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M. ffl. TALMAGE. The Eminent Brooklyn Divine's Sun day Sermon. Subject: "Mendin tbeU. Text- "Jqmet the ton of Zebedee, and ' John hin brother. $t a hift tcith Zebedee their, father, mending their nets." MaV- i thew iv.. 21 MI (go a fishing," cried Simon Peter to his i -comrades, and t ie roost of the apostles had bands hard from fishing tackle. The fisa eries , of the world have always attracted attention. In the Third century the queen ; cf Egypt had for pin money four hundred and seventy ..thousand dollar, received from , 'the fisheries of Lake iloeris. And if the time should ever come when the immensity f the wor ui's population could not be fed. j by the vegetable and meats of the land, the : sea has an amount of animal life that would feed all the populations of the earth, ani fatten them with a food that by its phos- fhorus would make a generation brainy and ntellectual beyond anvthinj that the world has ever imagine J jfy text takes us among the Galilean fishermen. One day, Walter rkott, while hunting in an old drawer, founi among some old fishing tackle the ; manuscript of his immortal book " Waver -ley," which he had put away there as of no worth, and who knows but that to-day we may find some unknown wealth of thought i while looking at the fishing tackle in the text t It is not a good day for fishing, and three men are in the boat repairing the broken fishing nets. If you are fishing with a hook and line and the fish will not bite it is a good time to put the angler's apparatus into better condition. Perhaps the last fish you hauled In was so large that something snapped. Or if you were fishing with a net there was a mighty floundering of the scales, or an ex posed uail on the side of the boat which broke lorae of the threads and let part or all of the captives of the deep escape into their natural element. And hardly anything is mora pro voking than to nearly land a score or a hun dred of trophies from the deep and when you are in the lull glee of hauling in the spotted treasures through some imperfection of the net they splash back into the wave, k This is too much of a trial of patience for most fishermen to endure, and many a man ordinarily correct of speech in such circum stances comes to an intensity of utterance unjustifiable. Therefore no good fiaheraian considers the time;wasted that is spent in mending his net. Now the Bible again and again represents Christian workers as fish ers of men, and we are all sweeping through the sea of humanity some kind of a net. In deed, there have been enough nets out and enough fishermen busy to have landed the whole human race in the kingdom of God long before this. What is the matter? The Gospel is all right, and it has bean a good time for catching souls for thousauds oi years. Why, then, the failures? The trou ble is with the nets, and most of them need to be mended. I propose to show you what is the matter with most of " the nets and how to mend them. . In the text old Zebedee and his two boys, James and John, were doing a good thing when they sat in the boat mend ing their nets. Uhe trouble with many of our nets is that the meshes are too large. If a fish can get his gills and half his body through the net work, he tears and rends and works his way 4. I . i i lfl 1 wut ana leaves ine piace tnrougn wniea -ne squirmed a tangle of broken threads. The Bible weaves faith and works right together, the law and the Gospel, righteousness and forgiveness. Some of our nets have meshes so wide that the sinner floats in and out and is not at any moment caught for the heavenly landing. In our desire to make everything so easy we relax, we loosen, we widen. We let men after they are once in the Gospsl net escape into the world and go into indulgences and swim all around Galilee, from north side to south side and from east side to west side, expecting that they will come back again. iWe ought to make it easy for them to get into the kingdom of God, and, as far as we can, make it impossible for them to get out. i The poor advice nowadavs to manv is: 4Go and do just as you did before you were captured for God an! heaven. The net was , not intended to be any restraint or any . hindrance. What you did before you were a Christian, do now Go. to all styles of j amusement, read all the styles of books, eu- : gage in all the styles of behavior as before ;you were converted." And so through these ; meshes of permission and laxity th?y wriggle out through this opening and that opening, tearing the net as they go, and soon all the : souls that we expected to land in heaven