The leader., 1889-11-16
REV. DIR. TALMAGE.
THE BROOKLYN DIVINE,S SUN
DAY SERMON.
Subject: ~ Must Also See Rome"
preached at Rome, Italy.)


TEXT: 81 must also see Rene" Acts
10, 81.
Here is Pauls itinerary He was q travel
ing or circuit preacher. He had been mobbed
and insulted and the more good he did the
worse the world treated him. But he went
lem, and says: "After that must also see
Rome Why did he want to visit this won
derful city in which / am to-day permitted
to stand? ITO preach the Gospel" you an
swer. No doubt of it, but there were other
reasons why he wanted to see Rome. A man
of Paups intelligence and classic taste had
fifty other reasons for wanting to see it.
Your Colosseum was at that time in process
of erection, and he wanted to see it. The
Forum was even then an old structure, and
the eloquent apostle wanted to see that
building in which eloquence had so
often thundered and wept, Over the
Appian Way the triumphal procession had
already marched for hundreds of years, and
he wanted to see that The Temple of Sat
turn was already an antiquity and he wanted
to see that. The architecture of the world
renowned city, he wanted to see that The
places associated with the triumphs, the
crueltias, the disasters, the wars, the mill
tary genius the poetic and the rhetorical
fame of this great city, he wanted to see
them. A man like Paul, so many sided, SO
sympathetic, so emotional, so full of analogy,
could not have been indifferent to the antiq-
uities and the splendors which move every
rightly organized human being. And with
what thrill of interest he walked these
streets, those only who for the first time like
ourselves enter Rome can imagine. If the
inhabitants of all Christendom were gathered
into one plain, and it were put to them which
two cities they would above all others wish to
Gao ha of
Jerusalem and Rome So we can understand
something of the record of my text and it's
surroundings when it says, Paul proposed in
the spirit when he had passed through Mace
donia and Achaia to go to Jerusalem, saying:
AFTER that must also see Rome" AS some
of you are aware, with my family and only
for the purpose of what we can learn and the
good we can get, l am on the way to Pales-
tine Since leaving Brooklyn, n. Y, this is
the first place we have stopped Intermedi-
ate cities are attractive, but we have visited
them in other years, and we hastened on, for
I said before starting that while 1 was going
to see Jerusalem I must also see Rome.
Why do l want to see it? Because want,
by visiting regions associated with the
great apostle to the gentiles, to have
my faith in Christianity confirmed.
There are those who will go through large
expenditure to have their faith weakened.
In my native land have known persons of
very limited means to pay fifty cents or
dollar to hear a lecturer prove that our
Christian religion is a myth, dream a
cheat, lie. On the contrary, will give all
the thousands of dollars that this journey of
my family will cost to have additional evil
dence that our Christian religion is an au-
thenticated grandeur, solemn, a joyous, a
rapturous stupendous, a magnificent fact
So 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 its surroundings, apostles suffered
and died for Christ's sake. Ny common
sense tells me that people do not die for the
sake of a falsehood. They may prac-
tice a deception for purposes of gain,
but put the sword to their heart,
or arrange the halter around their neck, or
lindle the fire around their feet and they
would say my life is worth more than any
thing l can gain by losing it. l hear you
have in this city Paurs dungeon. Show it to
me- must see Rome also. While l am in
terested in this city because of her rulers or
her citizens who are mighty in history for
virture or vice or talents, RomuluS, and
Caligui, and Cincinnatus, and Vespasian,
and Coriolanus, and Brutus, and q hundred
others whose names are bright with an ex-
ceeding brightness or black with the deepest
dye most of all am 1 interested in this city
because the preacher of Mars HILL and the de-
fer of Agrippa, and the hero of the ship
wrecked 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 me every place connected with his
memory. | must also see Rome.
But my text suggests that in Paul there
was the inquisitive and curious spirit Had
my text only meant that he wanted to preach
here he would have said so. Indeed, in
another place, he declared: II 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.. Gamaliel
had no lack of phraseology, and was used to
saying exactly what he meant, and he said: II
must also see Rome" There is such thing
as Christian curiosity. Paul had it and some
of us have it. About other peoples business
have no curiosity. About all that can con-
firm my faith in the Christian religion and
the worlds salvation and the sou's future
happiness, lam full of an all absorbing, all
compelling curiosity. Paul had great curl
osity about the next world, and so
have we. I hope some day. by the
grace Of God to go over and see for
myself; but not now. No well man, no pros
pered man, think, wants to go now. But
the time will come l think, when l shall go
over. l want to see what they do there, and
want to see how they do it, do not want
to be looking through the gates aiar for
ever. 1 want them to swing wide open
There are ten thousand things 1 want ex-
plained-about you, about myself, about the
government of this world, about God, about
everything. We start in a plain path of
what we know, and in a minute come up
against high wall of what we do not know.
l wonder how it looks over there. Some
body tells me it Il like paved city-paved
with gold; and another man tells me it is
like a fountain. and it is like tree, and
it is like a triumphal procession; and the
next man / met tells me it is all figurative.
1 really want to know, after the body is
resurrected what they wear and what they
eat; and 1 have an immeasurable curiosity
it 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 risked his life to find a pas
sage between icebergs and shall we dread tn