Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 November 1893 — IF. [ARTICLE]

IF.

The “Ife” of the Bible As the Subject of Dr. Talmage’s Sunday Sermon. Only Foor Step* Between Faith and Unbe- , lift— Fhe Gospel Is the Bells on for Adversity. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at the Brooklyn Tabernacle last Sunday. Subject: “The Ifs of the Bible.” Text—Exodus xxxii., 32. He said: There is in our English language a small conjunction which I propose, by God’s help, to haul out of its present insignificancy and set upon the throne where jt belongs, and that is the conjunction “if.” Though made of only two letters, it is the pivot on which everything turns. All time and all eternity are at its disposal. We slur it in our utterance, we ignore it in our appreciation and none of us recognize it as the most tremendous word in all the vocabulary outside of those words which describe deity. “If!” Why, that word we take as a tramp among words, now appearing here, now appearing there, but having no value of its own, when it really has a millionairedom of worlds, and in its train walk all planetery, stellar, lunar solar destinies. If the boat of leaves made watertight, in which the infant Moses sailed the Nile, had sunk, who would have led Israel out of Egypt? If the Red sea had not parted for the escape of one host and then come together for the submergence of another, would the book of Exodus ever have been written? If the ship on which Columbus sailed for America had gone down in an Atlantic cyclone how much longer would it have taken for the discovery of this continent? Oh, that conjunction “if!” How much has depended on it! The height of it, the depth of it, the length of it, the immensity of it, the infinity of it—who can measure it? It would swamp anything but omnipotence. But I must confine myself to the “ifs” yi the Bible, and in so doing I shall speak -of the “if” of overpowering earnestness, the “if” of incredulity, the “if” of threat, the “if” of argumentation, the “if” of eternal significance, or so many of these “ifs” as I can compass in the time that may be reasonably allotted to pulpit discourse. “First, the “if” of overpowering earnestness. My text gives it. The Israelites have been worshiping an idol, notwithstanding all that God had done for them, and now Moses offers the most vehement prayer of all history, and it turns upon an “if.” “If thou wilt forgive their sins—and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book.” Oh, what an overwhelming “if!” It was as much as to say: “If thou wilt not pardon them, do not pardon me. If thou wilt not bring them to the promised land, let me never see the promised land. If they must perish, let me perish with them. In that book where thou record est their doom record my doom. If they are shutout of heaven, let me be shut out of heaven. If they go down into darkness, let me go down into darkness.” What vehemence and holy recklessness of prayer! Yet there are those here who, I have no doubt, have, in their allabsorbing desire to have others saved, risked the same prayer, for it is a risk. You must not make it unless you are willing to balance your eternal salvation on such an ? ‘if.” Yet there have been cases where a mother has been so anxious for the recovery of a wayward son that her prayer has swung and trembled and poised on an “if’like that of the text. “I have for many years loved thee.O God, and it has been my expectation to sit with Christ and all the redeemed at the banquet of the skies, but I now give up my promised place at the feast, and my promised robe, and my promised crown, and my Sromised throne, unless John, unless eorge, unless Henry, unless my darling son can share them with me. Heaven will be no heaven without him. O God, save my boy, or count me among the lost.” That is a terrific prayer, and yet there is a young man sitting in the pew on the main floor, or in the lower gallery, or in the top gallery, who has already crushed such a prayer from his mother’s heart. He hardly ever writes home, or, living at home, what does he care how much trouble he gives her? Her tears are no more to him than the rain that drops from the eaves of a dark night. The fact that she does not sleep because of watching for his return late at night does not choke his laughter nor hasten his step forward. Another bible “if” is the “if” of incredulity. Satan used it when Christ's vitality was depressed by forty days’ abstinence from food.and the tempter pointed to some stones, in color and shape like loaves of bread, and said: “If Thou be the Son of God command that these stones be made bread.” That was appropriate, for Satan is the father of that “if” of incredulity. Peter used the same “if” when standing on the wet and slippery deck of a fishing smack off Lake Galilee, he saw Christ walking on the sea as though it were as solid as a pavement of basalt from the adjoining volcanic hills, and Peter cried, “If it be thou, let me come to Thee on the water.” What a preposterous “if!" What human foot was ever so constructed as to walk on water? In what part of the earth did law of gravitation make exception to the rule that a

