The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1907-01-13

DR.. TALMAGE'S SERMON
Q 'cS"o.CsC'Cscsc
BY THE Rev. FRANK De WITT TALMAcE D. D.

down and worshiped Him."
That was only a legend. But it was
| legend which has had It's duplication In
many lives We had grown to manhood.
! We wanted to worship Christ, but some
how we did not know how Then there
came into our homes O. little child. Oh
That little girl seemed so small! When
tho nurse first placed her in our arms
We were almost frightened. We were
afraid of dropping the puny thing upon
the floor But as we kept carrying the
child and watching her with her gentle
| trustful ways, we began to be like the
| legendary giant Through that little child
| life we learned how to trust and believe
on Jesus Christ. Oh, the marvellous infiu-
ence of a Christian child In the home
Have you ever stopped for one instant
| to think what must have been the in
| tiuence of the child Jesus in the Naz-
areth carpenter shop upon His father and
mother and brothers and sisters? Are you
and I willing to be led to reconsecrate
our lives to the cross through the influ-
ence of the consecrated actions of our lit
| tie children?
! l turn the leaves Of the four gospels
and look in vain for any record of what
j Christ did as a young man. From the
age of IL to 80 absolutely nothing au-
| thoritative is written. And yet those were
very importan years In Jesus life They
were the years when, like Paul, He put
|
thought as a man and worked as a man,
but He had the responsibilities of the
home flung upon Him when He was yet
mere boy. He was like one of those lit
| tie children we often see In our poorer
districts. While they are yet babies them
! selves by the cruel. inexorable laws of
J poverty they are compelled to take care
, of some younger brother and sister. But
during all these years of Christ's life
there is not a word written; no, not one
word.
] What Jesus Did NOT Do.
How precious to us would have been a
/ genuine record showing how Jesus acted
/ when His foster father Joseph, died.
Joseph, the carpenter, stood in the same
/ relationship to Jesus as Ludwig Guyer
did TO his stepson, Richard Wagner, or as
David Swings stepfather did to him.
, Joseph, the carpenter was the divine
boys breadwinner and human protector
When suddenly this strong carpenter was
stricken down, we can see Mary, his Wife
and her brood of little ones, with their
stained faces, standing about the pale
corpse Now, what do you suppose
Jesus, the boy, did at that time? DO you
suppose he turned to Mary and said
Mother, 1 am willing to look after you,
but not after the Their boys and girls.
! We have not the same father, and there
fore l am not responsible for their daily
bread" No; l do not believe that is
what Jesus, the young man, did. Neither
do i believe he went up to that bier and
began to lament, saying; What am l to
do? | wanted to study, to be great
rabbi like Hillel. Now | have no father
to pay my way through school" No; |
do not believe Jesus did that 1t is an
unwrltten life. All this tragedy of the
home is covered up.
From what we know of His manhood
we must suppose He was very kind and
tender to His mother. We can imagine
, Him, as the eldest of her children, taking
Joseph's place In the carpenter shop, of
/ His toilng for the support of Mary and
her young family. How that sunny ma
ture would tighten the workshop, and In
the evening, when He returned to the
maternal abode, how 1t would tighten
the humble cottage Can you not imagine
the little services He would render to the
widowed mother and her brood? | wish
we knew just what He did. that our
children might be cheered In their service
by thinking that Jesus did just such
tasks.
The Unwritten Deeds.
And then the neighbors. What must It
have been to be a neighbor of Jesus To
have the sympathy of Jesus in their trou-
bles and His ready help in times of ac-
cldent and sorrowl As Jesus was always
helping his neighbors as young man,
are not you and | to profit by His divine
example? Shall we be like Christ, the
young man in the home, standing by the
bier of His foster father Joseph, and
like Christ helping His friends living in
the neighborhood who needed His heldp?
Is our unwritten life to be like Christ's
unwritten life?
But we must not stop here in the dis
cusson Of this remarkable theme. We
would try to fill up some of the blank
pages of that divine life after His full
mission had been revealed to Him at the
Jordanic baptism. We would speak about
the parallels which Christ uttered, but
which were not written down, and of the
miracles He did of which there there Is
no record given and of the gentle words
of love and sympathy which he uttered to
those about Him of which there is no
mention. Oh, what volumes of spiritual
truths there would be If we could only
have them at handl wonder If some
time in the dim future the records of
some of these unrevealed wondrous deeds
of Jesus will not yet be exhumed from
some of the eastern tombs for man to
ponder over and to study and to trans
late in his human life.
Mr.. Beecher thus bewails the loss of the
unrevealed words and deeds of Christs
life: when l see how much has been
written of those who have lived, how
the Greeks preserved every saying of
Platos, how Boswell followed Johnson,
gathering up every leaf that fell from
that rugged old oak and pasted it away,
l almost regret that one of the disciples
had not been a recording angel, to pre-
serve the odor and richness of every
word of Christ. When John says. And
there are also many other things which
Jesus did, the which. If they should be
written every one, 1 suppose that even
the world itself could not contain the
books that should be written it affects
me more profoundly than when I think
of the destruction of the Alexandrian
library or the perishing of the Greclan
art in Athens or Byzantium. The crea-
tions of Phidias were cold stones over
laid by warm thought, but Christ de-
scribed his own creation when he said
The words that | speak unto you thoy
are life The leaving out of these things
from the New Testament, though divine
ly wise, seems to my yearning not so
much the unaccompllshment of noble
things as the destruction of great treas
ures which had already had oral life
but failed of incarnation In literature"
But though these unrevealed deeds and
sayings of Jesus Christ did not have
their incarnation in literature were their
lives purely evanescent? Like the dew
drops tumbling upon the finger of a
leaf were they soon to pass away? Nay
The unwritten words and aeeds of Jesus
found their incarnation in the lives of
the men and the women and the children
by whom he was surrounded These peo-
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