Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1890-02-17
THE FIRST AND THE LAST.
DR.. TALMAGE TELLS OF THE MAI
ESTY OF CHRIST.

No Miracle Too Wonderful for Him to
Perforr,l-Death Should Have No Terror
for True Christians.
BROOKLYN, Feb. 16.-At the Taber-
naclc this morning, Rev T. De Witt
/ Talmage, d. D., announced that he
would very soon begin a series of SER
mons on his journey To and Through
the Holy Land" The subject of his
discourse this morning was THE Clio
rious Christ" His text was: HE that
cometh 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
genealogy, the finger OF chronology,
the finger of events--all five fingers
pointing in one direction Christ is
the overlapping figure of all time He
is the vOx humana 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 perOrati0n 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 spell out either
with those two letters and all the let
ters 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
all.
What does it mean? 1t means, after
you have piled up all Alpine and Him
alayan attitudes, the glory of Christ
would have to spread its wings and
those SUBMITS. PeliOn, a high mount
ain of Thessaly; Ossa, high mount
ain, 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 heav-
ems; but the height was not great
enough, and there was a complete fail
ure. And after all the giants Isaiah
and Paul, 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 Christs
glory they might all well unite in the
words Of the text and say: He 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 laymen, as well
as all clergymen, have made up their
minds what sermons oughtto be. That
sermon is most effectual which most
pointedly puts forth Christ as the par
don of all sin and the correction of all
evil-individual, social, POLITICAL ma
tional 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 dis
course have frequent mention of justi-
fcation, sanctifcatiOn, covenant of
works and covenant of grace, that
therefore it must be profoundly evan
gelical, 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 inherit
ed from the Latin and the Greek and
the Indo-E European, but we have a
right to marshal it in religious discus
sion. Christ sets the example. His
illustrations were from the grass, the
flowers, the spittle, the salve, the barn
yard fowl, the crystals of salt, as well
as from the seas and the stars; and we
do not propose in our Sunday school
teaching and in our pulpit address to
be put on the limits
THE POWER OF WORDS
I know that there is d great deal said
in our day against words, as though
they were nothing. They may be mis-
used, 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 Oil
vet? Words Out Of what did Christ
strike the spark for the illumination
there be light, and light was OF
course, thought is the cargo and 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 ali need
is to enlarge 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 fif-
teen thousand different words for dra
matte purposes; Milton employed eight
thousand different words for poetic
purposes; Rufus Choate employed
over eleven thousand different words
for legal purposes; but the most of us
have less than a thousand words that
we can manage, less than five hun
dred, and that makes us so stupid.
When we come to set forth the love
of Christ we are going to take tender
est phraseOlOgy wherever we find It,
and if it has never been used III 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 trl-
umphal arch and oratorio and every
thing grand and stulhendOus. The
which they give signal, but those
eighteen flags they can put into sixty
six thousand different combinations
And I have to tell you that these stand
ards Of the cross may be lifted into
combinations infinite and varieties
everlasting And let me say to these
young men who come from the thcO
logical seminaries into our services
every Sabbath, and are after 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 pull
pit and wept out his discourse, while |
George Whitefeld, with the manner
and the voice and the start of an actor,
overwhelmed his auditory. + would
have been different thing if Jona-
than Edwards had tried to write and
dream about the pilgrims grogress 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 no sweetness, |
sunset civ hos no color rcd with |