The Russellville Democrat., 1890-03-13
REVISION OF CREEDs.
Sermon by Rev. T. Dewitt Tal- mage on Old and New Creeds.
Old Bugbears Must be Swept Away and n Creed Founded on the Sovereignty Of God and the Humanity of Man
 Erected in Their stead.


 Witt Talmage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the text being.
 Loose him and let him go.--John lxi., A.
 My Bible il, at the place of this text,
 written all Over with lead pe1cil marks made last December at Bethany on the ruins of the house of Mary and Martha and Lazarus We dismounted from our horses tn the way up from Jordan to the
 Dead nea. Bethany was the summer
 ~enihg retreat of Jesus. After spend iE. the day in the hoteity of Jerusalem
 He would come out there almost every evening to the house of His three friends. l think tho occupants of that house were orphans, for the father and mother are not mentioned. But the son and two daughters must have inherited property, for it must have been, judging from what 1 saw of the foundations and the size of the rooms, an opulent house. Lazarus, the brother, was now the head of the household, and his sisters de-
 pended on him and were proud of him, for he was very popular and every body liked him, and these girls were splendid girls. Martha, first-rate housekeeper, and Mary, spirituelle, somewhat dreamy, but affeetionate, and as good girl as could be found in all Palestine, But ono day Lazarus got sick. The sisters were in consterna- tion. Father gone and mother gone, they feel very nervous lest they lose their brother also. Disease did it's quick
 work. How the girls hung over his pill all ah hu4
 no sleep at all. From the characteris- ties otherwise developed. judge that Martha prepared the medicines and made 1 tempting dishes of food for the poor ap- petite of the sufferer, but Mary prayed and sobbed. Worse and worse gets Laza-
 rus, until the doctor announces that he can do no more. The shriek that went up from that household when the last breath had been drawn and the two sis ters were being led by sympathizers in
 to the adjoining room, all those of us can imagine who have had our own hearts broken.
 But why was not Jesus there as He so often had been? Far away in the coun- try districts preaching, healing other sick, how unfortunate that this omnip- otent Doctor had not been at that do- nestle crisis in Bethany. When at last Jesus arrived in Bethany Lazarus had been buried four days and dissolution had taken place. In that climate the breathless body disintegrates more readily than in ours. If immediately after decease that body had been awak- ened into life, unbelievers might have said that he was only in comatose state or in sort of trance, and by some vigorous manipulation or powerful stim- ulant vitality had been renewed. No! Four days dead. At the door of the sepulcher is crowd of people, but the three most memorable are Jesus, who was the family friend, and the two bereft sisters. We went into the tradi- tional tomb in December, and it is deep down and dark, and with torches we ex- plored it. We found it all quiet that afternoon of our visit, but the day spoken of in the Bible there was pres ent an excited multitude. wonder what Jesus will do. He orders the door of the grave removed, and then He be- gins to descend the steps, Mary and Martha close after Him, and the crowd after them. Deeper down into the shadows and deeper! The hot tears of Jesus roll over His cheeks and plash upon the back of His hands.
 Were ever so many sorrows com pressed into SO small space as in that group pressing on down after Christ, all the time bemoaning that He had not come before? Now all the whispering and all the crying and all the sounds of shuffiing feet are stopped. It is the silence of expectancy. Death had con 1ucred, but now the Vanquisher of Death confronted the scene. Amid the awful hush of the tomb the familiar name which Christ had often had upon His lips in the hospitalities of the village home came back to His tongue, and with a pathos and an almightiness of which the resurrection of the last day shall be only an echo cries:
 sLazarusi come forthr'
 The eyes of the slumberer open and | he rises and comes to tho foot of the steps and with great difficulty begins to ascend, for the cerements of the tomb are yet on him and his feet arc fast and his hands are fast, and the imped iments to all his movements are so great that | Jesus commands:
 ''Take off these cerements; remove these hindrances; unfasten these grave clothes; loose him and let him go." | Oh, l am so glad that after the Lord | raised Lazarus He went on and ordered | Ne loosening of the cords that bound
 ais feet so that he could walk, and the breaking off of the cerement that bound l his hands so that he could stretch out his arms in salutation, and the tearing | of of the bandage from around his jaws
 80 that he could speak. What would
 resurrected life have been to Lazarus if ! he had not been freed from all those
 supplements of his body? am glad
 that Christ commanded his complete
 emancipation, saying:
 | Loose him and let him go.
 The unfortunate thing now is that so
 many Christians are only half liberated. | They have been raised from the death | and burial of sin into spiritual life, but they yet have the grave clothes on
 them. They are like Lazarus, hobbling l up the stairs of the tomb, bound hand | dnu lOot, anu tuS oDleSe oi tulS sermon
 is to help free their body and free their
 soul, and shall try to obey the Masters
 command that comes to me and comes
 to every ministers of religion.
 Loose him and let him go.
 First many are bound hand and foot
 by religious creedS Let no man inter pret me as antagonizing ereeds. have
 eight or ten of them; creed about re. ligion, a creed about art, creed about
 social lifo, a creed about government,
 and so on. A creed Is something that a
 man believes, whe ther it be written or
 unwritten. The Presbyterian church
 is now agitated about its creed. Some
 good men in it arc for keeping it be-
 cause 1t was framed from the belief oi
 John Calvin. Other good men in il
 want revision. am with neither party
 Instead of revision l want substitution
 was sorry to have the question dis
 turbed at ali. The creed did not hinder | us from offering the pardon and tht