Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 January 1889 — BARNLIKE BIRTHPLACES. [ARTICLE]

BARNLIKE BIRTHPLACES.

THK MANGER AND THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. •N. ~ Marking the BlrthplacfeOf a Savior Sent a<« a Sacrifice of a Rebellious World. «. Rev. Dr. preached at the Brooklyn Tabernacle last Sunday. Text: Luke ii., 12-13. He said: At midnight from* out of Abe galleries of the sky a chart broke. To an ordinary observer there was no reason for such a celestial demonstration. A poor mail and wife—travelers, Joseph and Mary by name—had lodged in an outhouse of an unimportant village. The supreme hour of solemnity haa passed, and upon the pallid forehead and cheek of Mary God had set the dignity, the ;■ grandeur, the tenderness, the everlasting and Divine significance of motherhood. , But such scenes had often occurred in Bethlehem, vet never before had a star been unfixed dr had a baton of light marshaled over the hills-winged orchestra. If there had been such brilliant and mighty recognition at an advent in the House of Pharaoh or at an advent in the House of Casar, or the House of Hapsburg, or the House of Stuart, we would not so much have wondered, but a barn seems too poor - a center for such delicate and archangelic circumference. The stage seems too, small for so great an act, the music too grand for such unappreciative auditors, the window of the stable too rude to be serenaded bv other worlds. No, sir. No, madam. It is my joy this morning to tell you What was born that night in the village barn; and as I want to make my discourse accurdulative and climacteric, I begin, in the first place, by telling you that that night in the Bethlehem manger was born (1) encouragement for all the poorly started. He “had only two friends, they His parents. No satin-lined cradle, no delicate attentions, but straw, and the cattle and the coarse joke and banter' of the camel-d’iver. No wonder the mediae va painters represent the oxen as kneeling before the infant Jesus, for there were no men there at that time to worship. From the depths of what poverty He rose until to-day He is honored in all Christendom, and sits on the imperial throne in heaven. What name is mightiest to-day in Christendom? Jesus. Who has more friends on earth than any other being? Jesus. Before whom do the most thousands kneel in chapel and church and cathedral at this hour? Jesus. For whom could one hundred million souls be marshaled, ready to fight or die? Jesus. From what depths of poverty to heights of renown? And so let all those who are poorly started remember that they can not be more poorly born, or more disadvantageously.than this Christ. Let them look up to His example while they have time and eternity to imitate it. Do vou know that the vast majority of the world’s deliverers had barnlike birthplaces? Luther, the emancipator of religion, born among the mines; Shakespeare, the emancipator of literature, born in an humble home at Strat-ford-on-Avon; Columbus, the discoverer of a world, born in poverty at Genoa; Hogarth, the discoverer of how to make art accumulative and administrative of virtue, born in a humble home at Westmoreland. Yea, I have to tell you that nine out of ten of the world’s deliverers, nine out of ten of the world’s Messiahs—the Messiahs of science, the Messiahs oi law, the Messiahs of medicine, the Messiahs of poverty, the Messiahs of grand benevolence—were born in want I stir your holy ambitions to-day, and I want to tell you, although the whole world may be opposed to you, and inside and outside of your occupations or professions there may be those who would hinder your ascent on your side and enlisted in your behalf and the sympathetic heart and almighty arm of One who one Christmas night, about eighteen hundred and eighty-eight years ago, was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. Oh, what magnificent encouragement for the poorly started! 2. Again, I have to tell you that in that village barn that night was born good will to men. whether you call it kindness, or forbearance, or forgiveness, or geniality, or affection, or love. It was no sport of high heaven to aend its favorite to that humiliation. It was a sacrifice for a rebellious world. After the calamity in Paradise not only did the ox begin to gore, and the adder to sting, and the elephant to smite with his tusks, and the lion to put to bad use Tooth and paw, but under the very tree from which the forbidden fruit was plucked were war and revenge,and malice and envy and jealousy, and the_ whole brood of cockatrices. Blit against that scene I set the Bethlehem manger, which says: “Bless rather than curse; endure rather than assault;” and that Christmas night puts out vindictiveness. It says: “Sheath your sword,, dismount your guns, dismantle your batteries, turn the war ship Constellation, that carried shot and shell, into a grain ship to take food to famishing Ireland; hook your cavalry horses to the plow; use your deadly gunpowder in blasting rocks and in patriotic cele* brations; stop your lawsuits; quit writing anonymous letters; extract the sting from your sarcasm; let your -wit cate, but never burn; drop all the harsh words out of your vocabulary. ‘Good will to men.’”

