Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 July 1891 — ASTRAY, BUT RECOVERED. [ARTICLE]

ASTRAY, BUT RECOVERED.

Have We ATI, lake Sheep, Gone Astray? Lambs Which Leave the Shelter of the Fold Usually Canter Back When the Grass Gets Short—Dr. Talmage’s Sermon. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn last Sunday. Subject} “Astray, hut Recovered,” Text, Isaiah liii, 6. He-said: Sit down, my brother, and took at home. My text takes us all in. It starts behind the pulpit, sweeps the circuit of the room and comes back to the point where it started, when it says: “AU we, like sheep, have gone astray.” 1 was, like many of you, brought up in the country, and I know some of the habits of the sheep, and how they get astray, and what my text means when it says: “All we, like' sheep, have gene-astray.’’-Sheep get astray in two ways, either by trying to get into another pasture or from being scared by the dogs. In the former some of us got astray. We thought the religion of JesusGhrist short commons. We thought there was better pasturage somewhere else. We thought if we could only lie down cn the banks of distant streams, or under great oaks on the other side of some hill, we might be better fed. We wanted other pasturage than that which God through Jesus Christ gave our soul, and we wandered on, and we wandered on, and we were lost. We wanted bread, and we found garbage. The further we wandered, instead of finding rich pasturage we found blasted heath and'sharper rocks and more stinging nettles. No pasture. How was it in the worldly groups when you lost your child? Did they come around and console you very much? Did not the plain Christian man who came into your house and sat up with your darling child give you more comfort than all worldly associations? Did all the convivial songs you ever heart! comfort you in that day of bereavement so much as the songs they sang io you, perhaps the very song that was sung by your little child the last Sabbath afternoon of her life? Did your business associates in that day of darkness and trouble give vou any especial condolence? Business exasperated you, business wore sou out, business left you limp as a rag, business made you mad. You tot dollars, but you got no peace. Bod have mercy on the man who has nothing but business to comfort him. Pie world afforded you no luxuriant pasturage. A famous English actor Stood on the stage impersonating, ind thunders of applause came down

Irom the galleries, and many thought it was the proudest moment of his life: but there was a man asleep just in front of him, and the fact that that man was indifferent and somnolent spoiled all the occasioh for him, and he cried: “Wakeup, wake up!” So one little annoyance in life has been tnore pervading to your mind than ill the brilliant congratulations and successes. Poor pasturage for your Soul you found in this world. The world has cheated you, the world has Delied you, the world has misinterpreted you, the world has persecuted you. It never comforted you. Oh! this world is a good rack from which I horse may pick his hay, it is a good tropgh from which the swine, may jrunch their mess; but it gives but little food to a soul blood-bought and immortal. "What is a soul? It is a hope high as the throne of God. What is a man? You say: “It is jnly a man.” It is only a man gone overboard in sin. It is only a man £one over in business life. What is a man? What is a man? The battleground of three worlds, with his hands taking hold of the destinies of light or darkness. A man? No line !?an measure him. No limit can bound him. The archangel before the throne can not outlive him. The stars shall die, but he will watch their extinguishment. The world will burn, but he will gaze on the conflagration. Endless ages will march on, he will watch the procession. A man! The masterpiece of God Almighty. Yet you say, “It is only a man.” Can nature like that be fed on the husks of the wilderness?

