Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 February 1896 — IN TRUMPET SOUNDS. [ARTICLE]

IN TRUMPET SOUNDS.

REV-DR. TALMAGE PREACHES A ' SERMON FULL OF HOPE - - - '/ ■ - Help for the Hopeless Through the Name, of Christ—The Need of pathy— Fulfillment of a Great Promise— A Mislfty Gathering;, * ' x. Capital City Sermon. This wrmon sounds the note of triumph, ■ note that all will be glad to hear in’ these times, when- so many are* uttering . and wr* ting jeremiads of discouragement. Dr. Talmage took as his text Genesis, xlix., 10, LDto luin shall the gathering of th? people be.” Through a supernatural lens, or what I might gall ■» prophescope, dying Jiicob looks down through the corridors of the centuries until he sees Christ the center of all popular attraction and the greatest beingin all the world, so everywhere ac- > kn iwledged. It was so. The iworld tried hard to’piit him down and to put hiin out. . In the year 1200, while excavating for antiquities fifty-three miles northeast of Rome, a copper plate tablet ' was found containing the death .warrant of the Lord Jesus Christ, reading in this “In the year 17 of the empire of Tiberius Caesar, and on the 2r>th'day of March, I, Pontius I’iUte, governor of the Praetoro, condemn Jesus at Nazareth- to die between two thieves, .Quintius Cornelius to lead him forth to the place of execution.”. ——Scoffers as Worshipers. The death warrant was signet’ by several names. First, by Daniel, rabbi, Pharisee: secondly, by Johannes, rabbi; thirdly, by Raphael; fourthly, b; Capet, a private citizen. —This capital punishment was executed according to law. The name of the thief crucified on the riglx band side of Christ was Dismas; tne name of the thief (rurified on the left hand side of Christ was Gestus. Pontius Pilate, describing the * tragedy, -says the whole world- liyhled’ eandk's from noon until night. Thirty-three years of maltreatment. They ascribe his birth to bastardy and his death to excruciation. A wall of the city, built about those times and-'re-eently exposed by archaeologists, show> a Caricature of Jesus Christ, evidencing the contempt in which he was held by many in his day—that caricature, bn the wall representing a ”crobs andjjjlbnkey nailed to it, and under it the inscription, “This is the Christ wlipm the people Worship.” But I rejoice that that day is Igphe by. Our'Christ is cimiiig' out from under the world's abuse. The most popular mime on earth to-day is the name of Christ. Where he had one friend Christ has a thousand friends. The scoffers have become-WbrsHTpeSy s Of the twenty most celebrated infidels in Great Britain in our day sixteen have come back to Christ, trying to undo the blatant mischief of their lives—sixteen out of the t\venty f Evcry. man who-writes a letter or signs a document, wittingly or unwittingly, bailors Jesus Christ. We date everything as B. C. or A. D.—B. C., before Christ; A. D.. Anno Domini, in the yearwf our Lord. All the ages.of history on the pivot of the upright beam of the cross of the Son of God, B. C., A. D. Ido not care what you call him—whether Conqueror, or King, or Morning Star, os Sun of Righteousness, or Balm of Gilead, or Lebanon Cedar, or Brother or Friend, or take the name used in the verse from which I take my text, and call him Shiloh, which means his Son, or the Tranquilator, or the Peacemaker, Shiloh. I only want to tell you that “unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” In tbe».first place, the people are gntheted arduud Christ for pardon. No sensible man or healthfully ambitioffs man is satisfied with his past life. A fool may think he is all right. A sensible man knows he is not. Ido not care who the thoughtful man is, the review of his lifetime behavior before God and man gives to him no especial satisfaction. “Oh,” he says, “there have been so many things I 'have done I ought not to have done, there have been so many things I have said I ought never to have said, there have been so many things I have written I ought never to have written, there have been so many things I have thought I ought never to have thought. I must somehow get things readjusted, I must somehow have the past reconstructed; there are days and months and years which cry out against me in horrible vociferation.” Ah, my brother, Christ adjusts the past by obliterating if. He does not erase the record of our misdoing with a dash of ink from a register's pen, but-lifting his right hand, crushed, red at the palm, he puts it against his bleeding brow, and then against his pierced side, and with the crimson accumulation of all those wounds he rubs out the accusatory chapter. He blots out our iniquities. Oh, never be anxious about the future; better be anxious about the past. I put it not at the end of my sermon; I put' it nt the front—mercy and pardon through Shiloh, the sin pardoning Christ. “Unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” “Oh!” says some man, “I have for forty years been as bad as I could be. and is there any mercy for me?” Mercy for you. “Oh!” says some one here. “I had a grand ancestry, the holiest of fathers and the tenderest of mothers, and - 'for my perfidy ..there is no excuse. Do you think there is any mercy forme?” Mercy for you. “But,” says another man, “I fear 1 have committed what they call the unpardonable sin, and the Bible says if a man commit that sin, he is neither to be forgiven in this world nor the world to come. Do you think there is any mercy for me?” The fact that you have any solicitude about the matter at •11 proves positively that you have not committed the unpardonable sin. Mercy for yon? Oh, the grace of God which bringeth saltation!

