Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 November 1895 — TALMAGE'S SERMON. [ARTICLE]

TALMAGE'S SERMON.

NEW LESSON FROM THE FEAST OF BELSHAZZAR. Welshed in the Balance and Found Wantins—The Suddenness of God’a Judgments-A Thought aa to the forma of Prayer—Look and Live. The Banquet of Sin. Since his going to Washington Dr. Talmage’s pulpit experience has been a remarkable one. Not only has the church in which he preaches been filled, but the audiences have overflowed into the adjoining streets to an extent that has rendered them impassable. Similar scenes were enacted at last Sunday’s services, when the preacher took for his subject, “Handwriting on the Wall,” the text chosen being Daniel v., 30, “In that night was Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain.” Night was about to come down on Babylon. The shadows of her 250 towers began to lengthen. The Euphrates rolled on, touched by the fiery splendors of the setting sun, and gates of brass, burnished and glittering, opened and shut like doors of flame. The hanging gardens of Babylon, wet with the heavy dew, began to pour from starlit flowers and dripping leaf a fragrance for many miles around. The streets and squares were lighted for dance and frolic and promenade. The theaters and galleries of art invited the wealth and pomp and grandeur of the city to rare entertainments. Scenes of riot and wassail were mingled in every street, and godless mirth, and outrageous excess and splendid wickedness came to the king’s palace to do their mightiest deeds of darkness. A royal feast to-night at the king’s palace! Rushing up to th|> gates are chariots, upholstered with precious cloths from Dedan and drawn by fire-eyed horses from Togarina'h, that rear and neigh in the grasp of the charioteers, while a thousand lords dismount and women dressed in all the splendors of Syrinn emerald, and the color blending of agate, and the chasteness of coral, and the nomber glory of Tyrian purple, and princely embroideries brought from afar by camels across the desert and by ships of Tarshish across the sea. A Great Banquet. Open wide the gates and let the guests come in. The chamberlains and cupbearers are all ready. Hark to the rustle of the silks, and to the carol of the music! See the blaze of the jewels! Lift the banners. Fill the cups. Olap the cymbals. Blow the trumpets. Let the night go by with song and dance and ovation, and let that Babylonish tongue be palsied that will not say, “O King Belshazzar, live forever!” Ah, my friends, it was not any common banquet to which these great people came. All parts of the earth had sent their richest viands to that table. Brackets and chandeliers flashed their light upon tankards of burnished gold. Fruits, ripe and luscious, in baskets of silver, intwined with leaves, plucked from royal conservatories. Vases, inlaid with emerald and ridged with exquisite traceries, filled with nuts that were thrashed from forests of distant lauds. Wine brought from the royal vats, foaming in the decanters and bubbling in the chalices. Tufts of cassia and frankincense wafting their sweetness from wall and table. Gorgeous banners unfolding in the breeze that came the open window, bewitched . with the perfumes of hanging gardens. Fountains rising up from inclosures of Ivory, in jets of crystal, to fall in clattering1 Idin1 din of diamonds and pearls. Statues of mighty men loking down from niches in the wall upon crowns and shields brought from subdued empires. Idols of wonderful work standing on pedestals of precious stones. Embroideries stooping about the windows and wrapping pillars of cedar, and drifting on floor inlaid with ivory and agate. Music, mingling the thrum of harps, and the clash of cymbals, and the blast of trumpets in one wave of transport that went rippling along the wall and breathing among the garlands and pouring down the corridors and thrilling the souls of a thousand banqueters. The signal is given, and the lords and ladies, the mighty men and women of’the land, come around the table. Pour out the wine. Let foam and bubble kiss the rim! Hoist every one his cup and drink to the sentiment: “O King Belshazzar, live forever!” Bestarred head band and carcanet of royal beauty gleam to the uplifted chalices, as again and again and again they are emptied. Away with care from the palace! Tear royal dignity to tatters! Pour out more wine! Give us more light, wilder music, sweeter perfume! Lord shouts to lord, captain ogles to captain. Goblets clash; decanters rattle. There come in the obscene song, and the drunken hiccough, and the slavering lip and the guffaw of idiotic laughter, bursting from the lips of princes, flushed, reeling bloodshot; while mingling with it all I hear, “Huzza, huzza! for great Belshazzar!”

