PB.ESENTED TO THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINSRY 
 
 fBX 9178 .T3 E8 1875 
 Talmage, T. De Witt 1832- 
 
 1902. 
 Every-day religion 
 
EVERY- DAY RELIGION: 
 
 SERMONS DELIVERED IN THE BROOKLYN TABERNACLE, 
 
 BY 
 
 T. DE WITT TALMAGE, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "first series of sermons," "second series of sermons," "abominations of 
 modern society," " crumbs swept up," " old wells dug gut," 
 
 "around THE TEA-TABLE," " SPORTS THAT KILL," ETC. 
 
 REVISED FROM PHONOGRAPHIC REPORTS. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 FRANKLIN SQUARE. 
 
 iS75- 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S75, by 
 
 Harper & Brothers, 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
, PREFACE. 
 
 ^ I ^HESE discourses attempt to bring tbe Gospel to the 
 -^ hearts and homes of the people, as a present comfort, 
 warning, and necessity. Hence the title of the book. 
 
 I thank the public for their kind reception of former 
 volumes, and also the Christian newspapers which each 
 week put my sermons before one million three hundred 
 and eighty thousand readers in Great Britain and the 
 United States; thus giving me the opportunity of preach- 
 ing Christ to multitudes whom I can not hope to meet till 
 on that day when we must answer for words spoken or 
 heard. My Christian greeting to all! 
 
 T. De Witt Talmage. 
 
 Brooklyn, September, 1875. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 EVERT-DAT RELIGION 7 
 
 LIFE AT HOME 21 
 
 THE OLD CORN OF CANAAN 33 
 
 ZIKLAG IN ASHES 46 
 
 THE RELIGION OF GHOSTS 59 
 
 SNOW-WATER AND ALKALI INSUFFICIENT 75 
 
 STRIPriNG THE SLAIN 89 
 
 A SUM IN GOSPEL ARITHMETIC 101 
 
 SWIMMING FOR LIFE 114 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN AT THE BALLOT-BOX 12G 
 
 THE OVERFLOWING CUP 136 
 
 THE WRECK OF THE " SCHILLER '" 149 
 
 EXASPERATING COMFORTERS ICO 
 
 A GOOD WOMAN PROMOTED 174 
 
 THE CRIMSON COAT 189 
 
 THE SYRACUSE CALAMITY 198 
 
 THINGS AVE NEVER GET OVER 208 
 
 THE BROKEN-UP FUNERAL 220 
 
 BARTERING FOR ETERNITY 231 
 
 A BASKET OF SUMMER FRUIT 243 
 
 THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY 254 
 
 DROWNED IN THE LAKE 266 
 
 THE RED CORD IN THE WINDOAV 276 
 
6 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 THE LAMP 288 
 
 the dying need of the church 300 
 
 view from the palace window 313 
 
 Paul's valedictory 325 
 
 honey from a strange hive 337 
 
 the knell of nineveh 350 
 
 pillows under the arms 3g2 
 
 what kills ministers 380 
 
 the superhuman jesus 395 
 
 wrecked for two avorlds 409 
 
EVERY-DAY RELIGION. 
 
 EVEEY-DAY RELIGION. 
 
 "Wliether therefore j-e eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the 
 glory of God." — 1 Corinthians -k., 31. 
 
 WHEN the apostle, in this text, sets forth the idea that 
 so common an action as the taking of food and 
 drink is to be conducted to the glory of God, he proclaims 
 the importance of religion in the ordinary affiiirs of our 
 life. In all ages of the world there has been a tendency 
 to set apart certain days, places, and occasions for worship, 
 and to think those were the chief realms in which religion 
 was to act. Now, holy days and holy places have their 
 importance. They give opportunity for especial perform- 
 ance of Christian duty, and for regaling of the religious 
 appetite ; but they can not take the place of continuous 
 exercise of faith and prayer. In other words, a man can 
 not be so much of a Christian on Sunday that he can 
 afford to be a worldling all the rest of the week. If a 
 steamer put out for Southampton, and go one day in that 
 direction, and the other six days go in other directions, 
 how long before the steamer will get to Southampton? It 
 will never get there. And though a man may seem to be 
 voyaging heavenward during the holy Sabbath-day, if, 
 
8 EVERY-DAY EELIGIOK 
 
 during the following six cla3^s of the week, lie is going to- 
 ward the world, and toward the flesh, and toward the devil, 
 he will never ride up into the peaceful harbor of heaven. 
 You can not eat so much at the Sabbath banquet that you 
 can afford religious abstinence the other six days. Hero- 
 ism and princely behavior on great occasions are no apolo- 
 gy for lack of right demeanor in circumstances insignificant 
 and inconspicuous. The genuine Cliristian life is not spas- 
 modic ; does not go by fits and starts. It toils on through 
 heat and cold, up steep mountains and along dangerous 
 declivities, its eye on the everlasting hills crowned with the 
 castles of the blessed. 
 
 I propose, this morning, to make a plea in behalf of what 
 I shall call "every-day religion." 
 
 In the first place, we want to bring the religion of Christ 
 into our every-day conversation. When a dam breaks, and 
 two or three villages in Massachusetts are overwhelmed, 
 or an earthquake in South America swallows a whole cit}^, 
 then people begin to talk about the uncertainty of life, 
 and they imagine that they are engaged in positively re- 
 ligious conversation. No. You may talk about these 
 things, and have no grace of God at all in your heart. 
 AVe ought every day to be talking religion. If there is 
 any thing glad about it, an}'- thing beautiful about it, any 
 thing important about it, we ought to be continuously 
 discussing it. I have noticed that men, just in propor- 
 tion as their Christian experience is shallow, talk about 
 funerals, and grave-yards, and tombstones, and death-beds. 
 The real, genuine Christian man talks chiefly about this 
 life, and the great eternity beyond, and not so much about 
 the insignificant pass between these two residences. And 
 yet how few circles there are where the religion of Jesus 
 
EVER T-DA Y RELIGION. 9 
 
 Christ is welcome. Go into a circle, even of Christian peo- 
 ple, where they are full of joy and hilarity, and talk about 
 Christ or heaven, and every thing is immediately silenced. 
 As on a summer day, when the forests are full of life, chat- 
 ter, and chirrup, and carol — a mighty chorus of bird-harmo- 
 ny, every tree-branch an orchestra — if a hawk appear in 
 the sk}', every voice stops, and the forests are still ; just so 
 I have seen a lively religious circle silenced on the appear- 
 ance of any thing like religious conversation. No one had 
 any thing to sa}^, save, perhaps, some old patriarch in the 
 corner of the room, wlio really thinks that something ought 
 to be said, under the circumstances; so he puts one foot 
 over the other, and heaves a long sigh, and says, " Oh yes\ 
 that's so, that's so !" 
 
 My friends, the religion of Jesus Christ is something to 
 talk about with a glad heart. It is brighter than the wa- 
 ters; it is more cheerful than the sunshine. Do not go 
 around groaning about your religion, when you ought 
 to be sino-ino; it or talking it in cheerful tones of voice. 
 How often it is that we find men whose lives are utter- 
 ly inconsistent, who attempt to talk religion, and alwaj'^s 
 make a fiiilurc of it! My friends, we must live religion, 
 or we can not talk it. If a man is cranky, and cross, and 
 uncongenial, and hard in his dealings, and then begins to 
 talk about Christ and heaven, every body is repelled by it. 
 Yet I have sometimes heard such men say, in whining 
 tones, "We are miserable sinners ;" " The Lord bless you ;" 
 " The Lord have mercy on 3'ou ;" their conversation inter- 
 larded with such expressions, which mean nothing but 
 canting; and canting is the worst form of hypocrisy. If 
 we have really felt the religion of Christ in our hearts, let 
 us talk it, and talk it with an illuminated countenance, re- 
 
1 EVER Y-DA Y RELIGION. 
 
 membering tLat when two Christian people talk, God gives 
 especial attention, and writes down what they say. Mala- 
 chi iii,, 16: "Then they that feared the Lord spake often 
 one to another; and the Lord hearkened and heard it, and 
 a book of remembrance was written." 
 
 Again I remark : we must bring the religion of Christ 
 into our every-day emx)loyments. "Oh," you say, "that is 
 very well if a man handle large sums of money, or if he 
 have an extensive traffic; it is very well for this importer 
 of silks, for the bankers and shippers, for the Rothschilds 
 and the Barings; but in my thread-and-needle store, in 
 my trimming establishment, in the humble woi'k in life 
 that I am called to, the sphere is too small for the action 
 of such grand heavenly principles." AVho told you so? 
 Do you not know that God watches the faded leaf on the 
 brook's surface as certainly as he does the path of a blaz- 
 ing sun ? And the moss that creeps up the side of the 
 rock makes as much impression upon God's mind as the 
 waving tops of Oregon pine and Lebanon cedar ; and the 
 alder, crackling under the cow's hoof, sounds as loud in 
 God's ear as the snap of a world's conflagration. When 
 you have any thing to do in life, however humble it may 
 seem to be, God is always there to help you to do it. If 
 your work is that of a fisherman, then God will help you, 
 as he helped Simon when he dragged Gcnnesaret. If your 
 work is drawing water, then he will help you, as when he 
 talked at the well-curb to the Samaritan woman. If j-ou 
 are engaged in the custom-house, he will lead 3'ou, as he 
 led Matthew sitting at the receipt of customs. A religion 
 that is not good in one place is not worth any thing in 
 another place. The man who has only a day's wages in 
 his pocket as certainly needs the guidance of religion, as 
 
EVEBT-DA T RELIGION. H 
 
 he who rattles the keys of a bank, and could abscond with 
 a hundred thousand hard dollars. 
 
 There are those prominent in the churches who seem to 
 be, on public occasions, very devout, who do not put the 
 principles of Christ's religion into practice. They are the 
 most inexorable of creditors. Tliey are the most grasping 
 of dealers. They are known as sharpers on the street. 
 They fleece every sheep they can catch. A country mer- 
 chant comes in to buy spring or fall goods, and he gets 
 into the store of one of these professed Christian men who 
 have real]}'' no grace in their hearts, and he is completely 
 swindled. He is so overcome that he can not get out of 
 town during the week. He stays in town over Sunday, 
 goes into some church to get Christian consolation, when, 
 what is his amazement to find that the very man who 
 hands him the poor-box in the church is the one who re- 
 lieved him of his money ! But never mind ; the deacon has 
 his black coat on now. He looks solemn, and Q;oes home 
 talking about "the blessed sermon." If the wheat in the 
 churches should be put into a hopper, the first turn of the 
 crank would make the chaff fly, I tell you. Some of these 
 men are great sticklers for Gospel preaching. They say, 
 "You stand there in bands and surplice and gown, and 
 preach- — preach like an angel, and we will stand out here 
 and" attend to business. Don't mix thinirs. Don't f2:et 
 business and religion in the same bucket. You attend to 
 your matters, and we will attend to ours." They do not 
 know .that God sees every cheat they have practiced in 
 the last six years; that he can look through the iron wall 
 of their fire-proof safe ; that he has counted every dishon- 
 est greenback they have in their pocket, and that a day 
 of judgment will come. These inconsistent Christian men 
 
12 EVERT-DAT EELIGIOX. 
 
 will sit on the Sabbath night in the house of God, singing, 
 at the close of tlie service, "Rock of Ages cleft for Me," 
 and then, when the benediction is pronounced, shut the 
 pew-door, and say, as they go out, " Good-bye, Religion. 
 I'll be back next Sunday." 
 
 I think that the Church of God and the Sabbath arc 
 only an armory where we are to get weapons. When 
 war comes, if a man wants to fight for his country he does 
 not go to Troy or Springfield to do battling, but he goes 
 there for swords and muskets. I look upon the Church 
 of Christ and the Sabbath-day as only the place and time 
 where and when we are to get armed for Christian con- 
 flict; but the battle-field is on Monday, Tuesday, Wednes- 
 day, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. "St. Martin's," and 
 "Lenox," and " Old Hundred" do not amount to any thing 
 unless they sing all the week. A sermon is useless unless 
 we can take it with us behind the plow and the counter. 
 The Sabbath-day is worthless if it last only twentj^-four 
 hours. 
 
 There are many Christians who sa}', " We are willing 
 to serve God, but we do not want to do it in these spheres 
 about which we are talking; it seems so insipid and mo- 
 notonous. If we had some great occasion, if we had lived 
 in the time of Luther, if we had been Paul's traveling com- 
 panion, if we could serve God on a great scale, we would 
 do it; but we can't in this every-day life." I admit that 
 a great deal of the romance and knight-errantry of life has 
 ^disappeared before the advance of this practical age. The 
 ancient temples of Rouen have been changed into store- 
 houses and smithies. The residences of poets and princes 
 have been turned into brokers' shops. The classic man- 
 sion of Ashland has been cut up into walking-sticks. The 
 
EYEET-DAY MELIGION. 13 
 
 groves where tlie poets said the gods dwelt have been 
 carted out for fire-wood. The muses that we used to read 
 about have disappeared before the emigrant's axe and the 
 trapper's gun, and a Vermonter can go over the Alle- 
 ghany and Kocky Mountains, and never see an oread or a 
 sylph; and that man who is waiting for a life bewitched 
 of wonders will never find it. There is, however, a field 
 for endurance and great achievement, but it is in every- 
 day life. There are Alps to scale, there are Ilellesponts 
 to swim, there are fires to brave ; but they are all around 
 us now. This is the hardest kind of martyrdom to bear. 
 It took grace to lead Latimer and Ridley through the fire 
 triumphantly when their armed enemies and their friends 
 were looking on ; but it requires more grace now to bring 
 men through persecution, when nobody is looking on. I 
 could show you in this city a woman who has had rheuma- 
 tism for twenty years, who has endured more suffering and 
 exhausted more gi-ace than would have made twenty mar- 
 tyrs pass triumphantly through the fire. If yon are not 
 faithful in an insignificant position in life, you would not be 
 faithful in a grand mission. If you can not stand the bite 
 of a midge, how could you endure the breath of a basilisk? 
 Do not think that any work God gives you to do in the 
 world is on too small a scale for you to do. The whole 
 universe is not ashamed to take care of one little daisy. I 
 say, " What are you doing down here in the grass, you 
 poor little daisy? Are you not afraid nights? You will 
 be neglected, you will die of tliirst, you will not be fed. 
 Poor little daisy !" "ISTo," says a star, "I'll watch over it 
 to-night." "No," says a cloud, "I'll give it drink." 
 "No," says the sun, "I'll warm it in my bosom." Then 
 I see the pulleys going, and the clouds are drawing water, 
 
14 EVERY-DAY RELIGIOX. 
 
 and I say, " What are you doing there, clouds ?" And 
 they rep]}^, " We are giving drink to that dais3%" Then 
 the wind rises, and comes bending down the wheat, and 
 sounding its psalm through the forest, and I cry, '"Whither 
 away on such swift wing, wind?" And it replies, "We 
 are going to cool the cheek of that dais3\" And then I 
 bow down and sa}'-, " Will God take care of the grass of 
 the field ?" And a flower at my foot responds, " Yes ; he 
 clothes the lilies of the field, and never yet has forgot- 
 ten me, a poor little daisy," Oh ! when I see the great 
 heavens bending themselves to what seems insi"'nificant 
 ministration, when I find out that God does not forget any 
 blossom of the spring or any snow-flake of the winter, I 
 come to the conclusion that we can afford to attend to the 
 minute things in life, and that what we do we ought to do 
 well, since there is as much perfection in the construction 
 of a spider's eye as in the conformation of flaming gal- 
 axies. Plato had a fable which I have now nearly forgot- 
 ten, but it ran something like this : He said spirits of the 
 other world came back to this world to find a body and 
 find a sphere of work. One spirit came and took the body 
 of a king, and did his work. Another spirit came and 
 took the body of a poet, and did his work. After a while 
 Ulysses came, and he said, " Why, all the fine bodies are 
 taken, and all the grand work is taken. There is nothing 
 left for me." And some one replied, "Ah ! the best one 
 has been left for you." Ul3''sses said, " What's that ?" 
 And the reply was, " Tlie body of a common man, doing 
 a common work, and for a common reward." A good fa- 
 ble for the woi'kl, and just as good a fable for the Church, 
 Whether we cat or drink, or whatsoever w'e do, let us do 
 it to the glory of God. 
 
EVEBT-DAY RELIGION. 15 
 
 Again, we need to bring the religion of Christ into our 
 every -day trials. For severe losses, for bereavement, for 
 trouble that shocks like an earthquake and that blasts like 
 a storm, we prescribe religious consolation ; but, business 
 man, for the small annoyances of last week, how much of 
 the grace of God did you apply ? " Oh !" you say, " these 
 trials are too small for such application." My brother, 
 they are shaping your character, they are souring your 
 temper, they are wearing out your patience, and they are 
 making you less and less of a man. I go into a sculptor's 
 studio, and see him shaping a statue. He has a chisel in 
 one hand and a mallet in the other, and he gives a very 
 gentle stroke — click, click, click ! I saj'-, " Why don't you 
 strike harder?'' " Oh !" he replies, " that would shatter the 
 statue. I can't do it that way; I must do it this way." 
 So he works on, and after a while the features come out, 
 and every body that enters the studio is charmed and fas- 
 cinated. Well, God has your soul under process of devel- 
 opment, and it is the little annoyances and vexations of 
 life that are chiseling out your immortal nature. It is 
 click, click, click! I wonder why some great providence 
 does not come, and with one stroke prepare you for heav- 
 en. Ah, no. God says that is not the way. And so he 
 keeps on by strokes of little annoyances, little sorrows, lit- 
 tle vexations, until at last you shall be a glad spectacle for 
 angels and for men. You know that a large fortune may 
 be spent in small change, and a vast amount of moral char- 
 acter may go away in small depletion. It is the little trou- 
 bles of life that are having more effect upon you than great 
 ones. A swarm of locusts will kill a grain -field sooner 
 than the incursion of three or four cattle. You say, "Since 
 I lost my child, since I lost my property, I have been a 
 
16 EVERY-DAY RELIGION. 
 
 different man," But you do not recognize the architecture 
 of little annoj'ances that are hewing, digging, cutting, shap- 
 ing, splitting, and interjoining your moral qualities. Rats 
 may sink a ship. One lucifer-match may send destruction 
 through a block of store-houses. Catherine de Medicisgot 
 her death from smelling a poisonous rose. Columbus, by 
 stopping and asking for a piece of bread and a drink of 
 "water at a Franciscan convent, was led to the discovery of 
 a new world. And there is an intimate connection be- 
 tween trifles and immensities, between nothings and every- 
 things. 
 
 Now, be careful to let none of those anno3'ances go 
 through your soul unarraigned. Compel them to admin- 
 ister to your spiritual w^ealth. The scratch of a sixpenny 
 nail sometimes produces locked-jaw, and the cli}) of a most 
 infinitesimal annoyance may damage you forever. Do not 
 let any annoyance or perplexity come across your soul 
 without its making you better. 
 
 Our National Government does not think it belittling to 
 put a tax on pins, and a tax on buckles, and a tax on shoes. 
 The individual taxes do not amount to much, but in the 
 aggregate to millions and millions of dollars. And I 
 would have you, O Christian man, put a high tariff on 
 every annoyance and vexation that comes through 3'our 
 soul. This might not amount to much, in single cases, 
 but in the aggregate it would be a great revenue of spirit- 
 ual strength and satisfaction, A bee can suck honey even 
 out of a nettle; and if you have the grace of God in your 
 heart, 3'ou can get sweetness out of that which would oth- 
 erwise irritate and anno}^ A returned missionary told me 
 that a compan}^ of adventurers rowing up the Ganges were 
 stung to death by flics that infest that region at certain 
 
E VER YD A Y EELIGION. 1 7 
 
 seasons, I have seen tHe earth strewed with the carcasses 
 of men slain bj insect annoyances. The only way to get 
 prepared for the great troubles of life is to conquer these 
 small troubles. What would you say of a soldier who re- 
 fused to load his gun, or to go into the conflict because it 
 was only a skirmish, saying, "I am not going to expend 
 my ammunition on a skirmish; wait until there comes a 
 general engagement, and then you will see how courageous 
 I am, and what battling I will do." The general would 
 say to such a man, "If you are not faithful in a skirmish, 
 you would be nothing in a general engagement." And I 
 have to tell you, O Christian men, if you can not apply 
 the principles of Christ's religion on a small scale, you will 
 never be able to apply them on a large scale. If you can 
 not successfully contend against these small sorrows that 
 come down single-handed, what will you do when the 
 greater disasters of life come down with thundering artil- 
 lery, rolling over your soul? 
 
 Again, we must bring the religion of Christ into our 
 cvery-day hlessings. When the autumn comes, and the har- 
 vests are in, and the governors make proclamation, we as- 
 semble in churches, and we are very thankful. But every 
 day ought to be a thanksgiving-day. We do not recog- 
 nize the common mercies of life. We have to see a blind 
 man led by his dog before we begin to bethink ourselves 
 of what a grand thing it is to have eye-sight. We have to 
 see some one afflicted with St. Vitus's dance before we are 
 ready to thank God for the control of our physical ener- 
 gies. We have to see some wounded man hobbling on his 
 crutch, or with his empty coat-sleeve pinned up, before we 
 learn to think what a grand thinsr God did for us when he 
 gave us healthy use of our limbs. We are so stupid that 
 
18 EVERY-D AY RELIGION. 
 
 nothing but the misfortunes of others can rouse us up to 
 our blessings. As the ox grazes in the pasture up to its 
 eyes in clover, yet never thinking who makes the clover, 
 and as the bird picks up the worm from the furrow, not 
 knowing that it is God who makes every thing, from the 
 animdlcula in the sod to the seraph on the throne, so we 
 go on eating, drinking, and enjoying, but never thanking, 
 or seldom thanking; or, if thanking at all, with only half 
 a heart. 
 
 I compared our indifference to the brute ; but perhaps I 
 wronged the brute. I do not know but that, among its 
 other instincts, it may have an instinct by which it recog- 
 nizes the Divine hand that feeds it. I do not know but 
 that God is, through it, holding communication with what 
 we call "irrational creation." The cow that stands at 
 this hour under the willow by the water-course, chewing 
 its cud, holes very thankful ; and who can tell how much 
 a bird means by its song ? The aroma of the flowers smells 
 like incense, and the mist arising from the river looks like 
 the smoke of a morning sacrifice. Oh that m'C were as re- 
 sponsive! Yet who thanks God for the M'ater that gushes 
 up in the well, and that foams in the cascade, and that 
 laughs over the rocks, and that patters in the showers, and 
 that claps its hands in the sea? Who thanks God for the 
 air, the fountain of life, the bridge of sunbeams, the path 
 of sound, the great fan on a hot summer's day? Who 
 thanks God for this wonderful physical organism — this 
 sweep of the vision — this chime of harmony struck into the 
 ear — this soft tread of a myriad delights over the nervous 
 tissue — this rolling of the crimson tide through artery and 
 vein — this drumming of the heart on our march to immor- 
 tality ? Wc take all these things as a matter of course. 
 
EVERY-DAT RELIGION. 19 
 
 But suppose God should withdraw these common bless- 
 ings ! Your body would become an Inquisition of tort- 
 ure, the cloud would refuse rain, every green thing would 
 crumple up, and the earth would crack open under your 
 feet. The air M'ould cease its healthful circulation, pesti- 
 lence would swoop, and every house would become a place 
 of skulls. Streams would first swim with vermin, and 
 then dry up ; and thirst, and hunger, and anguish, and de- 
 spair would lift their sceptres. Oh, compare such a life as 
 that with the life 3'ou live this morning with your fam- 
 ilies about you ! Is it not time that, with every word of 
 our lips and with every action of our life, w^e began to 
 acknowledge these every-day mercies? "Whether ye eat 
 or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." 
 Do I address a man or a woman this morning who has 
 not rendered to God one sin2;le oflferins; of thanks? 
 
 I was preaching one Thanksgiving-day, and announced 
 my text : " Oh, give thanks unto the Lord ; for he is good ; 
 for his mercy endureth forever." I do not know whether 
 there was any blessing on the sermon or not ; but the text 
 went straight to a young man's heart who sits in this as- 
 sembly to-day. He said to himself, as I read the text, 
 " ' Oh, give thanks unto the Lord ; for he is good — ' Why, 
 I have never rendered him any thanks. Oh, what an in- 
 grate I have been 1" Can it be, my brother, that you have 
 been fed by the good hand of God all these days — that you 
 have had clothing and shelter and all beneficent surround- 
 ings, and yet have never offered your heart to God? Oh, 
 let a sense of the Divine goodness shown you in the every- 
 day blessings melt your heart ; and if you have never be- 
 fore uttered one earnest note of thanksgiving, let this be 
 the day which shall hear your song. What I say to one, 
 
20 EVERY-DAY liELIGION. 
 
 I say to all of this audience. Take tliis practical religion 
 I liave recommended into your every-day life. Make ev- 
 ery day a Sabbath, and everj'- meal a sacrament, and ev- 
 ery room you enter a Holy of Holies. We all have work 
 to do ; let us be willing to do it. We all have sorrows to 
 bear ; let us cheerfully bear them. We all have battles to 
 fight ; let us courageously fight them. If you want to die 
 right, you must live right. Negligence and indolence will 
 win the hiss of everlasting scorn, while faithfulness will 
 gather its garlands, and wave its sceptre, and sit upon its 
 throne, long after this earth has put on ashes, and eternal 
 ages have begun their march. You go home to-day, and 
 attend to your little sphere of duties. I will go home, and 
 attend to my little sphere of duties. Every one in his 
 own place. So our every step in life shall be a triumphal 
 march, and the humblest footstool on which we are called 
 to sit will be a conqueror's throne. 
 
LIFE AT H02IE. 21 
 
 LIFE AT HOME. 
 
 "Let them learn first to show piety at home." — 1 Timothy v., 4. 
 
 A CHURCH within a cliurcb, a republic within a re- 
 public, a world within a world, is spelled by four let- 
 ters — Home! If things go right there, they go right ev- 
 erywhere; if things go wrong there, they go wrong every- 
 where. The door-sill of the dwelling-house is the founda- 
 tion of Church and State. A man never gets higher than 
 his own garret or lower than his own cellar. In other 
 words, domestic life overarches and undergirds all other 
 life. The highest house of Congress is the domestic circle ; 
 the rocking-chair in the nursery is higher than a throne. 
 George Washington commanded the forces of the United 
 States, but Mary Washington commanded George. Chrj's- 
 ostom's mother made his pen for him. If a man should 
 start out and run seventy years in a straight line, he could 
 not get out from under the shadow of his own mantel-piece. 
 I therefore talk to you this morning about a matter of 
 infinite and eternal moment when I speak of your home. 
 
 As individuals we are fragments. God makes the race 
 in parts, and then he gradually puts us together. What 
 I lack, you make up ; what 3'ou lack, I make up ; our de- 
 ficits and surpluses of character being the cog-wheels in the 
 great social mechanism. One person has the patience, an- 
 other has the courage, another has the placidity, another 
 has the enthusiasm : that which is lacking in one is made 
 up by another, or made up by all. Buffaloes in herds, 
 
22 LIFE AT HOME. 
 
 grouse in broods, quails in flocks, the human race in circles. 
 God has most beautifully arranged this. It is in this way 
 that he balances society ; this conservative and that radical 
 keeping things even. Every ship must have its mast, cut- 
 water, taffrail, ballast. Thank God, then, for Princeton 
 and Andover, for the opposites. I have no more right to 
 blame a man for being different from me than a driving- 
 wheel has a right to blame the iron shaft that holds it to 
 the centre. John Wesley balances Calvin's Institutes. A 
 cold thinker gives to Scotland the strong bones of theology : 
 Dr. Guthrie clothes them with a throbbing heart and warm 
 flesh. The difficulty is that we are not satisfied with just 
 the work that God has given us to do. The water-wheel 
 wants to come inside the mill and grind the grist, and the 
 hopper wants to go out and dabble in the water. Our use- 
 fulness and the welfare of society depend upon our staying 
 in just the place that God has put us, or intended we should 
 occupy. 
 
 For more compactness, and that we may be more use- 
 ful, we are gathered in still smaller circles in the home 
 group. And there you have the same varieties again: 
 brothers, sisters, husband, and wife; all different in tem- 
 peraments and tastes. It is fortunate that it should be so. 
 If the husband be all impulse, the wife must be all pru- 
 dence. If one sister be sanguine in her temperament, the 
 other must be lymphatic. Mary and Martha are necessi- 
 ties. There will be no dinner for Christ if there be no 
 Martha; there will be no audience for Jesus if there be 
 no Mary. The home organization is most beautifully con- 
 structed. Eden has gone ; the bowers are all broken down ; 
 the animals that Adam stroked with his hand that morning 
 when they came up to get their names have since shot 
 
LIFE AT HOME. 23 
 
 forth tusk and sting, and growled panther at panther; and, 
 mid-air, iron beaks plunge till with clotted wing and eye- 
 less sockets the twain come whirling down from under the 
 sun in blood and fire. Eden has gone, but there is just 
 one little fragment left. It floated down on the river Ilid- 
 dekel out of Paradise. It is the marriage institution. It 
 does not, as at the beginning, take away from man a rib. 
 Now it is an addition of ribs. 
 
 This institution of marriage has bqen defamed in our 
 day. Socialism, and polygamy, and Mormonism, and the 
 most damnable of all things, free-lovism, have been trying 
 to turn this earth into a Turkish harem or a great Salt 
 Lake City. While the pulpits have been comparatively 
 silent, novels — their cheapness only equaled by their nasti- 
 ness — are trying to educate, have taken upon themselves 
 to educate, this nation in regard to holy marriage, which 
 makes or breaks for time and eternity. Oh, this is not a 
 mere question of residence or wardrobe! It is a question 
 charged with gigantic joy or sorrow, with heaven or hell. 
 Alas for this new dispensation of George Sands ! Alas 
 for this mingling of the nightshade with the marriage gar- 
 lands ! Alns for the venom of adders spit into the tank- 
 ards! Alas for the white frosts of eternal death that kill 
 the orange-blossoms! The Gospel of Jesus Christ is to as- 
 sert what is right and to assert what is wrong. Attempt has 
 been made to take the marriage institution, which was in- 
 tended for the happiness and elevation of the race, and make 
 it a mere commercial enterprise; an exchange of houses and 
 lands and equipage; a business partnership of two stuffed 
 up with the stories of romance and knight-errantry, and 
 unfaithfulness and feminine angelhood. The two after 
 a while have roused up to find that, instead of the paradise 
 
24 LIFE AT HOME. 
 
 they dreamed of, tliey have got nothing but a Van Am- 
 burgh's menagerie, filled with tigers and wild cats. Eighty 
 thousand divorces in Paris in one year preceded the worst 
 revolution that France ever saw. It was only the first 
 course in that banquet of hell ; and I tell you what you 
 know as well as I do, that wrong notions on the subject of 
 Christian marriage are the cause at this day of more moral 
 outrage before God and man than any other cause. 
 
 There are some things that I want to bring before you. 
 I know there are those of you who have had homes set 
 up for a great many years ; and, then, there are those 
 here who have just established their home. They have 
 only been in it a few months or a few years. Then, 
 there are those who will, after a while, set up for them- 
 selves a home, and it is right that I should speak out upon 
 these themes. 
 
 My first counsel to you is, have Jesus in your new home, 
 if it be a new home; and let him who was a guest at 
 Bethany be in your household : let the divine blessing 
 drop upon your every hope and plan and expectation. 
 Those young people who begin with God end with heaven. 
 Have on your right hand the engagement ring of the Di- 
 vine affection. If one of you be a Christian, let that one 
 take the Bible and read a few verses in the evening-time, 
 and then kneel down and commend yourselves to him who 
 setteth the solitary in families. I want to tell you that 
 the destroying angel passes by without touching or enter- 
 ing the door-post sprinkled with blood of the everlasting 
 covenant. Why is it that in some families they never 
 get along, and in others they always get along well? I 
 have watched such cases, and have come to a conclusion. 
 In the first instance, nothing seemed to go pleasantly, and 
 
LIFE AT HOME. 25 
 
 after a while there came devastation, domestic disaster, or 
 estrangement. Why ? They started wrong. In the other 
 case, although there were hardships and trials and some 
 things that had to be explained, still things went on pleas- 
 antly until the very last. Why ? They started right. 
 
 My second advice to you in your home is, to exercise to 
 the very last possibility of your nature the law of forlear- 
 ance. Prayers in the household will not make up for 
 every thing. Some of the best people in the world are the 
 hardest to get along with. There are people who stand up 
 in prayer-meetings and pray like angels, who at home are 
 imcompromising and cranky. You may not have every 
 thing just as you want it. Sometimes it will be the duty 
 of the husband and sometimes of the wife to yield ; but 
 both stand punctiliously on your rights, and you will have 
 a Waterloo with no Bliicher coming up at night-fall to de- 
 cide the conflict. 
 
 Never be ashamed to apologize when you have done 
 wrong in domestic affairs. Let that be a law of your 
 household. The best thing I ever heard of my grand- 
 father, whom I never saw, was this : that once having un- 
 righteously rebuked one of his children, he himself having 
 lost his patience, and, perhaps, having been misinformed of 
 the child's doings, found out his mistake, and in the even- 
 ing of the same day gathered all his family together, and 
 said, "Now, I have o.ne explanation to make, and one 
 thing to say, Thomas, this morning I rebuked you very 
 unfairly. I am very sorry for it. I rebuked you in the 
 presence of t^je whole family, and now I ask your forgive- 
 ness in their presence." It must have taken some courage 
 to do that. It was right, was it not? Never be ashamed 
 to apologize for domestic inaccuracy. Find out the points; 
 
 2 
 
26 LIFE AT HOME. 
 
 what cire the weak points, if I may call them so, of your 
 companion, and then stand aloof from them. Do not carry 
 the fire of your temper too near the gunpowder. If the 
 wife be easily fretted by disorder in the household, let the 
 husband be careful where he throws his slippers. If the 
 husband come home from the store with his patience all 
 exhausted, do not let the wife unnecessarily cross his tem- 
 per; but both stand up for your rights, and I will promise 
 the everlasting sound of the war-whoop. Your life will 
 be spent in making-up, and marriage will be to you an un- 
 mitigated curse. Cowper said, 
 
 "Tlie kindest and the happiest pair 
 Will find occasion to forbear ; 
 And something, every day tiiey live, 
 To pity, and perhaps forgive." 
 
 I advise, also, that you make your chitf 2^l<^asure circle 
 around about that home. It is unfortunate when it is other- 
 wise. If the liusband spend the most of his nights away 
 from home, of choice, and not of necessity, he is not the 
 head of the household ; he is only the cashier. If the 
 wife throw the cares of the household into the servant's 
 lap, and then spend five nights of the week at the opera or 
 theatre, she may clothe her children with satins and laces 
 and ribbons that would confound a French milliner, but 
 they are orphans. Oh, it is sad when a child has no one 
 to say its prayers to because motlier has gone off to the 
 evening entertainment! In India they bring children and 
 throw them to the crocodiles, and it seems very cruel; but 
 the jaws of New York and Brooklyn dissipation are swal- 
 lowing down more little children to-day than all the mon- 
 sters that ever crawled upon the banks of the Ganges! 
 
