Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1894 — A CONQUERING CHRIST. [ARTICLE]

A CONQUERING CHRIST.

The Greatest and Most Heroic Figure in All History. The Transcendent Power of the Blood Bhed Upon Calvary—Dr. Talmage'a Sermon. From the startling figure of the text chosen by the Rev. Dr. Talmage in his sermon in the Brooklyn Tabernacle, Sunday, the preacher brought out the radical truths of the Christian, religion. The subject of the sermon was “Christ, the Conqueror,” the text being Isaiah lxiii, I, “Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah this that is glorious in His apparel, traveling in the greatness of His strength?” ije said: When a general is about to go out to the wars a flag and a sword are publicly presented to him and the maidens bring flowers, and the young men load the cannon, and the train starts amid a huzza that drowns the thunder of the wheels and the shriek of the whistle. But all this will give no idea of the excitement that there must have been in heaven when Christ started out on the campaign of the world’s conquest. If they could have foreseen the. siege that would be laid to Him, and the maltreatment He would suffer, and the burdens He would have to carry, and the battles He would have to

fight, I think there would have been a milliir volunteers in heaven who would have insisted on coming along with Him. You know there is a wide difference between a man's going off to battle and coming back again. When he goes off, it is with epaulets untangled, with banner unspecked, with horses sleek and shining from the groom. All that there is of struggle and pain is to come—yet— So it was with Clmst. He had not yet fought, a battle. Ho was starting out, and though this world did not give Him a warm-hearted greeting there was a gentle mother who folded Him in her arms, and a babe finds no difference between a stable and a palace, between courtiers and camel drivers. But soon hostile forces began to gather. They deployed from the sanhedrim. They were detailed from the standing army. They came out from the Caesarean castles. The vagabonds in the street joined the gentlemen of the mansion. Spirits rode up from hell, and in long array there came a force together that threatened to put to rout this newly arrived one from heaven. Jesus now seeing the battle gathering lifted His own standard. But who gathered about it? How feeble the recruits. A few shoremen, a blind beggar, a woman with an alabaster box, another woman with two mites and a group of friendless, money less and positionless people came to his standard. What chance was there fpr Him? Nazareth against Him. Bethlehem igainst Him. Capernaum against Him. Jerusalem against Him. Galilee against Hint. The courts against Him. The army against Him. The throne against Him. The world igainst Him. All hell against Him. No wonder they asked Him to surrender. But he could not surrender; He could not apologize; He could not take any back-steps. He had . come to strike for the deliverance of an euslaveL race, and He must da the. work. Then they sent out their pickjts to watch Him. They saw in what bouse He went and when He came out. They watched what he ate and who with, what he drank and how much.

But at last the battle came. It was to be more fierce than Bozrah, more Dloodv than Gettysburg, involving nore than Austerlitz, more combatints employed than at Chalons, a ghastlier conflict than all the battles y»f the earth put together, though Edmund Burke’s estimate Of thirtycive thousand million of its slain be iccurate. The day was Friday, the hour was between 12 and 3 o’clock. The field was a slight Hillock northvest of Jerusalem. The forces engaged were earth and hell, joined as lilies on one side, and heaven represented by a solitary inhabitant on the other. The hour came. Oh. what a time t was! I think that that day the universe looked on. The spirits that could be spared fH>m the heaV y enly temple and could get conveyance of wing or chariot came down from above, and spirits getting furlough from beneath came up, and they listened and they looked, and they watched. Oh, what an uneven battle. Two worlds armed on one side, an unarmed man on the other. The regiment of the Roman army at that time stationed at Jerusalem began the attack,. They knew how to fight, for they belonged to the most thoroughly prilled army of the world. With spears' glittering in the, sun they charged up the hill. The horses prance and rear amid the excitement of the populace, the heels of the riders plunged in the flanks,urging them on. The weapons begin to tell on Christ. See how faint He looks! There the blood starts, and there and there and there. If He is to have re-enforcements, let him call them up now. No, He must do this work alone—alone. He is dying.. Feel for yourself of the wrist; the pulse is feebler. Feel under the arm; the warmth is less. He is dying. Aye, they pronounce Him dead. And just at that moment that they pronounced Him dead He rallied, and from His wounds He uc-

sheathed a weapon which staggered the Roman legions down the bill and hurled the satanic battalions into the pit. It was a weapon of love — infinite love, all conquering love. Mightier than javelin or spear, it triumphed over all. Put back, ye armies of earth and hell! The tide of battle turns. . Jesus hath overcome. Let the people stand apart and make a line that He may pass down from Calvary to Jerusalem, and thence on and out all around the world. The battle is fought. The victory is achieved. The triumphal march is begun. Hark to the hoofs of the warrior’s steed and the tramping of a great multitude, for He has many friends now.—The hero of the earth and heaven advances. Cheer! Cheer! “Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, traveling ip ,the greatness of His strength?” You have noticed that when soldiers come, home from the wars they carry on their flags the names of the battlefields where they were distinguished. The Englishman coming back has on his banner Inkerman and Balaklava;the Frenchman, Jena and Eilau; the German,