W hat is that on the plastering of the a Bpirit? Is it: a Phantom? Is it God? The music stops. The goblets fail from the nerveless grasp. There is a thrill. There is a start. There is a thousand voiced shriek of horror. Let Daniel be brought in to read that writing He comes in. He reads it—“ Weighed in the balance and found wanting.” A Warning. Meanwhile the Medes, who for two years had been laying siege to that city, took advantage of that carousal and came in. I hear the feet of the conquerors on the palace stairs. Massacre rushes iu with a thousand gleaming knives. Death bursts upon the scene, and I shut the door of that banqueting hall, for I do not want to look. There is nothing there but torn banners, and broken wreaths, and the slush of upset taukards, and the blood of murdered women and the kicked and tumbled carcass of a dead king. For “in that night was Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain.” I go on to learn some lessons from all this. I learn that when God writes anything on the wall a man had better read it as it is. Daniel did not misinterpret or modify the handwriting on the wall. It is all foolishness to expect a minister of the gospel to preach always things that the people like or the people choose. Young men of Washington, what shall I preach to you to-night? Shall I tell you of the dignity of human nature? Shall I tell you of the wonders that our race has accomplished ? “Oh, no," you say. “Tell me She message that came from God.” I will. If there is any handwriting on the wall, it is this lesson: “Repent! Accept of Christ and be saved!” I might talk of a great many other things, but that is tho message, and I so declare it. Jesus never flattered those to whom he preached. He said to those who did wrong, and who were offensive in his sight, “Ye generation of vipers, ye white sepulchers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell!” Paul the apostle preached before a man who was not ready to hear him preach. What subject did he take? Did he say, “Oh, you are a good man. a very fine man, a very noble man?” No; he preached of righteousness to a man .who was unrighteous, of temperance to a man who was a victim of bad appetites, of judgment to come toA man who was unfit for it. So we must always declare the message that happens to come to us. Daniel must read it as it is. A minister preached before James I. of England, who was James VI. of Scotland. What subject did he take? The king was noted all over the world for being un-

settled and wavering in }iis ideas. What did the minister preach about to this man who was James I. of England and James VL of Scotland? He took for his text James L, G: “He that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.” Hugh Latimer offended the king by a sermon preached, and the king said, “Hugh Latimer, come and apologize.” “I will,” said Hugh Latimer. So the day was appointed, and the king's chapel was full of lords and dukes and the mighty men and women of the country, for Hugh Latimer was to apologize. He began his sermon by saying, “Hugh Latimer, bethink thee! Thou art in the presence of thine earthly king, who can destroy thy body. But bethink thee, Hugh Latimer, that thou art in the presence of the king of heaven and earth, who can destroy both body and soul in hell fire.” Then he preached with appalling directness at the king's crimes. The End of Sin. Another lesson that comes to us tonight: There is a great difference between the opening of the banquet of sin and its close. Young man, if you had looked in upon the banquet in the first few hours you would have wished you had been invited there, and could sit at the feast. “Oh, the grandeur of Belshazzar’s feast!” you would have said, but you look in at the close of the banquet and your blood curdles with horror. The king of terrors has there a ghastlier banquet; human blood is the wine and dying groans are the music. Sin has made itself a king in the earth. It has crowned itself. It has spread a banquet. It invites all the world to come to it. It has hung in its banqueting hall the spoils of all kingdoms, and the banners of all nations. It has gathered from all music. It has strewn, from its wealth, the tables and floors and arches. And yet how often is that banquet broken up, and how horrible is its end! Ever and anon there is a handwriting on the wall. A king falls. A great culprit is arrested. The knees of _ wickedness knock together. God’s judgment, like an armed host, breaks in upon the banquet, and that night is Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain. Here