be- Jore we know it are back in the deep sea of ; the world. Oh, when we go a-Gospel fishing let us make it as easy as possible for souls to get in, and as hard as possible to get out. I There should be no rivalry between ' churches. Each one does a work peculiar to itself. There should be no rivalry between ministers. God never repeats Himself, and die never makes two ministers alike, and each 'one has a work that no other man in the iuniverse can accomplish. If fishermen are jwise, mey win nut auuw meir neu to eu (tangle, or if they accidentally get inter . twisted, the work of extrication should be (kindly and gently conducted. What a glad .spectacle for men and angels when on our recent dedication day ministers of ail de ' nominations stood on this platform and jwishedt for each other widest prosperity and .useiuiness, uut tnere are ciiies in ais coun try where there is now going on an awiui i ripping and rending and tearing ot nshmg nets. Indeed, all over Christendom at this time there is a great war going on between fishermen, ministers against ministers. Aow 1 have noticed, a man cannot fish and fight at the same time. He either neglects his net or his musket It is amazing0 how much time some of the fishermen have to look after other fishermen. It is more than 1 can do to take care of my own nt. You see the wind is just right, and it is such a Rood time for fishing, ani the fish are com ing in so rapidly that I have to keep mv eye and hand busy. There are about two'hun Ired million souls wanting to get into the kingdom of God, and it will require all tbf nets and all the boats ani all the fishermen ,f Christendom to safely land them. Oh, brethren of ministry! Tet us spend our time in fishing instead oi fighting. But if I angrily jerk my net across your net, an i you jerk your net angrily across mine, we will .xn have two bro&ea nets and no fish. The French revolution nearly destroyed th .French fisheries, and ecclesiastical war is the worst thing possible while hauling souls into the kingdom. I had hoped that the millennium was about to dawn, but the lion is yet too fond of the lamb. My friends, I notice in the text that James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, were busv not mending somebody else's nets but mend ing their own nets, and I rather think that we who are engaged iu Christian work in this Utter part ot the nineteenth century will require all our spare time to mend our own nets. God help us in the important duty! In this work of reparation we need to put into the nets more threads of common sense. When we can present religion as a great practicality we will catch a hundred souls where now we catch one. Present religion as an inteUectuality and we will fail. Out in thA fisheries there are est across th - ! waters what ara called ffill nets, and the flsH put their heads through the meshes and then coop nets, seine n ecs. ara- neii. aun ru cannot withdraw tnem because tney are , Ttu 4 , " :7, " , i cau-htbythefriiU. But jrOl nets cannot be Lj huiiJre and thoasaaw ai - t: - t. r , ntinn H hornina da v. ani ta neouspapres uv but service iix reiizifus wor, 01 i any service m reliziou: never caught for the truth by their heads; it j is by the heart or not at all. No argument j ever saved a man. and no keen analysis ever j brought a man into the kingdom of. God. Heart work, not head work. Away with ; your gill nets! Syrapathv, helo'ulnes. con- ', solation, love, are the names of some of the i threads that we need to weave in our Gospel j nets when we are mending them. Again, in mnding our net we need al j to put in the threads of faith and t.ar out all the tangled meshes of unbelief. Our work is successful according to our faith. The mw ; who believes in only half a Bible, or tie j nible in spots; th mm who think He ci j not persuade others; the man who halts, j doubting about this and about that, will be a ; failure in Christian work. Show me the ; man who rather thinks that the garden. of ! Eden mar have been an allegory, and is not j quite certain bnt that there may be another j caance after death, and does not know j whether or not the Bible is inspired, and I ! t?ll you that man for soul saving is a poor j stick. Faith in Goi and in Jesus Christ, and j the Holy G'aost,and the absolute neceitv of j a regenerated heart in order to see God in pece, is one thread you must hare m your ; mnded net or you will never be a successful fisher for men. Why. how canyon doubt? ' The hundreds of millions ot men and wo- j men now standing in the - church on earth. ( and the hundreds of millions in heaven,att3t ; the power of the Gospel to save. With more f .i i i m ii . 