The Maryville times. (Maryville, Tenn.) 1884-1944, 1891-10-14
JEsUSACHRIsT.
His Leadership Around Lake Galilee
Was
March in Which True Christians Proudly
NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. by Rev. DIR.
T. Dewitt Talmage, ID. ID.

Centuries" and his text Revelation
XIX, 12: "On his head were many
crowns"
May your ears be alert and your
thoughts concentrated, and all the
powers of your soul aroused, while
speak to you of 1.-The march Of Christ
through the centuries" You say. 'give
us then good start, in rooms of ver-
million 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 Galilee, and palaces
at Jerusalem, and imperial bathrooms
at Jericho, and obelisks at Cairo, and
the Pantheon at Rome. with its Corinth-
ian portico and its sixteen granite
columns; and the Parthenon at Athens,
with its glistening coronet of temples;
and there were mountains of fine archi-
lecture in many parts of the world.
But none of them were to be the start
ing place of the Chieftain l celebrate.
A cows stall, winter month, an at
mosphere in which are the moan of
camels and the baahing of sheep and
the barking of dogs and the rough ban
ter of hostelries. 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 H. 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 born there, had
not during ages elevated the village
into any special attention.
The other fact, that it was the birth
place of our Chieftain, did not keep the
place in after years from special dis
honor. for here Hadrian built the grove
of Adonis, and for $50 years the religion
there observed was the most abhorrent
the world has ever seem 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 stel-
lar connections, world out of its
place and shooting down toward cara
vansary. Standardization was a science.
As late as the eighteenth century it had
Its votaries. At the court of Catharine
de Medicis 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
H., Lilly, an astrologer, was called be-
fore the house of 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 circles l do not
know but that after while it may be
found that as the moon lifts the tides of
the sea and the sun affects the growth
or blasting of crops, other worlds be-
sides those two worlds may have some
thing to do with the destiny of individ-
uals and nations in this world.
1 do not wonder that the connections
in the heavens excited the wise men on
the night our Chicftain was born. AS
he came from another world, and after
thirty-three years was again to ex-
change 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
n Indicate the mighty wars that were
to come between righteousness and in
iquity? Where was Jupiter that night
that it did not celebrate omnipotence
incarnated? Where were the Pieaides
that night that they did not announce
the storms of persecution that would
assail our Chicftain?
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 wor-
shipful. So we walk behind Him. We
follow Him while not yet in His teens,
up Jerusalem terrace, to a building
600 feet long and 600 feet wide, and I'M
der the lowering splendor of gate-ways,
and by a pillar crowned with capital
chiseled into the shape of flowers and
leaves, and along by walls of beveled
masonry and near a marble screen
until q group OF white-haired philos-
ophers and theologians gather around
Him, and then the boy bewilders, and
confounds, and overwhelms these
scholarly septuagenarians with ques-
tions they can not answer, and under
His quick why's and whyfores, and
hows and whens, they pull their white
boards with embarrassment, and rub
their wriukled foreheads in confusion,
and putting their staff down hard on
the marble floor as they arise to go,
they must feel like Gliding the bold
ness that allows twelve years of age to
ask seventy-tivc years of age such puz-
zlers.
Out of this building we follow Him
into the Quarantania, the mountain of
temptation, its side to this day black
with robbers dens. Look. Up the side
of this mountain come all the forces of
perdition to effect our Chieftain's cap
ture But although weakened by forty