Versailles and Sedan. And Christ has on the banner He carries as conqueror the names of 10,000 battlefields He won for you and for me. He rides past all our homes of bereavement, by the door-bell swathed in sorrow, by the wardrobe black with woe, by the dismantled fortress of our strength. Come out and greet Him today, O ye people! See the names of ail the battle passes on His flag. Ye who are poor, read on this ensign the story of Christ’s hard crusts and pillowless head. Ye who are persecuted, read here of the ruffians who chased Him from His first breath to His last. - Mighty, to. soothe your troubles, mighty to balk vour calamities, mighty to tread down vour foes, “traveling in the greatness of His strength.”—Though His horse be brown with the dust of the march, and the fetlocks be wet with the carnage, and the bit be red with the blood of your spiritual foes, He comes up now, not exhausted from the battle, but fresh as when He went into it —coming up from Bozrah, “traveling in the greatness of His strength.” At 2 o’clock to-morrow afternoon go among the places of business or toil. It will be no difficult thing for you to find men who, by their looks, show you that they are overworked. They are/prematurely old. They are hastening rapidly toward their decease. They have gone through crises in business that shattered their nervous systems and pulled on the brain. They have a shortness of breadth, and a pain in the back of the head, and at night an insomnia that alarms them. Why are they drudging at business j early and ' late? For fun? No; it ! would be difficult to extract any | amusement out of that exhaustion. ! Because they are avaricious? In i many cases no. Because their own j personal expenses are lavish? No; ; a few hundred dollars would meet all their wants. The simple fact is, the man is enduring all that fatigue and exasperation and wear and tear to ! keep his home prosperous. ! There is an invisible line reaching from that store, from that bank, from that shop, from that scaffolding to a quiet scene a few blocks, a few miles away, and there is the secret of that business endurance. He is simply the champion of a homestead, for which he wins bread and wardrobe and education, and prosperity, and in such battle 10,000 men fall. Of ten business men whom I bury nine die of overwork for others. Some sudden disease finds them with no power of resistence, and they are gone. Life for life. Blood for blood. Substitution! About thirty-three years ago there went forth from our homes hundreds of thousands of men to do battle for their country. All the poetry of war soon vanished and left them nothing but the terrible prose. They waded knee deep in mud. They slept in snowbanks. They marched till their cut feet tracked the earth. They were swindled out of their honest rations and lived on meat not fit for a dog. They had jaws all fractured, and eyes extinguished, and limbs shot away. Thousands of them cried for water as they lay dying on the field the night after the battle and got it not. They were homesick and received no message from their loved ones. They died in 'barns, in bushes, in ditches, the buzzards of the summer heat the only attendants on their obsequies. No one but the infinite God, who knows everything, knows the ten thousandth part of the length and breadth and depth and height of anguish of the northern and southern battlefields. Why did these fathers leave their children and go to the front, and why did these young men, postponing the marriage day, .start out in the probabilities of never coming back? For the country they died. Life for life. Blood for blood. Substitution! But we need not go so far. What is that monument in Greenwood? Is it to the doctors who fell in the southern epidemics? Why go? Were there not enough of sick to be attended to in these northern latitudes? Oh, yes, but the doctor put a few medical books in his valise, and some vials of medicine, and leaves his patients here in the hands of other phySicans and takes the rail train. Before he gets to the infected regions he passes crowded rail trains, regular and extra, taking the flying and affrightened populations. He arrives in a city over which a great horror is brooding. He goes from coych to couch, feeling the pulse and studying

of symptoms, and presciibing day after day, night after night, until a fellow physician says: “Doctor, you had better go home and rest. . You look miserable,” But he can not rest while so many are suffering. On and on until some morning finds him in a delirium, in which he talks of home and then rises and says he must go and look after those patients. Hals told tc lie down, but he fights his attendants until he falls back and is weaker and weaker and dies for people with whom he had no kinship, and far away from his own family, and is hastily put away in a stranger’s tomb, and only the fifth part of a newspaper line tells us of his sacrifice —his name just mentioned among five. Yet he has touched the furthest height of sublimity in that three weeks of humanitarian service. He goes straight on as an arrow to the bosom of Him who said. “I was sick and ye visited me. ” Life for life. Blood for blood. Substitution! I catch a handful of the red torrent that rushes out from the heart of the Lord, and I throw it over this audience, hoping that one drop of its cleansing power may come upon your soul. O, Jesus, in that crimson tide wash our souls! We.accept thy sacrifice! Conqueror of Bozrah, have mercy upou us! We throw our garments in the way ! We fall into line! Ride on, Jesus, ride oh! “Traveling, traveling is the greatness of Thy strength.” . s 1