1 J tii&n a certainty oi a nnnneaiaucai uemuu- stration. let ns start out to redeem all nations. The rottenest thread you are to tear out ot your net is unbelief, and the most important thread vou are to put in it is faith. Faith in : God, triumphant faith, everlasting faith. If you cannot trust the infinite, the hoi v. the omnipotent Jehovah, who can you trust? Oh, this important work of mending onr ; nets! If we Icould get our nets right we would accomplish more in soul-saving in the ; next year than we have In the last twenty ! years. Bat Where shall we get them raendei? Just; where the oli Zebedee and his two boys mended their nets where you are. "Jamed why don't you put your oar , in Lake Gatilee, or hoist your sail and lan 1 ! at Capernaum or Tiberias or Gardara. and seatei on the bank mani your net? John, wnv don't you go ashore ani mend your : net? No, they sat on the guaris of the boat, or at the prow of the boat, and th3y took u ; the thread and the n idle, and tha rooes an 1 ; the wooden blocks, aid went to work: saw- ' ing, sawing; tyinz, tying: weaving, weaving; pounding, pounding, until, the net mended, they push it oSf into the sea and drop pa idle and hoist sail, ' and the cutwater went through amid the shoals of fish, some of the j descendants of which we had for breakfast j one morning while we were encamp3d on the , beach of beautiful Galile?. James and John had no time to go ashore. They were not fishing for fun, as you and I do in summer time. It was thir livelihooi and that ot their families. Thsy meniei their nats where they were, in the ship. "Oh." savs some one, "I mean to get ray j net mended, and I will go down to the public library, and I will sea whattbe scientists say about'evolution and about 'the survival oi , the fittest,-ani I will read up what th theologians say about 'advanced thought.' j will leave the ship nvrmle, ani will go ashore I and stay there until my net is meuded." Do 1 that, my brother, and you will have no net ' left. Instead of their helping you mend -I your net, they will steal the yieees that re ; mam. Better stay in the Gospel boat, where : you have all the means for mending your net. What are they, do you ask? I answer I all you need you have where you are, namelr, ) a Bible and a place to pray. The more you study evolution, and adopt what is called ; advanced thought, the bigger fool you will I be. Stay in the ship and mind your net. ; That is where James the son of Zebedee and j John his brother staid. That is where all j who get their nets mended stay. These dear brethren of all denominations, ! aulicted with theological fidgets, had better I go to mending nets instead of br esking them. ! Before they break up the old r eligion and i try to foist on us a new religion let them go ; through some great sacrifice for God that ! will prova then worthy for sue l a work, takin? the a lvica of Talleyraii to a man who wanted to up3?t the religion of Jesus j Christ and start a new on?, when he said: j "Go and be crucified and then raise yourself j from the grave the third day!"' Those who : propose to mend their nets by secular skep tical books ara just like a man who has just : one week for fishing, and six of the dayB he spen Is in reading Isaak Walton's "Complete a 1 n 1 ll'i . I un Fly for Trout," and then on Saturday lnornmg, his last day out, goes to the river to ply his art, but that day the fish will not bite, and late on Saturday night he goes home with empty basket and a disappointed heart. Meanwhile a man who never saw a big library in all his life, has that week caught with an old fishing tackle, enough to supply his own table and the table of all his neigh bors, and enough to salt down in barrels for the long winter that will soon come in. Alas! Alas! If, when the Saturday night of our life drop3 on U3 it shall be founi that we have sp?nt our time in the libraries of worldly philowphy, trying to m3nd our neta, and we have only a few souls to report as brought to Go 1 through our instrumentali ty, while some bumble Gospal fisaerman, his library male up of a Bible' ani an almanac. Shall come home laien with the results, his trophies the souls within fifteen miles of his log cabin meeting house. In the time of great disturbance in Naples in 1649 Massaniello, a bare footed fishing boy, droppei his fishing rod. and by strange magnetism took command of that city of six hundred thousand souls. He toos off ms fish ing jacket and put on a robe of goid in the presenc? of howlin? mobs. He put his hand on his Up as a signal, and they were rent. He waved his hani away from him, and they