LIFE AT HOME. 27 
 
 I have seen the sorrow of a godless mother on the death 
 of a child she had neglected. It was not so much grief 
 that she felt from the fact that the child was dead as the 
 fact that she had neglected it. She said, "If I had only 
 watched over and cared for the child, I know God would 
 not have taken it," The tears came not: it was a dr}-, 
 blistering tempest — a scorching simoom of the desert. 
 When she wrung her hands, it seemed as if she would 
 twist her fingers from their sockets ; when she seized her 
 hair, it seemed as if she had, in wild terror, grasped a coil- 
 ing serpent with her right hand. No tears! Comrades 
 of the little one came in and wept over the coffin ; neigh- 
 bors came in, and the moment they saw the still face of 
 the child the shower broke. ISTo tears for her. God gives 
 tears as the summer rain to the parched soul ; but in all 
 the universe the driest and hottest, the most scorching 
 and consuming thing is a mother's heart if she has neg- 
 lected her child, when once it is dead. God may forgive 
 her, but she will never forgive herself. The memory will 
 sink the eyes deeper into the sockets, and pinch the face, 
 and whiten the hair, and eat up the heart with vultures 
 that will not be satisfied, forever plunging deeper their 
 iron beaks. Oh, you w^anderers from your home, go back 
 to your duty ! The brightest flowers in all the earth are 
 those which grow in the garden of a Christian household, 
 clambering over the porch of a Christian home, 
 
 I advise you also to cultivate sympathy of occupation. 
 Sir James M'Intosh, one of the most eminent and elegant 
 men that ever lived, while standing at the very height of 
 his eminence, said to a great company of scholars, "My 
 wife made me." The wife ought to be the advising part- 
 ner in every firm. She ought to be interested in all the 
 
28 LIFE AT HOME. 
 
 losses and gains of sliop and store. She ought to Lave a 
 right — she has a right — to know every thing. If a man 
 goes into a business transaction that he dare not tell his 
 wife of, you may depend that he is on the way either to 
 bankruptcy or moral ruin. There may be some things 
 which he does not wish to trouble his wife with ; but if he 
 dare not tell her, he is on the road to discomfiture. On 
 the other hand, the husband ought to be sympathetic with 
 the wife's occupation. It is no easy thing to keep house. 
 Many a woman that could have endured martyrdom as 
 well as Margaret, the Scotch girl, has actually been worn 
 out by house management. There are a thousand mar- 
 tyrs of the kitchen. It is very annoying, after the vexa- 
 tions of the day around the stove or the table, or in the 
 nursery or parlor, to have the husband say, "You know 
 notliing about trouble; you ought to be in the store half 
 an hour." Sympathy of occupation! If the husband's 
 work cover him with the soot of the furnace, or the odors 
 of leather or soap factories, let not the wife be easily dis- 
 gusted at the begrimed hands or unsavory aroma. Your 
 gains are one, your interests are one, your losses are one ; 
 lay hold of the work of life with both hands. Four hands 
 to fight the battles; four eyes to watch for the danger; 
 four shoulders on which to carry the trials. It is a very 
 sad thing when the painter has a wife who does not like 
 pictures. It is a very sad thing for a pianist when she has 
 a husband who docs not like music. It is a xery sad thing 
 when a wife is not suited unless her husband has what is 
 called a " c'cnteel business." So far as I understand a "' ircn- 
 teel business," it is something to which a man goes at ten 
 o'clock in the morning, and from which he comes home at 
 two or three o'clock in tlic afternoon, and c:ets a lar2;e 
 
LIFE AT HOME. 29 
 
 amount of money for doing nothing. That is, I believe, a 
 "genteel business;" and there has been many a wife who 
 has made the mistake of not being satisfied until the hus- 
 band has given up the tanning of the hides, or the turning 
 of the banisters, or the building of the walls, and put him- 
 self in circles where he has nothing to do but smoke cigars 
 and drink wine, and get himself into habits that upset him, 
 going down in the maelstrom, taking his wife and children 
 with him. There are a good many trains running from 
 earth to destruction. They start all the hours of the day, 
 and all the hours of the night. There are the freight 
 trains ; they go very slowly and very heavily : and there 
 are the accommodation trains going on toward destruction, 
 and they stop very often, and let a man get out when he 
 wants to. But genteel idleness is an express train : Satan 
 is the stoker, and death is the engineex; and though one 
 may come out in front of it, and swing the red flag of 
 "danger," or the lantern of God's "Word, it makes just one 
 shot into perdition, coming down the embankment with a 
 shout and a wail and a shriek — crash, crash! There are 
 two classes of people sure of destruction : first, those who 
 have nothing to do ; secondly, those who have something 
 to do, but who are too lazy or too proud to do it. 
 
 I have one more word of advice to give to those who 
 would have a happy home, and that is, Itt love preside in it. 
 When 3^our behavior in the domestic circle becomes a 
 mere matter of calculation ; when the caress you give is 
 merely the result of deliberate study of the position you 
 occupy, happiness lies stark dead on the hearth -stone. 
 When the husband's position as head of the household is 
 maintained by loudness of voice, by strength of arm, by 
 fire of temper, the republic of domestic bliss has become a 
 
30 LIFE AT HOME. 
 
 despotism that neither God nor man will abide. Ob, ye 
 who promised to love each other at the altar! how dare 
 you commit perjury? Let no shadow of suspicion come 
 on your affection. It is easier to kill that flower than it is 
 to make it live again. The blast from hell that puts out 
 that light, leaves you in the blackness of darkness forever. 
 Here are a man and wife; they agree iu nothing else, 
 but they agree they will have a home. They will have a 
 splendid house, and they think that if they have a house, 
 they will have a home. Architects make the plan, and 
 the mechanics execute it; the house to cost one hundred 
 thousand dollars. It is done. The carpets are spread ; 
 lights are hoisted; curtains are hung; cards of invitation 
 sent out. The horses in gold-plated harness prance at the 
 gate; guests come in and take their places; the flute 
 sounds; the dancers go up and down; and with one 
 e;rand whirl the wealth and the fashion and the mirth of 
 the great town wheel amidst the pictured walls. Ila! this 
 is happiness. Float it on the smoking viands; sound it 
 in the music; whirl it in the dance; cast it on the snow 
 of sculpture; sound it up the brilliant stair-way; flash it 
 in chandeliers! Happiness, indeed! Let us build on the 
 centre of tlie parlor floor a throne to Happiness; let all 
 the guests, when come in, bring their flowers and pearls 
 and diamonds, and throw them on this pjn'amid, and let 
 it be a throne; and then let Happiness, the queen, mount 
 the throne, and we will stand around, and, all chalices lifted, 
 we will sa}", "Drink, O queen! live forever!" But the 
 guests depart, the flutes are breathless, the last clash of the 
 impatient hoofs is heard in the distance, and the twain of 
 the household come back to see the Queen of Happiness 
 on the throne amidst the parlor floor. But, alas! as they 
 
LIFE AT HOME. 31 
 
 come back, the flowers have faded, the sweet odors have 
 become the smell of a charnel-house, and instead of the 
 Queen of Happiness there sits there the gaunt form of An- 
 guish, with bitten lip and sunken eye, and ashes in her 
 hair. The romp of the dancers who have left seems rum- 
 bling yet, like jarring thunders that cj^uake the floor and 
 rattle the glasses of the feast rim to rim. The spilled wine 
 on the floor turns into blood. The wreaths of plush have 
 become wriggling reptiles. Terrors catch tangled in the 
 canopy that overhangs the couch. A strong gust of wind 
 comes throuoh the hall and the drawing-room and the bed- 
 chamber, in which all the lights go out. And from the 
 lips of the wine-beakers come the words, " Happiness is not 
 in us 1" And the arches respond, " It is not in us !" And 
 the silenced instruments of music, thrummed on by invisi- 
 ble fingers, answer, " Happiness is not in us !'' And the 
 frozen lips of Anguish break open, and, seated on the 
 throne of wilted flowers, she strikes her bony hands to- 
 gether, and groans, "It is not in mel" 
 
 That very night a clerk with a salary of a thousand 
 dollars a year — only one thousand — goes to his home, set 
 up three months ago,- just after the marriage-daj^ Love 
 meets him at the door; love sits with him at the table; 
 love talks over the work of the day; love takes down the 
 Bible, and reads of Him who came our souls to save; and 
 they kneel, and while they are kneeling — right in that 
 plain room, on that plain carpet — the angels of God build 
 a throne, not out of flowers that perish and fade away, but 
 out of garlands of heaven, wi'eath on top of wreath, ama- 
 ranth on amaranth, until the throne is done. Then the 
 harps of God sounded, and suddenly there appeared one 
 who mounted the throne, with eye so bright and brow so 
 
32 LIFE AT HOME. 
 
 fair that the twain knew it was Christian Love. And they 
 knelt at the foot of the throne, and, putting one hand on 
 each head, she blessed them, and said, "Happiness is with 
 me!" And that throne of celestial bloom withered not 
 with the passing years ; and the queen left not the throne 
 till one day the married pair felt stricken in years — felt 
 themselves called away, and knew not which way to go, 
 and the queen bounded from the throne, and said, " Fol- 
 low me, and I will show you the way up to the realm of 
 everlasting love." And so they went up to sing songs of 
 love, and walk on pavements of love, and to live together 
 in mansions of love, and to rejoice forever in the truth that 
 God is love. 
 
THE OLD COBN OF CANAAN. 33 
 
 THE OLD CORN OF CANAAN. 
 
 "And the manna ceased on Mie morrow after they had eaten of the old 
 corn of the land." — Joshua v., 12. 
 
 ONLY those who have had something to do with the 
 commissariat of an army know what a job it is to 
 feed and clothe five or six hundred thousand men. Well, 
 there is such a host as that marching across the desert. 
 They are cut off from all army supplies. There are no 
 rail trains bringing down food or blankets. Shall they all 
 perish ? No. The Lord comes from heaven to the rescue, 
 and he touches the shoes and the coats which in a year or 
 two would have been worn to rngs and tatters, and they 
 become storm-proof and time-proof, so that, after forty years 
 of wearing, the coats and the shoes are as good as new. 
 Besides that, every morning there is a shower of bread, 
 not sour and so2:o;y, for the rising- of that bread is made in 
 heaven, and celestial fingers have mixed it, and rolled it 
 into balls, light, flaky, and sweet, as though they were the 
 crum.bs thrown out from a heavenly banquet. Two batches 
 of bread made every day in the upper mansion — one for 
 those who sit at the table with the King, and the other for 
 the marching Israelites in the wilderness. I do not very 
 much pity the Israelites for the fact that they had only 
 manna to eat. It was, I suppose, the best food ever pro- 
 vided. I know that the ravens brought food to hungry 
 Elijah ; but I should not so well have liked those black 
 waiters. Rather would I have the fore that came down 
 
34 THE OLD CORN OF UAXAAK 
 
 every morning in buckets of dew — clean, sweet, God-pro- 
 vided edibles. But now the Israelites have taken their 
 last bit of it in their fingers, and put the last delicate morsel 
 of it to their lips. They look out, and there is no manna. 
 Why this cessation of heavenly supply ? It was because 
 the Israelites had arrived in Canaan, and they snielled the 
 breath of the harvest-fields, and the crowded barns of the 
 country were thrown open to them. All the inhabitants 
 bad fled, and in the name of the Lord of hosts the Israel- 
 ites took possession of every thing. Well, the threshing- 
 floor is cleared, the corn is scattered over it, the oxen are 
 brought around in lazy and perpetual circuit until the corn 
 is trampled loose; then it is winnowed with a fan, and it 
 is ground and it is baked, and, lol there is enough bread 
 for all the worn-out host. "And the manna ceased on the 
 morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land." 
 
 The bisection of this subject leads me, first, to speak of 
 especial relief for especial emergency ; and, secondly, of the 
 old corn of the Gospel for ordinary circumstances. 
 
