People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 February 1893 — SUNSHINE OF RELIGION. [ARTICLE]

SUNSHINE OF RELIGION.

Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage Talks of the Christian’s Life. ---------------- Religion is the Daughter of God—The Sunshine of Christian Society— Why the Children of God Should be Happy. The following discourse, with “The Sunshine of Religion” as its subject, was delivered by Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage in the Brooklyn tabernacle. The text was: Her ways are ways of pleasantness.—Proverbs [illegible],17. You have all heard of God’s only begotten Son. Have yon heard of God’s daughter? She was born in Heaven. She came down over the hills of our world, she had queenly step. On her brow was celestial radiance. Her woioe was mnsic. Her name is Religion. My text introduces her. “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. ” But what is religion? The fact is that theological study has had a different effect upon me from the effect sometimes produced. Every year I tear out another leaf from my theology until I have only three or four leaves left. In other words, a very brief and plain statement of Christian belief.

An aged Christian minister said: "When I was a young man, I knew everything; when I got to be thirty-five years of age in my ministry I had only a hundred doctrines of religion; when I got to be forty years of age, I had only fifty doctrines of religion; when I got to be sixty years of age, I had only ten doctrines of religion, and now I am dying at seventy-five years of age, and there is only one thing I know, and that is, that Christ came into the world to save sinners.” And so I have noticed in the study of God’s word, and in my contemplation of the character of God or the eternal world, that it is necessary for me to drop this part of my belief and that part of my belief as being non-essential, while I cling to the one great doctrine that man is a sinner, and Christ is his Almighty and Divine Saviour. Now, I take these three or four leaves of my theology, and I find that in the first place, and dominant above all others, is the sunshine of religion. When I go into a room I have a passion for throwing open ail the shutters. That is what I want to do this morning. We are apt to throw so much of the sepulchral into our religion and to close the shutters, and to pull down the blinds, that it is only through here and there a crevice that the light streams. The religion of the Lord Jesus Christ is a religion of joy indescribable and unutterable. Whenever I can find a bell I mean to ring it. If there are any in this house this morning who are disposed to hold on to their melancholy and gloom, let them now depart this service before the fairest and the brightest and most radiant being of all the universe comes in. God's Son has left our world, but God’s Daughter is here. Give her room! Hail! princess of Heaven. Hail! daughter of the Lord God Almighly. Come in and make this house thy throne room.

In setting forth this idea the dominant theory of religion is one of sunshine. I hardly know where to begin, for there are so many thoughts that rush upon my soul. A mother saw her little child seated on the floor in the sunshine, and with a spoon in her hand. She said: "My darling, what are yon doing there?” “Oh,” replied the child, "I'm getting a spoonful of this sunshine.” Would God that to-day I might present you with a gleaming chalice of this glorious, everlasting, gospel sunshine! First of all, I find a great deal of sunshine in Christian society. I do not know of anything more doleful than the companionship of the mere fun-makers of the world—the Thomas Hoods, the Charles Lambs, the Charles Matthews of the world —the men whose entire business it is to make sport. They make others laugh, but if you will examine their autobiography, or biography, you will find that down in their soul there was a terrific disquietude. Laughter is no sign of happiness. The maniac laughs. The hyena laughs. The loon among the Adirondacks laughs. The drunkard, dashing his decanter against the wall, laughs. There is a terrible reaction from all sinful amusement and sinful merriment. Such men are cross the next day. They snap at you on the exchange or they pass you, not recognizing you. Long ago I quit mere worldly society for the reason it was so dull, so inane and so stupid. My nature is voracious of joy. I must have it. I always walk on the sunny side of the street, and for that reason I have crossed into Christian society. I like their mode of repartee better; I like their style of amusement better. They live longer. Christian people, I sometimes notice, live on when by all natural law they ought to have died. I have known persons who have continued in their existence when the doctor said they ought to have been dead ten years. Every day of their existence was a defiance of the laws of anatomy and physiology, but they had this supernatural vivacity of the Gospel in their soul, and that kept them alive. Put ten or twelve Christian people in a room for Christian conversation, and you will from 8 to 10 o’clock hear more resounding glee, see more bright strokes of wit and find more thought and profound satisfaction than in any merely worldly party. Now, when I say a “worldly party,” I mean that to which you are invited because under all the circumstances of the case it is the best for you to be invited, and to which you go because under all the circumstances of the case it is better that you go; and leaving the shawls on the second floor, you go to the parlor to give formal salutation to the host and hostess, and then move around, spending the whole evening in the discussion of

