Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 June 1894 — AGITATED EXECUTIVE. [ARTICLE]

AGITATED EXECUTIVE.

The Governor of Caesarea in a Dilemma. “Now Is the Accepted Time, Now Is the Day of Salvation”—Dr. Talmage’s - 4 Sermon forthePreiis Dr, Talmage, now enroute around the world, selected for his sermonic discourse for the press for last Sunday the subject of “The Excited Governor,” the text being Taken from Acts xxiv. 25: “Felix trembled, and answered: Go thy way for this time. When I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.” A city of marble was Cicsarea—wharves of marble, houses of marble, temples of marble. This being the ordinary architecture of the place, you may imagine something of the splendor of Governor Felix’s residence. In a room of that palace, floor tessellated, windows curtained, ceiling fretted, the whole scene affluent with Tyrian purple and stat-

ues and pictures and carvings, sat a . very-dark-complexioned man of the name of Felix,, and beside him a woman of extraordinary beauty, whom he had stolen by breaking up another domestic circle. She was only eighteen years of age, a princess by birth and unwittingly waiting for her doom- -that of being buried alive in the ashes and scoriae of Mt. —Vesuvius, which in sudden eruption one day put an end to her abominations. Well, one afternoon Drusilla, seated in the palace, weary with the magnificent stupidities of the place, says to Felix: “You have a very distinguished prisoner, I believe, of the name of Paul. Do you know he is rny“couirtrymen? I should very much like to see him, and I should very much like to hear him speak, for I have heard so much about his eloquence. Besides that, that other day, when-ffie was—being tried in another room of this palace and the windows were open, I heard the applause that greeted the speech of Lawyer Tertullus as he denounced Paul. Now I very much wish I could hear Paul speak. Won’t you let me hear him speak?”. “Yes,” said Felix. “I will. I will order him up now from the guard room.” Clank, clank, comes a chain up the marble stairway, and there is a shuffle at the door, and in conies Paul, a little old man, prematurely old through-exposure —only sixty years of age, but looking as though lie were eighty. He bows very courteously before the governor and the beautiful woman by his side. They say: “Paul, we have heard a great deal about your speaking Give us now a specimen of your elequence.” And just there and then there broke in upon the scene a peal of thunder. ~ It was the voiceofa judgment day speaking through the words of the decrepit apostle. As that grand old missionary proceeded with his remarks the stoop begins to go out of his shoulders and he rises up and his countenance is illuminated with the glories of a future fife and his shackles rattle and grind is he lifts his fettered arm and with it hurls upon his abashed auditors the bolts of God's indignation. Fe-lix-grew- very wvhite about the lips. His heart beat unevenly. He put his hand to his brow as though to stop the quickness and violence of his thoughts. He drew his robe tighter about him as under a sudden chill. His eyes glare and his knees shake, and as he clutches the side of his chair in a very paroxysm of terror he orders the sheriff to take Paul back to the guard-room. “Felix trembled- and said: ‘Go thy way for this time. When I have a convenient season I will call thee.’ ” I propose to give you two or three reasons why I think Felix sent Paul back to the guard room and adjourned this whole subject of religion, The first reason was he did not want to give up his sins. He looked around. There was Drusilla. He knew that when he becamea Christian he must send her back to Azizus, her lawful husband, and he said to himself, “I will risk the destruction of my immortal soul sooner than I will do that.” How many there are now who can not get to be Christians because they will not abandon their sins! In vain all their prayers and all their church-going. You can not keep these darling sins and win heaven.

Another reason why Felix sent Paul back to the guardroom and adjourned this subject was he was so very busy. In ordinary times he found the affairs of State absorbing, but those were extraordinary times. The whole land was ripe for insurrection. The Sicarii, a band of assassins, were already prowling around the palace, and I suppose he thought, “I can’t attend to religion while I am pressed by affairs of state.” It was business, among other things, that ruined his soul, and I suppose there are the usands of people who are not children of God because they have so much business. It is business in the store—losses, gains, unfaithful employes. It is business in your law office—sub ipoeuas, writs you have to write out, ‘papers you have to file, arguments ,you have to make. —lt is your medical profession, with its broken bights and the exhausing anxieties of life [hanging upon your treatment, It is [your real estate office, your business [with landlords and tenants, and the [failure of men to meet their obligations with ybu. Aye, with sotfie of those who are here it is the annoyance of the kitchen, and the sitting room, and the parlor—the wearing economy of trying to meet large expenses with a small income. O, Felix, you might better post-

