New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1890-02-26
GLORIOUS CHRIST.
Discourse Preached by the
Rev. Dr.. Talmage at
Brooklyn.
Me That Cometh From Above,
is Above All. Taken as
The Text.

Lie leAG.
EnooKLYN. Especial. AT the Tabernacle
ksev. Z. De Witt Talmage d. D.. preached
on The Glorious Christ" His text was
He that eometh from above is above all. -
-sohn iii, 81. The preacher said:
The most conspicuous character OF history
steps out upon the platform. The finger
which, diamond ed with light, pointed down tic
Aina from the Bethlehem sky was only a rati-
sfication of the finger of Prophecy the finger
~af ssenealogy, the finger Of chronology, the
finger ofevents-all FIVE fingers pointing in
one direction. Christ is the overtopping
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 eli
MAKES, the dome OF all cathedraled grand
eur, and the peroration of all splendid Ian
.guaae.
The Greek alphabet is made up of "a let
fers, and when Christ compared himself to
the first letter and the last letter, the alpha
and the omega, he appropriated to himself
adj the splendors that you can spell out either
with those two letters and all the letters be-
tween them, II am the alpha and the Omega,
Che beginning and the end, the first and the
last Or. you prefer the words OF the text,
1fatsoye alt.'
&aye piled up all Alpine and Himalayan alti-
Iudes, the glory of Christ would have to
suread its wings and descend thousand
leagues to touch those SUBMITS. Pelion, a
high mountain of Thessaly; Ossa. high
mountain. aud Olympus, high mountains;
essfs mythology tells us when the giants
warred against the gods they piled UP these
aShree m mountains, and from the top of them
gsroposedtto scale the heavens; but the height
was not GreaJ enough, and there was COM
plete fsaiure. And alter all the giants
Isaiah and Paul, prophetic and apostolic
giants: Raphael and Michael Angelo, artistic
giants; cherubim and seraphim and rchangel,
celestial giants-have tailed to climb to the
Top of Christ's glory they might all well unite
an the words of the text and say: HE that
eotneth from above is above ALL
FIRST, Christ must be above all else in our
preaching There are SO many books on
honileties scattered through the country
that all laymen. as we'll as all clergymen
nave made up their minds what sermons
ought to be. That sermon is l.ost effectual
which most pointedly puts forth Christ as
the pardon of all sin and the correction OF
MI evil-individual, social. political, national
There is reason why weshould ring the end
less changes on afew phrases. There are those
who think that if an exhortation or a dis
course have frequent mention ofiustifcation
SanctIhcatIoD, covenant of works and coven-
ant of grace, that therefore it must be pro-
fouudiy evangelical, while they are suspi.
Gious OF q discourse which presents..th same
truth. but under different phraseoogy. Now,
say there is nothing in all the opulent
realm of Anglo-Saxonism, of all the word
'and treasures that weinherited from he Latin
the Greek and the Indo- European but we have
81 right tolmarshal it in religious discussion
Christ sets the example His Illustrations
were from the grass, the flowers, the spittle,
the salve, the barnyard fowl, thu crystals of
salt, as we'll as from the seas and the stars
and we do nottpropse in our Sunday school
teaching and in our pulpit address to be put
ON the limits.
know that there is 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 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 Olivet? Words.
<Out of what did Christ strike the spark for
the illumination fthe universe. Out ofwords
Let there Delight, (" andlight was. Ofcourse
Thought Is the cargo and words are only the
SHIP; but how fast would your cargo get on
without the ship? Whatyou need, my friends
M ali your work, in your Sabbath school
class, in your reformatory Institutions. and
&xhat we all need is to enlarge our vocabulary
when we come to speak about God and Christ
and heaven We ride a few old words to
death when there is such illimitable resource
Shakes pere employed $4,000 differentlwords
Tor dramatic purposes; Milton employed
5000 different words for poetic purposes;
Rufus Choate employed over IL 900 different
words for legal purposes: but tho most of us
have less than 1000 words that we can
manage less than 500, and that makes us SO
stupid
When we come to set forth the love of Christ
we are going to take tenderest phraseology
wherever we find it, and lift has never been
Il hot n lof<> ~
shall we use it. When we come to speak of
The: glory OF Christ, the ConQueror, we are
EssIng tG draw our smiles from tIiumphal arch
and oratorio and everything grand and stu
pendous. The French navy has Is flags by
(Which it gives signal, but those Is flags it
cannot put into $4,000 different combina-
lions. And | have to tell you that these
standards of the cross may be lifted onto
combinations intimate and varieties everlast-
ssng- And let me say to these young men
who come from the theological seminaries in
DO our services every Sabbath land are u ter q
while going to preach Jesus Christ, you will
have the largest liberty and unlimited re-
source. You only have to present Christ in
your own way
Jonathan Edwards preached Christ in the
.essverest argument ever penned and John
7Bunyan preached Christ in the sublimest
7Htlegory ever composed. Edward Pay
son, sick and exhausted, leaned up aguinst
she side of the pulpit and wept out his dis
course, while George White, with the manner
and the voice and the start of an actor,
overwhelmed his auditory. 1t would have
been d different thing if Jonathan Edwards
had tried to write and dream about the pill
grim's progress to the celestial city, or John
'Buayan had attempted an essay on the
human will.
Brighter than the light, fresher than the
fountains, deeper than the seas, are all those
gospel themes Song has no melody, flowers
zsaye no sweetness, sunset sky has no color
compared with these glorious themes These
harvests of grace spring up quicker than we