Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 September 1896 — TALMAGE’S SERMON. [ARTICLE]

TALMAGE’S SERMON.

HE PREACHES UPON MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS. He Says the Castles of Sin Are All Going to Be Captured by the Sunglass of the Gospel Focused Upon Wickedness. Religion in Cities. So much that is depressing is raid about the wickedness of the cities that it will cheer us to read what Dr. Talmage says in this sermon about their coming re* demption. The text is Zechariah, viii. 5, "And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.” Glimpses of our cities redeemed! Now, boys ami girls who play in the streets run such risks that multitudes of them end in ruin. But in the coming time spoken of our cities will be so moral that lads and lasses shall be as safe in the public thoroughfares as in the nursery. Pulpit and printing press for the most part in our day are busy in discussing the condition of the cities at this time, but would it not be healthfully encouraging to all Christian workers, and to all who are toiling to make the world better, if we should for a little while look forward to the time when our cities shall be revolutionized by the gospel of the Son of God, and all the darkness of sin and trouble and crime and suffering shall be gone from the world? Every man has a pride in the city of his nativity or residence, if it be a city distinguished for any dignity or prowess. Caesar boasted of his native Rome, Virgil of Mantua, Lycurgus of Sparta, Demos-, thenes of Athens, Archimedes of Syracuse. and Paul of Tarsus. I should have suspicion of base heartedness in a man who had no especial interest in the city of his birth or residence —no exhilaration at the evidence of its prosperity or its artistic embellishments, or its intellectual advancement. I have noticed that a man (never likes a city where he has not behaved well. People who have had a free ride in the prison van never like the city that furnishes the vehicle. When I find Argos and Rhodes and Smyrna trying to prove themselves the birthplace of Homer, I conclude at once that Homer behaved well. He liked them, and they liked him. We must not war on laudable city pride, or, with the idea of building ourselves up at any time, try. to pull-others down. Boston must continue to point to its Faneuil hall and to its Common and to its superior educational advantages. Philadelphia must continue to point to its Independence hall and its mint and its Girard college. Washington must continue to point to its wondrous capitoline buildings. If I should find a man coming from any city, having no pride in that city, that city having been the place of his nath*ty or now being the place of his residence, I would feel like asking: “What mean thing have you done there? What outrageous thing have you been guilty of that you do not like the place?”

