The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1895-09-11
CHRIST IS THE CHIEF.
REV. Or. TALMAGE ON THE MOST
CONSPICUOUS FIGURElN HISTORY.

A Sermon that Must be Full OF Inspiration
to Christians Everywhere--Christ tie
Object of Fairh and Love and Hope
Treasures in Heaven.
New YORK, Sept. 1.-For his SER
mon for this forenoon, Rev. DR.. Tai
mage selects a topic which must prove
full of inspiration to Christians every
where. The title of his discourse is,
THE Chieftain," and the text. The
chiefest among ten thousand" Can't
cles V, 10.
The most conspicuous character of
history steps ont upon the platform.
The finger which, oiamonded 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 chronolo-
gy, the finger of events-all five fing-
ers pointing in one: direction. Christ
is the overtopping figure of all time.
He is the "vox humana" IN all music,
the gracefulest line in all sculpture.
the most exquisite mingling of lights
and shades in all painting, the acme
of all climaxes, the dome of all cathe-
draled grandeur and the peroration of
all language.
The Greek alphabet is made up Of
24 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 splend-
ors that you can spell out either with
those two letters Or all the letters be-
tween them, Il am the Alpha and the
Omega, the beginning and the end.
What does that Scripture mean
which says Of Christ, He that cometh
from above is above all" 1t means
after you have piled up all Alpine and
Himaiayan attitudes the glory of
Christ would have to spread its wings
and descend thousand leagues to
touch those SUBMITS. Pclion, high
mountain of Thessaly; Ossa, a high
mountain, and Olympus, high
mountain, but mythology tells us
when the giants warred against the
gods they piled up these three noun
tains, and from the tops of them they
proposed to scale the heavens, but the
height was not great enough. and
there was complete failure. And al
ter all the giants-Isaiah and Paul,
prophetic and apostolic giants; Raph-
ael and Michael Angelo, artistic
giants; cherubim and seraphim and
archangel, celestial giants-have failed
to climb to the top of Christ's glory
they might all well unite in the words
Of Paul and cry out, "Above all"
above ALL But Solomon in my text
prefers to call Christ THE Chieftain, -
and so today I hail him.
First, Christ must be chief in our
preaching. There are so many books
on homiletics scattered through the
country that all laymen, as well as all
clergymen, have made up their minds
what sermons ought to be. That SER
mon is the most effectual which most
pointedly puts forth Christ as the par
don of all sin and the correction OF
all evil-individual, social, political,
national. 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-
fcation, sanctifcation, covenant of
works and covenant of grace, there
fore it must be profoundly evangeli-
cal, while they are suspicious of a dis
course which presents the same truth,
but under different phraseology. Now
I say there is nothing in all the opu-
lent realm of Anglo-Saxonism, of 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 barnyard fowl, the crystals of
salt, as well as from the seas and the
stars, and we do not propose in our
Sunday school teaching and in our
pulpit address to, be put ON the limits.
I 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 Christ
write upon the tables Of stone:
Words. What did Christ utter on
Mount Olivet2 Words. Out of what
did Christ strike the spark for the illu,
mination 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
without the ship. What: you need,
my friends, in all your work, in your
Sabbath school class, in your reform.
atory institutions and what we all
need is to enlarge our vocabulary
when we come to speak about God
and Christ and heaven. We ride q
few old words to death, when there is
such illimitable resource. Shakes
peare employed $1,000 different words
for dramatic purposes; Milton en-
ployed 5000 different words for poet
ic purposes; Rufus Choate employed
over ! /, ,0C0 different words. for legal
purposes, but the most of us have less
than 1000 words that we can manage,
and that makes us so stupid.
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 before all the more
shall we use it. When we come to
speak Of the glory OF Christ the con,
queror we are going to draw our sim
lies from triumphal arch and oratoric
and everything grand and stupendous.
The French navy have is flags by
which they give signal, but those Is
flags they can put into $4,000 differ:
ent combinations. And | have to tell
you that these standards of the cross
may be lifted into combinations infin-
ite and varieties everlasting And let
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