Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 June 1889 — CHRIST THE LORD. [ARTICLE]

CHRIST THE LORD.

FACT'S WORTHY OF CONSIDER ATION BY THE YOUTH. - - —~ i <* How Christ Grew In Wisdom and Waxed Strong In Spirit—Great Responsibility of Parents. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at the Brooklyn Tabernacle last Sunday. Subject: “Christ the Village Lord.” Text: Luke ii., 40. He said: About Christ as a village lad I speak. There isfor the most part a silencemure than eighteen centuries long about Christ between infancy and manhoodi What kind of a boy was he? Was he a genuine boy at all, or did there settle down upon him from the start all the intensities es martyrdom? We have on this subject only a little guessing, a few surmises, and here and there an unim* portant “perhaps.” Concerning what bounded that boyhood on both sides we have whole libraries of books and whole galleries of canvas and sculpture. Yet by l three conjoined evidences I think we can come to as accurate an Ideaof wbat Ghrißt was as a bov as we can of what Christ was as a man. First, we have the brief Bible acconnt. Then we have the prolonged account of what Christ was at 30 years of age. Now, you have only to minify that account somewhat and you find what be was at 10 years of age. Temperaments never change. A sanguine tenmerament never becomes a phlegmatic temperament. A nervous temperament never becomes a lymphatic temperament. Religion changes one’s affections and ambitions, but it is the same old temperament acting in a different direction. As Christ bad no religious change, he was as a lad what he was as a man, only on not so large a Beale. When all tradition, and all history represents him as a blonde with golden hair, I know he was in boyhood a blonde. We have, besides an uninspired book that was for the first three or four centuries after Christ’s appearance received by many as inspired, and which gives a prolonged account of Christ’s boyhood. Borne of it may be true, most of it may be true, none of it may be true. It may be partly built on facts, or by the passage of the ages, some real facts may have been distorted. But because a book is not divinely inspired we are not therefore to conclude that there are not true things in it. But what right have you to Bay that Christ did not perform miracles at 1C years pL age as well as str3o?~lle was in boyhood as certainly as divine as in manhood. Then while a lad he - must have had the power to work miracles,whether he did or did not work them. When, having reached manhood, Christ turned water into wine that was said to be the beginning of miracles. But that may mean that it was the beginning of that series of manhood miracles. In a word, I tnink that the New Testament is only a small transcript of what Jesus did and said. Indeed, the Bible declares positively that if all Christ did and said were written the world would not contain the books. So we are at liberty to believe or reject those parts of the apocrvDhal Gospel which say that when the’ boy Christ with his mother passed a band of thieves he told his mother that two of them, Dumacbus and Titus by name, would be the two thieves who afterwards would expire on crosses beside him. Was that more wonderlul than some of Christ’s manhood prophecies? Or the uninspired story that the boy Christ made a fountain spring from the roots of a sycamore tree so that his mother washed his coat in the Btream—was that more unbelievable than the manhood miracle that changed common water into a marria je beverage? Or the uninspired story that two, kick children were recovered by bathing in the water where Christ had washed? Was that more wonderlul than the manhood miracle by which the woman twelve years a complete invalid should have been made straight by touching the fringe of Christ’s coat? In other words, while I do not believe that any of the so-called apocryphal New Testament is inspired, ( believe much of it is true; just as I believe a thousand books, none of which are divinely inspired. Much of it was just like Christ. Just as certain as the man Christ was the most of the time getting men out of trouble, I think that the boy Christ was the most of the time getting boys out of trouble. I have declared to you this day a boys’ Christ. And the world wants such a one. He did not sit around moping over what was to be, or what was. From the way in which natural objects enwreathed themselves into his sermoas after he had become a man I conclude that there was not a rock or a hill or a cavern or a tree for miles around that he was not familiar with in chilhood. He had cautiously felt his way down into the caves, and had with lithe and agile limb gained a poise on many a high tree top. His boyhood was passed among grand scenery, as most all the great natures have passed early life among the mountains. Our Lord’s boyhood was passed in a neighborhood 1,200 feet above the level of the sea and surrounded by mountains 500 or 600 feet still higher. Before it couK shine on the village where this boy slept the sun had to climb far enough up to look over bills that held their heads far aloft. From yonder height his eye at one sweep took in the mighty scoop of the, vallevs and with another sweep took in the Mediteranean Sea, and you hear the grandeur of the cliffs and the surge of the great waters in his matchless sermonology. One day I see that divine boy, the wind flurrying his hair over his sun-browned forehead, standing on a hill top looking off Lake Tiberias, on which at one time, according to profane history, are, not four hundred but four thousand shins. Authors have taken pains to say that Christ was not affected by these surroundings, and that he from within lived outward and-independent of circumstances. So far from that being true he was the most sensitive being that ever walked the 6arth, and if a pale invalid’s weak finger could not touch his robe without strength going out from him, these mountains ana seas could not have touched his eve without irradiating his entire nature with their magnificence. I warrant that he had mounted and explored all the fifteen hills around Nazareth. L .» h^, u * th Btud 7 ia R the sky between the hills Chriat had noticed the weather signs, and that a crimson akv at night meant dry weather next day, ‘ and that a crimson sky iu tho morning m>m