 If these Israelites crossing the wilderness had not re- 
 ceived bread from the heavenly bakeries, there would, first, 
 have been a long line of dead children half buried in the 
 sand; then, there would have been a long line of dead 
 women waiting for the jackals ; then, there would have 
 been a long line of dead men unburied, because there would 
 have been no one to bury them. It would have been told 
 in the history of the world that a great company of good 
 people started out from Egj'pt for Canaan, and were never 
 heard of, as thoroughly lost in the wilderness of sand as 
 the City of Boston and the President were lost in the wilder- 
 ness of waters. Wliat use was it to them that there was 
 l)lenty of corn in Canaan, or plenty of corn in Egypt? 
 
THE OLD COBN OF CANAAN. 35 
 
 What they wanted was something to eat right there, where 
 there was not so much as a grass-blade. In other words, 
 an especial supply for an especial emergency. That is 
 what some of you want. The ordinary comfort, the ordi- 
 nary direction, the ordinary counsel, do not seem to meet 
 your case. There are those who feel that they must have 
 an omnipotent and immediate supply, and you shall have it. 
 
 Is it pain and physical distress through which you must 
 go? Does not Jesus know all about pain? Did he not 
 suffer it in the most sensitive part of head and hand and 
 foot? He has a mixture of comfort, one drop of which 
 shall cure the worst paroxysm. It is the same grace that 
 soothed Eobert Hall when, after writhing on the carpet in 
 physical tortures, he cried out, "Oh! I suffered terribly, 
 but I didn't cry -out while I was suffering, did I? Did I 
 cry out?" There is no such nurse as Jesus — his hand the 
 gentlest, his foot the lightest, his arm the strongest. For 
 especial pang especial help. 
 
 Is it approaching sorrow? Is it long, shadowing be- 
 reavement that you know is coming, because the breath is 
 short, and the voice is faint, and the cheek is pale? Have 
 you been calculating your capacity or incapacity to en- 
 dure widowhood or childlessness or a disbanded home, and 
 cried, "I can not endure it?" Oh, worried soul, you will 
 wake up amidst all your troubles, and find around about 
 you the sweet consolations of the Gospel as thickly strewed 
 as was the manna around about the Israelitish encamp- 
 ment ! Especial solace for especial distress. 
 
 Or is it a trouble past, yet present? A silent nursery? 
 A vacant chair opposite you at the table? A musing 
 upon a broken family circle never again to be reunited? 
 A choking sense of loneliness? A blot of grief so large 
 
3Q THE OLD CORN OP CANAAN. 
 
 that it extinguishes the light of sun, and puts out bloom 
 of flower, and makes you reckless as to whether you live 
 or die? Especial comfort for that especial trial. Your ap- 
 petite has failed for every thing else. Oh, try a little of 
 this wilderness manna: "I will never leave thee, I will 
 never forsake thee." "Like as a ftither pitieth his chil- 
 dren, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." "Can a 
 woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have 
 compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may for- 
 get, yet will I not forget thee." 
 
 Or is it the grief of a dissipated companion ? There are 
 those here who have it, so I am not speaking in the ab- 
 stract, but to the point. You have not whispered it, per- 
 haps, to your most intimate friend; but you see your home 
 going away gradually from you, and unless things change 
 soon it will be entirely destroyed. Your grief was well 
 depicted by a woman, presiding at a women's meeting last 
 winter in Ohio, when her intoxicated husband staggered 
 up to the platform, to her overwhelming mortification and 
 the disturbance of the audience, and she pulled a protrud- 
 ing bottle from her husband's pocket, and held it up be- 
 fore the audience, and cried out, "There is the cause of 
 my woe! There are the tears and the life-blood of a 
 drunkard's wife!" And then, looking up to heaven, she 
 said, "IIow long, Lord! how long?" and then, looking 
 down to the audience, cried, "Do 3'ou wonder I feel 
 strongly on this subject? Sisters, will you help me?" 
 And hundreds of voices responded, "Yes, yes, we will help 
 you." You stand, some of 3'ou, in such a tragedy to-day. 
 You can not even ask him to stop drinking. It makes 
 him cross, and he tells you to mind your own business. 
 Is there any relief in such a case? Not such as is found 
 
THE OLD CORN OF CANAAN. 37 
 
 ill the rigmarole of comfort ordinarily given in such cases. 
 But there is a relief that drops ia manna from the throne 
 of God. Oh, lift up your lacerated soul in praj^er, and 
 you will get omnipotent comfort! I do not know in what 
 words the soothing influence may come, but I know that 
 for especial grief there is especial deliverance. I give you 
 two or three passages ; try them on ; take that which best 
 fits your soul: "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." 
 "All things work together for good to those who love 
 God." " Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh 
 in the morning." I know there are those who, when they 
 try to comfort people, alwaj's bring the same stale senti- 
 ment about the usefulness of trial. Instead of bringing a 
 new plaster for a new wound, and fresh manna for fresh 
 hunger, they rummage their haversack to find some crumb 
 of old consolation, when from horizon to horizon the 
 ground is white with the new-fallen manna of God's help 
 not five minutes old ! 
 
 But after fourteen thousand six hundred consecutive 
 days of falling manna — Suqdays excepted — the manna 
 ceased. Some of them were glad of it. You know they 
 had complained to their leader, and wondered that they 
 had to eat manna instead of onions. Now the fare is 
 changed. Those people in that army under forty years 
 of age had never seen a corn-field, and now, when they 
 hear the leaves rustling and see the tassels wavino- and the 
 billows of green flowing over the plain as the wind touch- 
 ed them, it must have been a new and lively sensation. 
 " Corn !" cried the old man, as he husked an ear. " Corn !" 
 cried the children, as they counted the shining grains. 
 "Corn!" shouted the vanguard of the host, as they burst 
 open the granaries of the affrighted population, the grana- 
 
38 THE OLD CORN OF CANAAK 
 
 ries that Lad been left in the possession of tbe victorious 
 Israelites. Then the fire was kindled, and the ears of corn 
 were thrust into it, and, fresh and crisp and tender, were 
 devoured of the hungry victors ; and bread was jDrepared, 
 and many things that can be made out of flour regaled 
 the appetites that had been sharpened by the long march. 
 "And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had 
 eaten of the old corn of the land." 
 
 Blessed be God, we stand in just sucli a field to-day, the 
 luxuriant grain coming above the girdle, the air full of the 
 odors of the ripe old corn of the Gospel Canaan. "Oh!" 
 you say, " the fare is too plain." Then I remember you 
 will soon get tired of a fanciful diet. "While I was in 
 Paris, I liked for a while the rare and exquisite cookery; 
 but I soon wished I was home again, and had the plain 
 fare of my native land. So it is a fact that we soon weary 
 of the sirups and the custards and the whipped foam of 
 fanciful religionists, and we cry, "Give lis plain bread 
 made out of the old corn of the Gospel Canaan." That is 
 the only food that can quell the soul's hunger. 
 
 There are men here this morning who hardly know 
 what is the matter with them. They have tried to get to- 
 gether a fortune and larger account at the bank, and to get 
 investments yielding larger percentages. They are trying 
 to satisfy their soul with a diet of greenbacks and Govern- 
 ment securities. There are others here who have been 
 trj-ing to get famous, and have succeeded to a greater or 
 less extent ; and they have been trying to satisfy their 
 soul with the chopped feed of magazines and newspapers. 
 All these men are no more happy now than before tliey 
 made the first thousand dollars; no more happy now than 
 when for the first time they saw their names favorably 
 
THE OLD COEN OF CANAAN. 39 
 
 mentioned. They can not analj'ze or define their feelings; 
 but I will tell them what is the matter — they are hungry 
 for the old corn of the Gospel. That you must have, or 
 be pinched, and wan, and wasted, and hollow-eyed, and 
 shriveled up with an eternity of famine. 
 
 The infidel scientists of this day are offering us a differ- 
 ent kind of soul food; but they are, of all men, the most 
 miserable. I have known many of them ; but I never 
 knew one of them who came within a thousand miles of 
 being happy. The great John Stuart Mill provided for 
 himself a new kind of porridge ; but yet, when he comes to 
 die, he acknowledges that liis philosophy never gave him 
 any comfort in days of bereavement, and in a roundabout 
 way he admits that his life was a failure. So it is with all 
 infidel scientists. They are trying to live on telescopes 
 and crucibles and protoplasms, and they charge us with 
 cant, not realizing that there is no such intolerable cant in 
 all the world as this perpetual talk we are hearing about 
 "positive philosophy," and "the absolute," and "the great 
 to be," and "the everlasting no," and "the higher unity," 
 and "the latent potentialities," and "the cathedral of the 
 immensities." I have been translating what these men 
 have been writing, and I have been translating what they 
 have been doing, and I will tell you what it all means — 
 it means that they want to kill God ! And my only won- 
 der is that God has not killed them. I have, in other 
 days, tasted of their confections, and I come back and tell 
 you to-day that there is no nutriment or life or health in 
 any thing but the bread made out of the old corn of the 
 Gospel. "What do I mean by that? I mean that Christ is 
 the bread of life, and taking him, you live and live forever. 
 
 But, you say, corn is of but little practical use unless it 
 
40 THE OLD CORN OF CANAAN. 
 
 is threshed and ground and baked. I answer, this Gospel 
 corn has gone through that process. When on Calvary 
 all the hoofs of human scorn came down on the heart of 
 Christ, and all the flails of Satanic fury beat him long and 
 fast, was not the corn threshed ? When the mills of God's 
 indignation against sin caught Christ between the upper 
 and nether rollers, was not the corn ground ? When Jesus 
 descended into hell, and the flames of the lost world wrap- 
 ped him all about, was not the corn baked ? Oh yes ! Christ 
 is ready. His pardon all ready ; his peace all readj'; ewcrj 
 thing ready in Christ, Are you ready for him? 
 
 You say, " That is such a simple Gospel !" I know it 
 is. You say you thought religion was a strange mixture 
 of elaborate compounds. No; it is so plain that any abe- 
 cedarian may understand it. In its simplicity is its power. 
 If you could, this morning, realize that Christ died to save 
 from sin and death and hell, not only your minister and 
 your neighbor and your father and your child, but you^ it 
 would make this hour like the judgment-day for agitations, 
 and, no longer able to keep your seat, you would leap up, 
 crying, '■^ For me! FOR me!" God grant that you, my 
 brother, may see this Gospel with your own eyes, and hear 
 it with your own ears, and feel with your own heart that 
 you are a lost soul, but that Christ comes for your extrica- 
 tion. Can you not take that truth and digest it, and make 
 it a part of your immortal life? It is only bread. 
 
 You have noticed that invalids can not take all kinds of 
 food. The food that will do for one will not do for an- 
 other. There are kinds of food which will produce, in 
 cases of invalidism, very speedy death. But you have 
 noticed that all persons, however weak they may be, can 
 take bread. Oh, soul sick with sin, invalid in your trans- 
 
THE OLD COSN OF CANAAN. 41 
 
 gressions, I tbink tliis Gospel will agree with you ! I 
 think if you can not take any thing else, you can take 
 this. Lost — found ! Sunken — raised ! Condemned — 
 pardoned ! Cast out — invited in ! That is the old corn 
 of the Gospel. 
 
 You have often seen a wheel with spokes of different 
 colors, and when the wheel was rapidly turned all the 
 colors blended into a rainbow of exquisite beauty. I wish 
 I could, this morning, take the peace and the life and the 
 joy and glory of Christ, and turn them before your soul 
 with such speed and strength that you would be enchanted 
 with the revolving splendors of that name which is above 
 every name — the name written once with tears of exile 
 and in blood of martyrdom, but written now in burnished 
 crown and lifted sceptre and transangelic throne. 
 
