Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 December 1893 — “UNHORSED” [ARTICLE]

“UNHORSED”

iS&ul of Tarsus and Elis Sudden Conversion. The Macy Lmiou to be Brawn f om th< Great Apoatle'e Life an* Career—Dr , Talmage's Sermon. Dr. Talmage preached at Birmingham, Ala., last Sunday. Subject — “Unhorsed.” Text, Acts ix, 3-5 — “And as he journeyed he came near Damascus, and suddnly there shiped round about him a light from heaven, and he fell to the earth and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, ! am Jesus whom thou persecutest.” The Damascus of Bible times still stands with a population of 135,000. It was a gay city of white and glistening architecture, its minarets and crescents and domes playing with the light of the morning sun ; embowered in groves of olive and citron and orange and pomegranate; a famous river plunging its brightness into the scene; a city by the ancients styled “a pearl surrounded by emeralds.” A group of horsemen are advancing upon that city. Let the Christians of the place hide, for the cavalcade coming over the hills is made up of persecutors, their leader small and unattractive in some respects, as leaders sometimes are insignificant in person—witness the Duke of Wellington and Dr. Archibald Alexander. But there is something very intent in the eye of this man of the text t and the horse he rides is lathered with the foam of a long and quick travel of 145 miles. He urges on his steed, for those Christians must be captured and silenced and that religion of the cross must be annihilated.

Suddenly the horses shy off and plunge until the riders are precipitated. Freed from the riders, the horses bound snorting away. You know that dumb animals at the sight of an eclipse, or an earthquake, or anything like a supernatural appearance, sometimes become very uncontrollable. A new sun had been kindled in the heavens, putting out the glare pf the ordinary sun. Christ, with the glories of heaven wrapped about him, looked from a cloud, and the splendor was insufferable, and no wonder that the horses sprang and the equestrians dropped. Dust-covered and bruised. Saul rises,, shading his eyes with his hands from the severe luster of the heavens, but unsuccessfully, for he is struck stone blind as he cries out, “Who art thou, Lord?” And Jesus answered him: “I am the one you have been chasing. He that whips and scourges those Damascene Christians whips and scourges me. It is not their back that is bleeding —it is mine. It is not their hearts ‘hat is breaking—-it is mine. lam esus, whom thou persecutest.”

I learn from this scene that a vorldly fall sometimes precedes a piritual uplifting. Here is Paul on orseback—a proud man, riding with government documents in his pocket, graduate of a famous school, in which the celebrated Dr. Gamaliel ad been a professor, perhaps havng already attained two of the three titles of the school —rab, the first; rabbi, the secondhand on his way to rabbak, the third and last title. I know from his temperament that his horse was ahead of the other horses. without time to think of what posture he should take, or without consideration for his dignity, he is tumbled into the dust, and yet that was the best ride Paul ever took. Out of that violent fall he arose into the apostleship. So it has been in all ages and so it is now. Again, I learn from the subject that the religion of Christ is not a pusillanimous thing. People in this day try to make us believe that Christianity is something for men of small caliber, for women with no capacity to reason, for children in the infant class under six years of age, but not for stalwart men. Look at this man of the text! Do you not think that the religion that could capture such a man as that must have some power in it? He was a logician, he was a metaphysician; he was an all conquering orator; he was a poet of the highest type. He had a nature that could swamp the leading men of his own day, and hurled against the sanhedrin he made it tremble.

He learned all he could get in the school of his native village; then he had gone to a higher school, and there mastered the Greek and the Hebrew and perfected himself in belles-lettres; until in after years he astonished the Cretans and the Corinthians and the Athenians by quotations from their own 'authors. I have never found anything in Goethe or Carlyle or Herbert Spencer that could compare in strength or beauty with Paul's epistles.. I do not think there is anything in the writings of Sir William Hamilton that shows such mental discipline as you find in Paul’s argument about justification and the resurrection. I have not found anything in Mijton finer in the way of imagination than I can find in Paul's illustrations drawn from the amphitheater. Oh, instead of cowering and shivering when the skeptic stands before you and talks religion as though it were a pusillanimous thing—instead of that take your New Testament from your noCket and show him the picture of the intellectual giant of all the ages prostrated on the road to Damascus while his horse i$ flying wildly away, and then usk