wet weather before night. And how beautifully He made useof it in years as He drove down UDon the pestiferous Pharisee and Sadducee by crying out: “When it is evening ye say it will be fair weather for tne sky is red, and in the morning it will be foul weather to-day, for the sky is Ted and lowering. Oye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky, but can ye not discern the signs of the times?” By day, as every boy has done, He watched the batn yard fowl at sight of overswinging hawk cluck her chickens under wing, and in after years He said: “0, Jerusalem! Jerusalem! How often would I .have. gathered thee as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wing!” By night He has noticed his mother by the plain candle light which, as ever and anon it was snuffed and the removed wick put down on the candlestick, beamed hrightly through all the lamily sitting room as his mother was mending his garments that had been torn daring the day’s wanderings among the rocks or bushes, and years afterward it alt came out in the simile of the greatest sermon ever preached: “Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but in a candlestick, and it giveth light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine.” Some time when his mother in the autumn took out the clothes that had been put away for the summer he noticed how the moth miller flew out and the coat dropped apart ruined and useless, and so twenty years after he enjoined: “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust can corrupt.” His boyhood spent among birds and flowers they ail caroled and bloomed again fifteen years after as he cries out: “Behold the fowls of the air.” “Consider the lflies.” A great storm one day during Christ’s boyhood, blackened the heavens and angered the rivers. Perhaps standing in the door of the carpenter’s shop he watched it gathering louder wilder until two cyclones, one sweeping down from Mt. Carmel, met in the Valley of Esdraelon,and two houses are caught in the fury, and crash goes the one and triumphant stands the other.and noticed that one had shifting sand for a foundation and the other an eternal rock for basis; and twenty years after he built the whole scene into a peroration of flood and whirlwind that seized his audience and lifted them into the heights of sublimity with the two great arms of pathos and terror. Yes, from the naturalness, the simplicity, the freshness of his parables and similes and metaphors in manhood discourse, I know that he had been a boy ol the fields, and had bathed in the streams and heard the nightingale’s call, and broken through the flowery hedge and looked out of the embrasures of the fortress, and drank from the wells and chased the butterflies, which travelers say have always been one of the flitting beauties of that landscape, and talked with the strange people fiom Damascus and Egypt and Sapphorisand Syria, who in caravans or on foot passed through his neighborhood, the dogs barking at their approach at Sundown. As atterward he was a perfect man, in the time of which I speak he was a perfect boy, with the spring of a boy s foot, the sparkle of a boy’s eye, the rebound of a boy’s life, and just the opposite of those juveniles who sit around morbid and unelastic, old men at ten. I warrant he was able to take his own part and to take the part of others. At ten years he was in sympathy with the underlings as he was at 30 or 33. I want no further inspired or uninspired information to persaude me that he was a splendid boy, a radiant boy, the grandest, holiest, mightiest boy of all ages. Hence, I commend him as a boy’s Christ. What multitudes between 10 and 15 years have found him out as the one just suited by his own personal experience to help any boy. Let the world look out how it treads on a boy, for that very moment it treads on Christ. You strike a boy, you strike Christ; you insult a boy, you insult Christ; you cheat a bov, you cheat Christ. It is an awful and’ infinite mistake to come as far as manhood without a Christ when here is a boy Ctirist, That was one reason, I suppose, that Jonathan Edwards, afterward the greatest American logician and preacher of his time, oecam i a Christian at 7 years of age; and Robert Hall, who afterwards shook Christendom with his sacred eloquence, became a Christian at 12 years of age; and Isaac Watts, who divided with Charles Wesley the dominion of sacred song, became a Christian at 9 years of age; and if in any large religious assembly it were asked that all the men knd women who learned to love Christ before they were 15 years of age would please lift their right hand, there would be enough hands lifted to wave a coronation. The temporal and eternal destiny of the frost of the inhabitants of this earth is decided before 14 years of age. Behold the Nazareth Christ, the village Qhrist, the country Christ, the boy Chrißt. But having shown you the divine lad in the fields, I must Bhow you him in the mechanic’s shop. Joseph, his father, died very early, immediately after the famous trip to the Temple, and this lad not only had to support himself, but support his mother, and what that is some of you know. There is a royal race of boys on earth now doing the same thing. They wear no crown. They have no purple robe adroop from their shoulders. The plain chair on which they sit is as much unlike a throne as anything you can imagine. Bat God knows what they are doing and through what sacrifices they go, and through all eternity God will keep paying them for their filial behavior. They shall get full measure of reward, the measure pressed down, shaken together and running over. They have their example ip this hoy Christ taking care of nis mother. He had been taught the carpenter’s trade bv his father. The boy had done the plainer work at the shop while his father had put on the finishing touches of (be work. The boy also cleared away the chips and blocks and shavings. He helped to hold the different pieces of work while the father joined them. To be a carpenter \in Christ’s boyhood days meapt to make plows, yokes, shovels, wagons, tables, chairs, sofas, houses and almost every thing that was made. Fortunate was It that the boy had iearsSd the trade, for, when the head of the family dies, it is a grand thing to have the child Able to take care of himself. and help take care of others. Now that Joseph, his father, is dead, and the responsibility of family support comes down on this boy, I hear from morning to night his hammer pounding, his saw vacillating, his ax descending, his gimlets boring, and standing amid the dost and debris of the shop I find the per-

