Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 April 1893 — THE WEDDING FEAST. [ARTICLE]

THE WEDDING FEAST.

The Many Guests Who Did Not Come. - Baseless Eicoim That Men Make for Sot Becoming Christians—Dr. Tal- , ■ mage’s Sermon. Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn. last Sundays— Subject: “The Wedding Feast.” Text: Luke xiv, 18—“ And they all with one consent began to make excuse.” He said: After the invitations to a levee are sent out the regrets come in. One man apologizes for nonattendance on one ground, another on another ground. The most of the regrets are founded on prior engagements. So in my text a great banquet was spread, the invitations were circu-

lated, and now the reports come in. Apology the First—-I am not sure there is anything valuable in the Christian religion. It is pleaded that there are so many impositions in this day —so many things that seem to be real are sham. A gilded mrtsidp. may have a hollow inside. There is so much quackery in physics, in ethics, in politics, that men come to the habit of inereduHty , and after awhile they allow that incredulity to collide with our holy religion. Nothing in religion! Why, then all those Christians were deceived when in their dying moment they thought they saw the castles of the blessed, and your child, that with unutterable agony you put away in the grave, you wili never see him again nor hear his sweet voice nor feel the throb of his young heart. There is nothing in religion! Sickness will come upon you. Roll and turn upon your pillow. No relief. The medicine may be bitter, ThtT night may be dark, the pain may be sharp. No relief. Christ never comes to the sick room. Let the pain stab. Let the fever burn. Curse it and die. There is nothing in religion. There are others who got into skepticism by a natural persistence in asking questions—why or how? How can God be one being in three persons? They cannot understand it. Neither can I. How can God be a complete sovereign and yefrman a free agent? They cannot understand it. Neither can I. They cannot understand why a holy God lets sin come into the world. Neither can I. They say: “Here is a great mystery. Here is a disciple of fashion, frivolous and godless all her days—she lives on to be an octogenarian. Here is a Christian mother training her children for God and for heaven, self-siacrifieing, Christianlike, indispensable, seemingly, to that household—she takes the cancer and dies.” The skeptic says: “I can’t explain that.” Neither can I. If, therefore, I stand this morning before men and women who have drifted away into skepticism, I throw out no scoff; I rather implead you by the memory of those good old times when you knelt at your mother s knee and said your evening prayer, and those other days of sickness when she watched all night and gave you the medicines at just the right time, and turned the pillow when it was hot, and with hand long ago turned to dust soothed your pains, and with that voice you will never hear again, unless you join her in the better land; told you nevermind —you would be better by and by—that dying couch where she talked so slowly, catching her breath between the words —by all those memories I ask you to come and take the same religion;, It was'"go6ff“"enougE''Wr her; it is good enough for you. Good resolution, reformatory effort, will not effect the change. It takes a mightier hand to bend evil habits than the hand that bent the bow of Ulysses, and it takes a lasso stronger than ever held the buffalo on the prairie. A man cannot go forth with any human weapons and contend successfully against these Titans armed with uptorn mountains. But you have known men into whose spirit the influence of the gospel of Christ came, until their disposition was wholy changed. Peter, with nature as tempestuous as the sea that he once tried to walk, at one look of Christ went out and wept bitterly. Rich harvests of grace may grow on the tiptop of the jagged steep, and flocks of Christian graces may find pasturage in the fields of bramble and rock. Though your disposition may be all a-bristle with fretfulness, though you have a tempm- a-gleam with quick lightnings; though your avarice be like that of the horse leech, crying, “Give!” though damnable impurities have wrapped you in all comsuming fire, God can drive that devil out of vour soul, and over the chaos and the darkness he can say, “Let there be light.” Cbnverting grace has lifted the drunkard from the ditch, and snatched the knife from the hand of the assassin and the false keys from the burglar, and in the pestiferous lanes of the city met the daughter of sin under the dim lamplight and scattered her sorrow and. his guilt with the words, “Thy sins are forgiven—go and sin no more.” For scarlet sin a scarlet atonement.

There are tens of thousands of people who decline being religious because there are so many unworthy Christians. Now, I say it is illogical. Poor lawyers are nothing against jurisprudence, poor physicians are nothing against medicine, poor fanners are nothing against agriculture, and mean, contemptible professors of religion are nothirjg agaifcst our glorious Christianity. Sickness will come, and we will be

'pushed out toward the Red sea which divides this world from the next, and not the inconsistency of Christians, but the rod of faith will wave back the waters as a commander wheels his host. The judgment will come, with its thundershod solemnities attended by bursting mountains and the deep laugh of earthquakes, and suns will fly before the feet of God like sparks from the anvil, and ten thousand burning worlds will blaze like banners in the track of GocFoim nipotent. Oh, then we will not stop to say, “There was a mean Christian; there was a lying Christian; there was an impure Christian.” In that day, as now, “If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself, but if thou scornest thou alone shall bear it.”

Other persons apologize for not becoming Christians because they lack time, as though religion muddled the brain of the accountant, or tripped the pen of the author, or thickened the tongue of the orator, or weakened the arm of the mechanic, or scattered the briefs of the lawyer, or interrupted the sales of the merchant. They bolt their store doora against it and fight it back with towels and yardsticks and cry, “Away with your religion from our store, our office, our factory!” Did religion make Raleigh any less of a statesman, or Havelock any less of a soldier, or Grinnell any less of a merchant, or West any less of a painter? Religion is the best security in every bargain. It is the sweetest note in every song; it is the brightest gem in every coronet. No time to be religious? Why, you will have to take time to be sick, to be troubled, to die. Our world is only the wharf from which we are to em • bark for heaven. No time to secure the friendship of Christ? No time to buy a lamp and trim it for that walk through the darkness which otherwise will be illuminated only by the whiteness of the tombstones? No time to educate the eye for heavenly splendors, or the hand for choral harps, or the ear for everlasting songs, or the soul for honor, glory and immortality? One would think we had time for nothing else. But while we as Christian people are bound to take a cheerful view of life we must also confess that life is a great uncertainty; and that man who says, “1 can’t become a Christian because there is time enough yet,” is running a risk infinite. You do not perhaps realize that this descending grade of sin gets steeper and steeper, and that you are gathering up a rush and velocity which after awhile may not answer to the brakes. Oh, my friends, be not among those who give their whole life to the world and then give their corpse to God. Here is a delusion. People think, I ‘l can go on in 3in and worldliness, but after awhile I will repent and then it will be as though I had come at the start.” That is a delusion. No one ever gets fully over procrastination. If you give your soul to God some other time than this, you will enter heaven with only half the capacity for enjoyment and knowledge you might have had. There will be heights of blessedness you might have attained you will never reach; thrones of glory on which you might have been seated, but which you will never climb. “This morning voices roll down the sky, and all the worlds of light are ready to rejoice at your disenthral 1ment. Rush not into the presence of the King ragged with sin when you may. have this robe of righteousness. Dash not your foot to pieces against the throne of a crucified Christ. Throw not your crown of Tife- etT the battlements. Ail the scribes of God are this moment ready with volumes of living light to record the news of your soul emancipated.