The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1907-03-22
Calr1aQe
Sermon
By Rev.
Frank De Witt TalmaGe, d. D.

ter of the time of Christ whose eX.
perience has a remarkable interest for
the people of today. The text is Mat
thew xvii, "a, "Truly this was the
Son of God"
No picture of the crucifxion is per-
feet unless the face of Jesus Christ is
the center and the absorbing theme.
All other parts of the picture must
converge toward that divine face or
radiate from it even as the spokes of
the wheel branch out from the hub.
There may be three crosses, but Jesus
cross must be the central cross. There
may be soldiers there gambling for q
prize, but that prize must be the gar
ments of Jesus Christ. There may be
a long line of scoffers and Knockers
and sneerers and blasphemers passing
by, but they must all have their eyes
riveted upon the dying Lord. The
heavens may be black and the rocks
riven, but through the blackness of
that midnOOn there must be some
beam of light lowering about the
bleeding brow of the dying Jesus. All
parts of the crucifXiOn scene must
concenter in the personality of the
chief figure of the divine or universal
tragedy, the death of him whose atom
ing blood was shed that whosoever
believeth on him should not perish,
but have everlasting life.
But though we would not for one
instant turn your chief thought of the
crucifixion from our Divine Lord, yet
in order to bring Christs saving sac
rifice a little closer we would this
morning have you watch the upturned
face of a Roman soldier who is stand
ing at the foot of the cross and with
outstretched arms is uttering the words
of my text. Who is this centurion?
Where did he come from? What was
his past life? Why was he led to be-
lieve in the divinity of our Master and
King? These are questions which l
would like to answer in an imaginative
way, for in all the Bible we do not
read one word about him except that
he was a captain or petty line officer
in the Roman army and that he was
detailed by his superior officer to see
that Christ was executed according to
the Roman law. And yet in an mag
NATIVE way believe we can read be-
tween the lines and trace this cen
turion's life step by stop from his era
die to his spiritual surrender at the
foot of the cross, where today we are
all gathered to worship our dying Lord.
In the first place, l imagine that this
centurion was once a Roman youth
who was born amid the pure, sweet,
wholesome country life of old Italy.
By that do not mean he came of an
ignorant, poverty stricken family, but
/ believe he came of an italian land
owning family which had neither pow
erty nor riches, but had purity in do
mestic life, refinement of home asso-
Citations and had all which was posi-
BILE in a heather land to make life
pure and sweet and wholesome. In
other words. l believe this Roman sol
der came from a family like that of
hundreds and thousands which lived
before the civil war in Georgia and
Alabama and Kentucky and Virginia
and Tennessee and the Carolinas.
These families had their slaves to
work their plantations, but they lived
for something good besides money
making. They lived for the noble pur-
pose of making true, brave, manly
men out of their boys and noble, vir-
tuous wives and mothers out of their
daughters. And, what is more, they
not only strove to make noble, pure
men and women out of their children
tIO iI1i0 Crn
from which this Roman centurion
sprung they accomplished what they
struggled for.
Not All Immoral.
1t is a very grave mistake to suppose
that rural Italy in the time of Angus
tus was like immoral Rome You can
no more judge the country life Of Italy
by the moral standards of the social
life of Caesars capital than you can
Judge the moral standards of France
by that of Paris or the pure, sweet
country life of our own land by the
standards of the Tenderloin district of
New York or by the social scandals of
summer resorts. The more l have read
Roman history the more l am Impress
ed with the fact that Rome was not
only the immoral cesspool of all Italy,
but of all the foreign capitals and the
countries of the world. Do you not
remember the famous sentence of Ju-
venal, an Tiberium dehuXit OrOntesT
This translated means, Unto the Tiber
the Orontes emptied itself" Where
was the Orontes river? Did it literally
D-.I.
river was away off in Syria. In order
to empty itself into the Tiber it would
have TO flow through the Mediterranean
waters. as the Thames to empty into
the Rhine would have to jump The
English channel. Now, what did Juve-
nal mean by that sentence? Why sim
pIv this: The OrOntes was the river
upon whose banks eastern Antioch was
built. as Paris is built upon the banks
Of the river Seine. Juvenal was poet
ically saying. "All the filth and the i'm
moral rottenness of Antioch and Of all
the eastern cities were emptied into
Rome as the river Orontes figuratively
empties its filth into the river Tiber,
upon whose banks the Roman capital
was built"
What Juvenal teaches us Farrar and
Stanley and all the penmen who have
delved into Roman history also teach
rs.l G., .iets Of the Roman
rrt-p GF-elt There were pu-
--G truth and honor. There the
% lived. ike Caesars wife. above
%. There thousands and tens
l1uauds of Cornelias had their
precious jewels in the setting of
-L-L---n Irnm the nure. sweet whole