Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 January 1895 — “POINTS OF COMPASS.” [ARTICLE]

“POINTS OF COMPASS.”

East, West, North, South-*AII Shall Be Brought to Christ. A Geographical Discourse at the New York Academy of Mu»lc byDr. Talmage. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at the New York Academy of Music at 4 p. m., last Sunday, from the subject, “Points of Compass.” Text—Luke xiii, 29, “They shall come from the East, and from the West, and from the North, and fromothe South, and shall sit down.” The man who wrote this was at one time a practicing physican, at another time a talented painter, at another time a powerful preacher, at another time a reporter, an inspired reporter. God bless and help and inspire all reporters! From their pen drops the health or poison of nations. The name of this reporter was Lucan us, for short he was called Luke, and in my text, although stenography had not yet been born, he reports verbatim a sermon of Christ which in one paragraph bowls the round world into the light of the millennium. “They shall come from the East, and from the West, and from the North and from the South, and shall sit down.” Nothing more interested me in my recent journey around the world than i to see the ship captain about noon, whether on the Pacific, or the Indian ' or Bengal or Mediterranean or Red • sea, looking through a nautical instrument to find just where we were sailing, and it is well to know that, though the captain tells you there | are thirty-two points of division of I the compass card in the marine’s ■ compass, there are only four cardinal points, and my text hails them — the north, the south, the east, the west. The hardest part of the field to be taken is the north, because our gospel is an emotional gospel, and ' the nations -of the far north are aj cold-blooded race, Thev dwell amid icebergs and eternal snows and everlasting winter. Greenlanders, Laplanders, Icelanders, Siberians —their vehicle is the sledge drawn by reindeer, their apparel the thickest furs at all seasons] their existence a lifetime battle with th: cold. But already the huts of the Arctic hear the songs of divine worship. Already the snows fall on open new [ testaments. Already the warmth J of the Sun of Righteousness begins j to be felt through the bodies and minds and souls of the hyperboreans. I The inhabitants of Hudson bay are ' gathering to the cross. The Church missionary society in those polar, climes has been grandly successful in establishing twenty-four gospel stations, and over 12,008 natives have believed and been baptized. ' The Moravians have kindled the| light of the gospel all up and down Labrador. The Danish mission has gathered disciples from among the I shivering inhabitants of Greenland. f Alaska, called at its annexation ! William H. Seward's folly, turns out to be William H. Seward’s triumph, and it is hearing the- voice of God through the American missionaries —men and women as defiant of arctic hardships as the old Scottish chief who, when campingout in a winter’s night, knocked from under his son’s head a pillow of snow, saying that such indulgence in luxury would weaken and disgrace the clan. But my text takes in the opposite point of the compass. The far south has, through high temperature, temptations to lethargy and indolence and hot blood which tend to i multiform evil. We have through my text got the north in, notwithstanding its frosts, and the same text brings in the south, notwithstanding its torridity. The fields of cactus, the orange grove and thickets of magnolia are to be surendered to the Lord Almighty. The south! That means Mexico and all the regions that William H. Prescott and Lord Kingsborough made familiar

to literature —Mexico in the strange dialect of the Aztecs; Mexico conquered by Hernan Cortez to be more gloriously conquered; Mexico with its capital more than seven thousand feet above the sea level, looking down upon the entrancement of lake and valley and plain; Mexico the home of nations yet to be born —all for Christ. The south! Tha,t means Africa, which David Livingstone consecrated to God when he died on his knees in his tent of exploration. Already about seven hundred and fifty thousand converts to Christianity in Africa. But I must not forget that my text takes in another cardinal point of the compass. It takes in the east. 1 have to report that in a journey around the world there is nothing so much impresses one as the fact that the missionaries, divinely blessed, are taking the world for God. The horrible war between Japan and China will leave the last wall of opposition flat in the dust. War is barbarism always and everywhere. We bold up our hands in amazement at the massacre at Port Arthur as though Christian nations could never go into such diabolism.' We forget Ft. Pillow. We forget that during the war both North and South rejoiced whbivthere-were 000 more wtffcdeS'htf® the j Chin!s^itti»<tfdiked* SWfesiw leßkxWK>i«alHMt<rfhe emnfii eastwnr with ■ him. Of course there are high ob-

