Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 March 1890 — "LOOSE BIH AND LET AIM GO." [ARTICLE]

"LOOSE BIH AND LET AIM GO."

Memorial Sermon of Dr. Talmage on H Kr vision of Cr;eds.” At the Ruins of Bethany. —Mary, Martha and Lazarus. —Christ Commanded the Loosening of the Cords That Stay our Stumbling Feet Last Sunday Rev. T. De Wit Talmage, supplementing his sermon with a statement that be thought the New Brooklyn Tabernacle would be dedicated in September,and that the idea would be carried out of building the church by subscription to The Christain Herald, of which he has become editor, all the subscriptions upto a hundred and fifty thousand to be paid to Mr. John Wood, treasurer of the Tabernacle, Fulton street, near Concord, Brooklyn, N. Y. The subject of his discourse was “Revision of Creeds,” and he took for his text John xt 44: “Loose him,, and let him go.” Dr. Talmage said: My Bible is, at the place of this text, written all over with lead pencil marks m-de last December at‘Bethany on the ruins of the bouse of Mary and Martha and Lazarus. We dismounted from our horses on the why upTrQm Jordon to the Dead Sea. Bethany was the summer evening rerteat of Jesus. After spending the day in the hot city of Jerusalem he would come out there almost every evening to the house of his three friends. I think the occupants of that house were orphans, for the lath r and mother are not mentioned. But the son and two daughters must have inherited property, for it must have been, judging from what I saw of the foundations and the size of the rooms, an opulent home. Lazarus, .the brother, was now the head of the household and his sisters depended on him and were proud of him, for he was very popular and everybody liked him, and these girls were splendid girls. Martha a first rate housekeeper and Mary a spirituelle, somewhat dreamy, but affectionate, and as good a girl as could be found in all Palestine. But one day Lazarus got sick. The sisters were in consternation. Father gone and mother gone, they feel very nervous lest they lose their brother also. Disease did its quick work. How the girls hung over his pillow I Not much sleep about that house, no sleep at aIL From the characteristics otherwhere developed I judge that Martba prepared the medicines and made tempting dishes of food for the poor appetite of the sufferer, but Mary prayed and sobbed,

Worse and worse gets Lazarus, until the doctor announces that he can do no more. Tbe shriek that went up from that household when the last breath had been drawn and the two sisters were being led by sympathizers into an adjoining room, all those of us can imagine who have had our own hearts broken. But; why was not Jesus there as he so often had been! Far away in the country districts preaching, healing other sick, how unfortunate that this omnipotent Doctor had not be'm at that domestic crisis in Bethany. When at last Jesus arrived in Bethany Lazarus had been buried four days and dissolution had taken place. In that climate the breathless body disintegrates more rapidly than in ours. If, immediately after decease, that body had been awakened into life, unbelievers might have said that he was only in a comatose state, or in a sort of trance, and by some vigorous manipulation or powerful stimulant vitality had been renewed. No! Four days dead. At the door of the sepulchre is a crowd of people, but the three most memorable are Jesus, who was the family friend, and the two bereft sisters. We went into the traditional tomb in December, and it is deep down and dark, and with torches we explored' it We found it ail quiet that afternoon of our visit but the day spoken of in the Bible there was present an excited multitude. I wonder what Jesus will do. He orders the doors of the grave removed, and then he begins to descend the steps, Mary aud Martha close after him, and the crowd after them. Deeper down into the shadows and deeper! The hot tears of Jesus roll over his cheeks and splash upon the back of his hands. Were ever so many sorrows compressed into so small a space as in that group pressing on down after Christ, all the time bemoaning that he had not come before! Now all the whispering and all the crying and all the sounds of shuffling feet are stopped. It is the silence of expectancy. Death has conquered, but now the vanquisher of death confronted the scene. Amid the awful hush pf the tomb the familar name which Christ had often had upon his lips in the hospitalities of the villiage home came back to his tongue and with a pathos and almightyness of which the resurrection of the last day shall be only an echo, he cries: "Lazarus! come fourth!” The eyes of the slumberer open and he rises and comes to the foot of the steps and with great difficulty begins to ascend, for the cerements of the tomb are yet on him and his feet and hands are fast and the impediments to all his movements are str great~ that Jesus commands: “Take off these cerements; remove these hindrances; unfasten these grave clothes; loose him and let him go!” Oh I am so glad that after the Lord raised Lazarus he went on and commanded the loosening of the cords that bound his feet so that he could walk, and the breaking off of the cerement that bound his hands so that he could stretch out his arms in salutation, and the tearing off of the bandage from around his jaws so that he could speak. What would resurrected life have ' been to Lazarus if he had not been freed from all those cripplements of his body! I am glad that Christ commanded his complete emancipation, saying; “Loose him, and let him go.” The unfortunate thing now is that so many Christians are only half liberated. They have been raised from tbe death and burial of sin into spiritual life, but they yet have the grave clothes on them. They are like Lazarus, hobbling up the stairs of the tomb, bound hand and foot, and the. object of this sermon is to help free their soul, and I shill try to obey the Master’s command that comes to me aud comes to every minister of religion, "Loose him, and let him go” First, many are bound hand and foot by religious creeds. Let no man misinterpret me as antagonizing creeds. I have eight or ten of them; a creed about religion, a creed about art, a creed about social life, a creed about government, and io on. A creed is something that a man believes, whether it be written or unwritten. The Presbyterian church is now agitating about its creed. Some good men in it are for keeping it because it was framed from the belief of John Calvin. Other good men in it wante-revision. ( am with neither party. Instead jf revision I want substitution. I at all. The creed did not hinder us from offering the pardon avi the comfort of the ?<>»i>el to ull men, and the Westminister Confession has not interfered with me one minute But now that the electric lights nave been turned on the imperfections of m it creed—and everything tfi.it man fashions is imperfect -let us out the old creed respectively aside and get a brand new

