Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 June 1892 — ON THE OCEAN SAILING. [ARTICLE]

ON THE OCEAN SAILING.

Dr. TfCbnage Dictates a Sermon v His Departure. Departure Is HU Subject, in Which He Finds Many Beautiful and Appropriate Thoughts. Rev. Dr. Talmage is now on the Atlantic, having sailed from New York on the 15th inst. for Liverpool, for a preaching tour in England, Ireland, Scotland and Sweden. Before visiting Sweden Dr. Talmage will go to Russia, there to witness the reception and disposition of the cargo of breadstuff's on board the Christian Herald relief steamship Leo. Previous to his departure he dictated to his stenographer the following farewell sermon, to be read by the vast and widely scattered audiences whom it is his weekly privilege to address through the medium of the newspa?er press. He took his text from II imothy, iv, 6: “The time of my departure is at hand.” Departure! That is a word used only once in all the Bible. But it is a word often used in the court room, and means the desertion Of one course of pleading for another. It is used in navigation to describe the distance between two meridians passing through the extremities of a course. It is a word I have recently heard applied to my departure from AmerEurcjpe for a preaching tour to last until September. In a smaller and less significant sense than that implied in the text I can say, “The time of my departure is at hand.” Through the printing press I address

this sermon to my readers all the world over, and when they read it I will be on the ocean, and unless something new happens in my marine experiences I will be in no condition to preach. But how unimportant the word departure when applied to change of continents as when ap?lied to exchange of worlds as when 'aul wrote: “The time of my departure is at hand.” - Now, departure implies a starting place and a place of destination. When Paul left this world, what was the starting poipt? It was a scene of'great physical distress. It was the Tullianumf the lower dungeon of the Mamertine prison, Rome, Italy. The top dungeon was bad enough, it having no means of ingress or egress but through an opening in the top. Through that the food was lowered, and through that came all the food and air and light received. It was i terrible place, that upper dungeon; but the Tullianum was the lower dungeon, and that was still more wretched, the only light and the only air coming through the roof, and that, roof the floor of the upper dungeon. That was Paul’s last earthly residence. I was in that lower dungeon in November, 1889. It is made of volcanic stone. I measured it, and from wall to wall it was fifteen feet. The highest of the roof was seven feet from the floor, and the lowest of the roof five feet seven inches. The opening in the roof through which Paul was let down was three feet wide. —r—

The dungeon has a seat oL rocks two and a half feet high, and a shelf of rock four feet high. It was there tha.t P.aul spent his. JasL_daya_mi_ earth, and it is there that I see him now, in the fearful dungeon, shivering blue with the cold, waiting for that old overcoat which he had sent for up to Troas, and which they had not yet sent down, notwithstanding he had written for it. If some skilled surgeon should go into that dungeon where Paul is incarcerated. we might find out what are the prospects of Paul’s living through the rough imprisonment. In the first place he is an old man only two years short of 70. At that very time when he most needs the warmth and the sunshine and the fresh air, he is shutout from the sun.. What are those scars on his aukles? Why, those were gotten when he was fast, his feet in the stocks. Every time he turned the flesh on his ankles started. What are those scars on his back? You know he wais-whipped five times, each time getting thirtynine strokes—one hundred and nine- . tyrfive bruises on the back recount them) made by the Jews with rods of elm-wood, each one of the 195 strokes bringing the blood. Look at Paul’s face and look at his arms. Where did hd get those bruises? I think it was When he was struggling ashore amidst the shivering timbers ofUhe shipwreck. I see a gash in Paul’s side. Where did he get that? I think he got that in the tussle with highwaymen, for he had been in . peril of robbers, and he had money of his own. He was a mechanic as well ar an apostle, and I think the tents he made were as good as his sermons. - There is a watTness Tibout Paul’s T looka. 'What makes that? I think a par>m that c§me from the fact he Was tor twenty-four hours on a plank in the Mediterranean Sea, suffering terribly. before he was rescued; for he says positively, “I was a night and a day in the deep.” Oh. worn-out, old man! surely you must be melancholy; no constitution could endure this and fooeheerf I press my way through the prison until I come up close to where he is, and J>y the light that streams through the opening I see on his face a supernatural joy, and I bow before hinu and I say: “Aged man, how keep cheerful amidst all this gloom?”. Bis voic# startles the darkness of the place as he cries out: Tam now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.” Harkl what is that shuffling of feet in the upper dungeon? Why, Paul has an invitation to a banquet, and he is going to dine to-day with the King. ThoSe shuffling feet" are the feet of the' executioners. - They come, and they cry down through the hole of

