Connecticut western news., 1897-11-25
THE COMING SERMON.
REV. OR TAlMAGe TELLS WHAT IT
 OUGHT TO Be.


 OUGHT TO BE.
 He Says the Sermon of Today Has Too
 lIneh Dead Wood The Sermon of the
 Future win He short. Spirited, and It
 VIII Re Reported Tn the Press. fCopyr!ght. 1897. by American Press Asso-
 ciation.l
 WAsHINGToN, Nov. 2l.--Most appro- priate to the times we live i'll is Dr Talmage's discourse of today. All Chris tian workers will read it with interest. His text is Luke K, 60. "Go, thou, and preach the kingdom of God.
 The gospel is to be regnant over all hearts, all circles, all governments and all lands The kingdom of God spoken of in the text is to be a universal king dom, and just as wide as that will be the realm sermonic "Go, thou, and preach the kingdom of God. We hear 8 great deal i'll these days about the coming man and the coming woman and the coming time Some one ought to tell us of the coming sermon. It is simple fact that everybody knows that most of the sermons of today do not reach the world The vast majority of the people of our great cities never en- ter church.
 The sermon of today carries along with it the dead wood of all ages. Hun dreds of years ago it was decided what a sermon ought to be, and it is the at- tempt of many theological seminaries and doctors of divinity to hew the mod ern pulpit utterances into the same old style proportions. Booksellers will tell you they dispose of hundred histories, a hundred novels, hundred poems, to one book of sermons -...
 What is the matter? Some say the age is the worst of all ages. It Is better Some say religion is wearing out, when it Is wearing in. Some say there arc so many who despise the Christian reli- g1on. I answer, there never was an age when there were so many Christians or co many friends of Christianity as this age has-our age; as to others a hundred to one What is the matter then? It is simply because our sermon of today is not suited to the age. It is the canalboat in an age of locomotive and electric telegraph. The sermon will have to be shaken out of the old grooves or it will not be heard and 1t will not be read.
 Before the world is converted the ser mon will have to be converted. You might as well go into modern Sedan or Gettysburg with bows and arrows in- stead of rifles and bombshells and parks of artillery as to expect to conquer this world for God by the old styles of ser monology. Jonathan Edwards preached she sermons best adapted to the age in which he lived. but if those sermons were preached now they would divide an audience into two classes - those sound asleep and those wanting to go home
 The Sermon of the Future.
 But there is coming sermon. Who win preach it have no idea; in what part of the earth it will be born have no idea; in which denomination of Christians it will be delivered cannot guess That coming sermon may be born in the country meeting house on the banks of tho St Lawrence, or the Oregon, or the Ohio, or the Tombigbee, or the Alabama. The person who shall deliver it may this moment lie in a cradle under the shadow of the Sierra Nevadas or in New England farm house or amid the ricefields of southern savannas, or this moment there may be some young man in some of our theo- logical seminaries, in the junior or mid dle or senior class, shaping that weapon of power. or there may be coming some new baptism of the Holy Ghost on the churches, so that some of us who now stand in the watchtowers of Zion. walk ing to the realization of our present in- emc1enoy, may preach 1t ourselves That coming sermon may not be 20 years of. And let us pray God that its arrival may be hastened, while 1 an nounce to you what think will be the chief characteristics of that sermon when it does arrive, and want to make the remarks appropriate and suggestive to all classes of Christian workers.
 First of all, 1 remark that that com ing sermon will be full of living Christ, in contradistinotion to didactio technicalities. A sermon may be full of Christ, though hardly mentioning his name, and 8 sermon may be empty of Christ while every sentence is repeti- tious of his titles The world wants a living Christ, not Christ standing at the head of formal system of theology, but 8 Christ who means pardon and sympathy and coincidence and brother hood and life and heaven, poor mans Christ. an overworked man 8 Christ, an 1nvalid's Christ, a farmers Christ, Q merchants Christ, an artisans Christ, an every mans Christ
 A symmetrical and finely worded sys- tenn of theology is we'll enough for the ological classes, but it has no more busi- ness in pulpit than have the technical phrases of an anatomist or physician in the sickroom of patient The world wants help, immediate and world up- lifting, and it will come through a ser mon in which Christ shall walk right down into the immortal soul and take everlasting possession of it, filling it as full of light as is the monday firrna- ment. That sermon of the future will not deal with men in the threadbare il- lustrations of Jesus Christ In that com ing sermon there will be instances of SOAIlOua b&AcIiilCo bdhcA Ilbub Out OI oN erytiay life, for there Is not a day some body is not dying for others. As the physician, saving his diphtheric patient by sacrificing his own life; as the ship captain, going down with his vessel, while he is getting his passengers into the lifeboat; as the fireman, consuming in the burning building, while he is taking a child out of Q fourth story window; as last summer the strong swimmer at Long Branch or Cape May or Lake George himself perished trying to rescue tho drowning; as the newspa per boy not long ago, supporting his mother for some years, his invalid another. when offered by a gentleman 5C cents to get some especial paper, and ht got it and rushed up in his anxiety tc deliver it and was crushed under the wheels of the train and lay on the grass with only strength enough to say, "Oh, what will become of my poor sick