Connecticut western news., 1897-04-01
OUR DEBT TO GREECE
REV. OR. TALMAGe ACCOUNTS THE OBLIGATION IN AN ABLE SERMON.

REV. OR. TALMAee ACCOUNTS THE
 OBLIGATION IN AN ABLE SERMON. The Great Divine Speaks of Grecian Infiu-
 .nce In Literature and Art--Thermopy-
 ls and Bunker Hill--How to Repay the Obligation-Paups Peroration.
 WASHINGTON, March 2s-As Dr. Tal- nage's sermons are published on both ndes the ocean, this discourse on sub tect of worldwide interest will attract universal attention. His text was Ro- mans i, IA, "I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians. '
 At this time, when that behemoth of Mohammedanism, after having gorged itself on the carcasses of 100, GOO Armenians, is trying to put it's paws upon one of the talresr of all na- tions, that of the Greeks. preach this sermon of sympathy and protest, for ev- cry intelligent person on this side, like Paul, who wrote the text, is debtor to she Greeks. The present crisis. is em- phasized by the guns of the allied pow Yrs of Europe, ready to be unlimbered against the Hellenes, and I am asked to speak out. Paul, with master intellect of the ages, sat in brilliant Corinth, the great Aero Corinthus fortress drowning from the height of 1 ,6S6 feet, and in the house of Gains, where he was guest, B big pile of money near him, which he was taking to Jerusalem for the poor.
 In this letter to the Romans which Chrysostom admired so much that he had it read to him twice a week, Paul practically says: "I, the apostle, am bankrupt. I owe what I cannot pay, put will pay as large a percentage as can. It is an obligation for what Greek literature and Greek sculpture and Greek architecture and Greek prowess have done for me. I will pay all can in installments of evangelism. am in- solvent to the Greeks. Hellas, as the inhabitants call it. or Greece, as we call it, is insignificant in size, about third as large as the state of New York, but what it lacks in breadth it makes up in height, with its mountains Cylene and Eta and Taygetus and Tymphrestus, each over 1000 feet in elevation, and it's Parnassus, over 5000. Just the country for mighty men to be born in, for in all lands the most of the intellec- tual 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 40 miles from the sea, has made its impress upon the world as no other nation, and it to- Hay holds first mortgage of obligation npon all civilized people. While we must leave to statesmanship and diplo- macy the settlement of the intricate questions which now involve all Eu- rope and indirectly all nations, it is time for all churches, all schools, all universities, all arts, all literatures, to sound out in the most emphatic way The declaration, "I am debtor to the Hreeks''
 The Best Sermon.
 In the first place, we owe to their language our New Testament. All of it was first written in Greek, except the book of Matthew, and that, written in the -Aramean language, was soon put into Greek by our Saviour's brother James, To the Greek language VIC owe the best sermon ever preached, the best letters ever written, the best visions ever kindled. All the parables in Greek. All the miracles 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 Pente- costal tongues, and seven trumpets that sounded over Patmos, have come to the world in liquid, symmetric, picturesque, philosophic, unrivaled Greek, instead of the gibberish language in which many of the nations of the earth at that time jabbered. Who can forget it, and who can exaggerate its thrilling impor- tance, that Christ and heaven were in- troduced to us in the language of the Greeks. the language in which Homer had sung, and Sophocles dramatized, and Plato dialogued, and Socrates dis coursed, and Lycurgus legislated, and Demosthenes 'thundered his oration on The Crown?" Everlasting thanks to God that. the waters of life were not handed to the world in the unwashed cup of corrupt languages from which
 
 clean, bright, golden tipped, emerald handled chalice of the Hellenes Learn cd Curtius wrote whole volume about the Greek verb. Philologists century after century have been measuring the symmetry of that language, laden with elegy and philippic, drama and comedy, Odyssey" and "Iliad," but the grand est thing that Greek language ever ac- complished was to give to the world the benediction, the comfort, the irradia- tion, the salvation, of the gospel of the Son of God. For that we are debtors to the Greeks.
 And while speaking of our philolog- ical obligation let me call your atten- tion to the fact that many of the intel iectual and moral and theological lead CTS of the ages got much of their disci- pline and effectiveness from Greek lit erature. It is popular to scoff at the dead languages, but 90 per cent of the worlds intellectuality would have been taken off if through learned institutions our young men had not, under competent professors. been drilled in Greek mas terpieces, Hesiod's "Weeks and Days, !" or the eulogium by Simonides of the slain in war, or Pindar's "Odes of Vic- tory" or "The 'Recollections of Soc- rates,' or "The Art of Words," by Corax, or Xenophon's "Anabasis.
 Leaders of the Ages.
 From the Greeks the world learned how to make history. Had there been no Herodotus and Thucydides there would have been nc Macaulay or Bancroft. Had. there been no Sopho- cles in tragedy. there would have been no Shakespearer.' Had there been no Homer, there would have been no Mill ton. The modern wits, who are now or 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 jocosities that are now taken as new had their sug- positions g ROO years ago in the 54 conn