Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 October 1887 — UNOCCUPIED FIELDS. [ARTICLE]

UNOCCUPIED FIELDS.

What the Churbh is Doing and What it Ought to Do. * All Teehnlealltloa Munt B* Dropped Tlie Church a Life Saving Station Whic-i Ought to Save the Wreaked, Not those Hailing on Cain Seae. Eev. Dr. Talmage preached at the Brooklyn Tabernacle last Sunday. Subject, “Unoccupied Fields.” Text, Romans xv., 20. He said: Stirring reports come from all parts of America showing what a great work tlie Churches of God are doing, and I congrauiate them and their pastors- Misapprehensions have been going the rounds, saying that the outside benevolences of this particular church are neglected, when the fact is that large sums of money are being raised in various ways by this church for all styles of good objects, not always through tbe boards of our own denomination. This cliurrh. was built by all denominations of Christians, and by many sections of this land and other lauds, and that obligation has led us to raise money for many objects not connected with our denomination, and this accounts for the j fact that we have not regularly contributed to all 'he boards commended. But I I rejoice in that you have done as a| church, a magnificent work, and am ! grateful that we have received during the year by the confession of faith in Christ 725 souls, which fact I mention not in boasting but in defense of this church, showing that it has been neither idle nor inefficient. The most of out accessions from the outside world, so that, taking the idea of my t-xt, we have not been building on other people’s foundations. In laying out the plan of his missionary tour Paul sought out towns and cities which,had not yet been preached to. He goes to Corinth, a city mentioned for splendor and vice, anil Jerusalem, where the priesthood and the Sanhedrim were ready to leap with both feet upon the Christian religion. He feels TdiSrhediSs elpecial work to do, and he means to doit. What was the results The grandest life of usefulness that a man ever lived. We modern Christian workers are not apt to imitate Paul. Wtj build on other people’s foundations. If we build a church we prefer to have it filled with families all of whom have been pious. Do we gather a Sabbath school class, we want good boys and girls, hair combed, faces washed, manners attractive. Bo a church in this day is apt to be built out of other churches. Borne ministers spend all their time in fishing in other people’s ponds,and they throw the line into that church pond and jerk out a Methodist, and throw the line into another church pond and bring out a Presbyterian; or there iff a religious row in some* neighboring church, and a whole school of fish Bwim off from that pond, and we take them all in with one sweep of the net. What is gained? Absolutely nothing for the general cause. of Christ It is only as in an army when a regiment is transferred from one division to another—from the Tennessee to the Potomac. ~ \Yhat strengthens the army is new recruits. What I have always desired is that while we are courteous to those Coming from other flocks, we build our church not out of other churches, but out of the world, lest we build on another man’s foundation. The fact is, this is a big world. When in our school boy days we learned the diameter and circumference of this planet, we did not learn half. It is the latitude and longitude and diameter and circumference of want and woe and sin that no figures can calculate. This one spiritual continent of wretchedness reaches across all zones, and if Iwere called to give its geographical boundary I would say it is bounded on the north and south and east and west by the great heart of God’s sympathy and love. Oh, it is a great world! Since 6 o’clock this morning 00,800 persons have been born, and all these multiplied people are to he reached of the Gospel. In England or in our Eastern American cities we are being much Crowded, and an acre of ground is of great value, but on' West five hundred acres is a small farm, and twenty thousand acres is no unusual possession. There is a vast field here and everywhere unoccupied, plenty of room more, not building on another man’s foundation. _■ We need as churches to stop bombarding the old ironclad sinners that have been proof against thirty years of Christian assaults. Alas for that church which lacks the spirit of evangelism, spending on one chandelier enough to. • light fiv?limTi4Vei!lf.Trar3'iO“glnTf!'‘aiHri n one carved pillar enough to have made a thousand men “pillars in the house o! our God forever” and doing less good than man} a log-cabin meeting-house with tallow caudles stuck in wooden sockets and a minister- who has never sehn a college or known the difference between Greek and Choctaw. We need, as churches, to get into sympathy with the great ouiside world auo let them know that none are so broken-hearted or hardly bestead that will not be welcomed. Many‘of the churches are like' a hospital that should advertise that its pat ients must have nothing worse than toothache or “run-rounds,” hut no broken heads, ho crashed ankles, no fractured thighs. Give us for treatment moderate sinners, velvet coated sinners and sinners with a gloss on. It is as though a man had a farm,of three thousand acres and put all his work on one acre. He may raise never so large ears of corn, never so oig head of wheat, he 1 would remain poor. The church of God has bestowed its chief care off one acre? | and lias raised splendid men and women jin that small inclosure, hut the field.is ‘ the world. Thar means North and Booth America. Europe, Asia, Africa and all ; the islands-of the sea. It is as though ! after a great'battle there were - left fifty j thousand wounded and dying on the ; field, and three surgeons gave all their : time to three patients tinders their i charge. The major-general comes in : and says to the doctor?: “Come out i litre and look at the nearly fifty thousand dying for lack -of surgical attendan<e.” "No.” eav tltfet/Tbrep doctors, standing there fanning their patients, •‘“we have-three important eases here, I and we are attending to them,and whetT . we are no| positively busy wit a their : wonpds.jjt takes all our time to keep ] the files off ’’’ In the awfnl battle ,of sin and sorrow where millions have • fallen on millions, do not let ns Lspend a ii , Jur time- in taking rare of a | 1 ftw people, and w hen the command

