inijBKM^Isti} 1 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 
 
 Shell .x 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
TALMAGE S NEW TABERNACLE, BROOKLYN, N. Y. 
 
Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, D. D. 
 
THE 
 
 PALESTINE SERMONS 
 
 OF 
 
 REY. T. DE WITT TEMAGE, D. D. 
 
 DELIVERED DURING HIS TOUR OF 
 
 THE .". HOLY /. LAND, 
 
 FOR HIS MILLIONS OF READERS AT 
 HOME AND ABROAD, 
 
 INCLUDING GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF SACRED PLACES ; 
 VIVID DELINEATIONS OF GOSPEL TRUTHS ; INTER- 
 ESTING LOCAL REMINISCENCES ; AND VARIED 
 MISCELLANY, AS INSPIRED BY 
 
 HIS VISIT TO THE MANY PLACES MADE SACRED BY THE 
 
 PERSONAL PRESENCE OF JESUS CHRIST AND THE 
 - *B GREAT HOST OF BIBLICAL CHARACTERS. 
 
 "Talk about questions of the day, there is but one question, and 
 that is the Gospel. It can and will correct everything needing 
 correction."— Gladstone's remark to Dr. Talmage at Ha warden. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED. 
 
 COPYKIGHT 1890. 
 
 CHICAGO : 
 
 RHODES & McCLURE PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 1890. 
 
^Fi ^% 
 
 PREFATORY LETTER. 
 
 Constantinople, January, 1890. 
 
 On leaving America I addressed some words of fare- 
 well to my sermonic readers, and now, on my way 
 home, I will write this letter of salution which will 
 probably reach you about the Monday that will find 
 me on the Atlantic ocean, from which I cannot reach 
 you with the usual sermon. I have completed the 
 journey of inspection for which I came. Others may 
 write a life of Christ without seeing the Holy Land. 
 I did not feel conpetent for such a work until I had 
 seen with my own eyes the sacred places, and so I left 
 home and church and native country for a more arduous 
 undertaking. I have visited all the scenery connected 
 with our Lord's history. The whole journey has been 
 to me a surprise, an amazement, a grand rapture or a 
 deep solemity. I have already sent to America my Holy 
 Land observations for my Life of Christ, and they were 
 written on horseback, on muleback, on camelback, on 
 ship's deck, by dim candle in tent, in mud hovel of Arab 
 village, amid the ruins of old cities, on Mount of Beati- 
 tudes, on beach of Genesareth, but it will take twenty 
 years of sermons to tell what I have seen and felt on 
 this journey through Palestine and Syria. 
 
 All things have combined to make our tour instructive 
 and advantageous. The Atlantic, and Mediterranean, 
 and Adriatic, Jjpgean, Dardanelles, and Marmora seas 
 have treated us well. Since we left New York we have 
 had but a half day and one night of storm, and that 
 while crossing Mount Hermon. But let only those in 
 robust health attempt to go the length of Palestine and 
 Syria on horseback. I do not think it is because of the 
 unhealthiness of climate in the Holy Land that so many 
 (4) 
 
PREFATORY LETTER. 5 
 
 have sickened and died here or afterward as a result of 
 visiting these lands, but because of the fatigue of travel. 
 The number of miles gives no indication of the exhaus- 
 tion of the way, A hundred and fifty miles in Palestine 
 and Syria on horseback demand as much physical 
 strength as four hundred miles on horseback in regions 
 of easy j ourney . 
 
 Because of the near two months of bright sunlight by 
 day and bright moonlight or starlight by night, the 
 half day of storm was to us the more memorable. It 
 was about noon of Dec. 18, that the tempest struck us 
 and drenched the mountains. One of the horses falls 
 and we halt amid a blinding rain. It is freezing cold. 
 Fingers and feet like ice. Two hours and three-quarters 
 before encampment. We ride on in silence, longing for 
 the terminus of to-day's pilgrimage. It is, through the 
 awful inclemency of the weather, the only dangerous 
 day of the journey. Slip and slide and stumble and 
 climb and descend we must, sometimes on the horse and 
 sometimes off, until at last we halt in the hovel of a vil- 
 lage, and instead of entering camp for the night we are 
 glad to find this retreat from the storm. It is a house 
 of one story, built out of mud. My room is covered 
 with a roof of goats' hair. A feeble fire mid-floor, but 
 no chimney. It is the best house of the village. Arabs, 
 young and old, stand around in wonderment as to why 
 we come. There is no window in the room, but two 
 little openings, one over the door, the other in the wall, 
 through which latter opening I occasionally find an 
 Arab face thrust to see how I am progressing. But the 
 door is open, so I have some light. 
 
 This is an afternoon and night never to be forgotten 
 for its exposures and acquaintance with the hardships 
 of what an Arab considers luxurious apartment. I sat 
 
 J 
 
6 PREFATORY LETTER. 
 
 that night by a fire the smoke of which finding no ap- 
 propriate place of exit took lodgement in my nostrils 
 and eyes. For the first time in my life I realized that 
 chimnies were luxury, but not a necessity. The only 
 adornments in this room were representations of two 
 tree branches in the mud of the -wall, a circle supposed 
 to mean a star, a bottle hung from the ceiling, and 
 about twelve indentations in the wall to be used as 
 mantels for anything that may be placed there. This 
 storm was not a surprise. Though pessimistic prophets 
 we had expected that at this season we should have 
 rain and snow and hail throughout our journey. For 
 the most part it has been sunshine and tonic atmos- 
 phere, and not a moment has our journey been hindered. 
 Gratitude to God is with us the dominant emotion. 
 
 Having visited the scenery connected 'with Christ's 
 life, I was glad to close my journey by passing through 
 the apostolic lands and seas. You can hardly imagine 
 our feelings as we came in sight of Damascus, and on 
 the very road where Saul was unhorsed at the flash of 
 the supernal light. We did not want, like him, to be 
 flung on the earth, but we did hope for some great 
 spiritual blessing, brighter than any noonday sun, and 
 a new preparation for usefulness. Our long horseback 
 ride was ended, for a carriage met us some miles out 
 and took us back to the city. The impression one 
 receives as he rides along the walled gardens of the 
 place are different from those produced by any other 
 city. 
 
 But we cannot describe our feelings as we entered the 
 city about which we have heard and read so much, 
 the oldest city under the sun, and founded by the grand- 
 son of Noah; nor our emotions as we pass througk 
 the street called "Straight," along which good Ananias 
 
PREFATORY LETTER. 7 
 
 went to meet Saul, and by the site of the palace of 
 Naaman, the leper, and saw the river Abana, as yester- 
 day we saw Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus that 
 Naaman preferred to wash in rather than the Jordan. 
 Strange and unique Damascus! It is worth while to 
 cross the Atlantic and Europe to see it. Though it has 
 been the place of battle and massacre, and of ancient 
 affluence and splendor as well as it is of present pros- 
 perity, to me its chief attraction arises from the fact 
 that here the scales fell from Paul's eyes, and that chief 
 of apostles here began that mission which will not end 
 until heaven is peopled with ransomed spirits. So also 
 I saw day before yesterday Patmos, where John heard 
 the trumpets, and the waves of the sea dashed to his 
 feet, reminding him of the songs of heaven, ' 'like the 
 voice of many waters." 
 
 But this letter can only give a hint of the things we 
 mean to tell you about when we get home, where we 
 expect to be before this month is ended. I baptized by 
 immersion in the Jordan an American whom we met, 
 and who desired the solemn ordinance administered 
 to him in the sacred waters. 
 
 I rolled down from Mount Calvary or "place of a 
 skull" a stone for the corner stone of our new Brooklyn 
 Tabernacle. 
 
 We bathed in the "Dead Sea" and in "Gideon's Foun- 
 tain," where his three hundred men eagerly lapped 
 the water from their hands as they passed through; 
 and we sailed on Lake Galilee and stood on Mount 
 Zion, and Mount Moriah, and Mount Hermon, and I 
 saw the place where the shepherds heard the Christmas 
 anthem the night Christ was born: and have been at 
 Nazareth, and Capernaum, and sat by "Jacob's Well," 
 and saw Tele-el-Kebir of modern battle, andMegiddo of 
 
8 PREFATORY LETTER. 
 
 ancient battle, and where the Israelites crossed the des- 
 ert, and slept at Bethel where one ladder was let down 
 into Jacob's dream, but the night I slept there the 
 heavens were full of ladders, first a ladder of clouds, 
 then a ladder of stars, and all up and down the heavens 
 were the angels of beauty, angels of consolation, angels 
 of God ascending and descending; and I was on nearly all 
 the fields of Herodic, and Solomonic, and Davidic, and 
 Abrahamic history. 
 
 I took Rome and Naples and Athens, and Alexandria 
 and Cairo on the way out, and take the Greek Archipel- 
 ago, and Constantinople, and Vienna on the way back. 
 What more can God in his goodness grant me in the 
 way of natural scenery, and classic association, and 
 spiritual opportunity? Ah yes! I can think of some- 
 thing gladder than that he can grant me. Safe return 
 to the people of my beloved flock, the field of my work, 
 and the land where my father died, and in the dust of 
 whose valley I pray God I may be buried. 
 
 T. De Witt Talmage. 
 
Hon. William E. Gladstone. 
 
 DR. TftLITOE'S CM ON MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 "Pray come to Hawarden to-morrow," telegraphed 
 Mr. Gladstone to Dr. Talmage, Jan. 23, 1890. The 
 invitation was gladly accepted, and the reception given 
 by the Ex Premier was very cordial. The two gentle- 
 men had a long talk on religious and political questions. 
 Mr. Gladstone said: 
 
 "Talk about the questions of the day, there is but 
 one question, and that is the Gospel. It can and will 
 correct everything needing correction. All men at the 
 head of great movements are Christian men. During 
 the many years I was in the Cabinet I was brought into 
 association with sixty master minds and all but five of 
 them were Christians. My only hope for the world is 
 in bringing the human mind into contact with divine 
 revelation." Then placing his hand on Dr. Talmage's 
 shoulder, Mr. Gladstone warmly eulogized the doctor's 
 (9) 
 
10 GLADSTONE'S LETTER. 
 
 Christian zeal and expressed his great gratification at 
 the marvelous publicity given to his sermons, which 
 are now distributed in all lands and read in all 
 languages. 
 
 After luncheon the two men linked arms and took a 
 walk over Mr. Gladstone's vast estate, its proprietor 
 commenting lovingly on its wonderful trees as though 
 they were human beings. He then inquired eagerly if 
 Americans paid proper attention to tree culture. 
 Dr. Talmage asked Mr. Gladstone if the Irish home rule 
 would be victorious. Gladstone brightened up and re- 
 sponded emphatically; ' 'Yes when next election comes . ' ' 
 He continued: " It seems to be a dispensation of God 
 that I should be engaged in battle. At my time of life 
 I should be resting. I never had any option in these 
 matters. I dislike contests, but when Ireland, once 
 the refuge of persecuted Englishmen, showed herself 
 ready to adopt a righteous constitution and do her full 
 duty, I hesitated not a monent to espouse her cause." 
 
 Concerning America he said: "No one outside of the 
 United States is bound to love it more than I." Point- 
 ing to the numerous beautiful gifts from America he 
 went on to say: ' 'Everywhere I have practical expres- 
 sion of the tender though tfulness and kindness of the 
 American people." 
 
 Toward evening, when bidding Dr. Talmage farewell, 
 Mr, Gladstone pressed into his hands some books and 
 pamphlets containing autographic inscriptions, and also 
 a copy of his own Latin rendering of his favorite hymn, 
 "Rock of Ages," and said: "Give my highest regards 
 to President Harrison and express to Mr. Blaine my 
 deepest sympathy with him on account of the loss of 
 his beloved son." 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 4 'Life's Great Voyage :" 
 Off for the Holy Land, 
 Paul as a Sailor, 
 Ancient Navigation, 
 Trampling the Billows, 
 The Church is the Dry Dock, 
 Love is the Helm, 
 Hope is the Anchor, 
 Faith is our Canvas' 
 Prayer is the Rigging, 
 The Bible is the Compass, 
 Look out for Icebergs, 
 Keep your Colors Up, 
 Christ is the Pilot, 
 Incidents, 
 
 Once More I Confess My Faith, 
 Good By. 
 
 "A Mediterranean Voyage:" 
 
 The Appian Way, 
 
 Paul as a Signal Officer, 
 
 An Excited Crew, 
 
 An Awful Shipwreck, 
 
 Tempters Are Not Helpers, 
 
 Dangerous to Refuse Good Advice 
 
 In a Cyclone on the Sea, 
 
 We Expected to Die, 
 
 The Terrified Passengers, 
 
 Wild Cry of the Cyclone, 
 
 My Dying Prayer, 
 
 The Beautiful Morning, 
 
 The Glorified Shore, 
 
 "The Clouded Vision:" 
 
 The Illustrious Paul, 
 
 The Splendor of Ancient Corinth, 
 
 Paul Addressed the Highest Culture, 
 
 Our Dim Vision Will Grow Brighter, 
 
 This is True of our Knowledge of God, 
 
 And True of the Saviour's Excellency, 
 
 (ii) 
 
12 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 God's Providences Not Fully Understood, 
 Providential Hindrances in Life, 
 How Many Shall Be Saved? 
 A Glorious and Everlasting Reunion, 
 
 "The Beloved Dorcas. " 
 
 Dorcas and Napoleon, 
 
 An Eloquent Tribute, 
 
 Great Weeping in Joppa, 
 
 The Apostle Peter Appears on the Scene, 
 
 Dorcas the Disciple, . 
 
 Dorcas the Benefactress, 
 
 Queen Blanche and Queen Maud, 
 
 Burial of Josephine of France, 
 
 A Story of the Queen of England. 
 
 "The Golden Age of Jerusalem' " 
 
 Jerusalem .'—Its Mighty Past, 
 
 Solomon's Splendors Portrayed, 
 
 But Solomon is not Happy, 
 
 Solomon's Riches, Wisdom and Wretchedness, 
 
 The City of David — Sorrow For Absalom, 
 
 The City of Great Temples, 
 
 Christ's Triumphant Entry, 
 
 Hosanna! Hosanna Cry the People, 
 
 The Scene From Olivet, 
 
 The City of Christ's Agony and Death. 
 
 The Last Sad Hour, 
 
 The New Jerusalem. . , 
 
 "The Stormy Passage on Galilee," 
 
 On the Banks of Galilee, 
 
 A Beautiful Scene, 
 
 On the Sea With Christ, 
 
 Christ Stilling the Tempest, 
 
 Have Christ on Your Ship, 
 
 The Martyrs, 
 
 Do Not be Frightened, 
 
 A Good Story of John Livingston, 
 
 Jesus is both God and Man, 
 
 Christ Can Hush the Tempest, 
 
 "A Marriage Feast. " 
 The Wedding in Cana, 
 
 109 
 109 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 13 
 
 The Miracle at the Wedding, 
 
 The Wonderful Sympathy of Christ, 
 
 The Abundance of Christ's Giving, 
 
 Try to Make others Happy, 
 
 Christ Favors the Luxuries of Life, 
 
 Christ Does Not Deny us Joys, 
 
 Christ With us in Our Extremity— A Story, 
 
 Jesus Invites us to a Grander Wedding, 
 
 "The Sky Anthem. " 
 
 Christmas Eve in Palestine, 
 
 Indigency Not Degredation, 
 
 Duty and Blessing, 
 
 Religion is Joyful, 
 
 The Manger and Throne, 
 
 The Double Mission of Christ, 
 
 The Vision of Battles, , , 
 
 A Touching Story, 
 
 "The Half Not Told. , , 
 The Two Circles, 
 A Vision of Beauty, 
 The Queen of Sheba, 
 Women, Wealth and Religion, 
 Earnestness in Search of Truth, 
 Religion a Surprise, 
 The Final Wonder, 
 
 "Downfall of athaliah." 
 
 A Word to Grandmothers, 
 
 A Wife Steals a Child, 
 
 Righteousness Cannot be Exterminated, 
 
 Persecutions are Futile, 
 
 Infidelity Fails to Annihilate, 
 
 The Opportunities For Saving, 
 
 Persons in Your Sunday School Class, 
 
 How Phocus Dug His Grave and Died, 
 
 The Church is a Good Hiding Place, 
 
 Save Your Children, 
 
 "Salvation By Faith." 
 The Crash of Earthquakes, 
 The Savior's Name, 
 The Wondrous Death, 
 
 
 
 
 110 
 
 
 . Ill 
 
 
 112 
 
 
 . 114 
 
 
 
 115 
 
 
 
 . 116 
 
 
 
 119 
 
 
 
 . 120 
 
 
 
 123 
 
 
 
 . 123 
 
 
 
 125 
 
 
 
 . 126 
 
 
 
 127 
 
 
 . 128 
 
 , 
 
 130 
 
 
 . 131 
 
 
 134 
 
 
 . 137 
 
 
 137 
 
 
 . 139 
 
 
 140 
 
 
 , 141 
 
 
 142 
 
 
 . 144 
 
 
 146 
 
 
 
 . 149 
 
 
 
 149 
 
 
 
 . 150 
 
 
 
 152 
 
 
 
 . 154 
 
 
 
 154 
 
 
 
 . 156 
 
 
 
 158 
 
 
 
 . 159 
 
 
 
 160 
 
 
 
 . 163 
 
 
 
 167 
 
 
 
 . 169 
 
 
 170 
 
 
 
 
 . 172 
 
14 
 
 CONTEXTS. 
 
 : ry of a Young Man, 
 How to Trust Christ. 
 Saving Faith. 
 A Happy L 
 A Peaceful Death, 
 
 Eternity. 
 A Mother's Story. 
 
 '"The Name Of Jesus." 
 An Easy Name, 
 A Beautiful Name. 
 A Mighty Name, 
 A:: Bnduring Name. 
 What Name Will You Call Christ ? 
 :e this Day to Christ. 
 
 '"The House ox the Wael. " 
 
 A Sad House, 
 
 Two Spies. 
 
 The Scarlet Tta 
 
 Stretch this Scarlet Cord, 
 
 The First Step, 
 
 Protect Your Household, 
 
 My Good Mother, 
 
 -rcarlet Line at the Window. 
 
 173 
 173 
 17-i 
 176 
 176 
 
 : - - 
 
 179 
 
 181 
 182 
 1S3 
 186 
 
 1S9 
 192 
 
 195 
 196 
 196 
 198 
 200 
 201 
 203 
 204 
 205 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Rev. T. De Witt Talmage D. D. , 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 Talmage's New Church Building, 
 
 1 
 
 The Old World, .... 
 
 16 
 
 Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple, 
 
 17 
 
 Trampling the Billows, 
 
 . 21 
 
 Tarsus the Birth Place of Paul, 
 
 30 
 
 Tbe Storm, .... 
 
 . 34 
 
 Paul and Barnabas at Antioch; 
 
 37 
 
 The Golden Honr, 
 
 . 44 
 
 En Route, ..... 
 
 46 
 
 The Ascension, .... 
 
 . 53 
 
 Unibrgotten, ..... 
 
 60 
 
 The Flood, .... 
 
 . 65 
 
 Mary and Martha, .... 
 
 69 
 
 A Cathedral Interior, 
 
 74 
 
 Ancient Jerusalem, .... 
 
 75 
 
 Jerusalem, . . , . 
 
 . 81 
 
 The Royal Rride to Jerusalem, 
 
 84 
 
 The Mount of Olives, 
 
 . 87 
 
 Jesus Crossing Galilee and Stilling the Tempest, 
 
 92 
 
 Saved in the Ark, .... 
 
 97 
 
 The Peaceful Little Home, 
 
 . 101 
 
 Jesus Healing the Blind, 
 
 105 
 
 Tropical Climes, .... 
 
 . 108 
 
 Christ Turning the Water into Wine, 
 
 109 
 
 "Enough For Every Brow a Chaplet," 
 
 . 113 
 
 Sitting Under the Vine, 
 
 118 
 
 Song of the Angels, 
 
 . 122 
 
 The Star of Bethlehem, . 
 
 123 
 
 The Babe in the Manger, 
 
 . 129 
 
 War in Ancient Times, 
 
 132 
 
 Bethlehem, .... 
 
 . 136 
 
 Earnest Seekers, .... 
 
 143 
 
 Napoleon Witnessing the Burning of Moscow, 
 
 . 148 
 
 Arc de Triumph, Paris, 
 
 149 
 
 Paul Before the Council, . , 
 
 . 153 
 
 Love of Children, .... 
 
 157 
 
 Jesus and the Doctors in the Temple, 
 
 . 161 
 
 Fleeing For the City of Refuge, 
 
 165 
 
 Abraham Offering His Son Isaac, 
 
 . 166 
 
 The Transfiguration, 
 
 167 
 
 Of Such is the Kingdom, " 
 
 . 180 
 
 The Peaceful River, .... 
 
 185 
 
 Symbol of the New Dispensation, 
 
 . 191 
 
 Rahab Concealing the Spies, 
 
 194 
 
 The Plains of Jericho, 
 
 . 199 
 
 The River of the Water of Life, 
 
 207 
 
 (15) 
 
PALESTINE SERMONS 
 
 T. De Witt Talmage, D. D. 
 
 Delivered during his tour of 
 
 THE 
 
 HOLY .-. LAND. 
 
 (JERUSALEM.) 
 
 LIFE'S GREAT VOYAGE. 
 
 [Delivered on board steamer "City of Paris," in New York harbor, October 
 29, 1889.] 
 
 "And they accompanied Him unto the ship.'" Acts xx, 38. 
 
 OFF FOR THE HOLY LAND. 
 
 jgptfO the more than 25,000,000 people in many 
 countries to whom my sermons come week by 
 week in English tongue and by translation, 
 through the kindness of the newspaper press, I address 
 these words. I dictate them to a stenographer on the 
 
 (17) 
 
 
18 talmage's sermons. 
 
 eve of my departure for the Holy land, Palestine. 
 When you read this sermon I will be mid-atlantic. 
 
 I go to be gone a few weeks on a religious journey. 
 I go because I want for myself and hearers and 
 readers to see Bethlehem, and Nazareth, and Jerusalem, 
 and Calvary, and all the other places connected with 
 the Savior's life and death, and so reinforce myself for 
 sermons. I go also because I am writing the "Life of 
 Christ," and can be more accurate and graphic when I 
 have been an eye-witness of the sacred places. Pray 
 for my successful journey and my safe return. 
 
 I wish on the eve of my departure to pronounce a 
 loving benediction upon all my friends in high places 
 and low, upon congregations to whom my sermons are 
 read in absence of pastors, upon groups gathered out 
 on prairies and in mining districts, upon all sick and 
 invalid and aged ones who cannot attend churches, but 
 to whom I have long administered through the printed 
 page. My next sermon will be addressed to you from 
 Rome. I think I feel like Paul when he said: "So, as 
 much as in me is , I am ready to preach the gospel to 
 you that are at Rome also." 
 
 PAUL AS A SAILOR. 
 
 The fact is that Paul was ever moving about on land 
 or sea. He was an old sailor — not from occupation, 
 but from frequency of travel. I think he could have 
 taken a vessel across the Mediterranean as well as 
 some of the ship captains. The sailors never scoffed 
 at him for being a "land lubber." If Paul's advice had 
 been taken the crew would never have gone ashore at 
 Melita. 
 
 When the vessel went scudding under bare poles Paul 
 was the only self-possessed man on board, and, turning 
 
life's great voyage. 19 
 
 to the excited passengers, he exclaims in a voice that 
 sounds above the thunder ofthe tempest and the wrath 
 of the sea: "Be of good cheer." 
 
 ANCIENT NAVIGATION. 
 
 The men who now go to sea with maps, and charts, 
 and modern compass, warned by buoys and light-house, 
 know nothing of the perils of ancient navigation. 
 Horace said that the man who first ventured on the 
 sea must have had a heart bound with oak and triple 
 brass. People then ventured only from headland to 
 headland and from island to island, and not until long 
 after spread their sail for a voyage across the sea. Be- 
 fore starting the weather was watched, and the vessel 
 having been hauled up on the shore the mariners placed 
 their shoulders against the stern ofthe ship and heaved 
 it off, they at the last moment leaping into it. Vessels 
 were then chiefly ships of burden — the transit of pass- 
 engers being the exception; for the world was not then 
 migratory as in our day, when the first desire of a 
 man in one place seems to be to go into another place. 
 The ship from which Jonah was thrown overboard 
 and in that which Paul was carried prisoner went out 
 chiefly with the idea of taking a cargo. As now, so 
 then, vessels were accustomed to carry a flag. In those 
 times it was inscribed with the name of a heathen 
 deity. A vessel bound for Syracuse had on it the in- 
 scription " Castor and Pollux." 
 
 The ships were provided with anchors. Anchors 
 w r ere of two different kinds — those that were dropped 
 into the sea and those that were thrown up onto the 
 rocks to hold the vessel fast. This last kind was what 
 Paul alluded to when he said: * 'Which hope we have 
 
20 talmage's sermons. 
 
 as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and 
 which entereth into that within the vail.' ' That was 
 what the sailors call a ' 'hook anchor." The rocks and 
 sand-bars, shoals and headlands, not being mapped out, 
 vessels carried a plumb line. They would drop it and 
 find the water fifty fathoms, and drop it again 
 and find it forty fathoms, and drop it again and find 
 it thirty fathoms, thus discovering their near approach 
 to the shore. 
 
 TRAMPLING THE BILLOWS. 
 
 In the spring, summer, and autumn, the Mediterran- 
 ean sea was white with the wings of ships, but at the 
 first wintry blast they hied themselves to the nearest 
 harbor, although now the world's commerce prospers 
 in January as well as in June, and in mid-winter all 
 over the wide and stormy deep there floats palaces of 
 light, trampling the billows under foot and showering 
 the sparks of terrible furnaces on the wild wind, and 
 the Christian passenger, tippeted and shawled, sits 
 under the shelter of the smoke-stack, looking off upon 
 the phosphorescent deep, on which is written in scrolls 
 of foam and fire: "Thy way, God, is in the sea and 
 thy path in the great waters!" 
 
 It is in those days of early navigation that I see a 
 group of men, women, and children on the beach of the 
 Mediterranean. Paul is about to leave the congrega- 
 tion to whom he had preached and they are come down 
 to see him off. It is a solemn thing to part. There 
 are so many traps that wait for a man's feet. The 
 solid ground may break through, and the sea — how 
 many dark mysteries it hides in its bosom! A few 
 counsels, a hasty good-by, a last look, and the ropes 
 rattle, and the Scils are hoisted, and the planks are 
 
22 TALAi AGE'S SERMONS. 
 
 hauled in, and Paul is gone. I expect to sail over some 
 of the same waters over which Paul sailed, but before 
 going I want to urge you all to embark for heaven. 
 
 THE CHURCH IS THE DRY DOCK FOR REPAIRS. 
 
 The church is the dry dock where souls are to be 
 fitted out for heaven. In making a vessel for this voy- 
 age the first need is sound timber. The floor timbers 
 ought to be of solid stuff. For the want of it vessels 
 that look able to run their jibbooms into the eye of any 
 tempest when caught in a storm have been crushed like 
 a wafer. The truths of God's word are what I mean 
 by floor timbers. Away with your lighter materials. 
 Nothing but oaks hewn in the forest of divine truth, 
 are staunch enough for this craft. 
 
 LOVE IS THE HELM. 
 
 You must have love for a helm to guide and turn the 
 craft. Neither pride nor ambition nor avarice will do 
 for a rudder. Love, not only in the heart, but flash- 
 ing in the eye and tingling in the hand — love married 
 to work, which many look upon as so homely a bride — 
 love, not like brooks, which foam and rattle, yet do 
 nothing, but love like a river, that runs up the steps 
 of mill-wheels and works in the harness of factory 
 bands — love that will not pass by on the other side, 
 but visits the man who fell among thieves near Jericho, 
 not merely saying; ''Poor fellow! you are dreadfully 
 hurt," but like the good Samaritan, pours in oil and 
 wine and pays his board at the tavern. There must 
 also be a prow, aranged to cut and override the bil- 
 low. That is Christian perservance. There are three 
 mountain surges that sometimes dash againist a soul 
 
life's great voyage. 23 
 
 in a minute — the world, the flesh and the devil— and 
 that is a well built prow that can bound over them. 
 For lack of this many have put back and never started 
 again. It is the broadside wave that so often sweeps 
 the deck and fills the hatches, but that which strikes in 
 front is harmless. Meet troubles courageously and 
 3'ou surmount them. Stand on the prow, and as you 
 wipe off the spray of the split surge, cry out with the 
 apostle: "None of these things move me." Let all your 
 fears stay aft. The right must conquer. Know that 
 Moses, in an ark of bulrushes, can run down a war- 
 steamer. 
 
 THE ANCHOR IS HOPE. 
 
 Have a good, strong anchor. "Which hope we have 
 as an anchor." By this strong cable and windlass 
 hold on to your anchor. "If any man sin we have 
 an advocate with the father." Do not use the anchor 
 wrongfully. Do not always stay in the same latitude 
 and longitude. You will never ride up the harbor of 
 eternal rest if you all the way drag your anchor. 
 
 FAITH IS OUR CANVAS. 
 
 But you must have sails. Vessels are not fit for the 
 sea until they have the flying jib, the foresail, the top 
 gallant, the skj^sail, the gaffsail, and other canvas. 
 Faith is our canvas. Hoist it and the wands of heaven 
 will drive you ahead. Sails made out of any other can- 
 vas than faith will be split to tatters by the first 
 northeaster. Strong faith never lost a battle. It will 
 crush foes, blast rocks, quench lightnings, thrash moun- 
 tains. It is a shield to the warrior, a crank to the 
 most ponderous wheel, a lever to pry up pyramids, a 
 
24- talmage's sermons. 
 
 drum whose beat gives strength to the heavenly sold- 
 iery, and sails to waft ships laden with priceless pearls 
 from the harbor of earth to the harbor of heaven. 
 
 PRAYER THE RUNNING RIGGING. 
 
 But you are not yet equipped. You must have what 
 seamen call the running rigging. This comprises the 
 ship's braces, halyards, clew-lines, and such like. With- 
 out these the yards could not be braced, the sails lifted, 
 or the canvas in anywise managed. We have prayer 
 for the running rigging. Unless you understand this 
 tackling you are not a spiritual seaman. By pulling on 
 these ropes you hoist the sails of faith and turn them 
 every whither. The prow of courage will not cut the 
 wave nor the sail of faith spread and flap its wings un- 
 less you have a strong prayer for a halyard. 
 
 THE COMPASS IS THE BIBLE. 
 
 One more arrangement and you will be ready for sea. 
 You must have a compass — which is a bible. Look at 
 it every day, and always sail by it, as its needle points 
 toward the star of Bethehem. Through fog, and dark- 
 ness, and storm it works faithfully. Search the script- 
 ures. "Box the compass." 
 
 Let me give you two or three rules for the voyage. 
 Allow your appetites and passions only an under-deck 
 passage. Do not allow them ever to come up on the 
 promenade deck. Mortify your members which are up- 
 on the earth. Never allow your lower nature anything 
 better than a steerage passage. Let watchfulness walk 
 the decks as an armed sentinel and shoot down with 
 great promptness anything like a munity of riotous ap- 
 petites. 
 
LIFE S GREAT VOYAGE. 25 
 
 LOOKOUT FOR ICE-BERGS. 
 
 Be sure to look out of the forecastle for icebergs. 
 There are cold christians floating around in the church. 
 The frigid-zone professors will sink you. Stear clear of 
 icebergs. Keep a log-book during all the voyage — an 
 account of how many furlongs you make a day. The 
 merchant keeps a day-book as well as a ledger. You 
 ought to know every night, as well as every year, how 
 things are going. When the express train stops at the 
 depot you hear a hammer sounding on the wheels, thus 
 testing the safety of the rail train. Bound as we are 
 with more than express speed toward a great eternity, 
 ought we not often to try the work of self-examination? 
 
