Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 July 1891 — AGGRESSIVENESS [ARTICLE]

AGGRESSIVENESS

Is the Christian Church’s Great Modem Need. The World Wants No More of Half and Half Christians—Modern Piety is too 'Exclusive—Rev. Dr. CL Talmage’s Sermon. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at Monona Lake, Wis., Sunday. Text, Esther iv., 14. He said: In the first place, in order to meet the special demand of the age; you need to be an unmistakably aggressive Christian. Of half and half Christians we do not want any more. The Church of Jesus Christ will be better without 10,000 of them. They are the chief obstacle to the Church's advancement. lam speaking of another kind of Christian. All the appliances for your becoming an earnest Christian are at your hand, and there is a straight path for you into fclfe broad daylight of God’s forgiveness. You may have come here today the bondsmen of the world, and yet before you go out of these doors you may become the Princes of the Lord God Almighty. You know what excitement there is in this country when a foreign prince comes to our shores. Whv? Because it is expected that some day he will sit upon a throne. But what is all that honor compared with the honor to which God calls you—to be sons and daughters of the "Lord Almighty; yea, to be Queens and Kings unto God? “They shall reign with him forever and forever.”' But, my friends, you need to be aggressive Christians, and not like those persons who spend their lives in hugging their Christian graces and wondering why they do not make any progress. How much robustness of health would a man have if he hid himself in a dark closet? A great deal of piety of the day is too exclusive, It hides itself. It needs more fresh air, more out-door exercise. There are many Christians who are giving their entire time to self-examination. They are feeling their pulses to see what is the condition of their spiritual health. How long would a man have robust physical health if he kept all the days and weeks and months and years of his life feeling his pulse instead of going out into active, earnest, everv-day work? I was once amid the wonderful, bewitching cactus growths of Noidh Carolina. I never was more bewildered with the beauty of flowers, and yet when I would take up one of the cactuses and pull the leaves apart the beauty was all gone. You eould hardly tell that it ever had been a flower. And there are a great many Christian people in this day just pulling apart their Christian experience to see what there is in them, and there is nothing attractive left This style of self-examination is a damage instead of an advantage to their Christian character. I remember when I was a boy I used to' have a small piece in the garden that I called my own and I planted corn there and every few days I would pull it up to see how fast it was growing, Now, there are a great many Christian people in this day whose selfexamination merely amounts to the pulling up of that which they only yesterday or the day before planted. Oh, my , friends, if you want to have a stalwart Christian character plant it right out of doors in the great field qf Christian usefulness, ■ and though storms may come upon it, and though the hot sun of trial may try to consume it, it will thrive until it becomes a greattree,in which the fowls of heaven may have their habitation. I have no patience with these flower-pot Christians. They keep themselves under shelter and all their Christian experience in a small, exclusive circle, when they of the Lord, so that the whol#atmospliere could be aromatic witk their Christian usefulness. What we want in the Church of God is more brawn of piety.

The century plant is wonderfully suggestive and wonderfully beautiful, but I never look at it without thinking of its parsimony. It lets whole generations go by before it puts forth one blossom; so I have really more heartfelt admiration when I see the dewy tears in the blue eyes of the violets, for they come every spring. My Christian friends, time is going by so rapidly that we can not afford to be idle. A recent statistician says that human life now has an average of only thirty-two years. From these thirty-two years you must substract all the time you take for sleep and the taking of food and recreation; that wiil leave you about sixteen years. From those sixteen years you must subtract all the time you were necessarily engaged in tne earning of a livelihood; that will leave you about eight years. From these eight years you must take all the days and weeks and months—all the length of time that is passed in childhood and sickness, leaving you about one year in which to work for God. Oh, my soul, wake up! How darest thou sleep in harvest time, and with so few hours in which to reap? So that I state it as a simple fact that all the time that the vast majority of you •will have for the exclusive service of God will be less than one year! “But,” says sometnan, “I liberally support the gospel, and the church is open and the gospel is preached; all the spiritual advantages are spread before men, and if they want to be saved,! let them come and be saved; I have discharged all my re-, sponsibilitv.” Ah! is that the Master’s spirit? Is there not an old Book somewhere that commands us to go out into the highways and hedges and compel the people to come in? What would have beeom •

of-you and me if Christ had not come off the hills of heaven, and if He had not come through the door of the Bethlehem caravansary, and if He had not with the crushed hand of the crucifixion knocked at the iron gate of the sepulcher of our spiritual death,crying, “Lazarus, come forth?” Oh, my Christian friends, this no time for inertia, when all the forces, of darkness seem to be in full blast; when steam printing press are publishing infidel tracts; when express railroad trains are carrying passensengers of sin; when fast clippers are laden with opium and rum: when the night air of our cities is polluted with laughter that breaks up from the 10,000 saloons and dissipation and abandoment: when the fires of the second death already are kindled in the cheeks of some who, only a little while ago, were incorrupt. Never since the curse fell upon the earth has there been a time when it was such an uuwise, such a cruel, such an awful thing for the Church -to sleep! aThe great audiences are not gathered in the Christian Churches the great audiences are gathered in temples of sin—tears are unutterable woe- their baptism, the blood of crushed hearts the awful wine of