comes “Go into']lie world” say practicaly “No,I cannot go;l have here a few choice cases, and I am busy keeping off 1 the flies.” There are multitude* to-day who have never had pay Christian worker look them in the eyi- and with earnestness in tbe a<treiitiia*ion say, “Come!” or they would long ago have been in ILe Kingdom. My triends, religion UB either a sliaui or a tremendous reality. If it. be a sham let ns disband our churches ami Christian association. If it he a reality, then great populations are on the way to trie bar of jSed unfitted for the ordeal, and whw ; :mrerwe doing? " In order to reach the -multitude of outsiders we must drop al l technicalities out (4 our religion, _ W hen we talk to people about the hypostatic union and French eneyelopediaht-tu, and Erastinanisrn, and Comoliitensdanisrn, we are as impolitic and littli understood as if a physician Should talk to an ordinary patient about tire pericardium and intercostal muscle, apd scorbutic symptoms. Many of us come out of the theological seminaries so loaded up that we take the first ten years to show our people how much we know, and the rtextten years get our people to know and at the end find that neither of tifl know anything as we ought to know. Here are hundreds anil thousands of sinning, struggling and dying people who neen to realize just one thing—that Jesus Christ came to save them, and will save them now. But. we go into a profound anil elaborate definition of what justification is. and after all the work there are not,outside of the learned professions, five thousand people in the United states Who can teli what justification is. Now, what is justification? I will tell you what justification is —When a sinner believes, God lets him off. Onesummer in Connecticut 1 went to a large factory, and I saw over the door written the words, “No admittance.” 1 entered and saw over the next door, “No admittance ” Of course, I entered. I got inside and fount! it a pin factory, and they were making pins—very serviceable, fine and useful pins. Bo the spirit of exclusiveness has practically w ritten over the outside door of many a church: “No admittance.’-’ And if the stranger enters he finds practically written over the second door: “No admittance,” while the minister stands in the pulpit, hammering out his little niceties of belief, pounding out the technicalties of religion - making pins. In the most practical common-sense way, and laying aside the non-eseenttals and the hard definitions of religion, go out on the God-given mission, telling the people what they need and when and how they can get it. Comparatively little effort as yet has been made to save that large class of nersons in our midst called skeptics,and he wlio goes to work here will not lie building upon another man’s foundation. There is a great multitude of them. They are afraid of us and our churches, for the reason we don’t know how to treat-tlxem. 0.. e of. this class met Christ, and hear with what tenderness,and pathos,and beauty,and success Christ, dealt with him: “Thou shalt love the Lord thv God with ail thy heart,and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment, and the second is like this; namely: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is no other commandment greater thaji this.” And the Biribe said to Him: “Well Master, thou hast said the truth, for there is one God, and to love him with all the heart, and all the understanding, and all the soul, and all the strength is more than whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” And when Jesus save that he answered discreetly, He said unto him: “Thou art not far from the Kingdom of God.” So a skeptic was saved in one interview. But few Christian people treat the skeptic in that way. Instead of taking hold of them with the gentle hand of love, we are apt to taee him with the iron pinchers of ecclesiasticism. You would not be so rough on- that man if you knew by what process he had lost his faith in Christianity. I have known men skeptical from the fact that they grew up in houses where religion was overdone. Sunday was the most awful day of the week. They had religion driven into them with a trip-hammer, :hey were surfeited with prayer meetings. T-hey we-re stuffed and choked with catechism. They were oiten told they were the worst boys the parents ever knew because they liked to ride down hill better than they liked to read Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Whenever father or mother spoke of religion They drew down the corners of their mouth and rolled up their eyes. If any ohe thing will send a boy or girl to perdition sooner than another that is it. If -I w fathermr mother C fear 1 aHs Remember skepticism always has some reason, good or bad, for existing. Goathe’s irreligion starred when the news came to Germany of the earthquake at Lisbon, November 1,17-7-5. That sixty thousand people should have perished irfdhat earthquake.and in the after rising of the Tagus Rivet; so stirred his sympathies that he threw up his belief in the goodness of God. Others have gone into skepticism from a natural persistence in asking the reason why. They have been feartully stabbed of the interrogation point. There art* so many things they can no' get explained. They cannot understand the Trinitv or how God can be sovereign and yet man a free agent. Neither can I. Thevsay: “f don’t understand why a good God should have let sin come in.to the world.” Neither do I. You say: “Why was that child started in life with : such disadvantages,while others have all physical and mental equipment?” I I cannot tell. They gd out of church on Easter morning and say: “'That doctrine of resurrection eon- ; founded me.” 2 So it is to me a mystery '"beyond unravelment. I understand all the processes by which men get into the : dark. I know themali. I have travelled with feet that blistered away. The first word that children learn is generally paoaormamma. I thin the first word I ever uttered was “ Why ?” 