 KEEP YOUR COLORS UP. 
 
 Be sure to keep your colors up. You know the ships 
 of England, Russia, France and Spain by the ensigns 
 they carry. Sometimes it is a lion, sometimes an eagle, 
 sometimes a star, sometimes a crown. Let it ever be 
 known who you are and for what port you are bound. 
 Let " Christian" be written on the very front, with a 
 figure of a cross, a crown, and a dove, and from the 
 masthead let float the streamers of Immanuel. Then 
 the pirate vessels of temptation will pass you by un- 
 harmed as they say: "There goes a Christian, bound 
 for the port of heaven. We will not disturb her, for she 
 has too many guns aboard." 
 
 Run up your flag on this pully: "I am not ashamed 
 of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God and 
 the wisdom of God unto salvation." When driven 
 back or laboring under great stress of weather — now 
 changing from starboard tack to larboard, and then 
 
26 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 
 
 from larboard to starboard — look above the topgallants 
 and your heart shall beat like a war-drum as the 
 streamers float on the wind. The sign of the cross will 
 make you patient and the crown will make you glad. 
 
 CHRIST IS THE PILOT. 
 
 Before you gain port you will smell the land breezes of 
 heaven, and Christ the pilot, will meet you as you come 
 into the narrows of death, and fasten to you, and say: 
 "When thou passest through the waters I will be with 
 thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow 
 thee." Are you ready for such a voyage? Make up 
 your minds. The gang-planks are lifting. The bell 
 rings. All aboard for heaven! This world is not your 
 rest. The chaffinch is the silliest bird in all the earth 
 for trying to make its nest on the rocking billow. Oh, . 
 how I wish that as I embark for the Holy land in the 
 east, all to whom I preach by tongue or type would em- 
 bark for heaven! What you all most need is God, and 
 you need him now. Some of you I leave in trouble. 
 Things are going very rough with you. You have had 
 a hard struggle with poverty, or sickness, or persecu- 
 tion, or bereavement. Light after light has gone out, 
 and it is so dark that you can hardly see any blessing 
 left. May that Jesus who comforted the widow of Nain 
 and raised the deceased to life, with his gentle hand of 
 sympathy wipe away your tears! All is well. 
 
 INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OP DAVID, JOB, 
 ROSSINI AND WATTS. 
 
 When David was fleeing through the wilderness pur- 
 sued by his own son he was being prepared to become 
 the sweet singer of Israel. The pit and the dungeon 
 
life's great voyage. 27 
 
 were the best schools at which Joseph ever graduated. 
 The hurricane that upset the tent and killed Job's child- 
 ren prepared the man of Uz to write the magnificent 
 poem that has astonished the ages. There is no way 
 to get the wheat out of the straw but to thrash it. There 
 is no way to purify the gold but to burn it. Look at 
 the people who have always had it their own way. 
 They are proud, discontented, useless, and unhappy. If 
 you want to find cheerful folks go among those who 
 have been purified by the fire. After Rossini had ren_ 
 dered ''William Tell" the five hundreth time a company 
 of musicians came under his window in Paris and sere- 
 naded him. They put upon his brow a golden crown 
 of laurel leaves. But amidst all the applause and en- 
 thusiasm Rossini turned to a friend and said: "I would 
 give all this brilliant scene for a few days of youth and 
 lo ve. ' ' Contrast the melancholy feeling of Rossini, who 
 had everything that this world could give him, to the 
 joyful experience of Isaac Watts, whose misfortunes 
 were innumerable, when he says: 
 
 "The hill of Zion yields 
 
 A thousand sacred sweets 
 Before we reach the heavenly fields, 
 
 Or walk the golden streets. 
 
 Then let our songs abound, 
 
 And every tear be dry; 
 We're marching through Immanuers ground, 
 
 To fairer worlds on high." 
 
 It is prosperity that kills and trouble that saves. 
 While the Israelites were on the march, amid great 
 privations and hardships, they behaved well. After 
 a while they prayed for meat, and the sky darkened 
 with a large flock of quails, and these quails fell in great 
 multitudes all about them; and the Israelites ate and 
 ate and they stuffed themselves until they died. Oh! 
 
28 talmage's sermons. 
 
 my friends, it is not hardship, or trial, or starvation 
 that injures the soul, but abundant supply. It is not 
 the vulture of trouble that eats up the Christian's life; 
 it is the quails! it is the quails! 
 
 ONCE MORE I CONFESS MY FAITH. 
 
 I can not leave you until once more I confess my faith 
 in the Savior whom I have preached. He is my all in 
 all. I owe more to the grace of God than most men. 
 With this ardent temperament if I had gone over-board 
 I would have gone to the very depths. You know I can 
 do nothing by halves: 
 
 "Oh, to grace how great a debtor 
 Daily I'm constrained to be!" 
 
 I think all will be well. Do not be worried about me. 
 I know that my Redeemer liveth, and if any fatality 
 should befall me I think I should go straight. I have 
 been most unworthy, and would be sorry to think 
 that any one of my friends had been as unworthy a 
 Christian as myself. But God has helped a great many 
 through, and I hope he will help me through. It is a 
 long account of shortcomings, but if he is going to rub 
 any of it out I think he will rub it all out. And now 
 give us (for I go not alone) your benediction. When 
 you send letters to a friend in a distant land you say 
 via such a city or via such a steamer. When you send 
 your good wishes to us send them via the throne of 
 God. We shall not travel out of the reach of your 
 prayers: 
 
 •'There is a scene where spirits blend, 
 Where friend holds intercourse with friend; 
 Though sundered far, by faith we meet 
 Around one common mercy seat." 
 
life's great voyage. 29 
 
 "GOOD-BY." 
 
 And now, may the blessing of God come down upon 
 your bodies and upon your souls, your fathers and 
 mothers, your companions, your children your brothers 
 and sisters, and your friends! May you be blessed in 
 your business and in your pleasures, in your joys and 
 in your sorrows, in the house and by the way! And 
 if, during our separation, an arrow from the unseen 
 world should strike any of us, may it only hasten on 
 the raptures that God has prepared for those who love 
 him! I utter not the word farewell; it is too sad, too 
 formal a "word for me to speak or write. But, con- 
 sidering that I have your hand tightly clasped in 
 mine, I utter a kind, an affectionate, and a cheerful 
 good-by! 
 
IN BRINDISI. 
 
 A MEDITERRANEAN VOYAGE. 
 
 [Delivered in Brindisi, an Italian port, Nov. 17, 1889.] 
 
 "And so it came to pass that they escaped all safe to land." 
 
 Acts xxvii, 44. 
 
 THE APPIAN WAY— PAUL AS A 
 OFFICER." 
 
 'SIGNAL 
 
 tAVING visited jour historical city, which we 
 desired to see because it was the terminus of 
 . the most famous road of the ages, the Roman 
 Appian Way, and for its mighty fortress overshadow- 
 ing a citv which even Hannibal's hosts could not 
 (31) 
 
32 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 
 
 thunder down, we must to-morrow morning leave your 
 harbor, and, after touching at Athens and Corinth, 
 voyage about the Mediterranean to Alexandria, Egypt. 
 I have been reading this morning in my New Testa- 
 ment of a Mediterranean voyage in an Alexandrian 
 ship. It was this very month of November. The ves- 
 sel was lying in a port not very far from here. On board 
 that vessel were two distinguished passengers: one, 
 Josephus, the historian, as we have strong reasons to 
 believe; the other, a convict, one Paul by name, who 
 was going to prison for upsetting things, or, as they 
 termed it, "turning the world upside down." This con- 
 vict had gained the confidence of the captain. Indeed, 
 I think that Paul knew almost as much about the sea 
 as did the captain. He had been shipwrecked three 
 times already; he had dwelt much of his life amidst 
 capstans, andyardarms, and cables, and storms, and he 
 knew what he was talking about. Seeing the equinoctial 
 storm was coming, and perhaps noticing something un- 
 sea worthy in the vessel, he advised the captain to stay 
 in the harbor. But I heard the captain and the first 
 mate talking together. They say: "We cannot afford 
 to take the advice of this landsman and he a minister. 
 He may be able to preach very well, but T don't believe 
 he knows a marlinespike from a luff tackle. All aboard! 
 Cast off! Shift the helm for headway! Who fears the 
 Mediterranean? They had gone only a little way out 
 when a whirlwind, called Euroclydon, made the torn 
 sail its turban, shook the mast as you would brandish 
 a spear, and tossed the hulk into the heavens. Over- 
 board with the cargo! It is all washed with saltwater 
 and worthless now, and there are no marine insurance 
 companies. All hands, ahoy, and out with the an- 
 chors ! 
 
A MEDITERRANEAN VOYAGE. 33 
 
 AN EXCITED CREW. 
 
 Great consternation comes on crew and passengers. 
 The sea monsters snort in the foam, and the billows 
 clap their hands in glee of destruction. In the lull of 
 the storm I hear a chain clank. It is the chain of the 
 great apostle as he walks the deck, or holds fast to the 
 rigging amidst the lurching of the ship— the spray drip- 
 ping from his long beard as he cries out to the crew: 
 "Now I exhort you to be of good cheer, for there shall be 
 no loss of any man's life among you, but of the ship. 
 For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose 
 I am, and whom I serve, saying, fear not, Paul, thou 
 must be brought before Caesar; and lo, God hath given 
 thee all them that sail with thee." 
 
 Fourteen days have passed and there is no abatement 
 of the storm. It is midnight. Standing on the look- 
 out, the man peers into the darkness, and, by a flash of 
 lightning, sees the long white line of breakers, and 
 knows they must be coming near to some country, and 
 fears that in a few moments the vessel will be shivered 
 on the rocks. 
 
 AN AWFUL SHIPWRECK. 
 
 The ship flies like chaff in the tornado. They drop the 
 the sounding line, and by the light of the lantern they 
 see it is t wen ty fathoms . Speeding along a little farther, 
 they drop the line again, and by the light of the lantern 
 they see it is fifteen fathoms. Two hundred and seven- 
 ty-six souls within a few feet of awful shipwreck! The 
 managers of the vessel, pretending they want to look 
 over the side of the ship and undergird it, get into the 
 small boat, expecting in it to escape; but Paul sees 
 through the sham, and he tells them that if they go off 
 3 
 
A MEDITERRANEAN VOYAGE. 35 
 
 in the boat it will be the death of them. The vessel 
 strikes! The planks spring! The timbers crack! The 
 vessel parts in the thundering surge! Oh. what wild 
 struggling for life! Here they leap from plank, to plank. 
 Here they go under as if they would never rise, but, 
 catching hold of a timber, come floating and panting 
 ©n it to the beach. Here, strong swimmers spread their 
 arms through the waves until their chins plow the sand, 
 and they rise up and wring out their wet locks on the 
 beach. When the roll of the ship is called two hundred 
 and seventy-six people answer to their names. "And 
 so,', says my text, "it came to pass that they escaped 
 all safe to land." I learn from this subject. 
 
 TEMPTERS ARE NOT HELPERS. 
 
 First, that those who get us into trouble will not stay 
 to help us out. These shipmen got Paul out of Fair 
 Havens into the storm.; but as soon as the tempest 
 dropped upon them they wanted to go off in the small 
 •oat, caring nothing what became of Paul and the pass- 
 engers. Ah me! human nature is the same in all ages. 
 They who get us into trouble never stop to help us out. 
 They who tempt that young man into a life of dissipa- 
 tion will be the first to laugh at his imbecility, and t* 
 drop him out of decent society. Gamblers always make 
 fun of the losses of gamblers. They who tempt you in 
 to the contest with fists, saying, "I will back you," wiM 
 be the first to run. Look over all the predicaments of 
 your life, and count the names of those who have got 
 you into those predicaments, and tell me the name of 
 ♦ne who ever helped you out. They were glad enougk 
 to get you out from Fair Havens, but -when, with dam- 
 aged rigging, you try to get into harbor, did they hold 
 
36 talmage's sermons. 
 
 for you a plank or throw you a rope? Not one. Satan 
 has got thousands of men into trouble, but he would 
 not hide the goods or bail out the defendant. The spi- 
 der shows the fly the way over the gossamer bridge into 
 the cobweb; but it never shows the fly the way out of 
 the cobweb over the gossamer bridge. I think that 
 there were plenty of fast young men to help the prodi- 
 gal spend his money; but when he had wasted his sub- 
 stance in riotous living, they let him go to the swine 
 pastures, while they betook themselves to some other 
 new comer. They who take Paul out of Fair Havens 
 will be of no help to him when he gets into the breakers 
 of Melita. 
 
 DANGEROUS TO REFUSE GOOD ADVICE. 
 
 I remark again, as a lesson learned from the text, that 
 it is dangerous to refuse the counsel of competent ad- 
 visers. Paul told them not to go out with that ship. 
 They thought he knew nothing about it. They said: 
 ' 'He is only a minister!" They went, and the ship was 
 destroyed. There are a great many people who now 
 say of ministers: " They know nothing about the world. 
 They cannot talk to us!" Ah, my friends, it is not nec- 
 essary to have the Asiatic cholera before you can give it 
 medical treatment in others. It is not necessary to have 
 your own arm broken before you can know how to 
 splinter a fracture. And we "who stand in the pulpit, 
 and in the office of a Christian teacher, know that there 
 are certain styles of belief and certain kinds of behavior 
 that will lead to destruction as certainly as Paul knew 
 that if that ship went out Fair Havens it would go to 
 destruction. "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; 
 and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth; 
 but know thou that for all these things God will bring 
 
38 TAI,MAGE'S SERMONS. 
 
 thee into judgment." We may not know much, but we 
 know that. 
 
 Young people refuse the advice of parents. They say: 
 " Father is over-suspicious, and mother is getting old." 
 But those parties have been on the sea of life. They 
 know where the storms sleep, and during their voyage 
 have seen a thousand battered hulks marking the place 
 where beauty burned, and intellect foundered, and mor- 
 ality sank. They are old sailors, having answered 
 many a signal of distress and endured great stress of 
 weather, and gone scudding under bare poles; and the 
 old folks know what they are talking about. Look at 
 that man — in his cheek the glow of internal fires. His 
 eyes flash not as once with thought, but with low pas- 
 sion. His brain is a sewer through which impurity 
 floats, and his heart the trough in which lusts wallows 
 and drinks. Men shudder as the leper passes, and par- 
 ents cry, "Wolf! wolf!" Yet he once said the Lord's 
 Prayer at his mother's knee, and against that iniqui- 
 tous brow once pressed a pure mother's lip. But he re- 
 fused her counsel. He went where euroclydons have 
 their lair. He foundered on the sea, -while all hell echoed 
 at the roar of the wreck: Lost Pacifies! Lost Pacifies! 
 You have, my friends, had illustrations, in your own 
 life, of how God delivers his people. I have had illus- 
 trations in my own life of the same truth. 
 
 IN A CYCLONE ON THE SEA. 
 
 I was once in what on your Mediterranean you call a 
 Euroclydon; but what on the Atlantic we call a cyclone, 
 but the same storm. The steamer Greece of the Nation- 
 al Line, swung out into the River Mersey at Liverpool, 
 bound for New York. We had onboard seven hundred, 
 crew and passengers. We came together strangers — 
 
A MEDITERRANEAN VOYAGE. 39 
 
 Italians, Irishmen, Englishmen, Swedes, Norwegians, 
 Americans. Two flags floated from the masts— British 
 and American ensigns. We had a new vessel, or one so 
 thoroughly remodeled that the vo\ r age had around it 
 all the uncertainties of a trial trip. The steamer felt its 
 way cautiously out into the sea. The pilot was dis- 
 charged, and, committing ourselves to the care of him 
 who holdeth the winds in his fists, we were fairly start- 
 ed on our voyage of three thousand miles. It was 
 rough nearly all the ay ay — the sea with strong buffeting 
 disputing our path. But one night at 11 o'clock, after 
 the lights had been put out, a cyclone — a wind just made 
 to tear ships to pieces — caught us up in its clutches. 
 It came down so suddenly that we had not time to 
 take in the sails or to fasten the hatches. You may 
 know that the bottom of the Atlantic is strewn with the 
 ghastly work of cyclones. Oh! they are cruel winds. 
 
 I thought that I had seen storms on the sea before; 
 but all of them together might have come under one 
 wing of that cyclone. We were onl3 r eight or nine hun- 
 dred miles from home, and in high expectation of soon 
 seeing our friends, for there was no one on board so 
 poor as not to have a friend. But it seemed as if we 
 were to be disappointed. 
 
 WE EXPECTED TO DIE. 
 
 The most of us expected then and there to die. There 
 were none who made light of the peril, save two. One 
 was an Englishman, and he was drunk, and the other 
 was an American, and he was a fool! Oh! wat a time 
 it was! A night to make one's hair to turn white. We 
 came out of the berths and stood in the gangway, and 
 looked into the steerage, and sat in the cabin. While 
 
-±0 talmage's sermons. 
 
 seated there we heard overhead something like minute 
 guns. It was the bursting of the sails. We held on 
 with both hands to keep our places. Those who at- 
 tempted to cross the floor came back bruised and gashed. 
 Cups and glasses were dashed to fragments: pieces of 
 the table getting loose, swung across the saloon. It 
 seemed as if the hurricane took that great ship of thou- 
 sands of tons and stood it on end and said: "Shall I 
 sink it, or let go this once?" And then it came down 
 with such force that the billows trampled over it, each 
 mounted of a fury. We felt that everything depended 
 on the propelling screw. If that stopped for an instant 
 we knew the vessel would fall off into the trough of the 
 sea and sink, and so we prayed that the screw, which 
 three times since leaving Liverpool had already stopped, 
 might not stop now. Oh! how anxiously we listened 
 for the regular thump of the machine^, upon which 
 our lives seemed to depend. After awhile some one 
 said: "The screw is stopped!" No, its sound had only 
 been overpowered by the uproar of the tempest, and we 
 breathed easier again when we heard the regular pul- 
 sation of the overtasked machinery going thump, thump, 
 thump. 
 
 THE TERRIFIED PASSENGERS. 
 
 There were about five hundred and fifty passengers in 
 the steerage, and as the water rushed in and touched 
 the furnaces, and began violently to hiss, the poor 
 creatures in the steerage imagined that the boilers were 
 giving way. Those passengers writhed in the water 
 and in the mud some praying, some crying, all terrified. 
 They made a rush for the deck. An officer stood on 
 deck and beat them back with blow after blow. It was 
 necessary. They could not have stood an instant on 
 
A MEDITERRANEAN VOYAGE. 41 
 
 the deck. Oh! how they begged to get out of the hold 
 of the ship! One woman, withachild in her arms, rush- 
 ed up and caught hold of one the officers and cried: "Do 
 let me out! I cannot die here!" Some got down and 
 prayed to the Virgin Mary, saying: " Oh blessed mother! 
 keep us! Have mercy on us!" Some stood with white 
 lips and fixed gaze, silent in their terror. Some "wrung 
 their hands and cried out: "Oh God! What shall I do? 
 What shall I do?" The time came when the crew could 
 no longer stay on the deck, and the cry of the officers 
 was: "Below! all hands below!" Our brave and sym- 
 pathetic Captain Andrews — whose praise I shall not 
 cease to speak while I live — had been swept by the 
 hurricane from his bridge, and had escaped very nar- 
 rowly with his life. 
 
 WILD CRY OF THE CYCLONE. 
 
 The cyclone seemed to stand on the deck, waving its 
 wing, crying: "This ship is mine! I have captured it! 
 Ha! Ha! I will command it! If God will permit I 
 will sink it here and now. By a thousand shipwrecks, 
 I swear the doom of this vessel!" There was a lull in 
 the storm, but only that it might gain additional fury. 
 Crash! went the lifeboat on one side. Crash! went 
 the lifeboat on the other side. The great booms got 
 loose, and, as with the heft of the thunderbolt, pounded 
 the deck and beat the mast — the jibboom, studdingsail 
 boom, and square sail boom, with their strong arms, 
 beating time to the awful march and music of the 
 hurricane. 
 
 Meanwhile the ocean became phosphorescent. The 
 whole scene looked like fire. The water dripping from 
 the rigging, there were ropes of fire; and there were 
 masts of fire; and there was a deck of fire. A ship of 
 
42 talmage's sermons. 
 
 fire, sailing on a sea of fire, through a night of fire. 
 May I never see anything like it again! Everybody 
 prayed. A lad of twelve years of age got down and 
 prayed for his mother. "If I should give up," he said, 
 "I do not know what would become of mother." 
 There were men also, I think had not prayed for 
 thirty years, who then got down on their knees. When 
 a man who has neglected God all his life feels that, he 
 has come to his last time, it makes a very busy night. 
 All of our sins and shortcomings passed through our 
 minds. 
 
 MY DYING PRAYER. 
 
 My own life seemed utterly unsatisfactory. I could 
 only say, "Here, Lord, take me as I am. I cannot 
 mend matters now. Lord Jesus, thou didst die for the 
 chief of sinners. That's me! It seems, Lord, as if my 
 work is done, and poorly done, and upon thy infinite 
 mercy I cast myself, and in this hour of shipwreck and 
 darkness commit myself and her whom I hold by the 
 hand to thee, Lord Jesus! praying that it may be a 
 short struggle in the water, and that at the same in- 
 stant we may both arrive in glory!" Oh! I tell you 
 a man prays straight to the mark when he has a cy- 
 clone above him, an ocean beneath him, and eternity 
 so close to him that he can feel its breath on his cheek. 
 
 The night was long. At last we saw the dawn, look- 
 ing through the portholes. As in the olden time, in 
 the fourth watch of the night, Jesus came walking on 
 the sea, from wave cliff to wave cliff; and when he puts 
 his foot upon a billow, though it may be tossed up 
 with might, it goes down. He cried to the winds, 
 Hush! They knew his voice. The waves knew his 
 foot. They died away. And in the shining track of 
 
A MEDITERRANEAN VOYAGE. 43 
 
 his feet I read these letters on scrolls of foam and fire, 
 "The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of God as 
 the waters cover the sea." 
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL MORNING. 
 
 The ocean calmed. The path of the steamer became 
 more and more mild; until, on the last morning out, 
 the sun threw around about us a glory such as I never 
 witnessed before. God made a pavement of mosaic, 
 reaching from horizon to horizon, for all the splendors 
 of earth and heaven to walk upon — a pavement 
 bright enough for the foot of a seraph — bright enough 
 for the wheels of the archangel's chariot. As a parent 
 embraces a child, and kisses away its grief, so over that 
 sea that had been writhing in agony in the tempest, the 
 morning threw its arms of beauty and of benediction, 
 and the lips of earth and heaven met. 
 
 As I came on deck — it was very early, and we were 
 nearing the shore — I saw a few sails against the sky. 
 They seemed like the spirits of the night walking the 
 billows. I leaned over the tanrail of the vessel, and 
 said, "Thy way, God, is in the sea, and thy path in 
 the great waters." 
 
 It grew lighter. The clouds were hung in purple 
 clusters along the sky; and, as if those purple clusters 
 were pressed into red wine and poured out upon the 
 sea, every wave turned into crimson. Yonder, fire cleft 
 stood opposit to fire cleft; and here, a cloud, rent and 
 tinged with light, seemed like a palace, with flames 
 bursting from the windows. The whole scene lighted 
 up until it seemed as if the angels of God were ascending 
 and descending upon stairs of fire, and the wavecrests, 
 changed into jasper, and crystal, and ametlryst, as they 
 
A MEDITERRANEAN VOYAGE. 45 
 
 were flung toward the beach, made me think of the 
 crowns of heaven cast before the throne of the great 
 Jehovah. I leaned over the taffrail again and said, 
 with more emotion than before: "Thy way, God, is 
 in the sea, and thy path in the great waters!', 
 
 THE GLORIFIED SHORE. 
 
 So, I thought, will be the going off of the storm and 
 night of the Christian's night. The darkness will fold 
 its tents and away! The golden feet of the rising morn 
 will come skipping upon the mountains, and all the 
 wrathful billows of the world's woe break into the 
 splendor of eternal jov. And so we come into the harb- 
 or. The cyclone behind us. Our friends all before us. 
 God, who is always good, all around us. And if the 
 roll of the crew and the passengers had been called, 
 seven hundred souls would have answered to their 
 names. "And so it came to pass that we all escaped 
 safe to land." 
 
 And may God grant that, when all our Sabbaths on 
 earth are ended, we may find that, in the rich mercy of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ, we all have weathered the gale!" 
 
 Into the harbor of heaven now wc glide, 
 
 Home at last! 
 Softly we drift on the bright silver tide, 
 
 Home at last! 
 Glory to God! All our dangers are o'er; 
 We stand secure on the glorified shore. 
 Glory to God! We will shout evermore, 
 
 Home at last! 
 
 Home at last! 
 
 ¥ 
 
IN ATHENS. 
 
 THE GLOUDED VISION. 
 
 [Delivered in Athens, Greece, November 24, 1889.] 
 
 "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard." I Cor., ii, 9. 
 
 "For now we see through a glass darkly." I Cor., xiii, 12. 
 
 THE ILLUSTRIOUS PAUL. 
 
 *^T^J OTH these sentences were written by the most illus- 
 Vftmk trious merely human being the world ever saw, 
 ^KJJK one who walked these streets, and preached 
 from yonder pile of rocks, Mars Hill. Though more 
 classic associations are connected with this city 
 than with any city under the sun, because here 
 Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle, and Demosthenes, 
 and Pericles, and Heroditus, and Pythagoras, 
 and Xenophon, and Praxiteles wrote or chiseled, 
 or taught or thundered or sung, yet in my mind 
 all those men and their teachings were eclipsed by 
 Paul and the Gospel he preached in this city and in your 
 (47) 
 
48 talmage's sermons. 
 
 nearby city of Corinth. Yesterday, standing on the old 
 fortress at Corinth, the Acro-Corinthus, out from the 
 ruins at is base arose in my imagination the old city, 
 just as Paul saw it. 
 
 THE SPLENDOR OF ANCIENT CORINTH. 
 
 I have been told that, for splendor the world beholds 
 no such wonder today as that ancient Corinth standing 
 on an isthmus washed by two seas, the one sea bring- 
 ing the commerce of Europe, the other sea bringing the 
 commerce of Asia. From her wharves, in the construc- 
 tion of which whole kingdoms had been absorbed, war 
 galleys with three banks of oars pushed out and con- 
 founded the navy yards of all the world. Huge handed 
 machinery, such as modern invention cannot equal, lift- 
 ed ships from the sea on one side and transported them 
 on trucks across the isthmus and sat them down in the 
 sea on the other side. The revenue officers of the city 
 went down through the olive groves that lined the 
 beach to collect a tariff from all nations. The mirth of 
 all people sported in her Isthmain games, and the beauty 
 of all lands sat in her theatres, walked her porticos and 
 threw itself on the altar of her stupendous dissipations. 
 Column, and statue, and temple bewildered the behold- 
 er. There were white marble fountains, into which, 
 from apertures at the side, there gushed waters every- 
 where known for health giving qualities. Around these 
 basins, twisted into wreaths of stone, there were all the 
 beauties of sculpture and architecture; while standing, 
 as if to guard the costly display, was a statue of Her- 
 cules of burnished Corinthian brass. Vases of terra 
 cotta adorned the cemeteries of the dead — vases so 
 costly that Julius Caesar was not satisfied until he had 
 captured them for Rome. Armed officials, the corinth- 
 
THE CLOUDED VISION. 49 
 
 ian, paced up and down to see that no statue was de- 
 faced, or pedestal overthrown, no bas-relief touched. 
 From the edge of the city the hill held its magnificent 
 burden of columns and towers and temples (l,000slaves 
 waiting at one shrine), and a citadel so thoroughly im- 
 pregnable that Gibraltar is a heap of sand compared 
 with it. Amid all that strength and magnificence Co- 
 rinth stood and defied the world. 
 
 PAUL ADDRESSED THE HIGHEST CULTURE. 
 
 Oh! it was not to rustics who had never seen anything 
 grand that Paul uttered one of my texts. They had 
 heard the best music that had come from the best in- 
 struments in all the world; they had heard songs float- 
 ing from morning porticos and melting in evening 
 groves; they had past their whole lives among pictures 
 and sculpture and architecture and Corinthian brass, 
 which had been molded and shaped until there was no 
 chariot wheel in which it had not sped, and no tower in 
 which it had not glittered, and no gateway that it had 
 not adorned. Ah, it was a bold thingfor Paul to stand 
 there amid all that and say: i 'All this is nothing. These 
 sounds that come from the temple of Neptune are not 
 music compared with the harmonies of which I speak. 
 These waters rushing in the basin of Pyrene are not 
 pure. These statues of Bacchus and Mercury are not ex- 
 quisite. Your citadel of Acro-Corinthus is not strong 
 compared with that which I offer to the poorest slave 
 that puts down his burden at that brazen gate. 
 You Corinthians think this is a splendid city; you think 
 you have heard all sweet sounds and seen all beautiful 
 sights; but I tell you eye hath not seen nor ear heard, 
 neither have entered into the heart of man, the things 
 which God hath prepared for them that love him. In- 
 
50 talmage's sermons. 
 
 deed both my texts, the one spoken by Paul and the one 
 written by Paul, show us that we have very imperfect 
 eyesight, and that our day of vision is yet to come: for 
 now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to 
 face. So Paul takes the responsibility of saying that 
 even the Bible is an indistinct mirror, and that its mis- 
 sion shall be finally suspended. 
 
 I think there may be one Bible in heaven fastened to 
 the throne. Just as now, in a museum, we have a lamp 
 exhumed from Herculaneum or Nineveh, and we look 
 at it with great interest and say: "How poor a light 
 it must have given, compared with our modern lamps," 
 so I think that this Bible, which was a lamp to our feet 
 in this world, may lie near the throne of God, exciting 
 our interest to all eternity by the contrast between its 
 comparatively feeble light and the illumination of heav- 
 en. The Bible, now, is the scaffolding to the rising 
 temple, but when the building is done there will be no 
 use for the scaffolding. 
 
 OUR DIM VISION WILL GROW BRIGHTER. 
 
 The idea I shall develope today is, that in this world 
 our knowledge is comparatively dim and unsatisfac- 
 tory, but nevertheless is introductory to grander and 
 more complete vision. 
 
 THIS IS TRUE OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 This is eminently true in regard to our view of God. 
 We hear so much about God that we conclude that we 
 understand him. He is represented as having the tend- 
 erness of a father, the firmness of a judge, the pomp of 
 a king and the love of a mother. We hear about him, 
 talk about him, write about him. We lisp his name in 
 infancy, and it trembles on the tongue of the dying 
 
THE CLOUDED VISION. 51 
 
 octogenarian. We think that we know very much 
 about him. Take the attribute of mercy. Do we un- 
 derstand it? The Bible blossoms all over with that 
 word, mercy. It speaks again and again of the tender 
 mercies of God, of the sure mercies, of the great mercies, 
 of the mercies that endureth for ever, of the multitude 
 of his mercies. And j^et I know that the views we have 
 of this great being are most indefinite, one sided and 
 incomplete. When, at death, the gates shall fly open, 
 and we shall look directly npon him, how new and sur- 
 prising. 
 
 We see upon canvas a picture of the morning. We 
 study the cloud in the sky, the dew upon the grass, and 
 the husbandman on the way to the field. Beautiful 
 picture of the morning! But we arise at daybreak, and 
 go up on a hill to see for ourselves that which was rep- 
 resented to us. While we look, the mountains are 
 transfigured. The burnished gates of heaven swing 
 open and shut, to let pass a host of fiery splendors. The 
 clouds are abloom, and hang pendant from arbors of 
 alabaster and amethyst. The "waters make pathway 
 of inlaid pearl for the light to walk upon; and there is 
 morning on the sea. The crags uncover their scarred 
 visage; and there is morning among the mountains. 
 Now you go home, and how tame your picture of the 
 morning seems in contrast? Greater than that shall be 
 the contrast between this scriptural view of God and 
 that which we shall have when standing face to face. 
 This is a picture of the morning; that will be the morn- 
 ing itself. 
 