their sacrament, blasphemies their litany, and the groans of the lost world the organ dirge of their worship, again, if you want to be qualified to meet the duties which this age demands of you, you must on one hand avoid reckless iconoelasm. and on the other hand not stick too much to things because they are old. The air is full of new plans, new projects, new theories of government, new theolgies; and lam amazed, to see how many Christians want only novelty in order to reccommend a thing to their confidence: and so they vacillate and swing to and fro and they are useless, and they are unhappy. New plans —secular, ethical, philosophically, religious, cisatlantic, transatlantic. Ah, my brother, do mot adopt a thing merely because it is new. Try it by the realities of a Judgment Day. But, on the other hand, do not adhere to any thing merely because it Is old. There is not a single enterprise of the church or the world but has sometimes been scoffed at. There was a time when men derived even Bible Societies: and when a few young men met near a hay-stack in Massachusetts and organized the first missionary society ever organized in this country, there went laughter and ridicule all around the Christian Church. They said the undertaking was preposterous. And so also the word of Jesus Christ was assailed. People cried out, “Who ever heard of such theories of ethics and government? Who ever noticed such a style of preaching as Jesus has? Ezekiel had talked of mysterious wings and wheels. Here came a man from Capernaum and Gennesaret, and he drew his illustrations from the lakes, from the sand, from the ravine, from the lilies, from the cornstalks. How the Pharisees scoffed! How Herod derided! How Caiaphas hissed! And this Jesus they plucked by the beard, and they spat in. His face, and they called Him “this fellow!”All the great enterprises in and out of the church have at times been scoffed at, and thei’e have been a great multitude who have thought that the chariot of God’s truth would fall to pieces if it once got out of the old rut.

And so there are those who have no patience with any \hing like improvement in church architecture, or with anything like good, hearty, earnest church and they deride any form of religious discussion which goes~dowTr vvalkiug - among-every-day men rather than that which makes an excursion on rhetorical stilts, Oh, that the Church of God would wake up to an adaptability o£- work! We must admit the simple fact that the churches of Jesus Christ in this day do not reach the great masses. There are 50,000 people in Edinburgh who never hear the Gospel. There are 1,000,000 people in London who never hear the Gospel. There are at least 300,000 souls in the city of Brooklyn who come not under the immediate ministrations of Christ’s truth. And the Church of God in this day, instead of being a place full of living epistles, read and known of all men, is more like a “dead-letter” postoffice. “But,” say the people, “the world is going to be converted: you must be patient: the kingdoms of the world are to become the kingdoms of Christ.” Never, unless the Church of Jesus Christ puts on more speed and energy. Instead of the church converting the world, the world is converting the church. Here is a great fortress. How shall it be taken? An army comes and sits around about it, cuts off the supplies, and says: “Now we will just wait until from exhaustion and starvation they will have to give up.” Weeks and months and perhaps a year pass along and finally the fortress surrenders through that starvation and exhaustion. But, my friends, the fortresses of sin are never to be taken in that way. If they are taken for God it will be by storm: you will have to bring up the great siege guns of, the Gospel to the very wall and wheel the flying artillery into line, and when the armed infantry of heaven shall confront the battlements you have to give the quick command. “Forward! Charge!’ f Ah, my friends, there is work for you to do in order to this grand accomplishment! Here is a pulpit, and a clergyman preaches in it. Your pulpitis the bank. Your pulpit is the store. Your pulpit is the editorial chair. Your pulpit isfthe anvil. Your pulpit is the home scaffolding Your pulpit is the mechanic’s shop, I may stand in this place, and, through cowardice, or through Seif-

seeking, may keep back the word I' ought to utter; while you, with! sleeve rolled up and brow besweated with toil, may utter the word that will jar the foundation of heaven with the-- sboutnf a great victory. Oh, that to-day this whole audience might feel that the Lord Almighty is putting upon them the hands of ordination. Every one, go forth and preach this Gospel. You have as much right to preach as I have, or as any man has. Only find out the pulpit where God will have you preach, and there preach;I again remark that in order to be qualified to meet your duty in this particular age you want unbounded faith in the triumph of the truth and the overthrow of wickedness. How "dare the Christain Church ever get' discouraged? Have we not the Lord Almighty on our side? How long did it take God to slay the hosts of Sennacherib or burn Sodom or shake down Jericho? How long will it take God, when Be once arises in His strength, to overthrow all the forces of iniquity? Between this time and that there may be long seasons of darkness—the chariot wheels of God’s gospel may seem to drag heavily, but here is the promiseand yonder is the throne; and when Omniscience has lost its eyesight, and Omnipotence falls back impotent, and Jehovah is driven from His throne, then the Church of Jesus,Christ can afford to be despondent, but never until then. Despots may plan and armies may march, and the congresses of the nations may seem to think that they are adjusting all the affairs of the world, but the mighty men of the earth are only the dust of the chariot wheels of God s providence.

I think that before the sun of this century shall set the last tyranny may fall, and with a splendor of demonstration that shall be the astonishment of the universe. God will set forth the brightness and pomp and glory and perpetuity of his eternal government. Out of the starry flags and the emblazoned insignia Of this world, God will make a path for His own triumph, and, returning from universal conquest, He will sit down, the grandest, highest throne of earth His foot-stool.

I preach this sermon because I want to encourage all Christian workers in every possible department, Hosts of the living God, march on! march on! His Spirit will bless you. His shield will defend you. His sword will strike for you. March on! march on! The last despotism will fall, and paganism will burn its idols, and Mohammedanism will give up its false prophet, and the great walls of superstition will come down in thunder and wreck at the long, loud blast of the Gosoel trumpet. March on! march on! The besiegement will soon be ended! Only a few more steps on the long way; only a few more sturdy blows; only a fdw more battle-cries; then God will put the laurel upon vour brow, and from the living fountains of heaven will bathe off the sweat and the heat and the dust of the conflict. March on! march on! For you the time of work will soon be passed, and amid the outflashings of the judgment throne, and the trumpetings of resurrection angels, and the upheaving of a world of graves, and the hosanna of the saved and the groaning of the lost, we shall be rewarded for our faithfulness or punished for our stupidity. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting, and let the whole world be filled with His glory. Amen and Amen.