Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1885-01-12
NEED OF AN AWAKENING.
DIR. TALMAGE TELLS WHAT THE
CHURCH MOST WANTS.

FOur-fifths of the Membership Sound
Asleep-The Pews Filled with Dead
WOOd-MOre Enthusiasm and Bold
ness Needed in the Pulpit-WOrIdli-
ness COnquering in Many Places.
BROOKLYN, n. Y, Jan. ia series
of revivalIstic services is now in progress
in the Brooklyn Tabernacle, and is excit-
ing great interest in the public mind.
The opening hymn was:
Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly dove
With all thy quickening pOwers!'
After expounding appropriate passages
of Scripture DR.. Talmage preached on the
subject "Awakening!" taking his text
from Malachi iii, 1: ''Behold l will send
my messenger and he shall prepare the
way before me; and the Lord, whom We
seek, shall suddenly come to his temple,
even the messenger of the Covenant,
whom ye delight in; behold, He shall
come, saith the Lord of hosts" DIR. Tai
mage said:
Sometimes minister's subject is suggested
by his artistic tastes; sometimes by the Oc-
currences of the previous week; sometimes
by nearer who desires some particular re-
Hglous subject discussed My subject comes
IN no such way. 1t drops straight from God
intense listening. l want to show this morn
ing so far as God may help me that the great
est need of the church universal is mighty
awakening. The OK IN the pasture field looks
around and perhaps comes to the conclusion
that all the world is a clover field. So we,
standing in the midst of luXuriant relig-
ious advantages, might think perhaps that
the earth is covered with the knowledge of
God; but so far from that, if this platform
were the world, so much of it as | now cover
with my right foot would represent all that is
conquered for Emanuel. Or if this whole
tabernacle were the world. then one new
would represent so much of it as the grace of
God has already conquered. Oh, there is
need of radical change Something must be
done and shall show this morning that the
greatest need of the church is a great
awakening.
learn this need in the first place from the
cOldness in the majority OF church members.
II religious society have a thousand mem
bers, eight hundred of them are sound asleep.
If 1t have five hundred members, four hun
dred are lethargic. If the Christians can
rally-that is, the prOfessed Christians-for
communion day, and succeed in not dropping
the wine cup, how many of them are satis-
fed? If it be a choice between Christ and
the world, the world has it. You know it as
well as l do. If religious meeting be on a
certain night, and on that same night there
be an extraordinary Operatic entertainment.
or a social gathering, or a literary club, or a
political meeting, or Free Mason society, or
an odd Fellows Association, you know which
they go to. God there fairly demonstrating
that while such prOfessed Christians pretend
to be on His side, they are really on the other
side; for there is a pOint-blank issue between
Christ and the world, and the world has it,
Y GU know very well whether you are a pro-
feSsed Christian or not; you know very well
that the dividing line between the church and
the world to-day is-like the equator. or Arc
tic or Antarctic circle-an imaginary line
and that there are men and women sworn of
God who sit discussing nfnitesimal questions:
''Shall We dance? shall we play cardsY Shall
Opera" while there are five hundred millions
Of the race going down to darkness unWarned
These sham Christians Will g on, occasion
ally taxing llJtlc religion with the tip end of
their fingers, sauutering on laZily towards
the bar Of Christ, until they come in front of
Gods swift revolving mill, and find them
selves 10 be ''the Chan which the wind
driveth away
Oh. how much dead wood we have in all our
churches. The day Of judgment will make a
fearful thinning out among pTofessed Christ
lans. suppose it viii be round on that dav
that there are hundreds Of thousands Of mrn
who have their names on the church books
who really made religion second rate or a
third rate thing; living for Themselves un-
mindful of God and the salvation of the race
and then tumbling over the embansment
where Judas went, and Achan went, and
where all those shall go who do not make re-
ligion the primOrdial thing-the first and the
last matter of the SOUL Oh, worldly professor
OF religion, vacIllatlug professor, idle profess
sOr, tremble before God to-day. Do YOU not
know that II you die as you are all the COM
munlOn tables at which you have ever sat
will lift up hands of BLOOD crying for your
condemnation? And your neglected Bible aud
your prayerless pillow will cry: SEQ down!
