News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1889-06-06
SUNDAYS SERMON.
ONE OF REV. DIR. TALMAGE'S
STERLING DISCOURSES.
Subject: ~our Need oroleansing.

TEXT: eff I ucdSh myself sCith snou
tCatey, and should l cleanse my hands an
olkali, net shalt thou plunge me fn the ditch
and mine o101e clothes shall dbhor me."-
Job TX, so, 81.
Albert Barnes-honored be his name on
earth and in heaven-went straight back to the
original writing OF my text and translated
it as | have now quoted it, giving substantial
better, the ancients had an idea that in snow
water there was 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 I've or alkali and
mixed 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 a dead failure, and
that, unless we are abluted by something
better than earthly liquids and chemical
preparations, we are loathsome and in the
ditch 'lf | 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.
l. turn the camera obscura of Gods
word full upon you, and l pray that
the sunshine falling through the skylight
may enable me to take you just as you
are. Shall it be a Aattering picture, or
shall it be a 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 Ambiguous. He had
a blind eye, and he compelled the art
list TO take his profile so as to hide the
defect in his vision. But since that inven-
ton, three hundred and thirty years before
Christ, there have been a great many pro-
files. Shall | to-day give you a one-sided
view of yourselves, profile, or shall it be
full-length portrait showing you Just what
you are2 If God will help me by His al
mighty grace, | shall give you that last kind
of a picture.
When | first entered the ministry | used to
write my sermons all out and read them and
run my hand along the line lest l should lose
my place. have hundreds of those manu-
scripts. Shall | ever preach them? Never;
tor In those days was somewhat over-mas-
tered with the idea heard talked all around
about, of the dignity of human nature and
adopted the idea, and evolved it and Illus
trated it, and | argued it; but coming on in
life, and having seen more of the world, and
studied better my Bible, | find that that early
teaching was faulty, and that there is no dig
nifty IN human nature, until it is reconstructed
by the grace of God. Talk about vessels going
to pieces on the SkerrieS off Irelandl There
never was such shipwreck as in the Gihon
and the Hiddekel, rivers of Eden, where
steamer going down with five hundred
passengers on bOardl What is that to tho
shipwreck of fourteen hundred million souls?
We are by nature mass of uncleanness and
putrefaction, from which it takes all the ON
Impotence and infinitude of Gods grace to
cxtTicate US. g If / wash myself with snow
water, and should cleanse my hands in al
kali, yet shalt thou plunge in the ditch,
and my own clothes shall abhor me-"
remark, in the first place, that some peo-
water of fine apologies. Here is one man who
says: 81 am a sinner; | confess that; but
Inherited this. My father was sinner, my
grandfather, my great great-grandfathe
and all the way back to Adam, and i
couldn't help myself" My brother, have
ed something to the original estate of
sin that was hequeathed to you? Are
you not brave enough to confess
that you have sometimes surrendered to sin,
which you ought to have conquered? / ask
you whether it is fair play to put upon our
ancestry things for which we ourselves are
personally responsible? If your nature was
askew when you got il, have you not some
times given it an additional twist? VIII all
the tombstones of those who have preceded
US make a barricade high enough
for eternal defenses? / know a devout
man who had blaSphemous parentage.
! know an honest man whose father was
thief. / know pure man whose mother was
a waif of the street. The hereditary tide
may be very strong, but there is such a thing
as stemming it. The fact that have a cor
rupt 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 in
sufficient apology.
Still further, says some one: ''If have
gone into sin, it has been through my COM
panions, my comrades and my associates;
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.n | do not believe it. God
gave TO no one the power to destroy you or
me. If a man is destroyed he is self destroyed
and that is always so. Why did you not break
away FROM them? 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, hut when they tried to steal your
immortal soul, you placidly submitted to it.
Those bad fellows have a cup of fire to drink
do not pour your cup into it. In this matter
of the soul, every man for himself. That
those persons are not fully responsible 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 apologies; though there were a great
food 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 immortal soul
Still further, some persons apologize for
their sins by saying: I'VE are great deal
better than some people. You see people all
around about us that are a great deal worse
than WEI You stand up columnar in YOUR
integrity, and look down upon those who are
PROSTATE in their habits and crimes What
of that my bfother2 If I failed through reck-
leSsness and wicked imprudence for ten thou
sand dollars, is the matter alleviated at all
by the fact that somebody else has
failed for one hundred thousand dollars
thousand dollars? Oh, no. If ] have
the neuralgia, shall refuse medical attend
ance because my neighbor has virulent
typhoid fever? The fact that his disease
Is worse than mine-does that cure mine?
If /, through my fooIhardiness 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
instead of two or three people being hurt
there were seventy-five mangled and crushed?
Because others are depraved, is that any ex-
cuse for my depravity2 Am / better
than they? Perhaps they had worse
temptations than | have had. Per
haps their surroundings in life were
more overpowering.. Perhaps, man,
If you had been under the same stress of
temptation, instead of sitting here to-day,
you would have been looking through the
bars of a penitentiary. Perhaps o woman,
If you had been under the same power of
temptation, instead of sitting here to-day,
you would be tramping the street. the laugh
ing stock OF men and the grief Of the angels !
OF God, dungeoned, body, mind and soul, in
the blackness of despair. All, do not let
us solace ourselves with the thought thatcher
people are worse than we. Perhaps in the |
future, when our fortunes may change, UNI
less God prevents it, we may be worse than
they are Many man after thirty years,
after forty wears after fifTy Years after sixtv
years, has gone TO pieces on the sand
bars. OH instead of wasting our
time in hypercriticism about others,
let us ask ourselves the questions, Where dc
we stand? What are our sins What are our
deficits? What are our perils? What our
hopes Let each one say to himself: 'Where
VIII l be Shall range in summary fields.
or grind in the mills of great night? Where?
Where ?"
some winter morning you go out and see a
snow bank in graceful drifts, as though by
some heavenly compass it had been curved:
and as the sun glints it the luster is almost
Insutferable, and it seems as if God had
wrapped the earth in shroud with white
And you say: twas there sS ever
anything so pure as the snow, SO
beautiful as the snow?n But you brought a
pail of that snow and put it upon the stove
and melted it: and you found that there was
a sediment at the bottom, and every drop of
that snow water was riled; and you found
that the snow bank had gathered up the
impurity of the field; and that after
all it was not fit to wash in. And SO say it
will be if you try to gather up these contrasts
and comparisons with others, and with these
your heart and life. 1t viii be an l1nsuccess-
full ablution- Such snow water will never
wash away single stain of an immortal
soul.