The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1897-04-09
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
What the Civilized World Owes
to Greece.
Largely Indebted to HellaS-
Paurs Acknowledgements
ical, Architectural, Art and
other Obligations.

the following sermon of present world
wide interest before his Washington
congregation, taking for his text:
am debtor both to the Greeks and to the
barbarians--ROmans l., IA
AT this time, when that behemoth of
denominations, Mohammedanism, after
having gorged itself on the carcasses of
100, 600 Armenians, is trying to put its
paws upon one of the fairest of all ma
tions, 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 texC, is debtor to
the Greeks. The present crisis is en-
phasized by the guns of the allied pow
ers of Europe, ready to be unlimbered
against the Hellenes, and L am asked
to speak out. Paul, with a master in
tellect of the ages, sat in brilliant Cor
inth, the great Acro-Corinthus fortress
frowning from the height of 1856 feet,
and in the house of Gaius, where he
was a guest, a big pile of money near
him, which he was taking to Jeru-
salem for the poor. In this let
ter to the Romans, which ChrySOStOm
admired so much that he had it read to
him twice a week, Paul practically
says: II, the aspOstle, am bankrupt.
l owe what l can not pay, but 1 will
pay as large a percentage as l can. 1t
is an obligation for what Greek litera-
ture and Greek sculpture and Greek
architecture and Greek prowess have
done for me. 1 will pay all L can in
Installments of evangelism. L am in
solvent to the Creeks HellaS, as the
inhabitants call it, or Greece, as we
call it, is Insignificant in size, about a
third as large as the state of New York;
but what it lacks in breadth it makes
up in height, with its mountains Cy-
lene, and Eta, and Taygetus, and lynn
phrestus, each over 1000 feet in ele-
vation, 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 cra-
die 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-day holds a first mort
gage of obligation upon all civilized
people. While we must leave to states
manship and diplomacy the settlement
of the intricate questions which now
involve all Europe, 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: Il am
debtor to the Greeks"
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, writ
ten in the Aramean language, was
soon put into Greek by our SaviOur's
brother, James. To the Greek Ian
guage we owe the best sermon ever
preached, the best letters ever written,
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
Golgotha and Olivet and Jordan banks
and Galilean beaches amt Pauline en-
barkation and PentecOstal tongues and
seven trumpets that sounded over Pat
mos, have come to the world in
liquid, symmetric, picturesque, philo-
sophie, 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 Importance,
that Christ and Heaven were introduced
to US in the language of the Greeks?
the language in which Homer had sung
and Sophocles dramatized and Plato
dialogued and Socrates discoursed and
4 -,
mes hundred his Grafton on The
Crown" Everlasting thanks to God
that the waters of life were not
handed to the world in the un-
washed cup of corrupt languages from
which nations had been drinking, but
in the clean, bright, golden-lipped,
chalice of the Hell
lenes. Learned Curtius wrote whole
volume about the Greek verb. Philol-
Ogists century after century have been
the symmetry of that
language, laden with elegy and philip
pic, drama and comedy, Odyssey and
Iliad; but the grandest thing that
Greek language ever accomplished was
to give to the world the benediction,
the comfort, the irraditation, the sal
vatiOn 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-
ton 90 the fact that many of the intel
lectuAl and moral and theological lead
ers of the ages got much of their d4sci-
plin< and effectiveness from Greek lit
erature. 1t is popular to scOff at the
deac languages, but so per cent. of the
worlds intellectually would have
been taken off if, through learned in
our young men had not, un-
der competent professors, been drilled
in Greek masterpieces. Hesiod's
Weeks and Days" or the eulogium by
of the slain in war, or Pin
dar's ''Odes of Victory" or the ''Recol-
lections of Socrates" or THE Art of
Words" by Corax, or Xenophon's
''Anabasis."
From the Greeks the world learned
how to make history. Had there been
no Herodotus and Thucydides, there
would have been no Macauley or Ban
croft Had there been no Sophocles in
there would have been no
Shakespeare. Had there been no Ho-
mer, there would have been no Milton.
The modern wits, who are now or have
been out on the divine mission of max
ing the world laugh at the right time,
can be traced back to Aristophanes,
the Athenian, and many of the jocOsi-
ties that are now taken as new had