man will sink to the elbows when he touches the wave of river'or lake and will sink further unless he can swim? But here Peter looks out uporythe form in the shape of a man defying the mightiest law of the universe, the law of gravitation, and standing erect on the top of |hfi liquid. Yet the incredulous Peter cries oat to the Lord, “If it be Thou.” Alas, for that incredulous “if!” It is working as powerfully in the latter part of this nineteenth Christian century as it did in the early part of the first Christian century. Though a small conjunction, it is the biggest block to-day in the way of the gospel chariot. “If!” “If!” We have theological seminaries which spend most of their time and employ their learning and their genius in the manufacturing of “ifs.” With that weaponry are assailed the Pentateuch, and the miracles, and the divinity of Jesus Christ. Almost everybody is chewing on an “if.” When many a man bows for prayer he puts his knee on an “if.” The door through which people pass into infidelity and atheism and all immortalities has two doorposts, and the one is made of the letter “i” and the other of the letter “f.” There are only four steps between strong faith and complete unbelief: (1) Surrender the idea of the verbal inspiration of the scriptures and adopt the idea that they were all generally supervised by the Lord. (2) Surrender the idea that they were all generally supervised by the Lord and adopt the theory that they were not all, but partly, supervised by the Lord. (3.) Believe that they are the gradual evolution of the ages, and men wrote according to the wisdom of the times in which they lived. (4) Believe that the Bible is a bad book, and not only unworthy of ere dence, but pernicious and debasing and cruel. Only four steps from the stout faith in which the martyrs died to the blatant caricature of Christianity as th® greatest sham of the centuries. But the door to all that precipitation and horror is made out of an “if.” The mother of unrests in the minds of Christian people and in those who regard sacred things is the “if” of incredulity. Just in proportion as you have ’few “ifs” of incredulity in your religion will you find it a comforting religion. My full and unquestioning faith in it is "founded on the fact that it soothes and sustains in time of trouble. I do not believe that any man who ever lived had more blessings and prosperity than I have received from God and the world. But 1 have had trouble enough to allow me opportunity of finding out whether our religion is of any use in such exigency. I have had fourteen great bereavements, to say nothing of lesser bereavements, ford was the youngest of a large family. I have had as much persecution as comes to most people. I have had all kinds of trial, except severe and prolonged sickness, and I would have been dead long ago but for the consolatory power of out - religion. Any religion will do in time of prosperity. Buddhism will do. Confucianism will do. No religion at all will do. But when the world gets after you and defames your best deeds, when bankruptcy takes the place of large dividends, when you fold for the last sleep the still hands over the still heart of your old father, who has been planning for your welfare all these years, or you close the eyes of your mother who has lived in your life ever since you were born, removing her spectacles because she will have clear vision in the home to which she has gone, or you give the last kiss to the child reclining amid the flowers that pile the casket and looking as natural . and lifelike as she ever did reclining in the cradle, then the only religion worth anything is the old-fashioned religion of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I would give more in such a crisis for one of the promises expressed in half a verse of the old book than for a whole library containing all the productions of all the othei* religions of all the ages. The other religions are a sort of cocaine to benumb and deaden the sou) while bereavement and misfortune do their work, but our religion is inspiration, illumination, imparadisation. It is a mixture of sunlight and hallelujah. Do not adulterate it with one drop of the tincture of incredulity. Another bible ‘if” is tte “if” of eternal significance. Solomon gives us that “if” twice in one sentence when he says, “If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself, but if thou scornest thou alone shalt bear it.” Christ gives us that “if” when He says, “If thou hadst known in this thy day the things which belong unto thy peace, but now they are hidden from thine eyes.” Paul gives us that “if” when he says, “If they shall enter into my rest.” All those “ifs” and a score more that I might recall put the whole responsibility of our salvation on ourselves. Christ’s willingness to pardon—no “if” about that. Realms of glory awaiting the righteous—no “if” about that. The only “iF’ in all the case worth a moment’s consideration is the “if” that attaches itself to the question as to whether we will accept, whether we will repent, whether we will believe, whether we will rise forever. Is it not time that we take our eternal future off that swivel? Is it not time that we extirpate that “if,” that miserable “if,” that hazardous “iF'? We would not allow this uncertain “if” to stay long in anything else of importance. Let some one say in regard to a railroad bridge, “I have reasons for asking if that