on*. It is impossible that people wholived hundreds of years ago should fashion an appropriate creed for our times. JOlnrCslyin was a great and good man, but he died three hundred sod twenty-six years ago The best centuries of Bible study have come since then, and explorers have done their work, and as you might as well have the world go back and stick to what Robert Fulton knew about steamboats and reject the subsequent improvement in navigation; and go back to John Guttenberg, the inventor of the art of printing, and reject all modern newspaper presses, and go back to the time when telegraphy was the elevating of signals or the burning of bonfires on the hilltops and reject the magnetic wire, which is the tongue of nations, as to ignore all the exegetes and the philologists and the theologians of the last three hundred and twenty-six years and put your own head under the sleeve of the gown of a Sixteen century doctor. I could call the n tmes of twenty living Presbyterian ministers of religion who could make a better creed than John Calvin. The Nineteenth century ought not to be called to sit on the feet of the Sixteenth.

“But,” you say,*“it is the same old Bible, and John Calvin had that as well as the present student of the Scriptures.” Yes; so it is the same old sun in the heavens, but in our time it has gone to making daguerreotypes and photographs. It is the same old water, but in our century it has gone to running steam engines. It is the same old electricity, but In our time it has become a lightning footed errand boy. So it is the old Bible, but new applications, new uses, new inter-' pretations.' You must remember that during the last three hundred years words have changed their meaning and some of them now mean more and some less. Ido not think that John Calvin believed, as some Bay he did, in the damnation of infants, although some qf the recent hot disputes would seem to imply that there is such a thing as the damnation of infants. A man who believes in the damnation Of infants himself deserves to lose heaven. I do not think any good man could admit such a possibility. What Christ will do withall the babies in the next world I conclude from what he did with the babies in Palestine when he huzged and kissed them. When some of you grown people go out of this world your doubtful destiny will be an embarrassment to ministers officiating at your obsequies, who will hive to be cautious so as not to hurt surviving friends But when the darling children go there are no ‘‘4fs” on “buts” or “guesses.” We must