stacles to be overcome, and great ordeals must be passed through before the consummation, as witness the Armenians under the butchery of the Turks. May that throne on the banks of the Bosporus soon crumble! The time has already come when the United States government and Great Britain-and Germany ought to intone the indignation of all civilized nations. While it is not requisite that arms be sent there to avenge the wholesale massacre of Armenians, it is requisite that by cable under the seas and by protest that shall thrill the wires from Washington and London and Berlin to Constantinople the nations anathematize the diabolism for which the Sultan of Turkey is responsible. Mohammedanism is a curse, whether in Turkey or New York. “They shall come from the east.” There is another point of the compass that my text includes. “They shall come from the west.” That means America redeemed. Everything between Atlantic and Pacific oceans to be brought within the circle of holiness and rapture. Will it be done by wordlv reform or evangelism? Will it be law or gospel? I am glad that a wave of reform has swept across the land, and all cities are feeling the advantage of the mighty movement. Let the good work go on until the last municipal evil is extirpated. But a movement which ends with crime exposed and law executed stops half way. The law nhver yet saved anybody, never yet changed anybody. Break up all the houses of iniquity in this city, and you only send the occupants to other cities. Break down all the policemen in New York, and while it changes their worldly fortunes it does not change their heart or life. The greatest want in New York today is the transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to change the heart and the life and uplift the tone of moral sentiment and make men do right, not because they are afraid of Ludlow street'jail or Sing Sing, but because they love God and hate un righteousness I have never heard, nor have you heard, of anything except the gospel that proposes to regenerate the heart and by the influence of that regenerated heart rectify the life. Execute the law, most certainly, but preach the gospel by all means —in churches, in theaters, in homes, in prisons, on the land and cn the sea. The work is not so difficult as many suppose. You say, “There are the foreign populations.” Yes, but many of them are Hollanders, and they were brought up to love and worship God, and it will take but little to persuade the Jjlollanders to adopt the religion of their forefathers. Then there are among these foreigners so many of the Scotch. They or their ancestors heard Thomas Chalmers thunder and Robert McCheyne pray. The breath of God so' often swept through the heather of the highlands and the voice of God has so often sounded through the Trosachs, and they all know how to sing “Dundee,” so that they will not have often to be invited to accept the God of John Knox and Bothwell Bridge. Then there are among these foreigners so many of the English. They inherited the same language as we inherited —the English in which Shakspeare dramatized, and Milton claimed his cantos, and Henry Melville gospelized, and Oliver Cromwell prorogued parliament, and Wellington commanded his eager hosts. Among these foreigners are the Swiss, and they were rocked in a cradle under the shadow of the Alps, that cathedral of the Almighty in which all the elements, snow and hail and tempest and hurricane, worship. Among these foreigners are a vast host of Germans, and they feel centuries afterward the power of that unparalleled spirit who shook the earth when he trod it, and the heavens when he prayed—Martin Luther! From all nations our foreign .populations have come, and they are homesick, far away from the place of their childhood and the graves of their ancestors, and our glorious religion presented t<s them aright will meet their needs and fill their souls and kindle their enthusiasm.

But what will they do after they come? Here is something gloriously consolatory that you have never noticed. “They shall come from the East and the West, and the North, and the South, and shall sit down.” Oh, this is a tired world! The most of people are kept on the run all their lifetime. Business keeps them on the run. Trouble keeps them on tbe run. Rivalries keep them on the run. They are tunning from disaster. They are running for reward. And those who run the fastest and run the longest seem best to succeed. But my text suggests a restful posture for all God’s children, for all those who for a lifetime have been on the run. “They shall sit down!” Why run any longer? When a man gets heaven, what more can he get? “They shall sit doyvn!" Not alone, but in picked companionship of the universe; not embsrassed, though a Seraph should Sit down on one side bf yon hhd 'an archangel on theOtheK 1 ‘ T ncftfee that the moat of the styles,, of! toii require Thebe arc tihe.thousands of ’girls , sueh.pefsortfi (because,or fl jack, or cusromers there ’OWfjE’tfhpllfflflhttoe btirii Wftrsv W* the 4WBeUagdskM abAtthi .ftp - ductors. In most BMf b occupations they must stand. Bat

ahead of all those who love and serv the Lord is a resting place, a core plete relaxation of fatigued muscle somethingcushioncd and upholstere and embroidered with the very eas of heaven. “They shall sit down.” Rest frot toil. Rest from pain. Rest fror persecution. Rest from uncertainty Beuatiful, joyous.transporting, ever lasting rest! Oh, men and womei of the frozen north, and the bloom ing south, and from the realms c the rising and setting sun, throug Christ get your sins forgiven ap< start for the place where you may a last sit down in blissful recover from the fatigues of earth whil there roll over you the raptures o heaven. Many of you have had sue.’ a rough tussle in this world that i your faculties were not perfect ii heaven you would some time forge yourself and say, “It is time for m to start on that journey,” or “I must be time for me to count oa .the drops of that medicine,” or “ wonder what new attack there is oi me through the newspapers?” oi “Do you think I will save anythin; of those crops from the grasshop pers, or locusts, or the droughts? or “I wonder how much I have los in that last bargain'f’Lor “Imus hurry lest I miss the train.” No, no The last volume of direful earth!; experience will be finished. Yea the last chapter, the last paragraph the last sentence, the last word Finis. Frederick the Great, notwithing the mighty domain over whicl he reigned, was so depressed at times he could not speak withou crying and carried a small bottle o quick poison with which to end hit misery when he could stand it n< longer. But I give you this smai vial of goad anodyne, one drop o which, not hurting either body oi soul, ought to soothe all unrest am put your pulses into an eternal calm “They shall come from the east, am from the west, and from the north and the south, and shall sit down.’