The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1889-11-15
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
Farewell Words on the Eve OF Start
ing for Palestine.
A. Loving BenedictiOn Upon All Friends
and the Prayers of His Vast Con-
gregatiOn BespOken for
His Safe Return.

/
To the more than twenty-five million
| people in many countries to whom my
sermons come week by week, in English
! tongue and by translation, through the
/ kindness of the newspaper press, 1 ad-
| dress these words. I dictate them to a
stenographer on the eve Of my departure
for the Holy Land, Palestine. When
you read this sermon I shall be in mid
atlantic. go to be gone a few weeks
on a religious journey. 1 go because /
want for myself and hearers and readers
to see Bethlehem, and Nazareth, and
Jerusalem, and Cavalry, and all the
other places connected with the
| SaviOur's life and death, and so re-en-
| force myself for sermons. go because
am writing the Life of Christ" and
can be more accurate and graphic when
l have been an eyewitness of the
sacred places. Pray for my successful
iOurneying and my safe return.
wish on the eve of departure to pro-
nOunce a loving benediction upon all
my friends in high places and low, upon
| congregations to whom my sermons are
| read in absence of pastors, upon groups
| gathered out on prairies and in mining
/ districts, upon all sick and invalid and
| aged ones who can not attend churches,
but to whom l have long administered
| through the printed page. Ny next SER
mon will be addressed to you from Rome,
/ Italy, for I feel like Paul when he said:
| $50, as much as in me is, am ready to
| preach tho Gospel to you that are at
| Rome also" The fact is that Paul was
ever moving about on land or sea. He
was an old sailor-not from occupation,
but from frequency of travel. think
/ ne could have taken a vessel across the
| Mediterranean as well as some of the
ship captains. The sailors never scoffed
at him for being a ''land lubber." II
| PaUl's advice had been taken the crew
would never have gone ashore at Melita.
When the vessel went scudding under
bare poles Paul was the only self-pos-
sessed man on board, and, turning to the
excited crew and despairing passengers,
be eXclaims, in voice that sounds above
the thunder of the tempest and the
wrath of the sea: ''Be of good cheer
The men who now go to sea with maps
and charts and modern compass, warned
by buoy and lighthouse, know nothing OF
the perils of ancient navigators. Horace
! said that the man who first ventured on
the sea must have had a heart bound
with oak and triple brass. People then
ventured only from headland to head
land and island to island, and not until
long after spread their sail for voyage
across the sea. Before starting the
weather was watched, and the ship hav-
Ing been hauled up on shore, the mari
ners placed their shoulders against the
stern of the ship and heaved it off, they
at the last moment leaping into it.
Vessels were then chiefly ships of bur
5en-the transit Of passengers being the
exception, for the world was not then
migratory as in our day, when the first
desire of man in one place seems to be
TO get into another place. The ship
from which Jonah was thrown over.
board, and that in which Paul was car
ried prisoner, went out chiefly with the
Idea Of taking a cargo. And now, sc
then, vessels were accustomed to carry
flag. In those times it was inscribed
with the name of a heather deity. A
vessel bound for Syracuse had on it the
inscription: castor and Pollux.'
The ships were provided with
anchors. Anchors were of two
kinds: those that were dropped
into the sea, and those that were thrown
up onto the rocks to hold the vessel fast
This last kind was what Paul alluded tt
when he said: (Which hope we have a.
an anchor of the soul, both sure ant
steadfast, and which entereth into tina
within the vail" That was what the
sailors call "hOol anchor" The rocks
and sand bars, shoals and headlands
not being mapped out, vessels carried ;
plumb line. They would drop it anC
find the water fifty fathoms, and drop
again and find it forty fathoms, anC
drop it again and find it thirty fathoms
thus discovering their near approach t,
the shore.
| In the spring, summer and autumn tn
Mediterranean sea was white with tn,
wings of ships, but at the first wintr,
blast they hied themselves to the near
est harbor, although now the world
commerce prOspers in January as we'll a
in June, and in midwinter, all over tn,
wide and stormy deep. there float pal
aces of light, trampling the pillows un
der foot, and showerfng the sparks o
terrible furnaces on the wild wind; an,
the Christian passenger, tippeted ant
shawled, sits under the shelter of tn
smokestack, looking of upon the phos
phorescent deep, on which is written, il
scrolls of foam and fire: ''Thy way,
God, is in the sea, and Thy path in tn
great waters"
1t is in those days of early navigation
that I see a group of men, women an,
children on the beach of the Medite1
ranean. Paul is about to leave the con
gregation to whom he had preached an,
they are come down to see him off.
is a solemn thing to part. There are $
many traps that wait for a mans feet
The solid ground may break through
and the sea-hOw many dark mysterie
T. hides in its bosom! A few counsels,
hasty goOd-bye,a last look, and the rope
rattle, and the sails are hoisted, an
the planks are hauled in, and Paul j
gone. I expect to sail over some of tn
same waters over which Paul sailed, bu
before going want to urge you all I
embark for Heaven.
The church is the drydock wher
souls are to be fitted out for Heaven.
making a vessel for this voyage the frs
need is sound timber. The floor timber
ought to be of solid stuff. For the wan
of it vessels that looked able to ru
their jibboons into the eye of any tenn
est, when caught in a storm have bee
crushed like a wafer. The truths {
I Gods word are what I mean by fioC
timbers. Nothing but oaks, hewn in tn
forest of Divine truth, are staunc