Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1892-08-11
'PRE-ENIINENT JESUS.
DR.. TALMAeE's SERMON FOR LATE
JULY IN SCOTLAND.

LONDON, July 31.-Since his return from
Russia DR.. Talmage has been literally
flooded with invitations to address congre-
cations and lyceums on the subject of his
| journey to the land of the czar, whittier he
went with Nr. Louis Klopsch to direct the
distribution of The Christian Herald re-
lief cargo. While expressing his high ap-
probation of the cordial welcome and
splendid hospitality extended by the of
ficials of st. Petersburg and Moscow, of
the civic honors heaped upon the Ameri-
can visitors and of Russia's national graft.
tude to America, as personally expressed
by the czarowitz at Peterhof, where he
entertained them as guests, DR.. Talmage
has been compelled to adhere to his origi-
nal programme. During the week he has
been preaching in the leading Scottish
cities. His arrangements for next week
include services at Newcastle and Sunder-
land, and thereafter he goes to the Isle of
Man for few days. The sermon selected
for this week is entitled "Pre-eminent,"
the text being John iii, 81, HE that
cometh from above is above ALL"
The most conspicuous character of his
tory steps out upon the platform. The fin
ger 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 chro-
nology, the finger of events-all five fin
gers pointing in one direction. Christ is
the overlapping figure of all time. He is
the voX humana in all music, the graceful
est line in all sculpture, the most exquisite
mingling of lights and shades in all paint
ing, the acme of all climaxes, the dome of
all cathedraled grandeur and the perora-
tion of all splendid language.
| The Greek alphabet is made up of
twenty-four letters, and when Christ COM
pared 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 be-
ginning and the end, the first and the
last" Or, if you prefer the words of the
text, "above all"
1t means, after you have piled up all AL
pine and Himalayan attitudes, the glory of
Christ would have to spread its wings and
descend thousand leagues to touch those
submits Pelion, high mountain of
Thessaly; Ossa, a high mountain, and
Olympus, a high mountain; but mythology
tells us when the giants warred against
the gods they piled up these three noun
tains and from the top of them proposed
to scale the heavens; but the height was
not great enough and there was complete
failure. And after all the giants-Isaah
and Paul, prophetic and apostolic giants:
Raphael and Michael Angelo, artistic
giants; cherubim and seraphim and arch
angel, celestial giants-have failed to climb
to the top of Christ's glory, they might all
we'll unite in the words of the text and say,
HE that cometh from above is above ALL"
THE CENTRAL THEME IN PREACHING.
| First, Christ must be above all else in
our preaching. There are SO many books
on homiletics scattered 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
wiS1ch 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 ex-
hortation or a discourse have frequent
mention of Justification sanctification,
covenant of works and covenant of grace,
that. therefore it must be profoundly
evangelical 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 right to marshal
1t in religious discussion. Christ sets the
example. His illustrations 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 teach
ing and in our pulpit address to be put on
the limits.
know that there is great deal said in
| our day against words, as though they
were nothing. They may be misused, 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 tables 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 are only the ship,
but how fast would your cargo get on with
out the ship?
What you need, my friends, in all your
work, in your Sabbath school class, in
your reformatory institutions, and what
we all need is to enlarge our vocabulary
when we come to speak about God and
Christ and heaven. We ride a few old
words to death when there is such illimit-
able resource Shakespeare employed fif-
fteen thousand different words for dramatic
purposes; Milton employed eight thousand
different words for poetic purposes; Rufus
Choate employed over eleven thousand diff
ferent words for legal purposes, but the
most of us have less than thousand
words that we can manage, less than five
hundred, and that makes us so stupid.
ALL SWEET WORDS NEEDED.
When we come to set forth the love of
Christ we are going to take the tenderest
phraseology wherever we find it, and if it
has never been used in that direction be-
fore, all the more shall we use it. When
we come tospeak of the glory of Christ,
the conqueror, we are going to draw our
SMILES from triumphal arch and oratorio
and everything grand and stupendous.
The French navy have eighteen flags by
which they give signal, but those eighteen
flags they can put into sixty-six thousand
different combinations. And I have to 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 to present Christ in your
own way.
Jonathan Edwards preached Christ in
the severest argument ever penned, and
John Bunyan preached Christ in the sub
limest allegory ever composed. Edward
Payson, sick and exhausted, leaned up
acrnirSt cidn and .r-o,nt