The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1899-11-24
THE COMING SERMON.
DR.. Talmage on Future Modes of
Preaching the Gospel.
Row He Thinks Religious Truths
should he Presented-sRys Min
listers should Preach the
Living Christ.
Copyright. 1888. by Louis Klopsch)
Washington,

Copyright. 1888. by Louis KlOpsch)
Washington.
In this discourse DR.. Talmage ad
dresses all Christian workers and de-
scribes what he thinks will be the modes
of preaching the Gospel in the future;
text, Romans 1874: "Or ministry, let
us wait on our ministering.~
While l was seated on the piazza of
hotel at Lexington, Ky, one summer
evening, a gentleman asked me: What
do you think Of the coming sermon ]
supposed he was asking me in regard TO
some new discourse of DR.. Cumming, Of
London, who sometimes preached star
tling sermons, and I replied: Il have
not seen it." But found out afterward
that he meant TO ask what l thought
would be the characteristics Of the com
ing sermon of the world, the sermons of
the future, the word Cumming" as a
noun pronounced the same as the word
coming as an adjective. But my mis-
take suggested TO me q very important
and practical theme, The Coming Ser
mon."
Before the world is converted the
style of religious discourse Will have
to be converted. You might as well go
into the modern Sedan or Gettysburg
with bows and arrows, instead of rifles
and bombshells and parks of artillery,
as 10 expect TO conquer this world for
God by the old style of eXhOrtiOn and
sermonOlogy. Jonathan Edwards
preached the sermons most adapted TO
the age in which he lived, but if those
sermons were preached now they would
divide an audience into two classes
those sound asleep and those wanting
TO go home.
But there is a discourse Of the future.
Who will preach it l have no idea. In
what part of the earth it will be born l
have no idea. In which denQminatiOn Of
Christians it viii be delivered ! cannot
guess. That discourse of eXhortation
may be born in the country meeting
house on the banks of the St. Lawrence
or the Oregon or the Ohio or the Tom
bigbee or the Alabama. The person
who shall deliver it may this moment
be in a cradle under the shadow of the
Sierra Nevadas or in a New England
farmhouse OF amid the ricefields of
southern savannas, or this moment
there may be some young man in one of
our theological seminaries, in the
junior or middle or senior class, shaping
that weapon of power, or there may be
coming some new baptism of the Holy
Ghost on the churches, so that some of
us who now stand in the watchtOwers
of Zion, waking to a realization of our
present inefficiency, may preach it our
selves. That coming discourse may not
be so years off. And let us pray God
that its arrival may be FASTENED while
I announce TO you what 1 think will be
the chief characteristics of that dis
course or exhortation when it does ar
rive, and l want TO make my remarks
appropriate and suggestive 10 all classes
Of Christian workers.
First of all, remark that that fu-
ture religious discourse will be full of
a living Christ in contradistinction to
didactic technicalities. \ discourse
may be full of Christ though hardly
mentioning His name, and a sermon
may be empty of Christ while every
sentence is repetition of His titles. The
world wants a living Christ, not Christ
standing at the head Of a formal sys-
y
means pardon and sympathy and con-
dolence and brotherhood and life and
Heaven, a poor mans Christ, an over
worked Christ, an invalid's Christ, a
farmers Christ, merchants Christ, an
artisans Christ, an every mans Christ.
4 symmetrical and fine worded sys-
tenn of theology is well enough for theo-
logical classes, but it has no more busi-
ness in a pulpit than have the technical
phrases of an anatOmist or n PsychOlo-
gist or a physician in the sickrOOm of a
patient. The world wants help, imme-
date and world uplifting, and it will
come through a discourse in which
Christ shall walk right down into the
immortal soul and take everlasting pos
session of it, filling it as full of light as
is this MONDAY armament.
That sermon or exhortation of the fu-
ture will not deal with men in the
threadbare illustrations of Jesus
Christ. In that coming address there
will be instances of vicarious suffering
taken right out of everyday life, for
there is not a day when somebody is
not dying for others-as the physician
saving his diphtheritic patient by sacri-
ficing his own life; as the ship captain
going down with his vessel while he is
getting his passengers into the life
boat; as the fireman consuming in the
burning building while he is taking a
child out of fOurth-story window; as
in summer the strong swimmer at East
Hampton or Long Branch or Cape May
or Lake George himself perished try
ing to rescue the drowning; as the
newspaper boy one summer, supporting
his mother for some years, his invalid
mother, when offered by a gentleman
so cents TO get some special paper, and
he got it, and rushed up in his anxiety
TO deliver it and was crushed under the
wheels of the train and lay on the grass
with only strength enough to say; "Oh,
what will become of my poor, sick
mother now?" Vicarious suffering
the world is full of it. An engineer said
10 me on a locomotive in Dakota: I'VE
men seem to be coming 10 better ap-
probation than we used TO. Did you
see that account the other day of an en-
ginesr who to save his passengers stuck
10 his place, and when he was found
dead in the locomotive, which was up
side down, he was found still smiling,
his hand on the airbrake?" And as the
engineer said il TO me he put his hand
o. ths airbrake to illustrate his mean