Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 November 1889 — TALMAGE IN ROME. [ARTICLE]

TALMAGE IN ROME.

c The Brooklyn Divine Preaches Under the Very Shadows of St. Peters. “I must Also See Borne," Was the Theme of Footsteps of the Apostle Paul—A Full Beport _____ Ten days after writing his letter onboard the steamer city pf Paris, announcing his departure for the Holy Land, Rev. T. De Witt Talmage spoke to a large congregation in the city of Rome, from the text, Acts 49*21: *T must also sec Rome," 1 A full report of the sermon follows: Here is Paul’s itinerary. He was a traveling or circuit preacher. He had been mobbed and insulted, and the more good ho did the worse the world treated him. Btit ho went right on. Now he proposes to go to Jerusalem and says: “After that I must also see Rome." Why did he want to visit this wonderful city in which I am today permitted to stand i “To preach ■the Gospel,” you answer. No doubt ofit, hut. there-were other reason* why he - wanted to see Rome. A man of Paul's intelligence and classic taste had fifty other reasons for wanting to see it., Your Colosseum was at that time in process of erection, and ho wanted to see it. The Forum was even then an old structure, and the eloquent apostle wanted to see that building in which eloquence had so often thundered and wept. Over the Appian \\ ay the triumphal processions had already marched for hundreds of years, and he wanted to see that. The Temple of Saturn was already an antiquity, and he wanted to see that. The architecture of the world renowned city, be wanted to see that. The places associated with the triumphs, the cruelties, the disasters. the wars, the military genius, the poetic' and the rhetorical fame of this great city, he wanted to see them. A man like Paul, so many sided, so sympathetic, so emotional, so full of analogy, could not have been indiffereut to the antiquities and the splendors which move every rightly organized | human being, And with what thrill of inI terest he walked these streets, those only [ who for the first timo like ourselves enter I Rome can imagine. If the inhabitants of I all Christendom were gathered into one plain, and it were put to them which tjyo cities they wouid a >ove all others wish to see, the: vast majority of them would- votoJerusaleni and Rome. So we can understand something of the record of my text and its surroundin cs when it says, Paul purposed in the spirit when he liai passed through Macedonia and Achaia to go to Jerusalem, saying: “After that I must also see Rome." As sorno of | you are aware, with my family and only lor the purpose of what we can learn, and for the good 'we can get, 1 am on the way to Palestine. Since leaving Brooklyn. N. Y., this is the first place wo have stopped. Intermediate citios are attractive, bufc we have visited them in other years, and we hastened on, for 1 said before starting that l while 1 was going to see Jerusalem I must also see Rome, v, hy do 1 want to see it! Because I want, by visiting regions associated with the gre t apostle to the Gentiles, to have iffy faith in Christianity confirmed. There are those who will go through large expenditure to have their faith weakened, in my native land I have known persons of very limited means to pay fifty cents or a dollar to hear a lecturer prove that our Christian religion is a myth, a dream, a cheat, a lie. On the contrary, I will give all the thousands of dollars that this journey of my family will cost to have additional evidence that our Christian relieion is an authenticated crandeur, a solemn, a joyous, a rapturous, a stupendous, a magn.fi ent fact. So I want to see Rome. I want you to show me the places connected with Apostolic min stry. I have heard that, in your city and amla its surroundings, apostles suffered and died for Christ’s sake. My common sense tells me that people do not die for the sake of a falsehood. They may practice a deception for purposes of gain but put the sword to their heart, or arrange the halter aro .nd their neck, or kindle the fire around their feet, aud they would say my life is wo. th more than anything I can gain by losing it f near you have in this city, Paul s dungeon. Show it to mt. I must see Homo also. While lam interested in this city because of ter rulers or her citi eus who are m ighty in history for virtue or vice or talents, Romulus, and Cuiiguli, and Cin. innatus, and Vespasian and Oor.olanus, and Brutus, and a hundred others whose names are brigot with an exceed.nar brightness, or black with the deepest dye, most of all am I interested in this city hecause the preacher of Mars hill, and the defier of Agrippa, and the hero of the shipwrecked vessel in the breakers of Melita, and- the man who held higher than any one that tho world ever saw the torch of Resurlaction, lived,and preached, and was massacred hero. Show me every place connected with his memory. 1 must also see Rome. But my text suggests that in Paul there was the inquisitive and curious spirit. Had my text only meant that he wanted to \ preach here he would have said so. Indeed, in another place, he de dared: “I am ready to preach tho Gospel to you who are at Rome also.” But. my text suggests a sight ' seeing. This man who had been under Dr. J Gamaliel had no Jack of phraseology, and j was used to sa.\ ing exactly what he meant, and he said: “I must ' also see Rome.” There is such a thing as Christian curiosity. Paul | had it and some of us have it. About other people’s business I have no curiosity, j About ail th it can confirm my faith in the Christian religion and the world’s salvation and the soul s future happiness, l am full j of an nil absorbing, all compelling curiosity.-f Paul bad a great curiosity about the next ; world, and so have we. 1 hope somo day, | by the grace of God, to go over and soe for I myself; but not now. No well man, no i prospered man, I think, wants to go now. j But the time will c une, I think, when I shall go over. 1 want, to seo what they do I there, and 1 want to see how they do it. I j do not, want to be looking through tho gates ! ajar forever. I want them to sw.ng wide ■ open. There are ten thoasan i tnings I want ex plained -übout you, about myse f, about the government of th s world, about God, j about everything. We st irt in a plain path of what we know, nnd in a mluute come up against a higi wall of what we do not know. I wonder how it looks over there. Somebody tells me it is like a paved city—Davea with god; and another m n tells me it is like a fountain, and it is Tike a tree, and it is Hire a triumphal proc ssioa; and the next min I mtet tells me it is all figurative. Ire illy waiit to know, after the body is resurrected,What they wear and vvliat they cat; and I li ive an imin asurablo curio itjr to know what it is' and how it is, and where it is. Columbus risked his life to fiud the American continent, and sh 11 wo shudder to go out on a voyage of discovery-which »h;i 11 reveal a vaster and more brilliant John Franklin risked his life to find a passage between lueb rgs, and shall we dread to fi id a pass ge to eternal summer t Xen in Switzerland travel up lo the heights of the Matterhorn, with alpefinoek, ant guides, and rockets, and rones, and, getting half way up, stumble and full down in a horrible massacre. They just wanted to say they had been on tbe tops of those high peaks. And shall we fear

