The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1890-02-17
GLORY OF THE SAVIOR.
REV. TALMAGE PREACHEs ON
"rHR GLORIOUS CHRIST"


Dying Allevietions.
BROOKLYN, Feb. 16-At the tabernacle,
this morning, Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage,
D. D., preached on "The Glorious Christ. u
His text was: "He that cometh from above
is above all."-John ill.,. 81. The great
preacher said:
The most conspicuous character of
history steps out upon the platform.
The finger which, diamonded with
light. pointed down to him from the
Bethlehem sky, was only q ratification
of the finger Of prophecy, the finger Of
genealogy, the finger of chronology, the
finger of events-al five fingers pointing
in one direction. Christ is the overtopping
figure of all time. He is the cor hupand
in all music, the gracefulest line in all
sculpture, the most exquisite mingling of
lights and shades in all painting, the acme
of all climaxes, the dome of all cathedraled
grandeur, and the peroration Of all splendid
language.
The Greek alphabet is made up of twenty
four letters. and when Christ compared
himself to the first letter and the last letter,
the Alpha and the Omega, he appropriated
to himself all the splendors that you can
SpSiA OuO SlbuoI Wltl bLAOSo bWO leLl0Ts ana
all the letters between them. "I am the
Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and
the end, the first and the last" Or, if you
prefer the words of the text, ''above all.h
What does it mean? 1t means, after you
have piled up all Alpine and Himalayan
attitudes, the glory of Christ would have to
spread its wings and descend a thousand
leagues TO touch those SUBMITS. Pelion, u
high mountain of Thessaly; Ossa, a high
mountain apA Olvyo p11a a b,erb
but mythology tells us when the giants
warred against the gods they piled up
these three mountains, and from the top
of them proposed to scale the heav-
ems, but the hight was not great enough
and there was a complete failure. And
after all the giants-Isaiah and Paul, pro-
phetic and apostolic giants; Raphael and
Michael Angelo, artistic giants; cherubim
and seraphim and archangel, celestial gi-
ants-have failed to climb to the top Of
Christ's glory, they might all well unite in
the words of the text and say: "He that
cometh from above is above all.n
First, Christ must be above all else in
our preaching There are so many books
on homiletics scattered through the country
that all laymen. as well as all clergymen,
have made up their minds what sermons
ought to be. That sermon is most effectual
which most pointedIy puts forth Christ as
all evil-individual, social, political, nation
al. There is no reason why we should ring
the endless changes on q few phrases There
are those who think that if an exhortation
or a discourse have frequent mention Of
justification, sanctifcation, covenant of
works and covenant of grace, that
therefore it must be profoundly evan
gelical, while they are suspicious Of a dis
course which presents the same truth, but
nnOar diffpTapf nh aqanlnnu Nnxu ~
there is nothing in all the opulent realm of
Anglo-Saxonsm, of all the word treasures
that we inherited from the Latin and Greek
and the Indo-E1ropean, but we have right
to marshal it in religious discussion. Christ
sets the example. His illustrations were
from the grass, the flowers, the spttle, the
salve, the barnyard fowl, the crystals of
salt, as well as from the seas and the stars
and W. do not propose in our Sunday school
teaching and in our pulpit address to be put
on the limits.
know that there is a great deal said in
our day against words, as though they were
nothing. They may be misused, but they
have an imperial power. They are the
bridge between soul and soul, between AL
mighty God and the human race. What
did God write upon the tables Of stone 2
Words. What did Christ utter on Mount
Olivet? Words. Out of what did Christ
strike the spark for the illumination of the
universe? Out Of words. "Let there be light, {"
and light was. OF course, thought is the
cargo and words are only the ship; but how
last would your cargo get on without the
ship. What you need, my friends,
in all your work, in your Sabbath
school class in your reformatory institu-
tions, and what we all need is to enlarge
our vocabulary when we come to spea K
about God and Christ and heaven. We
ride few old words to death when there is
such illimitable resource. Shakespeare en-
ployed fifteen thousand different words for
dramatic purposes; Milton employed eight
thousand different words for poetic pur-
poses; Rufus Choate employed over eleven
thousand different words for legal pur-
poses; but the most Of us have less than a
thousand words that we can manage, less
than five hundred, and that makes us so
stupid.
When we come to set forth the love of
Christ we are going to take tenderest
phraseology wherever we find it, and If it
has never been used in that direction be-
fore, all the more shall we use it, When
we come to speak of the glory Of Christ,
the conqueror, we are going to draw our
Smiles from triunphal arch and oratorio,
and everything grand and stupendous.
The French navy have eighteen flags
by which they give signal, but those
eighteen flags they can put into sixty
six thousand different combinations.
And / have to tell you that these stand
ards Of the cross may be lifted into combi-
nations infinite and varieties everlasting.
And let me say to these young men who
come from the theological seminaries into
| our services every Sabbath and are after a
while going to preach Jesus Christ, you
will have the largest liberty and unlimited
resource. You only have to present Christ
in your own way.
Jonathan Edwards preached Christ In the
severest argument ever penned, and John
Bunyan preached Christ in the sublimest
allegory ever composed. Edward Payson,
sick and exhausted, leaned up against the
side Of the pulpit and wept out his dis
course, while George Whiteheld, with the
manner and the voice and the start Of an
actor, overwhelmed his auditory. 1t would
have been different thing IL Jonathan
Edwards bad tried to write and dream
about the pilgrims progress to the celestial
city, or John Bunyan had attempted an
essay on the human will
Brighter than the light, fresher than the
fountains, deeper than the seas, are all
these gospel themes. Song has no melody,
flowers have nosweetness, sunset sky has no
color compared with these glorious themes.
These harvests Of grace spring up quicker
than we can sickle them. Kindling pulpits
with their fire, aud producing revolutions
with their power, lighting mp dying beds
with their glory, they are the sweetest
thought for the poet, and the most thrilling
illustration for the orator, and they offer
most intense scene for the artist, aud