The McCook tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 1886-1936, 1895-09-13

Of the finger OIL
prophecy, the fin
ger of genealogy, the finger OF chron-
ology, 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 g%racefulest line in all sculpture, the
most exquisite mingling of lights and
shades in all painting, the acme OF all
climaxes, the dome of all cathedral
grandeur, and the peroration of all Ian
guage.
The Greek alphabet is made up OF
twenty-four 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 %splendors that you can spell out
either with those two letters or all the
letters between 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 ALP" 1t means after
you have piled up all Alpine and Him
alayan attitudes, the glory of Christ
would have to spread its wings and
descend a thousand leagues to touch
those SUBMITS. Pelion, a high noun
tain of Thessaly; Ossa. a high noun
tain, and Olympus, a high mountain;
but mythology tells us when the giants
warred against the gods they piled mp
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 after all the giants-lsaiah
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 unite in the words
of Paul, and cry out, above all. Above
all" But Solomon in his text prefers to
call Christ "The Chieftain," and so to-
day 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
cleTgymen, have made up their minds
what sermon 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, 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 eXhortation or a discourse
have frequent mention Of justification,
sanctification, covenant Of works and
covenant of grace, therefore it must be
profoundly evangelical, while they are
suspicious of a discourse which pre-
sents the same truth, but under differ
ent phraseology. Now, I say there is
nothing in all the opulent realm OF
Anglo-SaXonism, of all the word treas
ures 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 Illustrations were from
the grass, the flowers, the barn-yard
fowl, the crystals of salt, as we'll as
from the seas and tie stars; and we do
not p in our Sunday-school
teaching and in our pulpit address to
be put on the LINKS.
l 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, end words are
only the ship; but how fast would you
cargo get On without the ship? What
you need, my friends, in all your work
In the Sabbath-school class, in YOU
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
flimitable source. Shakespeare en-
GlOyed 15,UU Inherent WOTuS lOE Ord-
matte purposes, Milton employed 5000
different words for poetic purposes,
Rufus Choate employed over II 1000 Diff
ferent 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 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 10 speak of the
glory of Christ the Conqueror, we are
going to draw GU SMILES from trium-
phai arch and o-atorio 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 different
combinations. And / have to tell you
that these standards of the cross may
be lifted into combinations infinite and
.-. .v,-1octirp And let me saw