bridge is safe,” and you would not cross it. Let some one say, “I have reasons to ask if that steamer is trustworthy,” and you would not take passage on it. Let some one suggest in regard to a property you are about to buy, “I have reason to ask if they can give a good title,” and you would not pay a dollar down until you had some skillful real estate lawyer examine the title. But I allowed for years of my lifetime, and some of you have allowed for years of your lifetime, an “if" to stand tossing up and down questions of eternal destiny. Oh, decide! Perhaps your arrival here to-day may decide. •Stranger things than that have put to flight forever the “if” of uncertainty. You cannot parse my text. It is an offense to grammatical construction. But that dash put in by the type setters is mightily suggestive. “If thou wilt forgive their sin (then comes the dash) —and if not, blot me. I pray thee, out of thy book." Some of the most earnest prayers ever uttered could not be parsed and were poor specimens of language. They halted, they broke down, they passed into sobs or groans or silence. God cares nothing for the syntax of prayers, nothing for the rhetoric of prayers. Oh, the wordless prayers! If they were piled up they would reach to the rainbow that arches the throne of God. A deep sigh means more than the whole liturgy. Out of the 10,000 words of the English language there may not be a word enough expressive for the soul. The most effective prayers I have heard have been prayers that broke down with emotion—the young man for the first time rising in a prayer meeting and saying “Oh, Lord Jesus!” and then sitting down, burying the face in the handkerchief: the penitent in the inquiry room kneeling and saying “God help me,” and getting no further; the broken prayer that started a great revival in my church in Philadelphia. A prayer may have in style a gracefulness of an Addison and the sublimity of a Mil ton and the epigrammatic form of an Emerson and yet be a failure, having a horizontal power' but no perpendicular power, horizontal power reaching the car of man, but no perpendicular power reaching the ear of God. A mother, praying for a son’s recovery from illness, told the Lord he had no right to take him, and the boy recovered, but plunged into ali abominations and died a renegade* Better in all such prayers pertaining to our tempo-al weliurjt) pit! an “if” saying “If it be Thy will/ But in praying for spiritual good and the salvation of our soul we need neverinsertan “if.” Our spiritual welfare is sure to be for the* best; and away with the “ifs.” Abraham’s prayer for the rescue) of Sodom was a grand prayer ill some respects, but there were sb! “ifs” in it, or “pcradventurcs,” which mean the same thing. “Peradventure there may be fifty righteous in the city, peradventure fortyfive, peradventure forty, pc rad venture thirty, peradventure twenty ,> peradventure ten.” Those six per- 1 adventures those six “ifs” killed the prayer; and Sodom went down ands went under. Nearly all the prayers that were answered had no “ifs” in them —the prayer of Elijah that changed dry weather to wet weather, the prayer that changed Hezekiah from a sick man to a well man, the prayer that halted sun and moon without shaking the universe to pieces. Oh, rally your soul for a prayer with no “ifs” in it! Say in substance: “Lord, Thou hast promised pardon,. and I take it. Here are my wounds; heal them. Here is my blindness; irradiate it. Here are my chains of bondage; by the gospel hammer strike them off. I am fleeing to the city of refuge, and I am sure this is the right way. Thanks be to God, I am free” Onoe. by the law, my hopes wore alain. But now, in Christ, I live ayain. With the Mosaic earnestness of my text and without its Mosaic “ifs,” let us cry out for God. Aye, if words fail us, let us take the suggestion of that printer’s dash of the text, and with a wordless silence implore pardon and comfort and life and heaven. For this assemblage, all of whom I shall meet in the last judgment, I dare not offer the prayer of my text, and so I change it and say, ‘‘Lord God, forgive our sins and write our names in the book of Thy loving remembrance, from which they shall-never be blotted out.’’