The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-03-17

Talmase shows in this sermon how A~ true to life are the portraits in the Bible story and how common in our day are the identical faults and sins that characterized men in the time of Christ. The text is Luke xii, 1, Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy"
 The Bible may be compared to a family album When you turn the sacred pages, the different faces you see there are like your own ancestors. They are men of an other age and another land, but they are men like ourselves. Their faults and their good qualities are plainly described, and we see that they were such man as those we associate with today. Moses and Joshua and Gideon and David and Paul and Peter and Mary and Martha and Laz- arus do not seem to be so much Jews as human beings like ourselves-not strangers, but your own flesh and blood. By their own mistakes and sins and killings and spiritual triumphs they are preaching their practical lessons. They seem to sit by your side and say: My son, l would not live as you are living. I would not sin you are shining The only true and happy life is the gospel life. l know your temptations by eXperl- ence There were blacl. days in my life as there are in yours. but they were tho dark days when l was following my own selhsh will When l surrendered my life to the divine will. there were no dark days. Try to live for Christ, my child. By my own sad history l want you to learn this lesson. Yes, the Bible pages are simply filled with pictures of those who are part of Us. IS you seem to be part of them.
 But, though the Bible is a great pho- tograph album with its hundreds of saint ly faces pleading with us 10 be good tine Bible also has it's rogues' gallery as well. There the fiendish faces are pilloried for our warning. There are Cain. the mur- derer, and Jezebel the painted hag. whose bleeding carcus is being eaten by the dogs under the walls of Jezreel. There is the swaying corpse of Prime Minister Haman dangling from the kangsmans moose which he had prepared for just Nordecai. There is the Babylonish ball nuet hall where BelsSazzar and his intox- fvated revelers were holding the high carnival of death. There are the cruei face of bloody Herod and the demoniac visage of the unrepentant thief blasphem- ing Christ when they were both dAlnS upon the cross. There is Judas, the trai- tor, clutching the blood money for which he had sold his Master. These sinful! faces are all there They seem to he hu- man lighthouses. flashing out their red Nights over the stormy seas of life. warn ing us away from the fatal rocks upon which they have cternally foundered, Yes. the Bible seems to be crowded with two kinds of pictures There we find the saints are pleading with us to come and kneel at the foot of the cross. The fiends by their miserable fate are continually calling. Beware. beware. beware"
 Whited Sepulchres.
 Among all the excoriated sinners of the Bible not any are more vehemently de- nounced by Christ than the Pharisees. In one place Christ compares them to the whited sepulchers filled with dead men, bones and all uncleanness. In another place Jesus compares these Pharisees to the woman who cleanses tho outside of her cups and yet leaves the inside cor alpt and filthy. In another place Christ describes Pharsee and a publican pray ing in the temple. To the Pharisee God is turning q deaf ear To the publican God is reaching out the hands of forgive ness and love. In another place Christ Is comparing the Pharisee to a wolf crawl ing around in sheeps clothing. In my text He calls them hypocrtes. In other words, these Pharisees may seem to have the face of an angel, but they have the claws of tiger. Though they may seem to be the friends and helpers of mankind, yet everything they touch they pollute and destroy as does the infectious hand of a leper, "Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees. hypocrites, for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves" This was Christs idea of the Pharsees when he was upon earth. It is just as true a picture of the Pharisees today.
 Now, why should the faces of the Phar- jsees always be found in the rogues' gal lery of the Bible? These men. as a class. represented the brains and the wealth ot the east. They had among their repre- sentatives most of the social and political and ecclesiastical leaders of Palestine. When candidates were about to be in- ducted into their order they had to take VOWS of piety and pledge themselves that they would give one-tenth of all ther financial income to the Lord. They held most of the seats in the sanhedrin. yet here Christ is denouncing them as worse than thieves and murderers and social outcasts Why is all this? Let us study their origin and then mark the spiritual degeneracy of these men. who were out wardly fair to look upon, but inwardly were as Q writhing mass of decomposi- tion.
 First their origin But what is the ety. moloby of the world? Pharisee originally comes from the Hebrew word perushim or separatsts. A Pharsee in broad ter anthology means "a separator A separ- ator from what?
 Their Origin.
 Away back in the time of Jehoiakinl, 6oo years before Christ. Nebuchadnszzar.