News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1891-10-01
THE MARCH OF CHRIST.
SERVICES OF SACRAMENT SUNDAY
AT DR.. TALMAGE'S TABERNACLE.

AT DR.. TALMAGE'S TABERNACLE.
The Lowly Surroundings of the Advent
and the Signs in the Heavens-Details
OF Christ's Separate Walks from Beth
lehem to Calvary.
BROOKLYN, Sept. 27.-This is Sacra-
ment Sunday at the Brooklyn Taber-
nacle. The services as usual on these
occasions were very solemn and impress
sive. The morning service opened with
the Long Meter Doxology. The grand
offertory by Grison was exquisitely
rendered by Professor Henry Eyre
Browne, and the service closed with
the majestic Coronation" hymn. DIR.
Talmages discourse was on THE March
of Christ Through the Centuries, and
his text Revelation xix, II, ION his
head were many crowns"
May your ears be alert and your
thoughts concentered, and all the powers
of your soul aroused, while l speak to
you of 1.-The march of Christ through
the centuries" You say, ''give us then
a good start, in rooms of vermilion and
on floor of mosaic and amid corridors
of porphyry and under canopies dyed in
all the splendors of the setting SUM-"
You can have no such starting place.
At the time our Chieftain was born,
there were castles on the beach of Cali
lee, and palaces at Jerusalem, and i'm
perial bathrooms at Jericho, and ODE
hsks at Cairo, and the Pantheon at
Rome, with its corinthian portico and
its sixteen granite columns; and the
Parthenon at Athens, with its glistening
coronet of temples; and there were
mountains of fine architecture in many
parts of the world. But none of them
were to be the startling place of the
Chieftain celebrate.
A cows stall, winter month, an at
mosphere in which are the moan of
camels. and the baaing of sheep, and
the barking of dogs, and the rough
banter of hostleries. He takes his first
journey before he could walk. Armed
desperadoes with hands of blood were
ready to snatch him down into butch
cry. Rev. William 81. Thompson, the
veteran and beloved missionary whom
! saw this last month in Denver, in his
eighty sixth year. has described in his
volume entitled, 1.-The Land and the
Book" Bethlehem as he saw it. Win
ter before last walked up and down
the gray hills of Jura limestone on
which the village now rests.
The fact that King David had been
~, l. !.
waited the village into any special at
tention. The other fact that it was
the birthplace of our Chieftain did not
keep the place in after years from spe-
cial dishonor, for Hadrian built there
the Grove of Adonis and for one hun
dred and eighty years the religion there
observed was the most abhorrent de-
bauchery the world has ever seen. Our
Chieftain was considered dangerous
from the start. The world had put
suspicious eyes upon him because at
the time of his birth, the astrologers
had seen stellar connections, world
out of its place and shooting down to-
ward caravansary. Star digination
was a science. As late as the Eight
zenith century it had its votaries. At
the court of Catharine de Medici it was
honored. Kepler, one of the wisest
philosophers that the world ever saw,
declared it was true science.
As late as the reign of Charles II,
Lilly, an astrologer, was called before
the house commons in England to
give his opinion as to future events |
For ages the bright appearance of
Mars meant war; of Jupiter, meant
power; of the Pleiades, meant storms
at sea- And as history moves in cir
cles, l do not know but that after
awhile it may be found that as the
moon lifts the tides of the sea and the
crops. other worlds besides those two
worlds may have something to do with
the destiny of individuals and nations
in this world.
THE SYMPATHETIC STARS.
do not wonder that the commo-
tons in the heavens excited the wise
men on the night our Chieftain was
born. As he came from another world
and after thirty-three years was again
to exchange worlds, it does not seem
strange to me that astronomy should
have felt the effect of his coming. And
instead of being unbelieving about the
one star that stopped, wonder that
all the worlds in the heavens did not
that Christmas night make some special
demonstration. Why should they leave
to one world or meteor the bearing of |
the news of the humaniZation of Christ? |
Where was Mars that night that it did |
not indicate the mighty wars that were
to come between righteousness and |
iniquity? Where was Jupiter that |
night that it did not celebrate omnipo-
tence incarnated2 Where were the |
PIeiades that night that they did not
announce the storms of persecution
that would assal our Chieftain2
In watching this march of Christ
through the centuries, we must not
walk before him or beside him, for that |
would not be reverential or worship |
full. So we walk behind him. We fol-
low him while not yet in his teens, up a
Jerusalem terrace, to a building six
hundred feet long and six hundred feet |
wide, and under the lowering splendor |
of gateways, and by pillar crowned |
with capital chiseled into the shape of |
flowers and leaves, and along by walls
of beveled masonry and near a mar
BILE screen until a group of white
haired philosophers and theologians
gather around MIN, and then the
boy bewilders and confounds and
overwhelms these scholarly septuage
narians with questions they cannot an
swer and under his quick why's and
wherefores and hows and whens they
pull their white boards with embarrass-
lnent. and rub their wrinkled foreheads
in confusion, and putting their staff |
hard down on the marble floor as they
arise to go. they must feel like Gliding
the boldness that allows twelve years
of age to ask seventy-fve years of age
such puzzlers.
Out of this building we follow him
into the Quarantania, the mountain OF
temptation, it's side to this day black
with robbers dens Lookl Up the
side of this mountain come all the
forces of perdition to effect our Chief
tain's capture. But although weak
ened by forty days and forty nights OF
abstinence, he hurls all Pandemonium
down the rocks, suggestive of how he
can hurl into helplessness all our temp
tations
And now we climb right after him up
ff,oA = i e -