The Opelousas courier., 1890-04-26
REV. DR.. TALMAGE
rag BROOkLlN DITINE'S SUNDAY
SERMON.

Sbfeb. diamonded with light, pointed down
n Him from the Bethlehem sky, was only a
ratification Of the finger of prophecy, the
finger of genealogy, the finger of chronology.
the finger Of eyents-all five fingers pointing
N one direction. Christ is the overlapping
tiq;Ire of all time. He is the vox humans in
MI music, the graceGulest line in all sculD-
fure. the most exquisite mingling of lights
and shades in all painting, tho acme of all
~clin,axes. the dome Of al cathedraled gran
dcur, and the peroration of all splendid Ian
guage.
four letters, and when Christ compared Him
self TO the first letter and the last letter. the
alpha and the omega, He appropriated
to Himself all the sPlendors that you
can spell out either with those two let
ters and all the letters between them. 81
am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning
and the end, the first and the last Or, il
you prefer the words Of the text, s'aboye
an
What does it mean? Tt means, after Won
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. a
high mountain of Thessaly; Ossa, a high
mountain, and Olympus, a high mountain;
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 heavens; but The height
was not great enough, and there was a COM
plete failure: And after all the giants
Isaiah and Paul, prophetic and apostolic
giants; Raphael and Michael Angelo, artistic
giants: cherubim and seraphim and arch
angel, 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
Il that cometh from above is above ALL"
First, Christ must be above all else in our
preaching. There are so many books ON
homiletics scattered through the country
that all iaymen, as well as all ~clergymen,
nave made up their minds what sermons
ought to be. That sermon is most effectual
which most pointedly puts forth Christ as
the pardon of all sin and the correction of all
evil-indiyidual, 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 a
discourse have frequent mention of justi-
fcation, sanctification, covenant of
works and covenant of grace, that
therefore it must be profoundly 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
Saxonisln, of all the word treasures that we
inherited from the Latin and the Greek and
the Indo-European, but we have q right to
marshal it in religious discussion. Christ
SeIS tile CXaIIlpIe. I1lS ILLUSTRATIONS were from
the grass, the flowers, the spittle, the salve,
the barnyard fowl, the crystals Of salt, as
well as from the seas and the stars; and we
do not propose in orr Sabbath-school teach
ing and in our pulpit address to be put on the
limits.
I 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 All 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 stones? 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,n and
light was. Of course, thought is the cargo,
and verbs are only the ship; but how fast
you'd our cargo get On without the
shipf What you need, my friends,
En all your work, in your Sabbath
school Glass; in our reformatory
institutions, and what we all need is to en-
large our vocabulary when we come to speak
about God and Christ and heaven. We ride
lew old words to death when there is such
tflIaitable resource. Shakespeare employed
fifteen thousand different words for dra-
matte purposes; Milton employed eight thou
Mnd different words for poetic purposes;
Bnsts Choate employed over eleven thou
sand different words for legal purposes; but
sao most OF us have less than a thousand
words that we can manage, less than five
A1adred, and that makes us so stupid.
When we come to set forth the love of
Ghrlst we are going to take tenderest
phrassology wherever we find it, and if it
has never been used i'll that direction before,
gig the more shall we use il. When we
teme to speak of the glory of Christ, the
Nonaueror, we are going to draw our SMILES
from triumphal arch and o~ratorio and
everything grand and .s~tupendous. The
trench navy have eighteen flags by
which they give signal, but those
Nlghteen flags they can put into sixty-six
Thousand different combinations. And I
Eave to tell you that these standards of the
GrgSs may be lifted into combinations infinite
and varieties everlasting. And slet me say
W tnese young men who come from the the
0loglcal seminaries into our services every
Eabbatf. and are after a while going to
preach Jesus Christ, you win nave the
AfFgest liberty and unlimited resource. You
Naiy have topresent Christ in your WI way.
Jonathan Edwards preached Christ in the
AeEerest argument ever penned, and John
AanyaH preached Christ in the snblimest ar
lcgory ever composed. Edward Payson, sick
and exhausted, leaned up against the side of
Cue pulpit and wept out his discourse, while
Seorge Whitfield, with the manner and the
voice and the startsof an actor, overwhelmed
1fs auditory. Tt would nave been a different
FAung II Jonathan Edwards had tried to
ii ~ u dissh. ABOUT w pHgrnls plogrsss
tempted an essay on the human will.
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