ordered. The royal circle bend forward to listen. Every eye is fixed.

Jehudi unrolls the book gleaming with the words of God, and as he reads Jehoiakim frowns; his eye kindles; his cheek burns; his foot comes down with thundering indignation.

King Jehoiakim snatches the book from Jehudi’s hand, feels for his knife, crumples up the book, and goes to work cutting it up with his penknife. Thus God’s book was permanently destroyed, and the king escaped.

Was it destroyed?

Did Jehoiakim escape?