Connecticut western news., 1898-08-04
THE HAND OF CHRIST
DR. TAlMAGE TELLS WHAT IT WROTE
 IN THE DUST.

Shows the Injustice of Conforming In
 Woman Sins That Are Overlooked Ip
 Man-Christ's Judgment of the outcast. Copyright. 1898. by American Press Asso-
 ciation.l
 WASHINGTON, July 31.-In this dis course Dr. Talmage gives heroic treat ment of delicate subject, and applies to modern society the lesson taught by Christ on memorable occasion; text John viii, 6, Jesus stopped down and with his finger wrote on the ground. "
 You must take your shoes off and put on the especial slippers provided at the door if you would enter the Moharnmed- an mosque which stands now where once stood Herod's temple, the scene of my text. Solomon's temple had stood there, but Nebuchadnezzar had thun- dered it down. Zerubbabel's s temple had stood there. but that had been prostrat- ed. Now we take our places in tenn pie that Herod built, because he was fond of great architecture, and he want ed the preceding temples to seem insig- nificant. Put eight or ten modern cathe- drals together, and they would not equal that structure. It covered 19 acres. There were marble pillars SUD- porting roofs of cedar and silver tables, on which stood golden cups, and there were carvings exquisite and inscriptions resplendent. glittering balustrades and ornamented Rateways The building of this temple kept 10000 workmen busy 46 yeara
 In that stupendous pile of pomp and magnificence sat Christ, and listening throng stood about him when wild disturbance took place. A group of men are pulling and pushing along woman who had committed a crime against so- cfety. When they have brought her in front of Christ, they ask that he sen- tence her to death by stoning. They are a critical, merciless, disingenuous crowd. They want to get Christ into controversy and public apprehension. If he say. "Let her die, !" they will charge him with cruelty. If he let her go, they will charge him with being in compile ity with wickedness. Whichever way he does they would howl at him.
 Christ's Judgment.
 Then occurs scene which has not been sufficiently regarded. He leaves the lounge or bench on which he was sitting and goes down on one knee, or both knees, and with the forefneger of his right hand he begins to write in the dust of the floor word after word. But they were not to be diverted or hinder ed. They kept on demanding that he settle this case of transgression until he looked up and told them they might themselves begin the woman's assas- sination if the complainant who had never done anything wrong himself would open the fire. "Go ahead, but be sure that the man who filings the first missile is immaculate. Then he re- stunned writing with his finger in the dust of the floor word after word. h. stead of looking over his shoulder to see what he had written the scoundrels skulked away. Finally the whole place Is clear of pursuers, antagonists and plaintiffs, and when Christ has finished this strange chirography in the dust he looks up and finds the woman all alone.
 The prisoner is the only one of the courtroom left, the judges, the police, the prosecuting attorney, having cleared out. Christ is victor, and he says to the woman: Where are the prosecutors in this case? Are they all gone2 Then discharge you. Go and sin no more. have wondered what Christ wrote on the ground, for do you realize that Is the only time that he ever wrote at allp l know that Eusebius says that Christ once wrote letter to Abgarus, the king of Edessa, but there is no good evidence of such correspondence. The wisest being the world ever saw and the one who had more to say than any one who ever lived never writing a book or 8 chapter or paragraph or word on parchment. Nothing but the literature of the dust, and one sweep of a brush or one breath of @ wind obliterated it forever.
 Among all the rolls of the volumes of the first library founded at Thebes there was not one scroll of Christ. Among the roo, 900 books of the Alex andrian library, which, by the infa- nous decree of Caliph Omar, were used as fuel to heat the 4,000 baths of the city, not one sentence had Christ penned. AmODR dll tu6 lullulbuu6 OI NOluIu6S now standing in the libraries of Edin burgh, the British museum or Der lin or Vienna or the learned reposi- tories of all the nations not one word written direcetly by the finger of Christ. All that he ever wrote he wrote in dust, uncertain, shifting dust.
 Stopping Down.
 My text says he stopped down and wrote on the ground. Standing straight up man might write on the ground with staff. but if with his fingers he would write in the dust he must bend clear over. Aye, he must get at least on one knee, or he cannot write on the ground. Be not surprised that he stopped down; his whole life was a stepping down. Stopping down from castle to barn. Stopping down from celestial homage to monocratio jeer. From resi- dence above the stars to where a star had to fall to designate his landing place. From heavens front door to the worlds back gate. From writing in round and silvered letters of constel- lation and galaxy on the blue scroll of heaven to writing on the ground in the
 
 left in Herod's temple. If in January you have ever stepped out of a prince's conservatory that had Mexican cactus and magnolias in full bloom into the outside air, 10 degrees below zero, you may get some idea of Christ's change of atmosphere from celestial to terres- trial. How many heavens there are l know not, but there are at least three, for Paul was "caught up into the third heaven"
 Christ came down from the highest heaven to the second heaven, and down from second heaven to first heaven, down swifter than meteors ever fell, down amid stellar splendors that him. self eclipsed, down through clouds, through atmospheres, through appalling space, down to where there was no low CT depth. From being waited on at the