Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1894 — XXVTH ANNIVERSARY. [ARTICLE]

XXVTH ANNIVERSARY.

Prospective and Retrospective Remarks. br. Tairnm** Rsriswi th* FsMt ftnff Talks of His Future »» Plans. Sunday was a great day in the history of the Brooklyn Tabernacle. The figures in flowers back of the platform, 1869 and 1894, indicated ihe Rev. Dr. Talmage’s time of coming to Brooklyn and the present feelebration, and were introductory ito the great meetings in honor of Dr. Talmage's pastorate to take place on the following Thursday and •Friday, presided over by the Mayor of the city and ex-Secretary of the Navy Tracy, and to be participated in by Governors and Senators and prominent men from North, South, East and West. The subject of the sermon was “The Generations,” the text being Ecclesiastes i, 4- “One generation cometh ” He said: This is ray twenty-fifth anniversary sennon, 1869 and 1894. It is twenty-five years since 1 assumed the Brooklyn pastorate. A whole generation has passed. Three generations we have known—that which preceded our own, that which is now at the front and the one coming on. We are at the heels of our predecessors and our predecessors are at our heels. What a generation it was that preceded us! We who are now in the front regiment are the only ones competent to tell the new generation just now coming in sight who our predecessors were. Biography cannot tell it. Biographies are generally written by special frierds of the departed, perhaps by wifo or son-or daughter, and they only tell the good things. The biographers of one of the first presiden ts of the United States make no record Of the president’s account books, now in the archives at the eapitoj, which 1 have seen, telling how much he Lost or gained daily at the gaming table. The biographers of one of the early secretaries of the United States never described the scene that day witnessed when the secretary was carried dead drunk from the State apartments to his own home. Yes, that generation wMch passed off within the last twenty-five years had their bereavements, their temptations, their struggles, their disappointments, their success, their failures, their gladnesses and their griefs, like these two generations trow in sight, that in advance and that following. But the twenty-five years between 1869 and 1894—how much they saw! How much they discovered! How much they felt! Within that time have been performed the miracles of the telephone and the phonograph. From the observatories other worlds have been seen to heave in sight. Six presidents of the United States have been inaugurated. Trans-Atlantic voyage abbreviated from ten days to five and one-half. Chicago and New York, once three days apart, now only twenty-four hours by the vestibule limited. There are fathers and mothers here whom I baptized in their infancy. There is not one person in this church’s board of session of trustees who was here when I came. Here and there in this vast assembly is one person who heard my opening sermon in Brooklyn, not more than one person in every five hundred now present. Of the seventeen persons who gave me a unanimous call when I came only three, I believo, are living. But this sermon is not a dirge. It is an anthem. While this world is appropriate as a temporary stay, as an eternal residence it would be a dead failure. It would be a dreadful sentence if our race were doomed to remain here 1,000 winters and 1,000 summers. God keeps us here just long enough to give us an appetite for heaven.

Nothing can rob us of' the satisfaction that uncounted thousands of the generation just past were converted. comforted and harvested for heaven by this church, whether in the present building or the three preceding buildings in which they worshiped. The two great organs of the previous churches went down in the memorable fires, but the multitudinous songs they led year after year were not recalled or in jured. There is no power on earth or hell to kill a halleluiah. It is impossible to arrest a hosanna. In this my quarter century sermon, I record the fact that side by side with the procession of blessings has gone a procession of disasters. I am preaching to day in the fourth church building since I began in this city. My first sermon was in the old church on Schermerhorn-st. to ao audience chiefly of empty seats, for the church was almost extinguished. That church filled and overflowing, we built a larger cnurch, which after two or three years disappeared in flame. Then we built another church, which also in a line of fiery succession disappeared in the same way. Then we put up this building, apd may it stand for many years a fortress of righteousness and a lighthouse for the storm-tossed, its gates crowded ■with vast assemblages long after we have ceased to frequent them. We have raised in this church over •1,030,000"7or church charitable purposes during the present pastorate, while we have given, free of all expense, the gospel to hundreds of thousands of strangers year bv year. I record with gratitude to God that

