Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 January 1895 — THE PRIDE OF INDIA. [ARTICLE]

THE PRIDE OF INDIA.

The Wondrous Tomb Taj Mahal ] at Agra. The World Cannot Duplicate This Marble Dream of Beauty and Splendor—--1 Dr. Talmage's Sermon For the Press. In continuing his series of round the world sermons through the press the Rev. Dr. Talmage, last Sunday, chose tor his subject “Tomb and Temple,” having reference to that most-famous and beautiful of mausoleums, the Taj Mahal. The text selected was, “From India Even Unto Ethiopia.” Esther i, 1, •In all the Bible this is the only book in which the word India occurs, but it stands for a realm of vast interest in the time of Esther, as its our time. It yielded then, as now, spices and silks and cotton and rice and indigo and ores of all richness and precious stones of all sparkle and bad a civilization of its own as marked as Egyptian or Grecian or Roman civilization. It holds the costliest tomb ever built and the most unique and wonderful idolatrous temple ever opened. For practical lessons in this city, my sixth discourse in round the world series, I show you that tomb and temple of India. The building is about six miles

from Agra, and as we rode out in the early dawn we heard nothing but the hoofs and wheels that pulled and turned us along the road, at every yard of which our expectation rose until we ha<l some thought that we might- be disappointed at the first glimpse, as they were disappointed. But how can anyone be disappointed with the Taj is almost as great a wonder to me as the Taj itself. There arc some people always disappointed, and who knows but that having entered heaven they may criticise the architecture of the temple and_the cut of the white robes and say that the river of life is not quite up to their expectations, and that the white horses on which the conquerors ride seem a little springhalt or spavined? As you-approach the floor of the Taj one experiences a strange sensation of awe, and tenderness, and humility, and worship. The building' is only a grave, but what a grave! Built for a queen, who, according to some, was very good, and according to others, was very bad. I choose to think she was very good. , At any rate, it makes me feel better to think that this commemorative pile was set up for the immortalization of virtue rather than vice. The Taj is a mountain of white marble, but never such walls face each other with exquisiteness; never such a tomb was cat from block of alabaster; never such a congregation of precious stones brightened, and blazed, and chastened, and glorified a building since sculptor’s chisel cut its first curve, or painter’s pencil traded its first figure, or mason’s plumb-line measured its first wall, or architect’s compass sweptits first circle. The Taj has sixteen great arched windows, four at each corner; also at each of the four corners of the Taj stands a minaret 137 feet high; also

at each side of the building is a splendid mosque of red sandstone. Two hundred and fifty years has the Taj stood, and yet not a wall is cracked, not a mosaic loosened, nor an jarch sagged, nor a panel dulled. The storms of 250 winters have not marred, nor the heat of 250 summers disintegrated a marble. There is no story of age written by mosses on its white surface. Montaz, the queen, was beautiful, and Shah Jehan, the king, here proposed to let all the centuries of time know it. She was married at twenty years of age and died at twenty-nine. Her life ended as another life began. As the rose bloomed the rose bush perished. To adorn the dormitory of the dead at the command of the king Bagdad sent to this building its cornelian, and Ceylon its lapis lazuli, and Punjab its jasper, and Persia its amethyst, and Thibet its torquoise, and Lanka its-sappbire, and Yeman its agate, and Punna its diamonds, and blood stones and sardonyx and chalcedony and moss agates are as common as though they were pebbles. You find one spray of vine beset with eighty and another with 100 stones. Twenty thousand men were twenty years in building it, and although the labor was slave labor and not paid for, the building cost what would be about $00,000,000 of our American money. Some of the jewels have been picked out of the wall by iconoclasts and conquerors, and substitutes of less value have taken their places, but the vines, the traceries, the arabesques, the spandrels, the entablatures are so wondrous that you feel like dating the rest of your life from the day you first saw them. Th# Taj is the pride of India and especially of Mohammedanism. An English officer of.the fortress told us that when, during the general mutiny of 1857. the Mohammedans proposed insurrection at Agra, the English government aimed the guns of the fort at the Taj and said, “Make insurrection and that same day we will blow your Taj to atoms,” and that threat ended the disposition for mutiny at Agra. With miner’s candle we had seen something of the underside of Australia, as at Gimpie, and with a guide’s torch we had seen at different times something of the underside of America, as in Mammoth cave, but we are now to enter one of the sacred cellars of India, commonly called the Elephants caves. We

