Rensselaer Republican, Volume 28, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 October 1895 — TALMAGE’S SERMON. [ARTICLE]

TALMAGE’S SERMON.

HIS FIRST SERMON AS A WASHINGTON PASTOR. Preached Before Vast Multitude—_on “All Heaven Looking On”—Paul Standing in the Amphitheater. New Field of Work. Those who know that no church in this or foreign countries has been able to hold the audiences that hare assembled when it was announced that Dr. Talmage would preach will not be surprised’that vast mul-', titudes attempted in vain to hear bis first sermon as pastor in Washington, The subject of his openiiig scrmon as The naatiimfll capital was, “Alf Heaven Looking On,” the text selected being the famous passage from Hebrews xii., 1, “Seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses.”

In this my opening sermon in the national capital I give you heartiest Christian I bethink myself of-the privilege of standing in this historic church so long presided over By one Of the most remarkable men of the century. There are plenty of good ministers besides Dr. Sunderland, but I do not know of any man except himself with enough brain to have stood successfully and triumphantly forty-three years in this conspicuous pulpit. Long distant be the year when that gospel chieftain shall put down the silver trumpet' with which he nas marshaled the hosts of Israel or sheath the sword with which he has struck such mighty blows for God and righteousness. I come to you with the same gospel that ho haS preached and to join you in ail kinds of work for making the world better, and I hope to see you all in your homes, and Lave you all come and t.ee me, but don't nil come at once; and without nny preliminary discourses tfsto what I propose to do I begin here and now to cheer you with the thought that all heaven, is sympathetically looking on. “Seeing we also are compassed about wit-i so great a cloud of fitnesses.” Where Rani Stood.

—; Crossing the Alps by the Mont Canis pass, or through the Mont Ceais tunnel. you are in a few hours set down at Verona, Italy, and in a few minutes begin') examining one of the grandest^ruins ofj the world—the amphitheater. The whole' building sweeps around you in a circle. You stand in the arena when the combat was once fought or the race run, :.nd on all sides the seats rise, tier above tier, nntil you count forty elevations, or galler es, as I shall see fit to call them, in vhich sat the senators, the kings and the 25,000 excited spectators. At tae sides of tne arena and under the galleries are the cages in which the lions hud tigers are kept without food, until, frenzied w'th hunger and thirst, they are let out upon some poor victim, who, with sword ami alone, is condemned to meet them. I think that Paul himself once stood in such a place, and that it was not only figuratively,_butjjterally,jthat he had “fought with beasts at Ephesus?’ The gala day has come. From all tne world the people are pouring into Verona. Men, women and children, orators and senators, great men and small, thousands upon thousands come, until the first gallery is full, and the second, the third, tne fourth, the fifth—all the way up to the twentieth, all the way up to the thirtieth, all the way up to the fortieth. Every place is filled. Immensity of audience sweeping the great circle. Silence! The time for the contest has come. A Roman official leads forth the victim into the arena. Let him get his sword with firm grip into his right hand. The 25,000 sit breathlessly watching. I hear the door at the -side of the arena creak open. Out plunges the half starved lion, his tongue atliirgt for blood, and, with a roar that brings all tlie galleries to their feet he rushes agaihfet the sword of the combatant. Do you know how strong a stroke a man will strike when his life depends upon the first thrust of his blade? The wild beast, lame and bleeding, slinks back toward the side of the arena; then, rallying his wasting strength, he comes up with fiercer eye and more terrible roar than ever, only to be driven .back with a fatal wound, while the combatant comes in with stroke after stroke, until the monster is dead at his feet, and the 23,000 people clap their hands and utter a shout that makes the city tremble. A Cloud of Witnesses. Sometimes the audience came to see a race, sometimes to see gladiators fight each other, until the people, compassionate for the fallen, turned their thumbs up as an appeal that the vanquished be spared, and sometimes the combat was with wild beasts. To an amphithentrieal audience Paul refers When he says, “Wo are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses.” ,|J The fact is that every Christian man has a lion to fight. Yours is a bad temper. The gates of the arena have been opened, and this tiger has come out to destroy your soul. It has lacerated you with many a wound. You have been thrown by it time and again, but in the strength of God you have arisen to drive it back. I verily believe yon will conquer. I think that the temptation is getting weaker and weaker. You have given it so many wopnds thnt the prospect is that it will die, and you shall be victor through Christ. Courage, brother! Do not let the sands of the arena drink the blood of your soul.

