Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1890-02-22
THE GLORIOUS Christ.
Rev. DR.. Talmage's Sunday
Sermon
Preached at the Brooklyn Academ,
of Music.

TEXT: He that cometh from ADORE is
aboUe aU"--John ill.,, 81.
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 scup-
ture, the most exquisite mingling of lights
end shades in all painting; the acme of all
olimaxes, the dome of all cathedraled gran
d,ur, and the peroration of all splendid Ian
gusge.
The Greek alphabet is made up of twenty
four letters, and when Christ compared Him
self 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 let
tiers 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
alln
What does it mean 1t means. after you
have piled up all Alpine and Himalayan
attitudes the glory of Christ would have to
spread its wings and descend a thousand
1 leagues to touch those submits. Pelion,
high mountain of Thessaly; Ossa, a high
mountain, and Olympus, 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
I proposed to scale the heavens; but the height
was not great enough, and there was com
/ plete failure. And after all the giants
Isaiah and Paul, prophetic and apostolic
| giants; Raphael and Michael Angelo artistic
| giants; cherubim and seraphim and arch
angel, 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 elergymen.
have made up their minds what sermons
! ought TO be. That sermon is most effectual
1 which most pointedly puts forth Christ as
the pardon of all SIN and the correction of all
eyil-individual, social, political national.
! There is no reason why we should ring the
endless changes on few phrases. There are
those who think that il an exhortation or
! discourse have frequent mention of justi-
| lication, specification, covenant of
works and covenant of grace that
therefore it must be profoundly evangelical,
/ while they are suspicious OF a discourse
which presents the same TRUTH but under
different phrsseology 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 the Greek and
! the lndo-European, but we have q right to
marshal it in religious discussion. Christ
/ sets the example. His illustrations were from
| the grass. the flowers, the spittle the salve
| the barnyard fowl the crystals Of salt, as
/ well as from the seas and the stars; and we
/ do not propose in our Sabbath-school teach
ing and in our pulpit address to be put on the
/ limits.
! know that there is a great deal said in our
| day against words, as though they We're
nothing. They may be misused, but they
have an imperial power. They are the
bridge between soul and soul, between Al
/ mighty God and the human race. What did
/ God write upon the tables Of stones9 Words.
/ What did Christ utter on Mount Olivet?
! Words Out of what did Christ strike the
| spark for the illumination of the universe?
Out of words "Let there be light" and
| light was, Or course, thought is the cargo,
and words are only the ship; but how fast
4 would your cargo get on without the
ship What you need, my friends,
! in all your work, in your Sabbath.
! school class, in your feforDatory
institutions. and what we all need is to en-
large 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 dra-
1udllC puTIfoSeSs employer e1SUU UnOU-
sand different words for poetic purposes;
Rufus Choate employed over eleven thou
sand different words for legal purposes but
the most of us have less than a thousand
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 il it
has never been used in that direction before,
all the more shalt we use it. When we
come 10 speak of the glory of Christ, the
Conqueror, we are going TO draw our smiles
from triumphal arch and oratorio and
everything grand and stupendous. The
French navy have eighteen flags by
which they give signal but those
eighteen flags they can put into sixty-six
thousand different combinations. And
Lave 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 the
illogical seminaries into our services every
Sabbath, and are after a 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
Dunyan preached Christ in the suhlimest al
legory ever composed Edward Payson, sick
and exhausted, leaned up against the side of
the pulpit and wept ont his discourse, while
George Whitfield, with the manner and the
voice and the start of an actor, overwhelmed
his auditory. 1t would have been different
thing if Jonathan Edwards had tried to
write and dream about the pilgrims progress
TO the celestial city, OF John Bunyan had at
tempted an essay on the human will.
Brighter than the light fresner than the
fountains, deeper than the seas, are all these
Gospel themes Song has no melody, flowers
have no sweetness sunset sky has no color
] wit pln
harvests of grace spring up quicker than we
can sickle them. Kindling pulpits with
their fire, and producing revolutions with
their power, lighting up dying beds with
their glory, they are the sweetest thought
for the poet and they are the most thrilling
illustration for the orator, and they offer
the most intense scene for the artist
and they are to the ambassador Of the
sky ali enthusiasm. Complete pardon for
direst guilt Sweetest comfort for CHASTITY
agony. Brightest hope for grimmest death.
Grandest resurrection for darkest scpulchre
Oh, what Gospel to preachl Christ over all
in it. His birth, His suffering, His miracles,
His parallels, His sweat, His tears, His blood,
| His atonement, Ills intercession-wh glo-
rious themesl Do we exercise faith? Christ
is its object Do we have love? 1t fastens
on Jesus. Have We a fonduess for the church?
! 1t is because Christ died for it. Have we
hope OF heaven? Ii is because Jesus went
anead, the herald and the forerunuer
| The royal robe of DemeGriuS was 50 costly,
so beautiful that after he hal put it OF no
one ever dared put it on; but this robe of
| Christ, richer than that, the poorest and the
wannest and the worst may wear. "Where
SIN abounde1 grace may much more abound
"Oh, my sins, my sins, sail Martin Luther
to Staupitz, my sins, my sinsp The fact
! Is, that the brawny German student had
found a Latin Bible that made him quake,
and nothing else ever did make him quake;
and when he found how, through Christ,
| he was pardoned and saved, no wrote
to friend, saying; Come over and
] join lis great aud awful sinners saved
| by the grace Of God. You seem to be
| only a slender sinner, and YOU don't
much extol the mercy of God; but we that
| have been such very awful sinners praise His
/ grace the more now that we have been re-
| deemed" Can it be that YOU are 50 des-
! perately egotistical that you feel yourself in
| first rate spiritual trim, and that from the
root OF the hair to the tip of the toe you are
! scariess and immaculate? What you need is
! a looking glass, and here it is in the Bible,
| Poor, and wretched, and miserable and blind,
| and naked from the crown of the head to the
sole OF the foot, full of wounds and putrefying
| sores. No health in us. And then take the
/ fact that Christ gathered up all the notes
against us and paid Them and then offered
US the receipt.
Ana how much we need Him in our sor-
rowsl We are independent of circumstances
| It we have His grace. Why, He made Paul
sing in the dungeon, and under that grace
st John from desolate Patmos heard the
| blast of the apocalyptic trumpets. After
all other candles have been snuffed out, this
Is the light that gets brighter and brighter
unto the perfect day; aud alter, under the
hard hoofs of calamity, all the pools of
worldly enjoyments have been trampled into
r.. s q 4.