Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1892-04-04

these twenty three years is that it Is not
necessary TO preach error or pick flaws in
the old Bib III order TO get an audience,
the old Book without any fixing up is
good enough for me, and higher criti-
cisln, as it is called, means lower reli-
gion. Higher criticism is another form
of iniidelity, and its disciples will be-
lieve less and less, until many of them
will land in Nowhere, and become the
worshipers of an eternal "What is itg'
The most of these higher critics seem
to be seeking notoriety by pitching into
the Bible. 1t is such brave thing to
strike your grandmother The old Cos.
pei put in modern phrase, and without
any of the conyentionalities and adapted
to oil the wants and woes of humanity,
have found the mightiest magnet, and
we have never lacked an audience.
Next to the blessing Of my own family
l account the blessing that / have al
ways had great multitude of people to
preach to. That old Gospel / have
preached to you these twenty-three
years of my Brooklyn pastorate, and
that old Gospel will preach till | die,
and charge my son, who is on the way
TO the ministry, to preach it after me,
for remember Pauls thunderbolt, "If
any man preach any other Gospel, let
him be accursed." And now, as | stand
here on my twenty-third anniversary,
see two audiences. The one is made up
of all those who have worshiped with
us in the past, but have been translated
to higher realms.
What groups of children-too fair and
too sweet and too lovely for earth, and
the Lord took them, but they seem pres
ent today, The Group has gone out of
the swollen throat, and the pallor from
the cheek, and they have ON them the
health and radiance of heaven. Hail,
groups Of glorified children! How glad
am to have you come back to us today
And here sit those aged ones who de-
parted this life leaving an awful va
cancy in home and church. Where are
your stats, and where are your gray
locks, and where your STOPPING Shout
ders, ye blessed old folks? "Oh," they
say, "we are all young again, and the
bath in the river from Under the throne
has made us agile and bounding. In
the place from which we come they use
no stats, but scepters!" Hail, fathers
and mothers in Israeli How glad we
are to have you come back to greet us!
But the other audience | see in imagi-
nation ismade up of all those to whom
we have had opportunity as church,
directly or indirectly, of presenting the
Gospel. Yea, all my parishes seem to
come back today. The people of my
first charge in Belleville, N. j. The peo-
pie of my second charge in Syracuse,
N. Y. The people of my third charge
in Philadelphia. And the people of all
these three Brooklyn Tabernacles. Look
at them, and all those whom through
the printing press we have invited to
God and heaven now seeming to sit in
galleries above galleries-fifty galleries,
hundred galleries, thousand galleries
high.
greet them all in your name and in
Christ's name, all whom | have con-
fronted from my first sermon in my
first village charge, where my lips
trembled and my knees knocked to-
gether from alright, speaking from the
text, Jeremiah i, 6, "Ah, Lord God, be-
hold cannot speak, for am a childp
until the sermon 1 preach today from
Luke tx, 33, ''Let us make three tabor
nacles," those of the past and the pres
emit, all gather in imagination if not in
reality, all of us grateful to God forpast
mercies, all of us sorry for misimproved
opportunities, all hopeful for eternal
raptures, and while the visible and the
invisible audiences of the present and
the past commingle, give out to be
sung by those who are here today, and
to be sung by those who shall read Of
this scene Of reminiscence and congratu-
lation, that hymn which has been roll
ing on since Isaac Watts started it ono
hundred and fifty years ago:
Our God. our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal homo.
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