The Brookhaven leader., 1890-02-27
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
Christ the One Conspicuous Figure
of All Time.
A Perpetual Text for Successful Preach
Ing and Perpetual Balm for
Wounded Souls-Death's
sting Removed. =

| envy OF Music from the text:
He that cometh from above is above ALL
John, ill.,, 81. a&A
The most conspicuous character OF
history steps out upon the platform. The
finger which, diamonded with light,
pointed down to him from the Bethle-
hem sky, was only ratification of the
finger of prophecy, the finger of gen.
ealogy, the finger of chronology, the
finger of events-all five fingers point
ing in one direction. Christ is the over
topping figure of all time. He is the
vox humana in all music, the most
| graceful 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
grandeur, and the peroration 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 Him.
self all the splendors that you can spell
out either with those two letters and all
| the letters between them. II 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 Himalayan
| attitudes, the glory of Christ would have
to spread it's wings and descend one
thousand leagues to touch those sum-
mits. Pellon. high mountain of Thes-
sally; Ossa, a high mountain, and Olym-
pus, 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 complete failure. And after all
the giants-Isaiah and Paul, prophetic
and apostolic giants; Raphael and Mich
ael Angelo, artistic giants, cherubim
and seraphim and archangel, celestial
giants-have failed to climb to the top
of Christ's glory they might all we'll
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 ought to 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 few
u Hxyhn irly
that if an exhortation or discourse
have frequent mention of justification,
sanctification, 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 Greek and the Indo-Eu-
ropean, 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 barn-yard fowl, the crys-
tails of salt, as we'll as from the seas and
the stars; and we do not propose in our
Sabbath-school teaching and in our pull
pit 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 bridge between soul and soul,
between Almighty God and 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 il
| Elimination of the universe? Out of
words. "Let 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 all 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 fifteen thousand
| different words for dramatic purposes;
Milton employed eight thousand differ
ent words for poetic purposes; Rufus
Choate employed over eleven thousand
different words for legal purposes; but
the most of us have less than one thou
sand words that we can manage, less
| than five hundred, 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 II
| 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 every thing grand and
| stupendous. The French navy has
eighteen flags by which they give sig
nal, but these eighteen flags they can
put into sixty-six thousand different
combinations. And l have to tell you
| that these standards of the cross may
be lifted into combinations infinite and
varieties everlasting. And let me say
to these young men who come from the
theological seminaries into our services
every Sabbath, and are after awhile go
ing to preach Jesus Christ, you will
have the largest liberty and unlimited
resource. You only have to present
Christ in your own way. Jonathan Ed
wards preached Christ in the severest