Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1890-02-21
THE GLORIOUS CHRIST.
DR.. TALMAGE breaches A POWER
Full SERMON m BROOKLYN.
Gle That Cometh from Above Is Above
Ail"-The son of God Is the First and
Last-.He Can Make Dying Hours
Easy, Rob Death of His Sting.

BROOKLYN, Feb. 16-At the tabernacle
this morning the Rev. 7. De Witt Talmage,
". H.. announced that he would very soon
nsGin series Of sermons on his journey "To
AID Through the Holy Land The subject
of hts discourse this morning was "The Clio
RIOTS Christi His text was; "He that COM
eth from above is above all John iii. 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
ratification of the finger of prophecy, the
finger of genc3logy, the finger of chronology,
the finger OF ovcnis--a five fingers pointing
in one direction. Christ is the overlapping
figure of all time. lie is the vo5 humana in
al music, tine g"acetuicSt line in all sculpture,
the uoSt exquisite mngling of lights and
shudes in ali painting, the acme of all eli
MAKES, the dome Of all cathcdralcd grandeur,
and the pcroration of all splendid language.
The Greek alphabet is made up of twenty
four lrttrr- and when Christ compared him
sell ~ the first letter and the last letter. the
alpha and the omega, he appropriated to
himself all the splcndors that you can spell
ga. either with those two letters and all tho
letters between them. Il am the Alpha and
the Omega the beginning and the end, the
first and the last Or, if you prefer the
words %, the text, above all"
What docs it mean. 1t means, after you
have piled up all Alpine and Himalayan aIti-
~ les the Glory of Christ would have to
*rrnl It's wings and descend thousand
loaGuts TO touch those SUBMITS Peion. a
high mountain Of Thessaly Oss:l. high noun
tain. ami Olympus n high mountain; but
mythology tells Us when the giants warred
against the gods they piled up these three
mountains, and from the topoT them proposed
10 scale the heavens; hut the height was not
great enough, and there was a complete fail
ure. And after all the gantS-Isaiah and
(aul prophetic and apostolic giants: Raphael
and Michael Angelo artistic giants: cherubim
and seraphim and archangel celestial giants
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"
CHRIST ABOVE ALL ELSE.
First Christ must be above all else in our
preaching. There are so many books ON
homiletics scattered through the country that
all layinen, as well as all clergymen, have
made up their minds what sermons ought to
be. That sermon is most effecttial which
most pointedly puts forth Christ as the par
don Of ali sin and the correction Of all evil
individual, social, political, national There
Is no reason why We should ring the endless
changes on a few phrases. There are those
who think that if an exhortation or u dis
course have frequent mention of Justification
sanctitication, covenant of works and cove
nant of grace, that therefore it must be pro-
foundly evangelical while they are suspicious
Of a discourse which presents the same truth.
but under different phraseology. Now, say
there Is nothing in all the opulent realm of
Anglo-SaxOnism, of all the word treasures
that we inherited from the Latin and the
Greek and the ndo-European, 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 and the stars;
and we do not propose in our Sunday school
teaching and in our pulpit address to be put
on the limits
| know that there is great deal said in
our day against words, as though they were
nothing. They may be nlsused, but they
have.an imperial power. They are the bridge
between soul and soul, between Almighty God
and the human race. What did God write
upon the tables of stones' Words What did
Christ utter on Mount OGvet! Words. Out
of what did Christ strike the spark for the
illumination Of the universal Out Of words
LET there be light" and light was. or
course, thought is the cargo and words are
only the ship; but how fast would your cargo
get on without the ships What you need NV
friends, in all your work, in your Sabbath
school class, i'll your reformatory institutions
and what we all need is to enlarge our vocab-
Ulary, when we come to speak about God and
Christ and heaven. We ride a few old words
to death when there is such illimitable re-
source. Shakespeare employed fifteen thou
sand different words for dramatic purposes:
Milton employed eight thousand different
words for poetic purposes; Rufus Choate en-
ployed over eleven Thousand different words
for legal purposes; but the most of us have
less than thousand words that we can man
age less than five hundred and that makes
Us so stupid.
When come to set forth the love of
Christ we are going to take tenderest phrase
oogy wherever we find it, and if it has never
been used in that direction before 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 tri-
umphnl arch and oratorio and everything
grand and stupendons. The French navy
have eighteen flags by which they give sig
mai, but those eighteen flags they can put into
sixty-six thousand different combinations
and have to tell you that these standards of
the cross may lie lifted into combinations in
finite and varieties everlasting And let Inc
say to these young men who come from the
theological seminaries into our services every
sabbath, and are after while going to
preach Jesus Christ, you will have the largest
hperty 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 al
leS"iy ever composed Edward Payson, sick