The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1901-04-26
THE ONE ABOVE ALL.
Dr.. Talmage Sounds Praises of the
Worlds Redeemer.
lie Puts Before Us the Portraits of
Some of His Great Disciples and
ExpOnents-The GIOries
of Heaven.
ICopyright, 1901, by Louis Klopsch, n. VI
Washington,

ICopyright, 1901 by Louis Klopsch, n. VI
Washington,
In this discourse DR.. Talmage
sounds the praises of the worlds Re-
deemer and puts before us the por-
traits of some of His great disciples
and exponents; text, John 3, 81: He
that cometh from above is above all"
The most conspicuous character OF
history steps out upon the platform.
The finger which, diamonded with
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 overtopping figure of all time. he
is the voN humana in all music, the
gracefulest line in all sculpture, the
most exquisite mingling of lights and
shades in all painting, the acme of all
climaXes, the dome of all cathedraled
grandeur and the peroration of all
splendid language.
The Greek alphabet is made up of
24 letters, and when Christ compared
Himself to the first letter and the last
letter, the alpha and the omega, He
appropriated to Himself all the splen-
doris that you can spell out with those
two letters and all the letters between
then. 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 a thousand
leagues to touch those SUBMITS.
Pelion, high mountain of Thessaly;
Ossa, high mountain, and Olympus,
a 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 a complete failure. And
after all the giants-Isaiah and Paul,
prophetic and apostolic giants;
Raphael and Michael Angelo, artistic
giants; cherubim and seraphim and
archangel, celestial giants-have failed
to climb to the top of Christ's glory
they may all we'll unite in the words
of the text and say: "He 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 the world that all laymen as
well as all clergymen have made up
their minds what sermons ought to
be. That sermon is most effectual
which most pointedly puts forth Christ
as the pardon of all sin and the cor
rection of all evil, individual, social,
political, national. There is no reason
why we should ring the endless changes
on a few phrases. There are those
who think that if an eXhorta ton or
a discourse have frequent mention of
justification, sanctifcation, covenant
of works and covenant of grace that
therefore it must be profoundly evan
gelical, while they are suspicious of
a discourse which presents the same
truth, but under different phraseol-
ogy. Now, I say there is nothing in
all the opulent realm of Anglo-SaX-
Onism or all the word treasures that
we inherited from the Latin and the
Greek and the Indo-European but we
have a right to marshal it in religious
discussion. Christ sets the example
His illustrations were from the grass,
the flowers, the spittle, the salve, the
barnyard fowl, the crystals of salt,
as well as from the seas and the stars,
and we do not propose in our Sunday
school teaching and in our pulpit ad-
dress to be put on the limits.
know that there is a great deal said
in our day against words, as though
misused, but they have an imperial
power. They are the bridge between
soul and soul, between Almighty God
and the human race. What did God
write upon the tables of stone {?
Words. What did Christ utter on
Mount Olivet? Words Out of what
did Christ strike the spark for the
illumination of the universe? Out of
words. LET there be light" and
light was. OF course, thought is the
cargo, and words are only the ship
but how fast would your cargo go on
without the ship? What you need,
my friends, in all your work, in your
Sunday school class, in your reform
atOry institutions, and what we all
need is to enlarge our vocabulary
when we come to speak about God
and Christ and Heaven. We ride
few old words to death when there
is such an illimitable resource.
Shakespeare employed $4,000 differ
ent words for dramatic purposes, Mil
ton employed 5000 different words
for poetic purposes, Rufus Choate
employed over 1900 different words
for legal purposes, but the most of
us have less than 1000 words that we
can manage, less than 500, and that
makes US so stupid.
When we come to set forth the love
of Christ, we are going to take the
tenderest phraseology wherever we
find it, and if it has never been used
in that direction before all the more
shall we use it. When we come to
speak of the glory of Christ, the con-
queror, we are going to draw our
SMILES from triumphal arch and ora
torio and everything grand and stu
pendous. The French navy have IS
flags by which they give cignal, but
those Is flags they can put into 5000
different combinations. And 1 have
to tell you that these standards of
the cross may be lifted into combina-
tions infinite and varieties everlast-
ing. And let me say to young men
Wao ege afteT swhile going to preach