Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 January 1890 — TALMAGE IN PARIS. [ARTICLE]

TALMAGE IN PARIS.

The Celebrated Brooklyn Clergyman on His Homeward Way. The Extermination ofßighteousness is an Impossibility —When Han is Good He is Apt to be Very Good and Vice Versa. Rev. T. De Witt Talmage preached in Paris last Sunday. He is making his way home, which he expects to reach in the early part of February. Dr, Talmage's text was: “Jehosheba, the daughter of King Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash the eon of 'Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king’s sons which were slain; and they hid him, even him from his nurse, in the bedchamber from Athaliah, so that he was not slain. And he was with her hid in the bouse Of tbe Lord six years.”—ll Kings, xi, 2, 8. He said: Graddmothers are more lenient with their children’s children than they were with their own. At forty years of age if discipline be necessary, chastisement is used, but at seventy, the grandmother, looking upon the misbehavior of the grandchild, is apologetic and disposed to subs dtute confectionery for whip. There is nothing more beautiful than this mellowing of old age toward childhood. Grandmother takes out her pocket handkerchief and Wipes her spectacles and puts them * on, and looks down into the faee of her mischievous and rebellious descendant, and says: ‘T don’t think be meant to do it; let him off this time; I’ll be responsible for his behavor in the . future.” My mother, with the second generation around her—a boisterous crew—said one day: “1 suppose they ought to be disciplined, but I can’t do it. Grandmothers are not. fit to bring up, grandchildren.” But here, in my text, we "have a grandmother of a. different hue. I have within a few days been at Jerusalem. where the occurrence of the text took place, and the whole scene came vividly before me while I was going over the site of the ancient temple andclimbing the towers of the king's palace. Here in the text it is old Athliah, tfie queenly murderess. She ought to have been honorable. Her father was a king. Her husband was a king. Her son was a king. And yet we find her plotting for the extermination Of the entire royal family, including her own grandchildren. The executioners’ Knives are sharpened. The palace is red with the blood of princes and princesses. On all sides are shrieks, and hands thrown up, and Struggle, and death groan. No mercy! Kill! Kill! Hut while the ivory floors of the palace run with carnage, and the whole land is under the shadow of a great horror, a fleet looted woman, a clergyman’s wife, Jehosheba by name, stealthily approaches the imperial nursery, seizes upon the grandchild that had somehow as yet escaped massacre, wraps it up tenderly but in haste, - snuggles it against her, flies down the palace stairs, her heart in her throat lest she be discovered in this Christian abduction. Get her out of the way as quick as you can, for she carries a precious burden, even a you ng king. With this youthful prize she presses into the room of the ancient temple, the church of olden time, unwraps the young king and puts him down, sound asleep as he is, and unconscious of the peril that has been threatened; and there for six years ho is secreted in that church apartment. Meantime old Athaliah smacks her lips with satisfaction, and thinks that all the royal family are dead. But the s x years expire, and it is now time for young Joash to come forth and take the throne, and to push hack into disgrace and death old Athaliah. Tho arrangements are all made for political revolution. The military come and take possession of the temple, swear loyalty to the boy Joash and stand around for his defense. See the sharpened swords and the burnished shields! Everything is reudy. armed trauip of his defenders, scared at the vociferation of his admirers, is brought forth in full regalia. The scroll of authority is put iu his hands, the coropet of government is pat on his brow, and the people clapped, and waved, and huzzaed, and trumpeted. “..hat. is that?” said Athaliah. '“What is that sound over in the temple?” And she flies to see, and on her way they meet her and say: ‘‘Why, haven't you heard? You thought you had slain all the royal family, but Joash has come to °®lighk” Then the queenly murderess, frantic with rage, grabbed her mantle and tore it to tatters, and cried until she foamed at tho month: ‘‘You • 'have 'iio right, vp fern wu my graMBOiE rsir have no right to take the government from my shouldiera. Treason! Treason!” While she stood there crying that, the military started for her arrest, and she took a short cut turough a back door of temple, and ran through the royal stables; but the battle axes of the military fell on her in the barn yard, and for many a day, when the horses were being unloosed from the chariot, after drawing out young Joash, the fiery steeds would snort and rear passing the place, as they smelt the place of the carnage. The lirst thought 1 hand you from this subject is that the extermination of righteousness is an impossibility. When a woman is good, she is apt to be very good, and when she is bad, she is apt to be very bad, and this Athaliah was one of the latter sort, the would exterminate the last scion of the house of David, through whom Jesus was to come. There was plenty of w-ork for embalmers and undertakers. She would clear the land of all God fearing anil God loving people. She would put an end to everything that could in anywise interfere with her imperial criminality. She folds her hands and says: "The work is done; it is completely done ” Is it? In the swaddling clothes of that church uparlment are wrapped the cause of God, and the cause of good government. That is the scion of the house of David; it is Joash, the Christian reformer; it is Joash. the friend of God; it is Joash, tho demolisher of Haalitish idolatry. Rock him tenderly; nurse him gently. Athaliah,*you may kill allthe other children, but you cannot kill him. Eternal defenses are thrown all around him, and this clergyman’s . wife, Johosbeba, will snatch him up from the palace nursery, and will run up and down with him into tho house of the Lord, and there she will hide him for six yoars, and at the end of that time he will come forth for your dethronement and obliteration. Y ell, my friends, just as poor a botch does the world always make of extinguishing righteousness Superstition rises up and says; ‘Twill just put an end to pure religion.” Domition slew forty thousand Christians, Dio letiau slew eight hundred and forty four thousand Christiana And the scythe of persecution has been swung through all the ages, and the flames hissed, and the guillotine ehopiied, and the Hastile groaned; butdid the foes of Christianity exterminate it? Did they exterminate Aloan, the first British sacrifice; or Z.iinglius, the Swiss reformer; or John Oldcastle, the Christian nouleman; or Abdallah, tho Arabian m rtv f; or Annie Askew.or Sanders, or Cranmer? threat work of extermination they made or it Just at the time when they thought they had slain all the royal family of Jesus, some Joash would spring up and out, and take the throne of power, and wield a very scepter of Christian dominion.

Infidelity says: “I’ll Just exterminate the Bible,” and the Scriptures were thrown it to the street for the mob to trample on. and they were piled up in the public squares and set on fire, and mountain* of indignant contempt were hurled on -them, and learned universities decreed the Bible out of existence. Thomas Paine said: “In my ‘Age cf Reason’ I have annihilated the Scriptures. Your Washington is a pusillanimous Christian, but I am the foe of Bibles and of churches.” O, how many assaults upon that Word! All the hostilities that have ever been created on earth are not to be compared with the hostilities against that one book. Said one man, in his infidel desperation, to his wife; “You must not he reading that Bible,” and he snatched it away from her. And though in that Bible was a lock of hair of the dead child—the only child that God had ever given them—he pitched the book with its contents into the fire, and stirred it with the tongs, and spat on it, and cursed it, and said: “Susan, never have any more of that -damnable stuff here!” 1 How many individual and organized attempts have been made to exterminate that Bible 1 Have they done it? Have they exterminated the American Bible society? Have they exterminated the British and Foreign Bible society? Have they exterminated the thousands of Christian institutions, whose only object it is to multiply copies of the Scriptures, and throw them broadcast around the world? They have exterminated until instead of one or two copies of the Bible in our houses we have eight or ten, and we pile them up in the corners of our Sabbath school rooms, and send great boxes of them everywhere. If they get on as well as they are now on in the work of extermination, I do not know but that our children may live to see the millennium! Yea, if there should come a time of persecution in which all the known Bibles of the earth should be destroyed, all these lamps of light that blaze in our pulpits and in our families extinguished—in the very day that infidelity and sin should be holding a jubilee over the universal extinction, there would be in some closet of a backwoods church a secreted copy of the Bible, and this Joash of eternal literature would come out and come up and take the throne, and the Athaliah of infidelity and persecution would fly out the back door of the palace, and drop her miserable carcass under the hoofs of. the horses of the king’s stables. You cannot exterminate Christianity! You cannot killSJoaah! The second thought I hand you from my subject is, that there are opportunities in which we may save royal life. You know that profane history is replete with stories of strangled monarchs and of young princes who have been put out of the way. Here is the story of a young king saved. How Jehosheba, the clergyman’s wife, must have trembled as she rushed into the imperial nursery and snatched up Joash. How she hushed him, lest by his cry he hinder the escape. Fly with him! Jehosheba, you hold in your arms the cause of God and good government. Fail, and he is sluin. Succeed, and you turn the tide of the world’s history in the right direction. It seems as if between that young king and his assassin there is nothing but the frail arm of a woman. But why should we spend our time in praising this bravery of expedition when God asks the some thing of you and me? All around us are the imperiled children of a great King. They are born of Almighty parentage, and will come to a throne or a crown, if permitted. But sin, the old Athaliah, goes forth to the massacre. Murderous temptations are out for the assassination. Valens, tue emperor, was told that there was somebody in his realm who would usurp his throne, and that the name of the man who should be the usurper would begin with the letters T. H. E. O. D., and the edict went forth from tho emperor’s throne: “Kill everybody .whose name begins with T. H. E. O. D.” And hundreds and thousands were slain, hoping by that massacre to put an end to that one usurper. But sin is more terrific iu its denunciation, it matters not how you spell your name, you come under its knife, under its sworfl, under its doom, unless there he some omnipotent relief brought to the rescue. But, blessed be God, there is such a thing as delivering a royal soul. Who will snatch away Joash! This afternoon in your Sabbath school class, there will be a Prince of God—some one who may yet reign as king forever before the throne; there will he some one in your class who has a corrupt physical inheritance; there will be some one in your class who has a father and mother who do not know how to pray; there will be some one in your class who is destined to command in church or state—some Cromwell to dissolve a parliament, some Beethoven to touch the world’s harp strings, some John Howard to pour fresh air into the lazaretto, some Florence Nightingale to bandage the battle wounds, some Ajiss Dix to soothe the crazed braiu, some John Frederick Oberlin to educate the besotted, some David Brainard to change the Indian’s war whoop to a Sabbath song, some John Wesley to marshal three-fourths of Christendom, some John Knox to make queens turn pale, some Joash to demolish idolatry and strike for the kingdom of heaven. There are sleeping in your cradles by night, there are playing in your nurseries hy day, imperial souls waiting for dominion, and whichever side the cradle they get out will decide the destiny of empires. For each one of those children sin and holiness contend—Athaliah on the one side and Jehosheba on theother. But I hear people say: ‘‘What’s tho use of bothering children with religious instruction? Let them grow up and choose for themselves. Don’t interfere with their volition.” Suppose some onh had said to Jehosheba: “Don’t interfere with that .\oung Joash. Let him grow up and decide whether he likes the palace or not, whether he wants to be king or not. Don’t disturb his volition.” Jehosheba know right well that unless that dav the young king was rescued, he would never be rescued at all. 1 tell you, my friends, the reason we don’t reclaim ail our children from worldliness is because they begin too late. Parents wait until their children lie before they teach them the value of truth. They wait uutil their children swear before they teach them the importance of righteous conversation. They wait until their children are all wrapped up in this world before they tell them of a better world. Tod late with your prayers. Too late, with your discipline. Too late with your benediction. You put all care upon •your children between , twelve and eighteen. »by do you not put the chief care between four and nine? It is too late to repair a vessel when it has got out of the dry docks. It is too late to save Joash after the executioners have broken in May God arm us all for this work of snatching royal souls from death to coronation. Gan you imagine any subiimer work than this soul saving! That was wliat flushed Paul’s i heck with enthusiasm; that was what led Munson to risk his life amid uornesian cannibals; that was what sent Dr. A heel to preach under the consuming skies of China; that was what gave courage to Phocus in the Third century. \\ hen the military officers came to put him to death for Christ’s sake,he nut them to bed that they.might rest

while he himself went out, and in his own garden dug his grave, and then came back and said: “I am ready;” bat they were shocked at the idea of taking the life of their host. He said: “It is the will of God that I should die," and he Stood on the margin of his own grave and they beheaded hint You say it is a mania, a foolhardiness, a fanaticism. Rather would I call it a glorious self abnegation, the thrill of eternal satisfaction, the plucking of Joash from death, and raising him to coronation. The third thought I hand to you from my text is that the church of God is a good hiding place. When Jehosheba rushes into the nursery of the king and picked up Joash, what shall she do with him? Shall she take him to some room in the palace: No; for the official desperadoes will hunt through every nook and corner of that building. Shall she take him to the residence of some wealthy citizen? No; - that citizen would not dare to harbor the fugitive. But she has to take him somewhere. She hears the cry of the mob in the streets; she hears the shriek of the dying nobility; so she rushes with Joash unto the room of the temple, into the house of God, and then she puts him down. She knows that Athaliah and her wicked assassins will not bother the temple a great deal; they are not apt to go very much to church, and so she sets down Joash in the temple. There he will be hearing the songs of the worshipers year after year; there he will breathe the odor of the golden censers; in that secreted spot he will tarry, secreted until the six years have passed, and he comes to enthronement Would God that we were as wise as Jehosheba, and knew that the church of God is the Pest hid ing place. Perhaps our parents took us there in early days; they snatched us away from tlie world and hid us behind the baptismal fonts and amid the Bibles and the psalm, books. O, glorious in closure! We have been breathing the breath