Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1895-09-07
THE ROCK OF REFUGE
REV. DIR. rALMAeE's SERMON ON
CHRIST, THE cHlEFTAlN.

|
the Saviour The Hope of All Chris
tians.
NEW YORK, Sept 1.-For his sermon
i for this forenoon Rev. DR.. Talmage Sc
lects topic which must prove full of
inspiration to Christians everywhere.
[ The title of his discourse is, "The Chief
tain,'' and the text, 'The chiefest
among ten thousand, Canticles v, 10.
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 tho finger of prophecy, the finger Of
genealogy, the finger of chronology, the
finger of events-all five fingers point
ing in one direction. Christ is the over
topping 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
i'll all painting, the acme Of all climaxes,
the dome of all cathedraled grandeur
and the peroration of all language.
The Greek alphabet is made up of "a
letters, and when Christ compared HIM
self tothe first letter and tho last let
ter, the Alpha and the Omega, he APP
propriated to himself all the splendors
that you can spell out either with those
two letters or all the letters between
them, 81 am the Alpha and the Omega,
the beginning and the end. "
Hail to the Chief.
What does that Scripture mean
which says of Christ, He that cometh
from above is above ALP" 1t means
after you have piled up all Alpine and
Himalayan attitudes, the glory of
Christ would have to spread its wings
and descend a thousand leagues to touch
those SUBMITS. Pclion, high noun
tain of Thessaly; Ossa, high mountain,
and Olympus, high mountain; 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 heav-
ems; but the height was not great
enough, and there was a complete fail
ure And latter all the giants-Isaiah
and Paul, prophetic and apostolic giants;
Raphael 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" "Aboye
allr' But Solomon i'll my text prefers
to call Christ "the Chieftain, and so
today 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 we'll as all
clergymen, have made up their minds
what sermons ought to be. That sermon
is the most effectual which most point
edly.puts forth. Christ rs the pardon 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 few phrases
There are those who think that if an
exhortation or a discourse have frequent
mention of justification. sanctificatlon,
covenant Of works and covenant OF
grace therefore it must be profoundly
evangelical, while they are suspicious
of discourse which presents the same
truth, but under different phraseology.
Now, l say there is nothing in all the
opulent realm Of Anglo-Saxonism, OF all
the word treasures that we inherited
from the Latin and the Greek and the
Indo-E European, but we have ii right to
marshal it in religious discussion.
Christ sets the example. His illustra-
tons 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 adj
dress to be put on the limits
Resources of Words.
I know that there is a great deal said
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 tables of stone? 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 Sab
bath school class, i'll your reformatory
institutions, and what we all need, is
to enlarge cur vocabulary when we
come to speak about God and Christ and
heaven. We ride few old words to
death, when there is such illimitable
resource. Shakespeare employed $4,000
different words for dramatic purposes;
Milton employed 5000 different words
for poetic purposes; Rufus Choate en-
ployed over II, 900 different words for
legal purposes, but the most Of us have
! less than thousand 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 ten
derest 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 conqueror, we are
going to draw cur SMILES from trium-
phal arch and oratorio and everything
grand and stupendous. The French navy
have IS flags by which they give signal,
but those IS flags they can put into &C.,
900 different combinations. And have
to tell you that these standards OF the
cross may be lifted into combinations
infinite and varieties everlasting And
let me say to the young men who come
from the theological seminaries into our