Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 August 1891 — A POOR INVESTMENT. [ARTICLE]

A POOR INVESTMENT.

t ■ .. /Have You Sold Yourself for f Naught? \ n>«* World Itself Is a Cheat-Many Title \ Deeds Go to the Devil—Dr. Tal- * mage's Sermon. ( Rev. Dr. Talmage preached last { Sunday at- Topeka. Kari. Text, Isa- ( iah Hi. 2. He said: The Lord's people had gone headdong into sin, and as a punisment I they had been carried captive to ■ Babylon. They found that iniquity did not pay. Cyrus seized Babylon and felt so sorry- for those poor captives' that without a dollar of compensation helet them go home. So that, literally, my text was fulfilled: “Ye have sold yourselves for naught, and ye shall be redeemed without money/’ There is enough Gospel in this text for fifty sermons. There are persons here who have, like the people of my text, sold out. You do not seem to belong either to yourselves or to God. The title-deeds have passed over to “the- world, the flesh and the devil,” but the purchaser never paid up. ‘‘Ye have sold youri selves for naught.” ' When a man passes himself over to the world he expects to get some adequate compensation. He has heard the great things the world does for a man, and he believes it. He. wants $250,000. That will be horses and houses, and a summer resort, and jolly companionship. To get it he parts with his health by overwork. He parts with his conscience. He parts with much domestic enjoyment. / He parts with opportunities for literary culture. He parts with his , soul. And so he makes over bis entire nature to the world. He does it in four installments. He pays down the first installment and one-fourth of his nature is gone. He pays down the second installment and one-Hats of his nature is gone. He pays down the third installment and three-quar-ters of his nature are gone, and after many years have "one by he pays /down the fourth installment, ana lo! nis entire nature is gone. Then he comes up to the world and says: “Good morning. I have delivered to you the goods. I have passed over to you my body, my mind, my soul, and I have come now to collect the $250,000. “Twc hundred and fifty thousand dollars?” says the world. “What do you mean?” “Well,” say you, “I have come to collect the money you owe me and I expect you to fulfill your art of the contract.” “But,” says ' the world, “I have failed. lam bankrupt. I cannot possibly pay that debt. I have not for a Ion" time expected to pay it. ” “Well, you then “give me back the goods.” Oh, do.” says the world, “they are all gone. I cannot give them back to you. " And there you stand on the confines of eternity, your spiritual character gone, staggering under the consideration that “you have sold' yourself for naught. ” —I tell you the world is a liar; it does not keep its promises. It is a cheat and it fleeces everything it can buftts hands on; It is'a bogus world. It is a six-thousand-year-old swindle. Even if it vnys the $250,000 for which you contracted, it pays them in bonds which will not be worth anything in a little while, just as a man may pay down SIO,OOO cash and get for it worthless scrip. So the world passes over to you. The $250,000 in that shape which will not be worth a farthing to you a thousandth part of a second after you ate dead. “Oh,” you say, “it will help to bury me, anyhow.” Oh, my friend you need not worry about that. The world will bury you soon enough from sanitary considerations. Post-mortem emoluments are of no use to you. The treasures of this world will not pass current in the future word; and if all the wealth of the Bank of England were put in the pocket of your shroud, and you in the midst of the Jordan of death was asked to pay three cents for your ferriage you could not do it, There comes a moment in your existence beyond which all earthly values fail; aud many a man has wakened up in such a time to find that he has sold out for eternity and has nothing to show for it. I should as soon think of going to Chatham street to buy silk pocketliankerchiefs with no cotton in them as to go to this world expecting to find any permanent happiness. It has deceived and deluded every man who has over put his trust in it. History tells us of one who resolved that he would Lave all his senses gratified at one and the same time, and he expended thousands of dollars on each sense. He entered a room and there were the first musicians of the land pleasing his ear and there were fine pictures fascinating his eye, and there were costly aromatics regaling his nostril, and there were the richest meats and and wines and fruits’lLid confections pleasing the appetite, and there was soft couch of sinful indulgence on which he reclined; and the man declared after ./ard that he would gjvo ten times what he had gii'en if he could have one week of such enjoyment, even though he lost his soul by it! Ah! that was the rqb_. He did lose his soul by it! Cyrus the Conqueror thought for a little while that he .vas making a fine thing out of this world,and yet before he came to his grave he wrote out this pitiful epitrph for his monument: “I am Cyrus. I occupied the Persian Empire. -I was king over Asia. Begrudge me not this monument. *’ But the world,in after years, plowed up his sepulcher. , The world clapped its hands and

