The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1883-03-21
DIR. T. Dewitt Talmage's Con-
fession of Faith.
A Prayer Meeting Talk


A Prayer Meeting Talk.
People all over the country, in the
Church and out of the Church, are now
telling what they believe and what they
do not believe; so l suppose my turn has
come to tell what believe. l can tell
you in five minutes. believe in God,
the good, the kind, the loving, the jusG,
the independent, the omnipotent. l be-
lieve in Jesus Christ, with "a heart large
enough to take the whole race in His
compassion, and perhaps other worlds,
for do not know but that He has done
as much for other spheres as He has done
for ours. l believe in the Holy Ghost,
an importuning, elevat;ng, sublimating,
purifying, gracious personage-gentle as
the dove that symbolized Him at the
baptism, and yet as intense as the fiery
tongues which covered the heads of the
disciples at the Pentecost. believe in
a soul immortal, winged for eternal flight,
and having free choice whether that
flight shall be upward or downward. I
believe In heaven built on so vast a
scale that there is room for all angelhood,
all manhood, all womanhood, all child
hood, and not monopoly for few, but
twelve gates for all. believe in per-
dition, the abode of those who are soul
suicides, for God pushes no man off the
precipice. He jumps off. 90 Israel,
thou hast destroyed thyselfl" You see,
it is self-destruction. If a man is in peril,
and there are twelve gates wide open to
let him out, and he turns his back on the
twelve gates and Jumps into the crater of
volcano, who is to blame? Certainly
not the man who swung open the twelve
gates. And if any man misses heaven
it will not be Gods fault, but the fault
of those who perish. "Ah," says some
one, how can a meroiful God allow any
suffering hereafter2" will answer your
question as easily % YER
mine. Why ooee
that good woman to marry man wno
makes her life hell on earth i? How
can merciful God allow bad people in
Brooklyn to prosper in health, while Rev
DR.. Burlington and Rev. DIR. Rockwell,
men who spent their lives in doing good,
die of cancer in the face? You answer
my question and I will answer yours.
You tell me why merciful God allowed
sin to come into this world, then [ will
tell you why God lets suffering 90 into
the neither world. go on, and 1 say 1
believe in baptism, the water beautifully
symbolic of a cleansing of the soul, and
this whether the bright liquid drop from
a wooden cup, as when in holy rite the
Covenanters of Scotland sprinkled their
children among the highlands, or whether
the candidate have whole Jordans roll
over him. I believe in the Kings ban
quet, commonly called the Lords Sup
per, and welcome to its table all who
acknowledge allegiance to Him, of whose
atonement the blood of the Gospel is eff
fcacious. believe in the Bible from
lid to lid inspired, yet the sacred writers
no more approve of some of the conduct
described in the Bible than Macaulay
approves of all the conduct in England
described in the history, but Bible from
lid to lid inspired, not always as precept
but sometimes as history, yet the best
book ever written By pen or printed by
type, the foundation of happy homes and
good governments, the book from which
most other good books have been beaten
out as one little piece of gold may be
beaten into gold foil of almost illimitable
extension. | believe in the brotherhood
of men all of one blood, all having the
same rights, all made in the image oil
God, and that he who insults mai
however OBSCURE strikes in the face his
Maker These cardinal truths l have
been preaching for twenty-five years, and
l have no prospect of changing. l am
all the more indisposed to change be-
cause l have noticed that those who get
off the track are like rail train off the
track, tumbling down the embankments
they roll over and over from place to
place. now one side, now the other. Now
they wonder about this, and now they
wonder about that, and the most Of them
end in agnosticism. That is, they do not
believe anything That is generally the
depot at which they fetch up. They
call it progress, and it is progress but il
is progress into bank Of mud
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