The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1892-10-07
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
The Brooklyn Preacher Back In His
Own Pulpit Again.
His First Sermon n Presentation of Chris
ms the All In All 70 Mankind
I'm Every Station I'm
This Life.

pit to an immense congregation assem-
bled to welcome him on his return from
Europe. His text was:
Christ is all and In all.-Colosians IT,, IL.
Returned after the most eventful
summer of my life, must shortly, and
as soon as recover from the sea voy-
age, give you an account of our mission
of bread 20 famine-struck Russia, and
of my preaching tour through Ger
many, England, Scotland and Ireland;
but my first sermon on reaching here
must be a hosanna of gratitude to
Christ, and from the text have chosen
] have found that the greatest name in
the ocean-shipping, and from Liverpool
10 Moscow, and from Moscow to Lon
don and Edinburgh and Belfast and
Dublin, is Jesus.
Every age of the world has had its
historians, its philosophers, its artists,
its thinkers. aud its teachers. Were
there histories TO be written, there has
always been Moses, or a Herodotus,
or Xenophon, or Josephus to write
them. Were there poems to be con-
structed, there has always been Job
or Homer to construct them. Were
TO be lifted, there has always been a
David or Cesar to raise them. Were
there teachers demanded for intel
lect and the hearts, there has been a
Socrates and a Zeno and Cleanthes
and Marcus Antonius coming forth
on the grand and glorious mission.
Every age of the world has had its
triumphs of reason and morality.
There has not been single age of the
world which has not had some decided
system of religion. The Platonism,
Orientalism, Stoicism, BrahminisIn and
Buddhism, considering the ages in
which they were established, were not
lacking in ingenuity and force. Now,
in this line of beneficent institutions
and of noble men, there appeared a
parsonage more wonderful than any
predecessor. He came from a family
without any royal or aristOcratic pre-
tension. He became a Galilean me
chanic. He had no advantage from
the schools. There were peo-
pie beside Him day after day who had
no idea that He was going to be any
thing remarkable or do anything re-
markable. Yet, notwithstanding all
this, and without any title, or scholar
" profession, or flaming rhetoric, He
startled the world with the strangest
announcements, ran in collision with
solemn priest and proud ruler, and
with a voice that rang through temple
and palace and over ships deck, and
mountain top, exclaimed: 81 am the
light of the worldw Men were taken
all aback at the idea that that hand,
yet hard from the use of the axe, the
saw, the adze, and Ratchet, should
wave the scepter of authority, and that
upon that brow, from which they had
so often seen Him wipe the sweat of
toll, there would yet come the crown
of unparalleled splendor and of uni
versal dominion. We all know how
difficult it is to think that anybody
who was at school with us in boyhood
has got TO be anything great or famous;
and no wonder that those who had
been boys with Christ in the streets of
Nazareth and seen Him in after years
in the days of His complete obscurity,
should have been very slow to acknowl-
edge Christ's wonderful mission.
From this humble point the stream
of life flowed out At first it was just
faint rill, hardly able to find its way
down the rock, but the tears of a weep
ing Christ added TO its volume; and il
flowed on until, by the beauty and
greenness of the banks, You might
know the path the crystal stream was
taking. On and on, until the lepers
brought down and washed off their
leprosy, and the dead were lifted into
the water that they might have life,
and pearls of JOY and promise were
gathered from the brink, and innumer-
able churches gathered on either bank,
and the tide flows on deeper, and
stronger, and wider, until it rolls into
the river from under the throne of God,
mingling billow with billow, and
brightness with brightness, and joy
with JOY, and hosanna with hosanna!
was looking at some of the paint
ings of the artist, Mr.. Kensett. 1 saw
some pictures that were just faint out
lines; in some places you would see
only the branches of a tree and no
trunk, and in another case the trunk
and no branches. He had not finished
the work. 1t would have taken him
DAYS and months, perhaps, to have
completed it. Well, my friends, in this
world we get only the faintest outline
of what Christ is. It will take all
eternity to fill up the picture-so low
ing, so kind, so merciful, so great!
Paul does not, in this chapter, say of
Christ He is good, or He is loving, or He is
patient, or He is kind; but in His ex-
clamation of the text, he embraces
everything when he says: Christ is all
and in ALL"
remark, in the first place, Christ is
everything in the Bible. do not care
where 1 open the Bible I find Jesus
In whatever path start I come, after
twhile, to the Bethlehem manager. 1
10 back to the old dispensation and see
a lamb on the altar, and say: Behold
the Lamb of God, which tazeth away
the sins of the worldr' Then go and
see the mamma provided for the Israel
ties in the wilderness, and say: Jesus,
the bread of life" Then look at the
rock which was smitten by the proph-
cts rod, and as the water gushes out, l
say: 1T is Jesus, the fountain, opened
for sin and uncleanness" / go back
and look at the writings of Job, and
hear him exclaim: ST know that nv
Redeemer liveth." Then go to Ezekiel
and find Christ presented there as "a
plant of renown;" and then turn over
TO Isaiah, and Christ is spoken of "as a
sheep before her shearers." 1t is
Jesus all the way between Genesis and
Malachi. Then turn over to the New
Testament, and it is Christ in the
nara bic, IL is Christ in the miracle il is