stamped its feet in honor of Charles Lamb; but what cfoes he say? “I walk up and down thinking I am happy, but feeling lam not.” Call . the roll,and be quick about it,Samuel Johnson, the learned! Happy? ' ‘No. lam afraid I shall some day get crazy.” William Hazlitt, the great essayist! Happy? “No, I have Deen for two hours and a half going up aud down Paternoster Row with a volcanaifi my breast. ” Smollet, the witty author! Happy? “No, lam sick of praise and blame, and I wish to God that I had such circumstances around me that I could throw my pen into oblivion.” Buchanan, the \vorld-renowned writer, exiled from his own country, appealing to Henry VIII, for protection! Happy? “No. Over mountains covered with snow, and through valleys flooded with rain, I corne a fugitive.” Moliere, the popular dramatic author! Happy? “No, That wretch of an actor just now recited four of my lines without the proper accent and gesture. To have the children of my brain so hung, drawn and quartered tortures me like a condemned spirit.” I went to see a worldling die. As I wont into the hall I saw its floor was tessellated, and its wall was a picture gallery. I found his death-chamber adorned with tapestry until it seemed as if the clouds of the setting sun had settled in the room. The man had given forty years to the wit, his time, his genius, his talent, his soul. Did the world come in to stand by his deathbed, and clearing off the vials of bitter medicine, put down any compensation? Oh, no! The world docs not like sick and dying people,* and leaves them in the lurch. It ruined this man and then left him. He had a magnificent funeral. All the minsters wore scarfs, and there were forty-three carriages in a row; but the departed man appreciated not the obsequies. ,1 want to persuade my audience that this world is a poor investment; that it does not pay 90 per cent, of satisfaction, nor 80 per cent., nor 20 per cent., nor 2 per cent., nor 1; that it gives no solace when a dead babe lies on your lap; that it gives no peace when conscience rings its alarm; that it gives no explanation in the day of dire trouble, and at the time of your decease it takes hold of the pillow-case and shakes out the feathers and then jolts down in the place thereof sighs, and groans and execrations, and then makes youjmt your head on it. Oh, ye who have tried this world, is a satisfactory portion? Would you advise your friends to make the investment? No. “Ye have sold yourselves for naguht.” Your conscience went. Your hope went. Your Bible went. Your heaven went. Your God went. When a sheriff under a writ sells a man out the officer generally leaves a few chairs and a bed, and a few cups and knives; but in this awful vendue in which you have been engaged the auctioneer’s mallet has come down upon body, mind and soul: Going! Gone! “Ye have sold yourselves for naught.” How could you do so? Did you think that your soul was a mere trinket, which for affew pennies you could buy in_ a toy shop? Did you think'thaf your" soul, if bnc6 'tost, might be found again if you went out with torches and lanterns? Did you think that your soul was short-lived, and that, panting, it would soon lie down for extinction? Or had you no idea what your soul was worth? Bid you ever put your forefinger on its eternal pulses? Have you not felt the quiver of its peerless wing? Have you not known that, after leaving the body, the first step of your soul reaches to the stars,, and the next step to the farthest outposts of jSods universe, and that it will not die ÜBtil -the day ..when the everlasting Jehovah expires? O, my brother, what possessed you that you should part with your soul so cheaply? “Ye have sold yourselves for naught.” „ But 1 have some good news to tell you. I want to engage in a litegation for the recovery of that soul of yours. I want to show that you have been cheated out of it. I want to prove, as I will, that you were crazy on that subject, and that the world, under such circumstances, had no right to take the title-deed from you; and if you will join me I shall get a decree from the High Chancery Oourt of Heaven reinstating you into the possession of your soul. “Oh,” you say, “I am afraid of lawsuits! They are so expensive, and I can not pay the cost.” Then have you forgotten the last half of my text? “Ye have sold yourselves for naught, and ye shall be redeemed without money.” Honey is good for a good many things but it cannot do anything in this niatter of the soul. ’ You can not buy your way through. Dollars and pound sterling mean nothing at the gate of mercy. If you could buy salvation heaven would be a great speculation, an extension of Wall street Bad men would go up and buy out the place and leave us to shift for ourselves. But as money is not a lawfql tender, what is? I will answer, Blood! Whose? Are we to go through the slaughter? Oh, no; it wants richer blood than ours. It wants a king’s blood. It must be poured from royal arteries. It must be a sinless torrent. But where is the king? I see a great many thrones and a great many occupants, yet none seem to be coming down to the rescue. But after i while the clock of night in Bethlehem strikes 12 afld the silver pendulum of a star awiags across the sky and I see the King of Heaven rising up, and He descends and steps down from star to alar, and from cloud to cloud, low* and lower until He touches the

