Dodge City times., 1889-06-13
NEED OF CLEANSING.
SUBJECT OF DIR. TALMAGE's TABER-
NACLE SERMON on SUNDAY.
Tho Attempts of Poor Weak Humanity to
Make Itself Clean Before God Are Not
Successful-The Lord Himself Must See to
the Cleansing.

Teyt.--H l wash myself with snow water
and should cleanse my hands in alkali, yet shal
thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine Owl
clothes shall aDhor me. job tx, 81, 81.
Albert Barnes-honored be his nam,
on earth and in Heaven-went straight
back to the original writing of my text
and translated it as l have now quoted
ii, giving substantial reasons for sc
doing. Although We know better, the
ancients had an idea that in snow watel
there was n special power to cleanse
and that garment washed and rinsed
in it would be as clean as clean could
be; but If the plain snow water failed to
do its work, then they would take lye ol
Rlkali and mix it with oil, and under
that preparation they felt that the last
impurity would certainly be gone. Job,
in my text, in most forceful figure sets
forth the idea that all his attempts to
make himself pure before God were q
dead failure, and that, unless We are
abluted by something betterthan earthly
liquids and chemical preparations, We
are Ioathsome and in the ditch. If
wash myself with snow water, and should
cleanse my hands in alkali, yet shalt
thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine
own clothes shall abhor me"
You are now sitting for your picture.
turn the camera obscura of Gods word
full upon you. and pray that the sun
shine falling through the skylight may
enable me to take you Just as you are.
Shall it be fiattering picture, or shall
it be true one? You say: Let it be a
true one" The first profile that was
ever taken was taken three hundred and
thirty years before Christ, of Antigonus.
He had blind eye, and he compelled
the artist to take his profile so as to hide
the defect in his vision. But since that
invention, three hundred and thirty
years before Christ, there have been a
great many profiles. Shall L to-day give
you one sided view of yourselves, a
profile, or shall it be full length por-
trait, showing you just what you are?
If God will help me by His almighty
grace, shall give you that last kind of
picture.
When / first entered the ministry |
used to write my sermons all out and
read them, and run my hand along the
line lest / should loose my place. 1
have hundreds of those manuscripts.
Shall l ever preach them? Never; for IN
those days / was somewhat over-mas-
tered with the idea l heard talked all
around about, of the dignity of human
evolved it. and l illustrated if, and
argued it; but coming on in life, and
having seen more of the world. and
studied better my Bible, i find that that
early teaching was faulty, and that there
is no dignity in human nature, until it
is reconstructed by the grace of God.
Talk about vessels going to pieces on
the Skerries, off Ireland, There never
was such a shipwreck as in the Gihon
and the Hiddekel, rivers ofEden, where
our first parents foundered. Talk of n
steamer going down with five hundred
passengers ON boardi What is that to
the shipwreck of fourteen hundred
million souls? We are by nature a mass
of uncleanness and putrefaction, from
which it takes all the omnipotence and
infinitude of Gods grace to extricate us.
If l wash myself with snow water, and
should l cleanse my hands in alkali, yet
shalt thou plunge me in the ditch. and
my own clothes shall abhor me"
/ remark, in the first place, that some
people trv TO cleanse their soul of sin in
the snow water of fine apologies. Here
is one man who says: Il am a sinner: 1
confess that; but l inherited this. My
father was sinner, my grandfather, my
great great grandfather, and all the way
back to Adam, and 1 couldn't help my
self" My brother. have you not, every
day in your life, added something to the
original estate of sin that was bequeathed
to you? Are You not brave enough to
confess that you have sometimes sur
rendered to sin, which you ought to
have conquered? l ask you whether it
is fair play to put upon our ancestry
things for which We ourselves are per-
% II afr,r
askew when you got it. have you not
sometimes given it an additional twist?
Will all the tombstones of those who
have preceded us ma Ae barricade high
enough fer eternal defenses? l know
devout man who had blasphemous par
entage. l know an honest man whose
father was a thief. l know pure man
whose mother was n waif of the street.
The hereditary tide may be very strong,
but there is such thing as stemming il.
The fact that l have a corrupt nature is
no reason why should yield to it. The
deep stains of our soul can never be
washed out by the snow water of such
insufficient apology.
Still further, says some one: IF l
have gone into sin, it has been through
my companions, my comrades and asso-
ciates; they ruined me. They taught me
to drink. They took me to the gambling
hell. They plunged me into the house
of sin. They ruined my soul" lido not
believe it. God gave to no one The
power to destroy you or me. IL man is
destroyed he is self destroyed, and that
is always so. Why did you not break
away from them2 If they had tried to
steal your purse, you would have
knocked them down; if they had tried
to purloin your gold watch, you would
have riddled them with shot; but when
they tried to steal your immoral soul,
you placidly submitted to it. Those bad
fellows have a cup of fire to drink; do
not pour your cup in it. In this matter
of the soul, every man for himself.
That those persons are not fully re-
sponsible for your sin. / prove by the
fact that you still consort with them.
You cannot get off by blaming them
Though you gather up all these apollo
gies; though there were great flood of
them; though they should come down
with the force of the melting SHOWS from
Lebanon, they could not wash out one
stain of your immoral soul.
Still further. some persons apologize
for their sins by saying: We are
great deal better than some people. You
see people all around about us that are
a great deal worse than we." You stand
up columnar in your integrity. and look
down upon those who are postrate in
their habits and crimes. What OF that,
my brother? If l failed through reck-
lessness and wicked imprudence for ten
thousand dollars, is the matter alleviated
Mt all by the fact that somebody else has
failed for one hundred thousand dollars,
and somebody else for two hundred
thousand dollars? Oh, no. If l have
the neuralgia, shall / refuse medical at
tendance because my neighbor has
typhoid fever? The fact that
his disease is worse than mine-does
that cure mine? If l. through my fool
leap off into ruin. does it
break the fall to know that others leap
off a higher cliff into deeper darkness? |
When the Hudson river rail train went
through the bridge at Spuyten Duyvil, !
did it alleviate the matter at all that in !
stead of two or three people being hurt
there were seventy-five mangled and
CruSheu2 Recausa pf hers ara ianraya1 I,