The San Saba news. [volume] (San Saba, Tex.) 1873-1966, 1890-05-09
REV. DIR. TALMAGE.
THE BROOKLYN DIVI MES sun
DAY SERMON.
subject. "The Glorious Christ"

TEXT: 'He that cometh from above is
dboUe aHn-John ill.,, 81.
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 A
ratification Of the finger of prophecy. The
finger of genealogy, the finger Of chronology.
the finger Of events-al five fingers pl mting
in one direction. Christ is the overlapping
figure of all time. He is the Yox humana in
all music, the gracefulest line in all sculp-
ture, the most exquisite mingling of lights
and shades in all painting, the acme Of all
clmaIes the dome Of all cathedralei gran
deur, and the peroration Of all splendid Ian
guage.
The Greek alphabet is made up of twenty
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
tiers and all the 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 of the text, above
What does it mean? It 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
ues 10 tOuCLl LLlOSe SUBMITS L cllol, u
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 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;
''He that cometh from above is above al.
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 pointedly puts forth Christ as
the pardon of all 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
discourse have frequent mention of justi-
fcation sanctifcatiOn, covenant OF
works and covenant of grace, that
therefore it must be profoundly evangelical,
while they are suspicious of discourse
which presents the same truth, but under
different phraseology. Now, l 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 Indo-European, but we have right to
marshal it in religious discussion Christ
sets the example. His Illustrations were from
the grass the flowers, the spittle, the salve,
the bsrnyard fowl, the crystals of salt as
well as from the seas and the stars; and we
do not propose in our Sabbath-school teach
ing 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
1ridge 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 Olivet2
Words. Out Of what did Christ strike the
spark for the illumination of the universes
out Of words. Let there be light and
light was. OF course, thought is the cargo,
RAd words are only the ship; but how fast
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
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
few old words TO death when there is such
illimitable resource. Shakespeare employed
fifteen thousand different words for dra-
matte purposes; Milton employed eight thou
sand different words for poetic purposes;
Rufus Choate employed over eleven thou
sand different words for legal purposes; but
the most of US have less than thousand
words that We can manage, less than five
hundred, and that makes Us 81 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 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 triumphal arch and oratorio and
everything grand and stupendous. The
French navy have eighteen flags by
which they give signal, but those