Rensselaer Republican, Volume 28, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 November 1895 — TALMAGE’S SERMON. [ARTICLE]

TALMAGE’S SERMON.

NEW LESSON FROM THE FEAST OF BELSHAZZAR. Weighed in the Balance and Found Wanting—The Suddenness of God’s Judgments—A Thought as to the Forms of Prayer—Look and Li re. The Banquet of Sin. Since his going to Washington "Dr. Talmage’s pulpit experience has been a remarkable one. Not only has the church in which he preaches been filled, but the audiences have overflowed into- the -ad——Joining streets to an extent that has rendered them impassable. Similar scenes were enacted at- last Sunday’s services, when the preacher took for his sabject, “Handwriting on the Wall,” the text chosen being Daniel v., 30, “In that night was Belshazzar, the king of the Chal- • deans, slain.” - ~~~ -r—r— Night was about to come down on Bnbylon. The shadows of her 250 towers began to lengthen!; The Euphrates rolled on, touched by the fiery splendors of the setting sun, and gates of brass, burnished and .glittering, opened and shut like doors of flame. The hanging gardens of Babylon, wet with the heavyTlew, began to pour from starlit .flcrivers and dripping leaf a fragrance for many miles around. The streets a-nd squares were lighted for dance and frolic and promenade. The theaters and galleries of art invited the wealth and pomp and grandeur of the city to rare entertainments. Scenes of riot and wassail were mingled in every street, and godless mirth, and outrageous excess and‘splendid wickedness came to the king's palace to do their mightiest deeds of darkness. A royal feast to-night at the king's palace! Rushing up to the gates are chariots, upholstered with precious cloths from Dell an and drawn by fire-eyed horses from Togarmah, that rear and neigh in the grasp of the charioteers, while a thousand lords dismount and , women dressed in all the splendors of Syrian emerald, and the color blending of _agate, and the chasteness of coral, and the somber glory, of Tyrian purple, and princely embroideries brought from afar "fry-camels across HieTlgscrTTnia fry jhillgl of Tarshish across the sea.

Olien wide I lie gates :in<t ti»f tbo Come in. The chamberlains trnd cupbearers are all ready. Hark to the rustle of the silks, and to the carol of the music! See the blaze of the jewels! Lift the banners. I'lll the cups. Clap the cymbals. Blow the trumpets. Let the night go by with song and dance and ovation, and let that Babylonish tongue be palsied that will not say, “O King Belshazzar, live forever!” Alt, my friends, it was not any common banquet to which these great people came. All parts of the earth had sent their richest viands to that table. Brackets and chandeliers flashed their light upon tankards of burnished gold. Fruits, ripe and luscious, in baskets of silver, intwined with leaves, plucked from royal conservatories. Vases’, inlaid with emerald and ridged with exquisite traceries, filled with nuts that were thrashed from forests of distant lands.* Wipe brought from the royal vats, foaming in the decanters and bubbling in the chalices. Tufts oLcassm and frankincense wafting-their sweetness from wall and table. Gorgeous banners unfojjjjpg jjj the breeze that came through the open window, bewitched with the perfumes ofdiapging -gardens.. Knnitams- rising— up from inclosures of ivory, ip jets of crystal, to fall in clattering rain of diamonds and pearls. Statues of mighty men loking down from niches in the wall upon crowns and shields brought from sjibdued empires. Idols of wonderful work standing on pedestals of precious stones. Embroideries stooping about the windows and wrapping pillars of cedar, and drifting on floor inlaid with ivory and agate. Music, mingling the thrum of harps, and the clash of cymbals, and the blast of trumpets in one wave of transport that went rippling alqng the wall and breathing among the garlands and pouring down the corridors and thrill ing the soul? of a thousand banqueters. - The signal is given, and the lords and ladies, the mighty men and women of the land, come around the table; Pornrwst, the wine. Let foam and bubble kiss the rim! Hoist every one his cup and drink to the sentiment;. “O King Belshazzar, live forever!” Bestarred head band and earcanet of'royalbeauty gleam to the uplifted chalices, as again and again and again they are emptied. Away with care from the palace! Tear royal dignity to tatters! I‘our out more wine! Give us more light, wilder music, sweeter perfume! Lord shouts to lord, captain ogles to captain. Goblets clash; decanters rattle. There come in the obscene song, and the ■drunken hiccough, and the slavering lip, and the guffaw of idiotic laughter, bursting from the lips of princes, flushed, reeling bloodshot; while mingling with it all I hear, “Huzza, huzza! for great Belshazzar!" What is that on the plastering of the wall? Is it a spirit? Is it a phantom? Is it God? The music stops. The goblets fall from the nerveless grasp. There is a thrill. There is a start. There is a thousand voiced shriek of horror. Let Daniel be brought in to re’ad that writing. He comes in. He reads it—“ Weighed in the balance and found wanting.”