poned everything else! For do you not know . ThaVthe upholstering of Tyrian purple in your palace Will fade, and the marble Blocks of Ciesarea will crumble, and the breakwater at the beach, made of great blocks of stone sixty feet long, must give way before the perpetual wash of the sea, but The-redcmption t-hat-Paul offers you will be forever? And y etand yet an d yet you wave hi m back to the guard room, saying: “Go thy way for this time. When I have a convenient season I will call for thee.” Again Felix adjourned this subject of religion and put off Paul’s argument because he could not give up the honors of the world. He was afraid somehow he would be compromised himself in this matter. Remarks he made afterward showed” him to be intensely ambitious. Oh, how he hugged the favor of men! I never saw the honors of this world in their hollowness and hypocrisy .so much as in the life and death of that wonderful man, Charles Sumner. As he went toward the place of burial even Independence Hall in Philadelphia asked that his remains stop there on Their way to Boston. The flags ■ were at half mast, and the minute guns on Boston common throbbed as his heart had ceased to beat. Was it always so? While he lived, how censured of legislative resolutions; how caricatured of the pictorials; how charged with every motive mean and ridiculous; how all the urns of scorn and hatred and billigsgate emptied upon his head; how, when struck down in Senate chamber, there were hundreds of thousands of people who said, ”Goo,d for him; serves him right!” how he had ‘put'..the„ocean between him and his maligners that he might have a little peace, and how, when he went off sick, they said he was broken hearted because he Could not get to be President or Secretary of State. O commonwealth dt Massachusetts,. w’ho is that man that sleeps in “ your public hall, covered with garlands and wrapped in the stars and stripes? Is that the man who, only afewmon ths before. you den o u need as the foe of republican and democratic institutions? Is that the same min? Te American people, ye could not, by one week of funeral eulogium and newspaper lea’ders, which the dead Senator could neither read nor hear, atone for twenty-live years of maltreatment and caricature. When I see a man like that, pursued by all the hounds of the political kennel so long as he lives and ..then buried under a great pile of garlands and amid the lamentations of a whole Nation, I say to myself: What an unutterably hypocritical thing is all human applause and all human favor! You took twenty-five years in trying to pull down his fame and then take twenty-five, years in.trying to build his monument. And now my subject takes a deeper tone, and it shows what a dangerous thing is this deferring of religion. When Paul’s chain rattled don the marble stairs of Felix, that

was Felix’s last chance for heaven. Judging from his character afteward, he- was reprobate and abandoned. And so was Drusilla. One day in Southern Italy there was a trembling of the earth, mid the air got black with smoke intershot with liquid rocks, and Vesuvius rained upon Drusilla and upon her son a horrible tempest of ashes and fire. They did not reject religion; they only put it off. They did not not know that that day, that that hour when Paul stood before them, was the pivotal hour upon which everything was poised, and that it tipped the wrong way. Their convenient season came when Paul and

his guardsmen entered the palace—it went away when Paul and his guardsmen left. I can tell you when your convenient season will come. I can tell you the year—it will be in 1894. I can tell you what kind of a day it will be—it will be the Sabbath day. I can tell you what hour it will be—it will be between 8 and 10 o’clock. In other words, it is now. Do you ask me how' I know this is your convenient season? I know it because you are here, and because the Holy Spirit is here, and because the elect sons and daughters of God are praying for your redemption. Ah, I know it is your convenient season because some of you, like Felix, tremble as all vour past life comes upotf you with its terror. Tins night air is aglare with torches to show you up or to show you down. It is rustling with wings to lift you into the light or smite you into despair, and there is a rushing to and a beating against the door of your soul as with a great thunder of emphasis, telling you, “Now, now is the best time, as it may be the only time.” May God Almighty forbid that any of you, my brethren or sisters, act the part of Felix and Drusilla and put away this great subject. If you are going to be saved ever, why not begin to-night? Throw down your sins and take the Lord’s pardon. My reader, why not throw away the worn-out blanket of your sin and take the robe of the Savior's righteousness—a robe so white, so fair, so lustrous that no fuller on earth can whiten it? O shepherd, tonight bring home the lost sheep! O Father, to-night give a welcoming kiss to the wan prodigal! O friend of Lazarus, to-night break down the door of the sepulcher and say to all these dead souls as by irresistible fiat: “Live! Live!” When Mme. Jang Ju, wife of the Chinese Minister, receives a ceremonious call she appears superbly dressed, and with her, attended by their nurses, are her little children.