Some of you got astray by looking for better pasturage; others by being scared of the dogs. The hound gets over into the pasture field. The poor things fly in every direction. In a few moments they are torn of the hedges and they are plashed of the ditch, and the lost sheep never gets home unless the farmer goes after it. There is nothing so thoroughly lost as a lost sheep. It may have been in 1857, during the financial panic, or during the financial stress in the fall of 1873 when you got astray. You almost became an atheist. You said: “Where is God, that honest men go down and thieves prosper?” You were dogged of creditors, you were dogged of the banks, you were dogged of worldly disaster, and some of you went into misanthropy, and some of you took to strong drink, and others of you fled out of Christian association and you got astray. O! man, that was the last time when you ought' to have forsaken God. Standing amid the foundering of your earthly fortunes, how could you get along without a God to comfort and a God to deliver you, and a God to help you and a God to save you. You tell’ me you have been through enough business tfbuble almost to kill you. I know it. I can not understand how the boat could live one hour in that chopped sea. But Ido not know by what process you got

astray; some in one way and some in another, and if you could see the position some of you occuny before God this morning your semi would burst into an agony of tearwind you would pelt the heaven’s with the cry: “God nave mercy.” Sinai’s batteries have been unlimbered above vour soul and at times you have heard it thunder: “The wages of sin is death.” “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. ” “The soul that sinneth, it, shall die.” But the last part of my text opens a door wide enough to let us all but and to let all heaven in. Sound it on the organ with all the stops out. Thrum it on the harps with all the strings atune. With all the melody possible let the heavens sound it to the earth and let the earth tell it to, the heavens. ‘ ‘The Lord hath laid on Him the inquity of us all.*- lam glad that the prophet did not stop to explain whom he meant by “him,” TTirn nf the manger, Him of the bloody sweat, Him of the surrection throne. Him of the crucifixion agony. l‘Qn him the Lord hath laid the iniquity of us all.” “O!" says some man, “that is not generous, that is not fair; let every man carry his own burden and pay ■ his qwn debts.” That sounds reasonable. If I have an obligation and I have the means to meet it and I come tb you and ask you to settle that obligation you rightly say; “Pay your own debts.” If you and I were walking down the street, both hale, hearty and well, I ask you to carry me, you say, and say rightly: “Walk on your own feet!” But suppose you and I were in a regiment and I was wounded in the battle and I fell unconscious at your feet with gunshot fractures and dislocations, what would you do? You would call to your comrades, saying, “Come aud heip, this man, is helpless; bringthe ambulance; let us take him to the hospital,” and I would be a dead lift in your arms, and you would lift me from the ground where I had fallen and put me in the ambulance and take me to the hospital and have all kindness shown me. Would there be any thing mean in doing that? Would there be any thing bemeaning in my accepting that kindness? Oh, no! You would mean not to do it. That is what Christ does. If we could pay our debts then it would be better to go up and pay them, saying. “Here, Lord, here is my obligation; here are the means with which I mean to settle that obligation, now give me a receipt —cross it all out.” The debt is paid. But the fact is we have fallen in the we have got down under the hot transgressions,we have been wounded by the sabers of sin, we are helpless,we are undone.” Christ comes. The loud clang heard in the sky on that Christmas night was only the bell, the resounding bell of the ambulance. Clear the way for the Son of God. He comes down to bind up the wounds, and to scatter the darkest, and to save the lost. Clear the way for the Son of God, Christ comes down to us, and we are a dead lift, he does not lift us up with the tips Of his fingers. He does not lift us up with one arm. He I comes down upon his knee, and then I with a dead lift he raises us to honor and glory and immortality. “The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. ” Why then will no man carry his sins? You can not carry successfully the smallest sin you ever committed. You might as well put the Apennines on one shoulder and the Alps on the other—hov much less can you carry all the sins of your lifetime. Christ comes and looks down in your face and says: ‘‘l have come through all the lacerations of these days, and through all the tempest of these nights: I have come to bear your burdens and to pardon your sins and to pay your debts. Put them on my shoulder; put them on my heart.” “On Him the Lord hath laid the iniquity of us all.”