the weather, and in apology for treading on long trails, and in effort to keep the corners of the mouth up to the sign of pleasure, and going aronnd with an idiotic he-he about nothing, until the collation is served, and then after the collation is served, going back again into the parlor to resume the weather and then at the close going at a very late hour to the host and hostess and assuring them that you have had a most delightful evening, and then passing down off the front steps, the slam of the door the only satisfaction of the evening. O young man! come from the country to spend days in city life, where are you going to spend your evenings? Let me tell you, while there are many places of innocent worldly amusement, it is most wise for you to throw your body, mind and soul into Christian society. Come to me at the close of five years and tell me what has been the result of this advice. Bring with you the young man who refused to take the advice, and who went into sinful amusement. He will come dissipated, shabby in apparel, indisposed to look anyone in the eyes, moral character eightyfive per cent. off. You will come with principle settled, countenance frank, habits good, soul saved, and all the inhabitants of Heaven, from the lowest angel up to the archangel and clear past him to the Lord God Almighty, your coadjutators. This is not the advice of a misanthrope. There is no man in the house to whom the world is brighter than it is to me. It is not the advice of a dyspeptic—my digestion is perfect; it is not the advice of a man who can not understand a joke, or who prefers a funeral; it is not the advice of a worn-out man, but the advice of a man who can see the world in all its brightness; and, considering myself competent in judging what is good cheer, I tell the multitudes of young men in this house this morning that there is nothing in worldly association so grand, and so beautiful and so exhilarant as in Christian society. I know there is a great deal of talk about the self-denial of'the Christian. I have to tell you that where the Christian has one self-denial the man of the world has a thousand self-denials. The Christian is not commanded to surrender anything that is worth keeping. But what does a man deny himself who denies himself the religion of Christ? He denies himself pardon for sin; he denies himself peace of conscience; he denies himself the joy of the Holy Ghost; he denies himself a comfortable death pillow; he denies himself the glories of Heaven. Do not talk to me about the self-denials of the Christian life. Where there is one in the Christian life there are a thousand in the life of the world. “Her ways are ways of pleasantness.” Again: I find a great deal of religious sunshine in Christian and Divine explanation. To a great many people life is an inexplicable tangle. Things turn out differently from what was supposed. There is a useless woman in perfect health. There is an industrious and consecrated woman a complete invalid. Explain that. There is a bad man with thirty thousand dollars of income. There is a good man with eight hundred dollars of income. Why is that? There is a foe of society who lives on doing all the damage he can, to seventy-five years of age; and here is a Christian father, faithful in every department of life, at thirty-five years of age taken away by death, his family left helpless. Explain that. Oh! there is no sentence that oftener drops from your lips than this: “I can not understand it. I can not understand it.”

Well, now, religion comes in just at that point with its illumination and its explanation. There is a business man who has lost his entire fortune. The week before he lost his fortune there were twenty carriages that stopped at the door of his mansion. The week after he lost his fortune all the carriages you could count on one finger. The week before financial trouble began people all took off their hats to him as he passed down the street. The week his financial prospects were under discussion people just tipped their hats without anywise bending the rim. The week that he was pronounced insolvent people just jolted their heads as they passed, not tipping their hats at all, and the week the sheriff sold him out all his friends'were looking in the store windows as they went down past him. Now, while the world goes away from a man when he is in financial distress, the religion of Christ comes to him and says: “You are sick, and your sickness is to be moral purification; you are bereaved; God wanted in some way to take your family to Heaven, and He must begin somewhere, and so He took the one that was most beautiful and was most ready to go.” I do not say that religion explains everything in this life, but I do say that it lays down certain principles which are grandly consolatory. You know business men often telegraph in ciphers. The merchant in San Francisco telegraphs to the merchant in New York certain information in ciphers which no other man in that line of business can understand; but the merchant in San Francisco has the key to the cipher, and the merchant in New York has the key to the cipher, and on that information transmitted there are enterprises involving hundreds of thousand dollars. Now the providences of life sometimes seem to be a senseless rigmarole, a mysterious cipher; but God has a key to that cipher, and the Christian a key to the cipher, and though he may hardly be able to spell out the meaning, he gets enough of the meaning to understand that it is for the best. Now, is there not sunshine in that? Is there not pleasure in that? Far beyond laughter, it is nearer the fountain of tears than boisterous demonstration. Have you never cried for joy? There are tears which are eternal rapture in distillation. There are hundreds of people in this house who are walking day by day in the sublime satisfaction that all is for the best, all things working together for good for their soul. How a man

