Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 October 1891 — NEED A TIGHTER GRIP. [ARTICLE]

NEED A TIGHTER GRIP.

Frisky, Fretty, Fickle Youth Given Some Fatherly Advice. Toting Men Should Have a Stout Grasp on the Bible If They - Would be Fortified Against Satan and Sin. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn last Sunday. Text: II Samuel xxiii, 10. He said: My friends, in this Christian conflict we want a tighter grip of the Gospel weapons, a tighter grasp of the two-edged sword of the truth. It makes me sad to see these Christian people who hold only a part of the truth and let the rest of the truth go, so that the Philestines, seeing the loosened grasp, wrenjh the whole sword away from them. The only safe thing for us to do is to put our thumb on the book of Genesis and sweep our band around the Book until the New Testament comes into the palm, and keep on sweeping our land atofmd the Book until the tips of the fingers clutch at the words: /-In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” T I like an infidel a great deal better than I do one of these namby-pamby Christians who hold a part of the truth and let the rest go. By miracle God preserved this Bible Just as it is, and it is a Damascus blade. The severest test to which a sword can be put in a sword factory is to wind the blade around a gun barrel like a ribbon, and then when the sword is let loose it flies back to its own shape. So the sword of God’s truth has been fully tested, and it is bent this way, and that way, and wound this way and that way, but it always comes back to its own shape. Think of it' A Book written eighteen centuries ago, and some of it thousands of years, ago, and yet in our time the avelwge sale of this Book is more than 20,000 copies every week, and more than 1,000,000 copies each year. I say now that a book which is divinely inspired and divinely kept and divinely scattered is a weapon worth holding li tight grip of. Bishop Colcnso will come along and try to wrench out of your hand the five books of Moses, and Strauss will come along and try to wrench out of your hand the miracles, and Renan will come along nnd try to wrench out of your hand the entire life of the Lord Jesus ' Christ, and your associates in the store, or the shop, or the factory, or the banking house, will try to wrench out of your hand the entire Bible; but in the strength of the Lord God of Israel, and with Eleazar's grip, hold onto it. You give up the Bible, you give up any part of it, and you give up pardon and peace, and life in heaven.

I see hundreds,perhaps thousands, of young men in this audience. Do r. be ashamed, young man, to have the world know that-you are a friend of the Bible. This book is the friend bf all that is good, and it is the sworn enemy of all that is bad. Do pot take part of it and throw the rest away. Hold on to all of it. There ire so many people now who do not know. You ask them if the soul is nimortal, and they sav; “I guess it s, I don't know; perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't.” Is tho Bible true? “Well, perhaps it is. and perhaps it Isn’t; perhaps it may be figuratively, and perhaps it may be partly, and perhaps it may not be at all.” They desifige ,whaljhey call the Apostle creed; but if their own creed were written out it would read like this: “I believe in nothing, the maker of heaven and earth, and in nothing Which it hath sent, which nothing was born of nothing,and which nothingwas dead and buried and descended into nothing, and arose from nothing, and ascended to nothing, and no*w sitteth at the right hand of nothing, from which it will come to judge nothing. I believe in the holy agnostic church and in the communion of nothingarians, and in the forgiveness of nothing, and the resurrection of nothing, anti in the life that never shall be. Amen!” -That is the creed of tens of thousands of people in this day. If you have a mind to adopt such a theory I will not. “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jeeus Christ, and in the Holy Catholic church, and in the communion of saints, and in the life everlasting. Amen.” Oh, when I see Eleazar taking such a stout grip on the sword in the battle against sin and for righteousness. I came to the conclusion that we out ought to take a stoutei- grip of God’s eternal truth, the sword of righteouness.

As I look at Eleazar's hand I also notice his spirit of self-forgetfulness. He did not notice that the hilt of the sword was eating through the palm of his hand. He did not know it hurt him. As he went out into the conflict. He was so anxious for the victory he forgot himself, and that hilt might go ever so deeply into the palm bis hand, it could not disturb him. “His hand-xilave unto the sword.” Oh my brothers and sisters, let us go into Christian conflict with the spirit of self abnegation. Who cares whether the world S raises us or denounces us? What o We care for misrepresentation, or abuse, or persecution in a conflict like this? Let usf forget ourselves. That man who is afraid of getting his hand hurt will never kill a Philistine. Who cares whether you get hurt or not if yuc get the victory? Oh, how many Christians there are who are all tho time worrying about the way the ( world treats them. They are so tired, they are so abused and they are fco tempted, when Eleaxar did not think whether he had a

hand, or an arm or a foot. All be wanted was victory. We see how men forget themselves in worldly achievement. We have often seen men who, in order to achieve worldly success, will forget all physical fatigue and all annoyance and all obstacle. Just after the battle of Yorktown, in the American revolution,, a musician, wounded, was told he must have his limbs amputated; and they were about to fasten him to the surgeon’s table —for it was long before the merciful discovery of anaesthetics. He said: “No, don’t fasten me to that table, get me a violin.” violin was brought to him and he said: “Now go to work as I begin to play,” and for forty minutes, during the awful pangs of amputation, he moved not a muscle nor dropped a note while he played some sweet tune, Oh, is it not strange that with the music of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and with this grand march of the church militant on the way to become the church triumphant, we cannot forget ourselves and forget all pang and al! sorrow .persecution and all perturbation.

We know what men accomplish under woaldly opposition. Men do not shrink back for antagonism or for hardship. You have admired Prescott’s “Conquest of Mexico,” as brilliant and beautiful a history as was ever written; but some of you may not know under what disadvantages it was written —that “Conquest of Mexico—for Prescott was totally blind, and he had two pieces of wood parallel to each, fastened, and totally blind, with his pen between Those pieces of wood he wrote the stroke against one piece of food telling how far the pen must go in one way, the stppke against the other piete of wood telling how far the pen must go in the other way. Oh, how much men will endure for wordly knowledge and for worldly success, and yet how little we endure for Jesus Christ. How many Christians therejiro.thatgoaroundsaying: “O my hand, my hand, my hurt hand; don’f’you see there is blood on my hand, and there is blood on the sword?” while Eleazar, with the hilt imbedded in the flesh of his right hand, does not know it. L What have we suffered in comparison with those who expired with suffocation, or were burned, or were chopped to pieces for the truth’s sake? We talk of presecution of olden times. There is just as much presecution going on now in various ways. In 1849, in Madagascar, eighteen men were put death for Christ’s sake. They were to be hurled over the rocks, and before they were hurled over the rocks, in order to make their death more dreadful in anticipation, they were put in baskets and swung to and fro over the precipice, that they might see how many hundred feet they would have to be dashed down, and while they were swinging in these baskets over the rocks they sang: “Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to Thy bosom fly.” Thea they were dashed down to death. Oh, how much others have endured for Christ, and how little we endure for Christ. Wc want to ride to heaven in a Pullman sleeping car, our feet on soft plush, the bed made up early so we can sleep all the way, the black porter of death to wake us up only jn time to enter the golden city. We want all the sur* geons to fix dur hand up. Let them bring on all the lint and all the bandages and all the salve, for our hand is hurt, while Eleazar does not know his hand is hurt—“ His,, hand, clave unto his sword.”

As I look at Eleazar’s hand I come to the conclusion that he has done a great deal of hard hitting. I am not surprised when I see these four men —Eleazar and his three companions—drove back the army of the Philistines, that Eleazar’s sword clave to his hand for every time he struck an enemy with one end of the sword the other wounded him. When he took hold of the sword the sword took hold of him. Oh, we have found an enemy who cannot bo conquered by rose-water and soft speeches. It must be sharp stroke and 9 straigbt thrust. Thero is intemperance, and there is fraud, and there is gambling, and there is lust, and there are ten thousand battalions of iniquity, armed Philistine iniquity. How are they to bo captured and overthrown? Soft sermons in morrocco cases laid down in front of an exquisite audience will not do it. You have got to call things by their right name. We have go to expel from our churches Christians who eat the sacrament on Sunday and devour widows’ houses all the week. We have got to stop oui’ indignation against tho Hitties and the Jebusites and the Gergishites, and let those poor wretches go, and anply cur indignation to the modern transgressions which need to be dragged out and slain. Ahabs here. Herods here., ‘Jezebels here. The massacre of the infants here. Strike for God so hard that while you slay the sin the sword will adhere to your own hand. I tell you, my friends, we want a few Johrt Knoxes and John Wesleys in the Christian church to-day. The whole tendency is to refine on Christian work. We keep on refining on it until we send apologetic word to iniquity wc are about to capture it, and we must go with sword silver chased and presented by the ladies, and we must ride on white palfrey under embroidered housing, putting the spurs in just enough to make the chargor dance gracefully, and then we must send a missive, delicate as a wedding card, to ask. the old black giant of sin if he will not surrender. Women saved by the grace of Gotf and on glorious mission sent, detained from Sabbath classes because