during this generation oftwentyffive years 1 remember but two Sabbaths that I have missed service through, anything like physical indisposition. E Almmjti R-fanatic on the sahjegt of physical exercis^,have made the parks with which our city is blessed the means of goodphysical condition. A daily walk and run in the open air have kept me ready for Work, and in good humor with all the world. I say to all young ministers of the gospel it is easier to keep good health than to regain it when once lost. The reason so many good men think the world is going to ruin is because their own physical condition is on the down grade. No man ought to preach who has a diseased liver or an enlarged spleen. There are two things ahead of us that ought to keep us cheerful in our work—heaven and the millennium. Most of you are aware that I propose at this time, between the close of my twenty-fifth year of pastorate and before the beginning of my twenty-sixth year, to be absent for a lew months in order to take a journey around the world. I expect to sail from San Francisco in the steamer Alameda May 31. My place here on Sabbaths will be fully occupied, while on Mondays, and every Monday, I will continue to speak through the printing press in this and other lands as heretofore. Why do I go? To make pastoral visitation among people whom I have been permitted a long while to administer. I want to see them in their own cities, towns and h&ighborhoods. Why do I go? For educational purposes. I want to freshen my mind and heart by new scenes, new faces, new manners and customs, I want better to understand what are the wrongs to be righted and the waste places to be reclaimed. I want to see the Sandwich islands, not so much in the light of modern politics as. in the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which Fas transformed them, and Samoa and those vast realms of New Zealand and Australia and Ceylon and India. I want to see what Christianity has accomplished. I want to see how the missionaries have been lied about as living in luxury and idleness. I want to know whether the heathen religions are really as tolerable jtnd as commendable as they were represented by their adherents in the parliament of religious at Chicago. I want to see whether Mohammedanism and Buddhism would be a good thing for transplantation in America, as it has again and again been argued. I want to hear the Brahmans pray. I want to test whether the Pacific ocean treats its guests any better than does the Atlantic. I want to see the wondrous architecture of India, and the Delhi and Cawtfpore where Christ was crucified in the massacre of his modern disciples, and the disabled Jug gernaut unwheeled by Christianity, and to see if the Taj which the Emperor Shah Jehan built in honor of his Empress really means any more than the plain slab we put above our dear departed. I want to see the world from all sides, how much of it is in darkness, - how much of it is in light, what the bible means by the “end of the earth,” and get myself ready to appreciate the extent of the present to be made to Christ as spokon of in the Psalms, “Ask for me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the utter most parts of the earth for thy p< s session,” and so I shall be ready to celebrate in heaven the victories of Christ in more rapturous song than I could have rendered had I never seen the heathen abominations before they were conquered. And so I hope to come back refreshed, reinforced and better equipped and to do in ten years more effectual work than I have done in the last twentyfive.

And now in this twenty-fifth anniversary sermon I propose to do two things—first, to put a garland on the grave of the generation that has just passed off, and then to put palm branch in the hand of the generation just now coming on the field of action, for my text is true, “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh.” Oh, how many we revered and honored and loved in the last generation that quit the earth! Tears fell at the time of their going, and dirges were sounded, and signals of mourning were put on, but neither tears nor dirge nor somber veil told the half that we felt. Their going left a vacancy in our souls that has never been filled up. We never get used to their abseuce. There are times when the sight of something with which they were associated-—a picture. or a b ok, or a garment, or a staff —breaks us down with emotion, but we bear it simply because we have to bear it. Ob, bow snowy white their hair got, and how the wrinkles multiplied, and the sight grew more dim, and the hearing less alert, and step more frail, and one day they were gone out of the chair by the fireside, and from the plate at the meal, and from the end of the church pew, where they worshipped with us. Omy soul, how we miss them! But let us console each other with the thought that we shall meet them again in the land of salutation and reunion. But what shall we do with the palm branch? That we will put in the hand of the generation coming on. The last and the present gen - erations have been perfecting the steam power, and the electric light, and the electric forces. To these will be added transportation. It will be your mission to use all these forces. Everything is ready now for you to march ritrht up and take this world for heaven. Get your heart right for repentance and the

pardoning grace of the Lord Jesud and your mind right by elevating books and pictures, and your body, right bv gymnasium and field exercise and plenty of ozone, and by looking as often as you can xxpoii til© fOl iiiouu tcihi ciim sea. ■ Then start! In God’s name start 1 And here is the palm branch. From conquest to conquest move right oq and right up. You will soon havq the whole field for yourself. Beforq another twenty-five years have gone, we will be out of the pulpits, and th j stores, and the factories, and the be* nevolent institutions, and you wilj be at the front. Forward into th.J battle! If God be for you who can be against you? “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered Hint up for us all, how slfoll He not with: .Him also freely give us all things?” And as for us who are now at thq front, having put the garland on thd grave of the last generation, anci having put the palm branch in tho hand of the coming generation, wo will cheer each other in the remaining onsets^andgo into the shining gate somewhere about the same time, and greeted by the generation that has preceded us we will have to wait only a little while to greet tho generation that will come after us. Three generations in heaven together—the grandfather, the son and the grandson, the grandmother, thej daughter and the granddaughter* And so with wider range and keener faeultv we shall realize the full significance of the text. “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh.