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IT IS KINDNESS TEAT WIHS SOULS FOR TH1 6R1AT H1ATE LT MASTIR. V \ Pr. Talmago Preaches on a Tory Fruitful Topic. Ho 8rests the Pooplo Who Hare Boon Wandering in Foreign Lands, and Draws Some Striking Parallels. Special Trltffram to t/ls RegitUr. Brooklyn, N. Y.« September 13.— Brooklyn Tabernacle to-day contained many strangers on their way home from the watering places and foreign lands. Many of the members, absent from the city during the sammer, were in their places. The church building and the organ, which have been almost continu ally under brush and hammer since the dedication last spring, are now about completed. The sermons to-day were full of congratulation and were attend ed by the usual throngs. Dr. Talmage’s morning sermon was on “KliWness,” from the text, Acts 28:2: “The bar barous people showed us no little kind ness.” Here we are on the Island of Malta, another name for Mellta. This island, which has always been an important commercial centre, belonging at differ ent times to Phoenicia, to Greece, to Rome, to Arabia, to Spain, to France, now belongs to England. The area of the island is about 100 square miles. It is in the Mediterranean Sea and of such clarity of atmosphere that Mt. Etna, 130 miles away, can bo distinctly seen. The island Is gloriously memorable, be cause the Knights of Malta for a long while ruled there, but most famous because of the apostolic shipwreck. The bestormed vessel on which Paul sailed had “laid to,” on tho starboard tack, and the wind was blowing cast-northeast, and the vessel, drifting, probably a mile and a half an hour, she struck at what Is now called St. Paul’s Bay. Practical sailors have taken up tho Bible account and decided beyond controversy tho place of the shipwreck. But the island which has so rough a ooast is for the most part a garden. Richest fruits and a profusion of honey characterized it in Paul’s time as well as now*. Tho finest oranges, ligs and olives grow there. When Paul and his comrades crawled up on the beach, saturated with the salt water, and hungry from long abstinence from food, and chilled to tho bone, the Isl anders, though called barbarians, be cause they could not speak Greek,opened their doors to the shipwrecked unfor tunates. Everything had gone to tho bottom of the deep, and the barefooted, bareheaded apostle and ship’s crew were In a condition to appreciate hospitality. About twenty-five such men a few seasons ago I found in the life station near Easthampton, Long Island. They had got ashore in the night from the sea, and not a hat or shoe had they left. They found out, as Paul and bis fellow voyagers found out, that the sea is the roughest of all rob bers. My text finds the ship’s crew ashore on Malta, and around a hot fire drying themselves, and with the best provisions the Islanders can offer them. And they go Into government quarters for three days to recuperate, Publius, the ruler, inviting them, although he had severe sickness In tho house at that time, his father down with dysentery and typhoid fever. Yea, for three months they stayed on the island, watching for a ship, and putting the hospitalities of the islanders to a severe test. But it endured the test satisfac torily, and it is recorded for all ages of time and eternity to read aud bear in regard to the inhabitants of Malta: “The barbarous people showed us no little kindness.” Kindness! >\ hat a groat wora tnat is. It would take a reed as long as that which the apocalyptic angel used to measure heaven to tell the length, the breadth, the height of that munificent word. It la a favorite Bible word, and it Is early launched in the book of Gen esis, caught up in the book of Joshua, embraced in the book of Ruth, sworn by in tho book of Samuel, crowned in the book of Psalms, and enthroned in many places in tho new Testament. Klnd nesss! A word no more gentle than mighty. I expect it will wrostle mo down before I get through with it. It is strong onough to throw an archangel, ltut It will be well for us to stand around It. and warm ourselves by Us glow as Paul and his fellow voyagers stood around the fire on the Island of Malta, where the Maltese made them selves immortal in my text by the way they treated these victims of the sea. “The barbarous people showed us no little kindness.” ... . > All J.d.UiA.A ♦ U n * Kindness: All aeoniuons ui iaai raultipotent word break down half way. You say It is clemency, benignity, gen erosity; it is made up of good wishes, it is an expression of beneficence, it is a contribution to the happiness of others. Some one elso says: “Why, I can give you a definition of kindneas: It is sun shine of the soul. It is affection peren nial, It Is a climacteric grace, it Is the combination of all graces. It is com passion. It is the perfection of gentle manliness and womanliness.” Are you all through? You have made a dead j fatluro in your definition. It cannot be defined. But we all know what It is, for we all felt its power. Some of you may have felt it as Paul felt it, on some coast of rock as the ship went to pieces, but more of us have again and again In some awful stress o! life had either from earth or heaven