to go out for the ascent of the eternal hills which start a thousand miles beyond where stop the highest peaks of the Alps, and when in that ascent there is no peril! A man doomed to die stepped on the scaffold, and said in jqy: “Now, in ten minutes I will know the great secret.” One minute after the vital functions ceased, the little child that died last night knew more than EauL hlmself" before he died: Friends, the exit from this world, or death, if you please to call it, to the Christian is glorious explanation. It is demonstration. It is illumination. It is Sunburst. It is the opening of all the, windows. It is shutting lip the catechism of doubt, and the unrolling of all the scrolls' of positive and accurate information. Instead of standing at the foot of tho ladder and looking up, it is standing atthe top of the ladder and looking down. It is the last mystery taken out of botany and geology and astronomy and theology. Oh, will it not be grand to Have all quertions answered? The perpetually recurring interrogation point changed for tho mark of exclamation. All riddles solved. Who will fear to go out on that discovery, when all the questions are to be decided which we havo been discussing ail our lives? Who shall not clap Uis hands in the 'anticipation of that blessed country, if it be no better than through curiosity? As this Paul of my text did not suppress his' curiosity, we need not suppress ours. Yes, I have an unlimited curiosity about all religious things, ami as this city of Romo was so intimately connected with apostolic times, the incidents of which emphasize and explain and augment the Christian religion, you will not take it as an evidence of a prying spirit, but as theoutbursting of a Christian curiosity when I say I must also see Rome. Our desire to visit this city is also intensified by the fact that wa want to be confirmed in the fealin g that human life is brief, but its work lasts for centuries, indeed forever. Therefore show us the antiquities of old Rome, about which we have been reading for a lifetime, but never seen. In our beloved America, wo have no antiquities. A church eighty years old overawes us with its age. We have in America some cathedrals hundreds and thousands of years old, but they are in Yellowstone park, or Californian canon, and their architecture and masonry wore by the omnipotent God. We want to sea-the buildings, or ruins of oid buildings, that were erected hundreds and thousands of years ago by human hands; They lived forty or seventy years, but the arches they lifted, the puintiazs they penciled, the sculpture they chiseled, the roads they laid out, 1 understand, are yet to bo seen, and wo want you to show them to us. I cam hardly wait until Monday morning. I must also seo Rome. Wo want to bo impressed with the fact that w.iat men do on a small scale or large scale lasts a thousand years, lasts I forever, that we build for eternity and- that L we do so in a very short sp ice of time. God is the only old living presence. But it is ; an old age without any of the infirmities or ; liniitatious of old age. There is a passage of Scripture which speak 3of the birth of ' the mount lias, for there was a time when the Andes were born, and the Pyrenees were borne, and the Sierra Nevada 3 were I born, but before tbe biftil of those moun- j tains the Bible tells us, God was born, aye j was never bom at all, because he always 1 existed. Psalm xc, 2: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and tho world, even from everlasting; to everlasting, thou art God.” How short is human life, what antiquity attaches to its worth! How ever- i lasting is God! Show us the antiquities,-], the things that Were old When America i was discovered, old when Paul went up and down these streets sight seeing, old ! when Christ was born. I must, I must also see Rome!