Your Hon is the passion for strong drink. You may have contended against it twenty years, but it is strong of body and thirsty of tongue. You have tried to fight it back with broken bottle or empty wine flask. Nay, that is not the weapon. With one horrible roar he will seize thee by the throat and rend thee limb from limb. Take this weapon, sharp and keen, reach up and get it from God’s armory—the sword of the spirit. With that thou mnyest drive him back and conquer. But why specify when every man nnd woman has a lion to fight? If there be one here who has no besetting siti, let him speak out, for him I have offended. If you have not fought tne lion, it is because you have let the lion eat you up. This very moment the contest goes on. The Trojan celebration, where 10,000 gladiators fought and 11,000 wild beasts were slain, was not so terrific a struggle as that which at this moment gdbs on in many n soul. That combat was for the life of the body; this is for the life of the soul. That was with wild beasts from the jungle; this is with the roaring lion of hell. Men think when they contend against an evil habit that they have to fight it all alone. No They stand in the center of an immense circle of sympathy. Paul .had

been reciting the names of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Joseph, Gideon hnd Barek and then says, “Being compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses.” Before I get through, I will show you that you fight in an arena, arouud which circle, in galleries above each other, all the kindling eyes and ail the sympathetic hearts of the ages, and at every victory gained there comes down the thundering applause of a great multitude that no man can number. “Being compassed about with so great a cloud bLvntnessen;” On the first elevation of the ancient amphitheater, on the day of a celebration, sat Tiberius, or Augustus, or the reigning king. So, in the great arena of spectators that watch our straggles, and in the first divine gallery, us I shall eall it, sits oui king, one Jesus. On his head are many ; crowns! The Roman emperor got his -place by cold blooded conquests, but oui king hath come to his place by the broken hearts healed, and the tears wiped away, and the souls redeemed. The Roman emperor sat, with folded arms, indifferent as eto. whether the swordsman or the lion beat, but onr king’s sympathies arc all with us. Nny, unheard of condescensions! I see him come down from the gallery into the arena to help ns in the fight, shouting, un lif all up and down his voice is hear(L:“Fenr not! I wilt help thee* I will strengthen thee by the right hand of my power!” In the Arena. They gave to the men in the arena, in the olden time, food to thicken their blood, so that it would flow slowly, and that for a longer time the people might gloat over the scene. But our king has no pleasure in our woupds, for we are bone of his bone flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood.

In all the anguish of our heart, The Man of Sorrows bore a part. Once, in the ancient amphitheater, a lion with one paw caught the combatant's sword and with his other paw caught bis shield. The man took his knife from his girdle and slew the beast. The king, sitting in the gallery, said, “That was not fair; the lion must be slain by a sword.” Other lions were turned out, and the poor victim fell. You cry, “Shame, shame!” at such meanness, But the king, in this case is onr brother, and he will see that we have fair play. He will forbid the rushing out of more lions than we can meet. ~~He~wiH not suffer us to-be tempted above that we are able. Thank God! The king is in the gallery! His eyes are - -on - us. H+s heart -is-witb us. -lUs_handwill deliver us. “Blessed are all they who put their trust in him!” I look again, and I see angelic gallery. There they are—l he angel that swung the sword at the gate of Eden, the same that Ezekiel saw upholding the throne of God and from which] I look away, for the splendor is insufferable;. Here are the guardian angels. That one Watched a patriarch; this one protected a child; that one has been pulling a soul out of temptation. All these are messengers of liglht. Those drove the Spanish armada on the rocks. This turned Sennacherib's living hosts into a heap of 185,000 corpses. Those yonder chanted the Christmas carol over Bethlehem until the chant awoke the shepherds. These at creation stood in the balcony of heaven and serenaded the newborn world wrapped in swaddling clothes of light. And there, holier and mightier than nil. is Michael, the archangel. To command an earthly host gives dignity, but this one is leader of the 20,000 chariots of God and of the ten thousand times ten thousand angels, I think God give command to the archangel, and the archangel to the seraphim, and the seraphim to the cherubim until all the lower orders of heaven hear the command and go forth on the high behest. Now, bring on your lions. Who can fear? All the spectators in the angelic gallery are our friends. “He shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all the ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder; the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample underfoot.” Though the arena l»e crowded with temptations we shall, with the angelic help, strike them down in the name of God and leap on their fallen carcasses. Oh, bending throng of bright, angelic faces and t-'vift wings and lightning foot, I hail you to-day from the dust and struggle of the aTena! I look again, and I. see the gallery of the prophets and apostles. Who are those mighty ones up yonder? Hosea and Jeremiah and Daniel arfd Isaiah and Paul and Peter and John and James. There sits Noah, waiting for all the world to come into the ark, and Moses, waiting till the last Red Sea shall divide, and Jeremiah, waiting for the Jews to return, and John of the Apocalypse, waiting for the swearing of the angel that time shall be no longer. Glorious spirits! Ye were howled at; ye were stoned; ye were spit upon. They have been in the fight themselves, and they are nil with us. Daniel knows all about lions. Paul fought with beasts at Ephesus.

