The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1899-12-01
H LIVING CHRIST.
INSPIRATION OF THE FUTURE RELIC
IOUS DISCOURSE.
DIR. Talmage Predicts That TheoIogy|
Must Take a Back Sea Outlines His
Idea OF the Nature OF the coming
Sermon.

dresses all Christian workers and de-
scribes what he thinks will be the
modes OF preaching the gospel in the
future: text, Romans xii, z, "Or minis
try, let us wait on our ministering."
While I vas seated on a piazza Of a
hotel at Lexington, KY, n summer
evening a gentleman asked ne, What
do you tbirk of the coming sermon?"
7 supposed he was asking me In regard
to some new discourse of DR.. Cumming
OF London, who sometimes preached
startling sermons, and / replied, Il
have not seen it," But / found out af-
terward hat he meant to ask what /
thought would be the characteristics of
the coming sermon of the world, the
ermon of the future, the word Cum
ming" as a noun pronounced n same
as the word coming" as an adjective.
But my mistake suggested to me a
very important and practical theme,
1.-THE Coming Sermon"
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 Gettys-
burg with bows and arrows, instead of
rifles and bombshells and parks Of ar
tillery, as to expect to nqu this
world for God by the old styles of ex-
hortation and sermonology. Jonathan
Edwards preached the sermons most
adapted to the age in which he lived,
out If those 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 / a no idea. In
what part of the earth it will be born L
have no idea. In which denomination
OF Christians it will be delivered / can
not guess. That discourse of exhorta-
ton may be born in the country meet
ing house on the banks of the ST. Law
renee or the Oregon or the Ohio or the
Tombigbee or the Alabama. The per-
son who shall deliver it may this mo-
ment be in a cradle under the hadow
of the Sierra Nevadas or in a New
England or amid he rice
fields of southern savannas, or this mo-
ment 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 real
ization of our present inefficiency, may
~ Cd111 IL CO. iAA"N SoAAAAAAo No
course may not be so years off. And
let us pray God that it's arrival may
be FASTENED while I announc to you
what / think will be the chief char
acteristics of that discourse or exhorta-
ton when it does arrive, and [ want to
make my remarks appropriate and
suggestive to all classes of Christian
A LIVING CHRIST.
T1.-4 Ill 4lo4 4La+ ,,f,,,1
religious discourse will be full of a liv-
ing Christ in contradistinction to di-
dactic t~echnicalities. A discourse may
be full of Christ though hardly men
tioning his name, and a sermon may be
empty of Christ While every sentence
is repetitious of his titles. The world
wants a living Christ, not a Christ
standing at the head of a formal sys-
tenn of theology, but a Christ who
means pardon and sympathy and con-
dolence and brotherhood and life and
heaven, a poor mans Christ, a rich
mans Christ, an oVerWOrked mans
Christ, an invalid's Christ, a farm
er's Christ, a merchants Christ, an
artisans Christ an every mans Christ.
A symmetrical n fine Worded syS-
tenn of theology is we'll enough for the
illogical classes, but it has no more
business in a pulpit than have the
technical phrases of an antaomist or a
psychologist or a physician in the sick
room of a patient. The world wants
help, immediate and world uplifting,
and it will come through a discourse in
which Christ shall walk right down
into the immortal soul and take ever
lasting possession of it, filling it as full
of light as is this monday armament.
That sermon or eXhortation of the
future will not deal with men in the
t~hreadbare Illustrations of Jesus Christ.
In that coming address there will be
instances Of vivcarious 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
diptheritic patient by sacrificing his
own life; as the ship captain going
down with his vessel while he is get
ting his passengers into the lifeboat; as
the fireman consuming in the burning
building while. he is tAking a child out
of a fourth story window; as in sum-
mer the strong swimmer at East
Hampton Oh Long Branch or Cape May
or Lake George himself persisted try
ing to rescue the drowning; as the
newspaper boy one summer, support
ing his mother for some years., his i'll
valid mother, when offered by n gentle
mar so cents to get some special pa
per, and he got it and rushed up in his
anxiety to deliver it and was crushed
under the Wheels or the tram ana lay
on the gra. S with only strength enough
to say, "Oh, what will become of my
poor, sick mother, now?" Vicarlous
suft ering-the world is full OF it. An
engineer sad to me on a locomotive in
Dakota: " men seem to be coming
10 letter al Orec'ation nan we Used to.
Did you see II at account the other day
of an engineer who to save his passer-
gers stuck to his place, and when he
was found dead in the locomotive,
which was u SIDE down, he was found
still smiling, L is hand on the airs
brake" And as the engineer said it
to me he pnt mis- hand on the airb.ake
to illustrate his meaning, and / looked
at him and thought: You would be
just as much a hero in the same crisis"
O1, "a thar religious discourse of the
future there will be living illustTa-
taken out from everyday life of
NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. that
will bring to mind the ghastlier sacri-
E3e of him who in the high places of
the'rield on the cross, fought our bat
ties. and endured our struggle and
died our Cpath. A German sculptor
made an image of Christ, ard he asked
his little child. 2 years old, who it was,
and sine said, THAT must be some very
great n,an.' The sculptor was dis