hands stretched out, which “showed us no little kindness.” There is kindness of disposition, kindness of word, kindness of act, and there is Jesus Christ the impersonation of all of them. Kinduess! You can not affect it, you cannot play it as a I part, you cannot enact it, you cannot j dramatize it. By the grace of God you j must have it inside you, an everlasting j summer, or rather a comblna’lon of June and October, the geniality of the one and the tonic of tha other. It can not dwell with arrogance or spite or revenge or malevolence. At its first appearance in the soul all these Amale kitesand Gerglshltes and Hittites and Jebusltes must quit, and quit forever. Kindness wishes everybody well, every man well, every woman well, every child well, every bird well, every horse well, every dog well, t ery cat well. Give this spirit full swing and you would have no more need of societies for prevention of cruelty to animala, no more need of protective sewing woman’s association, and it would dull every sword until it would not cut skin deep, and nnwbecl every battery till It could not roil and make gunpowder of no more use In the world except for rock blasting or pyro technic celebration. Kindness is ft spirit divinely implanted, and In answer to prayer>nd^hen to be sedulously culti vated until it fills all the nature with a perfume richer and more pungent than mignonette, and, as if you put a tuft of that aromatic beauty behind the clock on the mantel, or In some corner where nobody can see It, you flod people walk ing about your room looking this way and that, and you ask them, "What are you looking for?” and they an.twer^ "Where le that flower?"—So U oacjhas in ht soul this infinite sweetness of disposition, its perfume will whelm everything. But are you waiting and hoping for some one to be bankrupted or exposed, oh discomfited, or in some way over thrown, then kindness has not taken possession of your nature. You are wrecked on a Malta where there are no oranges. You are entertaining a guest so unlike kindness that kindness will not come and dwell under the same roof. The most exhausting and un healthy and ruinous feeling on earth is a rovengeful spirit or retaliating spirit, as I know by experience, for I have tried it for five or ten minutes at a time. When some moan thing has been done me or said about me, I have felt ‘Twill pay him In his own coin. I will show him up. The ingrate! the traitor! The liar! The villian!” But five or ten minutes of the feeling has been so un nerving and exhausting I have aban doned it, and I cannot understand how people can go about torturing themselves five or ten or twenty years, trying to get even with somebody. The only way you will ever triumph over your enemies is by forgiving them and wishing them all good and no evil. As malevo lence is the most uneasy and profitless and dangerous feeling, kindness is tha most healthful and delightful. And this is not an abstraction. As I have tried a little of the retaliatory feelings, so I have tried a little of the forgiving. I do not want to leave this world until I have taken vengeanco upon every man that ever did me a wrong, by doing him a kindness. In most of such cases I have already succeeded, but there are a few malignants whom I am yet pur suing, and I shall not be content until I have in some wise helped them or beuefitted them or blessed them. Let us all pray for this spirit of kindness. It will settle a thousand questions. It will change the phaso of everything. It will mellow through and through our entire nature. It will transform a lifetime. It is not a feeling gotten up for occasions, but perennial. That is the reason I like petunias bet ter than morning glories. They look very much alike, and if I should put in your hand a petunia and a morn ing-glory you could hardly tell which is the petunia and which the morning glory; but the morning-glory blooms only a few hours and then shuts up for the day, while the petunia is in as wide spread a glow at 12 o’clock at noon and six o’clock in the evening as at sunrise. Aud this grace of kindness Is not spas- . modic, is not Intermittent, is not for a little while, but it irradiates the whole nature, all through and clear on till the sunset of our earthly existence. Kind ness! I am resoivedto get it. Are you resolved to get It? It does not come by hap-hazard, but through culture under the Divine help. Thistles grow without culture. Rocky Mountain rage grass grows without culture. Mullen stalks grow without culture. But that great red roso In tho conservatory, its leaves parked on leaves, deep-dyed as though It had been obliged to fight for its beauty and it were still reeking with the carnage of the battle, that rose needed to be cultured and through long years its floral ancestors wore cultured, Oh, God! implant kindness in ail our souls and then give us grace to watch it, to enrich it, to develop it! The King of Prussia had presented to hlin by the Empress of Russia the root of a rare flower, and it was put In the royal gardens on an Island, and the head gardener, Horr Fintelmann, was told to watch it. And one day it put forth its glory Three days of every week tho people were admitted to those