 AND TRUE OF THE SAVIOUR'S EXCELLENCY. 
 
 Again: My texts are true of the Saviour's excellency. 
 By image, and sweet rhythm of expression, and start- 
 
52 TALM AGE'S SERMONS. 
 
 ling antitheses, Christ is set forth — his love, his compas- 
 sion, his work, his life, his death, his resurrection. We 
 are challenged to measure it, to compute it, to weigh it. 
 In the hour of our broken enthrallment, we mount up 
 into high experience of his love, and shout until the 
 countenance glows, and the blood bounds, and the 
 whole nature is exhilarated. "I have found him." And 
 yet it is through a glass, darkly. We see not half of 
 that compassionate face. We feel not half the warmth 
 of that loving heart. We wait for death to let us rush 
 into his outspread arms. Then we shall be face to face. 
 Not shadow then, but substance. Not hope then, but 
 the fulfilling of all prefigurement. That will be a mag- 
 nificent unfolding. 
 
 The rushing out in view of all hidden excellency; the 
 coming again of a long-absent Jesus to meet us — not in 
 rags and in penury and death, but amidst a light and 
 pomp and outbursting joy such as none but a glorified 
 intelligence could experience. Oh! to gaze full upon the 
 brow that was lacerated, upon the side that was pierced, 
 upon the feet that were nailed; to stand close up in the 
 presence of him who prayed for us on the mountain, 
 and thought of us by sea, and agonized for us in the 
 garden, and died for us in horrible crucifixion; to feel 
 of him, to embrace him, to take his hand, to kiss his 
 feet, to run our fingers along the scars of ancient suffer- 
 ing; to say: u This is my Jesus! He gave himself for me. 
 I shall forever behold his glory. I shall eternally hear 
 his voice. Lord Jesus, now I see thee. I behold where 
 the blood started, where the tears coursed, where the 
 face was distorted. I have waited for this hour. I shall 
 never turn my back on thee. No more looking through 
 imperfect glasses. No more studying thee in the darkness. 
 But, as long as this throne stands, and this everlasting 
 
THE ASCENSION. 
 
 (53) 
 
54 talmage's sermons. 
 
 river flows, and those garlands bloom, and these arches 
 of victory remain to greet home heaven's conquerors, 
 so long I shall see thee, Jesus of my choice; Jesus of my 
 song; Jesus of my triumph — forever and forever — face 
 to face!" 
 
 GOD'S PROVIDENCES NOT UNDERSTOOD FULLY 
 NOW, BUT WILL BE HEREAFTER. 
 
 The idea of my texts is just as true when applied to 
 God's providence. Who has not come to some pass in 
 life thoroughly inexplicable? You say: "What does this 
 mean? What is God going to do with me now? He tells 
 me that all things work together for good. This does 
 not look like it." You continue to study the dispensa- 
 tion, and after a while guess about what God means. 
 "He means to teach me this. I think he means to teach 
 me that. Perhaps it is to humble my pride. Perhaps 
 it is to make me feel more dependent. Perhaps to teach 
 me the uncertainty of life." But after all, it is only a 
 guess— a looking through the glass, darkly. The Bible 
 assures us there shall be a satisfactory unfolding. 
 "What I do thouknowest not now; but thou shalt know 
 hereafter." You will know why God took to himself 
 that only child. Next door there was a household of 
 seven children. Why not take one from that group, in- 
 stead of your only one? Why single out the dwelling 
 in which there was only one heart beating responsive 
 to yours? Why did God give you a child at all, if he 
 meant to take it away? Why fill the cup of your glad- 
 ness brimming, if he meant to dash it down? Why al- 
 low all the tendrils of your heart to wind around that 
 object, and then, when every fiber of your own life 
 seemed to be interlocked with the child's life, with strong 
 hand to tear you apart, until you fall bleeding and 
 
THE CLOUDED VISION. 55 
 
 crushed, your dwelling desolate, your hopes blasted, 
 your heart broken? Do you suppose that God will ex- 
 plain that? Yea. He will make it plainer than any 
 mathematical problem — as plain as that two and two 
 make four. In the light of the throne you will see that 
 it was right — all right. ' 'Just and true are all thy ways , 
 thou King of saints." 
 
 PROVIDENTIAL HINDRANCES IN LIFE. 
 
 Here is a man who cannot get on in the world. He 
 always seems to buy at the wrong time and to sell at 
 the worst disadvantage. He tries this enterprise, and 
 fails; that business, and is disappointed. The man 
 next door to him has a lucrative trade, but he lacks 
 customers. A new prospect opens. His income is in- 
 creased. But that year his family are sick; and the 
 profits are expended in trying to cure the ailments. He 
 gets a discouraged look. Becomes faithless as to suc- 
 cess. Begins to expect disasters. Others wait for some- 
 thing to turn up; he waits for it to turndown. Others, 
 with only half as much education and character, get 
 on twice as well. He sometimes guesses as to what it 
 all means. He says: "Perhaps riches would spoil me. 
 Perhaps poverty is necessary to keep me humble. Per- 
 haps I might, if things were otherwise, be tempted into 
 dissipations." But there is no complete solution of the 
 mystery. He sees through a glass, darkly, and must 
 wait for a higher unfolding. Will there be an explana- 
 tion? Yes; God will take that man in the light of the 
 throne, and say: "Child immortal, hear the explana- 
 tion! You remember the failing of that great enterprise. 
 This is the explanation." And you will answer: "It 
 is all right!" 
 
56 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 
 
 I see, every day, profound mysteries of Providence. 
 There is no question we ask oftener than Why? There 
 are hundreds of graves that need to be explained. 
 Hospitals for the blind and lame, asylums for the idiotic 
 and insane, almshouses for the destitute, and a world 
 of pain and misfortune that demand more than human 
 solution. Ah! God will clear it all up. In the light 
 that pours from the throne, no dark mystery can live. 
 
 Things now utterly inscrutable will be illumined as 
 plainly as if the answer were written on the jasper wall, 
 or sounded in the temple anthem. Bartimeus will 
 thank God that he was blind; and Lazarus that he was 
 covered with sores; and Joseph that he was cast into 
 the pit; and Daniel that he denned with lions; and 
 Paul that he was humpbacked; and David that he was 
 driven from Jerusalem; and the sewing-woman that 
 she could only get a few pence for making a garment; 
 and that invalid that for twenty years he could not 
 lift his head from the pillow; and that widow that she 
 had such hard work to earn bread for her children. 
 You know that in a song different voices carry different 
 parts. The sweet and overwhelming part of the hal- 
 lelujah of heaven will not be- carried by those who rode 
 in high places, and gave sumptuous entertainments; 
 but pauper children will sing it, beggars will sing it, 
 redeemed hod-carriers will sing it, those who were 
 once the offscouring of earth will sing it. The hal- 
 lelujah will be all the grander for the earth's weeping 
 eyes, and aching heads, and exhausted hands, and 
 scourged back, and martyred agonies. 
 
 HOW MANY SHALL BE SAVED? 
 
 Again: The thought of my texts is true when applied 
 to the enjoyment of the righteous in heaven. I think 
 we have but little idea of the number of the righteous 
 
THE CLOUDED VISION. b/ 
 
 in heaven. Infidels say: "Your heaven will be a very 
 small place compared with the world of the lost; for, 
 according to your teaching, the majority of men will be 
 destroyed." I deny the charge. I suppose that the 
 multitude of the finally lost, as compared with the 
 multitude of the finally saved, will be a hand full. I 
 suppose that the few sick people in the hospitals of our 
 great cities, as compared with the hundreds of thou- 
 sands of well people, would not be smaller than the 
 number of those who shall be cast out in suffering, 
 compared with those who shall have upon them the 
 health of heaven. For we are to remember that we are 
 living in only the beginning of the Christian dispensa- 
 tion, and that this whole world is to be populated and 
 redeemed, and that ages of light and love are to flow- 
 on. If this be so, the multitudes of the saved will be in 
 vast majority. Take all the congregations that have 
 assembled for worship throughout Christendom. Put 
 them together, and they would make but a small audi- 
 ence compared with the thousands and tens of thou- 
 sands, and ten thousand times ten thousands, and the 
 hundred and forty and four thousand that shall stand 
 around the throne. Those flashed up to heaven in 
 martyr fires; those tossed for many years upon the 
 invalid couch; those fought in the armies of liberty 
 and rose as they fell; those tumbled from high scaffold- 
 ing or slipped from the mast, or were washed off into 
 the sea. They came up from Corinth, from Laodicea, 
 from the Red Sea bank and Gennesaret's wave, from 
 Egyptian brick- yards, and Gideon's threshing floor. 
 Those thousands of years ago slept the last sleep, and 
 these are this moment having their eyes closed, and 
 their limbs stretched out for the sepulcher. 
 A general, expecting an attack from the enemy stands 
 
58 talmage's sermons. 
 
 on a hill and looks through a field glass, and sees, in the 
 great distance, multitudes approaching, but has no idea 
 of their numbers. He says: "I cannot tell anything 
 about them. I merely know that there are a great 
 number." And so John, without attempting to count, 
 says: ' 'A great multitude that no man can number." 
 We are told that heaven is a place of happiness but 
 what do we know about happiness? Happiness in this 
 world is only a half fledged thing, flowery path, with 
 a serpent hissing across it; a broken pitcher, from which 
 the water has dropped before we could drink it; a thrill 
 of exhilaration, followed by disastrous reactions. To 
 help us understand the joy of heaven, the Bible takes 
 us to a river. We stand on the grassy bank. We see 
 the waters flow on with ceaseless wave. But the filth 
 of the cities is emptied into it, and the banks are torn, 
 and unhealthy exhalations spring up from it, and we 
 fail to get an idea of the river of life in heaven. 
 
 A GLORIOUS AND EVERLASTING REUNION. 
 
 We get very imperfect ideas of the reunions of heaven. 
 We think of some festal day on earth, when father and 
 mother were yet living, and the children come home. 
 A good time that! But it had this drawback— all were 
 not there. That brother went off to sea, and never was 
 heard from. That sister — did we not lay her away in 
 the freshness of her young life, never more in this world 
 to look upon her? Ah! there was a skeleton at the feast: 
 and tears mingled with our laughter on that Christmas 
 day. Not so with heaven's reunions. It will be an un- 
 interrupted gladness. Many a Christian parent will 
 look around and find all his children there. "Ah!" he 
 says, "can it be possible that we are all here, life's perils 
 over? The Jordan passed and not one wanting? Why, 
 
THE CLOUDED VISION. 59 
 
 even the prodigal is here. I almost gave him up. How 
 long he despised nry counsels! but grace hath triumphed. 
 All here! all here! Tell the mighty joy through the city. 
 Let the bells ring, and the angels mention it in their 
 song. Wave it from the top of the walls. All here!" 
 
 No more breaking of heart strings, but face to face. 
 The orphans that were left poor, and in a merciless 
 world, kicked and cuffed of many hardships, shall join 
 their parents over whose graves they so long wept, and 
 gaze into their glorified countenances forever, face to 
 face. We may come up from different parts of the world, 
 one from the land and another from the depths of the 
 sea; from lives affluent and prosperous, or from scenes 
 of ragged distress; but we shall all meet in rapture and 
 jubilee, face to face. 
 
 Many of our friends have entered on that joy. A few 
 days ago they sat with us studying these gospel themes; 
 but they only saw dimly — now revelation hath come. 
 Your time will also come. God will not leave you 
 floundering in the darkness. You stand wonder struck 
 and amazed. You feel as if all the loveliness of life were 
 dashed out. You stand gazing into the open chasm of 
 the grave. Wait a little. In the presence of your de- 
 parted and of him who carries them in his bosom, you 
 shall soon stand face to face. Oh! that our last hour 
 may kindle up with this promised joy! Ma}~ we be able 
 to say, like the Christian not long ago, departing: 
 ''Though a pilgrim walking through the valley, the 
 mountain tops are gleaming from peak to peak!" or, 
 like my dear friend and brother, Alfred Cookman, who 
 took his flight to the throne of God, saying in his last 
 moment that which has already gone into Christian 
 classics: "I am sweeping through the pearly gate, 
 washed in the blood of the Lamb!" 
 
UlTtfQBGOTTEi;, 
 
IN JOPPA. 
 
 THE BELOVED DORCAS. 
 
 [Delivered in Joppa, Palestine, December 1st, 1889.] 
 
 "And all the widows stood by him weeping, and showing the coats 
 and garments which Dorcas made while she was with them." 
 
 Acts ix, 39. 
 
 DORCAS, JUDAS MACCABAEUS AND NAPOLEON. 
 
 CHRISTIANS of Joppa! Impressed as I am with 
 
 fyour mosque, the first I ever saw, and stirred as 
 I am with the fact that your harbor once floated 
 the great rafts of Lebanon cedar from which the temple 
 at Jerusalem was builded, Solomon's oxen drawingthe 
 logs through this very town on the way to Jerusalem, 
 nothing can make me fcrget 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 
 (61) 
 
62 talmage's sermons. 
 
 your town when Judas Maccabasus set it on fire and 
 Napoleon had 500 prisoners massacred in your neighbor- 
 hood can not make me forget that one of the most mag- 
 nificent charities of the centuries was started in this sea- 
 port by Dorcas, a woman with her needle embroidering 
 her name ineffaceably into the beneficence of the world. 
 
 DORCAS HAS BEEN HERE-AN ELOQUENT 
 TRIBUTE. 
 
 I see her sitting in yonder home. In the doorway, 
 and around about the building, and 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, she adjusts the manufactured articles to suit 
 the bent form of this invalid woman and to the cripple 
 that comes crawling on his hands and knees. She gives 
 a coat to this one, she gives sandals to that one. With 
 the gifts she mingles prayers and tears and Christian en- 
 couragement. Then she goes out to be greeted on the 
 street corners by those whom she blessed and all through 
 the street the cry is heard: " Dorcas is coming!" The 
 sick look up gratefully in her face as she puts her 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 and sees his little boy well 
 clad and says: "Where did these clothes come from?" 
 And they tell him, " Dorcas has been here." In another 
 place a woman is trimming a lamp; Dorcas bought 
 the oil. In another place a family that had not been at 
 table for many a week are gathered now, for Dorcas 
 has brought bread. 
 
THE BELOVED DORCAS. 63 
 
 GREAT WEEPING IN JOPPA. 
 
 But there is a sudden pause in that woman's ministry. 
 They say: Where is Dorcas? Why we haven't seen 
 her for many a day? Where is Dorcas? And 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 awaited than 
 the news from this sick benefactress. Alas! forjoppa! 
 there is wailing, wailing. That voice which has utter- 
 ed so many cheerful words is hushed; that hand which 
 has made so many garments for the poor is cold and 
 still; the star which has. 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 this town; wherever there is a sick child and 
 no balm; wherever there is hunger and no bread; where- 
 ever there is guilt and no commiseration; wherever 
 there is a broken heart and no comfort, there are des- 
 pairing looks and streaming eyes, and frantic gesticu- 
 lations as they cry: " Dorcas is dead!" They send for 
 the apostle Peter, who happens to be in the suburbs of 
 this place, stopping with a tanner by the name of 
 Simon. 
 
 THE APOSTLE PETER APPEARS ON THE SCENE. 
 
 Peter urges 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 poor woman had made for them. Their grief can 
 not be appeased. The apostle Peter wants to perform 
 
64 talmage's sermons. 
 
 a miracle. He will not do 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 resur- 
 rected. 
 
 DORCAS, THE DISCIPLE. 
 
 If I had seen that word disciple in my text I would 
 have known this woman was a Christian. Such music 
 as that never came from a heart which is not chorded 
 and strung by divine grace. Before I show you the 
 needlework 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 all the earth would imitate 
 Dorcas in her discipleship. Before you cross the thres- 
 hold of the hospital, before you enter upon the tempta- 
 tions and trials of tomorrow, I charge }^ou, 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. 
 
 When the trumpet shall sound there will be an up- 
 roar, and a wreck of mountain and continent, and no 
 human arm can help you. Amid the rising of the dead, 
 
66 talmage's sermons. 
 
 and amid the boiling of yonder sea, and amid the live, 
 leaping thunders of the flying heavens, calm and j)laeid 
 will be every woman's heart who hath put her trust in 
 Christ; calm, notwithstanding all the tumult, as though 
 the fire in the heavens 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 God that every Mary and every 
 Martha would this day sit down at the feet of Jesus. 
 
 DORCAS, THE BENEFACTRESS. 
 
 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 red- 
 olence of clover tops, and a-rustle 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 on the 
 garment for the poor, the needle has wrought wonders 
 of kindness, generosity, and benefaction. It adorned 
 the girdle of the high priest; it fashioned the curtains of 
 the ancient tabernacle; it cushioned the chariots of King 
 Solomon; it provided the robes of Queen Elizabeth; and 
 in the high places and in the low places, by the fire of 
 the pioneer's back log and under the flash of the chan- 
 delier, 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 employer have been constructed. 
 Amid the greatest triumphs of 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 BELOVED DORCAS. 67 
 
 the fire, it has punctured the eye, it has pierced the side, 
 it has stuck weakness in the lungs, it has sent madness 
 into the brain, it has filled potter's field, it has pitch- 
 ed whole armies of the suffering into crime and wretch- 
 edness 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 needie. 
 
 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 lacer- 
 ated, who fix up boxes of clothing for missionaries, who 
 go into the asylums of the suffering and destitute bear- 
 ing 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, immortal health bound- 
 ing in their pulses. What a contrast between the prac- 
 tical benevolence of this woman and a great deal of the 
 charity of this day! This woman did not spend her 
 time idly planning how the poor of your city 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 vit- 
 uals, or 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 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, hard working, against 5,000 mere theo- 
 rists on the subject of charity. There are a great many 
 who have fine ideas about church architecture who never 
 
68 talmage's sermons. 
 
 in their life helped to build a church. There are men 
 who can give you the history of Buddhism and Moham- 
 medanism who never sent a farthing for their evangel- 
 ization. There are women who talk beautifully about 
 the suffering of the world who never had the courage, 
 like Dorcas, to take the needle and assault it. 
 
 QUEEN BLANCHE, QUEEN MAUD AND OTHER 
 BENEFACTRESSES. 
 
 I am glad that there is not a page of the world's 
 history which is not a record of female benevolence. 
 God says to all lands and people, Come now and hear 
 the widow's mite rattle down into the poor box. The 
 princess of Counti sold all her jewels that she might 
 help the famine-stricken. Queen Blanche, the "wife of 
 Louis VIII. of France, hearing that there were some 
 persons unjustly incarcerated in the prisons, went out 
 amidst the rabble and took a stick and struck the door 
 as a signal that they might all strike it, and down went 
 the prison door, and out came the prisoners. Queen 
 Maud< the wife of Henry L, 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. Is there a man or 
 woman who has ever heard of the civil war in America 
 who has not heard of the -women of the sanitary and 
 Christian commissions, or the fact that before the smoke 
 had gone up from Gettysbnrg and South Mountain the 
 women of the north met the women of south on the bat- 
 tle-field, forgetting all their animosities while they bound 
 up the wounded and closed the eyes of the slain? Do rcas 
 the benefactress. 
 
 I come now to speak of Dorcas the lamented. When 
 
70 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 
 
 death struck down that good woman, oh, how much 
 sorrow there was in this town of Joppa! I suppose 
 there were women here with larger fortnnes; women, 
 perhaps, with handsomer 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 Mediter- 
 ranean sea, dashing against the wharves of this sea- 
 port, then there were surgingsto and fro of grief because 
 Dorcas was dead. There are a great many who go out 
 of life and are unmissed. There may be a Yery 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 false-hood and a sham. 
 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. 
 
 BURIAL OF JOSEPHINE OF FRANCE. 
 
 When Josephine of France 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; 
 
THE BELOVED DORCAS. 71 
 
 but I am most affected by the story of history that on 
 that day there were 10,000 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. Theremay be no mass for the dead; there 
 may be no costly sacrophagus; there may be no elabor- 
 ate mausoleum; but in the damp cellars of the city and 
 through the lonely huts of the mountain glen there will 
 be mourning, mourning, mourning, because Dorcas is 
 dead. "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; they 
 rest from their labors and their works do follow them." 
 
 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 writer put that — 
 "She sat up!" Oh, what a time there must have been 
 around this town "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 
 stops. A Christian woman toils for the upbuilding of a 
 church through many anxieties, through many self 
 denials, with prayers and tears, and then she dies. It 
 
72 TALMAGE's SERMONS. 
 
 is fifteen years since she went away. Now the spirit of 
 God descends upon the church; hundreds of souls stand 
 up and confess the faith in 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 the 
 songs over sin forgiven, in all the prosperity of the 
 church. The good that seemed to be buried has come 
 up again. Dorcas is resurrected. 
 
 After awhile all these womanly friends of Christ will 
 put down their needles forever. After making gar- 
 ments for others some one will make a garment for 
 them; the last robe we ever wear — the robe 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 3 r our 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 re- 
 pose! Sleep on! 
 
 Asleep in Jesus! Blessed sleep! 
 From which none ever wakes to weep. 
 
 Then one day there will be a sky rending, and a whirl 
 of wheels, and the flash of a pageant; armies marching, 
 chains clanking, banners waving, thunders booming, 
 and that Christian woman will arise from the dust, and 
 she will be suddenly surrounded — surrounded by the 
 wanderers of the street whom she reclaimed, surround- 
 ed by the wounded souls to whom she had administered! 
 Daughter of God, so strangely surrounded, what means 
 this! It means that reward has come, that the victory 
 is won, that the crown is ready, that the banquet is 
 spread. Shout it through all the crumbling earth. 
 
THE BELOVED DORCAS. M 
 
 Sing it through all the flying heavens. Dorcas is resur- 
 rected. 
 
 A STORY OP THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND. 
 In 1885, when some of the soldiers came back from 
 the Crimean war to London, the Queen of England dis- 
 tributed among them beautiful medals, called Crimean 
 medals. Galleries were erected for the two houses of 
 parliament and the royal family to sit in. There was a 
 great audience to witness the distribution of the med- 
 als. A colonel who had lost both feet in the battle of 
 Inkerman was pulled in on a wheel-chair; others came 
 in limping on their crutches. Then the queen of Eng- 
 land arose before them in the name of the government 
 and uttered words of commendation to the officers and 
 men and distributed these medals, inscribed with the 
 four great battlefields — Alma, Balaklava, Inkerman, 
 and Sebastopol. As the queen gave these to the wound- 
 ed men and the wounded officers the bands of music 
 struck up the national air and the people with stream- 
 ing eyes joined in the song: 
 
 God save our gracious queen! 
 Long live our noble queen! 
 God save the queen! 
 
 And then they shouted, "Huzzah! huzzah!" Oh, it 
 was a proud day for those returned warriors! 
 
 But a brighter, better, and gladder day will come 
 when Christ shall gather those who have toiled in his 
 service, good soldiers of Jesus Christ. He shall rise be- 
 fore them, and in the presence of all the glorified of 
 heaven he will say: "Well done, good and faithful ser- 
 vant!" and then he will distribute the medals of eternal 
 victory, not inscribed with works of righteousness 
 which we have done, but with those four great battle- 
 fields, dear to earth and dear to heaven, Bethlehem! 
 Nazareth! Gethsemane! Calvary! 
 
THE HOLY CITY. 
 
 THE GOLDEN AGE OE JERUSALEM. 
 
 [Delivered in Jerusalem, December 8, 1889.] 
 "Jerusalem! Jerusalem!" Matt, xxiii, 37. 
 
 JERUSALEM! JERUSALEM !— ITS MIGHTY PAST. 
 
 (^T^HIS exclamation burst from Christ's lips as He 
 B» came in sight of this great city, and although 
 things have marvel ously changed, who can visit 
 Jerusalem to-day without having its mighty past roll 
 over on him, and ordinary utterance must give place 
 for the exclamatory as we cry, O, Jerusalem, Jerusalem! 
 Disappointed with the Holy Land many have been, 
 (75) 
 
 
76 talmage's sermons. 
 
 and I have heard good friends say that their ardor 
 about sacred places had been so dampened that they 
 were sorry they ever visited Jerusalem. But with me 
 the city and its surroundings are a rapture, a solemnity 
 an overwhelming emotion. 0! Jerusalem, Jerusalem! 
 The procession of kings, conquerors, poets and immor- 
 tal men and women pass before me as I stand here. 
 Among the throng are Solomon David and Christ. 
 
 SOLOMON'S SPLENDOR PORTRAYED. 
 
 Yes, through these streets and amid these surround- 
 ings rode Solomon, that wonder of splendor and wretch- 
 edness. It seemed as if the world exhausted itself on 
 that man. It wove its brightest flowers into his gar- 
 land. It set its richest gems in his coronet. It pressed 
 the rarest wine to his lips. It robed him in the purest 
 purple and embroidery. It cheered him with the sweet- 
 est music in that land of harps. It greeted him with 
 the gladdest laughter that ever leaped from mirth's lip. 
 It sprinkled his cheek with spray from the brightest 
 fountains. Royalty had no dominion, wealth no luxury, 
 gold no glitter, flowers no sweetness, song no melody, 
 light no radiance, upholstery no gorgeousness, waters 
 no gleam, birds no plumage, prancing coursers no met- 
 tle, architecture no grandeur but it was all his. Across 
 the thick grass of the lawn, fragrant with tufts of cam- 
 phire from Engedi, fell the long shadows of trees brought 
 from distant forests. 
 
 Fish pools, fed by artificial channels that brought 
 the streams from hills far away, were perpetually 
 ruffled with fins, and golden scales shot from water 
 cave to water cave with endless dive swirl, attracting 
 the gaze of foreign potentates. Birds that had been 
 brought from foreign aviaries glanced and fluttered 
 
THE GOLDEN AGE. 77 
 
 among the foliage, and called to their mates far beyond 
 the sea. From the royal stables there came up the 
 neighing of twelve thousand horses, standing in blank- 
 ets of Tyrian purple, chewing their bits over troughs 
 of gold, waiting for the king's order to be brought out 
 in front of the palace when the official dignitaries 
 would leap into the saddle for some grand parade, or 
 harnessed to some of the fourteen hundred chariots of 
 the king, the fiery chargers with flaunting mane and 
 throbbing nostril would make the earth jar with the 
 tramp of hoofs and the thunder of wheels. While with- 
 in and without the palace you could not think of a single 
 luxury that could be added, or of a single splendor that 
 could be kindled, down on the banks of the sea the dry 
 docks of Ezion-geber rang with the hammers of the 
 shipwrights who were constructing larger vessels for a 
 still wider commerce, for all lands and climes were to 
 be robbed to make up Solomon's glory. No rest till 
 his keels shall cut every sea, his axmen hew every for- 
 est, his archers strike every rare wing, his fishermen 
 whip every stream, his merchants trade in every bazaar, 
 his name be honored by every tribe; and royalty shall 
 have no dominion, wealth no luxury, gold no glitter, 
 song no melody, light no radiance, waters no gleam, 
 birds no plumage, prancing coursers no mettle, uphol- 
 stery no gorgeousness, architecture no grandeur, but it 
 was all his. 
 
 BUT SOLOMON IS NOT HAPPY. 
 
 "Well," you say, "-if there is any man happy, he 
 ought to be." But I hear him coming out through the 
 palace, and see his robes actually incrusted with jewels, 
 as he stands in the front and looks out upon the vast 
 domain. What does he say? King Solomon, great is 
 
78 TALMAGE^S SERMONS. 
 
 your dominion, great is your honor, great is your joy? 
 No. While standing here amidst all the splendor, the 
 tears start, and his heart breaks and he exclaims: 
 "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.' ' What! Solomon 
 not happy yet? No, not happy. The honors and the 
 emoluments of this world brings as many cares with 
 them that they bring also torture and disquietude. 
 Pharoah sits on one of the highest earthly eminences, 
 yet he is miserable because there are some people in his 
 realm that do not want any longer to make bricks. 
 The head of Edward I. aches under his crown because 
 the people will not pay the taxes, and Llewellyn, 
 Prince of Wales, will not do him homage, and Wallace 
 will be a hero. Frederick William III, of Prussia, is 
 miserable because France wants to take the Prussian 
 Provinces. The world is not large enough for Louis 
 XIV and Willian III. The ghastliest suffering, the 
 most shriveling fear, the most rendering jealousies, the 
 most gigantic disquietude, have walked amidst obse- 
 quious courtiers, and been clothed in royal apparel, 
 and sat on judgment seats of power. 
 
 Honor and truth and justice cannot go so high up in 
 authority as to be beyond the range of human assault. 
 The pure and good in all ages have been execrated by 
 the mob who cry out: "Not this man, but Barabbas. 
 Now, Barabbas was a robber." By honesty, by Chris- 
 tian principle, I would have you seek for the favor and 
 the confidence of your fellow men; but do not look 
 upon some high position as though that were always 
 sunshine. The mountains of earthly honor are like the 
 mountains of Switzerland, covered with perpetual ice 
 and snow. Having obtained the confidence and love 
 of your associates, be content with such things as you 
 have. You brought nothing into the world, and it is 
 
THE GOLDEN AGE. 79 
 
 very certain you can carry nothing out. "Cease ye 
 from man, whose breath is in his nostrils." There is an 
 honor that is worth possessing, but it is an honor that 
 comes from God. This day rise up and take it. "Behold 
 what manner of love the father hath bestowed upon 
 us, that we should be called the sons of God." Who 
 aspires not for that royalty? Come now, and be kings 
 and priests unto God and the lamb forever. 
 
 If wealth and wisdom could have satisfied a man, 
 Solomon would have been satisfied. To say that Solo- 
 mon was a millionaire gives but a very imperfect idea 
 of the propert}' he inherited from David, his father. 
 
 SOLOMON'S RICHES, WISDOM AND WRETCH- 
 EDNESS. 
 
 He had at his command gold to the value of sis hun- 
 dred and eighty millon pounds, and he had silver to the 
 value of one billion, twenty -nine million, three hundred 
 and seventy -seven pounds sterling. The queen of Sheba 
 made him a nice little present of seven hundred and 
 twenty thousand pounds, and Hiram made him a pres- 
 ent of the same amount. If he had lost the value of 
 a whole realm out of his pocket, it would hardly have 
 been worth his while to stoop down and pick it up. 
 He wrote one thousand and five songs. He wrote three 
 thousand proverbs. He wrote about almost every- 
 thing. The Bible says distinctly he wrote about plants, 
 from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grow- 
 ethoutofthe wall, and about birds and beasts and 
 fishes. No doubt he put off his royal robes, and put on 
 hunter's trapping, and went out with his arrows to 
 bring down the rarest specimens of birds; and then 
 with his fishing apparatus he went down to the stream 
 to bring up the denizens of the deep, and plunged into 
 the forest and found the rarest specimens of flowers 
 
80 talmage's sermons. 
 
 and then he came back to his study and wrote books 
 about zoolog}', the science of animals; about ichthyol- 
 ogy, the science of fishes; about ornithology, the science 
 of birds; about botany, the science of plants. Yet, not- 
 withstanding all his wisdom and wealth, behold his 
 wretchedness, and let him pass on. Did any other city 
 ever behold so wonderful a man? Jerusalem, Jerusalem! 
 
 THE CITY OF DAVID— SORROW FOR ABSALOM. 
 
 But here passes through these streets, as in imagina- 
 tion I see him, quite as wonderful and a far better man. 
 David the conqueror, the king, the poet. Can it be that 
 I am in the very city where he lived and reigned! David 
 great for power, and great for grief. He was wrapped 
 up in his boy Absalom. He was a splendid bo}^ 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, not- 
 withstanding 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 marshalled 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 the 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 continu- 
 ance of the throne of Israel. After awhile, 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, and the father watches and waits, and 
 
ott, Jerusalem! Jerusalem! 
 
 (81) 
 
82 talmage's sermons. 
 
