Connecticut western news., 1889-11-13
AYISIT TO THEETERNAL CITY
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage, D. D., Ar-
 rives in Rome.
The Great Brooklyn Divine Breaches on the Topic, "I Must Also Sec Rome'-The Itinerary of Paul-Some Lessons to be Learned from tho City's History.


 the Topic, "I Must Also Sec Rome''-The
 Itinerary of Paul-Some Lessons to be
 Learned from the City's History.
 ROME, Nov. 10, 1889. Rev., T. Dewitt Talmage, D. D., Mrs. Talmage and Miss Talmage, with Mir. and Mrs. Louis klopsch, arrived in this city last evening. Today the great Brooklyn divine preached to large congregation from the text, Acts xix, 21: '.I must also sec Rome." A full report of the sermon follows
 Here is Pauls itinerary. He was a travel ling or circuit preacher. He had been mob bed and insulted, and the more good he did the worse the world treated him. But he went right on. Now he proposes to go to Jerusalem and says: 'After that I must also see Rome" Why did he want to visit this wonderful city in which am today permit ted to stand? ''Io preach the Gospel" you answer. Nodoubt of it, but there were oth- CT reasons why he wanted to see Rome. A man of Paurs intelligence and classic taste had fifty other reasons for wanting to see it. Your Colosseum was at that time in process os erection, and he wanted to see it.
 The Forum was even then an old struc- ture, and the eloquent apostle wanted to see that building in which eloquence had so often thundered and wept. Over the Appian Way the triumphal processions had already marched for hundreds of years. and he wanted to see that. The temple of Saturn was already an antiquity, and he wanted to see that. The architecture of the world-re- nowned city, he wanted to see that. The places associated with the triumphs, the cruelties, the disasters, the wars, the military genius, the poetic and the rhetorical fame of this great city, he wanted to see them. man like Paul, so many sided, so sympathetic, so emotional, so full of analogy, could not have been indifferent to the antiquities and the splendors which move every rightly organized human being. And with what thrills of in- terest he walked these streets. those only who for the first time like ourselves enter Rome can imagine.
 If the inhabitants of Christendom were gathered into one plain, and it were put to them which two cities they would above others wish to see, the vast majority of them would vote Jerusalem and Rome. So we can understand something of the record of my text and its surroundings when it says, Paul purposed in the spirit when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia to go to Jerusalem, saying: "After that must also see Romc.' As some of you are aware. with we can learn and the good we can get, I am on tLe way to Palestine. Since leaving Brooklyn, N. Y., this is the first place we have stopped. Intermediate cities are at- tractive, but we have visited them in other years, and we hastened on, for said before starting that while was going to see Jeru- salem must also see Rome. Why do want to sec it? Because l want, by visiting re- gions associated with the great apostle to the Genties, to have my faith ill Christianity confirmed.
 There are those who will go through large expenditure to have their faith weakened. In my native land 1 have known persons of very limited means to pay fifty cents or a dollar to hear a lecturer prove that our Chris tian religion is myth, dream, cheat, a Ea In 70 | thousands of dollars that this journey of my family will cost to have additional evidence that our Christian religion is an authenticated grandeur. a solemn, a joyous, rapturous, stupendous, q magnificent fact. So l want to see Rome. l want you to show me the places connected with apostolic ministry. l have heard that, in your city and amid it's surroundings, apostles suffered and died for Christ's sake.
 My common sense tells me that people do not die for the sake of a falsehood. They may practice n deception for purpose of gain, but put the sword to their heart, or arrange the halter around their neck, or kindle the fro around their feet, and they would say my life is worth more than any thing can gain by losing it. l hear you have in this city Paups dungeon. Show it to me. I must see Rome also. While l am interested in this city because of her rulers or her citizens who arc mighty in history for virtue or vice or talents, Romu-
  pasian. and Cariolanus, and Brutus, and q hundred others whose names arc bright with an exceeding brightness, or black with tho deepest dye, most of all am interested in the end city na Gr the Rreeher of ond Ma1 5s hero of - the shipwrecked vessel in the breakers of Melita and the man who held higher than any one that the world ever saw the torch of resurrection, lived and preached and was massacred here. Show tod must also see Rome.
 But my text suggests that in Paul there was the inquisisive and curious spirit. Had my text only meant that he wanted to preach here he would have said 30. Indeed, in an- ] other place, he declared: 'I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are at Rome also" But my text suggests sight seeing. This man who had been under Dr. Gamaiel had no lack of phraseoiogy, and was used to saying exactly what he meant, and he said: 'sI must also see Rome." There is such q thing as Christian curiosity. Paul had it and some of us have it. About other peoples business have no curiosity. About all that can confirm my faith in the Christian relig- ion and the worlds salvation and the souls future happiness l am full of Paul had 8 great curiosity about the next world, and so have we. l hope some day, by the grace of God, to go over and see for my self; but not now. No we'll man, no pros pered man, I think wants to go now. But the time will come, think, when l shall go over. want to see what they do there, and want to see how they do it. do not want to be looking through the gates ajar forever want them to swing wide open: There are ten thousand things Iwant eXplained-about this world, about God, about everything. We start in plain path of what we know, and in minute come up againsta Q high wall of what we do not know. 1 wonder how 1t looks over there. Somebody tells me it is like a paved city-paved with gold; and an- other man tells me 1t is like fountain, and it Is like tree, and it is like a triumphal pro- cession and the next man meet tells me it is all fgurative. really want to know, after the body is resarrected, what they wear and what they eat; and have an fmmeasurable curiosity to know what 1t Is. and how 1t Is, and where 1t Is. Columbus risked his life to find the American continent, and shall we shudder to go out on voyage of discovery which shall reveal a vaster and more brilliant country?
 John Franklin rsked his life to find pass age between iceberss, and shall we dread to find passage between eternal summer? Men | i'll Switzerland travel up the heights Of Mat terhorn, with alpenstock and guides and rockets and ropes, and, getting halfway up, stumble and fall down in horrible massacre. They just wanted to say they had been on the tops of those high peaks. And shall we hills which start thousand miles beyond, where stop the highest peaks. of the Alps, and when in that ascent there is no peril? A n% aoG%ed sod it to ds Sepa E on n the en sc' @ utes I will know the great secret" One minute after the vital functions ceased, the little child that died last night knew more than Paul himself before he died. Friends, the exit from this world, or death, if you please to call it, to the Christian is glo- riO,1s eynanation It ia demonstration Ii is