The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1890-05-08
REVISION OF CREEDS."
Sermon by Rev. T. Dewitt Tai
mage on Old and New Creeds.
Old Bugbears Must be Swept Away and a
Greed 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.-J ohm xL, a.
NY Bible is, at the place of this text,
written all over with lead pencil marks
made last December at Bethany on the
ruins of the house of Mary and Martha
and Lazarus. We dismounted from our
horses on the way up from Jordan to the
Dead Sea. Bethany was the summer
evening retreat of Jesus. After spend
ing the day in the hotcity of Jerusalem
He would come out there almost every
evening to the house of His three
friends. think the 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 l 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, 1rst-rate
housekeeper, and Mary, a spirituelle,
somewhat dreamy, but affectionate, and
as good girl as could be found in all
Palestine. But one day Lazarus got
sick. The sisters were in consterna-
ton. Father gone and mother gone,
they feel very nervous lest they lose
their brother also. Disease did its quick
work. How the girls hung over his Pill
lowl Not much sleep about that house,
sleep at all. From the Characters
tics otherwise developed, judge that
Martha prepared the medicines and made
tempting dishes of food for the poor APP
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 shrek 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 a comatose
state or in sort of trance, and by some
vigorous manipulation or powerful slim
ulant vitality had been renewed. No!
Four days dead. At the door of the
sepulcher is a 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 Decembe 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
emit an excited multitude. l 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 thai
group pressing on down after Christ, al
the time bemoaning that He had moi
come before? Now all the whispering
and all the crying and all the sounds o.
shutting feet are stopped. 1t is the
silence of expectancy. Death had con
quered, 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 Inequalities of the village home
came back to His tongue, and with g
pathos and an almightiness of which
the resurrection of the last day shall be
only an echo cries:
Lazarus! come forth!''
The eyes of the slumberer open and
he rises and comes to the foot of the
steps and with great difficulty begins tc
ascend, for the cerements of the tomb
are yet on him and his feet are 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, I am so glad that after the Lord
raised Lazarus He went on and ordered
the loosening of the cords that bound
his feet so that he could walk, and the
breaking off of the cerement that bound
his hands so that he could stretch out
his arms in salutation, and the tearing
eff of the bandage from around his Jaws
so that he could speak. What would
Tesurrected life have been to Lazarus il
he had not been freed from all those
cripplements of his body? / am glad
that Christ commanded his complete
emancipation, saying:
Loose him and let him go.
The unfortunate thing now is that 50
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. hohblino