 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 victor- 
 ious? 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 battlefield — the 
 question: ' 'Is the young man Absalom safe!" When it 
 was told to David, the king, that, though his armies 
 had been victorions, 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: "0 Absalom! my son! my 
 son! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom! my 
 son! my son!" Stupendous grief of David resounding 
 through all succeeding ages. This was the city that 
 heard the woe. Jerusalem, Jerusalem! 
 
 THE CITY OF GREAT TEMPLES. 
 
 I am also thrilled and overpowered with the rememb- 
 rance that yonder, where now stands a Mohammedan 
 mosque, stood the temple, the very one that Christ vis- 
 ited. Solomon's temple had stood there, but Nebuchad- 
 nezzar thundered it down. Zerubbabel's temple had 
 stood there, but that had been prostrated! Then Herod 
 built a temple because he was fond of great architecture, 
 and he wanted the preceding temples to seem insigni- 
 ficant. Put eight or ten modern cathedrals together, 
 and they would not equal that structure. It covered 
 nineteen acres. There were marble pillars supporting 
 roofs of cedar, and silver tables on which stood golden 
 
THE GOLDEN AGE. 83 
 
 cups, and there were carvings exquisite and inscriptions 
 resplendent, glittering balustrades and ornamented 
 gateways. The building of this temple kept ten thou- 
 sand workmen busy forty -six years. Stupendous 
 pile of pomp and magnificence! But the material and 
 architectural grandeur of the building were very tame 
 compared with the spiritual meaning of its altars and 
 holy of holies, and the overwhelming significance of its 
 ceremonies . Jerusalem , Jerusalem! 
 
 CHRIST'S TRIUMPHAL ENTRY. 
 But standing in this old city all other facts are eclipsed 
 when we think that near here our blessed Lord was 
 born, that up and down the streets of this city he walk- 
 ed, and that in the outskirts of it he died. Here was 
 his only day of trimph and his assassination. One day 
 this old Jerusalem is at the tiptop of excitement. Christ 
 has been doing some remarkable works and asserting 
 very high authority. The police court has issued pa- 
 pers for his arrest; for this thing must be stopped, as 
 the very government is imperiled. News comes that 
 last night this stranger arrived at a suburban village 
 and that he is stopping at the house of a man whom 
 he had resuscitated after four days sepulture. Well, the 
 people rush out into the streets, some with the idea of 
 helping in the arrest of this stranger when he arrives, 
 and others expecting that on the morrow he will come 
 into the town and by some supernatural force oust the 
 municipal and royal authorities and take everything in 
 his own hands. They pour out of the city gates until 
 the procession reaches to the village. They come all 
 around about the house where the stranger is stopping, 
 and peer into the doors and windows that they may 
 get one glimpse of him or hear the hum of his voice. 
 The police dare not make the arrest, because he has 
 
THE GOLDEN AGE. 85 
 
 •somehow won the affections of all the people. Oh; it is 
 a lively night in j^onder Bethany! The heretofore quiet 
 village is filled with uproar, and outcry and loud dis- 
 cussion about the strange acting countryman. I do not 
 think there was any sleep in that house that night 
 where the stranger was stopping. Although he came 
 in wearc he finds no rest, though for once in his life- 
 time he had a pillow. But the morning dawns, the olive 
 gardens wave in the light, all along yonder road, reach- 
 ing the top of Olive, toward this city, there is a vast 
 swaying crowd of wondering people. The excitement 
 around the door of the cottage is wild as the stranger 
 steps out besides an unbroken colt that had never been 
 mounted, and after his friends had strewn their gar- 
 ments on the beast for a saddle the Saviour mounts it, 
 and the populace, excited and shouting and feverish, 
 push on back toward this city of Jerusalem. 
 
 "HOSANNA! HOSANNA!" CRY THE PEOPLE. 
 
 Let none jeer now or scoff at this rider; or the popu- 
 lace will trample him under foot in an instant. There 
 is one long shout of two miles, and as far as the eye can 
 reach you see wavings of demonstrations and approval. 
 There was something in the rider's visage, something in 
 his majestic brow, something in his princely behavior, 
 that stirs up the enthusiasm of the people. They run 
 up against the beast and try to pull the rider off intc 
 their arms and carry on their shoulders the illustrious 
 stranger. The populace are so excited that they hardly 
 know what to do with themselves, and some rush up 
 to the roadside trees and wrench off branches and throw 
 them in his way; and others doff their garments, what 
 though they be new and costly, and spread them for a 
 carpet for the conquerer to ride over. "Hosanna!" cry 
 
86 talmage's sermons. 
 
 the people at the foot of the hill. "Hosanna!" cry the 
 people all up and down the mountain. 
 
 THE SCENE FROM OLIVET. 
 
 The procession has now come to the brow of yonder 
 Olivet. Magnificent prospect reaching out in every 
 direction — vineyards, olive groves, jutting rock, silvery 
 Siloam, and above all, rising on its throne of hills, this 
 most highly honored city of all the earth, Jerusalem. 
 Christ there, in the midst of the procession, looks off 
 and sees here fortressed gates, and yonder the circling 
 wall, and here the towers blazing in the sun, Phasaelus 
 and Mariamme. Yonder is Hippicus, the king's castle. 
 Looking along in the range of the larger branch of that 
 olive tree, you see the mansions of the merchant princes. 
 Through this cleft in the limestone rock you see the palace 
 of the richest trafficker in all the earth. He has made 
 his money by selling Tyrian purple. Behold now the 
 temple! Clouds of smoke lifting from the shimmering 
 roof, -while the building rises up beautiful, grand, ma- 
 jestic, the architectural skill and glory of the earth lift- 
 ing themselves there in one triumphant doxology, the 
 frozen prayer of all nations. The crowd looked around 
 to see exhilaration and transport in the face of Christ. 
 Oh, no! Out from amid the gates, and the domes, and 
 the palaces, there arose a vision of the city's sin, and of 
 this citiy's doom, which obliterated the landscape from 
 horizon to horizon, and he burst into tears, crying; 
 "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!" But that was the only day 
 of pomp that Jesus saw in and around this city. Yet 
 he walked the streets of this city the lovliest and most 
 majestic being that the world ever saw or ever will see. 
 
 A ROMAN LETTER DESCRIBING JESUS. 
 Publius Lentilus, in a letter to the Roman senate, de- 
 

 ! . 
 
88 talmage's sermons. 
 
 scribes him as "a man of stature somewhat tall, his 
 hair the color of a chestnut fully ripe, plain to the ears, 
 whence downward it is more orient, curling and waving 
 about the shoulders; in the midst of his forehead is a 
 stream, or partition of his hair; forehead plain, and 
 very delicate: his face without a spot or a wrinkle, a 
 lovely red; his nose and mouth so forked as nothing 
 can be represented; his beard thick, in color like his 
 hair — not very long; his eyes gray, quick and clear." 
 
 THE CITY OF CHRIST'S AGONY AND DEATH! 
 
 He must die. The French army in Italy found a brass 
 plate on which wasa copy of his death warrant, signed 
 by John Ferubbabel, Raphael Robani, Daniel Roban 
 and Capet. Sometimes men on the way to the scaffold 
 have been rescued by the mob. No such attempt was 
 made in this case, for the mob were against him. From 
 nine in the morning, until three in the afternoon, 
 Jesus hung a-dying in the outskirts of this city. It 
 was the scene of blood. We are so constituted 
 that nothing is so exciting as blood. It is not 
 the child's cry in the street that arouses you as the 
 crimson dripping from his lip. In the dark hall, seeing 
 the finger marks of blood on the plastering, you cry: 
 "What terrible deed has been done here?" Looking up- 
 on this suspended victim of the cross, we thrill wdth the 
 sight of blood — blood dripping from thorn and nail, 
 blood rushing upon his cheek, blood saturating his gar- 
 ments, blood gathered in a pool beneath. It is called 
 an honor to have in one's veins the blood of the house 
 of Stuart, or of the house of Hapsburg. Is it nothing 
 when I point you to the outpouring blood of the king 
 of the universe? 
 
 In England the name of Henry was so great that its 
 
THE GOLDEN AGE. 89 
 
 honors were divided among different reigns. It 'was 
 Henry the First, and Henry the Second, and Henry the 
 Third, and Henry the Fourth, and Henry the Fifth. In 
 France the name of Louis was so favorably regarded 
 that it was Louis the First, Louis the Second, Louis 
 the Third, and so on. But the king who walked these 
 streets was Christ the First, and Christ the Last, and 
 Christ the Only. He reigned before the czar mounted 
 the throne of Russia, or the throne of Austria was ti- 
 tled, "king eternal, immortal." Through indulgences of 
 the royal family, the physical life degenerates, and some 
 of the kings have been almost imbecile, and their bodies 
 weak, and their blood thin and watery: But the crim- 
 son life that flowed upon Calvary had in it the health 
 of immortal God. 
 
 THE LAST SAD HOUR. 
 
 Tell it now to all the earth, and to all the heavens — 
 Jesus, our king, is sick with his last sickness. Let 
 couriers carry the swift dispach. His pains are worst; 
 he is breathing a last groan; through his body quivers 
 the last anguish; the king is dying; the king is dead! 
 
 It is royal blood. It is said that some religionists 
 make too much of the humanity of Christ. I respond 
 that we make too little. If some Roman surgeon, stand- 
 ing under the cross, had caught one drop of the blood 
 on his hand and analyzed it, it wonld have been found 
 to have the same plasma, the same disk, the same 
 fibrin, the same albumen. It was unmistakably human 
 blood. It is a man that hangs there. His bones are of 
 the same material as ours. If it were an angel being 
 despoiled I would not feel it so much, for it belongs to a 
 different order of beings. But my Savoir is a man, and 
 my whole sympathy is aroused. I can imagine how 
 i;he spikes felt— how hot the temples burned — what 
 
90 TALM AGE'S SERMONS. 
 
 deadly sickness seized his heart — how mountain, and 
 city, and mob swam away from his dying vision — 
 something of the meaning of that cry for help that 
 makes the blood of all the ages curdle with horror: 
 ''My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?" 
 
 Forever with all these scenes of a Savior's suffering 
 will this city be associeted. Here his unjust trial and 
 here his death. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! 
 
 THE NEW JERUSALEM. 
 
 But finally I am thrilled with the fact that this city 
 is a symbol of heaven which is only another Jerusalem. 
 "The New Jerusalem!" And this thought has kindled 
 the imagination of all the sacred poets. I am glad that 
 Horatio Bonar the Scotch hymnist rummaged among 
 old manuscripts of the British museum until he found 
 that hymn in ancient spelling, parts of which we have 
 in mutilated form in our modern hymn books, but the 
 quaint power of which we do not get in our modern 
 versions: 
 
 Hierusalem, my happy home! 
 
 When shall I come to thee? 
 When shall my sorrows have an end, 
 
 Thy joys when shall I see? 
 Noe dampish mist is seene in thee, 
 
 Noe colde nor darksome night : 
 There everie soule shines as the sunne, 
 
 There God himselfe gives light. 
 
 Thy walls are made of peetious stones, 
 
 Thy bulwarkes diamondes square ; 
 Thy gates are of right orient pearle, 
 
 Exceedinge riche and rare, 
 
 Thy turrettes and thy pinnacles 
 
 With carbuncles doe shine ; 
 Thy verrie streets are paved with gould, 
 
 Surpassinge ckare and fine. 
 
THE GOLDEN AGE. 91 
 
 Thy houses are of yvorie, 
 
 Thy windows crystal cleare; 
 Thy tj'les are made of beaten gould, 
 
 God ! that I were there. 
 
 Our sweet e is mixt with bitter gaule, 
 
 Our pleasure is but paine ; 
 Our joyes scarce last the lookeing on. 
 
 Our sorrowes stille remaine. 
 
 But there they live in such delight, 
 
 Such pleasures and such pla3 r , 
 As that to them a thousand yeares 
 
 Doth seem as yesterday. 
 
 Thy gardens and tlry gallant walkes 
 
 Continually are greene; 
 There grow such sweete and pleasant flowers 
 
 As no where else are seene. 
 
 There trees for evermore beare fruite 
 
 And evermore doe springe ; 
 There evermore the angels sit, 
 
 And evermore doe singe. 
 
 Hierusalem ! my happie home ! 
 
 Would God I were in thee ! 
 Would God my woes were at an end, 
 
 Thy joyese that I might see ! 
 
JESUS CROSSING GALILEE, AND STILLING THE TEMPEST. 
 
IN CAPERNAUM. 
 
 THE STORMY PASSAGE ON GALILEE- 
 
 [Delivered in Capernaum, Palestine, December, 15, 1890.] 
 
 " And entered into a ship, and went over the sea toward Caperna- 
 um." John vi, 17. 
 
 "And He arose and rebuked the wind" Mark iv:39 
 
 ON THE BANKS OF GALILEE. 
 
 tERE in this seashore village was the temporary 
 home of that Christ who for the most of his life 
 , was homeless. On the site of this village, now 
 in ruins, and all around this lake, what scenes of kind- 
 ness, and power, and glory, and pathos when our Lord 
 lived here! It has been the wish of my life — I cannot 
 say the hope, for I never expected the privilege — to stand 
 on the banks of Galilee. What a solemnity and what a 
 rapture to be here! I can now understand the feeling 
 of the immortal Scotchman, Robert McCheyne, when, 
 sitting on the banks of this lake, he wrote: 
 (93) 
 
94 talmage's sermons. 
 
 "It is not that the wild gazelle 
 
 Conies down to drink thy tide, 
 But he that was pierced to save from hell 
 
 Oft wandered by thy side. 
 Graceful around thee the mountains meet, 
 
 Thou calm reposing sea; 
 But ah! far more, the beautiful feet 
 
 Of Jesus walked o'er thee." 
 
 I can now easily understand from the contour of the 
 country that bounds this lake that storms were easily 
 tempted to make these waters their play-ground. From 
 the gentle way this lake treated our. boats when we 
 sailed on it yesterday one would have thought it incap- 
 able of a paroxysm of rage, but it was quite different 
 on both the occasions spoken of in my two texts. 
 
 A BEAUTIFUL SCENE. 
 
 I close my eyes, and the shore of Lake Galilee as it 
 now is, with but little signs of human life, disappears, 
 and there comes back to my vision the lake as it was in 
 Christ's time. It lay in a sense of great luxuriance; the 
 surrounding hills, terraced, sloped, grooved, so many 
 hanging gardens of beauty. On the shore "were castles, 
 armed towers, Roman baths, every thing attractive and 
 beautiful — all styles of vegetation in shorter space tham 
 in almost any other space in all the world, from the 
 palm-tree of the forest, to the trees of rigorous climate. 
 
 It seemed as if the Lord had launched one wave of 
 beauty on all the scene, and it hung and swung from 
 rock and hill and oleander. Roman gentlemen in pleas- 
 ure-boats sailing this lake and countrymen in fish-smacks 
 coming down to drop their nets pass each other with 
 nod, and shout, and laughter, or swinging idly at their 
 mooring. Oh, what a beautiful scene! It seems as if 
 we shall have a quiet night. Not a leaf winked in the 
 
THE STORMY PASSAGE. 95 
 
 air; not a ripple disturbed the face of Gennesaret, but 
 there seems to be a little excitement up the beach and 
 we hasten to see what it is and we find it is an embark- 
 ation. 
 
 ON THE SEA WITH CHRIST. 
 
 From the western shore a flotilla pushed out; not a 
 squadron, or deadly armament, nor clipper with valuable 
 merchandise, nor piratic vessel ready to destroy every- 
 thing they could seize, but a flotilla bearing messengers 
 of light, and life, and peace. Christ is in the front of 
 the boat. His disciples are in a smaller boat. Jesus, 
 weary with much speaking to large multitudes, is put 
 into somnolence by the rocking of the waves. If there 
 was any motion at all the ship was easily righted; if 
 the wind passed from starboard to larboard or from 
 larboard to starboard the boat would rock, and by 
 the gentleness of the motion putting the master asleep. 
 And they extemporized a pillow made out of a fisherman's 
 coat. I think no sooner is Christ prostrate and his head 
 touched the pillow than he is sound asleep. The breezes 
 of the lake run their fingers through the locks of the 
 worn sleeper and the boat rises and falls like a sleeping 
 child on the bosom of a sleeping mother. 
 
 Calm night, starry night, beautiful night. Run up 
 all the sails, ply all the oars, and let the large boat and 
 the small boat glide over the gentle Gennesaret. But 
 the sailors say there is going to be a change of weather. 
 And even the passengers can hear the moaning of the 
 storm as it comes on with great stride and all the ter- 
 rors of hurricane and darkness . The large boat trembles 
 like a deer at bay among the clangor of the hounds; 
 great patches of foam are flung into the air; the sails 
 of the vessel loosen, and the sharp winds crack like 
 
96 talmage's sermons. 
 
 pistols; the smaller boats like petrels poise on the cliffs 
 of the waves and then plunge. 
 
 CHRIST STILLING THE TEMPEST. 
 
 Overboard go cargo, tackling, and masts, and the 
 drenched disciples rush into the back part of the boat 
 and lay hold of Christ and say unto him; " Master 
 carest thou not that we perish?' ' That great person- 
 age lifts his head from the pillow of the fisherman's 
 coat, walks to the front of the vessel, and looks out in- 
 to the storm. All around him are the smaller boats, 
 driven in the tempest, and through it comes the cry of 
 drowning men. By the flash of the lightning I see the 
 calm brow of Christ as the spray dropped from his 
 beard. He has one word for the sky and another for 
 the waves. Looking up^ward he cries: "Peace!" Look- 
 ing downward he says: "Be still!" 
 
 The waves fall flat on their faces, the foam melts, the 
 extinguished stars relight their torches. The tempest 
 falls dead and Christ stands with his feet on the neck 
 of the storm. And while the sailors are bailing out the 
 boats, and while they are trying to untangle the cord- 
 age the disciples stand in amazement, now looking in- 
 to the calm sea, then into the calm sky, then into the 
 calm Savior's countenance, and they cry out: "What 
 manner of a man is this that even the winds and the 
 sea obey him?" 
 
 HAVE CHRIST ON YOUR SHIP 
 
 The subject in the first place impresses me with the 
 fact that it is very important to have Christ in the ship, 
 for all those boats would have gone to the bottom of 
 Gennesaret if Christ had not been present. Oh, what 
 a lesson for you aiid for me to learn! We must always 
 
98 talmage's sermons. 
 
 have Christ in the ship. Whatever voyage we under- 
 take, into whatever enterprise we start, let us always 
 have Christ in the ship. All you can do with ut- 
 most tension of body, and mind, and soul you are 
 bound to do, but oh! have Christ in every enterprise, 
 Christ in every voyage. 
 
 There are men who ask God's help at the beginning 
 of great enterprises. He has been with them in the 
 past; no trouble can overthrow them; the storms might 
 come down from the top of mount Hermon and lash 
 Geunesaret into foam and into agony, but it could not 
 hurt them. But here is another man who starts out 
 in worldly enterprise, and he depends on the uncertain- 
 ties of this life. He has no God to help him. After 
 awhile the storm comes and tosses off the masts of the 
 ship; he puts out his life-boat and the long boat; the 
 sheriff and the auctioneer try to help him off; they can't 
 help him off; he must go down — no Christ in the ship. 
 Your life will be made up of sunshine and shadows. 
 There may be in it Arctic blasts or tropical tornadoes; 
 I know not what is before you, but I know if you 
 have Christ with you all shall be well. You may seem 
 to get along without the religion of Christ while every- 
 thing goes smoothly, but after awhile, when sorrow 
 hovers over the soul, when the waves of trial dash 
 clear over the hurricane deck, and the decks are crowd- 
 ed with piratical disasters — oh, what would you do 
 then without Christ in the ship? Take God for your 
 portion, God for your guide, God for your help; then 
 all is well; all is well for time, all shall be well forever. 
 Blessed is that man who puts in the Lord his trust. 
 He shall never be confounded. 
 
 But my subject also impresses me with the fact that 
 when people start to follow Christ they must not 
 
THE STORMY PASSAGE. 99 
 
 THE MARTYRS, 
 expect smooth sailing. 
 
 These disciples got into the small boats, and I have 
 no doubt thej said: "What a beautiful day this is! 
 What a smooth sea! What a bright sky this is! How 
 delightful is sailing in this boat! And as for the waves 
 under the keel of the boat, why, they only make the 
 motion of our little boat the more delightful.'' But 
 -when the winds swept down and the sea was tossed 
 into wrath, then they found that following Christ was 
 not smooth sailing. So you have found it; so I have 
 found it. Did you ever notice the end of the life of the 
 apostles of Jesus Christ? You would say, if ever men 
 ought to have had a smooth life, a smooth departure, 
 then those men, the disciples of Jesus Christ, ought to 
 have had such a departure and such a life. St. James 
 lost his head. St. Philip was hanged to death on a 
 pillar. St. Matthew had his life dashed out with a hal- 
 bert. St. Mark was dragged to death through the 
 streets. St. James the Less was beaten to death with 
 a fuller's club. St. Thomas was struck through with 
 a. spear. They did not find following Christ smooth 
 •ailing. Oh, how they were all tossed in the tempest! 
 John Huss in the fire, Hugh McKall in the hour of 
 martyrdom, the Albigenses, the Waldenses, the Scotch 
 Covenanters — did they find it smooth sailing? But 
 why go into history when we can draw from our own 
 memory illustrations of the truth of what I say? Some 
 young man in a store trying to serve God, while his 
 employer scoffs at Christianity; the young men in the 
 same store, antagonistic to the Christian religion, teas- 
 ing him, tormenting him about his religion, trying 
 to get him mad. They succeed in getting him mad, 
 saying: "You'er a pretty Christian!" Does that 
 
100 talmage's sermons. 
 
 young man find it smooth sailing when he tries to fol- 
 low Christ? Or you remember a Christian girl. Her 
 father despises the Christian religion; her mother des- 
 pises the Christian religion; her brothers and sisters 
 scoff at the Christian religion; she can hardly find a 
 quiet place in which to say her prayers. Did she find 
 it smooth sailing when she tried to follow Jesus Christ? 
 Oh, no! All who would live the life of the Christian 
 religion must suffer presecution: if you do not find it 
 in one way you will get it in another way. The ques- 
 tion was asked: "Who are the nearest the throne?" 
 And the answer came back: "These are they who came 
 up out of great tribulation — great flailing as the orig- 
 inal has it; great flailing, great pounding — and had 
 their robes washed and made white in the blood of the 
 lamb." Oh, do not be disheartened! Take courage. 
 You are in glorious companionship. God will see you 
 through all trials and he will deliver you. 
 DO NOT BE FRIGHTENED. 
 
 My subject impresses me with the fact that good 
 people sometimes get very much frightened. 
 
 In the tones of these disciples as they rushed into the 
 back part of the boat I find they are frightened almost 
 to death. They say: "Master, carest thou not that 
 we perish?" They had no reason to be frightened, for 
 Christ was in the boat. I suppose if we had been there 
 we would have been just as much affrighted. Perhaps 
 more. In all ages very good people get very much 
 affrighted. It is often so in our day and men say: "Why, 
 look at the bad lectures; look at the various errors 
 going over the church of God. We are going to found- 
 er. The church is going to perish. She is going down." 
 Oh, how many good people are affrighted by iniquity 
 in our day and think the church of Jesus Christ is go- 
 
102 talmage's sermons. 
 
 ing to be overthrown, and are just as much affrighted as 
 were the disciples of my text. Don't worry, don't fret, 
 as though iniquity were going to triumph over right- 
 eousness. A lion goes into a cavern to sleep. He lies 
 down, with his shaggy mane covering the paws. 
 Meanwhile the spiders spin a web across the mouth 
 of the cavern and say: " We have captured him." Gos- 
 samer thread after gossamer thread, until the whole 
 front of the cavern is covered with the spiders' web 
 and the spiders say: " The lion is done; the lion is fast." 
 After awhile the lion has got through sleeping; he 
 rouses himself; he shakes his mane; he walks out into 
 the sunlight; he does not even know the spiders web 
 is spun, and w T ith his voice shakes the mountain. So 
 men come spinning their sophistries and skepticism about 
 Jesus Christ; he seems to be sleeping. They say: "We 
 have captured the Lord; he will never come forth again 
 npon the nation; Christ is captured forever. His reli- 
 gion will never make any conquest among men." But 
 after awhile the lion of the tribe of Judah will rouse 
 himself and come forth to shake mightily the nations. 
 What's a spider's web to the aroused lion! Give truth and 
 error a fair grapple and truth will come off victor. 
 
 But there are a great many good people who get af- 
 frighted in other respects; they are affrighted in our 
 day about revivals. They say: "Oh! this is a strong 
 religious gale; we are afraid the church of God is going 
 to be upset, and there are going to be a great many 
 people brought into the church that are going to be of 
 no use to it," and they are affrighted whenever they see 
 a revival taking hold of the churches. As though a 
 ship captain, with 5,000 bushels of wheat for a cargo, 
 should say some day, coming upon deck: "Throw over- 
 board all the cargo," and the sailors should say: "Why> 
 
THE STORMY PASSAGE. 103 
 
 captain, what do you mean? "0h,"sa3 T s the captain, 
 "we have a peck of chaff that has got into this 5,000 
 bushels of wheat, and the only way to get rid cf the 
 chaff is to throw all the wheat overboard." Now, that 
 is a great deal wiser than the talk of a great many 
 Christians who want to throw overboard all the thou- 
 sands and tens of thousands of souls who are the sub- 
 jects of revivals. Throw all overboard because they 
 are brought into the kingdom of God through great re- 
 vivals, because there is a peck of chaff, a quart of chaff, 
 a pint of chaff! I say, let them stay until the last day; 
 the Lord will divide the chaff from the wheat. Do not 
 be afraid of a great revival. Oh that such gales from 
 heaven might sweep through all our churches! Oh, for 
 such days as Richard Baxter saw in England, and 
 Rodert 2vicCheyne saw in Dundee! Oh, for such days as 
 Johnathan Edwards saw in Northampton! 
 
 A GOOD STORY OF OLD JOHN LIVINGSTON. 
 I have often heard my father tell the fact that in the 
 early part of this century a revival broke out at Somer- 
 ville, N. J., and some people were very much agitated 
 about it. They said: "Oh, you are going to bring too 
 many people into the church at once," and they sent 
 down to New Brunswick to get John Livingston to stop 
 the revival. Well, there was no better soul in all the 
 world than John Livingston. He went and looked at 
 the revival; they wanted him to stop it. He stood in 
 the pulpit on the Sabbath and looked over the solemn 
 auditory, and he said: "This, brethern is in reality the 
 work of God; beware how you try to stop it." And 
 he was an old man, leaning heavily on his staff— a very 
 old man. And he lifted that staff, and took hold of the 
 small end cf the staff, and began to let it fall slowly 
 through between the finger and the thumb, and he said: 
 
104 talmage's sermons. 
 
 "Oh, thou impenitent, thou art falling now — falling from 
 life, falling away from peace and heaven, falling as cer- 
 tainly, as that cane is falling through my hand— falling 
 certainly, though perhaps falling slowly!" And the 
 cane kept on falling through John Livingston's hand. 
 The religious emotion in the audience was overpowering, 
 and men saw a type of 'their doom, as the cane kept 
 falling and falling, until the nob of the cane struck Mr. 
 Livingston's hand, and he clasped it stoutly and said: 
 "But the grace of God can stop you as I stopped that 
 cane, "and then there was a gladness all through the 
 house at the fact of pardon, and peace, and salvation. 
 "Well," said the people after the service: "I guess you 
 had better send Livingston home; he is making the re- 
 vival worse." Oh, for gales from heaven to sweep all 
 the continents! The danger of the church of God is not 
 in revivals. 
 
 JESUS IS BOTH GOD AND MAN. 
 
 Again, my subject impresses me with the fact that 
 Jesus was God and man in the same being. Here he is 
 in the back part of the boat. Oh, how tired he looks; 
 what sad dreams he must have! Look at his counte- 
 nance; he must be thinking of the cross to come. Look 
 at him, he is a man— bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. 
 Tired, he falls asleep; he is a man. But then I find 
 Christ at the prow of the boat; I hear him say: 
 "Peace be still, '<and I see the storm kneeling at his feet 
 and the tempests folding their wings in his presence; 
 he is God. 
 
 If I have sorrow and trouble and want sympathy I 
 go and kneel down at the back of the boat and say: 
 "Oh, Christ, weary one of Gennesaret, sympathize with 
 all my sorrows, man of Nazareth, man of the cross." 
 A man, a man. But if I want toconquer my spiritual 
 
JESUS HEALING THE BLIND. 
 
106 talmage's sermons. 
 
 foes, if I want to get the victory over sin, death, and hell, 
 I come to the front of the boat, and I kneel down, and 
 I say: "Oh, Lord Jesus Christ, thou who dost hush 
 the tempest, hush all my grief, hush all my temptation 
 hush all my sin." A man, a man; a God, a God. 
 CHRIST CAN HUSH THE TEMPEST. 
 
 I learn once more from this subject that Christ can 
 hush a tempest. 
 
 It did seem as if everything must go to ruin. The 
 disciples had given up the idea of managing the ship, 
 the crew were entirely demoralized, yet Christ rises, 
 and he puts his foot on the storm, and it crouches at 
 his feet. Oh, yes! Christ can hush the tempest. You 
 have had trouble. Perhaps it was the little child tak- 
 en away from you — the sweetest child of the household, 
 the one who asked the most curious questions, and 
 stood around you with the greatest fondness, and the 
 spade cut down through your bleeding heart. Perhaps 
 it was an only son, and your heart has ever since been 
 like a desolated castle, the owls of the night hooting 
 among the fallen arches and the crumbling stairways. 
 Perhaps it was an aged mother. You always went to 
 her with your troubles. She was in your home to 
 welcome your children into life, and when they died 
 she was there to pity you; that old hand will do you 
 no more kindness; that white lock of hair you put away 
 in the casket or in the locket didn't look as it usually 
 did when she brushed it away from her wrinkled brow 
 in the home circle or in the country church. Or your 
 property gone; you said: "I have so much bank stock, 
 I have so many government securities, I have so many 
 houses, I have so many farms — all gone, all gone." 
 Why, sir, all the storms that ever trampled with their 
 thunders, all the shipwrecks, have not been worse than. 
 
THE STORMY PASSAGE. 107 
 
 this to you. Yet you have not been completely over- 
 thrown. Why? Christ says: I have that little one 
 in my keeping. I can care for him as well as you can, 
 better than you can, O bereaved mother! Hushing the 
 tempest. When your property went away, God said: 
 "There are treasures in heaven, in banks that never 
 break. Jesus hushing the tempest. There is one 
 storm into which we will all have to run. The moment 
 when we let go of this world and try to take hold of 
 the next we will want all the grace possible. Yonder 
 I see a Christian soul rocking on the surges of death; 
 all the powers of darkness seem let out against that 
 soul — the whirling wave, the thunder cf the sky, the 
 shriek of the wind, all seem to unite together; but that 
 soul is not troubled there is no sighing, there are no tears; 
 plenty of tears in the room at the departure, but 
 he weeps no tears — calm, satisfied, and peaceful; all is 
 well. By the flash of the storm you see the harbor just 
 ahead, and you are making for that harbor. All shall 
 be well, Jesus being our guide. 
 
 "Into the harbor of heaven now we glide; 
 
 We're home at last, home at last. 
 Softly we drift on the bright, silv'ry tide, 
 
 We're home at last. 
 
 "Glory to God! all our dangers are o'er, 
 We stand secure on the glorified shore; 
 Glory to God! we will shout ever more, 
 We'er home at last. ' ' 
 
IN CANA,OF GALILEE. 
 
 A MARRIAGE FEAST. 
 
 [Delivered near Cana, of Galliee, December, 22, 1889.] 
 "Thou hast kept the good wine until now." John ii, 10. 
 
 THE WEDDING IN CANA. 
 