spiration gathering on his temples and notice the fatigue of his arm, and as he stops a moment to rest I see him panting, his hand on his side from exhaustion. Now he goes forth in the morning loaded with implements of vOrk heavier than any modern kit of tools. Under the tropical sun he swelters. Lifting, pulling, adjusting, cleaving, splitting alt day long. At nightfall he goes home to the plain supper provided by his mother and sits down too tired to talk. Work! work! work! Yon can not tell Christ anything now about blistered hands or aching ankles or bruised fingera or stiff joints or rising in the morning as tired as when you laid down; While yet a boy He knew it all. He felt it all. He suffered it ail. The boy carpenter! The boy wagon-makei! The boy house builder! Oh, Christ, we have teen Thee when full grown in Police Court Room, we have seen Tbee when full grown thou were assassinated on Golgotha, but, Oh Christ, let all the weary artisans and mechanics of the earth see Thee while yet undersized and arms not yet muscularized and with the undeveloped strength of juvenescence trying to take Thv father’s place in gaining the livelihood I*9r the family. But, having seen Christ the boy of the fields and the boy of the mechanic’s shop, I show you a more marvelous scene—Christ, the smooth-browed hid among the long-bearded, white-haired, high-foreheaded ecclesiastics of the Temple. Hundreds of thousands of strangers had come to Jerusalem to keep a great religious festival. After 'the hospitable homes were crowded with visitors the tents were spread all around the city to shelter immense throngs of strangers. It was very easy among the vast throngs coming and going to lose a child. More than 2,0. 0,000 people have been known to gather at Jerusalem for that national feast. No wonder that amid the crowds at the time spoken of Jesus the boy was lest. His parents, knowing that he was mature enough to take care of himself, are on their way home without any anxiety supposing that their boy is coming with some of the groups. But after awhile they suspect he.is lost, and, with flushed cheek and terrorized look, they lush this way and that. And 10, after three days they discovered him in the great Temple, seated among the mightiest religionists of all the world. The walls of no other building ever looked down on such a scene. A child 12 years old surrounded by septuagenarians, he asking his own questions and answering theirs. What can this 12-year lad teach them or what questions can he ask worthy of their cogitation? Ah, the hrstiimein all their lives these religionists have found their match and more than their match. Though bo young he knew all about that famous Temple under whose roof they held that most wonderful discussion of all history. He knew the meaning of every altar, of every sacrifice, of every golden candlestick, of every embroidered curtain, of every crumb of Bhew bread, of every drop of oil in that sacred edifice. He knew all about God. He knew all about man. He knew all about heaven, for He came from it. He knew ail about,this world, for He made it. He knew all worlds, for they were only the sparkling morning dewdrops on the lawn in Iront of His heavenly palace. But while 1 see the old theologians standing around the boy Christ, I am impressed as never before with the fact, that what theologians most want is more of childish simplicity. The world and the church have built up immense systems of theology. Half of them try to tell what God thought, what Goo planned, what Sou did five hundred million years before the small star on which we live was created. I have had many a sound sleep under sermons about the decrees of God and the eternal generation of the Sod, and discourses showing who Melchisidek waßu’t, and I give fair warning that if any minister ever begins a sermon on such a subject in my presence I will put my bead down on the pew in front and go into the deepest slumber I can reach. Wicked waste of time, this trying to scale the unscalable and fathom the unfathomable, while the nations want the bread of life and to be told how they can get rid of their sins and their sorrows. Why should you and Iperplex ourselves about the decrees of God. Mind your own business and God will take care of His. In the conduct of the universe i think He will somehow manage to get along without us. If you want to love and serve God, and be good and useful and get to heaven, I warrant you that nothing which occurred eighteen hundred quintillion of years ago will hinder you a minute. It is not the decrees of God that do us any harm. It is our own decrees of sin and folly. You need not go any farther back in history than about 1,856 years. You see, this is the year 1889. Christ at about 33 years of age. You subtract 33 from 1889 and that makes it only 1,856 years. That is as far back as you need to go. Something occurred on that day under an eclipsed sun that sets us all forever free, if with our whole heart and life we accept the tremendous prosier. Do not let the Presbyterian Church or the Methodist Church or the Lutheran Church or the Baptist Church or any of the other evangelical churches spend any time in trying to fix up old creeds, all of them imperfect as every thing man does is imperfect. Some, referring to Christ, have exclaimed: Ecco Dens! Behold the God. Others have exclaimed: Ecco homo! Behold the Man! Bat to-day in conclusion of my subject, l cry: Ecco adolescena! Behold the Boy!