gardens, and a young man, pi vY>®,bly not realizing what a wrong thing he was doing, pluck ed this flower and put it In his botton hole, and the gardener arrested him as he was crossing at the ferry, and asked the king to throw open no more his gar dens to the public. The king replied, “Shall I deny to the thousands of good people of my country the privilege of seeing this garden because one visitor has done wrong? No, let them come and see tho beautiful grounds.” And when tho gardener wished to give tho King the name of the offender who had taken the royal flower, ho said, “No, my memory is very tenacious and I do not want to have in my mind tho name of the offender, lest it should hinder me granting him a favor some othor time.” Now, I want you to know that kindness is a royal flower,and blessed bo God, tho King of mercy and grace, that by a di vine gift and not by purloining, wo may pluck this royal flowor and not wear it on the outside of our nature, but wear tt on our soul and wear it forever, its radiance and aroina not more wonderful for time than wonderful for eternity. Still further, I must speak of kind ness of word. When you meet anyone do you say a pleasant thing or an un pleasant? Do you tell him of agreeable things you have heard about him, or the disagreeable? When he leaves you, does he feel better or does ho feel worse? Oh. the power of the tongue for the production of happiness or mls ory! One would think from the way the tongue is caged In wo might take the hint that it has a dangerous power. First It is chained to the back part of the mouth by strong muscles. Then It is surrounded by the teeth of the lower jaw, so many Ivory bars; and then by the teeth of the up per Jaw, more Ivory bars. Then out side of all are the two lips with the power of compression and arrest. And yet notwithstanding these four Impris onments or limitations, how many take no hint in regard to the dangerous power of the tongue, and the results are laceration, scarification, and dam nation. There are those If they know a good thing about you and a bad thing, will mention the bad thing and act as though they had never heard the good thing. Now there are two sides to almost every one’s character, and we have the choice of overhauling the vir tue or the vice. We can greet Paul and tho ship’s crew as they come up the beach of Malta, with the words, “What a sorry looking sot you are! How little of navigation you must know to run on these rocks! Didn’t you know better to put out on the Mediterranean this wintry month! It was not much of a ship anyhow, or It would not have gone to pieces so soon as that. Well, what do you want? We have hard enough work to make a ltv- J lng for ourselves, without having thrust on us two hundred and seventy-six ragamuffins.” Not so said the Maltese. ( I think they said: “Come iu! Sit ! down by the fire and warm yourselves. ! Glad that you all got off with your j lives. Make yourselves at home. You are welcome to all we have until some ship comes in sight and you resume your voyage. Here, let me put a ban dage od your forehead, for that is an ugly gash you got from tho floating ! timbers, and here is a man with a broken arm. We will have a doctor come to attend to this fracture.” And though for three month the kindness went on, we have hut little more than this brief record: “Tho barbarous people showed us no little kindness.” Oh! say the cordial thing! Say tho useful thing! Say tho hospitable thing! Say the helpful thing! Say the Chris tian thing! Say the kind thing! I ad mit that this Is easier for some leinper roents than for others. Some are born pessimist*, end home are born optimists, and that demonstrates itself all through everything. It Is a cloudy morning. You meet a pessimist and you say: “What weather to-day?” He answers: •'It’s going to storm,” and umbrella un der arm and a water-proof overcoat show that he is honest in that utter ance. On the same block, a minute af ter, you meet au optimist, and you say: “What weather to-day?” “Good weath er; this Is only a fog and will soon scatter.” The absence of umbrella and absence of water-proof overcoat show It is an honest utterance. On your way at noon to luncheon you meet an opti mistic merchant and you say: “What do you think of the commercial pros pects?” and he says, “Glorious. Great crops must bring great business. We are going to have such an Autumn and Winter of prosperity as we have never seen.” On your way back to your store you meet a pessimistic merchant. “What do you think of the commercial prospects?” you ask, And he answers: “Well, I don’t know. So much grain will surfeit the country. Farmers have more bushels but less prices, and the grain gamblers will get their fist in It. There is the McKinley bill, and the hay crop is short in some places, and in the Southern part of Wisconsin they had a hall storm and our business is as dull as It ever was.” You will find the same difference in judgment of character. A man of good reputation is assailed and charged with some evil deed. At the first story the pessimist will believe In guilt. “The papers said so, and that’s enough. Down with him:” The opti mist will say: “I don’t believe a word of it. I don’t