The Road to Victory. I think we ought—and I take it for granted you are interested in this great work of evangelizing the cities and saving the world—we ought to toil with the sunlight in our faces. We are not fighting in a miserable Bull Run of defeat. We are on our way to final victory. We nre not following the rider on the black horse, leading us down to death and darkness and doom, but the rider on the white horse, with the moon under his feet and the stars of heaven for his tiara. Hail, Conqueror, hail! I know there nre sorrows, and there are sins, and there are sufferings all around about us, but as in some bitter, cold winter day, When we are thrashing our arms around us to keep our thumbs from freezing, we think of the warm spring day that will after awhile come, or in the dark winter night we look up and see the northern lights, the windows of heaven illuminated by some great victory, just so we look up from the night of suffering and sorrow and wretchedness in our cities, and we see a light streaming through from the other side, and we know we are on the way to morning—more than that, on the way to “a morning without clouds.” I want you to understand, all you who are toiling for Christ, that the castles of sin are all going to be captured. The victory for Christ in these great towns is going to be so complete that not a man on earth or an angel in heaven or a devil in hell will dispute it. How do I know? I know just as certainly as Cod lives and that this is holy truth. The old Bible is full of it. If the nation is to be saved, of course ail the cites are to be .saved. It makes a great difference with yoUy and with me whether we are toiling on towArd a defeat or toiling on toward a victory. Now, in this municipal elevation of which I speak, I have to remark there will be greater financial prosperity than our cities have ever seen. Some people seem to have a morbid idea of the millennium, and they think when the better time comes to our cities and the world people will give their time up to psalm singing and the relating of their religious experience, and as all social life will be purified there will be no enterprise. There is no ground for Such an abstjrd anticipation. In the time of which I speak where now one fortune is made therp will be a hundred fortunes made. We all know business prosperity depends upon confidence between man and man. Now, when that time comes of which I speak, and when all double dealing, all dishonesty and all fraud are gone out of commercial circles, thorough confidence will be established, and there will be better business done, and larger fortunes gathered, and mightier successes achieved. The great business disasters of this country have come from the work of godless speculators and infamous stock gamblers. The great foe to business is crime. When the right shall have hurled back the wrong, and shall have purified the commercial code, and shall have thundered down fraudulent establishments, and shall-have put into the hands of honest men the keyh of business, blessed time for the makers. lam not talking an abstraction. lam not making a guess. I am telling you God’s eternal truth. Taxes Will Be Low, In that day of which I speak taxes wili be a mere nothing. Now our business men are taxed for everything. City taxes, county taxes, State taxes. United States taxes, stamp taxes, license taxes, manufacturing taxes—taxes, taxes, taxes! Our business men have to make a snifill fortune every year to pay their taxes. What fastens on our great industries this awful load? Crime, individual and official. We have to pay the board of the villains who are incarcerated in our prisons. We have to take care of the orphans of those who plunged into their graves through sensual indulgences. We have to support the municipal governments, which are vast and expensive just in proportion as the criminal proclivities are vast and tremendous. Who support the almshouses and police stations, and all the machinery of municipal government? The taxpayers. But in the glorious time of which I speak grievous taxation will all have ceased. There will be no need of supporting criminals; there will be no criminals. Virtue will have taken the place of vice.

There will be no orphan asylums, for parents will be able to leave a competency to their children. There will be no voting of large sums of money for some municipal improvement, which money, before they get to the improvements, drops into the pockets of those who voted it. No oyer and terminer kept up at vast expense to the people. No empaneling of juries to try theft and arson and murder and slander and blackmail. Better factories. Grander architecture. Finer equipage. Larger fortunes. Richer opulence. Better churches. In that better time, also, coming to those cities. Christ’s churches will be more numerous, and they will be larger, and they will be more devoted to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they will accomplish greater influences for good. Now, it is often the case that qhurches are envious of each other, anil enominations collide with each other,, and even ministers of Christ sometimes forget the bond of brotherhood. But in the time of which I speak, while there will be just as many differences of opinion as there are now, there will be no acerbity, no hypercriticism, no exclusiveness. People Will Sing in Church. In our great cities the churches are not to-day large enough to hold more than a fourth of the population. The churches that are built—comparatively few of them —are fully equipped. The average attendance in the churches of the United States to-day is not 400. Now, in the glorious time of which I speak there are going to be vast churches, and they are going to be all thronged with worshipers. Oh, what rousing songs they will sing! Oh, what earnest sermons they will preach! Oh, what fervent prayers they will offer! Now, in our time, what is called a fashionable church is a place where a few people, having attended very carefully to their toilet, come and sit down—they do not want ,to be crowded; they like a whole seat' to themselves —and then, if they have any time left from thinking of their store, arid from examining the style of the hat in front of them, they sit and listen to a sermon warranted to hit no Man’s sins, and listen to music which is rendered by a choir warranted to sing tunes that nobody knows: And then after an hour and a half of indolent yawning they go home refreshed. Every man feels better after he has had a sleep. In many of the churches of Christ in our day the music is simply a mockery. I have not a cultivated ear, nor a cultivated voice, yet no man can do my singing for me. I have nothing to say against artistic singing. The $2 or $3 I pay to hear any of the great queens of song is a good investment. But when the people assemble in religions convocation, and the hymn is read, and the angels of God step from their throne to catch the music on their wings, do not let us drive them away by our indifference. I have preached in churches where vast sums of money were employed jo keep up the music, and it was as exquisite as any heard on earth, but I thought at the same time that for all practical I would prefer the hearty, outbreaking song of a backwoods Methodist camp meeting. Let one of these starveling fancy songs sung in church get up before the throne of God—how would it seem standing amid the great doxologies of the redeemed? Let the finest eparatic air that ever went up from the church of Christ get many hours the start; it will be caught and passed by the hosanna of the Sabbath school children. I know a church where the choir did all the singing, save one Christian man, who, through “perseverance of the saints,” went right on, and afterward a committee was appointed to wait on him and ask him if he would not please stop singing, as he bothered the choir. Let those refuse to sing Who never knew our God, But children of the heavenly King Should speak their joys abroad. “Praise ye the Lord. Let everything with breath praise the Lord. In the glorious time coming in our cities and in the world hosanna will meet hosanna and hallelujah, hallelujah. In that time also of which I speak all the haunts of iniquity and crime and squalor will be cleansed and will be illuminated. How is it done? You say perhaps by one influence. Perhaps I say by another. I will tell you what is my idea, and I know I am right in it. The gospel of the Son of God is the only agency that will ever accomplish this.