retire! to their homes. Armies pas iei in re view before him. He became the nation's idol. The rapid rise and complete supremacy I of that young fisherman, Massaniello, has co ; parallel in all history. But something equal ; to that and better than that is an everyday j occurrence in heaven. God takes some of those, who in this world were fishers of men,' and who toiled very ; humbly, but because of the way they mended I their nets and employed their nets after they were mended, and suddenly hoists them and robes them and soeDters them and rrownt Angier, anu neauey s "noa an i Line," and Scott's "Fishing in Northern Waters," and Pullman's "Vade Mecum of Flv Fishin? them and makes ithem rubers over cities, and American nationality, or who hav $ He marches armies of saved ones before them . - ' ' in review, iassaniellos unhonored on earth, married iato British or American fam- but radiated in heaven. The fisher boy of jit , n : JCaoles soon lost his rower, but thoM twn! ies. of God who kept their nets mended and ! The late Mary Cash Cheairs of Bol nghtly swung them shall never lose their ex- , ,. alted place, butshall rein forever ani ever lTar ienn., predicted two vcars ago "luVxMri'S.;' " M lr ninety- hook and line. Why did not Jamas, the son . fourth birthdav and she did 60. She of Zibedea, sit on the wharf atCana. bis feet j . , . hanginz over the lake ani with a km role ' a remarkable woman in many ani a worm on the hook dipped into the Vita mit frw- tftma rrn11,af tv etsftm ... 1 oa caum afternoon caught? Why did not Zebedee spend his ternooatryinstocatehoaeeel? .No; that irk was too alow. These men were not work meodinzahookaniline: they were mend- in-r tW- r,mtt lt tKi -Hr,K f r j be content with havinz here one soul i .n mnw v, auvu. wo w jujm the kingdom. Sweep all the seas with nets quake with the tread of a ransoming God. Do you know what will hi th two most tremendous hours in our heavenly existeucs? Among the quadrillions of ages which shall roll on, what twa occasions wdl be to us the greatest? The day of our arrival there will be to us one of the two greatest. The second great est, I think, will be the day when we shall have put in parallel lines before us what Christ did for us and what we did foe Christ the one so great, the other so little. Thai will be the only embarrassment in heaven. My Lord and my God! What will we da and what will we say when on one side are placed the Saviour's great sacrifices for us and our small sacrifices for Him LI is exile, Hii humiliation. His agonies on one hand, and our poor weak, insufficient sacrifices on thi other? To make the contrast less over whelming, let us quickly men! our nets ani like the Galilean fishermen may we be divine ly helped to cast them on the right side a the ship. QUALM' AND CTIUOCS. An Angora cat is worth $100. A Halifax (Vt.) Tvoman secured from thirty-two hens in four months 5112 eggs. The Chinese are credited with being the most diligent gardeners and tillers of the land. Two acres of land adjoining the English Houses of Parliament 'are offered for sale at $5,000,000. A colored jrirl has been sentenced at Rome, Ga., fo ninety-nino year service in the convict camp for arson. The original spring which supplied the first s.-ttlers of Boston 200 years ago still bubbles up beneaH the foundations of the postoffice. Londoners are complaining aput the duplication of street names. There are King streets ad Queen streets and Prince streets all over London. The man who hauled the first load of sand used in building the Polk County, Iowa, penitentiary has just been sentenced to that institution for six months. Physicians of this country are paid annually nearly $1,500,000 for mcdi ical examinations for life insurance companies. Three companies pay over $250,000 each. The total length of the streets, ave" mies, boulevards, bridges, qunys and thoroughfares of Paris is set down at 600 miles, of which nearly 200 are planted with trees. In the formation of a single locomo tive steam engine there ore nearly 6000 pieces to be put together, and these require to bo as accurately ad justed as the works of a watch. British India embraces a territory of 1,500,000 square miles. The native population is about 240,000,000 and the English residents, soldiers and civ ilians do not number more than 250, 000. In order to "boom" Ben Lomond, Santa Cruz County, Cal., the local lumber company built a nteeting house and offered it as a free gift to any denomination that would provide stated preaching in it. The Presby terians spoke first. A;variety of coflee which is said to be pleasant in taste, though rather bit ter, is grown