In the ancient amphitheater, the people got so excited that they would shoqt from the galleries to the men in the areha: “At it again!” “Forward!” “One more stroke!” “Look out!” “Fall back!” “Huzza, huzza!” So in that gallery, prophetic and apostolic; they cannot keep their peace. Daniel cries out, “Thy God will deliver thee from the mouth of the lions!” David exclaims, “He will nqt suffer thy foot to be moved!” Isaiah calls out: “Fear not!. lam with thee! Be not dismayed!” Paul exclaims, “Victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” That throng of prophets and apostles cannot keep still. They make the welkin ring with shouting qnd hallelujahs. Familiar Figures. I look again, and I see the gallery of the martyrs. Who is that? Hugh Latimer, sure enough! He would not apologize for the truth preached, and-so he died, the night before swinging froin the bedpost iu perfect glee at the thought of emancipation. Who arc that army of 6,000? They are the Theban legion who died for the faith. Heye is a larger host in magnificent array-^884,000— who perished for Christ in the persecutions of Diocletian. Yonder is a family group, Felicitas of Rome and her children. While they were dying for the faith she stood encouraging them. One son was whipped to death by thorns; another was flung from a rock; another was beheaded. At last the mother became a martyr. There they are together—a family group In heaven! Yonder is John Bradford, who said, in the fire, "We shall have a merry supper with the Lord to-night!” Yonder is He_nry Voes, who exclaimed, as he died, “If I had ten heads, they should all fall off for Christ!” The great throng of the martyrs! They had hot lead poured down their throats; horses were fastened to their hands, and other horses to their

feet, and thus they were pulled apart; they had -their tongues pulled out by redhot pinchers; they were sewed up in the skins of animals, and then thrown to the dogs; they were daubed with combustibles and set on fire! If all the martyrs’ stokes that have been kindled could be set at proper distances, they would make the midnight, nil the world over, bright as fioondny! And now they sit yonder in tho-martyrs’ gallery. For them the fires of persecution have gone out. The swords are sheathed and the mob hashed. Now they watch us with an ail observing sympathy. They know all the pain, all the hardship, all the anguish, injustice, all the privation. They cannot keep still. They cry. “Courage! The fire will not consume. The floods cannot drown. The lions cannot devour! Courage, down there in the arena!” What are they all looking at? This nigh t wc answer back the salutation they give, and cry, “Hail, sons and daughters of the fire!” ~ 7 ~ r y < —