sheep=cOvered hills, and then on to anbther hill, this last one skullshaped, and there at the sharp stroke of persecution a rillincardine trickle; down, and we who could not be re deemed by money are redeemed by precious and imperial blood. We have in this day professed Christian; who are so rarifled and etherealized that they do not want a religion ol blood. What do you want? You seem to want a religion of brains. The Bible says, “In the blood is the life.’’ No atonement without blood. Ought not the apostle to know? What did he say? “Ye are redeemed not with corruptible things, such as silver and gold, but by the precious blood Christ. ” You put your lancet into the arm of our holy religion and withdraw the blood and you leave it a mere corpse, fit only for the grave. Why did God command the priests of old to strike the knife into the kid, and the goat, and the pigeon, and the bullock, and the lamb? It was so that when the blood rushed out from these animals on the floor of the ancient tabernacle the people should be compelled to think of the coming carnage of the Son of God. No blood no atonement. I think that God intended to impress us with a vividness of that color. The green of the grass, the blue of the sky, would not have startled and aroused us like this deep crimson. It is as if God had said: “Now, sinner, wake up and see what the Savior endured for you. This is not water. This is not wine. It is blood. It is the blood of my own Son. It is the blood of the Immaculate. It is the blood of God.” Without the shedding of blood is no remission. There has been many a man who in courts of law has pleaded “not guilty,” who nevertheless has been condemned because there was blood found on his hands, or blood found in Lis room; and what shall we do in the last day if it be found that we have recrucified the Lord of Glory and have never repented of it? You must believe in the blood or die. No escape. Unless you let the sacrifice of Jesus go in your stead, you yourself must suffer. It is either Christ’s blood or your blood. It seems to me as if all heaven were trying to bid in your soul. The first bid it makes is the tears of Christ at the tomb of Lazarus; but that is not a high enough price. The next bid heaven makes is the sweat of Gethsamane; but it is too cheap a price. The next bid heaven makes seems to be the whipped back of Pilate's Hall; but it is not a high enough price. Can it be possible that heaven -can not buy you in? Heaven tries once more. “I bid this time for that man's soul the tortures of Christ’s martyrdom, the blood on His temple,the blood on His check, the blood on'His chin, the blood on His hand, the blood on His side, the blood on His knee, the blood on His foot —the blood in drops, the blood in rilis, the blood in pools coagulated beneath the cross: the blood that wet the tips of the soldier's spears, the blood that splashed warm in the faces of his enemies. ” Glory to God, that bid wins it. The highest price that was ever paid for any thing was paid for your soul. Nothing could buy it but blood! The estranged property is brought back. Take it. “You have sold yourselves for naught: and ye shall be redeemed without money.” O atoning blood, cleansing blood, life-giving blood, sanctifying blood, glorifying blood of Jesus! Why not burst into tears at the thought that for thee He shed it —for thee the hard-hearted, for thee the lost? “No,” says some one, “I will have nothing to do ...with it except that, like the enemies of Christ, I put both my hands into that carnage and scoop up both palms full, and throw it on my head and cry; “His blooJ be on us and on our children!” Can you do such $ shocking thing as that? Just rub your handkerchief across your brow and look at it. It is the blood of the Son of God whom you have despised and driven back all these years. Oh. do not do that any longer! Come out boldly and frankly and honestly, and tell tlhrist you are sorry. You can not afford to so roughly treat Him upon whom everything depends. Ido not know how you will get away from this subject! You see that jou are sold out, and that Christ wants to buy you back. There are three persons who comfe after you to-day; God the Father. God the Son. and God the Holy Ghost. They unite their three omnipotences in one movement for your salvation. You will not take up arms against the Triune God, Will you? Is there enough muscle in your arm for such a-Gombat? By. the highest throne in Heaven, and by tho deepest chasm in hell, I beg you look out. Unless you allow Christ to carry away your sins, they will carry you away. Unless you allow Christ to lift up, they will drag you down. Thei eis only one hope for you, and that is the blood. Christ, the sin-offering, bearing your transgressions. Christ the surety, paying your debts. Christ, the devine Cyrus, loosening your Babylpnish captivity. ...1-....! Would you like to be free? Here is the price of your liberation—not money, but blood. I tremble fron: head to foot, not because 1 fear your presence, but because I feiir that yov will miss your chance for immortal rescue. This is the alternative divinely put: “He that believeth on the Son shall have everlasting life; and he that believeth not on the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.” In the last day, if you now reject Christ, every drop of that sacrificial blood, instead of pleading for your release, as it would have pleaded had you repent ed, will plead against you.