A Warning:, Meanwhile the Medes, who for two years had been laying siege to that city, took advantage of that carousal and came in. I hear the feet of the conquerors on the palace stairs. Massacre rushes in with a thousand gleaming knives. Death bursts upon the scene, and I shut the door of that banqueting hall, for I do not want to look. There is nothing there but torn banners, and broken wreaths, and the slush of upset tankards, and the blood of murdered women and the kicked and tumbled carcass of a dead king. For “in thut night was Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain.” I go on to learn some lessons from all this. I learn that when God writes anything brt the wall a man had better read it as it is.'* Daniel did not misiuterpretpr modify theTiahdwritlhg on the wall. It is nil foolishness to expect a minister of the gospel, to preach always things 'that the people like or the people choose. Young men of Washington, what shall I preach to you to-night? Shall I tell you of the dignity of human nature? Shall 1 tell you of the wonders that our race has accomplished? “Oh, no,” >4>u say. “Tell me the message that came from God.” I will. If there is any handwriting on the wall,itdlthis'lesson: “Repent! Accept of Christ and be saved!” Mmight talk of a great many other things, but that is the message, ahd Iso declare it. Jesus never flattered those to whom he preached. He said to those who did wrong, and who

were offensive in his sight, “Ye generation of vipers, ye white sepulchers, how cau ye escape the dampation of hell!” Paul the apostle preached before a man who was not ready to hear him preach. What subject did he take? Did he say, “Oh, you are a good man. a very fine man, a very noble mad?” No; he preached of righteousness to a man who was unrighteous, of temperance to a man who was a victim of bad appetites, of judgment to come to a man who was unfit for it. So we must always declare the message that happens to come to ns. DaiP" iel must read it as itis. A minister preached before James I. of England, who was James VI. of Scotland. What subject did he take? The king was noted all over the world for being unsettled and wavering inhtejdeas,__What did the minister preaeh about to this man who was James I. of England and James * VI. of Scotland ? He took for his-text, James i., 6: “He that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.” Hugh Latimer offended the king by a sermon preached, and the king said, “Hugh Latimer, come and apologize.” “I will,” said Hugh Latimer. So the day ' was app6inted, arid the king’s chapel was full of lords and dukes and the mighty men and women of the country, for Hugh Latimer was to apologize. He began hrs ■ sermon fry saying, “Hugh Latimer, bethink thee! Tliou art in the presence of thine earthly king, who can destroy thy body. But bethink thee, Hugh Latimer, that thou art in the presence of the king of heaven and earth, who can destroy both body and soul in hell fire.” Then he preached with appalling directness at the king’s, crimes.