Another reason for our visit t,o this city is that we want to see the places where the mightiest intellects aa! the greatest natures wrought lor our Christian religion. We have been told in America by some people of swollen heaas that the Christian religion is a pusillanimous thing, good for children under 7 years of age and small brained people, but not for the intelligent and swarthy minded. We have haard of your Constantine the mighty, who pointel his army to the cro3s, saying: “By this conquer,” If there be anything here connected with his reign or his military history, show it to us. The mightiest intellect of the ages was the author of my text, and, if for the Christian religion he was willing to labor and suffer and die, there must bo something exalted and sublime aud tremendous in it; and show me every place he visited, and show me if you can where he was tried, and which of your roads leads out to Ostia, that I may see where he went out to die. We expect before we finish this journey to see Lake Galilee and the pla :os where Simon Peter aud Andrew fished, and perhaps wo may drop a net or a hook and line into those waters ourselves, but when following the track of those lesser apostles I will iearn quite another lesson. I want while in this city of Rome to study the religion of the brainiest of the apostles. 1 want to follow, as far as we can trace it, the tra3k of this great intellect of my text who wanted to see Roue also. He was a logician, he was a metaphisician, he was an all conquering orattr, he w.is a poet of the highest type. Ho hid a nature that could swamp the leading men of his own day, and, hurled against the Sanhedrim, he made it tremble. He learned all he could get in the school of his native village, then he had gone to a higher school, and there had mastered the Greek and the Hebrew and perfected himself iu belles lettres, until, in after years, ho astounded the Cretaus, and the Corint liaus, and the Athenians, by quotations from their own authors. I have never found anything in Carlyle or Goethe, or Herbert Spencer that could compare in strength or beauty wth Paul’s epistles. I do not think thero is anything In the writings of Sir William Hamilton that shows such mental discipline as you find in Paul’s argument about justication ana resurrection. I have not found anything in Milton finer in the way of imagination than I can find in Paul’s illustrations drawn from the amphitheatre. There was nothing in Robert Emmet pleading for his life, <sr in Edmund Burke arraigning Warren Hastings in Westminster Hall, that compared with tho scene in the court room when; before robea officials, Paul bowed and began his speech, saying; “I think myself happy, King Agrippa, becauso 1 shall answer for myself this day.” I repeat, that a religion that eati nantm-a a man like that must have some power in it. It is time our wiseacres stooped talking as though all the brain of tho world were opposed to Christianity. \\hcre Paul leads, we can afford to follow. lam glad to know that Christ has, In the different ages of the world, had in h s disciploship a Mo,:art and a Handel in Music.; a Raphael and a Reynolds in painting; an Angelo and a Canova in sculpt ure: a Rush and a Harvey in medicine; a Grotius and a Washington in statesmanship ; a Blackstone, a Marshall and a Kent in the law; and the time will cumewben the religion of Christ will conquor all tho observatories and universities, and p illosophy, will, through her tele-s<-oi>e, behold the morning st.nr of Jesus, and in her laboratory see that "all things work together for good,” and with her geological hauimor discern tho “Rock-of Ages." Oh, instead of cowering and shiv-

ering when tbe skeptic stands before ns* and t Iks of religion as though it were a pusillanimous thing—instead of that, let us take out our sew testament and read the story of Paul at Rome, or come and see this city for ourselves, and learn that it could have been no Weak Gospel that actuated such a man, but that it is an all conquering Gospel. Ayed for all ages the power of"God~andTteß~ wisdom of God unto salvation. Men, brethren and fat hers! I thank you for this opportunity of preaching the gospel to you that are at Rome also. The churches of America salute you. Upon you who are like us, strangers in Rome, I pray the protecting and journeying care of God. grace mercy and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. After tarrying bere a few days we resume our journey for Palestine, and we shall never meet again, either in Italy, or America, or what is called the holy Land, but there is a holier land, and there we may meet, saved by the grace that in the same way saves Italian and American, and there in that supernai clime, after embracing him who, by his sufferings on the hill back of Jerusalem, made our heaven possible, and given salution to our own kindred whose departure broke our hearts on earth, we shall, I think, seek out the traveling preacher and mighty hero of the t xt who marked out his journey through Macedonia ana Achaia to Jerusalem, saying: “After I have been there, I must also see Rome."