think that a man that has been as useful and soemingly honest for twenty year9 could not get off the track like that. There arc two sides to this story and I will wait to hear the other side before I condemn him.” My hearer, If you are by nature a pessimist, make a special effort by the grace of God to extlrpato the dolorous and the hypocritical from your disposi tion. Believe nothing against anybody until the wrong is established by at least two witnesses of integrity. And if guilt be proven find out the extenuating cir cumstances, if there are any. And then commit to memory so that you can quote for yourself and quote for others that exquisite thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians about charity that suffers long and Is kind, and hopeth all things, and cnduroth all things. By pen, by voice, in public and in private, say all the good about people you can think of, and if thero be nothing good, then tighten tho chain of muscle on the back ond of your tongue and keep the ivory bar9 of teeth on tho lower jaw and the ivory bars of teetli on the upper jaw locked, and the gate of your lips tightly closed, and your tongue shut up. What a place Brooklyn would be to live in, and all the other cities and neighborhoods to live in, if charity dom inated! What if all tho old and voung gossippers were dead. The Lord hasten thoir funerals! What if tittle-tattle and whispering were out of fashion! What if in ciphering out the value of other people’s character, in our moral arith metic we stuck to addition instead of subtraction! Kindness! Let us morn ing, noon and night pray for it until we get it. When you can speak a good word for some one, speak it. If you can conscientiously give letter of commend ation, give it. Watch for opportunities for doing good fifty years after you are dead. Ali ray life has been affected by the letter of introduction that the Rev. Dr. Van Vrankon, of New Brunswick Theological Seminary, wrote for me, a boy under him, wh«ti I was seeking a settlement in wluov preach the TiacLt letter g» — my flrst pn>pit. Dr. Van v ran ken has wen dead moro than thirty years, ye* I fool the touch of that magnificent old pro fessor. Strange sensation was it whon I received a kind message from Rev. Thomas Guard of Baltimore, the great Methodist orator, six weeks after his death. By way of the eternal world? Oh, no, by way of this world. I did not not meet the friend to whom he gave tho message until nearly two months after Thomas Guard had ascend ed. So you can start a word about some one that will bo oa its travels and vig orous long after tho funeral psalm has been suug at your obsequies. ICindnessl Why if fifty men all aglow with it should walk through the lost world, methinks they would almost abolish perdition. Furthermore, there is kindness of ac- ] tlon. That is what Joseph showed to his outrageous brothers. That is what David showed to Mephibosheth for his father Jonathan’s sake. That Is what Onesiphorus showed to Paul in the Ro man penitentiary. That is what Wil liam Cowper recognized when he said he would not trust a man who would, with his foot, needlessly crush a worm. That is what our assassinated President Lincoln demonstrated when his private secretary found him in the capitol grounds trying to get a bird back to the nest from which it had fallen, and which quality the illustrious man ex hibited years before whon having with some lawyers in tho carriage on the way to court passed ou the road a swine fa9t in the rairo, after awhile cried to his horses “Ho!” and said to the gen tleman, “I must go back and help that hog out of the mire.” And he did go Gone mad— tho person with had blood who’s not taking Dr. Pierce’s Golden Medical Discovery. You are bereft of judg ment and good sense if you allow your blood to get out of order, vour liver sluggish—life dull, everything blue, for you may soon find out that you’re in the grave—or next to it —because you did not procure the G. M. D. soon enough, and some dread disease, may be influenza or consumption, may be typhoid or malarial fever, has taken you. Consumption is Lung Scrofula. For Scrofula in its myriad forms, and for all Liver, Blood and Lung dis eases, the “Discovery” is an un equaled remedy. Everybody, now and then, feels “ run-down w “ played out,”—with no power to generate vitality, in fact, just too sick to be well That’s where the right kind of medicine comes in, and fhe “Dis covery” does for a dollar what the doctor wouldn’t do for less than five or ten. We claim that nothing like it has been discovered for a blood-purifier. It’s guaranteed by the makers. Your money is returned if it dosea’t bene fit or cure you. , I back, and put on solid ground that most uninteresting qnadruped. That was the spirit that wa9 manifested by my de parted friend Hon. Alexander H. Steph ens, of Georgia, (and lovelier man never exchanged earth for heaven), when at Washington. A senator’s wife who told my wife of the circumstances, said "o him: “Mr. Stephens, come and see my dead canary bird.” And he answered: “No, I could not look at the poor thing without crying.” That is the spirit that Grant showed when at the surren der at Appomattox he said to General Lee: “As many