The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1885-12-31
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
Medicine For All Ills" Dispensed
By the Brooklyn Pastor.
The Bleeding Heart of Christ the Only I'M
mediate Relief for Sinners-A Balm
for All Wounds and Pardon for
All Transgressions.

mage at Brooklyn Tabernacle. The SER
mon was based ON the following text:
And his disciples came, and took up the
body, and buried 1t, and went and told Jesus.
Matthew xiv, u.
An outrageous assassination had just
taken place. To appease a revengeful
woman, Herod had ordered the death of
that noble, self-sacrifcing Christian man,
John the Baptist. The disciples were in
great trouble. There was no court to
which they could make appeal. But grief
must have utterance, and if there be no
sympathetic ear to hear it, then it must be
cried aloud to the winds and the woods and
the waters. But there was an ear ready to
listen. What beauty of pathos and what
wonderful picture in the words of my text:
They "went and told Jesus" He was
ready to listen and he was ready to as
suage their grief. We see Christ standing,
his own face Swallowed with his own sor-
row, surrounded by group of disciples in
violent gesticulation, with many tears and
with great outcry of woe. Raphael, with
skillful hand, putting upon the wall of
palace picture of Bible story, was not so.
skillful as the plain hand of the evangelist,
as he puts upon canvas the sketch of the
text: They "went and told Jesus"
The Goths and the Vandals came down
from the North of Europe and upset the
gardens, and broke down the affairs, and
swept away everything that was good and
beautiful; and ever and anon in the lives
of men there are rough-handed despoilers,
crusaders who come down to despoil and
plumber, and to ransack the soul. No cav
ern is so deeply cleft in the mountain as to
allow you shelter from trouble. The foot
of the feetest courser is not swift enough
to bear you beyond pursuit. The arrows
brought to the string fly with unerring
dart, and often you have fallen pierced
and stunned.
Now / am this morning to bring a cathol-
icon for all your troubles. / am going to
gather all your griefs-I do not care what
they are-I am going to gather all your
griefs into bundle, and set them on fire
with spark from Gods altar. The pre-
scription of the text, which healed the sor-
row of the disciples, is just as successful
prescription to-day and will heal all your
sorrows.
Now, in the first place, commend the
behavior of the disciples in the text to all
those who feel themselves sinful and I'M
pardoned. There comes a time in every
mans life when he wakes up to an appre-
ciatien of q sinful nature. The thought
may not have enough heft to fell HINT
may only be like the flash of cloud at the
close of hot summer day; but the man
must somehow get rid of that feeling. One
man flies to prayer, another man stimu-
lates himself with ardent spirits, another
man dives deeper into secularities. 1t is
wonderful when a man has his eternity
poised on an uncertainty, that he is deter
mined to do something violent and imme-
diate. Now, can it be that there is in all
this house this morning one man who is
unwilling to have the cancer of sin taken
from his soul, when the Divine Surgeon is
ready to do the work and do it successful
iy? lean not believe it.
Think the first thing for you to do, if
you are oppressed, my brother, if you are
oppressed with sense of your sinfulness,
is to go and tell Jesus. Why, my friends,
that is the business of Christ. He does
other things, but think the
great business of Christ is to pardon. To
relax the grip of death from your soul and
to plant your unshackled foot
on a golden throne Christ allowed the tor
lures of the bloody mount to transfix him.
With the beam of his own cross he will
this morning crush in the door of your
dungeon. Out of his own thorny crown
ne viii pick enough gems to make your
brow blaze with eternal victory. In every.
tear OF his wet cheek, in every cash of his
wounded side, in every long and blackened
mark of liberation from shoulder to shout
der, in the grave-shattering, Heaven
storming death-cry 1 hear the words:
Hin that cometh unto me I will in no
wise cast out" Oh, what glorious gos-
peii What gospel to preach! "Where
sin abounded, grace did much more
abound.o
'Oh, says some man, "why then, YOU
propose to cure the wound of sin by max.
ing another wound-the wound of convic-
tion." Why, my brother, that is what
every physician does, of all schools. The
physicians, when they End an oldrankling
wound, come with caustic and thew
burn it out, and then health and restora-
tion come. Here is the old sore of sin, and
~~>A o~NA@Sc3 W Ais SOAf iStlEE EEdc6, ana
ne burns it out, and the flesh comes again
rs the flesh of a little child. Well, there is
not man in the audience but is ready to
have that process go on in his soul. He
says: "That's reasonable, that's right,
that's just what / would suppose, and /
mean to have that process in my soul. y
When, my brother, when? "Oh, J" you say,
"some time" Well, I can not afford to
have yen put ID off in that way, and you
can not afford to put it off in that way. I
want to know just when.
have heard that Alfred, the King, be-
fore the invention of timepieces, used TO
measure the day by three wax candles.
Each wax candle would burn eight hours,
sothat when one candle was consumed eight
hours were gone; two wax candles, six
teen hours We're gone; and when the third
wax candle had been consumed, then the
twenty-four hours, the whole day, was
gone. 0, my friends, wish, instead of
measuring our days and nights and years
ON earth by q timepiece, we would meas
nre time by mercies and opportunities,
which are burning down and burning out,
never to be relighted, lest we wake up with
the discontinue of the foolish virgins and
cry: sour lamps are gone out"
- A. = !