remember that John Calvin was a logician and a metaphysician and by the proclivities of his nature put some things in an unfortunate wav. Logic has Its use and metaphysics has its use, but they are not good at making creeds. A gardner hands you a blooming rose, dewy fresh, but a severe botanist comes to you with a rose and says: “I will show you the structure of this rose.” And he proceeds to take It apart and pulls off the leaves and he says: “There are the petals,” and he takes out the anthers and he says: “Just look at the wonderful structure of these floral pillars,” and then he cuts thejstem to show you the juices of the plant. So logic or metaphysics takes the aromatic rose of the Christian religion and says: “I will just show you how this rose of religion was fashioned:” and it pulls off of it a piece and says: “That is the human will,” and another piece and says: “This is God’s will,” and another piece and says: “This is sovereignty,” and another piece and says: “This is free agency,” this is this and that is that. And while I stand looking at the fragments of the rose pulled apart, one whom the Marys toon for a gardener comes in and presents me with a crimson rose, red as blood, and says: “Inhale the sweetness of this, wear it on your heart and wear it forever.” I must confess that I prefer the rose in full bloom to the rose pulled apart What a time we have had with the dogmatics, tbe apologetics and the hermeneutics. The defect in some of ;the creeds is that they try to tell us all about the decrees of God. Now the only human being that was ever competent to handle that subject was Paul, and he would not have been competent had he not been inspired. I believe in the sovereignty of God and I believe in man’s free agency, but no one can harmonize tbe two. It is not necessary that he harmonize them. Every sermon that I have ever heard that attempted such harmonization was to me as clear as a London fog, as clear as mud. My brother of the Nineteenth century, my brother of the Sixteenth century, give us Paul’s statement and leave out your own. Better one chapter of Paul on that subject than all of Calvin’s institutes, able and honest and mighty as they are. Do not try to measure either the throne of God or the thunderbolts of God with your little steel pen. What do you know about the decrees! You cannot pry open the door of God’s eternal counsels You cannot explain the mysteries of God’s government now, much less the mysteries of his government five hundred quintillion of years ago. I move for a creed for all our denominations made out of Scripture quotations pure and simple. That .would take the., earth, for _ God. That would be impregnable against infidelity and Apollyonic assault That would be beyond human criticism. The denomination, whatever its name be, that can rise up to that will be the church of tbe millennium, will swallow up all other denominations and be tbe one that will be the bride when the Bridegroom cometh Let us make it simpler and plainer for people to get into the kingdom of God. Do not hinder people by the idea that they may not have been elected. Do not tag on to the one essentail faith in Christ any of the innumerable nonessentails. A man who heartily accepts Christ is a Christian and tbe man who does not accept him is not a Christain, and that is all there is of it He need not believe in election or reprobation. He need not believe in the eternal generation of tbe Son. He need not believe in everlasting punishment He need not believe in infant baptism. He need not be lieve in plenary inspiration. Faith in Christ is the criterion, is the test, is tbe pivot is the ind ispensable. But there are those who would add unto the tests rather than subtract from them. There are thousands who would not accept persons into church membership if they drink wine or if they smoke cigars or if they attend the theatre or if they play cards or if they drive a fust horse. Now 1 do not drink wine or smoke or attend the theatre, never played a game of cards and do not drive a fast horse, although I would if I owned one. But do not substitute testa which the Bible does not establish. There is one passage of Scripture wide enough to let all in who onght to enter and to keep out all who ought to be kept out: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved.” Get a man’s heart right and his life will be right. But now that the oki creeds —have -been- - - pul — under., public scrutiny something radical must be done. Some would split them, some would carve them, some would elongate them, some would abbreviate them. At the present moment and in the present shape they are a hindrance. Lazarus is alive, but hampered with tbe old grave clothes. If you want one glorious church free and unencumbered take off the cere-

meats of old ecclesiastical voeabulariy. Loom her, and let her go. What many of you Christians most need is to get your grave clothes off I rejoice that you have been brought from the death of sin Ito the life of the Gospel, bat yon need to get your band loose and your feet loose and your tongue loose and your soul loose. There is no sin that the Bible so arraigns and punctures and flagellates as the sin of unbelief, and that is what is the matter with you. “Oh,” you say, “if yon knew what I once was ana how many times I have grievously strayed, you would understand why I do not come out brighter.” Then I thin you would call yourself the chief of sinners. lam glad you hit upon that term, for I have a promise that fits into your case as the cogs of one wheel between the cogs of another wheel or as the key fits into the labyrinths of a lock. A man who was once called Saul but afterwards Paul declared: “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world

to save sinners, of whom I am chief.” Mark that—“of whom lam chief.” “Put down your overcoats and hats and I will take care of them while you kill Stephen”—so Paul said to the stoners of the first martyr—“l do not care to exert myself much, but I will guard your surplus apparel while you do the murder.” The New Testament account says: “The witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet whose name was SauL” No wonder he said: “Sjnners, of whom 1 am the chief.” Christ is used to climbing. He climbed, to the top of the temple. He climbed to the top of Mount Olivet. He climbed to the top of the cliffs about N azareth. He climbed to the top of Golgotha. And to the top of the hills and the mountains of your transgression he is ready to climb with pardon for every one of you. The groan of Calvary is mightier than the thunder of Sinai. Full receipt is offered for all your indebtedness. If one throw a stone at midnight into a bush where the hedge-bird roosts, it immediately begins to sing; and into the midnight hedges of your despondency these words I hurl, hoping toawaken you to anthem. Drop the tunes in. the minor key and take the major. Do you think it pleases the Lord for you to bo carrying around with you the debris and. carcasses of old transgressions I You make me think of some ship that has had a. tempestuous time at sea, and now