 There is another characteristic about bread, and that is, 
 you never get tired of it. There are people here seventy 
 years of age who find it just as appropriate for their ap- 
 petite as they did when, in boyhood, their mother cut a 
 slice of it clear around the loaf. You have not got tired 
 of bread, and that is a characteristic of the Gospel. Old 
 Christian man, are you tired of Jesus? If so, let us take 
 his name out of our Bible, and let us with pen and ink 
 erase that name wherever we see it. Let us cast it out of 
 our hymnology, and let " There is a Fountain " and " Eock 
 of Ages" go into forgetfulness. Let us tear down the 
 communion-table where we celebrate his love. Let us 
 dash down the baptismal bowl where we were consecrated 
 to him. Let us hurl Jesus from our heart, and ask some 
 other hero to come in. Let us say, " Go away, Jesus ; I 
 want another companion, another friend, than thou art." 
 Could you do it ? The years of your past life, aged man, 
 
42 THE OLD CORN OF CANAAK 
 
 would utter a protest against it, and tbc graves of your 
 Christian dead would cliarge \o\x with being an ingrate, 
 and your little grandchildren would saj^ "Grandfather, 
 don't do that Jesus is the one to whom we say our 
 jDrayers at night, and who is to open heaven when we die. 
 Grandfather, don't do that." Tired of Jesus? The Bur- 
 gundy rose you pluck from the garden is not so fresh and 
 fair and beautiful. Tired of Jesus? As well get weary of 
 the spring morning, and the voices of the mountain runnel, 
 and the quiet of your own home, and the gladness of your 
 own children. Jesus is bread, and the appetite for that is 
 never obliterated. 
 
 I notice, in regard to this article of food, you take it 
 three times a day. It is on your table morning, noon, and 
 niglit ; and if it is forgotten, you saj^, "Where is the 
 bread?" Just so certainly 3'ou need Jesus three times a 
 day. Oh, do not start out without him ; do not dare to go 
 out of the front door ; do not dare to go off the front steps, 
 without first having communed with him! Before noon 
 there may be perils that will destroy bod}^, mind, and soul 
 forever. You can not afford to do without him. You 
 will during the day be amidst sharp hoofs and swift wheels 
 and dangerous scaffoldings threatening the body, and traps 
 for the soul that have taken some who are more wily than 
 you. "When they launch a ship they break against the 
 side of it a bottle of wine. That is a sort of super- 
 stition among sailors. But oh, on the launching of ev- 
 ery day, that we might strike against it at least one 
 earnest prayer for divine protection ! That would not 
 be superstition; that would be Christian. Then at the 
 apex of the day, at the tiptop of the hours, equidistant 
 fi'om morning and night, look three ways. Look back- 
 
THE OLD CORN OF CANAAN. 43 
 
 ward to the forenoon; look ahead to the afternoon; look 
 up to that Saviour who presides over all. You want 
 bread at noon. You may find no place in which to kneel 
 amidst the cotton bales and the tierces of rice ; but if Jonah 
 could find room to pray in the whale's belly, most cer- 
 tainly you will never be in such a crowded place that you 
 can not prny. Bread at noon ! When the evening hour 
 comes, and your head is buzzing with the day's engage- 
 ments, and your whole nature is sore from the abrasion of 
 rough life, and you see a great many duties 3'ou have neg- 
 lected, then commune with Christ, asking his pardon, 
 thanking him for his love. That would be a queer even- 
 ing repast at which there was no bread. 
 
 This is the nutriment and life of the plain Gospel that 
 I commend to you. I do not know how some of our min- 
 isters make it so intricate and elaborate and mystifying a 
 thing. It seems as if they had a sort of mongrelism, in 
 religion — part humanitarianism, part spiritualism, part 
 iiothingarianism ; and sometimes you think they are build- 
 ing their temple out of the "Rock of Ages," but you find 
 there is no rock in it at all. It is stucco. The Gospel is 
 plain. It is bread. There are no fogs hovering over this 
 river of life. All the fogs hover over the marsh of human 
 speculation. If you can not tell, when you hear a man 
 preach, whether or not he believes in the plenary inspira- 
 tion of the Scriptures, it is because he does not believe in 
 it. If, when you hear a man preach, you can not tell 
 whether or not he believes that sin is inborn, it is because 
 he does not think it is congenital. If, when j'ou hear a 
 man talk in pulpit or prayer-meeting, you can not make 
 up your mind whether or not he believes in regeneration, 
 it is because he does not believe in it. If, when 3-ou hear 
 
4-i THE OLD CORN OF CANAAN. 
 
 a man speak on religious themes, you can not make up 
 your mind whether or not he thinks the righteous and the 
 wicked will come out at the same place, then it is because 
 he really believes their destinies are conterminous. Do 
 not talk to me about a man being doubtful about the doc- 
 trines of grace. He is not doubtful to me at all. Bread is 
 bi'ead, and I know it the moment I see it. I had a corn- 
 field which I cultured this summer with my own hand. I 
 did not ask once in all the summer, " Is this corn?" I did 
 not hunt up The AgrknUuriat to get a picture- of corn. I 
 was born in sight of a corn-field, and I know all about it. 
 When these Israelites came to Canaan and looked off upon 
 the fields, the cry was "Corn! corn!" And if a man has 
 once tasted of this heavenly bread, he knows it right away. 
 He can tell this corn of the Gospel Canaan from " the chaff 
 which the wind driveth away." I bless God so many 
 have found this Gospel corn. It is the bread of which if a 
 man eat he shall never hunger. I set the gladness of your 
 soul to the tunes of "Ariel" and "Antioch." I ring the 
 wedding-bells, for Christ and your soul are married, and 
 there is no power on earth or in hell to get out letters of 
 divorcement. 
 
 But alas for the famine-struck! Enough corn, yet it 
 seems you have no sickle to" cut it, no mill to grind it, no 
 fire to bake it, no appetite to eat it. Starving to death, 
 when the plain is golden with a magnificent harvest! My 
 brother, if your friends had acted as crazily about worldly 
 things as you have acted about spiritual things, you would 
 have sent them before this to Bloomingdale Insane Asylum. 
 You do not seem to realize the hunger that is gnawing on 
 3'our soul, the precipices on the edge of which you walk, 
 the fires into which 3-ou run. .Oh, the insanity, the awful 
 
THE OLD CORN OP CANAAN. 45 
 
 madness, of a man that will not take Christ! Wlien I 
 tbink of the risks you run, it seems as if I must rush fi'om 
 the pulpit, and take you by the shoulder, and tell you of 
 what is coming and how little you are ready for it. 
 
 This summer I rode some thirteen miles to see the Alex- 
 ander, a large steamship that was beached near Southamp- 
 ton, Long Island, last winter. It was a splendid vessel. 
 As I walked up and down the decks and in the cabins, 
 I said, "What a pity that this vessel should go to pieces, 
 or be lying here idle!" The coast wreckers had spent 
 thirty thousand dollars trying to get her off, and they suc- 
 ceeded once; but she came back again to the old place. 
 While I was walking on deck, every part of the vessel 
 trembled with the beating of the surf on one side. Since 
 then I heard that that vessel, which was worth two hundred 
 and fifty thousand dollars, has been sold for three thou- 
 sand five hundred, and is to be knocked to pieces. They 
 had given up the idea of getting her to sail again. How 
 suggestive all that is to me! There are those here who 
 are aground in religious things. Once you started for 
 heaven, but you are now aground. Several times we 
 thought we had started \o\x again heavenward, but yow. 
 soon got back to the old place, and there is not much pros- 
 pect you will ever reach the harbors of the blessed. I fear 
 it will be after a while said in regard to some of you, "No 
 use; no use. To be destroyed without remedy," God's 
 wreckers will pronounce 3^ou a hopeless case, Beudiedfor 
 eternitij! And then it will be written in heaven concerning 
 some one of j^our size, and complexion, and age, and name, 
 that he w\as invited to be saved, but refused the offer, and 
 starved to death wuthin sight of the fields and srranarics full 
 of the Old Corn of Canaan, 
 
46 ZIKLAG IX ASHES. 
 
 ZIKLAG IN ASHES. 
 
 " Then David and the people that were with him lifted up their voice and 
 
 wept, until tliey had no more power to weep Darid recovered all 
 
 As his part is tliat goeth down to tlie battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth 
 by the stuft'." — 1 Samuel xxx., 4, 19, 24. 
 
 THERE is intense excitement in tbe village of Ziklag. 
 David and his men are bidding good-bye to their fam- 
 ilies, and are off for the wars. In that little village of Zik- 
 lasr the defenseless ones will be safe until the warriors, 
 flushed with victory, come home. But will the defenseless 
 ones be safe? The soft arms of children are around the 
 necks of the bronzed warriors until they sliake themselves 
 free and start, and handkerchiefs and flags are waved and 
 kisses thrown until the armed men vanish bej'ond the hills. 
 David and his men soon get through with their campaign 
 and start homeward. Every night on their way liome, no 
 sooner does the soldier put his head on the knapsack than 
 in his dream he hears the welcome of the wife and the 
 shout of the child. Oh, what long stories they will have 
 to tell their families, of how they dodged the battle-axe! 
 and then will roll up their sleeve and show the half-healed 
 wound. With glad, quick step, they march on, David and 
 his men, for they are marching home. Now they come 
 up to the last hill which overlooks Ziklag, and they expect 
 in a moment to see the dwelling-places of their loved ones. 
 They look, and as they look their check turns pale, and 
 their lip quivers, and their hand involuntarily comes down 
 
ZIKLAG IN ASHES. 47 
 
 on the bilt of the sword. "Where is Ziklag? Where 
 are our homes?" they cry. Alas! the curling smoke 
 above the ruin tells the tragedy. The Amalekitcs have 
 come down and consumed the village, and carried the moth- 
 ers and the wives and the children of David and his men 
 into captivity. The swarthy warriors stand for a few mo- 
 ments transfixed with horror. Then their eyes glance to 
 each other, and they burst into uncontrollable weeping; for 
 when a strong warrior weeps, the grief is appalling. It 
 seems as if the emotion might tear him to pieces. They 
 " wept until they had no more power to weep." But soon 
 their sorrow turns into rage, and David, swinging his sword 
 high in air, cries, "Pursue, for thou shalt overtake them, 
 and without fail recover all." Now the march becomes a 
 "double-quick." Two hundi-ed of David's men stop by 
 the brook Besor,Jaint with fatigue and grief. They can 
 not go a step farther. They are left there. But the other 
 four hundred men under David, with a sort of panther 
 step, march on in sorrow and in rage. They find by the 
 side of the road a half-dead Egyptian, and they resuscitate 
 him, and compel him to tell the ^Yhole story, lie says, 
 "Yonder they went, the captors and the captives," point- 
 ing in the direction. Forward, 3'e four hundred brave men 
 of fire! Yery soon David and his enraged company come 
 upon the Amalekitish host. Yonder they see their own 
 wives and children and mothers, and under Amalekitish 
 guard. Here are the ofiicers of the Amalekitish army 
 holding a banquet. The cups are full, the music is roused, 
 the dance begins. The Amalekitish host cheer and cheer 
 and cheer over their victory. But, without note of bugle 
 or warning of trumpet, David and his four hundred men 
 burst upon the scene, suddenly as Eobert Bruce hurled his 
 
48 ZIKLAG ZV ASHES. 
 
 Scotchmen upon the revelers at Bannockburn. David 
 and his men look up, and one glance at their loved ones in 
 captivity and under Amalekitish guard throws them into 
 a very fury of determination ; for you know how men will 
 fight when they fight for their wives and children. Ah, 
 there are lightnings in their eye, and every finger is a 
 spear, and their voice is like the shout of the whirlwind! 
 Amidst the upset tankards and the costly viands crushed 
 underfoot, the M'ounded Amalekites lie (their blood min- 
 gling with their wine), shrieking for merc3^ No sooner 
 do David and his men win the victory than they throw 
 their swords down into the dust — what do they want M'ith 
 swords now? — and the broken families come together 
 amidst a great shout of joy that makes the parting scene in 
 Ziklag seem very insipid in the comparison. The rough 
 old warrior has to use some persuasion before he can get 
 his child to come to him now after so long an absence; 
 but soon the little finger traces the familiar wrinkle across 
 the scarred face. And then the empty tankards are set 
 up, and they are filled with the best wine from the hills, 
 and David and his men, the husbands, the wives, the broth- 
 ers, the sisters, drink to the overthrow of the Amalekites 
 and to the rebuilding of Ziklag. So, Lord, let thine 
 enemies perish! 
 