For the Worst Sinners. ;The grace of God! Let us take the surveyor’s chain and try to measure God's mercy through Jesus Christ. Let one surveyor take that chain- and go to the north, and another surveyor take that chain and go to the south, and another surveyor take that chain and go to the cast, and another surveyor t»ke that chain and go to the west, anti then make a reportof the square miles of that vast kingdom of God’s mercy. Aye, you will have to wait to all eternity for the report of that measurement. It cannot be measured. Paul tried to cHthb the heightof it, and he went height over height, altitude above altitude, mountain above mountain, then sank down in l discouragement and gave it up, for he •aw Sierrg Nevada* beyond and Matterboms beyond, and waving his hands back pa in the plains he says, * Past finding

out; unsearchable, that in ail things he might haye' the pre-eminence.” You notice that nearly all the sinners mentioned a spar denied in the Bible were l great sinners—David a great sinner, Paul a great sinner, Rahab a great sinner, Magdalene a great sinner, the Prodigal Son a great sinner. Th? world easily understood- how Christ could pardon a half bird half sinner, but wha-t the wqrld wants to be persuaded of is that Christ will forgive the worst sinner, the hardest sinner, the oldest sinner, the most inexcusable sinner. To the sin pardoning Shiloh let all the gathering or the people be. ' ' But, I remark again, the people will gather around Christ as a sympathize?. . Gh, we all want sympa thy. I hear people talk as though they, were independent of it. None of us could live without sympathy; When’ parts of Our family are away, how lonely the house seems until they all get home! .But,mlns! for those who never come home. Sometimes it seems as if it must be impossible. What, will their feet neveragaiu eome over the threshold? Will they never again sit with us at the table? Will they never again kneel with us at family prayer? Shall wc never again look into their sunny faces? Shall we never again on earth take counsel with them for our work? Alas me, who can stand under these griefs! Oh, Christ, thou eanst do more for a. bereft soul than any one else. It is he who stands beside us to tell of the resurrection. It is hp that comer to bid pbace. It is he that comes to us' and breathes into us the, spirit of submission until we can look up from the wreck and ruin of our brightest expectations and say, “Father, not my will, but thine, be done.” Oh, ye who are bereft,' ye anguish bitten, come into this refuge. The roll of those who came for relief to Christ is larger and larger. Unto this Shiloh of omnipotent sympathy the gathering of the people shall be. Oh, that Christ would stand by all these empty cradles, and all these desolated homesteads, and all these broken hearts, and persuade us it is well. Need for Sympathy. - The world cannot offer you any help at such a time. Suppose the world comes and offers you money. You would rather live on a crust in a cellar and have your departed loved ones with you than live in palatipl surroundings and they away. Suppose .the world offers you its honors’to console you. What is the presidency to Abraham Lincoln when little Willie lies ■ dead in tile White House? Perhaps the ’ivorld comes and says, “Time will cure it all,” All. there are griefs that have raged' on for thirty years and are raging yet. And yet hundreds have been comforted, thousands have been comforted, millions have been copiforted, and Chrisjibfld dune the work. Oh, whnt you want is sympathy. The world's heart of sympathy beats very irregularly. Plenty of sympathy when we do not; want it, Oml often, when we are in appalling need of it, no sympa : thy. There are multitudes of people dying for sympathy—sympathy in their work, sympathy in their fatigues, sympathy in their bereavements, < sympathy in .their financial losses, sympathy in their physical ailments, sympatlf/in their spiritual anxieties, sympathy in the time of declining years—-wide, deep, high, everlasting, almighty sympathy. We must have it, and Christ gives it. That is the cord with which he is going to draw all nations to him. A Variety of Demons. Oh, there is something beautiful in sympathy—in manly sympathy, wifely sympathy, motherly sympathy; yea, and neighborly sympathy! Why was it that a city was aroused with excitement when a little child was kidnaped from one