that it proposes another voyage, keeps on its davits the damaged lifeboats, and the splinters of a shivered mast, and the glass of a smashed skylight My advice is: clear the decks, overboard with the damaged rigging, brighten up the salted smokestack, open a new log book, haul in the planks, lay out a new course and set sail for heaven. You have had spiritual dumps long enough. You will please the Lord more >by being happy than by being miserable. Have yon net sometimes started out in the rain with your unbrella and you were busy thinking and you did not notice that the rain kadi stopped, and though it had cleared off' you still had your umbrella up, and whom you discovered what you were doing yon felt silly enough! That is what some of you are doing in religious things. You have got so used to sadness that though the rain has stopped you still have your umbrella up. Come out of the shadow. Ascend the stairs of your sepulchre. Step out into the broad light of noonday. We come arouad. you to help remove your grave clothes, and! a voice from the heavens, tremulous but omnipotent, commands; “Loose him, and let him go." Heaven is ninety-five per cent, better than this world, a thousand per cent, better, a million per cent, better. Take the gladdest, brightest, most jubilant days you ever had on earth and compress them all into one hour, and that hour would be a requiem, a fast day, a gloom, a horror, as compared with the poorest hour they have had in heaven since its first tower was built or its first gates swung or its first song caroled. “Oh,” you say, “that may be true, but I am so afraid of crossing over from this world to the nest, and I fear the snapping of the cord between soul and body.” Well all the surgeons and. physicians and scientists declare that there* is no pang at the parting of the body and. soul, and all the seeming restlessness at tbe closing hour of life is involuntary aud no distress at aIL And I agree with the doctors, for what they say is confirmed by tbe fact that persons who were drowned or were submerged until all consciousness departed and were afterwards resucitated declare that the sensation of passing into unconsciousness was pleasurable rather than distressful. The cage of the body has a door on easy hinges, and when that door of tbe physical i-ago opens tbe soul simply puts out ita wings and soars “But,” you say, "I fear to go because the future is so full of mystery.” Well, I will tell you how to treat the mysteries. The mysteries have ceased bothering me, for I do as the judges of your courts often do. They bear all the arguments in tbe case and then say: “I will take these papers and give you my decision next week.” So I have beard all the arguments in regard to tbe next world, and some things are uncertain and fnll of mystery, and so I fold up tbe papers and reserve until the next world my decision about them. 1 can there study all the mysteries to better advantage, for the light will be better and my faculties stronger, aud I will ask the Christian philosophers, who have had all the advantages of heaven for centuries, to help me, and I may be permitted myself humbly to ask the Lord, add 1 think there w.U be only one mystery left, and that will be bow one so unworthy as myself got into such an enraptured place. Come up out of the sepulchral shadows. If you are not Christians by faith in Christ come up into the light; and if you are already like Lazarus, reanimated, but still have your grave clothes on, get rid of them. The command is: “Loose h.m, and let him go.” The only part of my recent journey that I really dreaded, althougn 1 did not say much auout it beforehand, was tne landing at Joppa. That is tbe port of entrance for the Holy Land, and there are many rocks, and in rough weather people cannot land as aIL The boats taking the people from tbe steamer io tbe docks must run betwbeu reefs that looked to mo to bo abou. fifty feet apart, and one mis-stroke of an oarsman or an unexjiected w >ve has sometimes been fatal, and hundreds have perished along those reefs. Besides that,' as we left Pon Said the evening be. ore au old traveler said: “The wind is just right to give you a rough landing at Jopp indeed, I think you will not be able to ladd at all.** The fact was tuat when our Mediterranean steamer dropped anchor near -oppa and we put out for shore in the small boat, the water was as still as though it had been sound usleep a hundred years, and we landed as easily as 1 came on this platform, i. ell, your fears have pictured for you an appalling arrival at the end of vour voyage of life, and they say that tue seus will run high and that thp breakers WtlT SWaitow yoxup. or that if you Teach Canaan at ail it will be a very rough landing The very opposite will be true if you have tbe eternal God for your portion. Your disembarkation for the promised laud will bj is smooth aa was ours - at Palestine last ‘December. Christ will meet you far out at sea and pilot you into complete safety, aud you wiU land with a hosanna on one side of you and , a bal lei ujah on the other.