The Maryville times. (Maryville, Tenn.) 1884-1944, 1886-01-13
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
The Closing Sermon Of 1895 in the
Brooklyn TabeFnscle. N
4 Review Of tho Journey Of Life, With Its
Obstacles and vicissitudes-Sug-
gestions 1sNew Things Tor
the New Year.

Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, in preaching
the last sermon Of the old year at the
Brooklyn Tabernacle, chose an appropriate
theme, taking for his text:
Knowing the time that now IL Is high time
90 awake out OF sleep -lRomans, xiii, II.
While this morning with glad anthem
we celebrated the Christmas hour, has ii
occurred to you that this is the last Sab
bath night Of grand, and beautiful, and
eventful, and joyous, and solemn 1885? The
occasion is nightly suggestive.
Starting out on long journey on horse
back, you ride along without stopping for
many a mile, until after while you come
on top of a high hill. You rein in the
steed. The horse smokes by reason Of the
length Of the way. You take your feet out
of the stirrups. You turn around in the
saddle. You look OF upon the ravines
through which you have passed, and the
hills over which you have come, and make
an estimate of how many miles you have
travelled. Then turning around again in
the saddle, and. putting your feet in the
stirrups, you look ahead and wonder how
far it will be before you come to the
place of destination. And SO to- day we
come up on the Sabbatc Mount of privi-
iege. No horseman eever spurred on a
steed faster than we have gone up tho
sleeps Of life and down the dangerou,
declivities; but having come here to-day,
we stop and look back upon the way
through which we have come-the dark.
ness and the sunshine, the accidents and
the successes--and then look forward and
wonder how long or how short will yet be
the way. And sitting and standing here,
the hour seems to me, as to you, 1t must
be, momentous. l put my finger ON the
pulse of this moment and l feel that it
beats high and eternal destinies. You and
i have started on in life which will con-
tinue to live after the sun has gone out
cold in death and this wrecked and foun.
dered world shall have strewn its timbers
on the coast of an eternal desolation. o!
it is mean question for me to ask my
self and you to-day: "Where am " What
ain l! Whence came 1! And whittier am
I bound" The simple fact is that
each one Of us has soul to save.
Now, when any man in olden
times had saved the life of a
Roman citizen from drowning, for instance,
that man who rescued the unfortunate
was hOnored. He was allowed sometimes
to sit in the Senate; be was allowed to ride
in great professions, and when The entered
room the other people would rise up to
greet him and do him honor. would to
God that tonight we might aspire for the
higher honor of saving q s0ul-an immOr-
tai soul.
There are three or four reasons that l
can think of why we should obey the in
junction of my text and wake up. The
first arousing confederation that occurs to
my mind is the fact that there are SO many
obstacles l. the way Of our salvation. Now,
there is no need Of our hiding this fact. We
sometimes hear people talking to the un.
converted and saying: at is just as easy
for you to become Christian as it is to
turn over your hand" It is not. There
are tremendous obstacles in the way Of
your becoming a Christian, and every
man that has tried in thorough earnest
ness to become child of God has found
that there are obstacles. That is not a
wise general who deprecates the force of
an enemy-who says to his men: "My
troops, you will have an easy time of it.
Those castles can be captured without any
very serious bombardment. There are
only few enemies in that opposing hos t.
1t will only be few moments assault and
we will gain the victory" No. A wise
general says: "Those are STRONG
battlements; those men who are
coming out to assault us are armed
and they are brave men. II you ever cap
ture those fortresses, and ii you ever over
come that host, it will be by mighty rally
ing Of all your energies" And I have to tel
you now, that ifyou are ever going to ge
to Heaven, il will be by going out in con
test as one against a hundred, as en'
against q thousand, as one against hun
bred thousand, aye, it is an infinite impos
sibility that you ever succeed by any
strength or resolution of your own, and i
there were not some supernatural aid to b'
offered and some divine promise to taxi
hold of, we would be lost, and we would al
be lost.
In the first place, there arc the obstacles
in the worldliness that surrounds you.
need not toll you, mon Of Brooklyn ant
New York, that there is tide OF wOrldli
ness setting away from God and from
Heaven. You have felt it. You hav
wa;ied down in it until the food came Il
your knee, until 1t camo to your girdle
until it has come to your hip. You rise il
the morning. You and it is few moment
later than you thought it was. You are il
great haste. You hurry through the morn
ing meal. You race down the street. YO
60 to your office. You open the letters an,
you answer them. You examine the none,
market. YOurun hither and thithcr. You
life is toll and turmoil. The long day
cave the fifteen or twenty minutes in whicl
YOU lunch, is given up to the influence O
this world, aud it is very rare, indeed
that from eight O'Clock in the morn
ing until four or five O'Clock in the after
noon that you have single thought abou
the great future. Some thought may
while you are standing at the counter or I
the banking house, some stray thought
the future world may come through you
mind, but it darts out again, just like
swallow that in summertime wheels int
the open window, makes circuit of fey
minutes and then goes out. Oh! this It'd
of worldliness. You have felt it. 1t SET
away from God and away from HEAVIER
You know it.
Then there are obstacles in the way
your getting to Heaven, in Satanic and in
fernal assault. The air is full Of evil spiI
its. They accost you. They meet you q
the crossroads. They tell you the wron
A.. xood Has