 Now they are coming home, David and his men and 
 their families — a long procession. Men, women, and chil- 
 dren, loaded with jewels and robes and with all kinds of 
 trophies that the Amalekites had gathered up in 3-ears of 
 conquest — every thing now in the hands of David and his 
 men. When they come by the brook Besor, the place 
 where staid the men sick and incompetent to travel, the 
 jewels and the robes and all kinds of treasures are divided 
 
ZIELAG IN ASHES. 49 
 
 among the sick as well as among the well. Surely, the 
 lame and exhausted ought to have some of the treasures. 
 Here is a robe for this j^ale-faced warrior. Here is a pil- 
 low for this dying man. Here is a handful of gold for the 
 wasted trumpeter. I really think that these men who faint- 
 ed by the brook Besor may have endured as much as those 
 men who went into the battle. Some mean fellows objected 
 to the sick ones having any of the spoils. The objectors 
 said, "These men did not fight." David, with a magnan- 
 imous heart, replies, "As his part is that goeth down to the 
 battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth by the stuff." 
 
 This subject is practically suggestive to me. Thank 
 God, in these times a man can go off on a journey, and be 
 gone weeks and months, and come back and see his house 
 untouched of incendiar}^, and have his family on the step 
 to greet him if by telegram he has foretold the moment 
 of his coming. But there are Amalekitish disasters, and 
 there are Amalekitish diseases, that sometimes come down 
 upon one's home, making as devastating work as the day 
 when Ziklag took fire. There are families in my congre- 
 gation whose homes have been broken up. No battering- 
 ram smote in the door, no iconoclast crumbled the statues, 
 no flame leaped amidst the curtains; but so far as all the 
 joy and merriment that once belonged to that house are 
 concerned, the home has departed. Armed diseases came 
 down upon the quietness of the scene — scarlet fevers, or 
 pleurisies, or consumptions, or undefined disorders came 
 and seized upon some members of that famil}^, and carried 
 them away. Ziklag in ashes! And you go about, some- 
 times weeping and sometimes enraged, wanting to get 
 back 3'our loved ones as much as David and his men 
 wanted to reconstruct their despoiled households. Ziklag 
 
 3 
 
50 ZIKLAG IN ASHES. 
 
 in ashes ! Some of you went off from home. You counted 
 the daj^s of your absence. Every day seemed as long as a 
 week. Oh ! bow glad you w^ere when the time came for 
 you to go aboard the steamboat or rail -car and start for 
 home ! You arrived. You went up the street where your 
 dwelling was, and in the night you put 3'our band on tlie 
 door-bell, and, behold ! it was wrapped with the signal of 
 bereavement, and you found that Amalekitish Death, which 
 has devastated a thousand other households, had blasted 
 yours. You go about weeping amidst the desolation of 
 your once happy home, thinking of the bright ej-es closed, 
 and the noble hearts stopped, and the gentle bands folded, 
 and you weep until you have no more power to weep. 
 Ziklag in ashes ! 
 
 A gentleman went to a friend of mine in the city of 
 Washington, and asked that through him he might get a 
 consulship to some foreign port. ^\y friend said to him, 
 "What do you want to go away from j-our beautiful borne 
 for, into a foreign port?" "Ob," be replied, "my home 
 is gone ! My six children are dead. I must get away, sir. 
 I can't stand it in this country any longer." Ziklag in 
 ashes ! 
 
 Wby these long sbadows of bereavement across this au- 
 dience?. "Why is it that in almost every assemblage black 
 is the predominant color of the apparel? Is it because 
 you do not like saffron or brown or violet? Oh no! 
 You sa}^, "The world is not so bright to us as once it 
 was ;" and there is a story of silent voices, and of still feet, 
 and of loved ones gone, and when you look over the hills, 
 expecting only beauty and loveliness, you find only devas- 
 tation and woe. Ziklag in ashes! 
 
 Last Wednesday week, in Ulster County, New York, 
 
ZIKLAG IN ASHES. 51 
 
 tbe village church was decorated until the fragrance of the 
 flowers was almost bewildering. The maidens of the vil- 
 lage had emptied the place of flowers upon one marriage 
 altar. One of their own number was affianced to a min- 
 ister of Christ, who had come to take her to his own home. 
 With hands joined, amidst a congratulatory audience, the 
 vows were taken. In three days from that time one of 
 those who stood at the altar exchanged earth forheaven. 
 The weddino; march broke down into the funeral dirge. 
 There were not enough flowers now for the coffin-lid, be- 
 cause they had all been taken for the bridal hour. The 
 dead minister of Christ is brought to another village. He 
 had gone out from them less than a week before in his 
 strength; now he comes home lifeless. The whole church 
 bewailed him. . The solemn procession moved around to 
 look upon the still face that once had beamed with mes- 
 sages of salvation. Little children were lifted up to look 
 at him. And some of those whom he had comforted in 
 days of sorrow, when they passed that silent form, made 
 the place dreadful with their weeping. Another village 
 emptied of its flowers — some of them put in the shape of a 
 cross to symbolize his hope, others put in the shape of a 
 crown to symbolize his triumph. A hundred liglits blown 
 out in one strong gust from the open door of a sepulchre. 
 Ziklag in ashes! 
 
 I preach this sermon to-day, because I want to rally 
 you, as David rallied his men, for the recovery of the loved 
 and the lost. I want not only to win heaven, but I want 
 all this congregation to go along with me. I feel that 
 somehow I have a responsibility in your arriving at that 
 great city. I have on other Sabbaths used other induce- 
 ments. I mean, to-day, for the sake of varietj^, hoping to 
 
52 ZIKLAG IN ASHES. 
 
 reach your Leart, to try another kind of inducement. Do 
 you really want to join the companionship of your loved 
 ones who have gone? Are you as anxious to join them 
 as David and his men were to join their families? Then 
 I am here, in the name of God, to say that you may, and 
 to tell you how. 
 
 I remark, in the first place, if you want to join your 
 loved ones in glory, you must travel the same ivay they 
 icent. No sooner had the half-dead Egyptian been resus- 
 citated than he pointed the way the captors and the cap- 
 tives had gone, and David and his men followed after. So 
 our Christian friends have gone into another country, and 
 if we want to reach their companionship we must take the 
 same road. They repented ; we must repent. They praj- ed ; 
 we must pray. They trusted in Christ; we must trust 
 in Christ. They lived a religious life; we must live a re- 
 ligious life. They were in some things like ourselves. I 
 know, now that they are gone, there is a halo around their 
 names; but they had their faults. They said and did 
 things they ought never to have said or done. They were 
 sometimes rebellious, sometimes cast down. They were 
 far from being perfect. So I suppose that when we have 
 gone, some things in us that are now only tolerable may 
 be almost resplendent. But as they were like us in defi- 
 ciencies, we ought to be like them in taking a supernal 
 Christ to make up for the deficits. Had it not been for 
 Jesus, they would have all perished ; but Christ confronted 
 them, and said, " I am the way," and they took it. 
 
 I have also to say to you that the path that these cap- 
 tives trod ivas a trouhled path, and that David and his 
 men had to go over the same difficult wa}^ While these 
 captives were being taken off, they said, " Oh ! we are so 
 
ZIKLAG m ASHES. 63 
 
 tired ; we are so sick ; we are so hungry !" But the men 
 who had charge of them said, " Stop this crying. Go on !" 
 David and his men also found it a hard way. They had 
 to travel it. Our friends have gone into glory, and it is 
 through much tribulation that we are to enter into the 
 kingdom. How our loved ones used to have to struggle! 
 how their old hearts ached ! how sometimes they had a tus- 
 sle for bread ! In our childhood we wondered why there 
 were so many wrinkles on their faces. "We did not know 
 that what were called "crow's-feet" on their fiices were 
 the marks of the black raven of trouble. Did you never 
 hear the old people, seated by the evening stand, talk over 
 their early trials, their hardships, the accidents, the burials, 
 the disappointments, the empty flour- barrel when there 
 w^ere so many hungry ones to feed, the sickness almost 
 unto death, where the next dose of morphine decided be- 
 tween ghastly bereavement and an unbroken home circle? 
 Oh yes! it was trouble that whitened their hair. It was 
 trouble that shook the cup in their hands. It was trouble 
 that washed the lus,tre from their eyes with the rain of tears 
 until they needed spectacles. It was trouble that made 
 the cane a necessity for their journe3\ Do you never re- 
 member seeing your old mother sitting, on some rainy day, 
 looking out of the window, her elbow on the window-sill, 
 her hand to her brow — looking out, not seeing the falling 
 shower at all (you well knew she was looking into the dis- 
 tant past), until the apron came up to her eyes, because the 
 memory was too much for her? 
 
 " Oft tlie big, unbidden tear, 
 
 Stealing down the furrowed cheek, 
 Told in eloquence sincere, 
 Tales of woe they could not speak. 
 
54 ZIKLAG IN ASHES. 
 
 "But this scene of weeping o'er, 
 Past this scene of toil and pain, 
 They shall feel distress no more, 
 Kever, never weep again." 
 
 "Who are these under the altar?" the question was ask- 
 ed ; and the response came, " These are they which came 
 out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and 
 made them white in the blood of the Lamb." Our friends 
 went by a path of tears into glor}^ Be not surprised if 
 we have to travel the same pathway. 
 
 I remark, again, if we want to win the society of our 
 friends in heaven, we will not only have to travel a path 
 of faith and a path of tribulation, but we will also have to 
 positively hattlefor their comimnionsldp. David and his men 
 never wanted sharp swords and invulnerable shields and 
 thick breastplates so much as they wanted them on the 
 day when they came down upon the Amalekites. If they 
 had lost that battle, they never would have got their fami- 
 lies back. I suppose that one glance at their loved ones 
 in captivity hurled them into the battle with tenfold cour- 
 age and energy. The\^ said, "We must win it. Every 
 thing depends upon it. Let each one take a man on point 
 of spear or sword. We must win it." And I have to tell 
 you that between us and coming into the companionship 
 of our loved ones who are departed there is an Austerlitz, 
 there is a Gettj^sburg, there is a Waterloo. War with the 
 world, war with the flesh, war with the devil. We have 
 either to conquer our troubles, or our troubles will conquer 
 us. David will either slay the Amalekites, or the Amalek- 
 ites will slny David. And yet is not the fort to be taken 
 worth all the pain, all the peril, all the bcsicgement ? Look ! 
 Who are thcv on the brig-ht hills of heaven vender? There 
 
ZIKLAG m ASHES. 55 
 
 they are, those who sat at your own table, the chair now 
 vacant. There they are, those whom you rocked in infancy 
 in the cradle, or hushed to sleep in your arms. There they 
 are, those in whose life your life was bound up. There 
 they are, their brow more radiant than ever before you 
 saw it, their lips waiting for the kiss of heavenly greeting, 
 their cheek roseate with the health of eternal summer, their 
 hands beckoning j^ou up the steep, their feet bounding 
 with the mirtli of heaven. The pallor of their last sickness 
 gone out of their ftice, never more to be sick, never more 
 to cough, never more to limp, never more to be old, never 
 more to weep. They are w^atching from those heights to 
 see if through Christ you can take that fort, and whether 
 you will rush in upon them — victors. They know that 
 upon this battle depends whether you will ever join their 
 society. Up! strike harder ! Charge more bravely ! Ee- 
 member that every inch you gain puts you so much farther 
 on toward that heavenly reunion. 
 