“Sin has almost pestered the life out of some of you. At times it has made you reasonable, and it has spoiled the brightness of your days and the peace of your nights. There are men who have been riddled of sin. The world gives them no solace. Gosamer and volatile the world eternity, as they look forward to it, is black as midnight. They writhe under the stings of a conscience which proposes to give no rest here and no rest hereafter; and yet they do not repent, they do not pray, they do not weep. They do not realize that just the position occupied by scores, hundreds and thousands of men who never found any hope. Oh, my brother! without stopping to look as to whether your hand trembles or not, without stopping to look if your hand is bloated with sin or not, put it in my hand, let me give you one warm, brotherly Christian grip and invite you right up to the heart, to the compassion, to the sympathy, to the pardon of Him on whom the Lord hath laid the ip ; iquity of us all. Throw away your sins. Carry them no longer. I proclaim emancipation this morning to all who are bound—pardon for all sin and eternal life for all the dead. Some one comes here this morning, and I stand aside. He comes up these steps. He comes to this place. I must stand aside. Taking that place He spreads abroad His nands, and they were nailed. You see His feet —they were bruised. He pulls aside the robe and shows you His wounded heart. I say, “Art thou weary?” “Yes,” he says, “weary with the world’s woe.” I say, “Whence comest thou?” He says.

“I come from Calvary.” I say. “Who comes with thee?” He' says t “No one; I have trodden the winev press alone.” I say, “Why comesi thou here?” He says, “Oh, 1 came here to carry all the sins and sorrows of the people.” Aud He •kneels and he sxys: “Put on m? shoulders all the sorrows and all the sins.” And conscious of my own sins first. I take them out and put them on the shoulders of the Son of God. I ask, “Canst thou bear more. O Christ?” He anwers, “yea, more.” and I gather up the sins of all those Hvho serve at these altars, the officers of the Church of -Jesus Christ—l gather up all their sins and put them on Christ’s shoulders and I say, “Canst thou bear any more?” He says, “Yea, more.” Then I gather up all the sins of a hundred people in this house and put them on the shoulders of Christ and ask, “Canst thou bear more?” He says, “Yea. more.” And I gather up all the sins of this assembly and put them bn th,e shoulders of the Son of God and I ask “Canst thou bear them?” “Yea,” he says, “more.” ' '"But He~ iy~depnrtiTg , . '''Clear the: wav for Him, the Son of God. Open the doo and let him pass out. He is carrying our sins and bearing them away. We shall never see them again. He“tErows~tKem dbwnTntb abysm and you hear the long reverberating echo of their fall. “On him the Lord hath laid the iniquity of us all. ” Will you let Him take away your sins now? or do you say, “I will take charge of them myself. I will fight my own battles, 1 will risk eternity on my own account. ” A clergyman said in his pulpit one Sabbath: “Before next Saturday night one of this audience will pass out of life.” A gentleman said, to another seated next to him: “I don’t believe it; I mean to watch, and if it doesn’t come true by next Saturday night I shall tell that clergyman his falsehood.” The man seated next to him said: “Perhaps it will be yourself.” “Oh, no,” the other replied, “I shall live to bean old man.” That night he breatheddiis last. To-day the Savior calls. All may come. "God never pushes a man off. God never destroys any body. The man jumps off. It is suicide—soul suide—if the man perishes, for the invitation is, “Whosoever will, let -him come.” Whosoever, whosoever, whosoever! In this day of merciful visitation, while many are coming into the kingdom of God, join the procession heavenward. Seated among us during a service was a man who came in and said: “I don’t know that there is any God.” That was on Friday night. I said, “We will kneel down and find out whether there is any God.” And in the second seat from the pulpit we knelt. He said: “I have found Him. There is a God, a pardoning God. I feel Him here.” He knelt in the darkness of sin. He arose two minutes afterward in the liberty of the Gospel, while another, sitting under the gallery on Friday night, said: “My opportunity is gone. Last week I might have been saved,but now the door is shut. ” And another from the very midst of the qaeeting during the week rushed out of the front door of the Tabernacle, saying: “I am a lost man.” “Behold! the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world.” “Now is the accepted time. Now is the day of salvation.” “It is appointed unto all men once to die, and after that—the judgment!”