can get along through this life without the explanation is to me a mystery. What! is that child gone forever? Are yon never to get it back? Is your property gone forever? Is your soul to be bruised and to be tried forever? Have you no explanation, no Christian explanation, and yet not a maniac? But when yon have the religion of Jesus Christ in your soul, it explains everything so far as it is best for you to understand. You look off in life, and your soul is full of thanksgiving to God that you are so much better off than you might be. A man passed down the street without any shoes, and said: “I have no shoes; isn't it a hardship that I have no shoes? Other people have shoes; no shoes,no shoes,” until he saw a man who had no feet. Then he learned a lesson. You ought to thank God for what He does instead of grumbling for what He does not. God arranges all the weather in this world—the spiritual weather, the moral weather, as well as the natural weather. “What kind of weather will it be to-day?" said some one to a farmer. The farmer replied: “It will be such weather as I like.” “What do yon mean by that?” asked the other. “Well,” said the farmer, “it will be such weather as pleases the Lord, and what pleases the Lord pleases me.” Oh! the sunshine! the sunshine of Christian explanation! Here is some one bending over the grave of the dead. What is going to be the consolation? The flowers you strew upon the tomb? Oh, no! The services read at the grave? Oh, no! The chief consolation on that grave is what falls from the throne of God. Sunshine, glorious sunshine. Resurection sunshine.

Again, I find a great deal of the sunshine of this Bible and of our religion in the climacteric joys that are to come. A man who gets up and goes from a concert right after the opening voluntary has been played, and before the prima donna sings, or before the orchestra begins, has a better idea of that concert than that man has who supposes that the chief joy of religion are in this world. We here have only the first note of the eternal orchestra. We shall in that world have the joy of discovery. We will in five minutes catch up with the astronomers, the geologists, the scientists, the philosophers of all ages, who so far surpassed us in this world. We can afford to adjourn astronomy and geology and many of the sciences to the next world, because we shall there have better apparatus and better opportunity. I must study these sciences so far as to help me in my work, but beyond that I must give myself to saving my own soul and saving the souls of others, knowing that in one dash of eternity we will catch it all. Oh! What an observatory in which to study astronomy Heaven will be—not by power of telescope, but by supernatural vision; and if there be something doubtful ten million miles away, by one stroke of the wing you are there, and by another stroke of the wing you are back again, and all in less time than I tell you, catching it all in one flash, of eternity. And geology! What a place that will be to study geology, when the world is being picked to pieces as easily as a school girl in botanical lessons pulls the leaf from the corolla! What a place to study architecture, amid the thrones and the palaces and the cathedrals—St Mark’s and St. Paul’s rookeries in comparison.

Sometimes you wish you could make the tour of the whole earth, going around as others have gone; but you have not the time, you have not the means. You will make that tour yet, during one musical pause in the eternal anthem. I say these things for the comfort of those people who are abridged in their opportunities—those people to whom life is a hum-drum, who toil and work, and toil and work, and aspire after knowledge but have no time to get it. “If I had the opportunities which other people have, how I would fill my mind and soul with grand thoughts!” Be not discouraged my friends. You are going to the university yet. Death will only matriculate you into the royal college of the universe. Oh! unglove your hand and give it to me in congratulation on that scene. I feel as if I would shout. I will shout hallelujah! Dear Lord, forgive me that I ever complained about anything. If all this is before us, who cares for anything but God and Heaven and eternal brotherhood? Take the crape off the doorbell. Your loved ones are only away for their health in a land ambrosial. Come Lowell Mason; come Isaac Watts, and give ns your best hymn about joy celestial. What is the use of postpoinng our Heaven any longer? Let it begin now; and whosoever hath a harp, let her thrum it: and whosover hath a trumpet, let him blow it; and whosoever hath an organ, let him give us a full diapason. They crowd down the air, spirits blessed, moving in cavalcade of triumph. Their chariot wheels whirl in the Sabbath of sunlight. They come. Halt! Armies of God! Halt! until we are ready to join the battalion of pleasures that never die. O my friends! it would take a sermon as long as eternity to tell the joys that are coming to us. I just set open the sunshiny door. Come in, all ye disciples of the world who have found the world a mockery. Come in, all ye disciples of the dance, and see the bounding feet of this heavenly gladness. Come in, ye disciples of worldly amusement, and see the stage where kings are the actors and burning worlds the footlights, and thrones the spectaculars. Arise ye dead in sin, for this is the morning of resurrection. They of Heaven submerge our soul. I pull out the trumpet stop. In thy presence there is a fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore. Blessed are the saints beloved of God, Washed are their robes in Jesus’ blood; Brighter than angels, lo! they shine, Their glories splendid and sublime. My soul anticipates the day, Would stretch her wing and soar away; To aid the song, the palm to bear, And bow, the chief of sinners there. Oh, the sunshine, the glorious sun shine, the everlasting sunshine!