_ Eminent Christiana. I look again, and I see another gallery, that of eminent Christians. What strikes me strangely is the mixing in companionship of those who on earth could not agree. There I see Martin Luther, and beside him a Roimwi Catholic who looked beyond the superstitions of his church and is saved. There is Albert Barnes, and around him Tho presbytery whe tried him for heterodoxy. Yonder is Lyman Beecher and the church court that denounced him. Stranger than all, there are John Calvin and James Arminius. Whd would have thought that they would sit so lovingly together? There are George Whitefield and the bishops who would not let him come into their pulpits because they thought, him a fanatic. There are the sweet singers Toplady, Montgomery, Charles Wesley, Isaac Watts and Mrs. Sigourney. If heaven had had no music before they went up, they would have started the siuging. And there the band of missionaries—David Abeel, talking of China redeemed, and John Scudder of India saved, and David Brainerd of the aborigines evangelized, and Mrs. Adoniram .Judson, whose prayers for Burma took heaven by violence. All these Christians a re.looking into the arena. Our straggle is nothing to theirs. Do we, in Christ’s cause, suffer from the cold? They walked Greenland’s icy mountains. Do we suffer frtftn the heat? They sweltered in the. tropics. Do we get-fatieued ? They fainted, with none to care for them but cannibals. Are we persecuted? They were anathematized. And ns they look from their gallery and see us falter in the presence of the lions I seem to hear Isaac Watts addressing us in his old hymn, nrtly a little ehnnped; Must you be carried to the skies On flowery beds of ease, While others fought to win the prize, Or sailed through bloody seas? Toplady sh’dliL n his old hymn: Your harps, ye trembling saints, Down from the-willows-take. Loud to the praise ot love divine, Bid every string awake. While Charles Wesley, the Methodist, breaks forth in his favorite words, a little varied:

A charge to keep you have, A God to glorify; A never dying soul to save, And fit it for the sky! I look again, nnd I see the gallery of our departed. Many of thoso in the other galleries we have heard of, but these we knew. Oh, how familiar their faces! They sat at our tables, and we walked to the house of God in company. Have they forgotten us? Those fathers and mothers started us on the road of life? Are they careless as to what becomes of us? And those children, do they look on with stolid indifference as to whether we win or lose this battle for eternity? Nay. I see that child running his hand over your brow and saying, “Father, do not fret; mother, do not worry.” They remember the day they left us. They remember the agony of the last farewell. Though years in heaven, they know our faces'. They remember our sorrows. They speak our names. They watch this fight for heaven. Nay, I see them rise up and lean over and wave before us their recognition and encouragement. That gallery is not full. They are keeping places for us. After we have slain the lion they expect the king to call us, saying, “Come up higher.” Between the hot struggles in the arena I wipe the sweat from my brow and stand on tiptoe, reaching up my right hand to clasp theirs in rapturous handshaking, while their voices come ringing dpwn from the gallery, crying, “Be thou faithful unto death, and* you shall have a crown.” In the Arena or Gallery? But here I with the majesty and joy of the scene. Gallery of the king! Gallery of angels! Gallery of prophets and apostles! Gallery of martyrs! Gallery of saints! Gallery of friends and kindred! Oh, majestic circles of light and love! Throngs! Throngs! Throngs! How shall we stand the gaze of the universe? Myriads of eyes beaming on us! Myriads of hearts beating in sympathy for us! flow shall wp ever dare to sin again? How' shall we ever become discouraged again? How shall we ever feel lonely again? With God for us, and angels for us, nnd prophets nnd apostles for us ; and the great souls of the ages for us, and our glorified kindred for us, shall we give up the fight and die? No, Son of God, who didst die to save us! No, ye angels, whose wings are spread forth to shelter us! No, ye prophets and apostles, whose warnings startle us! No, ye loved ones, whose arms are outstretched to receive us! No, we will never surt render!

Sure I must fight if I would reign— Be faithful to my Lord, And bear the cross, endure the pain, Supported by thy word. Thy saints in all this glorious war Shall conquer, though they die, They see the triumph from afar, And seize it with their eye. When that illustrious day shall rise, And all thine armies shine In robes of victory through the Rkies The glory shall be thine. My hearers, shall we die in the arena or rise to join our friends in the gallery? Through Christ we may come off more than conquerors. A soldier dying in the hospital rose up in bed the last moment and cried: “Here! Here!' His attendants put him back on his pillow and asked him why he shouted “Here!” “Oh, I heard the roll call of heaven, and I was only answering to my name.” * I wonder whether, after this battle of life is over, our names will be balled,in the muster roll of the pardoned and glorified, and with the joy of heaven breaking upon, onr souls we shall cry: ,“Hcre! Hero!”