in the neighborhood of Ascholtshausen, Bavaria, in sandy 6oil. It is sown in spring, and the 6ky-blue blossoms appear in July. The fruit is gathered in August and is pale yellow, resembling Bourbon Island coffee. The dam porpoises arc said to help their young in their efforts to breathe by bearing them up to the surface of the water on their flippers. The ' spiracle, or blowhole, appears to be a sensitive part of the head, for -when i. 1,.1 . i- i i .i lu-utu im iuc iiauu iiiu porpoise in- . . , . . .. variably shows signs of great discom fort by lashing the tail very violently. One of the smallest clubs in the world is the Anglo-American Club of Dresden, Germany. Its present mem bership, exclusive of the associate, honorary aud reserve lists, is ouly forty-nine. A i confined to Its active membership is persons of British or ways, being able to play the harp and J I ; 61D ballads almost to the day of her J death, and to quote long passages ! . 1 f-"" rfrora the Greek and Roman rvetsi .... 1 Wncse writings she was quite - Mr unt.r. . ! A MARVELOUS FIBER. The Great Things That Expected of Ramie. Are A Splendid Opportunity For an Inventive American, "I had a talk the other day with Mr. Burgess, the famous Boston yacht builder' said Charles Richards Dodge ; to a writer for the "Washington Star,. ; and he remarked incidentally that i he thought ramie fiber was likely to be j utilized in the not distant future as a material for yacht sail. lie seemed ; to think that such a fabric might be produced as light and strong as silk, which would serve for the purpose better than any kind of stuff thus far employed. I myself would not be ' surprised if it should so turu out, I though I hazard no prediction. One i advantage claimed for ramie sail cloth ! is that it will not mildew. I "Ramie is a provoking substance to i deal with. It is a most beautiful liber, susceptible of uso in making , ever so many sorts of exquisite fab ; rics. The world wants it, bnt un- fortunately, though th plant that pro ; duces It is one of the most easily ; grown and prolific vegetables known. ! no machine or process has thus far been devised for reducing the raw i a .... . . material to marketable snapc at a i cheap enough rate to pay. There would bo no end of the material ob- tamable, but at present it costs more to turn out tne noer in condition lor manufacture than it will sell for. Fortunes have been spent in trying to devise a machine capable cf separating it from the stalks and leaves at an ceo- nomical price, but thus far in vain. "The Department of Agriculture has just received, through the Depart ment of State, samples from China, forwarded by United States Consul Henry J Adams at Hankow, of all the six kinds of ramie grown in that country, where alone it 'Is cultivated at a profit, though the production is limited. From this source the com mercial supply of the fiber that reaches Europe and the United States is ob tained. Labor, of course, costs almond nothing there, and the operation of preparing the material for market is performed by stripping the fresh cut stalks of the leaves, scraping off the outer bark and then peeling off, with bamboo knives, the fibrous inner bark, which yields the marketable article in small ribbons. Finally, these ribbons are boiled for a while in lye water and spread upon the roofs of the houses to dry. Thus obtained, tho ramie is de- livered here and purchasable, iu small quantities, at 8 1-2 cents a pound. Br this method, it is said, less than two pounds of the ribbons cati be pro- dnced by one man's labor for a dav. The samples we have secured include four varieties besides the while and the green ramie, which reach our shores through commerce. We shall csrefully preserve them iu tin fiber collection for comparison. Here are some articles made of ra mie that may interest you. These arc laces for curtains, of very beautiful texture, as you may sec; and these are white goods of various kinds closely resembling tine muslins and other such stuff. Here is a bundle o dress goods samples of many patterns; take notice how sheer and silky some of them are. Are not these napkins so like linen that you could not have told they were not such if I had not - uvu tt,P(l.,i. . . ... spread ami all similar household arti cles can be made of ramie. In this packago are plushes aud upholstery good?, for hangings, lambrequins and so forth. Even carpets of the same material are most handsome and ser viceable, the latter made in this coun try. -What is ramie? Why, it is a plant belonging t the nettle family, some times called the stinglcss nettle, which ha been cultivated in