is a young man who says: “I cannot see why they make such a fuss about the intoxicating cup. Why, it is exhilarating! It makes me feel well. I can talk better, think better, feel better. I cannot see why people have such a prejudice ogainst it.” A few years pass on, and be wakes up and finds himself in the clutches of an evil habit which he tries to break, but cannot, and he cries out, “O Lord God, help me!” It seems as though God would not hear his prayer, and in an agony of body and soul he cries out, “It biteth like a serpent and it stingeth like an adder.” How bright it was at the start! How black it was at the last! Here is a man who begins to read loose novels. “They are so charming,” he says. “I will go out and see for myself whether all these things are so.” He opens the gate of a sinful life. He goes in. A sinful sprite meets him with her wand. She waves her wand, and it is all enchantment. Why, it seems as if the angels of God had poured out vials of perfume in the atmosphere. As he walks on he finds the hills becoming more radiant with foliage and the ravines more resonant with the falling water. Oh, what a charming landscape he sees! But that sinful sprite, with her wand, meets him again. But now she reverses the wand, and all the enchantment is gone. The cup is full of poison. The fruit turns to ashes. All the leaves of the bower are forked tongues of hissing serpents. The flowing fountains fall back in a dead pool stenchful with corruption. The luring songs become curses and screams of demoniac laughter. Lost spirits gather about him and feel for his heart and beckon him on with “Hail, brother! Hail, blasted hail!” He comes to the front door where he entered and tries to push it back, but the door turns against him, and in the jar of that shutting door he hears these words, “This night is Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slam.” Sin may open bright as the morning. It ends dark as the night! Death at the Banquet. I learn further from this subject that death sometimes breaks in upon a banquet. Why did he not go down to the prisons in Babylon? There were people there that would like to have died. I suppose there were men and women in torture in that city who would have welcomed death, but he comes to the palace, and just at the time when the mirth is dashing to the tip-top pitch, death breaks in at the banquet. We have often seen the same thing illustrated. Here is a young man just come from college. He is kind. He is loving. He fs enthusiastic. He is eloquent. By one spring he may bound to heights toward which many men have been struggling for years. A profession opens before him. He is established in the law. His friends cheer him. Eminent men encourage him. After awhile you may see him standing in the American Senate, or moving a popular assemblage by his eloquence, as trees are moved in a whirlwind. Some night he retires early. A fever is on him. Delirium, like a reckless charioteer, seizes the reins of his intellect. Father and mother stand by and see the tides of his life going out to the great ocean. The banquet is coming to an end. The lights of thought and mirth and eloquence are being extinguished. The garlands are snatched from the brow. The vision is gone. Death at the banquet! We salv the same thing, on a larger scale, illustrated in our civil war. Our whole nation had been sitting at a national banquet—North, South, East and West. What grain was there but we grew it on our hills? What invention was there but our rivers must turn the new wheel and rattle the strange shuttle? What warm furs but our traders must bring them from the arctics? What fish but our nets must sweep them for the market? What music but it must sing in our halls? What eloquence but it must speak in our senates? Ho, to the national banquet, reaching from mountain to mountain and from sea to sea! To prepare that banquet the sheepfolds and the aviaries of the country sent their best treasures. The orchards piled up on the table their sweet fruits. The presses burst out with new wines. To sit at that table came the yeomanry of New Hampshire, and the lumbermen of Maine, and the Carolinian from the rice plantation, and the Western emigrant from the pines of Oregon, and we were all brothers—brothers at a banquet. Suddenly the feast ended. What meant those mounds thrown up at Chiokamauga, Shiloh, Atlanta, Gettysburg, South Mountain? What meant those golden grainfields, turned into a pasturing ground for cavalry horses? What meant the cornfields gullied with the wheels