The L'Anse sentinel. (L'Anse, L.S., Mich.) 18??-current, 1901-04-27
TILL ONE ABOVE ALL.
DR.. Talmage Sounds Praises OF the
Worlds Redeemer.
re Puts Before Us the Portraits of
some of His Great Disciples and
EIponents-The Glories
OF Heaven.
fCopyrIeht, 1901, by Louis Klopsch. n. VI
Washington. April II.

deemer and puts before MS the Por-
traits of some of His great disciples
and opponents; text, John 8, u: ne
that cometh from above is above all.
The most conspicuous character OF
history steps out upon the PLATFORM
The finger which, diamonded win
light, pointed down to Him from the
Bethlehem sky was only ratification
of the finger of prophecy, the finger OF
genealogy, the finger of chronology
the finger of events--all five fingers
pointing in one direction. Christ Is
the overlapping figure of all time. lie
is the vox humana in all music, the
grace fullest line in all sculpture, the
most exquisite mingling of lights ana
shades in all painting, the acme OF all
clmaxes, the dome of all cathedraied
grandeur and the peroration OF al
splendid language.
The Greek alphabet is made up OF
"a letters, and when Christ compared
Himself to the first letter and the last
letter, the alpha and the omega, lie
appropriated to Himself all the splen-
doris that you can spell out with those
two letters and all the letters between
them. 81 am the alpha and the omega,
the beginning and the end. the first
and the last" or, If you prefer the
words of the text, "above ALL
1t means, after you have piled up all
Alpine and Himalayan attitudes, the
glory of Christ would have To spread
its wings and descend thousand
leagues to touch those SUBMITS.
Pelion, high mountain of Thessaly;
Ossa, high mountain, and Olympus,
q high mountain, but mythology tells
us when the giants warred against the
gods they piled up these three noun
tains and from the top of them pro-
posed to scale the heavens, but the
height was not great enough, and
there was complete failure. And
after all the giants--Isaiah and Paul,
prophetic and apostolic giants;
Raphael and Michael Angelo. artistic
giants; cherubim and scraphim and
archangel, celestial giants-have failed
to climb to the top of ChriSt's glory
they may all well unite in the words
of the text and say: "Ie that cometh
from above is above all"
First, Christ must be above all else
in our preaching. There are so many
books on homiletics scattered
through tho world that all laymen as
well as all c;ergymen have made ur
their minds what sermons ought 70
be. That sermon is most effectual
which most pointedly puts forth Christ
as the pardon of all sin and the cor
-.a.:-----s IL. ---.,,-.--s.-'o-'",, --',rru :
political, national. There is no reason
why we should ring the endless changes
on few phrases. There are thos,
who think that IL an exhortation o,
discourse have frequent mention o
justification, sanctifcation, covenan
of works and covenant of grace tina
therefore it must be profoundly evan
gelical, while they are suspicious o
a discourse which presents the sam
truth, but under different phraseol
ogy. Now, l say there is nothing i,
all the opulent realm of Anglo-Sax
onism or all the word treasures tina
we inherited from the Latin and tn
Greek and the European but w
have n right to marshal it in religion
discussion. Christ sets the example
His illustrations were from the gras.
the flowers, the spittle, the salve, tn
barnyard fowl, the crystals of sal
as well as from the seas and the stars
and we do not propose in our Sunda
school teaching and in our pulpit at
dress to be put on the limits.
know that there is great deal sal
in our day against words, as thong
they were nothing. They may b
misused, but they have an imperis
power. They are the bridge betwee
soul and soul, between Almighty Go
and the human race. What did Go
write upon the tables of stone
Words. What did Christ utter o
Mount Olivet? Words. Out Of wha
did Christ strike the spark for tn
illumination of the universe? Out c
words. Let there be light" an
light was. or course, thought is tn
cargo, and words are only the shi,
but how fast would your cargo go o
without the ship? What you nee,
my friends, in all your work, in you
Sunday school class, in your reform
atory institutions, and what we n
need is to enlarge our vocabular
when we come to speak about Go
and Christ and Heaven. We ride
few old words to death when ther
is such an illimitable resourc
Shakespeare employed $4,000 diffe
ent words for dramatic purposes, Mi
ton employed 5000 different wore
for poetic purposes, Rufus Choai
employed over 1000 different wore
for legal purposes, but the most {
us have less than 1000 words that "
can manage, less than 500, and thu
makes us 80 stupid.
When we come to set forth the 10,
OF Christ. we are going to take tn
tenderest phraseology wherever "
find it, and IL IL has never been use
in that direction before all the MOI
shall we use IL. When we come I
speak of the glory of Christ, the col
queror, we are going to draw on
SMILES from triumphal arch and orr
torio and everything grand and st,
pendous. The French navy have /
flags by which they give signal. bu
those IS flags they can put into 66,0C
different combinations. And l hay
20 tell you that these standards Q