had it all to ourselves—the yacht that 7 was to take us about fifteen mites over the harbor of Bombay, between enchanted islands and along shores whose curves and gulches and., pictured rocks gradually prepared the mind Tor appreciation of the most unique spectacle in India. The morni ng had been ful 1 of thunder and lightning and deluge, but the atmospheric agitations had ceased and the cloudy ruins of the storm were piled up in the heavens, huge enough and darkly purple enough to make the skies as grandly picturesque as the earthly scenery amid which we' moved. After, an hour’s cutting- through -th e waters we came to the long pier reaching from the island called Elephanta. It is an island small of girth/butsix hundred feet high. And now we come near the famous tern pl ejiewn from one rock of porphyry at least eight hundred years ago. On either side of the chief temple is a chapel, these cut out of the same stone. So vast was the undertaking and to the Hindoo was so great the human impossibility that they say the gods scooped out this structure from the rock and carved the pillars and hewed its shape into gigantic idols and dedicated it to all the grandeurs. We climb many stone steps before we get to the gateways. The entrance to this temple has sculptured doorkeepers leaning on sculptured devils. How strange! But I have seen doorkeepers of churches and auditoriums who seemed to be leaning on the demons of bad ventilation and asphyxia. Doorkeepers ought to be leaning on the angels of health and comfort and life. All the sextons and janitors of the. earth who have spoiled sermons and lectures and poisoned the lungs of audiences by inefficiency ought to visit this cave of Elephanta and beware of what these doorkeepers are doing, when instead of leaning on the angelic they lean on the demoniac.

Yonder is the King Ravana worshiping. Yonder is the sculptured representation of the marriage of .Shiva and Parhati. Yonder is Daksha, the son of Brahma, born from the thumb of his right hand. He had sixty daughters. Seventeen of those daughters were married to Kasyapa and became the mothers of the human race. Yonder is a god with three heads. The .center god has a crown wound with necklaces of skulls. The right-hand god is in a paroxysm of rage, with forehead of snakes, and in its hand is a cobra. The left-hand god has pleasure, in all its feature, and the hand has a flower. But there are gods and goddesses in all directions. The chief temple of this rock is 130 feet square and has twenty-six pillars rising to the roof. After the conquerors of other lands and the tourists from all lands have clipped, defaced and blasted and carried away curios and mementos for museums and homes there are enough entrancements left to detain one, unless he is cautiqus, until he is down with some of the malarias which encompass this island or get bitten with some of its snakes.

That evening of our return to Bombay 1 visited the Young, Men’s Christian association, with the same appointments that you find in the Young Men’s Christian associations of Europe and America, and the night after that I addressed a thyong of native children who are in the schools of the Chris - tian mission. Christian universities gather under their wing of benediction host of the young men of this country. Bombay and Calcutta, the two great commercial cities of India, feel the elevating power of an aggressive Christainity. Episcopalian liturgy and presbyterian Westminster catechism and methodist anxious seat and baptist water of consec ration now stand where once basest idolatries had undisputed . sway. The work which Shoemaker Carey inaugurated at Serampore, India, translating the bible into forty different dialects and leaving his wornout body amid the natives whom he had come to save and going up into the heavens from which he can better watch all the field —that work will be completed in the salvation of the millions of India, and beside him, gazing from the same high places, stand Bishop Heber. and Alexander Duff, and John Scudder and Meakay, who fell at Delhi, and Montieff, whofellatCawnpur. and Polehampton, who fell at Lucknow, and Freeman, who fell at Futigarh, and all heroes and heroines who, for Christ’s sake, lived and died for the Christianization ,of India, and their heaven will not be com - plete until the Ganges that washes the ghats of heathen temples shall roll between churclu s of the living God, and the trampled womanhood of Hindooism shall have all the rights purchased by Him who amid the cuts and stabs of his owa assassination cried out, “Behold thy mother!” and from Bengal bay to Arabian ocean and from the Himalayas to the coast of Coromandel there be lifted hosannahs to Him who died to redeem all nations. In that day Elcphanta cave will be one of the places where idols are “cast to moles and bats.” If any clergyman asks me, as an unbelieving ministerof religion onee asked the Duke of Wellington, “Do you not think that the work of converting the Hindoos is all a practical farce?” I answer him as Wellington answered the unbelieving minister, “Look to your marching orders, sir,” Or if anyone having joined in the gospel attack feels like retreating 1 say to him, as General Havelock said to a retreating regiment.” “The enemy are in front, not in the rear,” and leading them again into the fight, though two horses had been shot under him.

Indeed the taking of this world for Christ will be no holiday celebration, butaSi tremendous as when in India during the mutiny of 1857 a fortress manned by sepoys was to be captured by Sir Colin Campbell and the army of Britain. The sepoys hurled upon the attacking columns burning missiles and grenades and fired on them shot and shell and poured fin them from the ramparts buring oil until a writer who witnessed it says, “It was a picture of pandemonium.” Then Sir Colin addressed his troops, saying; ““Remember the women and children must be rescued,” and his men replied: “Aye, aye, Sir Colin. We by you at Balaklava and will stood by you here.” And then came the trlumpliant assaults of the battlements. So in this gospel campaign which proposes capturing the very last citadel of idolatry and sin and hoisting Oyer it the banner of the cross we may have hurled upon us mighty opposition arid scorn and obloquy, and many may fall before the work is done, yet at every call for new onset let the cry of the church be: “Aye, .aye,* great captain of our sal- t vation. We stood by thee in other conflicts, and will stand by thee to the last.” And then, if not in this world, then from the battlements of the next, as the last Appoiyonic fortification shall crash into ruin, wc will join in the shout: “Thanks bo untd God, who givethus the victory! Hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!”