Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 February 1894 — A DIVINE BANQUET. [ARTICLE]

A DIVINE BANQUET.

“Come, For All Things Are Now Ready.” An Elcqaent Appeal to the Weak and Erring—Dr. Talmaga’a Scriunu. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at the Brooklyn Tabernacle last -Sunday. Subject: “Festivity." Text: Luke xiv. 17—“ Come, for all things are s now ready.” He said: There have been grand entertain ments where was a taking off—the wine gave out. or the servants were rebellious, or the light failed, but I have gone all around about this subject and looked at the redemption which Christ has provided, and I come here to tell vou it is complete, and I swing open the door of the feast, telling you that “all things are now ready.’’ In the first place I have to announce that the Lord Jesus Christ himself is ready. Christ comes in at the very beginning of the feast—aye, he has been waiting I.BIH years for his guests. He has been standing on his mangled feet. He has had His sore hand on His punctured side, or He has been pressing His lacerated temples—waiting, waiting. It is wonderful that He has not been impatient, and that He has not. said, “shut the door and let the laggard stay out," but He has been waiting. No banqueter ever waited for his guests so patiently as Christ has waited for us. To prove how willing He is to receive us, I gather all the drops of blood that channeled His brow, and His back, and His hands and feet, in trying to purchase vour redemption. I gather all the groans that He uttered in midnight chill, and in mountain hunger, and in desert lonliness, and twist them into one cry—bitter, agonizing overwhelming. I gather all the pains that shot from spear and spike and cross jolting into one pang —remorseless, grinding, excruciating. I take that one drop of sweat on his brow, and under the gospel glass that drop enlarges until I see in it lakes of sorrow and an ocean of agony. That being standing before you now, emaciated and gashed and gorv, coaxes for your love with a pathos in which every word is a heartbreak and every sentence a martyrdom. How can you think he trifles? Ahasueru3 prepared a feast for 180 days, but this feast is for all eternity. Lords and princes were invited to that. You and I and all our world are invited to this. Christ is ready. You know that the banqueters of ; olden time used to wrap themselves in robes prepared for the occasion. So my Lord Jesus hath wrapped himself in all that is beautiful. See how fair he is. His eyes, his brow, his cheek, so radiant that the stars have no gleam and the morning no i brilliancy compared with it. His 1 face reflecting all the joys of the re- ■ deemed. His hand having the omnipotent surgery with which he opened i blind eyes and straightened crooked J limbs and hoisted the pillars of ; heaven and swung the twelve gates ; which arc twelve pearls.

There are not enough cups in heaven to dip up this ocean of beauty. There are not ladders enough to scale this height of love. There are not enough cymbals to clap, or harps to thrum, or trumpets to peal forth the praises of this one altogether fair. Oh, thou flower of eternity, thy breath is the perfume of heaven! Oh, blissful daybreak, let all people clap their hands in thy radiance! Chirus: Come, men and saints and cherubim and seraphim and archangel—ail hights, all depths, all immensities. Chorus: Roll Him through the heavens in a cbartoTo? universal acclaim, over bridges of hosannas, under arches of coronation, along by the great towers chiming with eternal jubilee. Chorus: “Unto Him who hath loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, to Him be glory, world without end!” Again, the Holy Spirit is ready. Why is ,it that so many sermons drop deacl; that Christian songs do not get their wings under the people; that so often a prayer goes no higher than a hunter’s “halloa”? It is because there is a link wanting—the work of the Holy Spirit. Unless that Spirit give grappling hooks to a sermon and lift the prayer and waft the song everything is a dead failure. That spirit is willing to come at our call and lead you to eternal life, or ready to come with the same power with which he unhorsed Saul on the Damascus turnuike and broke down Lydia in her flue store and lifted the 3,000 from midnight into midnoon at the Pentecost. With that power the spirit of God now beats at the gate of your soul. Have you not noticed what homely and insignificant instrumentality the Spirit of God employs for man’s conversion? One year ago on Thanksgiving day I read for my text, “Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good; for his mercy enduretb forever.” And there is* a young man in the house to whose heart the Holy Spirit took that text for his eternal redemption. I might speak of my own case. I will tell you I was brought to the peace of the gospel through the Syro-Phoenicean woman’s cry to Christ, “Even the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from the Master's table." The great French orator, when the dead king lay before him, looked up and cried, “God only is great.” And the triumph of bis eloquence has been told by the historians. But I have not beard that one soul was