the dungeon: “Hurry up, old mam Come, now; get yourself’ ready. He had nothing to pack up.' He had no baggage to take. He had been ready a good while. I see him rising up. and straightening out his stiffened limbs, and pushing back his white hair from his creviced forehead, and see him looking up through the hole in the roof of the dungeon into the face of his executioners, and hear him say: “I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.” Then they lift him out the dungeon,and they start with him to the place of execution. They say: ‘‘Hurry along old man, or you will f§el the weight of our spear, Hurry along.” “How far is it,” nays Paul, “we have to travel?” “Three miles.” Three miles is a good way for an old man to travel after he has beepwhipped and crippled maltreatment.,' But they soon get to the place of execution — Acqae Salvia —and he -is fastened to the pillar of martyrdom. It does not take any strength to tie him fast. Hejmade no resistance. O Pauli why not now strike for your life? You have a great many friends here. With that withered hand just launch the thunder-bolt of the people upon those infamous soldiers. No! Paul was not going to interfere with his ovAi coronation. He was too glad to go. I see him laoking up in the face of his executioner, and, as the grim official draws his sword, Paul calmly say, “I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my deEarture is at hand.’! # But L put mv and over my eyes. I want not to see that last struggle!?*' One sharp keen stroke and Paul does go to the banquet, and Paul does dine with the King. « What a transition it was! From the malaria of Rome to the finest climate in all the universe—the zone of eternal beauty and of Rome, but in one moment the air of heaven bathed from the soul the last ache. From shipwreck, from dungeon, from the biting pain of the elmwood rods, from the sharp sword of the headsman, he goes into the most brilliant assemblage of heaven, a king among kings, multitudes of the sainthood rushing out and stretching forth hands of welcome; for I do really think that as on the right hand of God is Christ, so on the right hand of Chsist is Paul, the secona great in heaven; He changed kings likewise. Before the hour of death, and up to the last moment, he was under Nero, the thick-necked, the cruel-eyed, the filthy-lipped: the sculptured features of that man bringing down to us to this very day the horrible possibilities of his nature —seated as he was amidst the pictured marbles of Egypt under a roof adorned with mother-of-pearl, in a dining room which by machinery was kept whirling day and night with most bewitching magnificence; his horses standing in stalls of solid gold, and the grounds around his palace lightened at bight by its victims, who had been bedaubed with tar and pitch and then set on fire to illumine the darkness. That was Paul’s King. But the next moment he goes into the realm of Him whose reign is love, and whose courts, are paved with love, and whose throne is set on pillars of love, and whose- scepter- is. .. adorned- with. jewels of love, and whose palace is lighted with love, andwhose life-tijne s is an eternity of love. When Paul was leaving so much on this side the pillar of martyrdom, to gain so much on the other side, do you wonder at the cheerful valedictory of the text: “The time of my departure is at hand?” —.— Blit you say, “I can not bear to think of parting from friends here.” If you age old you have more friends in heaven than here. Just take the census. Take some large sheet of paper and begin to record the names of those who have emigrated to the other shore: the companions of your school days, your early business associates, the friends of middle life, and those who more recently wept away. Can it be they have been gone so long you do not care anything more about them? and you do not want their society? Oh, no. There have been days when you have felt that you could not endure another moment away from their blessed companionship. They have gone. You say you would not like to bring them back to this world of trouble even if you had the power. It would not do to trust you. God would not give you resurrection power. Before to-morrow morning you would be rattling at the gates of the cemetery crying to the departed, “Come back to the cradle where you slept! Come back to the hall where you used to play! Come back to the table where you used to sit!” and there will be a great burglary in heaven. No, no. God will not trust vou with resurrection power: but He compromises the mattes and says, “You can not bring them where you are, but you can go where they are.” Thev are more lovelv now than ever. Were they beautiful here, they are more beautiful there, « Besides that, it is more healthy for you than here, aged man; better olimate there than these hot” summers and cold winters and late Bprings; better hearing; better eyesight; more tonic in the air; more perfume in the bloom; more sweetness in the song. Do you hot feel, Paged man, sometimes as though you wdurd like to get your arm and foot free? Do you not feel as though you would .like to throw away spectacles and canes and crutches? Would you not like to feel the spring and elasticity and mirth of an eternal boyhood? When the point at which you start from this world is old age, and the point to which you gfl is eternal juvemftcence. aged man, clap your hands at the anticipation, and say, in perfect rapture of , soul, “The time of my departure is at hand.”