Rather Preposterous. A gentleman in England had a theory that if the natural forces of wind and tide and sunshine and wave were rightly applied and rightly developed it would make this whole earth a paradise. In a book of great genius and which rushed from edition to edition he said: “Fellow men, I promise to show the means of creating a paradise within ten years where everything desirable for human life may be had by every man in superabundance without labor aird without pay; where the whole face of nature shall be changed into the most beautiful farms and man may live’ in the most magnificent palaces, in all imaginable refinements of luxury and in the most delightful gardens; where he may accomplish without labor in one year more than hitherto could be done in thousands of years. From the houses to be built will be afforded the most cultured views that can be fancied. From the galleries, from the roof and from the turrets may be seen gardens as far as the eye can see full of fruits and flowers, arranged in the most beautiful order, with walks, colonnades, aqueducts, canals, ponds, plains, amphitheaters, terraces, fountains, sculptured works, pavilions, gondolas, places of popular amusement to lure the eye and fancy, all this to be done by urging ,the ; water, the wind and the sunshine to their full development.” , ( lie goes on and gives plates of the ma- ' chinery by which this work is to be done, and he says Jje only needs,at the start a company in which the shares shall be S2O each, and SIOO,OOO or $206,000 shall be raised just to make a specimen community, and then, this being formed, the world will see its practicability, and very soon $2,000,000 or $3,000,000 can be obtained, and in ten years the whole earth Will he emparadised. The plan is not so preposterous as some I have heard of. i But I will take no stock in that company. I do not believe that it will ever be done in that way, by any mechanical force or by anymachiuery that the human mind can put into play. It is to be done by the gospel of the Son of God—the omnipotent machinery of lovo and grace and pardon and salvation. This is to emparadise the nations. Archimedes destroyed a fleet of ships coming up the harbor. You know how he did it. He lifted a great sunglass, history tells us, and when the fleet of ships came up the harbor of Syracuse he brought to bear this sunglass, and he focused the sun’s rays upon those ships. Now the sails are wings of fire, the masts fall, the vessels sink. Oh, my friends, by - the sunglass of the gospel converging the | rays of the sun of righteousness upon the sins, the wickedness of the world, we will make them blaze and expire! The Changed City. In that day of which I speak do you believe there will be any midnight carousal? Will there be any kicking off from the marble steps of shivering mendicants? I Wil* there be any unwashed, unfed, unj combed children? Will there be any blasi phemies in the streets? Will there be any I inebriates staggering past? No. No wine | stores. No lager beer saloons. No disI tilleries, where they the three X’s. !- No bloodshot- eye. No bloated cheek. No 1 instruments of ruin and No

