Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 August 1892 — TALMAGE IN EUROPE. [ARTICLE]

TALMAGE IN EUROPE.

A Practical Sermon on the Prodigal Son. Sin i* s Mean and Contemptible Thine at All Time*—The Promisee of Sataa Are Never Kept, Dr. Talmage continues his European evangelization. He preached every day last week. The sermon selected for publication is from the text Luke xv, 18, *'l will arise and go to my father.” He said: There is nothing like hunger to take the energy out of a man. A hungry man can neither toil with pen nor hand nor foot. There has been an army defeated not so much for lack of ammunition as for lack of bread. It was that fact that took the fire out of this young man of the text. Storm and exposure will wear out any man’s life in time, but hun-. ger makes quick work. The most awfuL cry everheard on earth is the cry for bread. A traveler tells us that in Asia Minor there are trees which bear fruit looking very much like the long bean of our time. It is called the carab. Once in a white the people reduced to?? destitution would eat these carabs, but generally the carabs, the beans spoken of here ip the text, were thrown only to the swjne, and they crunched them with great avidity. But this young man of my text could not get even them without stealing them. So one day amid the swine troughs he begins to soliloquize. He said, ‘\These are no clothes for a rich man’s son to wear; this is no kind of business for a Jew to be engaged in feeding swine; I’ll go home; I’ll go home: I will arise and go to my father.” I know there are a gqpd many people who try to throw a fascination, a romance, a halo about withstanding all that Lord Byron and George Sand have said in regard to it, it is a mean, low contemptible business, and putting food and fodder into thp troughs of a herd of iniquities that root and wallow in the sold of man Is very poor business for men and women intended to be sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty. And when the young man resolved to go home it was a wise thing, for him to do, and the only question is whether we will follow him.

Satan promises large wages if we will follow him, but he clothes his victims with rags and he pinches them with hunger, and when they,, start out to do better he sets after them all the 3 bloodhounds of hell. Satan comes Jo us and promises all luxuries, all emoluments' ff we will serve him. Liar, thee to the pit! “The wages df sin is death.” Oh, the young man of, the text was wise when he uttered the resolution. -T will arise and goto my father.” The resolution of tbis text was formed in disgust at his present.circumstances. If this young man had been by his employer set to culturing flowers, or training vines over an arbor, or keeping an account of the pork market,or overseeing other laborers, he would not have thought of going home. If he had had his -pocketirfdl-ofmaffejr'irhehadbeeti able to say, “I have a thousand dollars now of my own, what’s the use of going back to my father's house ? Do you think I am going back to apologize to the old man ? Why, he would put me on the limits ; he would not have going on around the old place such conduct as I have been engaged in. I won’t go home There is no reason *why I should go home. I have plenty of money, plenty of fleasqnt surroundings. Why shouM go home ? ” Ah ! it was his pauperism ; it was his beggary. He bad to go home. Some man comes and says to me : “ Why do you talk about the ruined state of the human soul ? Why don’t you speak about the. progress of the Nineteenth century, and talk of something more exhilarating,?” It is for this reason—a man never wants the Gospel until he realizes he is in a famine Suppose I should come to yoi£ in your home, and you are, in gbbd and robust health, and I should begin to talk about medicines, and about how much better this medicine is than that, and some other medicine than some other medicine, and talk about this physician and that physician. After awhile you would get tired, and you would say, “I don’t hear about medicines. Why do you talk to me of physicians ? I never Tiave a doctor. ’ J

Suppose I come into your house and find you severely sick,' and I know the medicines that will cure you, and I know the physician who is skillful enough to meet your ease. You say: “Bring on all that medicine; bring on that physician. lam terribly sick and I want help.” If I came to you aud feel you are all right in body and all rtoht in mind and all right in soul have need of nothing; but suppose i have persuaded you that the leprosy of siu is .upon you, the worst ol ail sickness, oh, then you say, “Bring me that balm of the Gospel; bring me that divine medicament; bring me Jesus Christ. But says some one in the audience. “How do you prove that we are in a ruined condition by sin?” Well, I can prove it in two ways, and you may have your choice. I can prove it either by the statements of men or by the statement of God, Which shall it be? You all say, “Let us haye the statement of C4od." Well he says in one place, “The heart is deceitful above all things and deswicked. '* He says in another place, “What is man that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be

