Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 February 1889 — JOY! JOY! JOY! [ARTICLE]

JOY! JOY! JOY!

JOYFULNESS THE TRUE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY. No Room for Sorrow in a Regener- ; ated Heart—Pardon and Peace Linked Wittythe Sinner’s Triumph. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at the Brooklyn tabernacle last Sunday, text: LnexT., 23. After a few opening remarks he said:

First of all, there is the new convert’* joy. It is no tame thing to become A Christian. The most tremendous moment in a man’s life is wbeh fie surrenders himself to God. The grandest t me on the father’s homestead is when the boy comes back. »Tou have seen, perhaps, a man running for his physical liberty and the officers of the law after him, and you i-aw him escape, or afterward you heard the Judge had pardoned him, and how great was the glee of that rescued man; but it is a very tame thing that, compared with running for one’s everlasting life—the terrors of the law after him', but Christ coming in to oardon and bless, rescue and save, You remember Jthn Bunyan, in his great story, tells bow the pilgrim put nis fingers in his ears and ran, crying. “Life, life.'leternal life!” A pjor car-driver in th s city some years ago, after he had a struggle to support his family, suddeuly was informed that a large inheritance Was his, and there whs joy amounting to bewilderment, but that is a small ihiug compared with tlje experience of one when he has put in his hands the title deed to the joys, the raptures, the splendors of heaven. Oh, it is no tame thing to become 'a Curistian. It is a merry making. It is the killing of the fatted calf. It is jubilee. You know the Bible never compares it “to a fureral, but always compares it to something bright. It is more apt to be compared to a banquet than anything else, it is compared in in the Bible to the water—bright, flashing wrter- to the morning, ro eate, tireworked, mountain-transfigured morning. I wish I could to day take all the B ble expressions about pardon and peace and life and com tort and hope and heaven, and twist them into one garland, and put it on the brow of the* humblest child of God in this assemblage. and cry: “Wear it, wear it now, wear it forever, son of God, daughter of the Lord God Almighty.” Oh, the joy of the new convert! Oh, the gladness of the Christian service!

J ust pass over from those tame joys in wlach joil are indulging— joys of this world—into the raptures of tde tiospel. L’he world can not satisfy you; you have found that out Alexander longing for other worl.-s to conquer, and yet drowncii m lub owu bottle. Byron whipped hy disquietudes around the world; Voltaire cursing his own soul while all the ttreetjj of Paris were applauding him; Henry Li, c nsumingwith hatred against poor Thomas a Becket - all illustrations, Oi the fact that this world cannot make a rnan happy. The very man who poisoned the pommel of the saddle oh which Queen Elizabeth rode shout-d in .he street, "God save the Queen!” One moment the world applauds and the next moment the world anathematizes. Oh, come over into this greater joy, this sublime solace, this magnificent beatitude. Oh, it is a great religion to live by, and it is a great religion to die by. There is only one heart throb between you and that jeiigion this morning. Just look iuto the face of your pardoning God and surrender yourself for time and for eternity, and H*- is yours, and heaven is yours, and all is yours. Some of vou like the young man of the text, have gone far astray. 1 know not the history, but you knew it, you know it. W hen a young man went forth into life the fegend says, his guardian angel went forth with him, and getting into a field, the guarding angel swept a circle clear around where the young man stood. It was a circle of virtue and honor, and he must not step Devond that circle. Armed foes came down, but were obliged to halt at the circle—they could not pass. But one day a temptress, with diamonded hand, stretched forth and crossed that circle with the hand, and the tempted soul took it and by that fell grip was brought beyoud-the circle and died. S ime of you have stepped beyond that circle. Would you not like this day by the grace of God to step bad?. This I say to you, is your hour of salvation If a man does not get to heaven it is because he will not go there. No difference the color, no difference the history, no difference the antecedents, no difference the surroundings, no difference the : sin. When the white horses of Christ’s victory are brought out to celebrate the eternal triumph you may ride one of them, and as Goa is greater than all. His joy is greater, and when a soul comes back there is in His heart the surging of an infinite ocean of gladness, and to express that gladness it takes all the rivers of pleasure, and all the thrones .of romp, and all the ages of eternity. It is a joy deeper than all depth, and higher than all heigth, and wider than all width, and vaster than all immensity. It overtops, it undergirds, outweighs all the united Splendor and joy of tue universe. Who can tell what God’s joy is? * You remember reading the story of a King who on same great day of festivity scatiered silver and gold among the people and Bent val uable presents to his courtiers; but methinks when a soul comes back God is so glad that to express His joy He flmgs out, new worlds into space and kinchgs up new suns and rolls among the whfe-robed anthems of the redeemed a greater hallalujah, while with a voice that reverberates among the mountains of frankincense and is echoed back from the everlasting gates He cries: “This, My son, was dead, and he is alive again.”, I notice also that when a prodigal comes home there is the joy of the ministefß of religion. Oh, it is a grand thing to preach this Gospei. I know there has been a great deal said about the trials and hardships of the Christian ministry. I wish koim.body would writer a good, rousing book about the joys of the Christian miaistrv. Since I entered the profession 1 have seen more of the goodness pf God than I /will be able to celebrate in all eternity. I know some boast about their equilibrium, and they not break down with emotion; but ! confess to you p'ainly that when I see a man coming to God and giving up his sin 1 feel in body, mind and soul a transport. When I see a man who is bound hand and foot in evil habit emancipated I rejoice over it as though it were my own emancipation. Wbe’a to-day incur comtnuatoi serdo such •.hrongs of y rcfhg and old stind at t less