their new hat is not done. Churches that shook our cities with great revivals sending around to ask some demonstrative worshiper if he will not please to say “amen” and “hallelujah” a little softer. It seems as if in our church we wanted a baptism of cologne and balm of a thou-, sand flowers, when we actually need a baptism of fire from the Lord God of Pentecost. But we are so afraid somebody will criticise our sermons, or criticise our prayers, or criticise our Religious work, that our anxiety for the world's redemption is lost in the fear that we will get our hand hurt, while Eleazer went into the conflict ‘jjmd his hand clave unto the sword.”* But I see in the next place what a hard thing it was for Eleazar to get his hand and his sword parted. The muscles and the sinews had been so long grasped around the sword he could pot drop it when he proposed to drop it, and his three comrades. I suppose, came up and tried to help' him* and they bathed the back part of the hand, hoping the sinews and muscles would “Hjs. hand clave to the sword.” Then they tried to pull open the fingers and to pull back the thumb, but no sooner were they pulled back than they closed againJ_“and_fiOand“ clave unto the sword.” But after a while they were successful, and then they noticed that the curve in the palm of the band corresponded exactly with the curve on the hilt. “His hand clave unto the sword.”

_ You and I have seen it many a time. There are in the United States-to-day many aged ministers of the Gospel, They are too feeble now to preach. In the church records the word opposite their name is “emeritus,” or the words are, “a minister without charge.” They were a heroic race. They had small salaries and but few books, and they swam spring freshets to meet their appointments. But they did in their day amightjg work for God. They tootc off more of the heads of Philistine iniquity than you could count from noon to sundown. You put that old minister Of the gospel now into a prayermeeting or occasional pulpit or a sick room where there is some one to be comforted, and it is the same old ring to his voice and the same old story of pardon and peace and Christ and heaven. His hand has so long clutched the sword in Christian conflict he cannot drop it. “His hand clave unto the sword.” I preach this sermon as a tonic. I want you to hold the truth with ineradicable grip, and I want you to strike so hard for God that it will react, and while you take the sword, the sword will take you. _ O, my friends, when the battle of life is over and the has come, and our bodies rise from the dead, will we have on us any scars of bravery for God? Christ will be there all covered with sears. Scars ou.the brow, scars on the hand scars on the feet, scars all over the heart won in the battle of redemption. And all Heaven will sob aloud with emotion as they look at those scars. Ignatius will be there, and he will point out the pl ace where the tooth and the paw of the lion seized him in the Coliseum, and John Huss will be there, and he will show where the coal first scorched theefoot on that day when his spirit took wing of flame from Constance. McMillan and Campbell and Freeman, American missionaries in India, will be there—the men who with -th.eir-MLV.es_and_children^went down in the awful massacre at Cawnpore, and they will show where the daggers of the Sepoys struck them. The Waldenses will be there, and they will show where their bones were broken on that day when the Piedmontese soldiery pitched them over the rocks. And there will be those there who took care of the sick and who looked after the poor, and they will have evidences of earthly exhaustion. And Christ, with His scarred hand waving over the scarred multitude, will say: “You suffered with me on earth, now be glorified with me in heaven,” and then the great organs of eternity will take up the chant, and St. John will play: “And these are they who came out of great tribulation and had their robes washed and tnado white in the blood of the Lamb.”