go down! you pretended to have religion, but
on had none. Out of the seven days Of the
week you gave not five hours to Christ. You
broke your sacramental oath. 60 down! 20
down" And the fercest and mightiest
is ever forced will smIte YOU into
darkness. Oh, / would rather
be the man in the last day who has never
seen church than you who professed to be
so much, and TO do so much, and yet did moth
ing. 1ou shall perish in the way when Gods
wrath is kindled but little. q worldly pro-
fessOr of reGglon-and there are hundreds of
them here to-day, am aiming at the mark
If you could to-day realize your true cOndi-
ton, and your true position before God, YOU
would bite your lip until the blood came;
you would wiring your hands until the bones
cracked; you would utter a cry that would
send this whole audience to their feet with
horror. May God wake you up, worldly pro-
fessor OF religion, before you wake up in the
barred and tlamlng dungeons of a destroyed
eternity. When you look abroad and see
lethargy among the professors of religion al
most all the world over, do you not see
that there is need that the bugles and the
cymbals and the drums and the trumpets of
all earth and heaven call upon the church to
wake up all those dormant professors of re-
ligiOn? Awake, thou that seepest; awake
and Christ shall give thee iife."
Still further, | see Il need for a great
awakening in the fact that those of us who
preach the gospel have so little enthusiasm
and zeal compared with what we ought to
have. Now, you see, the gun kicks. / say,
we who preach the gospel have so little zeal
and enthusiasm for Christ, compared with
what we ought to have. Oh. it is q tremendous
thing to stand before an audience on Sabbath
days, realizing the fact that the majority of
them will believe what YOU say about God
and the soul and the great future. Suppose a
man asked of you the road to a certain place,
a a fNTOn Inu uul fula L
forwards you heard that through lack of ri ght
direction that man was lost on the mountains,
fell over the rocks and lost his life, you could
not forgive yourself. You would say: Il
wish had taken more time with that man.
wish | had gwen him such specific directions
that he would not have been lost. How sorry
feel about it?' But oh, to misdirect the
eternal interests of a large congregation!
How cold and stolid we stand in our pulpits.
actually sometimes prdlng ourselves on our
dellberatiOn, when we have no right to be
cold, and ought to be almost frantic with the
perlls that threaten-Our hearers. So much so
that some of us give no warning at all, and
we stand Sabbath after Sabbath, talking
about human development" and we pat
men on the PACK, and we please them, and we
sing them all down through the rapids to the
last plunge; or, as the poet has it:
"Smooth down the stubborn text to ears polite
And snugly keep damnation out of sightH'
o, my brethren in the ministry-for | see
them always in the audience--my brethren in
the ministry, we cannot afford to do that wav
II you prophecy good things, smooth things TO
your people, without regard TO their charae-
ter, what chance will there be for you in the
day when you meet them at the bar of God?
You had better stand clear of them then.
They will tear you to pieces. They will say
Il heard you preach five hundred times, and
admired YOUR philOsOphic disquisitiOn and
your graceful gestures and your nicely
moulded sentences, curvilinear and stelli-
form, and thought you were the prince of
proprletles; but you didn't help me prepare
for this day. Cursed be your rhetoric, cursed
be your art. am going down and I'll take
ness all the hosts of heaven and all
the hosts of darkness. 1t is your fault.
SIR" And the chorus will come up
from all worlds: His fault! His faultv' All
OF us who preach this gospel need to speak as
though the pulpit quaked with the tramp of
eternal realities. as though beneath us were
the bursting graves Of the resurrection morn.
as though rising above US, tier after ter were
the myIlads OF heaven looking down ready to
applaud our fidelity, or hiss at our stOlidity,
WINE coming through the Sabbath air were
the long, deep, narrowing groan of the dying
nations that are never dead. May God, with
loren from Heaven, set all the pUlpits of
England, Scotland and Ireland and the
united states on fire. AS for myself, stand
ing mere IN this presence this morning, 1 feel
as II had never begun to preach. If God
VIII forgive me for the past | Will do better
for the future.
''Tis not a cause of small import
The pastors care demands;
But what might fill an angels heart,
1t filled Savior's hands.
'They watch for souls for which the Lord
Did heavenly bliss forego;