fist-pounded forehead. The grandchildren of that woman who goes down the street with a curse, stoned by the boys that fojjow her, wit! be the reformers and philanthropists and the Christian men and the honest merchants of our cities. Then what municipal governments, too. we wili have in ail the cities. Some cities are worse than others, but in many of our cities you just walk down by the city halls and look in at some of the rooms occupied by politicians and see to what a sensual, loathsome, ignorant, besotted crew city polities is often abandoned. Or they stand around the city hall picking their teeth, waiting for some emoluments of crumbs to fall to their feet, waiting all day long and waiting all night long. . Who are those wretched women taken up for drunkenness and carried up to the courts in prison, of course? What will you do with the grogshops that make them drink? Nothing. Who are those prisoners i# jail? One of them stole a pair of shoes. That boy stole a dollar. This girl snatched a purse. All of them crimes damaging society less than S2O or S3O. But what will you do with the gambler who last night robbed the young man of $1,000? Nothing. What shall be done with that one who breaks through and destroys the purity of a Christian home, and. with an adroitness and perfidy that beat the strategy of heli, flings a shrinking, shrieking soul into ruin? Nothing. What will you do with those who fleeced that young man, getting him to purloin large sums of money from his employer—the young man who came to an officer of my church and told the story and frantically asked what he should do? Nothing. Ah, we do well to punish small crimes, but I have sometimes thought it would be better in some of our cities if the officials would only turn out from the jails the petty criminals, the little offenders, $lO desperadoes, and put irttkqjjr places some of the monsters of iniquity who their roan span through tire atttets so swiftly that honest men have to leap to get out of the way of being run over. Oh, the damnable schemes that professed Christian men will sometimes engage in until God puts the finger of his retribution into the collar of their robe of hypocrisy and rips it clear to the bottom! But all these wrongs will be righted. I expect to live to see the day. I think I hear in the distance the rumbling of the King’s chariot. Not always in the minority is the church of God going to be or are good men going to be. The streets are going to be filled wltit regenerated populations. Three hundi®£ and sixty bells rang in Moscow yyhen,one prince was married, but whenstighiteotitvess and peace kiss each other in all the, earth, ten thousand 1 times ten thousand'bells shall strike the jubilee. Poverty { Hunger fed. Crime banished. Ignorajyje i enlightened. All the cities save<L r notthis a cause worth working in?

Wheel Into Line. Oh, you think sometimes it does not amount to much! You toil on in your different spheres, sometimes with great discouragement. People have no faith and say: “It does not amount to anything. You might as well quit that.” Why, when Moses stretched his hand o’ver .the Red Sea it did not seem to mean anything especially. People came out, I suppose, and said, “Aha!” Some of them found out what he wanted to do. He wanted the sea parted. It did not amount to anything, this stretching out of his hand over the sea. But after awhile the wind blew ail night from the east, and the waters were gathered into a glittering palisade on either side, and the billows reared as God pulled back on their crystal bits. Wheel into line, O Israel! March! March! Pearls crashed under feet. Flying spray gathers into rainbow arch of victory for the conquerors to march under. Shouts of hosts on the beach answering the shout of hosts amid sea. And when the last line of Israelites reach the beach the cymbals clap, and the shields clang, and the waters rush over the pursuers, and the swift fingered winds on the white keys of the foam play the grand march of Israel delivered and the awful dirge of Egyptian overthrow. So you and I go forth, and all the people of God go forth, and they stretch forth their hand over the sea, the boiling sea of crime and sin and wretchedness. “It doesn’t amount to anything,” people say. Doesn’t it? God’s winds of help will after awhile begin to blow. A path will be cleared for the army of Christian philanthropists. The path will be lined with the treasures of Christian beneficence, and we shall be greeted to the other beach by the clapping of all heaven’s cymbals, while those who pursued us and derided us and tried to destroy us will go down under the sea, and all that will be left of them will be cast high and dry upon the beach, the splintered wheel of a chariot, or thrust out from the foam, the breathless nostril of a riderless charger.