Highland recorder. (Monterey, Highland County, Va.) 1877-1972, 1900-10-05
REV. DR.. TALMAGE.
THE EMINENT DIyINE's SUNDAY
DISCOURSE.
Subject: Spread the Gospel-Efforts of
the Churches Should Be Directed
Toward Saving Sinners--They Should
Get in Sympathy With Strangers.

Subject: spread the GOspel-E6Orts O
the Churches Should Be Directed
Toward Saving Sinners-They Should
Get in Sympathy With Strangers.
copyright 1901
WASHINGTON, d. Gin this discourse
Dr. Talmage points to fields of usefulness
that are not yet thoroughly cultivated
and shows the need of more activity. The
text is Romans XIV, 20. LEST / should
build upon another mans foundation"
In laying out the plan of his missionary
tour Paul sought out towns and cities
which had not yet been preached to. lie
goes to Corinth, city famous for splen-
dor and vice, and Jerusalem, where the
priesthood and the sanhedrin were ready
to leap with both feet upon the Christian
religion. He feels he has especial work
to do, and he means to do it. What was
the RESULT The grandest life of usefulness
that man ever lived. We modern Chris.
tian workers are not apt to initiate Paul.
We build on other peoples foundations.
If we erect church. we prefer to have 1T
filled with families all of whom have been
pious Do we gather Sabbath-school class,
we want good boys and girls, hair combed,
faces washed. manners attractive. so
church in this day is apt to be built out
of other churches. Some ministers spend
all their time in fishing in other people
ponds. and they throw the line into that
church pond and jerk out Methodist,
and throw the line into another church
pond and bring out Presbyterian, or
there is religious row in some neighbor-
ing church. and a whole school OF fish
swim off from that pond, and we take
them all in with one sweep OF the net.
What is gained? Absolutely nothing for
the cause of Christ. What strengthens an
army is new recruits. While courteous to
those coming from other -focks. we should
build our churches not out of other
churches, but out of the world, lest we
build on another mans foundation
The fact is this is big world. When
in our schoolboy days we learned the dia-
meter and ircumference of this planet we
did not learn half 1t is the latitude and
longitude and diameter and circumference
of want and woe and sin that no figures
can calculate. This one spiritual cont.
nent of wretchedness reaches across all
zones and if / were called to give its geo.
graphical boundary I would say it was
bounded on the north and south and east
and west by the great heart of Gods sym
pathy and love. Oh, it is great world!
"
have been born, and all these multiplied
populations are to be reached by the gos-
pei. In England or in our Eastern Ameri-
can cities we are being much crowded,
and an acre Of ground is of great value,
but in Western America 500 acres is q
small farm, and 10000 acres is no unusual
possession. There is a vast field here and
everywhere unoccupied, plenty of room
more not building on another mans foun-
dation.
We need as churches to stop lombard
ing the old iron-clad sinners that have
been proof against thirty years of Chris
tan assault. Alas for that church which
lacks the spirit of evangelism, spending
on one chandelier enough TO light 800
souls to glory, and in one carved pillar
enough to have made thousand men
pillars in the house of our God forever,
and doing less good than many log
cabin Westinghouse with tallow candles
stuck in wooden sockets and minister
who has never seen a college and does
not know the difference between Greek
and Choctaw! We need as churches to
get into sympathy with the great outside
world, and let them know that none are
so brokenhearted or hardly bestead that
they will not be welcomed. NO" says
some fastidious Christian 81 don't like to
be crowded in church. Don't put any one
in my pew"
My brother, what will you do in heaven?
When great multitude that no man can
number assemblies, they will put fifty in
your pew. What are the select few to-day
assembled in the Christian churches COM
pared with the mightier millions outside
of them? Many of the churches are like
a hospital that should advertise that it's
patients must have nothing more than
toothache or "run rounds" but no broken
heads, no crushed ankles, no fractured
thighs. Give us for treatment moderate
sinners, velvet-coated sinners and sinners
with gloss on. 1t is as though man
had farm of 5000 acres and put all his
work on one acre. He may raise ever so
large ears of corn. ever so big heads of
wheat = he would remain poor. The
church. of God has bestowed its chief care
on one acre, and has raised splendid men
women in that small Enclosure, but the
field is the world. That means North
and South America, Europe, Asia and
Africa and all the islands of the sea. 1t
is as though, after great battle, there
were left $4,000 wounded and dying on the
field and three surgeons gave all their
time to three pat ents under their charge.
The major general comes in and says to
the doctors, "Co-ae out here and look at
cal attendance" NO" say the three doc
tors, standing there tanning their patients,
1--WE have three important cases here, and
we are attending to them, and when we
are not positively busy with their wounds
it takes all our time to keep the flies off,
In this awful battle of sin and sorrow,
where millions have fallen on millions, do
not let us spend all our time in taking
care of few people, and when the COM
mand comes, "Go into the world" say
mo, / cannot. have here
q few choice cases, and | am busy keeping
off the flies" There are multitudes to-
day who have never had any Christian
worker look them in the eye and with
earnestness in the accentuation say,
''Come!" OF they would long ago have
been in the kingdom. My friends, reli
gion is either sham or a great reality
If it be a sham, let us disband our
churches and Christian associations. If
it be reality, then great populations are
on the way to the bar of God untitled for
the ordeal. And what are we doing?
In order to reach the multitude of out
siders we must drop all technicalities out
Of our religion. When we talk to people
about the hypostatic union and French
and Erastinianism and
Complutensianism we are impolite and as
little understood as if physician should
talk to an ordinary patient about the per-
icardium and intercostal muscle and scor-
butte symptoms Many of us come out of
the theological seminaries so loaded up
that we take the first ten years to show
our people how much we know and the
next ten years to get our people to know
rs much as we know, and at the end we
find that neither of us knows anything
Is we ought to know. Here are hundreds
Of thousands of SHINING, struggling and
dying people who need to realize just one
thingTthat Jesus Christ came to save
them and will save them now. But we
rot into profound and elaborate defni.
lion of what justification is, and after all
The work there are not, outside of the
earned professions, 10000 people who can
ell what justification is. | will read you
he definitions: Classification is purely