1 knoy- what it is to have a hundred midnights pour their darkness into one hour. ‘Sueh men are not to be scoffed at, but helped. Turn your hack upon a drowning man when yon have the rope ! ith wiiicp to pull him ashore, and let . that: woman in thelhird story of a house perish in the flames when vou haveua landder wdh which to help her out and . help hex dn*n,,Ftfetije*, .than trim vimr back seoffingly oh a skeptic whose soul is in more jperil than 1 the bo lies of | those other endangered, onea posai Kly can be. Oh. skepticism is a dark land! There are men in this house who would

give a thousand worlds if they possessed them, to get hack to the placid faith of their fathers and mothers, and it is onr place to help them, »ever through their heads, but always through the heart. Again, there "is a field of usefulness •but little touched occupied by those who are astray in their habits. Ail Northern nation*, like tbo-e of North America, and England, and Scotland, that is, in the colder climates, are devastated by Alcoholism to keep up the ! warmth. In (Southern countries, like Arabia and Spain, the blood iB bo they, are not tempted to firey liquids fl The great Roman a*rnies never drauk anything stronger than water tiuged with vinegar, but under our (Northern clj- ! mate the temptation to heating stimulants is most mighty, and millions succumb. When a man’s habits go wrong thaChurch drops him, the social circle drops, him, good influences drop him, we all drop him. Of all the men who get off track but few ever get on again. Near my summer residence there is a life saving station on the beach. There are all the ropes and rockets, the boats, the machinery for getting people off shipwrecks. Summer before last I saw there fifteen or twenty men who were breafasting after having .just escaped with their lives and nothing more. Up and down our coast are built these useful structures, and the mariners know it, and they feel that if they are driven into the breakers there will be apt from shore to come a rescue. The churches of God ought to be so many life saving stations, not. so much to those who are in smooth wafers but those who have been shipwrecked. Gome, let us run ontthe life-boats! And who will man them? We do not preach enough to such men, we have not enohgh faith in their release. Alas, if when they do come to hear us, we are laboriously trying to show the difference betwen Bupiapsarianism and Supralsawhile they have a thousand vipers of remorse and despair coiling around and biting their immortal spirits. T he Church is not chiefly for goodish sort of men whose proclivities are all right, and who could get to heaven praying and singimg in their own homes. It is on the beach to help the drowning. Those bad cases are the cases that God likes to get hold of. He can save a big sinner as well as a small sinner; &nd when a man calls to God for help He will go out to deliver such a one. If it were necessary God would come down from the sky, followed by all the artillery of heaven and a million angels with drawn swords. Get one hundred such redeemed men in each of your Churches and nothing could stand before them, for such men are generally warm-hearted and enthusiastic. No formal prayers then. No heartless singing then. No cold conventionalisms then. Ftirthemore, the destitute children of the street offer a field of work comparatively unoccupied. The uncared for children are in the majority in Brooklyn and most of our cities. When they grow up r if unreformed, they-will” outvote your children, and they will govern your children. The, whisky“ ring will hatch out other whisky rings, and grog shops will kill with their horrid, stench public sobriety unless the Church of God rises up with outstretched arms and enfolds this dying population in her bosom. Public schools can not do it. Art galleries can not do it. Blackwell’s Island can not doit. Almshouses can not do it. New York Tombs and Raymond street Jail can not do it. Sing Sing can not do it. Church of God. wake up to your magnificent mission! You can do it. Get somewhere, somehow to work. I have heard of what was called the “Thundering Legim.” It was in 179, a part of the Roman army to which some Christians belonged, and their prayers, it was said, were answered by thunder and lightning and hail and tempest, which overthrew the invading army and saved the empire. And I would to God that/ this church may be so mighty in prayer and work that it would become a thundering legion before which the forces of sin might be routed, and the gates of hell might tremble. Now that the autumn has eome, and the Gospelship has been repaired and enlarged, it is time to launch her for apother voyage, Heave away now, lads! Shake out the reefs in the fore-topsail! Come. O, heavenly wind, and fill the canyas! Jesus aboard will assure our wafe'y. Jesus on the sea will beckon us forward. Jesus on the shining shore will welcome us into harbor. “And so it came to pass that they all escaped safe to land.”