of the heavy supply train? Why those rivers of tears —those lakes of blood? God was angry! Justice must come. A handwriting on the wall! The nation had been weigtfed and found wanting. Darkness! Woe to the North! Woe to the South! Woe to the East! Woe to the West! Death at the banquet. Sudden Judgment. I have also to learn from the subject that the destruction of the vicious, and of those who despise God, will be very sudden. The wave of mirth had dashed to the highest point when the invading army broke through. It was unexpected. Suddenly, almost always, comes the doom of those who despise God and defy the laws of men. How was it at the deluge? Do you suppose it came through a long northeast storm, so that people for days before were sure it was coming? No. I suppose the morning was , bright; that calmness brooded on the waters; that beauty sat enthroned on the hills, whe*

suddenly the heavens burst, and the mountains sank like anchors into the see. that daShtel Hear over the Andes-and the Himalayas. The Red Sea was divided. The Egyptians tried to cross it There could be no danger. The Israelites , had just gone through. Where they had gone, why not the Egyptians? Oh, it was such a beautiful walking place! A pavement of tinged shells and pearls, and on either side two great walls of water —solid. There can be no danger. Forward, great host of tho Egyptians! Clap the cymbals and blow the trumpets of victory! After them! We will catch them yet, and they shall be destroyed. But the walls begin to tremble! They rock! They fall! The rushing waters! The shriek of drowning men! The swimming of the warhorses in vain for the shore! The strewing of the great host on the bottom of the sea or pitched by the angry waves on the beach—a battered, bruised and loathsome wreck! Suddeiily destruction came. One-half hour before they could not have believed it. Destroyed, and without remedy. I am just setting forth a fact which you have noticed as well as I. Ananias comes to the apostle. The apostle says, “Did you sell the land for bo much?” Ha' says, “Yes.” It was a lie. Dead, as quick as that! Sapphira, his wife, comes in. “Did you sell the land for so much?” “Yes.” It was a lie, and quick as that she was dead! God’s judgments are upon those who despise him and defy him. They come suddenly. A Simple Prayer. The destroying angel went through Egypt. Do you suppose that any of the people knew that he was coming? Did they bear the flap of his great wing? No! No! Suddenly, he came. Skilled sportsmen do not like to shoot n bird standing on a sprig near by. If they are skilled, they pride themselves on taking it on the wing, and they wait till it starts. Death is an old sportsman, and he loves to take men flying under the very sun. He loves to take them on the wing. Oh, flee to God this night! If there be one in this presence who has wandered far away from Christ, though he may not have heard the call of tho gospel for many a year, I invite him now ta come and be saved. Flee from thy sin! Flee to the stronghold of the gospel! Now is the accepted time. Now is the day of salvation. Good nighty my young friends! May you have rosy-sleep, guarded by him who never slumbers! May you awake !n the morning strong and well! But, oh, art thou a despiser of God? Is this thy Inst night on earth? Shouldst thou be awakered in the night by something, thou kr.owest not what, and there be shadows floating in the room, and a handwriting on the wall, and you feel that your last hour is come, and there be a fainting at the heart, and a tremor iu the limb, and a catching of the breath— doom wc-uld be but an echo of the word of the telt, “In that night was Belshazzar, the f king of the Chaldeans, slain.” Oh, that my Lord Jesus would now make himself so attractive to your souls that you cannot resist him, and if you have never prayed before or have not prayed since those days when you knelt down at your mother’s kuee, then -that to-night you might pray, saying:

Just as I am, without one plea But that thy blood was shed for me And that thou bidst me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come! Btit if you cannot think of so long a prayer as that I will give you a shorter prayer that you can say, “God be merciful to me, a sinner!” Or, if you cannot think of so long a prayer as that, I will give you a still shorter one that you may utter, “Lord save me, or I perish!” Or, if thaLjje too long a prayer, you need not make it. Use the word “Help!” Or, if that tie too long a word, you need not use any word at all. Just look and live!