your skeptic what it was that frightened the one and threw the other? Oh. no, it is no weak gospel, it is a glorious gospel. It is an all conquering gospeL It is an omnipotent gospel. It is the power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation. Again, I learn from the text a man can not become a Christian until he is unhorsed. The trouble is we want to ride into the kingdom of God just as the knight rode into castle gate on palfrey, beautifully caparisoned. We want to come into the kingdom of God in fine style. No kneeling down at the altar, no sitting on “anxious” seats, no crying over sin, no begging at the door of God's mercy. Clear the road, and let us come in all prancing in the pride of our souL—No, we will never get into heaven that way. We must dismount. • Again, I learn from this scene of the text that the grace of God can overcome the persecutor. Christ and Paul were boys at the same time in different villages, and Paul’s antipathy to Christ was increasing. He hated everything about Christ. He was going down then with writs in his pockets to have Christ’s disciples arrested. He was not going as a sheriff goes, to arrest a man against whom he had no spite, but Paul was going down to-arrest those people because he was glad to arrest them. The Bible says, “He breathed out slaughter.” He wanted them captured, and he wanted them butchered. I hear the click and clash and clatter of the hoofs of the galloping steeds on the way to Damascus. Oh, do you think that proud man on horseback can ever become a Christian? Yes! There is a voice from heaven like a thunderclap uttering two words, the second the same as the first, but uttered with more emphasis, so that the proud equestrian may have no doubt as to who is meant: “Saul! Saul!” That man was saved, and he was a persecutor. And so God can by His grace overcome any persecutor. The dayS of sword and fire for Christians seem to have gone by. The bayonets of Napoleon pried open the “inquisisition” and let the rotting wretches out. The ancient dungeons around Rome are today mere curiosities for the travelers.

That woman finds it hard to be a Christian, as her husband talks and jeers while she is trying to say her prayers or read the bible. That daughter finds it hard to be a Christian with the whole family arrayed against her—father, mother, brother and sister making her the target of ridicule. That young man finds it hard to be a Christian in the shop or factory or store when his comrades jeer at him because he wjjl not go to the gambling hell or other places of iniquity. Oh, no, the days of persecution have not ceased, and will not until the end of the world. But, oh, you persecuted ones, is it not time that you began to pray for your persecutors? They are no prouder, no fiercer, no more set in their way than was the persecutor in the text. He fell. They will fall if Christ from heaven grandly and gloriously look out on them. Again, I learn from this subject that there is hope for the worst offenders. It was particularly outrageous that Saul should have gone to Damascus on that errand. Jesus Christ had been dead only three years, and the story of his kindness and his generosity, and his love filled all the air. It was not an old story as it is now. It was a new story. Jesus had only three summers ago been ijvthese very places, and Saul every day in Jerusalem must have met people who knew Christ, people with good eye-sight whom Jesus had cured of blindness, people who were dead and who had been resurrected by the Savior, and people who could tell Paul all the particulars of the crucifixion —just how Jesus looked in the last hour, just how the heavens grew black in the face at the torture.

He heard that recited every day by people who were acquainted with the circumstances, and yet in the fresh memory of that scene he goes to persecute Christ’s disciples, impatient at the time it takes to feed the horses at the inn, not pulling at snaffle, but riding with loose rein, faster and faster Oh, he was the chief of sinners! No outbreak of modesty when he said that. He was a murderer. He stood by when Stephen died and helped in the execution of that gcod man. When the rabble wanted to be unimpeded in their work of destroying Stephen and wanted to take of their coats, but did not dare to lay them down least they be stolen, Paul said, “I’ll take care of the coats,” and they put them down at the feet Paul, and he watched the coats, and he watched the horrid mangling of the glorious Stephen. Is it a wonder that when he fell from the horse he did not break his neck—that he did not catch somewhere In the trappings of the saddle and he was not dragged or kicked to death? He deserved to die miserably, wretchedly and forever, notwithstanding all his metaphysics, and his eloquence, and his logic. He was the chief of sinners. He said what was true when he said that. And yet the grace of God saved him, and so it will you. If there is any man in this house who thinks he is too bad to be saved and says, “I have wandered very grievously from God; I do not believe there is any hope for me,”! tell you the story of this man in the text who was brcught to Jesus Christ in spite of his sins aqd opposition. You say you have exasperated Christ and coaxed your own ruin; so did Paul. And yet he sits to day on

one of the highest of the heavenly thrones, and there is mercy for you, and good days for you and gladness for you, if you will only take the same Christ which first threw him down and then raised him up. It seems to me as if I can see Paul today rising up from the highway to Damascus, and brushing off the dust from his cloak, and wiping the sweat of excitement from his brow, as he turns to us and all the ages, saying, “This a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.” Once more I learn from this subject that there is a tremendous reality in religion. If it bad been a mere optical delusion on the road to Damascus, was not Paul just the man to find it out? If it had been a sham and a pretense, would he not have pricked the bubble? He was a man of facts and arguments, of the most gigantic intellectual nature, and not a man of hallucinations. And when I see him fall from the saddle, blinded and overwhelmed. I say there must have been something in it. And, my dear brother, you will find that there is. something in religion somewhere. The only question is, where? There was a man who rode from Stamford to London, ninety-five miles, in five hours on horseback. Very swift. There was a woman of Newmarket who rode 1,000 miles in 1,000 hours. Very swift. But there are those here, aye, all of us are speeding on at tenfold that velocity, at a thousandfold that rate toward eternity. May Almighty God, from the opening heavens, flash upon your souls this hour the question of vour eternal destiny, and oh, that Jesus would this hour overcome you with his pardoning mercy as he stands here with the pathos of a broken heart and sobs in your ear. “I have come for thee. I come with my back raw from the beating. I come with my feet mangled with the nails. I come with my brow aching from the twisted bramble. I come with my heart bursting for your woes. I can stand it no longer. I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.”