of the streets? Why were whole columns of the newspapers filled with the story of a little child? It was because we are all one in sympathy, and eyery parent said: “How if it had been my Lizzie? How if it had been my Mary? How if it had been my Maud? How if it hud been my Child? How if there had been one unoccupied pillow in our trundle bed to-night' 5 How if my little one —bone of my bone rhd flesh of my flesji—were to-night carHeA captive into some den of vagabonds, never to come back to me? How if it had bees my sorrow looking out of the window, W'atching and waiting—that sorrow worse than death ?” Then, whemlheyfouEti.her, why did we declare the news all through the households, and everybody that knew how topray say, “Thank God?” Because we are all one, bound by one great golden chain of sympathy. Oh, yes, but I have to tell you that if you will aggregate all neighborly, manly, wifely, motherly sympathy, it will be found only a poor starv ing tiling compared with the sympathy of our great Shiloh, who has held in his lap the sorrows of the ages, and'who is ready to nurse on his holy heart the woes of all who will come to him. Oh, what a God, what a Saviour we have!

But, iq larger vision we. the -nations in some kind of trouble ever since the world was derail, d and hurled down the embankments. The demon of sin came to this world, but other demons have gone through other worlds. The demon of conflagration, the demon of volcanic disturbance, the demon of destruction. La Place says he sow one world in the northern hemisphere sixteen months burning. Tycho Brahe said he saw another world burning. A French astronomer says that in 300 years 1,500 worlds have disappeared. • I do not see why infidels find it so hard to believe that two worlds stopped in Joshua’s time, when the astronomers tell us that 1,500 worlds have stopped. Even the moon is a world in ruins. Stellar, lunar, solar catastrophes innumerable. But it seems as if the most sorrows have been reserved for dur world. By one toss of the world at Ticuboro, of 12,000 inhabitants only 20 people escaped. By one shake of the world at Lisbon in five minutes 60,000 perished and 200,000 before the earth stopped rocking. A mountain falls in Switzerland, burying the village of Goldau. A mountain falls in Italy in the night, when 2,000 people are asleep, and they never arouse. By a convulsion of the earth Japan broken off from China. By a convulsion of the earth the Caribbean islands broken off* from America. Three islands near the mouth of the Ganges, with 340,000 inhabitants—a great surge of the sea breaks over thein, and 214,000 perish that day. Alas, alas, for our poor world. It has been recently discovered that a whole continent bas sunk, a continent that connected Europe and America, part of the inhabitants of that continent going to Europe, part coming to America over the tablelands of Mexico, up through the valleys of the Mississippi. and wo are finding now the remains of their mounds and their cities in Mexico, in Colorado and the tablelands of the West. It is a matter of demonstration that a whole continent has gone down, the Axores off the coast of Spain only the highest mountain of that sunken

continent Plato described that contt hent, its |frandeur;- the multitude of its Inhabitants, its splbndor and its awful destruction,' and the world thought it was a romance, but archaeologists have found out it was history, and the English and the German and the American fleets have gone forth with archaeologists, and th? Challenger and the Dolphin and the Gazelle have dropped nn<-hor, anuin deep sea soundings they have fouiid the content of that sunken continent. L.— All to Christ. ——- Oh, there is trouble marked on the rocks, on. the sky, on the sea, on the flora and the fauna—astronomical trouble, geological trouble, oceanic trouble, political trouble, domestic trouble —and standing in the presence of all those stupendous dgyastaUana, I ask if I am ,not right ja. saying that the great want of this age and all ages is divine sympathy and omnipotent comfort, and they are found not in the Brahma of the Hindoo or the Allah of the Mohammedan, but in the Christ unto whom shall the gathering of the people be. Other worlds may fall, but thia morning star will never be blotted from the heavens. The earth may quake, but this rock of ages will never be*-shaken from its foundations. The same CLrifct' wjm