The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1892-08-12
CHRIST PRE-EMINENT.
Row. T. Dewitt Talnage Speaks on
the Glory of Christ.
A Position Unique In the History OF the
WorId-The Alpha and Omega OF
All that Is Good, Great
and Glorious.

The following discourse, from among
those delivered during his European
tour. is selected by Rev. t. Dewitt Tai
mage for perusal by his great congre-
CATION of newspaper readers in Ameri-
ca. The text is:
He that cometh from above is above ALL
John fiji, 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-an five fingers
pointing in one direction. Christ is the
overtOpping figure of all time. He is
the vox humana in all music, the grace
fullest line in all sculpture, the most
exquisite mingling of lights and shades
in all painting, the acme of climaxes,
the dome of all cathedraled grandeur,
and the peroration of all splendid Ian
guage.
The Greek alphabet is made up of
tventy-four letters, and when Christ
compared Himself 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 letters and all
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"
1t m cans, after you have piled up all
| Alpine and Himalays attitudes, the
glory of Christ would have to spread
its wings and descend ] 200 leagues to
touch those SUBMITS. Pelion, a high
mountain of Thessaly, Ossa, a high
mountain, and Olympus, a high noun
tain; 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 a COM
plete failure. And after all the giants
Isaiah and Paul, prophetic and apos-
| tolic giants; Raphael and Michael An
| gelo, artistic giants; Cherubim and Ser
aphim and Archangel, celestial giants
have failed to climb to the top of
! Christ's glory, they might all well unite
In the words of the text and say: "EIe
| that cometh from above is above all"
First, Christ must be above all else in
our preaching There are also many
| books on homiletics scattered all
through the world 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
pardon 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 a
few phrases. There are those who
think that if an exhortation or dis
course have frequent mention of justi-
| fication, sanctification; covenant of
works and covenant of grace, that
therefore it must be profoundly evan
| gelical, while they are suspicious of a
discourse which presents the same
| truth but under different phraseology.
Now, say there is nothing in all the
opulent realm of Anglo-SaXonism or all
the word treasures that we inherited
| from the Latin and the Greek and the
Indo-European, but we have a right to
marshal it in religious discussion.
| Christ Sets the example. His illustra-
| tions 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
teaching and in our pulpit addresses to
| be put on the limits.
/ -. = i
in our day against words as though
they were nothing. They may be mis-
used, but they have an imperial power.
| They are the bridge between soul and
soul, between Almighty God and the
| human race. What did God write upon
the table of stones? 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 OF course, thought is the
cargo and words only the ship; but
how long would your cargo get along
without the ship? What you need, my
| friends, in all your work, in your Sab
| bath-School, in your reformatory in
stitutions, and what we all need is to
enlarge our voca bulary when we come
to speak about God and Christ and
| Heaven. We ride few old words tc
death when there is such illimable re-
source. Shakespeare EMPLOYED 15, 900 diff
ferent words for dramatic purposes
Milton employed 5000 different words
for poetic purposes; Rufus Choate en-
| ployed over IL, 900 different words for
legal purposes, but the most of us have
less than 1 900 words that we can man
age, less than 500. and that maks US
so stupid -
When we come to set forth the love
of Christ we are going to take the ten
derest phraseclogy wherever we find it,
and If il 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 10 draw our studies from tri-
umphal area and oratorio and every
thing grand and stupendous. The
French navy have eighteen flags by
which they give signal; but those
eighteen flags they can put into 90, ,ooC
different combinations. And nave tc
tell you that these standards of the
Cross may be lifted into combinations
infinite and varieties everlasting. And
let me say TO young men who are after
awhile going to preach Jesus Christ
you will have the largest liberty and
unlimited resource. You only have Il
present Christ in your own way.
Jonathan Edwards preached Chris