Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 November 1893 — TALKING POLITICS. [ARTICLE]

TALKING POLITICS.

Da*. Talmage Speaks About Candidates and Characters. • Th« Ton ComaitUidmentH the Trite To*t of FitnoM for Official Position. Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn last Sunday. Text—Exodus xx, 18: •‘And alUthe -people saw the thunderings and the lightnings and the noise of the trumpet and the mountain smoking. ” He said: On the eve of elections in the sixty counties of this State, and in all «ountie» of most of the .United. States, while there are many hundreds of nominees to office, it’ is appropriate and important that I .preach this before election sermon. My text informs you that the ‘lightnings and earthquakes united their forces to wreck a mountain of Arabia Petraea in olden time, and -travelers today find heaps of porphyry and greenstone rocks, bowlder against bowlder, the remains of •the first law library, written, not on parchment or papyrus, but on shattered slabs of granite. The cornerstones of all morality, of all wise law, of all righteous jurisprudence, of all good government are the two tablets of stone on which are written the ten commandments. All Roman law, all French law, ■all English law, all American law that is worth anything, all common taw, civil law, criminal, martial law, law of all nations were rocked in the •cradle of the twentieth chapter of Exodus. And it would be well in these times of great political agitation if the newspapers would print the decalogue some day in place of the able editorial. The fact is that some people suppose that the law has passed out of existence, and some are not aware of some of the passages of that law, and others say this or that is of the more importance, when no one has any right to make such an assertion. These laws are the pillars of society, and if you remove one pillar you damage the whole structure. Many questions are before the people in the coming elections all over the land, but I shall try to show you that the most important thing to be settled about all these candidates is their personal, moral character. The decalogue forbids idolatry, image making, profanity, maltreatment of parents, Sabbath desecration, murder, theft, incontinence, lying and covetousness. That is the decalogue by which you and I will have to be tried, and by the same decalogue you and I must try candidates for office. Most certainly are we not to take the statement of red hot partisanship as to the real character of any man. From nearly all the great cities of this land I receive daily or weekly newspapers, sent to me regularly and in compliment, so I see both sides—l see all sides—and it is most entertaining and my regular amusement to read the opposite •statements. The one statement says the man is an angel and the other says he is a devil; and I split the difference and I find him half way between.

I warn you also against the mistake which many are making and always do make of applying a different standard of character for those in prominent position from the standard they’ apply for ordinary persons. However much a man may • have or however high the position he gets, he has no special liberty given him in the interpretation of the ten commandments. A great siuner Is no more to be excused than » small sinner. Do not charge illustrious defection to eccentricity or ehop off the. ten commandments to suit especial cases. The right is everlastingly right and the wrong is everlastingly wrong. If any man nominated for any office in this city or State differs from the decalogue do not fix up the decalogue but fix him up. The law must stand whatever else must fall. I call your attention also to the fact that you are all aware of—that the breaking of any one commandment makes it the more easy to break all of them—and the philosophy is plain. Any kind of sin weakens the conscience, and if the conscience is weakened that opens the door for all kinds of transgression. If, for instance, a man go into this political campaign wielding scurrility as his chief weapon and he believes everything bad about a ma? and believes nothing good, how long before that man himself will get over the moral depression? Neither in time nor eternity. And then, when you investigate a man on such subjects, you must go to the whole length of investigation and find out whether or not he has repented. He may have been on his knees before God and implored the divine forgiveness, and he may have implored the forgiveness of society and the forgiveness of the world. Although if a man commit that sin at thirty or thirty-five years of age, there is not one case out of a thousand where he ever repents. You must in our investigation see if it is possible that the one case investigated may not have been the exception. But do not chop off the seventh commandment to suit the case. Do not change Fairbank’s scale to suit what you are weighing with it. Do not cut off a yardstick to suit the dry goods you are measuring. Let the law stand and never tamper with it. Above* all, I charge you do not join in the cry that I have heard—for fifteen, twenty years I have hoard U. If you make that charge, you are a foul mouthed scaudaler of

the Iter nai> race You are • a ieper. Make room for that leper! When a ma*, By pea or type or tongue, utters suA a slander on tbe human race that there is such thiqg as purity, I know right away that that man himself is a walking lazaretto, a reeking ulcer, and is-fit for no society better than that of devils damned. We may enlarge our charities in such a case, but in no such case let us shave off the ten commandments. Let them stand as the everlasting defense of society aud of the chiirch of God. The .committing of one sin opens the door for the commission of other sins. You see it every day. Those embezzlers, those bank cashiers absebaefing as soon as they -.arebrought to justice, develop the fact that they are in all kinds of sin. No exception to the rule. They all kept baa company, they nearly all gambled, they all' went' to places where they ought not. Why? The commission of the one sin opened the gate for all the other sins. Sins go in flocks, in droves and in herds. You open the door for one sin, that invites in-all the miserable segregation. Some o' the campaign orators this autumn —some of them —.bombarding the suffering candidates all the week, will think no wrong in Sabbath breaking. All week hurling the eighth commandment at one candidate, the seventh commandment at another candidate and the ninth commandment at still another,' what are they doing with the fourth commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy?” Breaking it. Is not the fourth commandment as important as the eighth, as the seventh, as the ninth? Some of these political campaign orators, as I have seen them reported in other years, and as. I have heard it in regard to them, bombarding the suffering candidates all the week, yet tossing the name of God from their lips recklessly, guilty of profanity—what are they doing with the third commandment? Is not the third commandment, which says, “Thou shalt not take tho name of the Lord thy Gpd in vain, for th§ Lord will riot iiold him thall taketh his name in vain” —is not the third commandment as important as the other seven? Oh, yes, we find in all departments men are hurling their indignation against sins perhaps to which they are not particularly tempted —hurling it against iniquity toward which they are not particularly drawn. I have this book for my authority when I say that the man who swears or the man who breaks the Sabbath is as culpable before God as those candidates who break other com--mandmentsj What right have- you and I to select which commandments we will keep aud which we will break? Better not try to measure the thunderbolts of the Almighty, saying this has less blaze, this has less momentum. Better not handle the guns, better not experiment much with the divine ammunition.