The En<Lx>f Sin. Another lesson that comes to us tonight: There is a great difference between the opening of the banquet of sin and its close. Young man, if you bad looked in upon the banquet in the first few hours you would have wished you had been invited there, and could sit at the ..f ea_st.__J!Q.h, the.grande uro f Belshazzaris feast!” you would have said, but you look in at the close of the banquet and your blood curdles with horror. The king of terrors has there a ghastlier banquet; human blood is the wine and dying groans are the music. Sin has made itself a king in the earth. It hns crowned itself. It has spread a banquet. It invites all the world to come to it. It has hung in its banqueting ha ll the spoils of all kingdoms, and the banners of all nations, it- hns from Its wealth, the tables and floors and arches. And yet how often is that banquet broken up, and how horrible is its end! Ever and anon there is a handwriting on the wall. A king falls. A great culprit is Arrested. The knees of wickedness knock together. God's judgment, like an armed host, breaks in upon the banquet, and that night is Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain. Here is a young man who says: ■ “I cannot see why they make such a fuss about the intoxicating cup. Why, it is exhilarating! It makes me feel well. I can talk better, think better, feel better. I cannot see why people have, such a prejudice against it.” A few years pass on, and he wakes up and finds himself in the clutches pf an evil habit which he tries to break, but cannot, and he cries out, “Q Lord God, help me!” It seems as though God Would not hear his prayer, and in an agony of body and soul he cries out, “It biteth like a serpent and it stingeth like an adder.y. How bright it was at the start! How black it was at the last I

Her& M a. man who begins to read loose novels.. “They are so charming,” he says. “I will go out and see for myself whether all these things are so.” He opens the gate of a siiifnHife. He goes in. A sinful sprite meets him with her wand. She waves her wand, and it.is all enchantment. Why, it seems as if the angels of God had poured out vials of perfun;.? in the atmosphere. As he walks on ho finds the hills becoming more radiant with foliage and the ravines more resonant with the falling Water. Oh, what a charming landscape he sees! But that sinful s-ftfite, with her wand, meets him again. But now she reverses the wand, and ajl the enchantment is gone. The cup is fu.l of poison. The fruit turns to ashes. All the leaves of the bower are forked toagues of hissing serpents. The flowing fiuintains fall back in a dead pool stenc'jful with corruptions The luring,.songs become curses and screams of demoniac laughter. Lost spirits gather about_hhH= and feel for his heart and beckon h‘ip on with "Hail, brother! Hail, blasted iqirit, Hail!" He comes to the front door where he entered and tries to push it back, but the door turns against him, and in the jar of that shutting door he hears these words, “This night is Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain.” Sin may open bright as the morning. It ends dark as the night!

Death at the Banqqct. I learn further from this subject that death sometimes breaks in upon a banquet. Why did he not go down to the prisons in Babylon? There were people there that would like to have died. I suppose there were men and women in torture in that city who would have welcomed death, but he comes to the palace, and just at the time when the mirth is dashing to the tip-top pitch, death breaks in at the banquet. We have often seen the same thing illustrated. Here is a jfoung man just come from college. He is kind. He is loving. He is enthusiastic. He is eloquent. By one spring he may bound to heights toward which many men have been struggling for years. A profession opens before him. He is established in the law. His friends cheer him. Eminent men encourage him. After awhile you may see him standing in the American Senate, or moving a popular assemblagebyhis eloquence, as trees are moved in a whirlwind. Some night he retires early. A fever is on him. Delirium, like a reckless charioteer, seizes the reins of his Intellect. Father and mother stand by and see the tides of his life going on to the great ocean. The banquet is coining to an end. The lights of thought ajd mirth and eloquence are being extinguished. The garlands are snatched from the brow. The vision is gone. Death at the banquet! We saw the same thing, on a larger synle, illustrated in our civil war. Our whole nation had been sitting at a national banquet—North, South, East and West. What grain was there but we grew- it oj our hills? What invention was there? but bur rivers must turn the new j»heel apd rattle the strange shuttle?" What warm furs but our traders must bring them from the arctics? What fish bi.tour nets must sweep them for the market? What music but ft must sing in onr halls? What eloquence but it must speak in our senates? Ho, to the Rational banquet, reaching from mountain to mountain and from sea to sea! To prepare that banquet the sheepfolds and the aviaries of the country sent their best treasures. The orchids piled up on the table their sweet

