The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-03-29
TALMAGE FLAYS THE TURKS.
THE WORLD OWES GREECE A DEBT
IT CAN NEVER PAY.

Now Trying To TUT It's iaNS Oh 'aAc
Fnircst of All Nations.
Washington. March $.-As DR.. Tai
maee's sermons are published on both
sides the ocean. this discourse on sub
ie,.t of worldwide interest will attract uni
versal attention. His text was Romans,
1l4: Il am debtor both to the Greeks and
to the barbarians."
At this time. when that behemoth OF
denominations Mohammedanism, after
having gorged itself on the carcasses OF a
hundred thousand Armenians, is trying to
mt its paws upon one of the fariest of
all nations. that of the Greeks. ! preach
this sermon of sympathy and protest. for
every intelligent person on this side OF the
sea. as well as the other side, like Paul.
who wrote the text, is debtor to the
Greeks The present crisis is emphasized
by the guns of the allied powers Of Eu-
rope, ready to be numbered against the
Hellenes, and / am asked to speak out
Paul, with a master intellect of the ages,
sat in brilliant Corinth, the great Aero
Corinthus fortress frowning from the
hight of sixteen hundred and eighty-siX
feet. and in the house of Gaius where he
was a guest. a big pile of money near
him, which he was taking to Jerusalem
for the poor In this Letter to the Ro-
mans, which Chrysostom admired so much
that he had it read to him twice week,
Paul practically says: Il, the Apostle,
am bankrupt. i owe what l cannot pay,
but l will pay as large a percentage as
can. 1t is an obligation for what Greek
literature and Greek sculpture and Greek
architecture and Greek proves have done
for me. 1 win pay all l can in install
ments of evangelism. I am insolvent to
the Greeks" Hellas, as the inhabitants
call it, or Greece, as we call it, is insignif-
cant in size, about a third as large as
the state of New York, but what 1t lacks
in breadth it makes up in hight, with its
mountains Cylene, and Eta, and Taygetus,
and Tymphrestus, each over seven thou
sand feet in elevation, and It's Parnassus,
over eight thousand. Just the country for
mighty men to be born in, for in all lands
the most of the intellectual and moral
giants were not born on the plain, but
had for cradle the valley between two
mountains That country, no part of
which is more than forty miles from the
sea, mas Iudue llS impress upon tHt MpIlQ
as no other nation, and it to-day holds a
first mortgage Of obligation upon all civ
ilized people. While we must leave to
craftsmanship and diplomacy the settle
ment of the intricate questions which now
involve all Europe, and indirectly all ma
lions, 1t is time for all churches, all
schools, all universities, all arts, all lit
erauures to sound out in the most en-
phatic way the declaration, Il am debtor
10 the Greeks.
In the first place, we owe to their Ian
guage our New Testament. All of it was
first written in Greek, except the Book Of
Matthew, and that written in the Ara
mean language, was soon put into Greek
by our Savior's brother, James. To the
Greek language we owe the best sermon
ever preached, the best letters ever writ
ten, the best visions ever kindled All the
parallels in Greek. All the mir
acles in Greek. The sermon on the
mount in Greek. The story of Bethlehem
and Golgotha and Olivet and Jordan
banks and Galilean beaches and Pauline
embarkation and Pentecostal tongues and
seven trumpets that sounded over Pat
mos, have come to the world in liquid,
symmetric, picturesque, philosophic, I'M
rivalled Greek, instead of the gibberish
language in which many of the nations
of the earth at that time jabbered. Who
can forget il and who can eXaggerate its
heaven were introduced TO us in the lam
guage of the Greeks? the language in
which Homer had sung and Sophocles
dramatized and Plato dialogued and Soc
rates discoursed and Lycurgus legislated
and Demosthenes Numbered his Grafton
on The Crown?' Everlasting thanks to
God that the waters of life were not hand
ed to the world in the unwashed cup of
corrupt languages from which nations had
been drinking, but in the clean, bright,
golden-lipped, emerald-handled chalice of
the Hellenes. Learned Curtius wrote a
whole volume about the Greek verb.
Philologists century after century have
been measuring the symmetry of that
language, laden with elegy and philippe,
drama and comedy, Odyssey and Illiad;
but the grandest thing that Greek Ian
guage ever accomplished was to give to
the world the benediction, the comfort
the irradiaton, the salvation of the Cos
pei of the Son of God. For that we are
debtors to the Greeks.
And while speaking of our pathological
obligation, let me call your attention tc
the fact that many of the intellectual and
moral and theological leaders of the ages
got much of their discipline and effective
ness from Greek literature. It is popular
to scoff at the dead languages, but fifty
per cent. of the worlds intellectually
would have been taken off If, through
learned institutions our young men had
not, under competent professors, beer
drilled in Greek masterpieces. Hesiod's
Weeks and Days" or the eulogium by
Simonides of the slain in war; of Pndar's
"Odes of Victory" or THE Recollections
of Socrates" or THE Art of Words" by
Corax. or Xenophon's Anabasis.
From the Greeks the world learned how
10 make history. Had there been no Her
odotus and Thucydides, there would have
been no Macaulay or Bancroft. Had there
been no Sophocles in tragedy, there would
have been no Shakespeare. Had there
been no Homer, there would have been nc
Milton. The modern wits. who are now OF
have been out on the divine mission OF
making the world laugh at the right time
can be traced back to Aristophanes the
Athenian, and many Of the iocosties
that are now taken as new had their sug,
gestions twenty-three hundred years age
in the hfty-four comedies of that master
OF merriment. Grecian mythology has
been the richest mine from which orators
and essayists have drawn their ilustra.
tions ana painters the themes for theii
canvas, and although now an exhausted
mine, Grecian mythology has done a work
that nothing else could have accomplish.
ed; Boreas, representing the north wind
Sisyphus, rolling the stone un the hill OnlN