 / fiS& TANDING not far off from the demolished town 
 c^SK of "what was once called Cana of Galilee, I be- 
 ^P'* think myself of our Lord's first manhood mira- 
 cle, which has been the astonishment of the ages. My 
 visit last week to that place makes vivid in my mind 
 that beautiful occurrence in Christ's ministry. My text 
 brings us to a wedding in that village. It is a wed- 
 ding in common life, two plain people having pledged 
 each other, hand and heart, and their friends having 
 (109) 
 
110 TALM AGE'S SERMONS. 
 
 come in for congratulation. The joy is not the less be- 
 cause there are no pretension. In each other they find 
 all the future they want. The daisy in the cup on the 
 table may mean as much as a score of artistic garlands 
 fresh from the hot-house. When a daughter goes off 
 from home with nothing but a plain father's blessing 
 and a plain mother's loYe she is missed as much as 
 though she were a princess. It seems hard, after the 
 parents have sheltered her for eighteen years, that in a 
 few short months her affections should have been car- 
 ried off by another, but mother remembers how it was 
 in her own case when she was young, and so she braces 
 up until the wedding has passed, and the banqueters 
 are gone, and she has a good cry all alone. 
 
 THE MIRACLE AT THE WEDDING. 
 
 Well, we are to-day at the wedding of Cana of Galilee. 
 Jesus and his mother have been invited. It is evident 
 that there are more people there than were expected. 
 Either some people have come who were not invited, or 
 more invitations have been sent out than it was sup- 
 posed would be accepted. Of course there is not enough 
 supply of wine. You know that there is nothing more 
 embarrassing to a housekeeper than a scant supply. 
 Jesus sees the embarrassment, and he comes up immedi- 
 ately to relieve it. He sees standing six water-pots. 
 He orders the servants to fill them with water, then 
 waves his hand over the water, and immediately it is 
 wine — real wine. Taste of it, and see for yourselves; 
 no logwood in it, no strychinein it, but first-rate wine. 
 I will not now be diverted to the question so often dis- 
 cussed in my own country, whether it is right to drink 
 wine. I am describing the scene as it was. When God 
 makes wine he makes the very best wine, and 130 gal- 
 lons of it standing around in these water-pots — wine so 
 
A MARRIAGE FEAST. Ill 
 
 good that the ruler of the feast tastes it and says: 
 "Why, this is really better than anything we have had! 
 Thou hast kept the good wine until now." Beautiful 
 miracle! A prize was offered to the person who should 
 write the best essay about the miracle in Can a. 
 Long manuscripts were presented in the competition, but 
 a poet won the prize by just this one line descriptive of 
 the miracle: 
 "The unconscious water saw its God and blushed." 
 
 THE WONDERFUL SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 
 
 We learn from this miracle, in the first place, that 
 Christ has sympathy with housekeepers. You might 
 have thought that Jesus would have said: "I can not 
 be bothered with household deficiency of wine. It is 
 not for me, lord of heaven, of earth, to become caterer 
 to this feast. I have vaster things than this to attend 
 to." Not so said Jesus. The wine gave out and Jesus, 
 by miraculous power, came to the rescue. Does there 
 ever come a scant supply in your household? Have 
 you to make a very close calculation? Is it hard work 
 for j^ou to carry on things decently and respectably? 
 If so, don't sit down and cry; don't go out and fret, 
 but go to him who stood in the house in Cana of Gali- 
 lee. Pray in the parlor! Pray in the kitchen! Let 
 there be no room in your house unconsecrated by the 
 voice of prayer. If you have a microscope put under it 
 one drop of water and see the insects floating about, 
 and when you see that God makes them, come to the 
 conclusion that he will take care of 3^ou and feed you — 
 Oh, ye of little faith! 
 
 A boy asked if he might sweep the snow from the 
 steps of a house. The lady of the household said: 
 "Yes-; you seem verypoor." Hesays: "I am verypoor." 
 She says: " Don't you sometimes get discouraged and 
 
112 talmage's sermons. 
 
 feel that God is going to let you starve?" The lad 
 looked up in the woman's face and said: "Do you 
 think God will let me starve when I trust him and then 
 do the best I can?" Enough theology for older people. 
 Trust in God and do the best you can. Amidst all the 
 worriments of housekeeping go to him; he will help you 
 control your temper, and supervise your domestics, 
 and entertain your guests, and manage your home 
 economies. There are hundreds of women weak, and 
 nervous, and exhausted with the cares of housekeeping. 
 I commend you to the Lord Jesus Christ as the best 
 adviser and the most efficient aid — the Lord Jesus who 
 performed his first miracle to relieve a housekeeper. 
 
 THE ABUNDANCE OF CHRIST'S GIVING. 
 
 I learn also from this miracle that Christ does things 
 in abundance. I think a small supply of wine would 
 have made up for the deficiency. I think certainly they 
 must have had enough for half of the guests. One gal- 
 lon of this wine will do; certainly five gallons will be 
 enough; certainly ten. But Jesus goes on, and he gives 
 them 30 gallons, and 40 gallons, and 50 gallons, and 
 70 gallons, and 100 gallons, and 130 gallons of the 
 very best wine. 
 
 It is just like him, doing everything on the largest 
 and most generous scale. Does Christ, our creator, go 
 forth to make leaves? He makes them by the whole 
 forest full; notched like the fern, or silvered like the as- 
 pen, or broad like the palm; thickest in the tropics, 
 Oregon forests. 
 
 Does he go forth to make flowers? He makes plenty 
 of them; they flame from the hedge, they hang from the 
 top of the grapevine in blossoms, they roll in the blue 
 wave of the violets, they toss their white surf into the 
 

114 talmage's sermons. 
 
 spiraea— enough for every child's hand a flower, enough 
 to make for every brow a chaplet, enough with beauty 
 to cover up the ghastliness of all the graves. 
 
 Does he go forth to create water? He pours it out, 
 not by the cup full, but by a river full, a lake full, an 
 ocean full, pouring it out until all the earth has enough 
 to drirk' and enough with which to wash. 
 
 Does Jesus, our Lord, provide redemption? It is not 
 a little salvation for this one, a little for that, and a lit- 
 tle for the other, but enough for all — " Whosoever will, 
 let him come." Each man an ocean full for himself. 
 Promises for the young, promises for the old, promises 
 for the lowly, promises for the blind, for the halt, for 
 the outcast, for the abandoned. Pardon for all, com- 
 fort for all, mercy for all, heaven for all; not merely a 
 cupful of gospel glory, but 130 gallons. Ay, the tears 
 of godly repentance are all gathered up into God's 
 bottle, and some day, standing before the throne, we 
 will lift our cup of delight and ask that it be filled with 
 the wine of heaven, and Jesus, from that bottle of tears, 
 will begin to pour in the cup, and we will cry: " Stop, 
 Jesus, we do not want to drink our own tears!" and 
 Jesus will say : " Know ye not that the tears of earth 
 are the wine of heaven ? " Sorrow may endure, but joy 
 cometh in the morning. 
 
 TRY TO MAKE OTHERS HAPPY. 
 
 I remark further, Jesus does not shadow the joys of 
 others with his own griefs. He might have sat down in 
 that wedding and said: "I have so much trouble, so 
 much poverty, so much persecution, and the cross is 
 coming; I shall not rejoice, and the gloom of my face 
 and of my sorrows shall be cast over all this group." 
 So said not Jesus. He said to himself: "Here are two 
 persons starting out in married life. Let it be a joyful 
 
A MARRIAGE FEAST. 115 
 
 occasion. I will hide my own griefs. I will kindle their 
 joy." There are many not so wise as that. I know a 
 household where there are many little children where for 
 two years the musical instrument has been kept shut 
 because there has been trouble in the house. Alas for 
 the folly! Parents saying : "We will have no Christ- 
 mas tree this coming holiday because there has been 
 trouble in the house. Hush that laughing up.stairs! 
 How can there be any joy when there has been so much 
 trouble?" And so they make everything consistently 
 doleful, and send their sons and daughters to ruin with 
 the gloom they throw around them. 
 
 Oh, my dear friends, do you not know those children 
 will have trouble enough of their own after awhile? Be 
 glad they can not appreciate all yours. Keep back the 
 cup of bitterness from your daughter's lips. When your 
 head is down in the grass of the tomb poverty may 
 come to her, betrayal to her, bereavement to 
 her. Keep back the sorrows as long as you 
 can. Do you not know that your son may, 
 after awhile, have his heart broken? Stand 
 between him and all harm. You may not fight his bat- 
 tles long; fight them while you may. Throw not the 
 chill of your own despondency over his soul ; rather be 
 like Jesus, who came to the wedding hiding his own 
 grief and kindling the joys of others. So I have seen 
 the sun, on a dark day, struggling amidst the clouds, 
 black, ragged, and portentious, but after awhile the 
 sun, with golden spa heaved back the blackness, and 
 the sun laughed to the lake, and the lake laughed to the 
 sun, and from horizon to horizon, under the saffron 
 sky, the water was all turned into wine. 
 
 CHRIST FAVORS THE LUXURIES OF LIFE. 
 
 I learn from this miracle that Christ is not impatient 
 
116 talmage's sermons. 
 
 with the luxuries of life. It was not necessary that they 
 should have that wine. Hundreds of people have been 
 married without any wine. We do not read that any 
 of the other provisions fell short. When Christ made 
 the wine it was not a necessity, but a positive luxury. 
 I do not believe that he wants us to eat hard bread and 
 sleep on hard mattresses, unless we like them the best. 
 I think, if circumstances will allow, we have a right to 
 the luxuries of dress, the luxuries of diet, and the luxu- 
 ries of residence. There is no more religion in an old 
 coat than in a new one. We can serve God drawn by 
 golden-plated harness as certainly as when we go a-loot. 
 Jesus Christ will dwell with us under a fine ceiling as 
 well as under a thatched roof, and when you can get 
 wine made out of water drink as much of it as you can. 
 
 What is the difference between a Chinese mud hovel 
 and an American home? What is the difference between 
 the rough bear-skins of the Russian boor and the outfit 
 of an American gentleman? No difference except that 
 which the gospel of Christ, directly or indirectly, has 
 caused. When Christ shall have vanquished all the 
 world I suppose every house will be a mansion, and 
 every garment a robe, and every horse an arch-necked 
 courser, and every carraige a glittering vehicle, and every 
 man a king, and every woman a queen, and the whole 
 earth a paradise; the glories of the natural world har- 
 monizing with the glories of the material world until 
 the very bells of the horses shall jingle the praises of the 
 Lord. 
 
 CHRIST DOES NOT DENY US JOYS. 
 
 I learn further from this miracle that Christ has no 
 impatience with festal joy, otherwise he would not have 
 accepted the invitation to that wedding. He certainly 
 would not have done that which increased the hilarity. 
 
A MARRIAGE EEAST. 117 
 
 There may have been many in that room who were hap- 
 p3', but there was not one of them that did so much 
 for the joy of the wedding party as Christ himself. He 
 was the chief of the banqueters. When the wine gave 
 out he supplied it, and so, I take it, he will not deny us 
 the jo3^s that are positively festal. 
 
 I think the children of God have more right to laugh 
 than any other people and to clap their hands as loudly. 
 There is not a single joy denied them that is given to 
 any other people. Christianity does not clip the wings 
 of the soul. Religion does not frost the flowers. What 
 is Christianity? I take it to be simply a proclamation 
 from the throne of God of emancipation for all the en* 
 slaved, and if man accepts the terms of that proclama- 
 tion and becomes free has he not a right to be merry? 
 Suppose a father has an elegant mansion and large 
 grounds? To whom will he give the first privilege of 
 these grounds? Will he say: "My children, you must 
 not walk through these paths, or sit down under these 
 trees, or pluck this fruit. These are for outsiders. They 
 may walk in them." No father would say anything 
 like that. He would say: "The first privileges in all 
 the grounds and all of my house shall be for my own 
 children." And yet men try to make us believe that 
 God's children are on the limits, and the chief refresh _ 
 mcnts and enjoyments of life are for outsiders and not 
 for his own children. It is stark atheism. There is no 
 innocent beverage too rich for God's child to drink; 
 there is no robe too costly for him to wear; there is no 
 hilarity too great for him to indulge in, and no house 
 too splendid for him to live in. He has a right to the 
 joys of earth; he shall have a right to the joys of heaven. 
 Though tribulation, and trial, and hardship may come 
 unto him let him rejoice. "Rejoice in the Lord, ye 
 
A MARRIAGE FEAST. 119 
 
 righteous; and again I say, rejoice." 
 
 CHRIST WITH US IN OUR EXTREMITY— A STORY. 
 
 I remark again that Christ comes to us in the hour of 
 our extremity. He knew the wine was giving out be- 
 fore there "was any embarrassment or mortiiication. 
 Why did he not perform the miracle sooner ? Why wait 
 until it was all gone and no help could come from any 
 source and then come in and perform the miracle ? This 
 is Christ's way, and when he did come in at the hour of 
 extremity he made first-rate wine, so that they cried 
 /ut: "Thou hast kept the good wine until now." 
 Jesus in the hour of extremity ! He seems to prefer that 
 hour. 
 
 In a Christian home in Poland great poverty had 
 come, and on the week-day the man was obliged to 
 move out of the house with his entire family. That 
 night he knelt with his family and prayed to God. 
 While they were kneeling in prayer there was a tap on 
 the window-pane. They opened the window and there 
 was a raven that the family had fed and trained, and in 
 its bill a ring all set with precious stones, which was 
 found out to be a ring belonging to the royal family. It 
 was taken up to the king's residence and for the honesty 
 of the man in bringing it back he had a house given to 
 him, and a garden, and a farm. Who was it that sent 
 the raven tapping on the window ? The same God that 
 sent the raven to feed Elijah by the brook of Cherith. 
 Christ in the hour of extremity ! 
 
 You mourned over your sins. You could not find the 
 way out. You sat down and said : " God will not be 
 merciful. He has cast me off; " but in that, the darkest 
 hour of your history, light broke from the throne, and 
 Jesus said "0 wanderer, come home. I have seen all 
 thy sorrows. In this, the hour of thy extremity, I of- 
 
120 talm age's sermons. 
 
 fer thee pardon and everlasting life ! " 
 
 Trouble came. Yon were almost torn to pieces by 
 that trouble. Yon braced yourself up against it. You 
 said : "I will be a stoic, and will not care ; " but before 
 you had got through making the resolution it broke 
 down under you. You felt that all your resources were 
 gone, and then Jesus came. "In the fourth watch of 
 the night," the bible says, "Jesus came walking on the 
 sea." Why did he not come in the first watch? or in 
 the second watch ? or in the third watch ? I do not 
 know. He came in the fourth, and gave deliverance to 
 his disciples. Jesus in the last extremity ! 
 
 I wonder if it will be so in our very last extremity. 
 We shall fall suddenly sick, and doctors will come, but 
 in vain. Something will say: "You must go." No one 
 to hold us back, but the hands of eternity stretched out 
 to pull us on. What then ? Jesus will come to us, and 
 as we say, "Lord Jesus, I am afraid of that water; I 
 can not wade through to the other side," he will say, 
 " Take hold of my arm ; " and we will take hold of his 
 arm, and then he will put his foot in the. surf of the 
 water, taking us down deeper, deeper, deeper, and our 
 soul will cry: "All thy waves and billows have gone 
 over me." They cover the feet, come to the knee, pass 
 the girdle, and come to the head, and our soul cries out: 
 "Lord Jesus Christ, I cannot hold thine arm any 
 longer." Then Jesus will turn around, throw both his 
 arms about us, and set us on the beach, far beyond the 
 tossing of the billows. Jesus in the last extremity. 
 
 JESUS INVITES US TO A GRANDER WEDDING. 
 
 That wedding scene is gone now. The wedding-ring 
 has been lost, the tankards have been broken, the house 
 is down, but Jesus invites us to a grander wedding. 
 You know that the bible says that the church is the 
 
A MARRIAGE FEAST. 121 
 
 lamb's wife, and the Lord will after awhile come to 
 fetch her home, There will be gleaming of torches in 
 the sky, and the trumpets of God will ravish the air 
 with their music, and the church, robed in white, will 
 put aside her veil, and look up into the face of her Lord 
 the king, and the bridegroom will say to the bride : 
 " Thou hast been faithful all these years ! The mansion 
 is ready! Home home! Thou art fair, my love!" And 
 then he shall put upon her brow the crown of domin- 
 ion, and table will be spread, and it will reach across 
 the skies, and the mighty ones of heaven will come in, 
 garlanded with beauty and striking their cymbals ; and 
 the bridegroom and the bride will stand at the head of 
 the table, and the banqueters, looking up, will wonder 
 and admire, and say : "That is Jesus the bridegroom . 
 But the scar on his brow is covered with the coronet, 
 and the stab in his side is covered with a robe ! " and 
 " That is the bride! The weariness of her earthly 
 woe lost in the flush of this wedding triumph ! " 
 
 There will be wine enough at that wedding ; not com- 
 ing up from the poisoned vats of earth, but the vine- 
 yards of God will press their ripest clusters, and the cups 
 and the tankards will blush to the brim with the 
 heavenly vintage, and then all the banqueters will drink 
 standing. Esther, having come up from the bacchanal- 
 ian revelry of Ahasuerus, where a thousand lords feas- 
 ted, will be there. And the queen of Sheba, from the 
 banquet of Solomon, will be there. And the mother of 
 Jesus, from the wedding in Cana, will be there, And 
 they all will agree that the earthly feasting was poor 
 compared with that. Then, lifting their chalices in that 
 holy light, they shall cry to the Lord of the feast: 
 " Thou hast kept the good wine until now." 
 
(122) 
 
IN BEYROOT. 
 
 THE SKY ANTHEM. 
 
 [A Christmas Sermon delivered at Beyroot, Palestine, December, 24, 1889. J 
 "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, good will to- 
 ward men." Luke, ii, 14. 
 
 CHRISTMAS EVE IN PALESTINE. 
 
 f' T last I have what I longed for, a Christmas 
 eve in the Holy land. This is the time of year 
 that Christ landed. He was a December Christ. 
 This is the chill air through which he descended. I 
 look up through these Christmas skies, and I see no 
 loosened star hastening southward to halt above Beth- 
 lehem, but all the stars suggest the star of Bethlehem. 
 (123) 
 
124 talmage's sermons. 
 
 No more need that any of them run along the sky to 
 point downward. In quietude they kneel at the feet of 
 him who, though once an exile, is now enthroned for- 
 ever. Fresh up from Bethlehem I am full of the scenes 
 suggested by a visit to that village. You know that 
 whole region of Bethlehem is famous in bible story. 
 There were the waving harvests of Boaz in which Ruth 
 gleaned for herself and weeping Naomi. There David 
 the warrior with thirty and three men of unheard of 
 self-denial broke through the Philistine army to get 
 him a drink. It was to that region that Joseph and 
 Mary came to have their names enrolled in the census. 
 That is what the scripture means when it says they 
 came "to be taxed," for people did not in those days 
 rush after the assessors of tax any more than they 
 now do. 
 
 The village inn was crowded with the strangers who 
 had come up by the command of government to have 
 their names in the census, so that Joseph and Mary 
 were obliged to lodge in the stables. You have seen 
 some of those large stone buildings in the center of 
 which the camels were kept, while running out from 
 this center in all directions there were rooms, in one of 
 which Jesus was born. Had his parents been more 
 showily appareled, I have no doubt they would have 
 found more comfortable entertainment. That night in 
 the fields the shepherds, with crook and kindled fires, 
 were watching their flocks, when hark to the sound of 
 voices strangely sweet! Can it be that the maidens of 
 Bethlehem have come out to serenade the weary shep- 
 herds? But now a light stoops upon them like the 
 morning, so that the flocks arise, shaking their snowy 
 fleece and bleating to their drowsy young. The heavens 
 are filled with armies of light, and the earth quakes 
 under the harmony as, echoed back from cloud to cloud. 
 
THE SKY ANTHEM. 125 
 
 it rings over the midnight hills: " Glory to God in the 
 highest, and on earth peace, good will to men!" It 
 seems the crown of royalty, and dominion, and power 
 which Christ left behind him was hung on the sky in 
 sight of Bethlehem. Who knows but that that crown 
 may have been mistaken by the wise men for the star 
 running and pointing downward. 
 
 INDIGENCE NOT DEGREDATION. 
 
 My subject, in the first place, impresses me with the 
 fact that indigence is not always significant of degra- 
 dation ! When princes are born heralds announce it, 
 and cannon thunder it, and flags wave it, and illumina- 
 tions set cities on fire with the tidings. Some of us in 
 England or America remember the time of rejoicing 
 when the prince of Wales was born. You can remem- 
 ber the gladness throughout Christendom at the nativ- 
 ity in the palace at Madrid. But when our glorious 
 prince was born there was no rejoicing on earth. Poor 
 and growing poorer, yet the heavenly recognition that 
 Christmas night shows the truth of the proposition 
 that indigence is not always significant of degradation. 
 
 In all ages there have been great hearts throbbing 
 under rags, tender sympathies under rough exterior, 
 gold in the quartz, Parian marble in the quarry, and in 
 every stable of privation wonders of excellence that 
 have been the joy of the heavenly host. All the great 
 deliverers of literature and of nations were born in 
 homes without affluence, and from their own privation 
 learned to speak and fight for the oppressed. Many a 
 man has held up his pine-knot light from the wilderness 
 until all nations and generations have seen it, and off 
 of his hard crust of penury has broken the bread of 
 knowledge and religion for the starving millions of the 
 
126 talmage's sermons. 
 
 race. Poetry, and science, and literature, and com- 
 merce, and laws, and constitutions, and liberty, like 
 Christ, were born in a manger. All the great thoughts 
 which have decided the destiny of nations started in 
 obscure corners, and had Herods who wanted to slay 
 them, and Iscariots who betrayed them, and rabbles 
 that crucified them, and sepulchcrs that confined them 
 until they burst forth in glorious resurrection. Strong 
 character, like the rhododendron, in an Alpine plant 
 that grows faster in the storm. Men are like wheat } 
 worth all the more for being flailed. Some of the most 
 useful people would never have come to positions of 
 usefulness had they not been ground and pounded and 
 hammered in the foundry of disaster. When I see Moses 
 coming up from the ark of bulrushes to be the greatest 
 lawgiver of the ages, and Amos from tending the herds 
 to make Israel tremble with his prophecies, and David 
 from the sheepcot to sway the poet's pen and the 
 king's scepter, and Peter from the fishing net to be the 
 great preacher at the Pentecost, T find proof of the 
 truth of my proposition that indigence is not always 
 significant of degradation. 
 
 DUTY AND BLESSING. 
 
 My subject also impresses me with the thought that 
 it is while at our useful occupations that we have the 
 divine manifestations. Had those shepherds gone that 
 night into Bethlehem and risked their flocks among the 
 wolves they would not have heard the song of the 
 angels. In other words, that man sees most of God and 
 heaven who minds his own business. We all have our 
 posts of duty, and standing there God appears to us. 
 We are all shepherds or shepherdesses, and we have our 
 flocks of cares, and annoyances, and anxieties, and we 
 must tend them. 
 
THE SKY ANTHEM. ±2 i 
 
 We sometimes hear very good people say : " If I had 
 a month or a year or two to do nothing but attend to 
 religious things I would be a great deal better than I 
 am now." You are mistaken. Generally the best peo- 
 ple are the busy people. Elisha was plowing in the 
 field when the prophetic mantle fell upon him. Mat- 
 thew was attending to his custom-house duties when 
 Christ commanded him to follow. James and John 
 were mending their nets w T hen Christ called them to be 
 fishers of men. Had they been snoring in the sun Christ 
 would not have called their indolence into the apostle- 
 ship. Gideon was at work with the flail on the thrash- 
 ing floor when he saw the angel. Saul was with great 
 fatigue hunting up the lost asses when he found the 
 crown of Israel. The prodigal son would never have 
 reformed and wanted to have returned to his father's 
 house if he had not first gone into business; though it 
 was swine-feeding. Not once out of a hundred times 
 will a lazy man become a Christian. Those who have 
 nothing to do are in very unfavorable circumstances for 
 the receiving of divine manifestations. It is not when 
 you are in idleness, but when you are, like the Bethle- 
 hem shepherds, watching your flocks, that the glory de- 
 scends and there is joy among the angels of God over 
 your soul penitent and forgiven. 
 
 RELIGION IS JOYFUL. 
 My subject also strikes at the delusion that the relig- 
 ion of Christ is dolorous and grief-infusing. The music 
 that broke through the midnight heavens was not a 
 dirge, but an anthem. It shook joy over the hills. It 
 not only dropped upon the shepherds but it sprang up- 
 ward among the thrones. The robe of a Saviour's 
 righteousness is not black. The Christian life is not 
 made up of weeping and cross-bearing and war-wag- 
 
128 talmage's sermons. 
 
 ing. Through the revelation of that Christmas night 
 I find that religion is not a groan but a song. In a 
 world of sin and sick-bed and sepulchers we must have 
 trouble, but in the darkest night the heavens part with 
 angelic song. You may, like Paul, be shipwrecked, but 
 I exhort you to be of good cheer, for you shall all escape 
 safe to the land. Religion does not show itself in the 
 elongation of the face and the cut of the garb. The 
 Pharisee who puts his religion into his phylactery has 
 none left for his heart. Fretfulness and complaining do 
 not belong to the family of Christian graces which 
 move into the heart when the devil moves out. Chris- 
 tianity does not frown upon amusements and recrea- 
 tions. It is not a cynic, it is not a shrew, it chokes no 
 laughter, it quenches no light, it defaces no art. Among 
 the happy it is the happiest. It is just as much at home 
 on the play ground as it is in the church. It is just as 
 graceful in the charade as it is in the psalm-book. It 
 sings just as well in Surrey gardens as it prays in St. 
 Paul's. Christ died that we might live. Christ walked 
 that we might ride. Christ wept that we might laugh. 
 
 THE MANGER AND THRONE. 
 
 Again, my subject impresses me with the fact that 
 glorious endings sometimes have very humble begin- 
 nings. The straw pallet was the starting point, but 
 the shout in the midnight sky revealed what would be 
 the glorious consummation. Christ on Mary's lap, 
 Christ on the throne of universal dominion — what an 
 humble starting! What a glorious ending! Grace be- 
 gins on a small scale in the heart. You see only men as 
 trees walking. The grace of God in the heart is a feeble 
 spark, and Christ has to keep both hands over it lest 
 it be blown out. What an humble beginning! But 
 look at the same man when he has entered heaven. No 
 
THE SKY ANTHEM. 
 
 129 
 
 crown able to express his royalt}^. No palace able to 
 express his wealth. No scepter able to express his power 
 and his dominion . Drinking from the fountain that drips 
 from the everlasting rock. Among the harpers harping 
 with their harps. On a sea of glass mingled with fire. 
 Before the throne of God, to go no more out forever. 
 The spark of grace that Christ had to keep both hands 
 over lest it come to extinction, having flamed up into 
 honor, glory and immortality. What humble starting! 
 What glorious consummation! 
 
 The new testament church was on a small scale. 
 Fishermen watched it. Against the uprising walls 
 crashed infernal enginery. The world said anathema. 
 Ten thousand people rejoiced at every seeming defeat 
 and said: "Aha! aha! so we would have it." Martyrs 
 on fire cried: "How long, O Lord, how long?" Very 
 humble starting, but see the difference at the consum- 
 mation, when Christ with his almighty arm has struck 
 off the last chain of human bondage, and Himalayas 
 
130 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 
 
 shall be Mount Zion, and Pyrenees Moriah, and oceans 
 the walking place of him who trod the wave cliffs of 
 stormed Tiberias, and island shall call to island, sea to 
 sea, continent to continent, and the song of the world's 
 redemption rising, the heavens, like a great sounding 
 board, shall strike back the shout of salvation to the 
 earth until it rebounds again to the throne of God, and 
 all heaven, rising on their thrones beat time with their 
 scepters. Oh, what an humble beginning! What a 
 glorious ending! Throne linked to a manger, heavenly 
 mansions to a stable. 
 
 THE DOUBLE MISSION OF CHRIST. 
 
 My subject also impresses me with the effect of Christ's 
 mission upward and downward. Glory to God, peace 
 to man. When God sent his son into the world angels 
 discovered something new in God, something they had 
 never seen before. Not power, not wisdom, not love. 
 They knew all that before. But when God sent his son 
 into this world then the angels saw the spirit of self- 
 denial in God, the spirit of self-sacrifice in God. It is 
 easier to love an angel on his throne than a thief on 
 the cross, a seraph in his worship than an adultress 
 in her crime. When the angels saw God — the God who 
 would not allow the most insignificant angel in heaven 
 to be hurt— give up his son, his only son, they saw 
 something that they had never thought of before, and 
 I do not wonder that when Christ started out on that 
 pilgrimage the angels in heaven clapped their wings in 
 triumph and called on all the hosts of heaven to help 
 them celebrate it, and sang so loud that the Bethlehem 
 shepherds heard it: "Glory to God in the highest." 
 
 But it was also to be a mission of peace to man. In- 
 finite holiness — accumulated depravity. How could they 
 ever come together? The gospel bridges over the dis- 
 
THE SKY ANTHEM. 131 
 
 tance. It brings God to us. It takes us to God. God 
 in us, and we in God. Atonement! Atonement! Jus- 
 tice satisfied, sin forgiven, eternal life secured, heaven 
 built on a manger. 
 
 But it was to be the pacification of all individual and 
 international animosities. What a sound this word 
 of peace had in the Roman Empire that boasted of the 
 number of people it had massacred, that prided itself 
 on the number of the slain, that rejoiced at the tremb- 
 ling providences. Sicily, and Sardinia, and Macedonia, 
 and Egypt had bowed to her sword and crouched at 
 the cry of her war eagles. She gave her chief honor to 
 Scipio, and Fabius, and Caesar — all men of blood. What 
 contempt they must have had there for the penniless, 
 unarmed Christ in the garb of a Nazarene, starting out 
 to conquer all nations. There never was a place on 
 earth where that word peace sounded so offensively to 
 the ears of the multitudes as in the Roman empire. They 
 did not want peace. The greatest music they ever 
 heard was the clanking chains of their captives. If all 
 the blood that has been shed in battle could be gathered 
 together it would bear up a navy. The club that 
 struck Abel to the earth has its echo in the butcheries 
 of all ages. Edmund Burke, who gave no wild statis- 
 tics, said that there had been spent in slaughter $35,- 
 000,000,000 or what would be equal to that, but he 
 had not seen into our times, when in our own day, in 
 America, we expended $3,000,000,000 in civil war. 
 
 THE VISION OF BATTLES. 
 Oh, if we could now take our position on some high 
 point and see the world's armies march past! There go 
 the hosts of Israel through a score of Red seas — one of 
 water, the rest of blood. There go Cyrus and his army, 
 with infuriate yell rejoicing over the fall of the gates of 
 
THE SKY ANTHEM. 133 
 
 Babylon. There goes Alexandei , leading forth his hosts, 
 and conquering all the world but himself, the earth reel- 
 ing with the battle gash of Arbela and Persepolis . There 
 goes Ferdinand Cortes, leaving his butchered enemies 
 on the table-lands, once fragrant with vanilla and cov- 
 ered over with groves of flowering cacao. There goes 
 the great Frenchman, leading his army down through 
 Egypt like one of its plagues and up through Russia 
 like one of its own icy blasts. Yonder is the grave trench 
 under the shadow of Sebastopol. There are the ruins 
 of Delhi and Allahabad, and yonder are the inhuman 
 Sepoys and the brave regiments under Havelock aveng- 
 ing the insulted flag of Britain, while cut right through 
 the heart of my native land is a trench in which there 
 lie 1,000,000 northern and southern dead. 
 