saved by the oratorical flourish. Worldly critics may think that the early preaching of Thomas Chalmers was a masterpiece. But Thomas Chalmers says he never began tc preach until ne came oilt of the sickroom. white and emaciated, and told men the. simple story of Jesus. Oh, my friend, I wish we could feel it more and more that if any good is done it is by the power ol God’s omnipotent spirit I do not know what words of the scripture lessons T read may save your soul. Perhaps the spirit of God may hurl the very text into your heart, “Come, for all things are now ready.” Again, the church is ready. O man, if I could take the curtain off these Christian hearts, I could show you a great many anxieties for your redemption. You think that old man is asleep, because his head is down and his-eyes are shut. No; no he is praying for your redemption and hoping that the words spoken may strike vour heart. Do you know the air is full of prayer? Do you know that prayer is going up from FultQn-st. prayer meeting and going up every hour of the day for the redemption of the people? And if you should just start toward the door of the Christian church how quickly it would flv open! Hundreds of people would say: “Give that man room at the sacrament. Bring the silver bowl for his baptism. Give him the right hand of Christian fellowship, Bring him into all Christian associations.” Oh, you wanderer on the cold mountains, come into the warm | sheepfold. I let down the bars and bid you come in. With the shepherd's crook I point you the way. Hundreds of Christian hands beckon you into the church of God. Many people do not like the church and say it is a mass of hypocrites, but it is a glorious church with all its imperfections. Christ bought it, and hoisted the pillars, and swung its gates, and lifted its arches, and curta'ned it wit.h upholstery crimson with crucifixion carnage. Come into it. Again, the angels of God are ready. A great many Christians think that the talk about angels is~ fanciful. You say it is a very good subject for theological students who have just begun to sermonize, but for older men it is improper. There is no more proof in that Bible that there is a God than that there are angels. Why, do not they swarm about Jacob’s ladder? Are we not told that they conducted Lazarus upward: that they stand before the throne, their faces covered up with their wings, while they cry. “Holy, holv, is the Lord God Aimighty”? Did not David see thousands and thousands? DM not one angel slay 185,000 men in tsennacherib’s army? And shall they not be the chief harvesters at the judgment? Again, vour kindred in glory are all ready for your coming. I pronounce modern spiritualism a fraud and a sham. If John Milton and George Whitefield have no better business than to crawl under a table and rattle the leaves, they had better stay at home in glory. While I believe that modern spiritualism is bad, common sense, enlightened bv the word of God, teaches us that our friends in giory sympathize with our redemption.

If I had shown you that “all things are ready;” that Christ is ready; that the Holy spirit is ready; that tiie angels in glory are ready; that your glorified kindred are ready, then with all the concentrated emphasis of my soul I ask you if you are ready? You see my subject throws the whole responsibility upon yourself. If you do not go into the King’s banquet, it is because you do not accept the invitation. Youhave the most importunate invitation. Two arms stretched down from the cross, soaked in blood from elbow to finger tips, two lips quivering in mortal anquish, two eyes beaming with infinite love, saying, “Come, come, for all thinsrs are now ready." I would like to take every one of you by the hand and say, “Come!” Old man, who hast been wandering sixty or seventy years, thy sun almost gone down, through the dust of the evening stretjh outyour withered hand to Christ. He will not cast these off.old man. Oh, that one tear of repentance might trickle down thy wrinkled cheek! After Christ has fed thee all thy life long, do you not think you can afford to speak one word in his praise? Do you think you can get into the feast with those rags? Why, the King's servant would tear them off and leave you naked at the gate. You must be born again. The day is far spent. The cliffs begin to slide their long shadows across the plain. Do you know the feast has already begun—the feast to which you are invited—and the King sits with His guests, and the servant stands with his hands on the doo>’ of the banqueting room and he begins to swing it shut. It is half way shut. It is three-fourths shut. It is only just ajar. Soon it will be shut. “Come, for all things are now ready." Have I missed one man? Who has not felt himself called this hour? Then I call him now. This is the hour of thy redemption. While Ood Invitee how blest the day. How sweet the gospel's charming sound; Como sinner haste oh. haste away. feWhlle yet a pardoning god Is found.