China from time immemorial. It is also known as China gras. When full grown it attains a height of from four to eight feet The fioer is formed in the bark of the stalk, which has a pithy center. So fast does it grow that three and even five crops a year have been ob tain I it i , 41 ed without replanting. In China is manufactured not onlr Into i rnrdae. fUh llni i.u...,t i " ' --MMwinB products, but alo into numerous mot .... . ueiicaie ana love fabrics. It has been estimated that an , of ramie one year old will proJcJ 27,600 pound of stripped stalks, lt to separate tho fiber from the prodjJ of fifi)' years, a single machine of best pattern thus far devised wo' require a year and a half simply f J one cutting, mind you. Cultirul,' at this rate is out of the question. . j asmuch as the machines are very tl pensive, costing $1000 apiece or J and the farmer could not afford t buy and use vcryjnany. The prrb:e!. is one to which American inventor will do well to turn their attenti&i Ramie, in the raw, can be raised U unlimited quantities at a small penditure. In its marketable thi-.k there is already a considerable derail' for it at reasonable prices, particulir!T! . . r a t . "i in r-uropc. uci sumc mgemor Yankee find out how to tran.forra tbi raw material into fiber cheaply andtj discovery will make him rich, un!J perchance he disposes of it prrri urely to the capitalist, who comtnot'j devours the fruits of a poor man's i ventions, Let the proper contrivta for the purpose bo once rendcrti available, and immediately the rauicj of ramie will become one of llic fori most agricultural industries of tij country, as well as abroad." How the Chinese Emperor Wa Chow The state of affairs iu China whid led to the placing of the pre-ent r peror upon the throne was a very t. culiar one. hen tho throne was Icfi ! vacant by death nearly twenty yean ago there was no direct heir to lit succession, ana me two uowacr cn i precs one of them the mother cf the deceased emperor fathcr--undcr- took the regency. With them rctel the power of choosing who should U tne next emperor, ami, instead or . Iccting one of the brothers of the em peror lately dead, they appointed aa infant sou of Prince Ch'uu, one cf those brothers. The elder of the tiva empresses was considerably iIdr than the younger, was rather stupid. and had never borne any childrex She had been the original empress, the younger one being only a secondary wiic; Dtit the latter naa baa a male child namcl7 the decrased cnucror referred to and had been for thxl reason promoted to full royal consider ation. She. the vonnirer one. wa a very remarkable woman, and it is to be presumed that her object in choo- ing an niiani ncpnew lor emperor was that khc might bo able during Lis minority to be in fact the ruler of t!e land. This result was accomplished and up to within two year of tU preent time, when the emperor came of age, she has governed with asajao itj that has excited tho admiration of the civilized world. Even now her power and influence ar vcrr great la the control of affairs. She has haJ not a little to contend with during her regency, inasmuch as the anomaly of I a rciiruimr sovereign hnvin ? filr living lias been productive of maar inconveniences difficult to get over. Obviously, the forms of resect which Ciuneo law and custom prescribe for a son toward his father could not let clash with the obeisance due from the subject to the monarclu Washington ciar. SaTfd by Ills Wire Keadj Hit. The llev. Dr. Clinton Lode. thJ popular Episcopal clergyman of Chi cago, made a bad break the other day. but was helped out by the quick wit of his wife. On the day in question he saw lady about to call whom he was anx ious not to meet. So he said to Lis wife: "Now, I'm off, my dear. 1H run upstairs and escape till she goci away' After about an hour he quietly tiptoed to the stair landing and listened. All was quiet Ulow. Heassured, he began to descend, aal while dcing so, he thouirhtlcMlr bat emphatically called out over the balus ter: Well, my dear, has that Id bore gone at last? The next, instant a voice frcta below caused the perspiration to be dew his ministerial brow and rooted him to the spot. There came a re sponse which sounded inexprc.itir sweet to ldm just then. It was the roiceof his, wife, who with trc womanly tact, replied: Yes darling, she went away over an hour ago, but here Is our good friend, Mrs. Blank, who I am sure you want to meet." Cleveland llaia Dealer.
Siler City Leader (Siler City, N.C.)
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June 3, 1891, edition 1
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