“Oh!” you say, “I can’t, exercise it; I won’t exercise it until they apologize; I won’t forgive them until they ask me to fqrgive them.” You are no Christian, then—l say you are no Christian, or you are a very inconsistent Christian. If vou forgive not men their trespasses, now can you expect your Heavenly Father to forgive you? borgive them if they ask your forgiveness, and forgive them anyhow. Shake hands all around. “Good will to men.”

Oh, my Lord Jesus, drop that spirit into our hearts this Christmas hour. I you what the world, wants more than anything else—more helping bands, more sympathetic hearts, more kind words that never die, more disposition to give other people a ride, and to carry the heavy end of the load and give other people the light end, and to ascribe good motives instead of bad and to find our happiness in making others happy.* Out of that Bethlehem crib let the bear and the lion eat straw like an ox. “Good will to men.” That principle will yet settle all controversies andunder it the world will keep on improving until there will be only two

antagonists in all the earth, and they will, side by side, take the jubilant sleigh-ride intimated by the propbet when he said: “Holiness shall be on the

bells of the horses.” 3. Again, JI remark that, Christmas nigUt in the village bam, was sympathetic union with other worlds. The only skepticism I have ever had about Christianity was an astronomical skepticism, which said: “Why would God out of the heavens and amid the jupiters and Saturns of the universe have chosen oiir little bit of a world for the achievements of His only begotten Son when He might have had a vaster scale and vaster worlds?” But my skepticism is all gone as I come to the manger and watch its surrondings. Now I see all the worlds are sisters; and that when one weeps they all weep, and when one sings they all sing. From that supernatural grouping in the cloud-banks over Bethlehem, and from the especial trains that ran down to the scene, I find that our world is beautifully and gloriously and magnificently surrounded. The meteors are with us, for one of them ran to a point down to the” birthplace. The heavens are with us because of the thought of our redemotion they roll hosannas out of the midnight sky. Oh! yes; I do not know but our world may be better surrounded than we sometimes imagine, and when a child is born angels fetch it, and when it hies angels take it, and when an old man be: ds under the weight of years angels uphold him, and when a heart breaks angels soothe it. Angels in the hospital to take cAre of the sick. Angels in the cemetry to watch our dead. Angels in the church ready to fly heavenward with the news of repentant souls. Angels above the world. Angels under the world. Angels all around the world. Rub the dust of human imperfection out of our eyes and look into the heavens and see angels of pity, angels of mercy, angels of pardon, angels of help, angels charioted. The world defended hy angels, girdled by angels, cohorted by angels—clouds of angels. Hear David cry out: “The chariots of God are twenty thousand. Even thousands of angels.’ But the .mightiest angel stood not that night in the clouds over Bethlehem; the mightiest angel that night lay among the cattle —the A ngel of the new covenent. As the clean white linen sent in by some motherly villager was being wrapped around the little form of that Child Emperor, not a cherub, not a seraph, not an angel, not a world but wept and thrilled and shouted. Oh! yes, our world has plenty of sympathizers. Our world is only a silver rung of a great ladder, at the top of which is our Father’s house. No more stellar solitariness for our world, not a friendless planet spun out into space to freeze, but a world in the bosom of divine maternity. A star harnessed to a manger. 4. Again, I remark that that night born in the village barn was the offender’s hope. Some sermonizera may say I ought to have piojected this thought at the be ginning of the sermon. Oh! no. I wanted you to rise toward it. I wanted you to examine the cornelians and the jaspers and the emeralds and the chrysalis before I showed you the KohinooT—the crown jewel of the ages. Oh! that jewel had a very poor setting. The cub of bear is born amid the grand old pillars of the forest, the whelp of the lion takes it first step from the jungle of luxuriant left and wild-flower, the kid of goat is born in cavern chandeliered with stalactite and pillared with stalagmite. Christ was born in a bare barn. Yet that nativity was the offender’s hope. Over the door of heaven are written these words: “None but the sinless may enter here.” “Oh, horror!” you say, “that shu,ts us all out.” No. Christ came to the world in one door, and He departed through another door. He came through the door of the sepulcher, and His one business was to wash away our sin that one second after we are dead there will be no more sin about us than about the eternal God. I know that it is putting it strongly, but that is what I understand by full remission. All erased, all washed away, all scoured out?, all gme. That undergirding, and overarching, and irradiating, and imparadising possibility for you and for me, and for the whole race, was given on that Christmas night. Do you wonder we bring flowers to-day to celebrate such an event? Do you wonder that we take the organ and cornet and youthful voice and queenly soloist to celebrate it? Do you wonder that Raphael and Rubens and Titian and Giotto and Ghirlandajo, and all the old German and Italian painters gave the mightiest stroke of the pencil to sketch the Madonna, Mary and her Boy? Oh! now I see what the manger was. Not so high the gilded, jeweled and embroiderea cradle of the Henry’s of England;, or the Louises of France, or the Fredericks of Prussia. Now I find tnat the Bethlehem crib fed not so much the oxen of the stall as the white horses of Apocalyptic vision. Now I find the 8 wadding clothes enlarging and emblazoning into an imperial robe for a conqueror. Now I find the star of that Christmas night was only the diamond sandal of Him who hath the moon under His feet. Now I come to understand that the music of the night was nota complete song, but onlv the stringing of the instruments for the great chorus of the two worlds, the bass to be carried by the earthly Nations saved, and the soprano by Kingdoms of Glory won. Oh, heaven, heaven, heaven. I shall meet you there. After all our imperfections are gone, I shall meet you there. I look out to-day, through the mist of years, through the fog that rises from the cold Jordan, through the wide, „ppen door of solid pearl, to that reunion. I expect to see you there as certainly as I see yoibhere. What a time we shad have in high converse, talking over sins pardoned and sorrows comforted and battles triumphant. lam going in. lam going to take all my family with me. lam going to take all my church with me. lam going to tike all my friends and neighbors with me. I have so much faith in the manger and cross. I feel sure of it. I am ' gbing to coax you in. I am going to | push you in. By holy stratagem I am ; going to surprise* you in. Yea. with all the concentrated energy of my naturesphysical mental, spiritual and immortal—l am going to compel you to go in. I like you so well I a ant to spend eteri nity with you. I Some of your children have already gone. Some time ago I buried one of

them, and though people passing along the street and seeing white crape on the door-bell may have said: “It is only a child,’ yet when the broken hearted father came to solicit my service he said; “Come around and comfort us, for though she was only fifteen months old we loved her so much.” Ah! it does nott take lo g for a child to get its arms around the parent’s whole nature. What a Christmas morning it will make when those with whom you used to keep the holidays are all around you in heaven! Silver-haired old lather young again,and mother who had so many achesand pains and decrepitudes well again, and all your brothers, and sisters and the little ones. How glad they will be to see you! They have been waiting. The last time they saw your face it was covered with tpars and distress, and pallid from long watching, and one of them I can imaging to-day, with one hand holding fast the shining gate, and* the other hand swung out toward you, saying: ‘ Steer ttite wav, father, steer airafaht for me: Here sate in He even I am waiting for thee.” Merry Christmas! Merry With the thought of sins forgiven, merry with the idea of sorrows comforted, merrv with the raptures to com s. Oh! dist that Christ from the manger and lay Him down in all our hearts. We may not bring to Him as costly a present as the Magi brought, but we bring to His feet and to the manger to-day the frank--incence of our joy, the pearls of out tears, the kiss of our love, the prostration of our worship. Down at His feet, all churches, ali ages, all earth, all heaven. Down at His feet the four-and-twenty elders On their faces. Down the “great multitude that no man can number.” Down Michael the archangel! Down all worlds a His feet and worship. .“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace,goodwill to men!” >