traits. The presses burst out with new wines. To sit at that table came the yeomanry of New Hampshire, and the lumbermen of Maine, and the Carolinian from the rice plantation,-and the Western emigrant from the pines of Oregon, and we wercall brothers—brothers at afranqiret Suddenly the feast ended. \\ hat meant those mounds thrown up at Chickamauga, Shiloh, Atlanta, Gettysburg, South Mountain^What meant those golden grainfields, turned into a pasturingjground for cavalry horses? What meant the cornfields gullied with the wheels of the heavy supply train? Why those rivers of tears —those lakes of blood? God was angry! Justice must come. A handwriting on the wall! The nation had been weighed and found wanting. Darkness! Darkness! Woe to the North! Woe to the South! Woe to the East! Woe to the West! Death at the banquet. Sudden I have also to learn from the subject that the destruction of the vicious, and of those who despise God, will be very sudden. The wave of mirth bad dashed to the highest point when theinvading ~Jarrny hfnE eth rough ■ It was unexpected? Suddenly-, almost"always, comes the doom of those who despise God and defy the laws of men. How was it at the deluge? lt came through a long northeast storm, so that people-for days before were sure it was coming? No. I suppose the, morning was bright; that calmness brooded on the waters; that beauty sat enthroned on the hills, when suddenly the heavens burst, and the mountains sank like anchors into the sea that dashed clear over the Andes and the Himalayas. The lied Sea was divided. The Egyptians tried to cross it. There could be no danger. The Israelites had just gone through. Where they had gone, why not the Egyptians? Oh, it was such a beautiful walking place! A pavement of tinged shells and pearls, and on either side two great walls of water—solid. There can be no danger. Forward, great host of the Egyptians! Clap the cymbals and blow the trumpets of victory! After them! We will catch them yet, and they shall be destroyed. But the walls begin to tremble! They rock! They fall! The rushing waters! The shriek of drowning men! The swimming of the warhorses in vain for the shore! The strewing of the great host on the bottom of the sea or pitched by the angry waves on the beach —a battered, bruised and loathsome wreck! Suddenly destruction came. - One-half'"ltour KeTbre they conid not frav-e btfret-ed'it; ' Destroyed, and without remedy—' •_ I am just setting forth a fact which you have noticed as well as 1. Ananias comes to the apostle. The apostle says, “Did you sell the land for so much?” He says, “Yes.” It was a lie. Dead, as quick as that! Sapphira, bis wife, comes in. “Did you sell the land for so much ?” “Yes.” It was a lie. and quick as that she was dead! God's judgments are upon, who despise him and defy him. They dome suddenly.

A Simple Prayer. The destroying angel went through Egypt. Do you suppose that any of the people knew that he was coming? Did they hear the flap of his great wing? No! No! Suddenly, unexpectedly he came. Skilled sportsmen do not like to shoot a bird standing on a sprig near by. If they are skilled, they pride themselves on taking it on the wing, and they wait till it starts. Death is an old sportsman, and he loves to take meh flying under the very sun. He loves to take them on the wing. Oh, flee to God this night! If there be one in this presence who has wandered far away from Christ, though he- may-not have heard the call of the gospel for many a year, I invite him now to eome and be saved. Flee from thy sin! Flee to the stronghold of the gospetlNow is the accepted time. Now is the day of salvation. Good night, ray young friends! May you have rosy sleep, guarded by him who never slumbers! May you awake in the morning strong and well! But, oh, art thou a despiser of God? Is this thy last night on earth? Shouldst thou be awakened in the night by something, thou not what, and there be shadows floating in the room, and a handwriting oh the wall, and you feel that your last hour is come, and there be a fainting at th? heart, and a tremor in the limb* and a catching of the breath—then thy doom would be but an echo.of the word of the text, “In that night was Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain.” - Oh, that my Lord Jesus would now make himself so attractive to your souls that you cannot resist him, and if you have never prayed before or have not prayed since those days when you knelt down at your mother's knee, then that’ to night you might pray, saying; Just as I am, without one plea But that thy blood was shed for me And that thoii bid st me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come! But if you cannot think of so lopg a prayer as that I will give you a shorter prayer that you can say, “God be merciful to me, a sinner!” Or, if you cannot think of so long a prayer as that, I will give you a still shorter one that you may utter, “Lord save me, or I perish!” Or, if that be too long a prayer, you need not make it. Use the word “Help!” O r , if that be too long a word, you need not use any word at all. Just look and live! ,