righte<r»s?” He says in another place, “There is none that doeth“ good; no, not one.” He says in another place, “As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men; for that all.have sinned. ’ “Well,” you say, “I am willing to acknowledge that, but why should I take the particular rescue, that you propose T This is the reason. “Except a man befborn again he cannot see the kingdbm of God.” This is the reason, “There is one name given under heaven among men whereby v they may be saved. ” Then there are a thousand voices here ready to “Well, I am ready to accept this help of the Gospel, I would !ike to have this divine cure; how shall I go - to work?” Let me saY that a mere whim, an undefined lqpging amounts to nothing. You must have a stout tremendous resolution like this young man of the text when he said, “I will arise and go to my father.” “Oh!” says some man, “how do I know my father wants me?” Ho# do I kndw, if I go baek,\l would he re-, eeived?” “Oh!” says some man, “you don't know where Ahave been: you dou’t know how rkrj have wandered; you wouldn’t talkT.nat way to me if you knew all the iniquities I have committed. ” What is that flutter among the angels of news, it is news! Christ has found the lost. ' Again, I notice that this resolution of the young man of the text was founded in sorrow at his mis behavior. It was not mere physical plight. It was grief that he had so maltreated his father. It is a sad thing after a father has done everything for a child! to have that child be ungrateful. “A foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.” That is tho Bible. Well, my friends, have not some of us been cruel prodigals? Have we not maltreated our Father? And such a father! So loving, so kmd. \lf he had been a stranger, if lie\had for* saken us, if lie had Tagellatiii us, if he had pounded us and turned us out of doors on the commons, it !,would not have been so wonderful— : our treatment of him; but he is a father so loving, sc kind, and yet how many of us for our wanderings have never apologized! We apologize for tho wrohgs dene our fellows, but some of us have perhaps committed ten thousand times ten thousand wrongs against God and never apologized. I remark still further that this resolution of the text was fouuded in a spirit of homesickness. I do not know how long this young man, how many mouths, how many years, he had been away from his father’s house, but there is something about the reading of my text that makes me think he was r hoinesick. Some of you know what that feeling is. Far away from home sometimes surrounded by everything* bright and pleasant,, plenty of friends, you have said, “I would give the world to bo home to-night.” Well, this young man was homesick for his father’s house. I have nd doubt when he thought of his father’s house he said, “Now, perhaps my father may not be living,”——' ' read nothing in this story—this parable found on everyday life —we read nothing about the mother. It says nothing about going her. I think, she was dead. I think she had died of a broken heart at his -wanderings, or perhaps he had gone into dissipation from- the fact ho could not remembersa loving and sympathetic mSther. A man never gets over baviug lost his moffler. Nothing said about her here, but ho is homesich for his father’s house. He thought he would just like to go and walk around the old place. He thought be would just like to go and see if things were as they used tobei. Many a man, after having been off for a long while, has gone home and knocked at the door and a stranger has come. It is the old homestead, but a stranger comes to the door. He finds out father is gone, mother is gone brothers and sisters all gone, I think this young man of the text said to himself, “Perhaps father may be dead.” Still hristarts to find out. He is homesick. Are there any here to-day homesick for God, homesick for heaven? But I remark the characteristic of this resolution was, it was immediately put into execution. The context savs “he arose and came to his father.? The trouble in out of ninehundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand is that our resolutions amount to nothing because we make them for some distant time. If I resolve to become a Christian next year, that amounts to nothing at all. If I resolve at the service to-day to become a Christian, that amouhts to nothing qt all. If I resolve that alter Igo home to day to yield my heart to God, that amounts to aching at all. The only kind of a resolution that amounts to anything is the resolution that is immediately put into.execution. There is a map who had typhoid fever.. He said. * ‘Oh, if 1 could ever get over this terrible distress, if this fever should depart, if 1 could be restored to health, I would all the rest of my life serve God.” The fever departed. He got well eaough to walk around the block. He got well enough to attend to business. He is well to-day—as well as he ever was. Wltertr is the broken vow? There is a man who said long ago: “If I could live to that time I will have?' mv busines matters all arranged, and I will have .time to attend to religion, and I will be a good, thorough, consecrated Christian. “The year 1802 has coma January, February, March, April, May; June —fully half of .the jear gone. Where is vour broken vow? The imperial diamond, owned by prince of Wales, weighs 182 carats and is valued at 17,000.000 franc*.