Democratic Northwest and Henry County news. [volume] (Napoleon, O. [Ohio]) 1894-1905, 1897-04-01
PRAISE FOR GREECE.
REV. DR.. TALmAeE ON A SUBJECT OF
WORLDWIDE INTEREST.

He Shows Whist We Owe the Greeks-A
Debt In Language, Art. Heroism and
MedIoine--The Best Way to Pay the
Debt.
WASHINGTON, March 2s.-As Dr. Tai
mage's sermons arc published on both sides
the ocean, this discourse on a subject of
worldwide interest will attract universal
attention. His text was Romans /, IA, 81
am debtor both to the Greeks and to tho
barbarians."
At this time, when that behemoth of
denominations, Mohammedanism, after
having gorged itself on the carcasses of
100000 Armenians, is trying to put its
paws upon one of the fairest of all ma
tions, that of the Greeks, l preach this
sermon of sympathy and protest, for ev
cry 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 Europe, ready
to be unlimbered against the Hellenes, and
l am asked to speak out. Paul, with
master intellect of the ages, sat in brill
liant Corinth, the great Aero -Corinthus
fortress frowning from the height of l 1856
feet, and in the house of Gaius, where he
was guest, a 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 week, Paul practi-
lxy hn hn N T.
rupt. l owe what 1 cannot pay, but l will
pay as large percentage as 1 can. 1t is
an obligation for what Greek literature
and Greek sculpture and Greek architec-
ture and Greek prowess have done for me.
Twill pay all can in installments of evan
gelisII.. 1 am insolvent 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 Tym-
phrestus, each over 1000 feet in elevation,
and its Parnassus, over 5000. 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 be-
tween 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 today
holds first mortgage of obligation upon
| all civilized 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
| set fo, Ill oh11r oil
all universities, all arts, all literature, to
sound out in the most emphatic way the
declaration, II am debtor to the Greeks "
The Greek Language.
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 Sayiours 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 miracles in
Greek. The sermon on the mount in
| Greek The story of Bethlehem and Col
gotha and Olivet and Jordan banks and
Galilean beaches and Pauline embarka
tion and Pentecostal tongues and seven
trumpcts that sounded over Patmos have
come to the world in liquid, symmetrical
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 whc
can exaggerate it's thrilling Importance
that Christ and heaven were introduced tt
us in the language of the Greeks, the Ian
guage in which Homer had sung ant
Sophocles dramatized and Plato dialogue(
and Socrates discoursed and Lycurgus leg
islated and Demosthenes thundered hi
grafton on "The Crown" Everlasting
thanks to God that the waters of life wer,
not handed to the world in the unwashet
cup of corrupt languages from which ma
tions had been drinking, but in the clean
bright, golden Tipped, emerald handict
chalice of tho Hellenes. Learned Curtiu
wrote q whole volume about the Greel
verb. Philologists century after centur,
have been measuring the symmetry of tina
language, laden with elegy and philippe
drama and comedy, odyssey" and "Il
lad, but the grandest thing that Greel
language ever accomplished was to give t.
the world the benediction the comfort, tn
irradiation, the salvation, of the gospel o
the Son of God. For that we are debtor
to the Greeks.
And while speaking Of our pathological
obligation let me call your attention t
the fact that many of the intellectual AM
moral and theological leaders Of the age
got much of their discipline and effective
ness from Greek literature. 1t is popula
to scoff at the dead languages, but so pc
cent of the worlds intellectually woul
have been taken off if through learned in
. stitutions our young men had not, unde
} competent professors, been drilled in Gree
masterpieces, Hesiod' "Weeks and Days,
or the eulogium by Simonides of the slail
A in war, or Pindar's "Odes of Victory" c
4 "The Recollections of Socrates" or eth
! Art of Words" by Corax, or Xenophon
4 "Anabasis.
Al History and the Greeks.
From the Greeks the world learned ho'
1 to make history. Had there. been no HI
4 rodotus and Thucydides there would hay
! been no Macaulay or Bancroft. Had thel
been no Sophocles in tragedy there woul
, have been no Shakespeare. Had there bee
: no Homer there would have been no Mi
A ton. The modern wits, who are now {
J have been put on the divine mission {
I making the world laugh at the right tim
I can be traced back to Aristophanes, IL
Athenian, and many Of the jocosities tn;
are now taken as new had their sugge
tions 1900 years ago in the "a comedi'
I OF that master of merriment. Grecia
4 mythology has been the richest mine frol
which orators and essayists have draw
Il |
for their canvas, and, although now an @,
: hausted mine, Gpecian mythology has dol
I work that nothing else could have a
A complished. Boreas, representing tt
) north wind; Sisyphus, rolling the stol
& up the hill, only to have the same thing
Z do over AGAIN: Taptnlus. with frnits nho'