of your soldiers are farmers and will need the horses and mules to raise the crops to keep their families from suffering next winter, let each confederate who can claim a horse or a mule take it along with him.” That is the spirit which last night ten thousand mothers showed to their sick children coming to give the drink at the twentieth call as cheerfully and as tenderly a9 at the first call. Suppose all this assemblage, and all to whom these words shall come by printer’s type, should resolve to make kindness an overarching, un der-girding and all-pervading principle of their life and then carrying out the resolution, why, in six months the whole earth would feel it. People would say: “What is the matter? It seems to mo that the world is getting to bo a better placo to llvo in. Why, life after all is worth living. Why, there is Shylock, my neighbor, has withdrawn his lawsuit of foreclosure against that man and because he ha9 had so much sickness in his family he is going t-o have the house for one year rent free. There is an old lawyer in that young lawyer’s oflice and do you know what he has gone in there for? Why, he is helping fix up a case which is too big for the young man to handle and the white-haired attorney is hunting up previous decisions and making out a brief for the boy. The East wind and the West wind were one day talking with each other, and the East wind said to the West wind: “Don’t you wish you had my power? Why, when I start they hail me by storm signals all along the coast. I can twist off a ship’s mast as easily as a cow’s hoof cracks an alder. With one sweep of my wing, I have strewn the coast from Newfoundland to Key West with parted ship-timber. I can lift and have lifted tho Atlantic Ocean. I am the terror of all iuvalldism, and to fight me back forests must be cut down for fires, and the mines of continents are called on to feed the furnaces. Under my breath the nations crouch into sep ulchres. Dont you wish you had my power?” said the East wind. The West wind made no answer, but started on its mission, coming somewhere out of the rosy bowers of tho sky, and all the rivers and lakes and seas smiled at its com ing. Tho gardens bloomed, and the orchards ripened, and the wheat fields turned their silver into gold, and health clapped its hands, and joy shouted from the hill tops, and the nations lifted their foreheads Into the light, and the earth had a doxology for the sky, and the sky au anthem for the earth, and the warmth and the sparkle and the gladness and the foliage, and tho flowers, and tho fruits, and tho beauty, and the life, were the only answer the West wind made to tho iusolence of the East wind’s interroga tion. Kindness to all! Surely it ought not to be a difficult grace to culture when we see toweriug above the centuries such an example that one glimpse of it ought to melt and transform all nations. Kind ness brought our Lord from Heaven. Kindne^ If&Tf’Wf tuk* ^ tho blind, and the cata^Ptle and the leprous and tho dropsical, and the domoniacal characterized him all the way, and on the Cross, kindness to the bandits suffering on the side of him, and kindness to the executioners while yet they pushed the spear, and hammered the spikes, and howled the blasphemies. All the stories of the John Howards and the Florence Nightingales and the Grace Darlings and the Ida Lewises pale before this transcendant example of him whose birth and life and doath are the great est story that the world ever heard,and the theme of the mightiest hosanna that heaven ever lifted. Yea, the very kindness that allowed both hands to be nailed to the horizontal timber of the Cross with that cruel thump! thump! now stretches down from the skies those same hands filled with balm for all our wounds, forgiveness for all our crimes, rescue for all our serfdoms. And while we take this matchless kindness from God, may it be found that we have# uttered our last bitter word, written oW last cutting paragraph, done our last re taliatory action, felt our last revenge ful heart-throb. As it would not be a bad epitaph for any of us if by the grace of God from this time forth we lived such beneficent lives that the tombstone’s chisel could appropriately cut upon the plain slab that marks our grave a suggestion from the text: “He showed us no little kindness.” Hut not until the last child of God has got ashore from the earthly storms that drove him on the rock9 like Mediter ranean Euroclydons, not until all the thrones of heaven are mounted, and all the conquerors crowned, and all the harps and trumpets and organs of heaven are tbummed or blown or sound ed, and the ransomed of all climes and ages are in full chorus under the jubi lant swing of angelic baton, and we shall for thousands of years have seen the river from under the Throne rolling into the “sea of glass mingled with fire,” and this world we now inhabit shall be so far in tho past that ody a stretch of celestial memory can recall that it exhlsted at all, not until then will we understand wbat Nehemiah calls “the great kindness.” and David calls “the marvelous kindness,” and Isaiah calls “the everlasting kindness” of God! 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