altars, and in the presence of heaven and earth and belt attest their* allegiance to Jesus Christ, I feel a joy something akin to that which the A po-tle describes when be says: * Whether in the body 1 can not tell,'wliether of the body I can not tell; God knoweth all.” •>Oh, have not ministers a right to rejoice vyhen a prodigal comes home? They blew the trumpet, and ought they not to be glsd of the gathering of the host? They pointed to the full sup' ply, and ought they not to rejoice when souls pant as the hart for the water brooks? They came forth saying: “All things are now ready;” ought they not to rejoice when the prodigal Bits down at the banquet? Life insurance men will all tell you ihat ministers of relifion as a class live longer than any other, tis confirmed by the statistics of all those who calculate upnn the human longevity. Why is ii? There is mi re dratt upon the nervous system than in any other profession, and their toil is most exhausting. I have seen ministers kepton miserable stipends by parsimonious congregations, who wondered at the dullness ol the sermons, when the men of God were perplexed almost to' death by questionSof livelihood, and had not enough nutritious food to keep any fire in their temperament. No luel, no tire, I have sometimes seen the inside of the life of many of the American clergymen —never accepting their hospitality, because they can not ass it; but 1 have seen them struggle on with salaries of SSOO and S6OO a year—the average less, than that-their struggle well depicted by the Western missionary, who says in a letter; “Than you for your last remittance. Until it came we had not any meat i in our house for one year, and all last winter, our children wore their summer clothes.” And these men of God I fiud in difierent parts of the land struggling against annoyances and exasperations innumerable; some of them week alter week entertaining agents who have maps to sell, and submitting themselves to all styles of annoyance, and yet without comp jaint, and cheeriul of soul. How do you account for the fact that these life insurance men tell us that ministers, as a class, live longer than any others? It is because of the ’ joy of their work, the joy of the harvest-field, the jov of greeting prodigals home to their Father’s house. Then, we are in'sympathy with all innocent hilarities, *We can en,oy a hearty song, and we pap b? merry with the merriest; but tfßhse ol us who have toiled in the service are ready to testify that all these joys are tame compared to the satisfaction of seeing men enter the kingdom of God, The great eras of every minister are the outpourings of the Holy Ghost, and 1 thank G*d 1 have seen eighteen of them. Thank God, thank God! I notice, also,when the prodigal comes back, all earnest Chris ians rejoice. If you stood on Montauk Point and there was a hurricane at sea, and it was blowing toward the shore,and a vessel crashed into the rocks and you saw people get ashore in the life boats, and the very last man got on the rocks in safety, you could not control jour joy. And it is a glad time when the Church of God sees men who are tossed on the ocean of their sins plant their feet on the rock Christ JeBUS.

Oh, when prodigals come home just hear those Christians sing! Just hear those Christians prayl It is not a stereotyped supplication that we have heard over and over again for twenty years, but a putting of the case in the hands of God with an importunate pleading. No long prayers. Men never pray at great length unless they have nothing to say and their hearts are hard and cold. All the prayers that were in the Bible that were answered were short prayers: “God be merciful to me a sinner.” “Lord, that I may receive my sight.” “Lord, save me or I perish.” The longest prayer, Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the Temple, less than eight minutes in length, according to the ordinary rate of enunciation.

And just hear them pray, now that the prodigals are coming home. Just see them shake hands. No putting forth of the four tips of the fingers in a formal way, but a hearty grasp, where the muscles of the heart seem to clench the fingers of on? hand around the other hand. And then see those Christian faces, how illuminated they are. And see that old man get up and, with the same voice that he sang fifty years ago in the old country meeting house, say: “Now, Lord, lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” Oace more I remark that when the prodigal gets back the inabitants o. heaven keep festival. lam very certain of it. If you have never seen a telegraphic chart you have no idea how many cities are connected together and how many lands. Nearly all the neighborhoods of the earth seem articulated and news flies from city to city and .from continent to continent. But more rapid l jvffo the tidings from earth to heaven, and when a prodigal returns it is announced before the throne of God. And if these bouls this morning should enter the kingdom there would be some one in the heaven'y kingdom to say: “That’s my father,” “That’s my mother,” “That’s my son,” “That’s my daughter,” “That’s my friend,” “That’s the one I used to pray for, “That’s the one for whom I wept so many tears,” and one soul would say, “Hosanna!” and another soul would say, “Hallelujah!” At the banquet of Lucullus sat Cicero, the orator; at the Macedonian festival sat Philip, the conqueror; at the/Grecian banquet sat Socrates, the philosopher; but at our Father’s table sit all the returned prodigals, more than conquerors. The table is so wide its leaves reach across seas and across lands. Its gqests are the .redeemed of earth and the glorified of heaven. The ring of God’s forgiveness on every hand, the robe of a Savior’s righteousness adroop from every shoulder. The wine that glows in the cups is from the bowls of ten thousand sacraments. Let all the, rrdeemed of earth and all the glorified of heaven rise and, with gleaming chalice, drink to the return ot a thousand prodigals. Sing! sing! sing! “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive' blessing and riches and honor and glory and power, World without endl” ' 1