 Oh, the tears! Oh, the blood! Oh, the long marches! 
 Oh, the hospital wounds! Oh, the martyrdom! Oh, the 
 death! But brighter than the light which flashed on 
 all these swords and shields and musketry is the light 
 that fell on Bethlehem, and louder than the bray of the 
 trumpets, and the neighing of the charges, and the 
 crash of the walls, and the groaning of the dying armies, 
 is the song that unrolls this moment from the sky, 
 sweet as though all the bells of heaven rung a jubilee, 
 " Peace on earth, good will toward men." Oh, when 
 will the day come — God hasten it! — when the swords 
 shall be turned into plowshares, and the fortresses shall 
 be remodeled into churches, and the men of blood bat- 
 tling for renown shall become good soldiers for Jesus 
 Christ, and the cannon now striking down whole 
 columns of death shall thunder the victories of the truth. 
 
 When we think of the whole world saved we are apt 
 to think of the few people that now inhabit it. Only a 
 very few compared with the population to come. And 
 
134 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 
 
 what a small part cultivated. Do yon know it has been 
 authentically estimated that three-fourths of Europe is 
 yet all barrenness, and that nine hundred and ninety- 
 nine one-thousandth part of the entire globe is unculti- 
 vated? This is all to be cultivated, all inhabited, and 
 all gospelized. Oh, what tears of repentance when 
 nations begin to weep ! Oh, what supplications when 
 continents begin to pray! Oh, what rejoicing when 
 hemispheres begin to sing ! Churches will worship on 
 the places where this very hour smokes the blood of 
 human sacrifice, and wandering through the snake-in- 
 fested jungles of Africa Christ's heel will bruise the 
 serpent's head. Oh, -when the trumpet of salvation 
 shall be sounded everywhere and the nations are re- 
 deemed, a light will fall upon every town brighter than 
 that which fell upon Bethlehem, and more overwhelm- 
 ing than the song that fell on the pasture fields where 
 the flocks fed there will be a song louder than the voice 
 of the storm-lifted oceans, " Glory to God inthehigest," 
 and from all nations, and kindred, and people, and 
 tongues will come the response : " And on earth peace, 
 and good will toward men ! " 
 
 A TOUCHING STORY. 
 On this Christmas we bring you good tidings of great 
 joy. Pardon for all sin, comfort for all trouble, and 
 life for the dead. Shall we now take this Christ into 
 our hearts ? The time is passing. This is the closing of 
 the year. How the time speeds by. Put your hand on 
 your heart— one, two, three. Three times less it will 
 beat. Life is passing like gazelles over the plain. Sor- 
 rows hover like petrels over the sea. Death swoops 
 like a vulture from the mountains. Misery rolls up to 
 our ears like waves. Heavenly songs fall to us like 
 stars. 
 
THE SKY ANTHEM. 135 
 
 I wish you a merry Christmas, not with worldly dis- 
 pensations, but merry with gospel gladness, merry with 
 pardoned sin, merry with hope of reunion in the skies 
 with all your loved ones who have preceded you. In 
 that grandest and best sense a merry Christmas. 
 
 And God grant that in our final moment we may have 
 as bright a vision as did the dying girl when she said : 
 " Mother" — pointing with her thin, white hand through 
 the window — "Mother, what is that beautiful land out 
 yonder beyond the mountains, the high mountains?" 
 "Oh," said the mother, " my darling, there are no 
 mountains within sight of our home." "Oh, yes,', she 
 said, " Don't you see them — that beautiful land beyond 
 the mountains out there, just beyond the high moun- 
 tains ? ' ' 
 
 The mother looked down into the face of her dying 
 child and said : "My dear I think that must be heaven 
 that you see." "Well, then," she said, "father, you 
 come, and with your strong arms carry me over those 
 mountains into that beautiful land beyond the high 
 mountains." "No," said the weeping father, "my dar- 
 ling, I can't go with you." " Well," she said, clapping 
 her hands, "never mind; never mind; I see yonder a 
 shining one coming. He is coming now, in his strong 
 arms to carry me over the mountains to the beautiful 
 land— over the mountains, over the high mountains." 
 
IN VIENNA. 
 
 THE HALF NOT TOLD. 
 
 [Delivered in Vienna, January, 5th., 1890.] 
 "Behold, the half was not told me." I Kings x., 7. 
 
 THE TWO CIRCLES. 
 
 J~^ PPEARING before you to-day, my mind yet agi- 
 tated with the scenery of the Holy land, from 
 which we have just arrived, you will expect me 
 to revert to some of the scenes once enacted there. 
 Mark a circle around Lake Galilee, and another circle 
 around Jerusalem, and you describe the two regions in 
 which cluster memories of more events than in any 
 other two circles. Jerusalem was a spell of fascination 
 that will hold me the rest of my life. Solomon had re- 
 solved that that city should be the center of all sacred, 
 regal, and commercial magnificence. He set himself to 
 work, and monopolized the surrounding desert as a 
 highway for his caravans. He built the city of Palmyra 
 around one of the principal wells of the east, so that 
 all the long trains of merchandise from the east were 
 obliged to stop there, pay toll, and leave part of their 
 wealth in the hands of Solomon's merchants. He man- 
 ned the fortress Thapsacus at the chief ford of the 
 Euphrates and put under guard everything that passed 
 there. The three great products of Palestine — wine 
 pressed from the richest clusters and celebrated all the 
 (137) 
 
138 talmage's sermons. 
 
 world over ; oil, which in that hot country is the entire 
 substitute for butter and lard, and was pressed from 
 the olive branches until every tree in the country be- 
 came an oil-well, and honey, which was the entire sub- 
 stitute for sugar— these three great products of the 
 country Solomon exported and received in return fruits* 
 and precious woods, and the animals of every clime. 
 
 He went down to Ezion-geber and ordered a fleet of 
 ships to be constructed, oversaw the workmen, and 
 watched the launching of the flotilla which was to go 
 out on more than a year's voyage to bring home the 
 wealth of the then known world. He heard that the 
 Egyptian horses were large and swift and long-maned 
 and round-limbed, and he resolved to purchase them, 
 giving $85 apiece for them, putting the best of these 
 horses in his own stall, and selling the surplus to foreign 
 potentates at great profit. 
 
 He heard that there was the best of timber on Mount 
 Lebanon and he sent out 180,000 men to hew down 
 the forest and drag the timber through the mountain 
 gorges, to construct it into rafts to be floated to Joppa 
 and from thence to be drawn by ox- teams twenty-five 
 miles across the land to Jerusalem. He heard that there 
 were beautiful flowers in other lands. He sent for them, 
 planted them in his own garden, and to this very day 
 there are flowers found in the ruins of that city such as 
 are to be found in no other part of Palestine, the lineal 
 descendants of the very flowers that Solomon planted. 
 He heard that in foreign groves there were birds of 
 richest voice and most luxuriant wing. He sent out 
 people to catch them and bring them there, and he put 
 them into cages. 
 
 Stand back now and see this long train of camels 
 coming up to the king's gate, and the ox-trains from 
 
THE HALF NOT TOLD. 139 
 
 Egypt, gold and silver and precious stones, and beasts 
 of every hoof, and birds of every wing, and fish of every 
 scale ! See the peacocks strut under the cedars, and the 
 horsemen run, and the chariots wheel ! Hark to the 
 orchestra ! Gaze upon the dance ! Not stopping to look 
 into the wonders of the temple step right on to the 
 causeway, and pass up to Solomon's palace. 
 A VISION OF BEAUTY. 
 Here we find ourselves amid a collection of buildings 
 on which the king had lavished the wealth of many em- 
 pires. The "genius of Hiram, the architect, and of the 
 other artists is here seen in the long line of corridors, 
 and the suspended gallery, and the approach to the 
 throne; Traceried window opposite traceried window. 
 Bronzed ornaments bursting into lotus, and lily, and 
 pomegranate. Chapiters surrounded by network of 
 leaves in which imitation fruit seemed suspended as 
 in hanging baskets. Three branches — so Josephus tells 
 us— three branches sculptured on the marble, so thin 
 and subtle that even the leaves seemed to quiver. A 
 laver capable of holding 500 barrels of water on 600 
 brazen ox heads, which gushed with water and filled 
 the whole place with coolness and crystalline brightness 
 and musical splash. Ten tables chased with chariot 
 wheel, and lion, and cherubim. Solomon sat on a 
 throne of ivory. At the seating place of the throne, on 
 each end of the steps, a brazen lion. Why, my friends, 
 in that place they trimmed their candles with snuffers 
 of gold, and they cut their fruits with knives of gold, 
 and they washed their faces in basins of gold, and they 
 scooped out the ashes with shovels of gold, and they 
 stirred the altar fires with tongs of gold. Gold reflected 
 in the water ! Gold flashed from the apparel ! Gold 
 blazing in the crown ! Gold, gold, gold ! 
 
140 talmage's sermons. 
 
 Of course the news of the affluence of that place went 
 out everywhere by every caravan and by wing of every 
 ship, until soon the streets of Jerusalem are crowded 
 with curiosity -seekers. What is that long procession 
 approaching Jerusalem ? I think from the pomp of it 
 there must be royalty in the train. I smell the breath 
 of the spices which are brought as presents, and I hear 
 the shout of the drivers, and I see the dust-covered 
 caravan, showing that they come from far away. Cry 
 the news up to the palace. The queen of Sheba ad- 
 vances. Let all the people come out to see. Let the 
 mighty men of the land come out on the palace corri- 
 dors. Let Solomon come down the stairs of the palace 
 before the queen has alighted. Shake out the cinnamon 
 and the saffron, and the calamus, and the frankincense, 
 and pass it into the treasure house. Take up the dia- 
 monds until they glitter in the sun. 
 
 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 The queen of Sheba alights. She enters the palace. 
 She washes at the bath. She sits down at the banquet. 
 The cup-bearers bow. The meat smokes. The music 
 trembles in the dash of the waters from the modern sea. 
 Then she rises from the banquet, and walks through 
 the conservatories, and gazes on the architectures, 
 and she asks Solomon many strange questions, and 
 then she learns about the religion of the Hebrews, and 
 she then and there becomes a servant of the Lord God. 
 
 She is overwhelmed. She begins to think that all the 
 spices she brought, and all the precious wood which are 
 intended to be turned into harps andpsaltreies and into 
 railings for the causeway between the temple and the 
 palace, and the $1,800,000 in money-she begins to think 
 that all these presents amount to nothing in such a 
 place, and she is almost ashamed that she has brought 
 
THE HALF NOT TOLD. 141 
 
 them, and she says within herself: "I heard a great 
 deal about this place, and about this wonderful religion 
 of the Hebrews, but I find it far beyond my highest 
 anticipations. I must add more than fifty per cent to 
 what has been related. It exceeds everything that I 
 could have expected. The half, the half was not told me:" 
 WOMEN, WEALTH, RELIGION. 
 
 I learn from this subject what a beautiful thing it is 
 when social position and wealth surrender themselves 
 to God. When religion comes to a neighborhood the 
 first to receive it are the women. Some men say it is 
 because they are weak minded. I say it is because they 
 have quicker preception of what is right, more ardent 
 affection, and capacity for sublimer emotion. After the 
 women have received the gospel then all the distressed 
 and the poor of both sexes, those who have no friends, 
 except Jesus. Last of all come the greatly prospered. 
 Alas, that it is so! 
 
 If there are those who have been favored of fortune, 
 or, as I might better put it, favored of God, surrender 
 all you have and all you expect to be to the Lord who 
 blessed this queen of Sheba. Certainly you are not 
 ashamed to be found in this queen's company. I am 
 glad that Christ has had his imperial friends in all ages 
 — Elizabeth Christina, queen of Prussia; Maria Feodo- 
 rovna, queen of Russia; Maria, empress of France- 
 Helena, the imperial mother of Constantine; Arcadia, 
 from her great fortunes building public baths in Con. 
 stantinople and toiling for the alleviation of the masses; 
 Queen Clotilda, leading her husband and 3,000 of his 
 armed warriors to Christian baptism; Elizabeth of 
 Burgundy, giving her jeweled glove to a beggar, and 
 scattering great fortunes among the distressed; Prince 
 Albert, singing "Rock of ages" in Windsor castle, and 
 
142 talmage's sermons. 
 
 Queen Victoria, incognita, reading the scriptures to a 
 dying pauper. 
 
 I bless God that the day is coming when royalty will 
 bring all its thrones, and music all its harmonies, and 
 painting all its pictures, and sculpture all its statuary, 
 and architecture all its pillars, and conquest all its 
 scepters, and the queens of the earth, in long line ad- 
 vance, frankincense filling the air, and the camels laden 
 with gold, shall approach Jerusalem, and the gates shall 
 be hoisted, and the great burden of splendor shall be 
 lifted into the palace of this greater than Solomon. 
 
 EARNESTNESS IN SEARCH OF TRUTH. 
 Again, my subject teaches me what is earnestness in 
 the search of truth. Do you know where Sheba was ? 
 It was in Abyssinia, or some say in the southern part 
 of Arabia Felix. In either case it was a great way off 
 from Jerusalem. To get from there to Jerusalem she 
 had to cross a country infested with bandits and go 
 across blistering deserts. Why did not the queen of 
 Sheba stay at home and send a committee to inquire 
 about this new religion, and have the delegates report 
 in regard to that religion and wealth of King Solomon ? 
 She wanted to see for herself and hear for herself. She 
 could not do this by work of committee. She felt that 
 she had a soul worth ten thousand kingdoms like Sheba 
 and she wanted a robe richer than any woven by orien- 
 tal shuttles, and she wanted a crown set with the 
 jewels of eternity. Bring out the camels. Put on the 
 spices! Gather up the jewels of the throne and put 
 them on the caravan. Start now; no time to be lost. 
 Goad on the camels. When I see that caravan, dust- 
 covered, weary and exhausted, trudging on across the 
 desert and among the bandits until it reaches Jerusalem, 
 I say : " There is an earnest seeker after truth." 
 
EARNEST SEEKERS. 
 
 (143) 
 
144 talmage's sermons. 
 
 But there are a great many who do not act in that 
 way. They all want to get the truth, but they want 
 the truth to come to them ; they do not want to go to 
 it. There are people who fold their arms and say : "I 
 am ready to become a Christian at any time ; if I am 
 to be saved I shall be saved, and if I am to be lost I 
 shall be lost." But Jerusalem will never come to you; 
 you must go to Jerusalem. The religion of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ will not come to you ; you must go and 
 get religion. Bring out the camels ; put on all the sweet 
 spices, all the treasures of the heart's affection. Start 
 for the throne. Go in and hear the waters of salvation 
 dashing in fountains all around about the throne. Sit 
 down at the banquet — the wine pressed from the grapes 
 of the heavenly Eshcol, the angels of God the cup- 
 bearers. Goad on the camels. The bible declares it: 
 " The queen of the south " — that is, this very woman I 
 am speaking of— " the queen of the south shall rise up 
 in judgment against this generation and condemn it; 
 for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to 
 hear the wisdom of Solomon ; and behold ! a greater 
 than Solomon is here." What infatuation, the sitting 
 down in idleness expecting to be saved. " Strive to en- 
 ter in at the straight gate. Ask, and it shall be given 
 you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be 
 opened to you." Take the kingdom of heaven by vio- 
 lence. Urge on the camels ! 
 
 RELIGION A SURPRISE. 
 Again, my subject impresses me with the fact that re- 
 ligion is a surprise to any one that gets it. This story 
 of the new religion in Jerusalem and of the glory of 
 King Solomon, who was a type of Christ — that story 
 rolled on and on and was told by every traveler coming 
 back from Jerusalem. The news goes on the wing of 
 
THE HALF NOT TOLD. 145 
 
 every ship and with every caravan, and you know- a 
 story enlarges as it is retold, and by the time that story 
 gets down into the southern part of Arabia Felix and 
 the queen of Sheba hears it, it must be a tremendous 
 story. And yet this queen declares in regard to it, 
 although she had heard so much and had her anticipa- 
 tions raised so high, the half, the half was not told her. 
 
 So religion is always a surprise to any one that gets 
 it. The story of grace— an old story. Apostles preached 
 it with rattle of chain; martyrs declared it with arm 
 fire; deathbeds have affirmed it with visions of glory, 
 and ministers of religion have sounded it through the 
 lanes and the highways, and the chapels and the cathe- 
 drals. It has been cut into stone with chisel, and spread 
 on the canvas with pencil; and it has been recited in 
 the doxology of great congregations. And yet, when a 
 man first comes to loook on the palace of God's mercy, 
 and to see the royalty of Christ, and the wealth of this 
 banquet, and the luxuries of his attendants, and the 
 loveliness of his face, and the joy of his service, he ex- 
 claims with prayers, with tears, with sighs, with tri- 
 umph: ' 'The half— the half was not told me!" 
 
 I appeal to those who are Christians. Compare the 
 idea you had of the joy of the Christian life before you 
 become a Christian with the appreciation of that joy 
 you have now since you have become a Christian, and 
 you are willing to attest before angels and men that 
 you never, in the days of your spiritual bondage, had 
 any appreciation of what was t6 come. You are ready 
 today to answer and say in regard to the discoveries 
 you have made the mercy, and the grace, and the good- 
 ness of God: "The half— the half was not told me!" 
 
 Well, we hear a great deal about the good time that 
 is coming to this world when it is to be girded with 
 
146 talmage's sermons. 
 
 salvation. Holiness on the bells of the horses. The lion's 
 mane patted by the hand of a babe. Ships of Tarshish 
 bringing cargoes for Jesus, and the hard, dry, barren, 
 winter-bleached, storm-scarred, thunder-split rock 
 breaking into floods of bright water. Deserts into 
 which dromedaries thrust their nostrils, because they 
 were afraid of the simoon — deserts blooming into car- 
 nation roses and silver-tipped lillies. 
 
 It is an old story. Everybody tells it. Isaiah told it, 
 John told it, Paul told it, Ezekiel told it, Luther told it, 
 Calvin told it, John Milton told it— every-body tells it, 
 and yet — and yet when the midnight shall fly the hills, 
 and Christ shall marshall his great army, and China, 
 dashing her idols into the dust, shall hear the voice of 
 God and wheel into line, and India, destroying her Jug- 
 gernant and snatching up her little children from the 
 Ganges, shall hear the voice of God and wheel into line, 
 and vine-covered Italy, and wheat-crowned Russia, and 
 all the nations of the earth shall hear the voice of God 
 and fall into line; then the church, which has been toil, 
 ing and struggling through the centuries, robed and 
 garlanded like a bride adorned for her husband, shall 
 put aside her veil and look up into the face of the lord 
 and king and say: The half— the half was not told me. 
 
 THE FINAL WONDER! 
 Well, there is coming a greater surprise to every 
 Christian — a greater surprise than anything I have de- 
 picted. Heaven is an old story. Everybody talks about 
 it. There is hardly a hymn in the hymn-book that does 
 not refer to it. Children read about it in their Sabbath- 
 school books. Aged men put on their spectacles to 
 study it. We say it is a harbor from the storm. We 
 call it home. We say it is the house of many mansions. 
 We weave together all sweet, beautiful, delicate, exhil- 
 
THE HALF NOT TOLD. 147 
 
 arant words ; we weave them into letters, and then we 
 spell it out in rose and lily and amaranth. And yet that 
 place is going to be a surprise to the most intelligent 
 Christian. Like the queen of Sheba the report has 
 come to us from the far country, and many of us have 
 started. It is a desert march, but we urge on the 
 camels. What though our feet be blistered on the way? 
 We are hastening to the palace. We take all our loves 
 and hopes and Christian ambitions, as frankincense 
 and myrrh and cassia to the great king. We must not 
 rest. We must not halt. The night is coming on and 
 it is not safe out here in the desert. Urge on the camels. 
 I see the domes against the sky, and the houses of Leb- 
 anon, and the temples, and the gardens. See the foun- 
 tains dancing in the sun, and the gates flash as they 
 open to let in the poor pilgrim. 
 
 Send the word up to the palace that we are coming 
 and that we are weary of the march of the desert. 
 The king will come out and say: "Welcome to the 
 palace; bathe in these waters; recline on these banks. 
 Take this cinnamon, and franki'icense, and myrrh, and 
 put it upon a censer and swing it before the altar," 
 
 And yet, my friends, when heaven bursts upon us it 
 will be a greater surprise than that— Jesus on the 
 throne and we made like him ! All our Christian friends 
 surrounding us in glory ! All our sorrows, and tears, 
 and sins gone by forever ! The thousands of thousands, 
 the one hundred and forty and four thousand, the great 
 multitudes that no man can number, will cry, world 
 without end : " The half— the half was not told me!" 
 
Napoleon Witnessing the Burning op Moscow. 
 
DOWNFALL OF HIHEM. 
 
 [Delivered in Paris, Jan., 12th, 1890.] 
 "Jehosheba, the daughter of King Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took 
 Joash, the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king's sons 
 which were slain; and they hid him, even him and his nurse, in the 
 bed-chamber from Athaliah, so that he was not slain. And he was 
 with her hid in the house of the Lord six years,'' II Kings, xi., 2, 3. 
 
 A WORD TO GRANDMOTHERS. 
 c^s) RANDMOTHERS are more lenient with their 
 v rFv children's children than they were with their 
 £$8p£ own. At 40 years of age, if discipline be neces- 
 sary, chastisement is used, but at 70, the grandmother, 
 (149) 
 
150 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 
 
 looking upon the misbehavior of the grandchild, is a- 
 pologetic and disposed to substitute confectionery for 
 whip. There is nothing more beautiful than this mel- 
 lowing of old age toward childhood. Grandmother 
 takes out her pocket handkerchief and wipes her speta- 
 cles 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't do it. Grandmothers 
 are not fit to bring up grandchildren." But here, in 
 my text, we have a grandmother of a different hue, 
 
 I have within a few days been at Jerusalem, where 
 the occurrence of the text 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 in the text it is old Athaliah 
 the queenly murderess. She ought to have been honor- 
 able. 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 I 
 Kill! Kill! 
 
 A WIFE STEALS A CHILD. 
 
 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 
 
DOWNFALL OF ATHALIAH. 151 
 
 as yet escaped massacre, wraps it tip 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 
 quick 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 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 young 
 Joash to come forth and take the throne, and to push 
 back into disgrace and death old Athaliah. The ar- 
 rangements are all made for political revolution. The 
 military come and take possession of the temple, swear 
 lo3^alty to the boy Joash, and stand around for his 
 defense. See the sharpened swords and burnished 
 shields! Everything is ready. Now Joash, half affright- 
 ed 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 in his hands, the 
 the coronet of government is put on his brow, and the 
 people clapped, and waved, and huzzaed, and trumpet- 
 ed. "What is that?" said Athaliah. "What is that 
 sound over in the temple?" And she flies to see, and on 
 her way they meet her and say: "Why, haven't you 
 heard? You thought you had slain all the royalfamily, 
 but Joash has come to light." Then the queenly mur- 
 deress, frantic with rage, grabbed her mantle and tore 
 it to tatters, and cried until she foamed at the mouth: 
 "You have no right to crown my grandson. You have 
 
152 talmage's sermons. 
 
 no right to take the government from my shoulders. 
 Treason! Treason!" While she stood there crying 
 that, 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 passing the place, as they smelt 
 the place of the carnage. 
 
 RIGHTEOUSNESS CANNOT BE EXTERMINATED. 
 The first thought 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 Ath- 
 aliah was one of the latter sort. She would extermin- 
 ate the last scion of the house of David, through whom 
 Jesus was to come. There was plenty of work for em- 
 b aimers and undertakers. She would clear the land of 
 all God-fearing and God-loving people. She would put 
 an end to everything that could in anywise interfere 
 with her imperial criminality. She folds her hands and 
 says: " The work is done; it is completely done." Is 
 it ? In the swaddling clothes of that church apart- 
 ment are wrapped the cause of God, in the cause of 
 good government. That is the scion of the house of 
 David; it is Jo ash, the Christian reformer ; it is Joash, 
 the friend of God ; it is Joash, the demolisher of Baali- 
 tish idolatry. Rock him tenderly; nurse him gently. 
 Athaliah, you may kill all the other children, but you 
 cannot kill him. Eternal defences are thrown all around 
 him, and this clergyman's wife, Johosheba, will snatch 
 him up from the palace nursery, and will run up and 
 down with him into the house of the Lord, and there 
 
154 talmage's sermons. 
 
 she will hide him for six years, and at the end of that 
 time he will come forth for your dethronement and ob- 
 literation. 
 
 PERSECUTIONS ARE FUTILE. 
 
 Well, my friends, just as poor a botch does the world 
 always make of extinguishing righteousness. Super- 
 stition rises up and says : " I will just put an end to 
 pure religion." Domitian slew 40,000 Christians. Dio- 
 cletian slew 844,000 Christians. And the scythe of 
 persecution has been swung through all ages, and the 
 flames hissed, and the guillotine chopped, and the bas- 
 tile groaned ; but did the foes of Christianity extermi- 
 nate it ? Did they exterminate Alban, the first sacrifice ; 
 or Zuinglius, the Swiss reformer; or John Oldcastle, the 
 Christian nobleman ; or Abdallah, the Arabian martyr; 
 or Anne Askew, or Sanders, or Cranmer? Great work 
 of extermination they made of it. Just at the time 
 when they thought they had slain all the royal family 
 of Jesus some Joash would spring up and out and take 
 the throne of power and wield a very scepter of Chris- 
 tian dominion. 
 
 INFIDELITY FAILS TO ANNIHILATE. 
 
 Infidelity says : " I'll just exterminate the bible," and 
 the scriptures were thrown into the street for the mob 
 to trample on, and they were piled up in the public 
 squares and set on fire, and mountains of indignant 
 contempt were hurled on them, and learned universities 
 decreed the bible out of existence. Thomas Paine said : 
 " In my 'Age of Reason ' I have annihilated the script- 
 ures. Your Washington is a pusillanimous Christian, 
 but I am the foe of bibles and of churches." Oh, how 
 many assaults upon that word ! All the hostilities that 
 have ever been created on earth are not to be compared 
 
DOWNFALL OF ATHALIAH. 155 
 
 with the hostilities against that one book. Said one 
 man in his infidel desperation to his wife: ''You must 
 not be reading that bible," and he snatched it away 
 from her. And though in that bible was a lock of hair 
 of the dead child— the only child that God had ever 
 given them — he pitched the book with its contents into 
 the fire; and stirred it with the tongs and spat on it , 
 and cursed it. and said : " Susan, never have any more 
 of that damnable stuff here ! " 
 
 How many individual and organized attempts have 
 been made to exterminate that bible ! Have they done 
 it ? Have they exterminated the British and Foreign 
 Bible society ? Have they exterminated the thousands 
 of Christian institutions, whose only object is to multi- 
 ply copies of the scriptures and throw them broadcast 
 around the world ? They have exterminated until in- 
 stead of one or two copies of the bible in our homes we 
 have eight or ten, and we pile them up in the corners for 
 our Sabbath-school rooms and send great boxes of them 
 everywhere. 
 
 If they get on as well as they are now going on in the 
 work of extermination I do not know but that our 
 children may live to see the millennium ! Yea, if there 
 should come a time of persecution in which all the 
 known bibles of the earth should be destroyed, all these 
 lamps of light that blaze in our pulpits and in our fami- 
 lies extinguished. In the very day that infidelity and 
 sin should be holding a jubilee over the universal extinc- 
 tion there would be in some closet of a backwoods 
 church a secreted copy of the bible, and this Joash of 
 eternal literature would come out and come up and take 
 the throne, and the [ Athaliah of infidelity and persecu- 
 tion would fly out the back door of the palace and drop 
 her miserable carcass under the hoofs of the horses of 
 
156 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 
 
 the king's stable. You can not exterminate Christian- 
 ity ! You cannot kill Joash ! 
 
 THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR SAVING. 
 
 The second thought I hand you from my subject is, 
 that there are oportunities in which we may save royal 
 life. You know that profane history is replete with 
 stories of strangled monarchs and of young princes 
 who have been put out of the way. Here is the story 
 of a young king saved. How Jehosheba. the clergy- 
 man's wife, must have trembled as she rushed into the 
 imperial nursery and snatched up Joash. How she 
 hushed him, lest by his cry he hinder the escape. Fly 
 with him ! Jehosheba, you hold in your arms the cause 
 of God and good government. Fail, and he is slain. 
 Succeed, and you turn the tide of the world's history 
 in the right direction. It seems as if between that 
 young king and his assassins there is nothing but the 
 frail arm of a woman. But why should we spend our 
 time in praising the bravery of expedition when 
 God asks the same thing of you and me ? All around 
 us are the imperiled children of a great king. 
 
 They are born of almighty parentage and will come 
 to a throne or a crown if permitted. But sin, the old 
 Athaliah, goes forth to the massacre. Murderous 
 temptations are out for the assassination. Yalens, the 
 emperor, was told that there was somebody in his 
 realm who would usurp the throne and that the name 
 of the man who should be the usurper would begin 
 with the letters T. H. E. 0. D., and the edictwent forth 
 from the emperor's throne: "Kill everybody whose 
 name begins with T. H. E. 0. D." And hundreds and 
 thousands were slain, hoping by that massacre to put 
 an end to that one usurper. But sin is more terrific in 
 its denunciation. If matters not how you spell your 
 
158 talmage's sermons. 
 
 name, you come under its knife, under its sword, under 
 its doom, unless there be some omnipotent relief 
 brought to the rescue. But, blessed be God, there is 
 such a thing as delivering a royal soul. Who will 
 snatch away Joash ? 
 
 PERSONS IN YOUR SUNDAY SCHOOL CLASS! 
 
 This afternoon, in your Sabbath-school class, there 
 will be a prince of God — some one who may yet reign 
 as king forever before the throne; there will be some 
 one in your class who has a corrupt physical inheritance; 
 there will be some one in your class who has a father 
 and mother who do not know how to pray; there will 
 be some one in your class who is destined to command 
 in church or state — some Cromwell to dissolve a parlia- 
 ment, some Beethoven to touch the world's harp-strings, 
 some John Howard to pour fresh air into the lazaretto, 
 some Florence Nightengale to bandage the battle 
 wounds, some Miss Dix to soothe the crazed 
 brain, some John Frederick Oberlin to educate the 
 besotted, some David Brainard to change the Indian's 
 war-whoop to a Sabbath song, some John Wesley to 
 marshall threefourths of Christendom, some John Knox 
 to make queens turn pale, some Joash to demolish idol- 
 atry and strike for the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 There are sleeping in your cradles by night, there are 
 playing in your nurseries by day, imperial souls wait- 
 ing for dominion, and whichever side the cradle they 
 get out will decide the destiny of empires. For each 
 one of those children sin and holiness counted— Athaliah 
 on one side and Jehosheba on the other. But I hear 
 people say; " What's the use of bothering children 
 with religious instruction? Let them grow up and 
 choose for themselves." Suppose some one had said to 
 Jehosheba: "Don't interfere with that young Joash 
 
DOWNFALL OF ATHALIAH. 159 
 
 Let him grow up and decide whether he likes the palace 
 or not, whether he wants to be king or not. Don't dis- 
 turb his volition." Jehosheba knew right well that 
 unless that day the young king was rescued he would 
 not be rescued at all. 
 
 I tell you, my friends, the reason we don't reclaim all 
 our children from worldliness is because we begin too 
 late. Parents wait until their children lie before they 
 teach them the value of truth. They wait until their 
 children swear before they teach them the importance 
 of righteous conversation. They wait until their chil- 
 dren are all wrapped up in this world before they tell 
 them of a better world. Too late with your prayers. 
 Too late with your discipline. Too late with your ben- 
 ediction. You put all care upon your children between 
 12 and 18. Why do you not put the chief care between 
 4 and 9? It is too late to repair a vessel when it has 
 got out of the dry-dock! It is too late to save Joash 
 after the executioners have broken in. May God arm 
 us all for this work of snatching royal souls from death 
 to coronation. 
 
 HOW PHOCUS DUG HIS GRAVE AND DIED. ! 
 
