Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1883-02-28
DR.. 7. Dewitt Talmage's Confession
OF Faith.

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 I;
so suppose my turn has come to tell what
l believe. can tell you in five minutes
l believe in God, the good, the kind, the
loving. the just, the independent, the ON
nipotent. l believe 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. believe in the Holy Ghost
an importuning, elevating, sublimating, pur-
flying, gracious personage-gentle as the
dove that symbolzed him at the baptism,
and yet as intense as the fiery tongues
which covered the heads of the disciples at
at the Pentecost. | believe in soul i'm
mortal, winged for eternal fight, and bav
ing free choice whether that fight shall be
upward or downward. / believe in
heaven built on so vast a scale that there
is room for all angelhood. all manhood, all
womanhood, all childhood, and not mon.
opoly for few, but twelve gates for ALL
| believe in perdition. the abode of those
are soul-suicides, for God pushes no man
off the precipice He jumps off. go Is
rael, thou hast destroyed thyself p You see,
it is self-destruction. II man is in peril
aud 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 q
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, show can
merciful God allow any suffering here.
after Z" l will answer your question as
easily as you will answer mine. Why>does
merciful God allow that good woman to
marry man who makes her life hell on
earth ? How can merciful God allow
bad people in Brooklyn to prosper in
health while Rev. DR.. Burlington and
Rev. DR.. Rockwell, men who spent their
lives in doing good, die of cancer in the
face. You answer my question and /
will answer yours. You tell me why a mer
ciful God allowed sin TO come into this
world, then will tell you why God let's
suffering go into the neither world. go
on, and say, believe in baptism, the
water beautifully symbolic of u cleansing OF
the soul, and this whether the bright liquid
drop from wooden cup, as when in holy
rite the covenanters of Scotland sprinkled
their children among the highlands, or
roll over him. believe in the kings ban
quet, commonly called the Lords Supper,
and welcome to its table all who acknowl-
edge allegiance to him, of whose atonement
the blood of the gospel is efficacious. be-
lieve in the Bible from lid to lid inspired,
yet the sacred writer's no more approve of
some of the conduct described in the Bible
than Macaulay approves of all the conduct
in England described in his history, but a
Bible from lid to lid inspired, not always as
precept, but sometimes as a 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 illimtable extension
| believe in the brotherhood of man all OF
one blood, all having the same rights, all
made in the image of God, and that he who
insults man, however obscure, strikes in
the face his Maker. These cardinal truths
l have been preaching for twenty. five years,
and have no prospect of changing. l am
all the more indisposed to change because
have noticed that those who get off the
track are like rail train off the track,
tumbliDg down the embankments; they roll
over aud 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 agnostic
ism. 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 it is progress into bank
OF mud.