The Forrest City times., 1891-10-09
TABERNACLE PULPIT.
.DR. TALMACE ON THE MISSION
 OF CHRIST.
The Text Taken from John IS: 37 -ssTo this End was BOrn,,-A Chapter from tho Greas Preacher's Everyday Life. @


 1000 persons on the main floor, in the two galleries, and the adjoining rooms rise and sing the Doxology This
 morning in addition to the congrega-
 tional singing, Prof. Henry Eyre
 Browne rendered from the organ,
 ''Iheme and Variations in Az by
 Kramer. Dr. Talmage's text was taken from John lS.37, "To this end
 was 1 born"
 After Pilate had shielded tradition says that his body was thrown into the Fiber, and such storms ensued on and about that river that his body was taken out and thrown into the khone, and similar sturbances swept tkat river and its banks. Then the body was taken out and removed to Lau- same. and put in a deeper pool, which immediately became the center of similar atmospheric and aqueous dis
 turbances. Though these are fanciful
 and false traditions, they show the execration with which the world looked upon pilate. It was before this
 man when he was in full life and pow
 CT that Christ was arraigned as in {,
 court of Oyer and Terminer Pilate said to his prisoner: Art thou King, theng' and Jesus answered.; "To this end was I born, Sure enough, al though all earth and hell arose to keep him down He is to day empal-
 aced, enthroned and coroneted king of
 earth and king of Heaven. 10 this end was | born.n That is what he came for, and that was what he ac-
 complished.
 Fly the time the child reaches ten years of age the parents begin to dis cover that chiids ,les5lny; but by the time he or she reaches fifteen years of age, the question is on the child lips: What am l to be? What am going
 to be? What was made for?r 1t is a
 sensible and righteous question, and
 the youth ought to keep on asking it until it is so fully answered that the young man, or the young woman. can say with as much truth as its author, though on less expansive scale: "To
 tiit, end was 1 born.
 There IS too much divine skill shown
 i'll tue physical, mental and moral con-
 stitution of the ordinary human being
 to suppose that he was constructed
 without any divine purpose. If you
 take me out on some vast plain and
 show me pillared temple surmounted
 by a dome like St. Peters, and having
 floor of precious stones, and arches
 that must have taxed the brain of
 he greatest draughtsman to de-
 sign, and walls scrolled and
 niched and paneled and wainscotted
 and painted, and l should ask you what this building was put up for, and you answered: For nothing at all how could believe you2 And it IS imp os- sihle for me to believe that any ordi-
 nary human being who has In his mus
 cular, nervous and cerebral organiza- tion more wonders than Christopher Wren lifted in St paul's, CT Phidias ever chiselea on the Acropolis, and | built in such a way that it shall last long after St Paul's Cathedral is us much a ruin as the Parthenon-that | such being was constructed for no l purpose and to execute no mission l and without any divine intention to- | ward some end The object of this sermon is to help you to find out what l you are made for, and help you find your sphere, and assist you into that | condition where you can say with cer- | tainty and emphasis and enthusiasm 1 and trium pm 'ro this end was bora ? First, i discharge you from all re- ! sponslbltler for most of your environ ments You are not responsible for l EeeASiiN<hNNN VI dhtt- G. 1 You are not responsible for any of the cranks that may have lived in your l ancestral line, and who hundred
 years before you were born, may have | lived style of life that
 more or less affects you to-day ! You are not responsible for the fast that your temperament
 is sanguine or melancholie, or bilious, l or lymphatic, or nervous. Neither are l you responsible for the place of your nativity, whether among the granite 1 hills of New England, or the cotton l plantations of Louisiana, or on the | banks of the Clyde, or the Dnieper, or | the shannon, or the Seine. Neither
 are you responsible for the religion taught in your fathers house, or the ir- | religion Do not bother yourself
 about what you cannot help or about 1 circumstances that you did not de-
 cree Take things as they are and de- eide the question so that YOU shall be 1 able safely to say. ''ro this end was
 born-' How will you decide it? By direct application to the only Being l in the universe who is competent to
 tell you--the Lord Almighty. Do you
 know the reason why He is the only one who can tell? Because He can see
 everything between your cradle and
 your grave, though the grave be eighty
 years off And besides that, He | is tho only Being who can see
 what has been happening for
 the last five hundred years in | your ancestral line, and for thousands
 of years clear back to Adam and there
 is not one person in all that ancestral | line of six thousand years but has 1 somehow affected your chara ter. and
 even old Adam himself will sometimes | turn up in voar disposition. The only | Belag who can take ell things that per
 tain to you into consideration is God, and he is the one you can ask. Life is so short that we have no time to ex- pertinent with occupations and profes- slons- The reason we have so many
 dead failures is that parents decide | For children what they shall do, or chl'dNen themselves, wrought on by some whiin or fancy, decide for them selves without any imploration of di- vlne guidance So We have now in
 pnlpits men making sermons who ought
 to be in blacksmith shops making 1 ploug ghshares, and we have in the law those who instead of running the cases of their clients ought to be pounding shoe lasts, and doctors who are the worst h ndrances to their patients convalescence, and artists try ing to paint landscapes who ought to be whitewashing board fences. While there are others mak- ing bricks who ought to be remodeling constitutions, or showing planes who ought to be transforming lteratures. L. tx,.l lxs< IL. |