The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-10-18
DR. TALMAGE'S SERMON.
BY THE REV. FRANK DE WITT rALMAeE. D. D.

BY THE REV. FRANK
 Chicago, October 1f.-In this sermon the preacher draws the distinction between the worldly and the spiritual estimate of greatness and shows the character of the training and preparation necessary for true greatness. The text is Matthew xxi, II, "There hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist
 Great men. great events and great epochs grow bigger and more colossal as the years pass away from them once wrote the biographer Of Robert Burns. Like the mountain shadows they increase in size and their regulations lengthen in importance as the sun of their day sets and the long night of their rest separates us from them. Like the mythological heroes and heroines of old. their leaders brows become luminous with crowns of gold. Abraham Lincoln dead is great deal more honored man than Abraham Lincoln alive. When Edwin M. stanton turned to the sorrowful group of friends who had gathered about the deathbed ot the famous statesman and said, We must now leave him to the ages, even the firm jawed secretary of war did not real ize how great man the ages would con sider his chief to be- No cathedral im- presses us so much as the venerable pile that is covered with moss and creeping ivy. Man is seldom called great and truly great until he has been dead at least twenty years.
 But standing today under the length ening shadows of many great regulations these imminent questions naturally arise in many minds What Is true greatness? What are the elements which distinguish the truly noble from the merely selhshly famous? Was Jay Gould truly great man? In his day no one man or collee- tion of men were more feared in Wall street than he. He was truly Napoleon of finance." a Napoleon with this one difference-that Jay Gould never met his Waterloo He was never compelled to sur render, as did Daniel Drew and Cyrus Field and hosts of other financiers who were outmanipulated by this arch finan- cial manipuator.
 Stamped With Divine Approval.
 Can Napoleon himself truly be called a great man, great in all the elements which go to make up true greatness? When his companion in arms, Marshal
 
 from Moscow, he called the emperor to his side and said: Your majesty, I am your friend. l am dying and this is my parting advice: Give up your merciless ambitions, or they will ruin you. as they have already ruined thousands of others" Did not the dying soldier picture the French emperor as he was? With the penetration that often comes to the dy- ing he saw beneath the splendor and grandeur of the conqueror man mean of soul, selfish and interruptions. Can Rob- ert Burnss so morally weak that he was the victim of intemperance, be called truly great man? Lord Byron. the licen- tous destroyer; or Thomas De Quincey. the opium eater; or Mark Antony, the traitor; or Cicero the coward: or Lord Bacon. the talxer of brbes-can they be called truly great men?
 Well" you say, instead of picking flaws in the regulations of men of com manding genius. tell us who is truly great man. Give us one whose character is stamped with the divine approval. Describe such a one, thar we may copy his life" That l will do, r'y friend, and do gladly. Such a character is to be found in John the Baptist Though we may go into the richest of all palaces and stand upon the most famous of all battlehelds and read epitaphs of all the poets, phi losophers, statesmen, inventors, reform CTS, we cannot find anywhere in any gen. eration up to the time of Jesus Christ a name standing so high as his, of whom Jesus said, "Verily verify, I say unto you. among them that are born of wo- men there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is great CT than he