The times., 1897-03-29
DEBTORS TO THE GREEKS
DIR. Talmage on What the World
Owes to Them.
MORE THAN CAN BE PAID
To Them the World Is Indebted
for Architecture, Sculpture, the
Science of Medicine, and More
Than 1t Can Pay for Struggles in
the Sacred Cause of Liberty.

Rev. r. Dewitt Talmage took for his
| text yesterday, Romans l. A: Il am
| debtor both To the Greeks and to the
| barbarians' He spoke in part as fol-
| lows:
AT this time, when that behemoth Of
| denominations, MohammedanisIn, NJ after hav-
| ing gorged itself on the carcdsses of o0,-
| 600 Armenians, is trying TO put its paws
| upon one of the fairest of all na tons, that
| of the Greeks, l preach this sermon OF
sympathy and protest, for every intelli-
| gent person on this side of the sea, as
| well as the other side, like Paul who
! wrote the text, is debtor TO the Greeks.
I The present crisis is emphasized by the
| guns OF the allied powers of Europe, ready
| TO be uniimbered against the HelieneS, and
1 am asked TO speak out.
while we must leave to craftsmanship
and diplomacy the settlement OF the in
tricate questions which now involve all
Europe, and Indirectly all nations, ii is
time for all churches, all schools, all uni
versitieS all arts, all literatuTes TO sound
out in the most emphatic way the declara-
ton, Il am debtor to the Greeks
'ln the first place, we owe To their Ian
guage our New Testament. All of il was
first itten in Greek, except the Book nf
Matthew and that written in the Aramean
language was soon put into Greek by our
Saviour's brother, James. To the Greek
language We owe the best sermons ever
preached. the best letters ever written, the
best visions ever kindled All the para
bles are in Greek All the miraclesin Greek.
ha an Greek The
story of Bethlehem and Golgotha and
oliyet and Jordan banks and Galilean
beaches and Pauline embarkation and Pen
tecostal tongues and seven trumpets that
sounded over Patnlos, have come TO the
world in liquid, symmetric, picturesque.
phnosephc, unriyalied Greek, instead of
the glbberish language in which many OF
the nations OF the earth at that time Jab-
bered
From the Greeks the world learned low
to make history Had there been 10
Herodotus and Thucydides, there would
have been no Macauley or Bancroft. Had
there been no Aeschylus in tragedy there
would have been no Shakespeare. Had
there been no Homer, there would have
been no Milton. The modern wits, who
are now or have been out on the divine
mission Of making the world laugh at tie
right time, can he traced back 10 a MS
tophanes, the Athenian, and many Of the
jocosities that are now taken as new had
their suggestions twenty three hundred
years ago in the fifty comedies Of
that master of merriInent.
"AI the civilized world, like Paul is
indebted to the Greeks for architecture
The world before the time of the Greeks
had built mcnoliths, obesks, Clomlechs
sphinXs. ana pyramids, but they Were
mostly monumental TO the dead, whom
they failed 10 mcmOrialiZe. We are not
certain of even the names OF these III
whose conmemoration the pyramids were
built. But Greek architecture did most
for the living. Ignoring Egyptian prec-
edents. and borrowing nothing from other
nations, Greek architecture carved Its own
columns, set its own pedlIncnts, adjusted
its own eutablatureS, rounded its Cwn mold
mgs, and carried out as never before the
three qualities of right building, called
hv an old author 'firmitas, utilitas, venus
tas,' namely, firnness usefulness, beauty.
But there is another art in my mind
the most fascinating. clevatnE, and in
spring of all arts, and the nearest To the
Irvine for which all the world owes
debt to the Hellenes that viii never be
paid. / mean sculpture. At least six hun
dred and fifty years before Christ the
Greeks perpetuated the human face and
form in terra Gotta and marble. What a
blessing to the human family that men and !
women, nightly useful, who could live |
only within a century may be perpetuate'l |
for five or six or ten centuries. How | |
wish that some sculptor, contemGerancous !
with Christ, could have put his matchleSs |
form in marble! But for every grand and |
exquisite statue of Martin Luther, OF John |
Knox. of William Penn, of Thomas Chal- |
mers, of WeIlin gtOn, OF Lafayeve, of any |
of the great Statesm men or emanclpatorS or |
who adorn your parks or fill |
the inches of your academies, you are
debtors to the Greeks.
Veal For the science of medicine, the
great art Of healing, we must thank the
Greeks. There is the immortal Greek
doctor, Hippocrates, who first opened the
door for disease to go out and health
to come in. He first set forth the i'm
portance of cleanliness and sleep, making
the patient before treatment To be washed
and take slumber on the hide of a sacrificed
beast. He first discovered the Importance
of thorough prognosis and diagnosis He
the famous oath OF Hippocrates
which is taken by physicians of our day.
Furthermore. all the world is obligated
to Helas more than it can ever pay forits
heroics in the cause of liberty and right.
United Europe today had not better think
that the Greeks will not fight. There may |
be fallings back and vacillations and tenn
porary defeat, but if Greece is right all
Europe cannot put her down. The other
nations. before they open the portfolios of
their rnen-of-war against that small king
dom, had better read of the battleof Mara
-hon. where 600 Athenans, led on by
triumphed over 100000 of their
enemies.
Also ut Thermopylae 800 Greeks, along
a road only wide enough for wheel track
betw a mountain and q marsh, died
rather than surrender. Had there been no
there might have been no
Bunker Hill The echo of .Athenian and
Spartan heroics was heard at the gates OF
Lucknow, and Scbastopol, and Bannock-
lurn, and Lexington, and Gettysburg Eng !
ish Magma Charta, our Declaration of In
dependence, and the song of Robert Burns
Untitled "a Mans a Man for a That
we're only the ong-continued reverberation
If what was said and done twenty cen
-ures before in that little kingdom that
he powers of Europe are now imposing