 Can you imagine any sublimer work than this soul- 
 saving? That was what flushed Paul's cheek with en- 
 thusiasm; that was what led Munson to risk his life 
 amid Bornesian cannibals; that was what sent Dr. 
 Abeel to preach under the consuming skies of China; 
 that was what gave courage to Phocus in the third 
 century. When the military officers came to put him to 
 death for Christ's sake he put them to bed that they 
 might rest while he himself went out and in his own 
 garden dug his grave and then came back and said: 
 ' 'I am ready." But they were shocked at the idea of 
 taking the life of their host. He said: "It is the will 
 
160 talmage's sermons. 
 
 of God that I should die," and he stood on the margin 
 of his own grave and they beheaded him. You say it 
 is a mania, a foolhardiness, a fanaticism. Rather 
 would I call it a glorious self-abnegation, the thrill of 
 eternal satisfaction, the plucking of Joash from death. 
 and raising him to coronation. 
 
 THE CHURCH IS A GOOD HIDING PLACE. 
 
 The third thought I hand to you from my text is 
 that the church of God is a good hiding-place. When 
 Jehosheba rushes into the nursery of the king and picks 
 up Joash what shall she do with him? Shall she take 
 him to some room in the palace? No; for the official 
 desperadoes will hunt through every nook and corner 
 of that building. Shall she take him to the residence 
 of some wealthy citizen? No; that citizen would not 
 dare to harbor the fugitive. But she has to take him 
 somewhere. She hears the cry of the mob in the streets; 
 she hears the shriek of the dying nobility; so she rushes 
 with Joash into the room of the temple, into the house 
 of God, and then she puts him down. She knows that 
 Athaliah and her wicked assassins will not bother the 
 temple a great deal; they are not apt to go very much 
 to church, and so she sets down Joash in the temple. 
 There he will be hearing the songs of the worshipers 
 year after year; there he will breathe the odor of the 
 golden censers; in that sacred spot he will tarry, secret- 
 ed until the six years have passed and he come to en- 
 thronement. 
 
 Would to God we were as wise as Jehosheba, and 
 knew that the church of God is the best hiding-place. 
 Perhaps our parents took us there in early da3^s; they 
 snatched us away from the world and hide us behind 
 the baptismal fonts and amid the bibles and the psalm 
 books. O glorious inclosure! We have been breathing 
 
162 talmage's sermons. 
 
 the breath of the golden censers all the time, and we 
 have seen the lamb on the altar, and we have handled 
 the phials which are the prayers of all saints, and we 
 have dwelt under the wings of the cherubim. Glorious 
 inclosure! When my father and my mother died, and 
 the property was settled up, there was hardly anything 
 left; but they endowed us with a property worth more 
 than any earthly possession, because they hid us in the 
 temple. And when days of temptation have come upon 
 my soul I have gone there for shelter; and when assault- 
 ed of sorrows I have gone there for comfort, and there 
 I mean to live. I want, like Joash, to stay there until 
 coronation. I mean to be buried out of the house of God . 
 
 Oh, men of the world outside there, betrayed, cari- 
 catured, and cheated of the world, why do you not come 
 in through the broad, wide-open door of Christian com- 
 munion? I wish I could act the part of Jehosheba to- 
 day, and steal you away from your perils and hide you 
 in the temple. How few of us appreciate the fact that 
 the church of God is a hiding-place. There are many 
 people who put the church at so low a mark that they 
 begrudge it everything, even the few dollars they give 
 toward it. They make no sacrifices. They dole a little 
 out of their surplusage. They pay their butcher's bill, 
 and they pay their doctor's bill, and they pay their 
 landlord, and they pay everybody but the lord, and 
 they come in at the last to pay the Lord in his church, 
 and frown as they say: " There, Lord, it is if you will 
 have it, take it— now take it, take it; send me a receipt 
 in full, and don't bother me soon again!" 
 
 I tell you there is not more than one man out of a 
 thousand who appreciates what the church is. Where 
 are the souls that put aside one-tenth for Christian in- 
 stitutions — one-tenth of their incomes? Where are those 
 
DOWNFALL OF ATHALIAH. 163 
 
 who, having put aside that one-tenth, draw upon it 
 cheerfully? Why, it is to pull, and drag, and hold on, 
 and grab, and clutch; and giving is an affliction to 
 most people when it ought to be an exhilaration and a 
 rapture. Oh, that God would remodel our souls on this 
 subject and that we might appreciate the house of God 
 as a great refuge. If your children are to come up to 
 lives of virtue and happiness they will come up under 
 the shade of the church. If the church does not get them 
 the world will. 
 
 SAVE YOUR CHILDREN. 
 Ah, when you pass away — and it will not be long be- 
 fore you do — when you pass away it will be a satis- 
 faction to see your children in Christian society. You 
 want to have them sitting at the holy sacraments. 
 You want them mingling in Christian associations- 
 You would like to have them die in the sacred precints. 
 When you are on your dying bed, and your little ones 
 come up to take your last word, and you look into 
 their bewildered faces, you will want to leave them un- 
 der the church's benediction. I don't care how hard 
 you are, that is so. I said to a man of the world: 
 "Your son and daughter are going to join our church 
 nextSunday. Have you any objections?" "Blessyou," 
 he said, "objections? I wish all my children belonged 
 to the church. I don't attend to those matters my- 
 self— I am very wicked — but I am very glad they are 
 going, and I shall be there to see them. I am very glad, 
 sir; I am very glad. I want them there." And so, 
 though you may have been wanderers from God, and 
 though you may have sometimes caricatured the church 
 of Jesus, it is your great desire that your sons and 
 daughters should be standing all their lives within this 
 sacred inclosure. 
 
164 talmage's sermons. 
 
 More than that, you yourself will want the church 
 for a hiding place when the mortgage is foreclosed; 
 when your daughter, just blooming into womanhood, 
 suddenly clasps her hands in a slumber that knows no 
 waking; when gaunt trouble walks through the par. 
 lor, and the sitting-room, and the dining-hall, and the 
 nursery, you will want some shelter from the tempest. 
 Ah, some of you have been run upon by misfortune and 
 trial; why do you not come into the shelter? I said to 
 a widowed mother after she had buried her only son — 
 months after I said to her: "How do you get along 
 nowadays?" "Oh," she replied, "I get along tolera- 
 ble well except when the sun shines." I said: "What 
 do you mean by that?" She said: "I can't bear to see 
 the sun shine; my heart is so dark that all the bright- 
 ness of the natural world seems a mockery to me." Oh, 
 darkened soul, oh, broken-hearted man, broken-hearted 
 woman, why do you not come into the shelter? I swing 
 the door wide open. I swing it from wall to wall. 
 Come in! Come in! You want a place where yonr trou- 
 bles shall be interpreted, where your burdens shall be 
 unstrapped, where your tears shall be wiped away. 
 
 Church of God, be a hiding place to all these people. 
 Give them a seat where they can rest their weary souls. 
 Flash some light from your chandeliers upon their dark- 
 less. With some soothing hymn hush their griefs. 
 Oh, church of God, gate of heaven, let me go through 
 it! All other institutions are going to fail; but the 
 church of God— its foundation is the "Rock of Ages," 
 its charter is for everlasting years, its keys are held by 
 the universal proprietor, its dividend is heaven, its 
 president is God! 
 
 "Sure as thy truth shall last, 
 
 To Zion shall be given 
 The brghtest glories earth can yield, 
 
DOWNFALL OF ATHALIAH. 
 
 165 
 
 And brighter bliss of heaven." 
 God grant that all this audience, the youngest, the 
 eldest, the worst, the best, may find their safe and glori- 
 ous hiding place where Jo ash found it— in the temple! 
 
ABRAHAM OEFEEING HIS SON ISAAC. 
 
 (166) 
 
IN LONDON. 
 
 SflLYflTIOHBY FAITH. 
 
 [Delivered in London, England, Jan., 19th., 1890.] 
 "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thoushalt besaved". Acts, 
 xvi, 31. 
 
 STANDING IN THE PHILIPPIAN DUNGEON ! 
 
 AILS are dark, dull, damp, loathsome places even 
 now, but they were worse in the apostolic times. 
 
 I imagine today we are standing in the Philippian 
 dungeon. Do 3^ ou not feel the chill ? Do you not hear 
 the groan of those incarcerated ones who for ten years 
 have not seen the sunlight and the deep sigh of women 
 who remember their father's house and mourn over 
 their wasted estates? Listen again. It is the cough of 
 (167) 
 
168 talmage's sermons. 
 
 a consumptive or the struggle of one in a nightmare of 
 a great horror. You listen again and hear a culprit, 
 his chains rattling as he rolls over in his dreams, and 
 you say : "God pity the prisoner." But there is an 
 other sound in that prison. It is a song of gladness. 
 What a place to sing in ! The music comes winding 
 through the corridors of the prison, and in all the dark 
 wards the whisper is heard: "What's that? What's 
 that ? ,' It is the song of Paul and Silas. They cannot 
 sleep. They have been whipped, very badly whipped. 
 The long gashes on their backs are bleeding yet. They 
 lie flat on the cold ground, their feet fast in wooden 
 sockets; and of course they can not sleep. But they 
 can sing. 
 
 Jailer, what are you doing with these people ? Why 
 have they been put in here ? 
 
 Oh, they have been trying to make the world better. 
 
 Is that all? 
 
 That is all. 
 
 A pit for Joseph. 
 
 A lion's cave for Daniel. A blazing furnace for Shad- 
 rach. Clubs for John Wesley. An anathema for Philip 
 Melanchton. A dungeon for Paul and Silas. 
 
 But while we are standing in the gloom of the Phil- 
 ippian dungeon, and we hear the mingling voices of 
 sob, and groan, and blasphemy, and hallelujah, sud- 
 denly an earthquake ! The iron bars of the prison twist, 
 the pillars crack off, the solid masonry begins to heave 
 and rock till all the doors swing open, and the walls 
 fall with a terrific crash. The jailer, feeling himself re 
 sponsible for these prisoners! and feeling suicide to be 
 honorable — since Brutus killed himself, and Cato killed 
 himself, and Cassius killed himself— puts his sword to 
 his own heart, proposing with one strong, keen thrust 
 
SALVATION BY FAITH. IbU 
 
 to put an end to his excitement and agitation. But 
 Paul cries out: "Stop! stop! Do thyself no harm, 
 we are all here." Then I see the jailer running through 
 the dust and amid the ruin of that prison, and I see 
 him throwing himself down at the feet of these prison- 
 ers, crying out : " What shall I do ? What shall I do?' 
 Then Paul answers: "Get out of this place before 
 there is another earthquake; put handcuffs and hob- 
 bles on these other prisoners lest they get away." No 
 word of that kind. Compact, thrilling, tremendous 
 answer; answer memorable all through earth and 
 heaven: " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou 
 shalt be saved." 
 
 THE CRASH OF EARTHQUAKES. 
 Well, we have all read of the earthquake in Lisbon, in 
 Lima, in Aleppo, and in Caraccas, but we live in a lati- 
 tude where in all our memory there has not been one 
 severe volcanic disturbance. And yet we have seen 
 fifty earthquakes. Here is a man who has been build- 
 ing up a large fortune. His bid on the money market 
 was felt in all the cities. He thinks he has got beyond 
 all annoying rivalries in trade and he says to himself: 
 "Now I am free and safe from all possible perturba- 
 tion." But a national panic strikes the foundations of 
 the commercial world and crash ! goes all the magnifi- 
 cent business establishment. He is a man who has built, 
 up a very beautiful home. His daughters have just come 
 home from the seminary with diplomas of graduation. 
 His sons have started in life, honest, temperate, and 
 pure. When the evening lights are struck there is a 
 happy and an unbroken family circle. But there has 
 been an accident down at the beach. The young man 
 ventured too far out in the surf. The telegraph hurled 
 the terror up to the city. An earthquake struck under 
 
170 talmage's sermons. 
 
 the foundation of that beautiful home. The piano 
 closed; the curtains dropped; the laughter hushed. 
 Crash ! go all those domestic hopes and prospects and 
 expectations. So, my friends, we have all felt the 
 shaking down of some great trouble, and there was a 
 time when we were as much excited as this man of the 
 text, and we cried out as he did: "What shall I do? 
 What shall I do?" The same reply that the apostle 
 made to him is appropriate to us: "Believe on the 
 Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved ? " 
 THE SAVIORS NAME. 
 There are some documents of so little importance that 
 you do not care to put any more than your last name 
 under them, or even your initials, but there are some 
 documents of so great importance that you write out 
 your full name. So the Savior in some parts of the 
 bible is called " Lord," and in other parts of the bible 
 he is called "Jesus," and in other parts of the bible he is 
 called "Christ," but that there might be no mistake 
 about this passage all three names come in together — 
 the " Lord Jesus Christ." Now, who is this being that 
 you want me to trust in and believe in ? Men some- 
 times come to me with credentials and certificates of 
 good character ; but I can not trust them. There is 
 some dishonesty in their looks that makes me know I 
 shall be cheated if I confide in them. You cannot put 
 your heart's confidence in a man until you know what 
 stuff he is made of, and am I reasonable this morning 
 when I stop to ask you who this is that you want me 
 to trust in ? No man would think of venturing his 
 life on a vessel going out to sea that had never been in- 
 spected. No, you must have the certificate hung amid- 
 ships, telling how many tons it carries, and how long 
 ago it was built, and who built it, and all about it. 
 
SALVATION BY FAITH. 171 
 
 And you can not expect me to risk the cargo of my im- 
 mortal interests on board any craft till you tell me 
 what it is made of, and where it was made, and what 
 it is. 
 
 When, then, I ask you who this is you want me to 
 trust in, you tell me he is a very attractive person. 
 You tell me that the contemporary writers describe 
 him, and they give the color of his eyes, and the color 
 of his hair, and they describe his whole appearance as 
 being resplendent. Christ did not tell the children to 
 come to him. " Suffer little children to come unto me " 
 was not spoken to the children ; it was spoken to the 
 Pharisees. The children had come without any invita- 
 tion. No sooner did Jesus appear than the little ones 
 pitched from their mothers' arms, an avalanche of 
 beauty and love, into his lap. " Suffer little children to 
 come unto me." That was addressed to the Pharisees ; 
 not to the children. Christ did not ask John to put his 
 head down on his bosom ; John could not help but put 
 his head there. Such eyes, such cheeks, such a chin, 
 such hair, such physical condition and appearance — 
 why, it must have been completely captivating and 
 winsome. I suppose a look at him was just to love 
 him. Oh! how attractive his manner. Why, when 
 the}' saw Christ coming along the street they ran into 
 their houses, and they wrapped up their invalids as 
 quick as they could, and brought them out that he 
 might look at them. Oh! there was something so 
 pleasant, so inviting, so cheering in everything he did, 
 in his very look. When these sick ones were brought 
 out did he say: "Take away these sores; do not 
 trouble me with these leprosies ? " No, no ; there was a 
 kind look, there was a gentle word, there was a healing 
 touch. They could not keep away from him. 
 
172 talmage's sermons. 
 
 In addition to this softness of character, there was a 
 fiery momentum. How the old hypocrites trembled be- 
 fore him. How the kings of the earth turned pale. 
 Here is a plain man, with a few sailors at his back, 
 coming off the sea of Galilee, going up to the palace of 
 the Caesars, making that palace quake to the found- 
 ations, and uttering a word of mercy and kindness 
 which throbs through all the earth, and through all 
 the heavens, and through all the ages. Oh! he was a 
 loving Christ. But it was not effeminacy or insipidity 
 of character; it was accompanied with majesty, infinite 
 and omnipotent. 
 
 THE WONDROUS DEATH. 
 
 Lest the world should not realize his earnestness, 
 this Christ mounts the cross. You say: i 'If Christ has 
 to die, why not let him take some deadly potion and 
 lie on a couch in some bright and beautiful home? If 
 he must die, let him expire amid all kindly attentions." 
 No, the world must hear the hammers on the heads of 
 the spikes. The world must listen to the death-rattle of 
 the sufferer. The world must feel his warm blood drop- 
 ping on each cheek, while it looks up into the face of his 
 anguish. And so the cross must be lifted and the hole is 
 dug on the top of Calvary. It must be dug three feet 
 deep, and then the cross is laid on the ground, and the 
 sufferer is stretched upon it, and the nails are pounded 
 through nerve, and muscle, and bone, through the right 
 hand, through the left hand, and then they shake his 
 right hand to see if it is fast and then they shake his 
 left foot to see if it is fast, and then they heave up the 
 wood, half a dozen shoulders under the weight, and 
 they put the end of the cross to the mouth of the hole, 
 and they plunge it in, all the weight of his body coming 
 down for the first time on the spikes, and while some 
 
SAYATION BY FATTH. 173 
 
 hold the cross upright others throw in the dirt and 
 trample it down, and trample it hard. Oh, plant that 
 tree well and thoroughly, for it is to bear fruit such as 
 no other tree ever bore. Why did Christ endure it? 
 He could have taken those rocks and with them crushed 
 his crucifiers. He could have reached up and grasped 
 the sword of the omnipotent God and with one clean 
 cut have tumbled them into perdition. But no; he was 
 to die. He must die. His life for my life. His life for 
 your life. 
 
 A STORY OP A TOUNG MAN. 
 
 In one of the European cities a young man died on 
 the scaffold for the crime of murder. Some time after 
 the mother of this young man was dying and the priest 
 came in, and she made a confession to the priest that 
 she was the murderer, and not her son; in a moment of 
 anger she had struck her husband a blow that slew 
 him. The son came suddenly into the room and was 
 washing away the wounds and trying to resuscitate 
 his father when some one looked through the window 
 and saw him and supposed him to be the criminal. 
 That young man died for his own mother. You say: 
 ''It was wonderful that he never exposed her." But I 
 tell you of a grander thing. Christ, the son of God> 
 died, not for his mother, not for his father, but for his 
 sworn enemies. Oh, such a Christ as that— so loving, 
 so self-sacrificing — can you not trust him? 
 HOW TO TRUST CHRIST. 
 
 I think there are many under the spirit of God who 
 are saying : "I will trust him if he will only tell me 
 how," and the great question asked by thousands in 
 this assemblage is: "How? How?" And while I 
 answer your question I look up and utter the prayer 
 
174 talmage's sermons. 
 
 which Rowland Hill §o often uttered in the midst of his 
 sermons: " Master, help! " How are you to trust in 
 Christ ? Just as you trust any one. You trust your 
 partner in business with important things. If a com- 
 mercial house give you a note payable three months 
 hence you expect the payment of that note at the end 
 of three months. You have perfect confidence in their 
 word and in their ability. You go home to-day. You 
 expect there will be food on the table. You have confi- 
 dence in that. Now, I ask you to have the same confi- 
 dence in the Lord Jesus Christ. He says: "You be- 
 lieve; I take away your sins," and they are all taken 
 away. "What! " you say, "before I pray anymore? 
 Before I read my bible any more? Before I cry over 
 my sins any more?" Yes, this moment. Believe with 
 all your heart and you are saved. 
 
 Why, Christ is only waiting to get from you what 
 you give to scores of people every day. What is that? 
 Confidence. If these people whom you trust day by 
 day are more worthy than Christ, if they are more faith- 
 ful than Christ, if they have done more than Christ 
 ever did, then give them the preference ; but if you really 
 think that Christ is as trustworthy as they are, then 
 deal with him as fairly. "Oh!" says some one in a 
 light way, "I believe that Christ was born in Bethle- 
 hem, and I believe that he died on the cross." Do you 
 believe it with your head or your heart? 
 SAYING FAITH. 
 
 I will illustrate the difference. You are in your own 
 house. In the morning you open a newspaper, and you 
 read how Capt. Braveheart on the sea risked his life for 
 the salvation of his passengers. You say: "What a 
 grand fellow he must have been ! His family deserves 
 very well of the country." You fold the newspaper and 
 
SALVATION BY FAITH. 175 
 
 sit down at the table, and perhaps do not think of that 
 incident again. That is historical faith. But now you 
 are on the sea, and it is night, and you are asleep, and 
 are awakened by the shriek of " Fire ! '? You rush out 
 on the deck. You hear, amid the wringing of the 
 hands the fainting, the cries : " No hope ! We are lost ! 
 we are lost ! " The sail puts out its wings of fire, the 
 ropes make a burning ladder in the night heavens, the 
 spirit of wreck hisses in the waves, and on the hurri- 
 cane deck shakes out its banner of smoke and darkness. 
 " Down with the life boats ! " cries the captain. " Down 
 with the life boats!/ People rush into them. The 
 boats are about full. Room only for one more man. 
 You are standing on the deck beside the captain. Who 
 shall it be ? You or the captain ? The captain says : 
 "You." You jump and are saved. He stands there 
 and dies. Now, you believe Capt. Braveheart sacri- 
 ficed himself for his passengers, but you believe it with 
 love, with tears, with hot and long continued exclama- 
 tions, with grief at his loss and with joy at your de- 
 liverance. That is saving faith. In other words, what 
 you believe with all the heart, and believe in regard to 
 yourself. On this hinge turns my sermon ; aye, the sal- 
 vation of your immortal soul. 
 
 You often go across a bridge you know nothing 
 about. You do not know who built the bridge, you do 
 not know what material it is made of, but you come to 
 it, and walk over it, and ask no questions. And here is 
 an arched bridge, blasted from the "Rock of Ages" 
 and built by the architect of the whole universe, span- 
 ning the dark gulf between sin and righteousness, and 
 all God asks you is to walk across it, and you start, 
 and you come to it, and you go a little way on, and 
 you stop, and you fall back, and you experiment. You 
 
176 talmage's sermons. 
 
 say : " How do I know that bridge will hold me ? " in- 
 stead of marching on with firm step, asking no ques- 
 tions, but feeling that the strength of the eternal God 
 is under you. 
 
 Oh, was there ever a prize offered so cheap as pardon 
 and heaven are offered to you ? For how much ? A 
 million dollars? It is certainly worth more than that. 
 But cheaper than that you can have it. Ten thousand 
 dollars? Less than that. Five thousand dollars? 
 Less than that. One dollar? Less than that. One 
 farthing? Less than that. "Without money and 
 without price." No money to pay. No journey to 
 take. No penance to suffer. Only just one decisive ac- 
 tion of the soul : " Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and 
 thou shaltbe saved." 
 
 A HAPPY LIFE. 
 Shall I try to tell you what it is to be saved ? I can 
 not tell you. No man, no angel, can tell you. But I 
 can hint at it. For my text brings me up to this point: 
 "Thoushalt be saved." It means a happy life here, 
 and a peaceful death and a blissful eternity. It is a 
 grand thing to go to sleep at night, and to get up in 
 the morning, and to do business all day, feeling that all 
 is right between my heart and God. No accident, no 
 sickness,, no persecution, no peril, no sword can do me 
 any permanent damage. I am a forgiven child of God, 
 and he is bound to see me through. He has sworn he 
 will see me through. The mountains may depart, the 
 earth may burn, the light of the stars may be blown 
 out by the blast of the judgment hurricane, but life and 
 death, things present and things to come are mine. 
 
 A PEACEFUL DEATH. 
 Yea, farther than that— it means a peaceful death. 
 
SALVATION BY FAITH. 177 
 
 Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Sigourney, Dr. Young, and almost 
 all the poets have said handsome things about death. 
 There is nothing beautiful about it. When we standby 
 the white and rigid features of those whom we love 
 and they give no answering pressure of the hand and 
 no returning kiss of the lip, we do not want anybody 
 poetizing around about us. Death is loathsomeness 
 and midnight and the wringing of the heart until the 
 tendrils snap and curl in the torture unless Christ be 
 with us. I confess to you of an infinite fear, a consum- 
 ing horror of death unless Christ shall be with me. I 
 would rather go down into a cave of wild beasts or a 
 jungle of reptiles tlmn into the grave unless Christ goes 
 with me. Will you tell me that I am to be carried out 
 from my bright home and put away in the darkness ? 
 I cannot bear darkness. At the first coming of the 
 evening I must have the gas lit, and the further on in 
 life I get the more I like to have my friends around me. 
 And am I to be put off for thousands of years in a 
 dark place, with no one to speak to ? When the holi- 
 days come and the gifts are distributed shall I add no 
 joy to the "Merry Christmas " or the " Happy New 
 Year?" Ah, do not point down to the hole in the 
 ground, the grave, and call it a beautiful place; un- 
 less there be some supernatural illumination. I shud- 
 der back from it. My whole nature revolts at it. 
 
 But now this glorious lamp is lifted above the grave 
 and all the darkness is gone and the way is clear. I 
 look into it now without a single shudder. Now my 
 anxiety is not about death; my anxiety is that I may 
 live aright, for I know that if my life is consistent when 
 I come to the last hour, and this voice is silent, and 
 these eyes are closed, and these hands with which I beg 
 for your eternal salvation to-day are folded over the 
 
178 talmage's sermons. 
 
 still heart, that then I shall only begin to live. What 
 power is there in anything to chill me in the last hour 
 if Christ wraps around me the skirt of his own gar- 
 ment? What darkness can fall upon my eyelids then, 
 amid the heavenly daybreak? O death, I will not fear 
 thee then! Back to thy cavern of darkness, thou rob- 
 ber of all the earth. Fly, thou despoiler of families. 
 With this battle-ax I hew thee in twain from helmet to 
 sandal, the voice of Christ sounding all over the earth, 
 and through the heavens : ' ' death , I will be thy plague. 
 
 grave, I will be thy destruction." 
 
 A BLISSFUL ETERNITY. 
 To be saved is to wake up in the presence of Christ. 
 You know when Jesus was on earth how happy he made 
 every house he went into, and when he brings us up to 
 his house how great our glee. His voice has more music 
 in it than is to be heard in all the oratorios of eternity. 
 Talk not about banks dasked with efflorescence. Jesus 
 is the chief bloom of heaven. We shall see the very face 
 that beamed sympathy in Bethany and take the very 
 hand that dropped its blood from the short beam of the 
 the cross. Oh, I want to stand in eternity with him. 
 Toward that harbor I steer. Toward that goal I run. 
 
 1 shall be satisfied when I awake in his likeness. Oh, 
 broken-hearted men and women, how sweet it will be 
 in that good land to pour all your hardships, and be- 
 reavements and losses, into the loving ear of Christ, 
 and then have him explain why it was best for you to 
 be sick, and why it was best for you to be widowed, 
 and why it was best for you to be persecuted, and why 
 it was best for you to be tried, and have him point to 
 an elevation proportionate to your disquietude here, 
 saying: "You suffered with me on earth, come up now 
 and be glorified with me in heaven." 
 
SALVATION BY FAITH. 179 
 
 A MOTHERS STORY. 
 
 Some one went into a house where there had been a 
 good deal of trouble and said to the woman there: 
 "You seem to be lonely. " "Yes," she said, "I am lone- 
 ly." "How many in family?" "Only myself." "Have 
 you had any children?" "I had seven children." "Where 
 are they?" "Gone." "All gone?" "All." "All dead?" 
 Then she breathed a long sigh into the loneliness, and 
 said: "Oh, sir, Ihave been a good mother to the grave." 
 And so there are hearts here that are utterly broken 
 down by the bereavements of life. I point you today 
 to the eternal balm of heaven. Are there any here that 
 I am missing this morning? Ohyougoodwaiting-maid! 
 your heart's sorrow poured in no human ear, lonely 
 and sad! how glad you will be when Christ shall dis- 
 band all your sorrows and crown you queen unto God 
 and the lamb forever! O aged men and women, fed b} T 
 his love and warmed by his grace for three-score years 
 and ten! will not your decrepitude change for the leap 
 of a hart when you come to look face to face upon 
 him whom, having not seen, you love? Oh, that will 
 be the good shepherd, not out in the night and watch- 
 ing to keep off the wolves > but with the lambs reclining 
 on the sunlit hill! That will be the captain of our sal- 
 vation, not amid the roar, and crash, and boom of bat- 
 tle, but amid the disbanded troop keeping victorious 
 festivity. That will be the bridegroom of the church 
 coming from the altar, the bride leaning upon his arm 
 while he looks down into her face and says: "Behold, 
 thou art fair, my love! Behold, thou art fair!" 
 
;; ';■:■?:. :;;;:'.: '.;, . .;: , ' : 
 
IN QUEENSTOWN, IRELAND. 
 
 ""For of siieh in the Kingdom of Heaven.'' 
 
 THE NME OF JESUS. 
 
 [Delivered at Queenstown, Ireland, Jan., 29th, 1890.] 
 4i A name which is above every name." Philippians, ii, 9. 
 
 A GOOD NAME. 
 
 MY way from the Holy land, and while I wait 
 for the steamer to resume her voyage to America, 
 S^e> I preach to you from this text, which was one of 
 Paul's rapturous and enthusiastic descriptions of the 
 name of Jesus. By common proverb we have come to 
 believe that there is nothing in a name, and so parents 
 sometimes present their children for baptism regardless 
 of the title given them, and not thinking that that partic- 
 ular title will be either a hindrance or a help. Strange 
 (181) 
 
182 talmage's sermons. 
 
 mistake. You have no right to give to your child a 
 name that is lacking either in euphony or in moral 
 meaning. It is a sin for you to call your child Jehoia- 
 kims or Tiglath-Pileser. Because you yourself ma}' 
 have an exasperating name is no reason why you should 
 give it to those who come after you. But how often 
 we have seen some name, filled with jargon, rattling 
 down from generation to generation, simply because 
 some one a long while ago happened to be afflicted with 
 it Institutions and enterprises have sometimes with- 
 out sufficient deliberation taken their nomenclature. 
 Mighty destinies have been decided by the significance 
 of a name. There are men who all their life long toil 
 and tussle to get over the influence of some unfortunate 
 name. While we may, through right behavior and 
 Christian demeanor, outlive the fact that we were bap- 
 tized by the name of a despot, or an infidel, or a cheat, 
 how much better it would have been if we all could 
 have started life without any such incumbrance. When 
 I find the apostle, in my text and in other parts of his 
 writing, breaking out in dsecriptions of admiration in 
 regard to the name of Jesus, I want to inquire what 
 are some of the characteristics of that appellation. And 
 that the Saviour himself, while I speak, might fill me 
 with his own presence, for we never can tell to others 
 that which we have not ourselves felt. 
 
 AN EASY NAME. * 
 First, this name of Jesus is an easy name. Sometimes 
 we are introduced to people whose name is so long and 
 unpronounceable that we have sharply to listen, and 
 to hear the name given to us two or three times, be- 
 fore we venture to speak it. But within the first two 
 years the little child clasps its hands, and looks up, and 
 says "Jesus." Can it be, amid all the families represent- 
 
THE NAME OF JESUS. 183 
 
 ed here today, there is one household where the little 
 ones speak of "father," and "mother," and "brother," 
 and "sister," and not of "the name which is above every 
 name?" Sometimes we forget the titles of our best 
 friends, and we have to pause and think before we can 
 recall the name. But can you imagine any freak of 
 intellect in which 3 t ou could forget the Saviour's desig- 
 nation? That word "Jesus" seems to fit the tongue in 
 every dialect. When the voice in old age gets feeble 
 and tremulous, and indistinct, still this regal word 
 has potent utterance. 
 
 Jesus, I love Tlry charming name, 
 
 Tis music to my ear; 
 Fain would I sound it out so loud 
 
 That heaven and earth might hear. 
 
 A BEAUTIFUL NAME. 
 
 Still further, I remark it is a beautiful name. You 
 have noticed that it is impossible to disassociate a name 
 from the person who has the name. So there are names 
 that are to me repulsive — I do not want to hear them 
 at all — while those very names are attractive to you. 
 Why the difference? It is because I happen to know 
 persons by those names who are cross, and sour, and 
 snappish, and queer, while the persons you used to 
 know by those names were pleasant and attractive. 
 As we cannot dissociate a name from the person who 
 holds the name, that consideration makes Christ's name 
 so unspeakably beautiful. No sooner is it pronounced 
 in your presence than you think of Bethlehem, and 
 Gethsemane, and Golgotha, and you see the loving face, 
 and hear the tender voice, and feel the gentle touch. 
 You see Jesus, the one who, though banquetting with 
 heavenly hierarches, came down to breakfast on the 
 fish that rough men had just hauled out of Genessaret; 
 
184 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 
 
 Jesus, the one who, though the clouds are the dust of 
 his feet, walked footsore on to the road to Emmaus. 
 