fed the 5,000 will feed all the world’s hunger. The same Christ whmpured Bartimeus will illumine all blindness. The same Chrisf who made the dumb sped k will put on every tongue a hosanna. The same Christ who awoke Lazarus from the sarcophagus will ye't rally all the pious dead in glorious resurrection. “I know t hat my Redeemer’llveth,” ami that “to him shall the gathering of the people be.” Ah, my friends, when Christ starts thoroughly and quickly to lift this miserable wreck of a sunken world, it will-not -take him long to lift it. I have thought that this particular age in which we live may be given up to discoveries and inventions by which through quick-and instantaneous communication all cities and all Communities and all lands will be brought together, and then in another period^perhaps these inventions which have been used for worldly purposes will be brought out for gospel invitation, and some great prophet of the Lord will come and snatch the mysterious, sublime .and miraculous telephone from the "EamT’of commerce, and, all lands and kingdoms connected by a wondrous wire, this prophet of the Lord may, through telephonic eommunieatioß, in an instant announce to the nations pardon and sympathy and life through Jesus Christ, and then, putting the wondrous tube to tfie ear of the Lord’s prophet, tile response shall come back, "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jfesus Christ, his only begotten Son.” You and I may not live to see the day. I think those of us who are over 40 years of age can scarcely expect to see'the day. I expect before that time our bodies will be sound asleep in the hammocks of the old gospel ship as it goes sailing on. But Christ will wake us up in time to see the achievement. We who have sweated in the hot harvest fields will be at the door of the garner when the sheaves come in. That work for which in this world we toiled and wept and struggled and wore ourselves out shall not come to consummation and we be oblivious of the achievement. We will be allowed to .come out and shake hands with the victors. The Great Victory. We who fought in the earlier battles will have just as much right to rejoice as those who reddened their feet in the last Armageddon. Ah, yea, those who couliJ only give a cupful of cold water in the name of a disciple, those who could only scrape a handful of lint for a wounded soldier, those who could only administer to old age in its decrepitude, those who could only coax a poor waif of the street to go back home to her God, those who could only lift a little child in the Arms of Christ, will have as much right to take part in the" ovation to the Lord Jesus Christ as a Chrysostom. It will be your victory and mine, as well as Christ’s. He the conqueror, we shouting in his train. Oh, what a glorious time it would be on earth if Christ would break through the heavens, and right here where he has suffered and died have this prophecy fulfilled —“Unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” But failing in that, I bargain to meet you at the ponderous gate of heaven on the day when our Lord comes back. Garlands of all nations on his brow—of the bronzed nations of the south and the pallid nations of the north—Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America, and the other continents that may arise meantime from the sea to take the places of their sunken predecessors—arch of Trajan, arch of Titus, arch of Triumph in the Champs Elysees, all too poor to welcome tfiis king of kings and lord of lords and conqueror of conquerors in his august arrival. Turn out all heaven to meet him. Hang all along the route the flags of earthly dominion, w-hether decorated with crescent, or star, or eagle, or lion, or coronet. Hang out heaven’s brightest banner, with its one star of Bethlehem and blood striped of the cross. I hear the processfon now. Hark! The tramp of the feet, the rumbling of the wheels, the clattering of the hoofs and the shout of the riders! Ten thousand time® ten thousand and thousands of thousands. Put up in heaven’s library, right beside the completed volume of the world’s ruin, the completed volume of Shiloh’s triumph. The old promise struggling through the ages fulfilled at last, “Unto him shall thb gathering of the people be.” While everlasting ages roll Eternal love shall feast their soul And scenes of bliss forever new Rise ip succession to their view.