of the golden censers all the time, and we have seen the lamb on the altar and we have handled the phials which are the prayers of all saints, and we have dwelt under the wings of the . cherubim. Glorious inclosure! When my father and mother died, and the property was settled up, there was hardly anything left; but they endowed us with a property worth more than any earthly possession, because they hid us in the temple. And when days of temptation have come upon my soul 1 have gone there for shelter : and when assaulted of sorrows, I have gone there for comfort, and there I mean to live. I want, like Joash, to stay there until coronation. I mean to he buried out of the house of God. O men of the world outside there, be-, trayed, caricatured and clieated of the world, why do you come in through the broad, wide open door of Christian communion? I wish I could act the part of Jehosheba to-day, and steal you away from your perils and hide you in the temple. How few of us appreciate the fact that the ehureh of God is a hiding place. There are many people who put the church at so low a mark that they begrad je it everything, even the few dollars they give toward it. They make no sacrifices. They dole a little out of their surplusage. They pay their butcher’s bill, and they pay their doctor’s bill, and they pay their landlord, and they pay everybody but the Lord, and they come in at the last to pay the Lord in his church, and frown as they say: “There Lord, it is; if you will have it, take it—now take it, take it; send me a receipt in full, and don’t bother me soon again!” I tell you there is not more than one man out of a thousand that appreciates what the ehureh is. Where are the souls that put aside one-tenth for Christian institutions —one tenth of their income? Where are those who, having put aside that onetenth, draw upon it cheerfully? Why, it i 3 pull, and drag, and hold on, and grab, and clutch: and giving is an affliction to most people when it ought to be an exhilaration and a rapture. Oh, that God would remodel our souls on this subject, and that weYnight appreciate the house of God asthe great refuge. If your children are to come up to lives of virtue and happiness, they will come up under the shadow of the church. If the church does not get them \h,e world wilL Ah, when you pass away—and it will not be long before you do—when you pass away it will be a satisfaction to see your children in Christian society. You want to have them sitting at the holy sacraments. You want them mingling in -Christian associations. You would like to have them die in the sacred precincts. When you are od your dying bed, and your little ones come up to take your last word, and you look into their bewildered faces, you will want to leave them under the church’s benediction. I don’t care how hard you are, that is so. I said to a man of the world: * Your son and daughter are going to join our chnrch next Sunday. Have you any objections?” “Bless you,” he said, “objections? I wish all my children belonged to the church.! I don’t attend to those matters myself I know I am very wicked —but I am very glad they are going, and I shall be there to see them. lam very glad, sir; lam very glad. I want them there." And so, though you may have been wanderers from God, and though you may have sometimes caricatured the church of Jesus, it is your great desire that your sons and daughters should be standing all their lives within this sacred inclosure. More than that, you yourself will want the church for a hiding place when the mortgage is foreclosed; when your daughter, just blooming into womanhood, suddenly clasps her hands in a slumber that knows no waking; when gaunt trouble walks through the parlor, and the sitting room,, and the dining hall, and the nursery, you will want some shelter from the tempest. Ah, some of yon have been run upon by misfortune and trial ; why do you not come into the shelter? 1 said to a widowed mother after ; she had buried her only son—months after 1 said to her: “How do you get along nowadays!” “Oh,” she replied, “I get along tolerably well except when the sun shines.” I I said: “U hat do you mean by that?”when she said: “I can’t bear to see the sun shine, my heart is so dark that all the brightness of the natural world seems a mockery Ito me." O, darkened soul, O, broken ' hearted man, broken hearted woman, why do you not come into the shelter? 1 swing the door wide open I swing it from wall |to walL Come in! Come in! You want a place where your troubles shhll be unstrap- ! peu, where your tears shall be Wiped away. I Church of God, be a hiding place to all these people. Give them a seat where they : can rest their weary sonls. Flash some light | from your chandeliers upon their darkness., i With some soothing hymn hush their griefs. ! O, Church of God, gate of heaven, let ! me go through it! Ail other institutions are going to fail; but the Cnurch of God its foundation is the “Rock of Ages,” its charter is for everlasting years, its keys are held by the universal progrietor, its dividend is heaven, its president is God. Sure as thy truth shall last. To Zion shall lac given The brightest glories earth can yield, And brigbter bliss of heaven. God grant that all this audience, the youngest, the eldest, the worst, the best, may find their safe and glorious hiding place where Joash found it-dn the temple. English cutlers whp used to pay $3,000 a ton for Ivory have recently had to pay as high as fiIO.OOO. |