 Just as soon as that name is pronounced in your 
 presence you think of how the shining one gave back 
 the centurion's daughter, and how he helped the blind 
 man to the sunlight, and how he made the cripple's 
 crutches useless, and how he looked down into the 
 babe's laughing eyes, and, as the little one struggled to 
 go to him, flung out his arms around it, and impressed 
 a loving kiss on its brow, and said: "Ofsuchisthe 
 kingdom of heaven." Beautiful name— Jesus! It stands 
 for love, for patience, for kindness, for forbearance, for 
 self sacrifice, for magnanimity. It is aromatic with all 
 odors and accordant with all harmonies. Sometimes 
 I see that name, and the letters seem to be made out of 
 tears, and then again they look like gleaming crowns. 
 Sometimes they seem to as though twisted out of the 
 straw on which he lay, and then as though built out 
 of the thrones on which his people shall reign. Some- 
 times I sound that word " Jesus," and I hear coming 
 through the two syllables the sigh of Gethsemane and 
 the groan of Calvary; and again I sound it, and it is 
 all a-ripple with gladness and a-ring with hosanna. 
 Take all the glories of book bindery and put them 
 around the page where that name is printed. On Christ- 
 mas morning wreathe it on the wall. 
 
 Let it drip from the harp's strings and thunder out in 
 organ's diapasom. Sound it often, sound it well, until 
 every star shall seem to shine it, and every flower shall 
 seem to breathe it, and mountain and sea, and day and 
 night, and earth and heaven acclaim in full chant: 
 "Blessed be his glorious name forever; The name that 
 is above every mame." 
 
 Jesus, the name high over all, 
 In heaven and earth and skv. 
 
186 talmage's sermons. 
 
 To the repenting soul, to the exhausted invalid, to the 
 to the Sunday school girl, to the snow white octogen- 
 arian, it is beautiful. The old man comes in from a 
 long walk, and tremblingly opens the door, and hangs 
 his hat on the old nail, and sets his cane in the usual 
 corner, and lies down on a couch, and says to his chil- 
 dren and grandchildren: "My dears, I am going to 
 leave you," They say: "Why, where are you going, 
 grandfather?" "I am going to Jesus." And so the 
 old man faints away into heaven. The little child 
 comes in from play and throws herself on your lap, and 
 says; "Mamma, I am so sick, I am so sick." And you 
 put her to bed, and the fever is worse and worse, until 
 in some midnight she looks up into your face and says; 
 "Mamma, kiss me good-by, I am going away from you." 
 And you say: "My dear, where are you going to?" 
 And she says: "I am going to Jesus." And the red 
 cheeks which you thought was the mark of the fever, 
 only tnrns out to be the carnation bloom of heaven. 
 Oh yes; it is a sweet name spoken by the lips of child- 
 hood, spoken by the old man. 
 
 A MIGHTY NAME. 
 
 Still further it is a mighty name. Rothchildis a potent 
 name in the commercial world, Cuvier in the scientific* 
 Irving a powerful name in the literary world, Washing- 
 ton an influential name in the political world Welling- 
 ton a mighty name in the military world, but tell me 
 any name in all the earth so potent to awe, and lift, 
 and thrill, and rouse, and agitate, and bless, as this 
 name of Jesus. That one word unhorsed Saul, and 
 flung Newton on his face on ship's deck, and today 
 holds 400,000,000 of the race with omnipotent spell. 
 That name in England today means more than Victoria: 
 in Germany, means more than Emperor William; in 
 
THE NAME OF JESUS. 187 
 
 France, means more than Carnot; in Italy, means 
 more than Hubert of the present or Garibaldi of the 
 past. I have seen a man bound hand foot in sin, satan 
 his hard task master, in a bondage from which no human 
 power could deliver him, and yet at the pronunciation 
 of that one word he dashed down his chains and marched 
 out forever free. I have seen a man overwhelmed 
 with disaster, the last hope fled, the last light gone out; 
 that name pronounced in his hearing, the sea dropped, 
 the clouds scattered, and a sunburst of eternal gladness 
 poured into his soul. I have seen a man hardened in 
 infidelit^r, defiant of God, full of scoff and jeer, jocose of 
 the judgment, reckless of an unending eternity, at the 
 mere pronunciation of that namd blanch, and cower, 
 and quake, and pray, and sob, and moan, and believe, 
 and rejoice. 
 
 Oh, it is a mighty name! At its utterance the last 
 wall of sin will fall, the last temple of superstition crum- 
 ble, the last juggernaut of cruelty crash to pieces. 
 That name will first make all the earth tremble, and 
 then it will make all the nations sing. It is to be the 
 password of every gate of honor, the insignia on every 
 flag, the shout in every conflict. All the millions of 
 the earth are to know it. The red horse of carnage 
 seen in apoc alyptic vision and the black horse of death, 
 are to fall back on their haunches, and the white horse 
 of victory will go forth, mounted by him who hath 
 the moon under his feet, and the stars of heaven for 
 his tiara. Other dominions seem to be giving out; this 
 seems to be enlarging. Spain has had to give up much of 
 her dominion. Austria has been wonderfully depleted in 
 powder. France has had to surrender some of her favor- 
 ite provinces. Most of the thrones of the world are being 
 lowered, and most of the sceptres of the world are be- 
 ing shortened; but every Bible printed, every tract dis- 
 
188 talmage's sermons. 
 
 tributed, every Sunday school class taught, every 
 school founded, every church established, is extending 
 the power of Christ's name. That name has hardly 
 been spoken under the Chinese wall, and in Siberian 
 snow castle, in Brazilian grove and in eastern pagoda. 
 That name is to swallow up all other names. That 
 crown is to cover up all other crowns. That empire is 
 to absorb all other dominations. 
 
 All crimes shall cease, and ancient frauds shall fail, 
 
 Returning justice lift aloft her scale; 
 
 Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend, 
 
 And white robed innocence from heaven descend. 
 
 AN ENDURING NAME. 
 
 Still further: it is an enduring name. You clamber 
 over the fence of the graveyard and pull aside the 
 weeds, and you see the faded inscription on the tomb- 
 stone. That was the name of a man who once ruled 
 all that town. The mightiest names of the world have 
 either perished or are perishing. Gregory VI, Sancho 
 of Spain, Conrad I, of Germany, Richard I, of England, 
 Louis XVI, of France, Catharine of Russia— mighty 
 names once, that made the world tremble; but now, 
 none so poor as to do them reverence, and to the great 
 mass of people they mean absolutely nothing; they 
 never heard of them. But the name of Christ is to 
 endure forever. 
 
 It will be perpetuated in art, for there will be other 
 Bellinis to depict the Madonna; there will be other 
 Ghirlandaios to represent Christ's baptism; there will be 
 other Bronzinos to show us Christ visiting the spirits 
 in prison; other Giottos to appall our sight with the 
 crucifixion. 
 
 The name will be preserved in song, for there will be 
 other Alexander Popes to write the " Messiah," other 
 Dr. Youngs to portray his triumph,. other Cowpers to 
 
THE NAME OF JESUS. 189 
 
 sing his love. It will be preserved in costly and magni- 
 ficent architecture, for, Protestantism as well as Catho- 
 licism is yet to have its St. Marks and its St. Peters. 
 
 That name will be preserved in the literature of the 
 world, for already it is embalmed in the best books, 
 and there will be other Dr. Paleys to write the "evi- 
 dences of Christianity," and other Richard Baxters to 
 describe the Saviour's coming to judgment. 
 
 But above all, and more than all, that name will be 
 embalmed in the memory of all the good of earth and 
 all the great ones of heaven. Will the delivered bond- 
 man of earth ever forget who freed him? Will the 
 blind man of earth forget who gave him sight? Will 
 the outcast of earth forget who brought him home? 
 No! No! 
 
 To destroy the memory of that name of Christ, you 
 would have to burn up all the Bibles and all the church- 
 es on earth, and then in a spirit of universal arson go 
 through the gate of heaven, and put a torch to the 
 temples and the towers and the palaces, and after all 
 that city was wrapped in awful conflagration, and the 
 citizens came out and gazed on the ruin — even then, 
 they would hear that name in the thunder of falling 
 tower and the crash of crumbling wall, and see it in- 
 wrought in the flying banners of flame, and the redeem- 
 ed of the Lord on high would be happy yet and cry out : 
 "Let the palaces and temples burn, we have Jesus left!" 
 "Blessed be his glorious name for ever and ever. The 
 name that is above every name." 
 
 WHAT NAME WILL YOU CALL CHRIST. 
 
 Have you ever made up your mind by what name 
 you will call Christ when you meet him in heaven? 
 You know he has many names. Will you call him 
 Jesus, or the Annointed One, or the Messiah, or will 
 
190 talmage's sermons. 
 
 you take some of the symbolical names which on earth 
 you learned from your Bible? 
 
 Wandering some day in the garden of God on high, 
 the place a-bloom with eternal springtide, infinite, lux- 
 uriance of rose, and lily, and amaranth, you may look 
 up into his face and say: "My Lord, thou art the rose 
 of Sharon and the lily of the valley." 
 
 Some day, as a soul comes up from earth to take its 
 place in the firmament, and shine as a star for ever and 
 ever, and the luster of a useful life shall beam forth 
 tremulous and beautiful, you may look up into the face 
 of Christ and say: "My Lord, thou art a brighter star 
 — the morning star — a star forever." 
 
 Wandering some day amid the fountains of life that 
 toss in the sunlight and fall in crash of peal and ame- 
 thyst in golden and crystaline urn, and you wander up 
 the round banked river to where it first tingles its silver 
 on the rock, and out of the chalices of love you drink to 
 honor and everlasting joy, you may look up into the 
 face of Christ and say: "My Lord, thou art the foun- 
 tain of living water . ' ' 
 
 Some day, wandering amid the lambs and sheep in 
 the heavenly pastures, feeding by the rock, rejoicing 
 jn the presence of him who brought you out of the wol- 
 fish wilderness to the sheepfold above, you may look up 
 into his loving and watchful eye and say: "My Lord, 
 thou art the shepherd of the everlasting hills." 
 
 But there is another name you may select. T will 
 imagine that heaven is done. Every throne has its 
 king. Every harp has its harper. Heaven has gather- 
 ed up everything that is worth having. The treasures 
 of the whole universe have poured into it. The song 
 full. The ranks full. The mansions full. Heaven full. 
 The sun shall set afire with splendor the domes of the. 
 temples and burnish the golden streets into a blaze 
 
192 talmage's sermons. 
 
 and be reflected back from the solid pearl of the twelve 
 gates and it shall be noon in heaven, noon on the river, 
 noon on the hills noon in all the valleys — high noon. 
 Then the soul may look up gradually accustoming itself 
 to the vision, shading the eyes as from the almost in- 
 sufferable splendor of the noonday light, until the vision 
 can endure it, then crying out: "Thou art the sun that 
 never sets! 
 
 At this point I am staggered with the thought that 
 notwithstanding all the charm in the name of Jesus, 
 and the fact that it is so easy a name, and so beautiful 
 a name, and so potent a name, and so enduring a name, 
 there are people who find no charm in those two 
 syllables. 
 
 O COME THIS DAY TO CHRIST. 
 
 O come this day and see whether there is anything in 
 Jesus. I challenge those of you who are farther from 
 God to come at the close of this service and test with 
 me whether God is good, and Christ is gracious, and 
 the Holy Spirit is omnipotent. I challenge you to come 
 and kneel down with me at the altar of mercy. I will 
 kneel on one side of the altar and you kneel on the other 
 side of it, and neither of us will rise until our sins are 
 forgiven, and we ascribe, in the words of the text, all 
 honor to the name of Jesus — you pronouncing it, I pro- 
 nouncing it — the name that is above every name. 
 
 His worth if all the nations knew, 
 Sure the whole earth would love him too. 
 O that God today, by the power of his holy spirit,, 
 would roll over you a vision of that blessed Christ, and 
 you would begin to weep and pray and believe and re- 
 joice. You have heard of the warrior who went out to 
 fight against Christ. He knew he was in the wrong, 
 while waging the war against the kingdom of Christ; 
 
THE NAME OF JESUS. 193 
 
 an arrow struck him and he fell. It pierced him in the 
 heart, and lying there, his face to the sun, his life blood 
 running away, he caught a handful of the blood that 
 was rushing out in his right hand, and held it up before 
 the sun and cried out: "0 Jesus thou hast conquered!" 
 And if today the arrow of God's spirit piercing your 
 soul, you felt the truth of what I have been trying to 
 proclaim, you would surrender now and forever to the 
 Lord who bought you. Glorious name! I know not 
 whether you will accept it or not; but I will tell you 
 one thing here and now, in the presence of angels and 
 men, I take him to be my Lord, my God, my pardon' 
 my peace, my life, my joy, my salvation, my heaven. 
 4 'Blessed be his glorious name forever. The name that is 
 above every name . " ' ' Halleluj ah ! unto him that sitteth 
 upon the throne and unto the lamb forever and ever! 
 Amen and amen and amen." 
 
HOME AGAIN. 
 
 THE HOUSE ON THE WfflLL. 
 
 [Delivered in Brooklyn, N. Y., February, 9th., 1890.] 
 "And the young men that were spies, went in and brought out 
 Rahab, and her father, and her mother, and her brethren, and all 
 that she had." Joshua, vi, 23. 
 
 ..^HEN, only a few weeks ago, I visited Jericho, I 
 h said, can it be possible that this dilapidated 
 ^fW place is the Jericho that Mark Antony gave 
 as a wedding present to Cleopatra? Where are the 
 groves of palm trees? Where are Herod's palaces which 
 once stood here? Where is the great theatre from the 
 stage of which Salome told the people that Herod was 
 dead? Where is the sycamore tree on the limb of which 
 Zaccheus sat when Jesus passed this place? Where is 
 the wreck of the walls that fell at the blowing of the 
 rams' horns? But the fact that all these have dis- 
 appeared did not hinder me from seeing in imagination 
 the smash of everything on that fated day, save one 
 (195) 
 
196 talmage's sermons. 
 
 house on the wall. The scene centuries ago comes back 
 to me as though it were yesterday. 
 A SAD HOUSE. 
 
 There is a very sick and sad house in the city of Jeri- 
 cho. What is the matter? Is it poverty? No. Worse 
 than that. Is it leprosy? No. Worse than that. Is 
 it death? No. Worse than that. A daughter has 
 forsaken her home. By what infernal plot she was 
 induced to leave I know not; but they look in vain for 
 her return. Sometimes they hear a footstep very much 
 like hers' and they start up and say: "She comes!" but 
 only to sink back again into disappointment. Alas! 
 Alas! The father sits by the hour, with his face in his 
 hands, saying not one word. The mother's hair is be- 
 coming gray too fast, and she begins to stoop so that 
 those who saw her only a little while ago in the street 
 know her not now as she passes. The brothers clench 
 their fists, swearing vengeance against the despoiler of 
 their home. Alas! will the poor soul never come back? 
 There is a long, deep shadow over all the household. 
 Added to this there is an invading army six miles away, 
 just over the river, coming on to destroy the city; and 
 what with the loss of their child and the coming on oi 
 that destructive army, I think the old people wished 
 that they could die. That is the first scene in this drama 
 of the Bible. 
 
 TWO SPIES. 
 
 In a house on the wall of the city is that daughter. 
 That is her home now. Two spies have come from the 
 invading army to look around through Jericho and see 
 how best it may be taken. Yonder is the lost child, in 
 that dwelling on the wall of the city. The police hear 
 of it, and soon there is the shuffling of feet all around 
 about the door, and the city government demands the 
 
THE HOUSE ON THE WALL. 197 
 
 surrender of those two spies. First, Rahab — for that 
 was the name of the lost child — First, Rahab secretes 
 the two spies and gets their pursuers off the track, but 
 after awhile she says to them: "I will make a bargain 
 with you. I will save your life if you will save my life, 
 and the life of my father and my mother, and my broth- 
 ers, and my sisters, when the victorious army comes 
 upon the city." 0, she had not forgotten her home yet, 
 you see. The wanderer never forgets home. Her heart 
 breaks now as she thinks of how she has maltreated 
 her parents, and she wishes she were back with them 
 again, and she wishes she could get away from her sin- 
 ful enthrallment; and sometimes she looks up in the face 
 of the midnight, bursting into agonizing tears. No 
 sooner have these two spies promised to save her life, 
 and the life of her father, and mother, and brothers, 
 and sisters, than Rahab takes a scarlet cord and ties it 
 around the body of one of the spies, brings him to the 
 window, and as he clambers out — nervous lest she have 
 not strength to hold him — with muscular arms such as 
 as woman seldom has, she lets him down, hand over 
 hand, in safety to the ground. Not being exhausted, 
 she ties the cord around the other spy, brings him to 
 the window, and just as successfully lets him down to 
 the ground. No sooner have these men untied the scar- 
 let cord from their bodies than they look up, and they 
 say: "You had better get all your friends in this house 
 — your father, your mother, your brothers and your 
 sisters; you had better get them in this house. And 
 then, after you have them here, take this red cord 
 which you have put around our bodies and tie it across 
 the window, and when our victorious army comes up, 
 and sees that scarlet thread in the window, they will 
 spare this house and all who are in it. Shall it be so?" 
 
198 talmage's sermons. 
 
 cried the spies. "Aye, aye," said Rahab, from the win- 
 dow, "it shall be so." That is the second scene in this 
 Bible drama. 
 
 FLY! FLY! 
 
 There is a knock at the door of the old man. He 
 looks up and says: "Come in," and lo! there is Rahab, 
 the lost child; but she has no time to talk. They gather 
 in excitement around her, and she says to them: "Get 
 ready quickly, and go with me to my house. The army 
 iscoming! Thetrumpet! Makehaste! Fly! Theenemy"! 
 That is the third scene in this Bible drama. 
 
 The hosts of Israel are all around about the doomed 
 city of Jericho. Crash goes the great metropolis, heaps 
 on heaps. The air suffocating with the dust, and hor- 
 rible with the screams of a dying city. All the houses 
 flat down. All the people dead. Ah no, no. On a crag 
 of the wall— the only piece of the wall left standing- 
 there is a house which we must enter. There is a family 
 there that have been spared. Who are they? Let us 
 go and see. Rahab, her father, her mother, her broth- 
 ers, her sisters, all safe, and the only house left stand- 
 ing in all the city. What saved them? Was the house 
 more firmly built? Oh, no; it was built in the most 
 perilous place— on the wall; and the wall was the first 
 thing that fell. Was it because her character was any 
 better than any of the other population of the city? 
 0, no. Why, then, was she spared and all her house- 
 hold? Can you tell me why? 0, it was the scarlet line 
 in the window. That is the fourth scene in this Bible 
 drama. 
 
 THE SCARLET THREAD. 
 
 When the destroying angel went through Egypt it 
 was the blood of the lamb on the door posts that saved 
 the Israelites; and now that vengeance has come upon 
 
200 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 
 
 Jericho it is the same color that assures the safety of 
 Rahab and all her household. My friends, there are foes 
 coming upon us, more deadly and more tremendous, to 
 overthrow our immortal interests. They will trample 
 us down and crush us out forever, unless there be some 
 skillful mode of rescue open. The police of death already 
 begin to clamor for our surrender; but, blessed be God, 
 there is a way out. It is through the window, and by 
 a rope so saturated with the blood of the cross . that it 
 is as red as that with which the spies were lowered; 
 and if once our souls are delivered, then the scarlet cord 
 stretched across the window of our escape, we may 
 defy all bombardment, earthly and satanic. 
 STRETCH THIS SCARLET CORD. 
 
 In the first place, carrying out the idea of my text, we 
 must stretch this scarlet cord across the window of 
 rescue. There comes a time when a man is surrounded. 
 What is that in the front door of his soul? Itisthethreat- 
 enings of the future. What is that in the back door of 
 the soul? It is the sins of the past. He cannot get out 
 of either of those doorways. If he attempts it he will 
 be cut to pieces. What shall he do? Escape through 
 the window of God's mercy. That sunshine has been 
 pouring in for many a day. God's inviting mercy. 
 God's pardoning mercy. God's all conquering mercy. 
 God's everlasting mercy. But you say the window is 
 so high. Ah, there is a rope, the very one with which 
 the cross and its victim were lifted. That was strong 
 enough to hold Christ, and it is strong enough to hold 
 you. Bear all your weight upon it, all your hopes for 
 this life, all your hopes for the life that is to come. Es- 
 cape now through the window. 
 
 "But," you say, "that cord is too small to save me; 
 that salvation will never do at all for such a sinner as 
 
THE HOUSE ON THE WALL. 201 
 
 I have been." I suppose that the rope with which 
 Rahab let the two spies to the ground was not thick 
 enough: but they took that or nothing. Ad, my dear 
 brother, that is your alternative. There is only one 
 scarlet line that can save you. There have been hun- 
 dreds and thousandswho have been borne away in safe- 
 ty by that scarlet line, and it will bear you away in 
 safety. Do you notice what a very narrow escape 
 those two spies had? I suppose they came with flus- 
 tered cheek and with excited heart. They had a very nar- 
 row escape. They went in the broad door of sin; but how 
 did they come out? They came out of the window. 
 They went up by the stairs of stone; they came down 
 on a slender thread. And so, my friends, we go easily 
 and unabashedly into sin, and all the doors are open; 
 but if we get out at all it will be by being let down over 
 precipices, wriggling and helpless, the strong grip above 
 keeping us from being dashed on the rocks beneath. 
 It is easy to get into sin, young man. It is not so easy 
 to get out of it. 
 
 THE FIRST STEP. 
 A young man goes to the marble counter of a hotel. 
 He asks for a brandy smash — called so, I suppose, be- 
 cause it smashes the man that takes it. There is no 
 intoxication in it. As the young man receives it he 
 does not seem to be at all excited. It does not give 
 any glossiness to the eye. He walks home in beautiful 
 apparel, and all his prospects are brilliant. That 
 drink is not going to destroy him, but it is the first 
 step on a bad road. Years have passed on, and I see 
 that young man after he has gone the whole length of 
 dissipation. It is midnight, and he is in a hotel — perhaps 
 the very one where he took the first drink. A deli- 
 rium is on him. He rises from the bed and comes to 
 
202 taumage's sermons. 
 
 the window, and it is easily lifted; so he lifts it. Then he 
 pushes back the blinds and puts his foot on the win- 
 dow-sill. Then he gives one spring, and the watch- 
 man finds his disfigured body, unrecognizable, on the 
 pavement. O, if he had only waited a little while— if 
 he had come down on the scarlet ladder that Jesus holds 
 from the wall for him, and for you, and for me; but no, 
 he made one jump, and was gone. 
 
 A minister of Christ was not long ago dismissed from 
 his diocese for intoxication, and in a public meeting he 
 gave this account of his sorrow; He said: "I had a 
 beautiful home once; but strong drink shattered it. 
 I had beautiful children; but this fiend of rum took their 
 dimpled hands in his and led them to the grave. I had 
 a wife — to know her was to love her; but she sits in 
 wretchedness to-night, while I wander over the earth. 
 I had a mother, and the pride of her life was I; but the 
 thunderbolt struck her. I now have scarcely a friend 
 in the world. Taste of the bitter cup I have tasted, and 
 then answer me as to whether I have any hatred for the 
 agency of my ruin. Hate it? I hate the whole damn- 
 ing traffic. I would to God to-night that every distill- 
 ery was in flames, for then in the glowing sky I would 
 write in the smoke of the ruin: "Woe to him that put- 
 teth the bottle to his neighbor's lips!" That minister 
 of the gospel went in through the broad door of temp- 
 tation; he came out of the window. And when I see 
 the temptations that are about us in all countries, and 
 whenlknow the proclivities to sin in every man's heart, 
 I see that if any of us escape it will be a very narrow 
 escape. 0, if we have, my friends, got off from our sin, 
 let us tie the scarlet thread by which we have been sav- 
 ed across the window. Let us do it in praise of him 
 whose blood dyed it that color. Let it be in announce- 
 
THE HOUSE ON THL WALL. 203 
 
 ment of the fact that we shall no more be fatally assault- 
 ed. "There is now no condemnation to them that are 
 in Jesus Christ." Then let all the forces of this world 
 come up in cavalry charge, and let spirits of darkness 
 come on — an infernal storming party attempting to 
 take our soul — this rope twisted from these words. 
 "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin," will 
 hurl them back defeated forever. 
 
 PROTECT YOUR HOUSEHOLD. 
 Still further, we must take this red cord of the text 
 and stretch it across the window of our households. 
 When the Israelitish army came up against Jericho, they 
 said: "What is that in the window?" Some one said: 
 "That is a scarlet line." "Oh," said some one else, 
 "that must be the house that was to be spared. Don't 
 touch it." That line was thick enough, and long 
 enough, and conspicuous enough to save Rahab, her 
 father, her mother, her brothers and her sisters — the 
 entire family. Have our households as good pro- 
 tection? You have bolts on the front door and on the 
 back, and fastenings to the window, and perhaps burg- 
 lar alarms, and perhaps an especial watchman blow- 
 ing his whistle at midnight before your dwelling; but 
 all that cannot protect your household. Is there on 
 our houses the sign of a Saviour's sacrifice and mercy? 
 Is there a scarlet line in the window? Have your chil- 
 dren been consecrated to Christ? Have you been wash- 
 ed in the blood of the atonement? In what room do 
 you have family prayers? Show me where it is you are 
 accustomed to kneel. The sky is black with the com- 
 ing deluge. Is your family inside or outside of the ark? 
 It is a sad thing for a man to reject Christ: but to lie 
 down and in the night of sin, across the path of heaven, 
 so that his family come up and trip over him — that is 
 
204 talmage's sermons. 
 
 terrific. It is a sad thing for a mother to reject Christ; 
 but to gather her family around her, aud then take them 
 by the hand and lead them out into the paths of world- 
 liness, away from God and heaven, alas! alas! There 
 may be geranium and cactus in that family window, 
 and upholstery ho vering over it, and childish faces look- 
 ing out of it, but there is no scarlet thread stretched 
 across it. Although that house may seem to be on the 
 best street in all the town or city, it is really on the 
 edge of a marsh, across which sweep poisonous malarias 
 and it has a sandy foundation, and its splendor will 
 come down, and great will be the fall of it. A home 
 without God! A prayerless father! An undevout 
 mother! Awful! Awful! Is that you? Will you keep 
 on, my brother, on the wrong road, and take your 
 loved ones with you? Time is so short that we can- 
 not waste any of it in apologies, or indirections, cir- 
 cumlocutions. You owe to your children, O father, O 
 mother, more than food, more than clothing, more than 
 shelter — you owe them the example of a prayerful, con- 
 secrated, pronounced, out and out Christian life. You 
 cannot afford to keep it away from them. 
 MY GOOD MOTHER. 
 Now, as I stand here, you do not see any hand out- 
 stretched towards me, and yet there are hands on both 
 my shoulders. They are hands of parental benediction. 
 It is quite a good many years ago now since we folded 
 those hands as they began their last sleep on the banks of 
 the Raritan, in the village cemetery; but those hands 
 are stretched out towards me to-day, and they are 
 just as warm and they are just as gentle as when I sat 
 on her knee at five years of age. And I shall never shake 
 off those hands. I do not want to. They have helped 
 me so much a thousand times already, and I do not ex- 
 
THE HOUSE ON THE WALL. 205 
 
 pect to have a trouble or a trial between this and my 
 grave where those hands will not help me. It Was not 
 a very splendid home, as the world calls it; but we had 
 a family bible there, well worn by tender perusal; and 
 there was a family altar there, where we knelt morning 
 and night; and there was a holy Sabbath there; and 
 stretched in a straight line or hung in loops or festoons 
 there was a scarlet line in the window. O, the tender, 
 precious, blessed memory of a Christian home! Is that 
 the impression you are making upon your children? 
 When you are dead — and it will not be long before you 
 are — when you are dead, will your child say: "If there 
 ever was a good Christian father, mine was one. If 
 there ever was a good Christian mother, mine was one?" 
 
 Still further: We want this scarlet line of the text 
 drawn across the window of our prospects. I seeRahab 
 and father, and her mother, and her brothers, and her 
 sisters looking out over Jericho, the city of palm-trees, 
 and across the river, and over at the army invading, 
 and then up to the mountains and the sky. Mind you, 
 this house was on the wall, and I suppose the prospect 
 from the window must have been very wide. Besides 
 that, I do not think that the scarlet line at all interfered 
 with the view of the landscape. The assurance it gave 
 of safety must have added to the beauty of the country. 
 To-day, my friends, we sit in the window of earthly 
 prospects, and we look off towards the hills of heaven 
 and the landscape of eternal beauty. God has opened 
 the window for us, and we look out. We only get a 
 dim outline of the inhabitants. We now only here and 
 there catch a note of the exquisite harmony. 
 
 THE SCARLET LINE AT THE WINDOW. 
 
 But blessed be God for this scarlet line in the window. 
 That tells me that the blood of Christ bought that home, 
 
206 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 
 
 for my soul, and I shall go there when my work is done 
 And as I put my hand on that scarlet line, every-thing in 
 the future brightens. My eyesight gets better, and the 
 robes of the victors are more lustrous, and our loved 
 ones who went away some time ago — they do not stand 
 any more with their backs to us, but their faces are 
 this way and their voices drop through this Sabbath 
 air, saying with all tenderness and sweetness, "Come! 
 Come! Come!" And the child that you think of only as 
 buried — why, there she is, and it is May day in heaven; 
 and they gather the amaranth, and they pluck the 
 lilies, and they twist then into a garland for her brow, 
 and she is one of the May queens of heaven. O, do you 
 think they could see our waving to-day? 
 
 It is quite a pleasant day, pretty clear and, not many 
 clouds in the sky. I wonder if they can see us from 
 that good land? I think they can. If from this win- 
 dow of earthly prospects we can almost see them, then 
 from their towers of light I think they can fully see us. 
 And so I wave them the glory, and I wave them the 
 joy, and I say: "Have you got through with all your 
 troubles?' ' And their voices answer: "God hath wiped 
 away all tears from our eyes." I say: "Is it as grand 
 up there as you thought it would be?" And the voice 
 answers: "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither 
 hath it entered into the heart of man, the things which 
 God hath prepared for those that love him" I say: 
 "Do you have any more struggle for bread?" and they 
 answer: "We hunger no more, we thirst no more." 
 And I say: "Have you been out to the cemetery of the 
 golden city?" and they answer: "There is no death 
 here." And I look out through the heavens, and say: 
 "Where do you get your light from nights, and what 
 do you burn in the temple?" and they answer: "There 
 
208 talmage's sermons. 
 
 is no night here, and we have no need of candle or of 
 star." And I say: "What book do you sing out of?" 
 and they answer: "The Hallelujah Chorus." And I 
 say: "In the splendor and magnificence of the city, 
 don't you ever get lost?" and they answer: "The 
 Lamb which is in the midst of the throne leadeth us 
 to living fountains of water." O how near they seem. 
 Their wings— do you not feel them? Their harps— do 
 you not hear them? And all that through the window 
 of our earthly prospects, across which stretcheth the 
 scarlet line. Be that my choice color forever. Is it too 
 glaring for you? Do you like the blue because it reminds 
 you of the sky, or the green because it makes you think 
 of the foliage, or the black because it is in the shadows 
 of the night? I take the scarlet because it shall make 
 me think of the price that was paid for my soul. O the 
 blood! the blood! the blood of the Lamb of God that 
 taketh away the sin oft he world. 
 
 I see where you are* You are at the cross roads. 
 The next step decides everything. Pause before you 
 take it; but do not pause too long. I hear the blast 
 of the trumpet that wakes the dead. Look out! Look 
 out! For in that day, and in our closing moment on 
 earth, better than any other defense or barricade, how- 
 ever high or broad or stupendous, will be one little, thin, 
 scarlet thread in the window.