Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1900-10-10
SERMON
Rev. Dr.. Calnlae<

Subject: Spread the Gospel-Enorts of
the Churches Should BE Directed
Toward saving sinners-They Should
Get In Sympathy With Strangers.
copyright lsoaI
WASHINGTON. d. C.-In this discourse
DIR. 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
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
that a man ever lived. We modern Chris
tlan workers are not apt to initiate Paul.
We build on other peoples foundations.
1t we erect church. we prefer to have 1t
filed with families all of whom have been
piOus. Do we gather a Sabbath-school class,
we want good boys and girls, hair combed,
faces washed. manners attractive. So a
church in this day is apt to be built out
of other churches. Some ministers spend
all their time in fishing in other peoples
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 a Presbyterian. or
there is a religious row in some neighbor-
ing church. and 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
hos kha,. ch
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 a big world When
in our schoolboy days we learned the dia-
meter and circumference 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 calcul-te. This one spiritual conti-
nent of wretchedness reaches across all
zones. and if / were called to give its geo
graphical boundary / 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,
Since o'clock this morning &C, 800 persons
have been born. and all these multiplied
populations are to be reached by the gos
pei. In England or in our Eastern Amcri
| can cities we are being much crowded.
| and an acre of ground is of great value,
but in Western America 800 acres is a
| 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
tian 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 Meeting house with tallow candles
| stuck in wooden sockets and a 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 broken-hearted or hardly bestead that
they will not be welcomed. NO" says
some fastidious Christian; Il don't like to
be crowded in church. Don't put any one
in my pew"
| My brother, what viii you do in heaven
When a 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 its
| 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 a gloss on. 1t is as though man
| had a farm of 5000 acres and put all his
work on one acre. He may raise ever so
large ears of corn, ever big heads of
wheat - he would remain poor: The
ah,,ra af Cnl has ,x-n1, re oh oar %
on one acre, and has raised splendid men
women in that small inclosure, 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 a great battle, there
were left 80, 900 wounded and dying on the
| field and three surgeons gave all their
| time to three patients under their charge.
| The major general comes in and says to
! the doctors, Come out here and look at
the nearly $4,000 dying for lack of suIrgi-
cal attendance" NO" say the three doc
tors, standing there tanning Their, patients;
eve have three important cases here, and
we are attending to them, and when we
are not positively busy with their wounds
| il takes all our time to keep the flies off J"
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 ,tn and tbs when ord 5de eom
practically: ANo, 1 cannot 1 have here
| few choice cases, and / am busy keeping
| off the hies' There are multitudes to-
day who have never had any Christian
worker look them in the eye and with
earnestness in the accentuation say,
been in the kingdom. My friends, reli-
| gion is either sham or great reality.
| If it be sham. let us disband our
| churches and Christian associations. 1t
| it be a 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
| encyclopedianism and Erastinianism and
| Complutensianism, we are impolte and as
little understood as if a 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 tage the first ten years to show
| our people how much we know and the
next ten years to get our people to know
as much as we know, and at the end we
| find that neither of us knows anything
| as we ought to know. Here are hundreds
| of thousands of shining, struggling and
dying people who need to realize just one
| thing-that Jesus Christ came to save
got into a profound and elaborate defini
ton of THAT justification is, and after all
| the work there are not, outside of the
learned professions, 10000 people who can
tell what justification is. l will read you
the definitions: justification is purely a
forensic act, the act of judge sitting in
the forum, in which the Supreme Ruler
| and Judge, who is accountable to none,
and who alone knows the manner in which
, Sle ends of His universal government can
best be obtained, reckons that which was
,, done by the substitute in the same man
| ner as if it had been done by those who
believe in the substitute, and purely on
| account of this gracious method of reck-
oning grants them the full remission of
their sns.
Now. vat is Justification? l will tell
YOU what justification is-when a sinner
, believes, God lets him off. One summer
, in Connecticut / went to large factory,