I bring'-up the ctftididaaes for ward and township, and city and State office. I bring them # up, and I try them by this decalogue. Of course they are imperfect. We are all imperfect. We say things we ought not to say; we do things we ought not to do. We have all been wrong; we have all done wrong. But I shall find out one of the candidates who comes, in my estimation, nearest to obedience of the ten commandments, and 1 will vote for him, and you will vote for him unless you love God less than your party —then you will not.

Herodotus said that, Nitoeris, the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, was so fascinated with her beautiful village of Aadoricca that she had the river above Babylon changed so it wound this way and wound that, and curved this way and curved that, and though you sailed on it for three days every day you would be in sight of that exquisite village. Now, Ido not care which way you sail in morals or which way you sail in life if you only sail in sight of this beautiful group of divine commandments. Although they may sometimes seem to be a little angular, I do not care which way you sail, if you sail in sight of them you will never run aground, and you will never be shipwrecked. Society needs toning up on all these subjects. Let not ladies and gentlemen in this nineteenth century revise the ten commandments, but let them in society and at the polls put to the front those who come the nearest to this God-lifted standard. On the first Tuesday morning of November read the twentieth chapter of Exodus at family prayers. The moral or immoral character of the officers elected will add 75 per cent, unto or subtract 75 per cent, from the public morals. You and I can not afford to have bad officials. The young men of this country can not afford to have bad officials. The commercial, the moral, the artistic, the agricultural, the manufacturing, the religious interests of this counury can not afford to have bad officials and if you, on looking over the whole field, can not find men who in your estimation come within reasonable distance of obedience of the decalogue stay at home and do not vote all. ' As near as I can tell the most important thing now to be done is to have about forty million copies of the Sinaitic decalogue printed and scattered throughout the land. It was a terrible waste when the Alexandrian library was destroyed, and the books were taken to heat 4,000 baths for the citizens of Alexandria. It was very expensive heat. But without any harm to the decalogue you could with it heat 100,000 baths

r .. ' ' ' of moral purification for the American people. I say we want a tonic—a. mighty tonic, a corrective, an all powerful corrective—and Moses in tbe text, with steady hand, notwithstanding the jarring monntums,. and the full •orchestra of the tempest, and the blazing of the air, pours out ten drops—no more notess—which our Dfcople need to take for their moral convalescence. ' .

But I shall not leave you. under tbe discouragement of the ten. commandments. because we have all offended. There is another mountain in sight, and while one mountain thunders the other answers in. thunder, and while Mount Sinai with lightnmg-.writes doom, the l other, mountain with lightning writes mercy. The only way" you will ever spike the guns of the decalogue is by the spikes of the cross. The Only rock that will ever step the Sinai tic upheavals is the Rock 6f Ages. Mount Calvary is higher than Mount Sinai.

Moultrie s silenced’ Sumter, and against the mountain of the- law I put th e mountain bTthe cross. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die,” booms one until the earth jars under thte cannonade. “Save them from going down to the pit. I have found a ransom,” pleads the other, until earth and heaven and hell tremble under the reverbation. And MoseS, who commands the one, surrenders to Christ, who commands the other. Aristotle " says that Mount Etna erupted one day aud poured torrents of scoria upon the villages at the base, but that the mountain divided its flame and made a lane of safety for all those who came to rescue their aged parents. And this volcanic Sinai divides its fury for all those whom Christ has come to rescue from the red ruin on both sides. Standing as I do to-day, half-way between the two mountains the mountain of the Exodus and the mountain of the nineteenth of John —all my terror comes into supernatural calm, for the uproar of the one mountain subsides into quiet and comes down into so deep a silence that Icanhear the other mountain speak— $ye, I can hear it Whisper. “The blood, the blood, the blood that cleanseth from all sin.” " -

Oh, if you could see that boat of gospel rescue coming this day you would feel as John Gilmore in his book, “The Storm Warriors,” says that a ship’s crew felt on the Kentish Knock sands.off the coast of England, when they were being beaten to pieces and they all felt they must die! They had given up all' hope, and every moment washed off another plank from the wreck, and they said, “We must die; we must die!” But after they saw a Ramsgate lifeboat coming through tbe breakers for them, and the man standing highest up on the wreck said: ‘ ‘Can it be? It is, itis. it is,it is! Thank God! It is aßamsgate lifeboat! It is, it is, it is, it is!”

And the old Jack Tar, describing that lifeboat to his comrades after he got ashore, said, “Oh. my lads, what a beauty it did seem coming through the breakers that awful day!” My God. through the mercy of Jesus Christ, take us all off the miserable wreck of our sin into the beautiful lifeboat of the gospel!