 If this morning while I speak you could hear the can- 
 nonade of a foreign navy, coming through the "Narrows," 
 •which was to despoil our city, and if they really should 
 succeed in carrying our families away from us, how long 
 would we take before we resolved to go after them? Ev- 
 ery weapon, whether fresh from Springfield or old and 
 rusty in the garret, w^ould be brought out ; and we would 
 urge on, and, coming in front of the foe, we would look at 
 them, and then look at our families, and the cry would be, 
 "A^ictory or death!" and when the ammunition was gone, 
 we would take the captors on the point of the bayonet or 
 under the breech of the gun. If you would make such a 
 struggle for the getting-back of 3'our earthly fi'iends, will 
 vou not make as much stru2"2:le for the sfaining of the eter- 
 
56 ZIKLAG jy ASHES. 
 
 nal companionsLip of your heavenly friends ? Ob yes ! we 
 must join tliem. "We must sit in their holy society. We 
 must sing with them the song. We must celebrate with 
 them the triumph. Let it never be told on earth or in 
 heaven that David and his men pushed out with braver 
 hearts for the getting-back of their earthly friends for a few 
 years on earth than we to get our departed ! 
 
 You say that all this implies that our departed Chris- 
 tian friends are alive. Wh}^, had you. any idea they were 
 dead? They have only moved. If you should go on the 
 2d of May to a house where one of your friends lived, and 
 found him gone, you would not think that he was dead. 
 You would inquire next door where he had moved to. 
 Our departed Christian friends have only taken another 
 house. The secret is that they are richer now than they 
 once were, and can ailbrd a better residence. They once 
 drank out of earthenware ; they now drink from the King's 
 chalice. "Joseph is yet alive," and Jacob will go up and 
 see him. Living? are they? Why, if a man can live in 
 this damp, dark dungeon of earthly captivity, can he not 
 live where he breathes the bracing atmosphere of the 
 mountains of heaven ? Oh yes, they are living! 
 
 Do you think that Paul is so near dead now as he was 
 when he was living in the Roman dungeon? Do you 
 think that Frederick Robertson, of Brighton, is as near 
 dead now as he was when, year after year, he slept seated 
 on the floor, bis bead on the bottom of a chair, because he 
 could find ease in no other position ? Do 3'ou think that 
 Robert Hall is as near dead now as when, on his couch, he 
 tossed in physical tortures? No. Death gave them the 
 few black drops that cured them. Tliat is all death does 
 to a Christian — cures him. I know that what I have said 
 
ZIKLAG IN ASHES. 57 
 
 implies that tbey are living. There is no question about 
 that. The only question, this morning, is whether you 
 will ever join them. 
 
 But I must not forget those two hundred men who 
 fainted by the brook Besor. They could not take another 
 step farther. Their feet were sore ; their head ached ; 
 their entire nature was exhausted. Besides that, they 
 were broken-hearted because their homes were gone. Zik- 
 lag in ashes! And yet David, when he comes up to them, 
 divides the spoils among them ! He says they shall have 
 some of the jewels, some of the robes, some of the treas- 
 ures. I look over this audience this morning, and I find 
 at least two hundred who have fainted by the brook Besor 
 — the brook of tears. You feel as if you could not take 
 another step farther, as though you could never look up 
 again. But I am going to imitate David, and divide among 
 you some glorious trophies. Ilere is a robe, "All things 
 work together for good, to those who love God." Wrap 
 yourself in that glorious promise. Here is for your neck 
 a string of pearls, made out of crystallized tears, " Weeping 
 may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." 
 Here is a coronet, " Be thou faithful unto death, and I will 
 give thee a crown of life." ye fainting ones by the 
 brook Besor, dip your blistered feet in the running stream 
 of God's mercy. Bathe your brow at the wells of salva- 
 tion. Soothe your wounds with the balsam that exudes 
 from trees of life. God will not utterly cast you off, O 
 broken-hearted man, O broken-hearted woman, fainting by 
 the brook Besor. 
 
 A shepherd finds that his musical pipe is bruised. He 
 says, " I can't get any more music out of this instrument ; 
 so I will just break it, and I will throw this reed away. 
 
 3* 
 
58 ZIKLAG IN ASHES. 
 
 Then I will get anolher reed, and I will play music on 
 that." But God savs lie will not cast you off because all the 
 music has gone out of your soul. " The bruised reed he 
 will not break." As far as I can tell the diagnosis of your 
 disease, you want Divine nursing, and it is promised 3'ou : 
 "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort 
 you." God will see you all the way through, O troubled 
 soul, and when you come down to the Jordan of death, 
 you will find it to be as thin a brook as Besor ; for Dr. 
 Eobinson says that, in April, Besor dries up, and there is 
 no brook at all. x\nd in 3-our last moment yon will be as 
 placid as the Kentucky minister wdio recently went up to 
 God, saying, in the dying hour, " Write to my sister Kate, 
 and tell her not to be worried and frightened about the 
 story of the horrors around the death-bed. Tell her there 
 is not a word of truth in it, for I am there now, and Jesus 
 is with me, and I find it a very happy way ; not because I 
 am a good man, for I am not; I am nothing but a poor, 
 miserable sinner; but I have an Almighty Saviour, and 
 both of his arms are around me." 
 
 May God Almight}^, through the blood of the everlast- 
 ing covenant, bring us into the companionship of our loved 
 ones who have already entered the heavenly land, and into 
 the presence of Christ whom, not having seen, we love, and 
 so David shall recover all, "and as his part is that goeth 
 down to the battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth by 
 the stuff." 
 
THE RELIGION OF GHOSTS. 59 
 
 THE EELIGION OF GHOSTS. 
 
 "BeliolJ, there is a woman tliat hath a familiar spirit at En-dor. And 
 Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment, and he went, and two men 
 with him, and they came to the Avoman hy niglit : and he said, I pray thee, 
 divine unto me by the familiar spirit, and bring me him up wliom I shall 
 name unto thee." — 1 /Samwe^xxviii., 7, 8. 
 
 '^'pEOUBLE to the rigbt of him and trouble to the left 
 -^ of him, Saul knew not what to do. As a last resort, 
 he concluded to seek out a spiritual medium, or a witch, 
 or any thing that you please to call her — at any rate, a 
 woman who had communication with the spirits of the 
 eternal world. It was a very difficult thing to do, for 
 Saul had either slain all the witches or compelled them to 
 stop business. A servant one day said to King Saul, "I 
 know of a spiritual medium down at the village of En-dor." 
 "Do you?" said the king. Night flxlls. Saul, putting off 
 his kingly robes, and putting on the dress of a plain cit- 
 izen, with two servants goes out to hunt up this spiritual 
 medium. It was no easy thing for Saul to disguise him- 
 self, for the tallest people in the country only came up to 
 his shoulder, and, I think, from the strength of the man 
 and the way he bore himself, he must have been well pro- 
 portioned. It must have been a frightful thing to see a 
 man walking along in the nio;ht eisrht or nine feet hig;h. I 
 suppose, as the people saw him pass, they said, " Who is 
 that? He is as tall as the kins;" — bavins: no idea that in 
 such a plain dress there really was passing the king. 
 Saul and his servants after a while reach the village, and 
 
60 THE RELIGION OF GHOSTS. 
 
 tliey say, "I wonder if this is tlie house;" and tbey look 
 in, and tliey see tlie haggard, weird, and shriveled - up 
 spiritual medium sitting by the light, and on the table 
 sculptured images, and divining-rods, and poisonous herbs, 
 and bottles, and vases. They say, " Yes, this must be the 
 place." One loud rap brings the woman to the door, and 
 as she stands there, holding the candle or lamp above her 
 head and peering out into the darkness, she says, "Who is 
 here?" The tall king informs her that he has come to 
 have his fortune told. "When she hears that, she trem- 
 bles and almost drops the light, for she knows there is no 
 chance for a fortune-teller or spiritual medium in all the 
 land. But Saul having sworn that no harm shall come to 
 her, she saj^s, " Well, whom shall I bring up from the dead ?" 
 Saul says, " Bring up Samuel." That was the prophet who 
 had died a little while before. I see her waving a wand,, 
 or stirring up some poisonous herbs in a caldron, or hear 
 lier muttering over some incantations, or stamping with 
 her foot, as she cries out to the realm of the dead, "Sam- 
 uel ! Samuel !" Lo, the freezing horror ! The floor of the 
 tenement opens, and the gray hairs float up ; and the fore- 
 head, the eyes, the lips, the shoulders, the arms, the feet, the 
 entire body of dead Samuel, wrapped in sepulchral robe, 
 appear to the astonished group, who stagger back, and 
 hold flist, and catch their breath, and shiver with the terror. 
 The dead prophet, white and awful from the tomb, begins 
 to move his aslicn lips, and he glares upon King Saul, and 
 cries out, "What did you bring me up for? Wh}'- did 
 you break my long sleep? What do you mean. King 
 Saul?" Saul, trying to compose and control himself, 
 makes this stammering and affrighted utterance, as he says 
 to the dead prophet, "Tiic Lord is against me, and I have 
 
THE RELIOION OF GHOSTS. 61 
 
 come to 3^oa for help. Wlmt shall I do ?" The dead 
 prophet stretched forth his finger to King Saul, and said, 
 " Die to-morrow ! Come with me into the sepulchre. I am 
 going now. Come, come with me !" And, lo ! the floor 
 again opens, and the feet of the dead prophet disappear, 
 and the arms and the shoulders and the forehead. The 
 floor closes. Nothing is left in the room but Saul, and 
 the two servants, and the spiritual medium, and the sculpt- 
 ured images, and the divining-rods, and the bottles, and the 
 vases, and the poisonous herbs. Oh, that was an awful 
 seance ! 
 
 I learn first from this subject that spiritualism is a very 
 old religion. It is natural that people should want to know 
 the origin and the history of a doctrine which is so wide- 
 spread in all the villages, towns, and cities of the civilized 
 world, getting new converts every day— a doctrine with 
 which many of you are already tinged. 
 
 Spiritualism in this country was born in 1847, in Hydes- 
 ville, Wayne Countj^, New York, when one night there 
 was a loud rap heard against the door of Michael Week- 
 man ; 'a rap a second time, a rap a third time ; and all 
 three times, when the door was opened, there was nothing 
 found there, the knocking having been made seemingly 
 by invisible knuckles. In that same house there was a 
 young woman who had a cold hand passed over her fice, 
 and, there being seemingly no arm attached to it, ghostly 
 suspicions were excited. After a while, Mr. Fox and his 
 family moved into that house, and then eveiy night there 
 was a banging at the door; and one night Mr. Fox said, 
 "Are you a spirit?" Two raps, answering in the affirma- 
 tive. "Are you an injured spirit?" Two raps, answering 
 in the affirmative. And so they found out, as they say. 
 
62 THE RELIGION OF GHOSTS. 
 
 tliat it was tlie gbost or spirit of a peddler wlio bad been 
 murdered in that house, many years before, for bis five 
 hundred dollars. Whether the ghost of the dead peddler 
 had come there to collect his five hundred dollars, or bis 
 bones, I can not say, not being a spiritualist; but there 
 was a great racket at the door, so Mr. Weekman declared, 
 and Mrs. Weekman, and Mr. Fox, and Mrs. Fox, and all 
 the little Foxes. The excitement spread. There was a 
 universal rumpus. The Honorable Judge Edmonds de- 
 clared, in a book, that he had actually seen a bell start 
 from the top shelf of a closet, heard it ring over the people 
 that were standing in the closet; then, swung by invisible 
 hands, it rang over the people in the back parlor, and 
 floated through the folding-doors to the front parlor; rang 
 over the people there, and then dropped on the floor. IST. 
 P. Talmage, Senator of the United States, afterward Gov- 
 ernor of Wisconsin, had his head completely turned with 
 spiritualistic demonstrations. A man, as he was passing 
 along the road, said that he was lifted uj) bodih'-, and car- 
 ried toward his home through the air at such great speed 
 he could not count the posts on the fence as he passed; 
 and, as he had a hand-saw and a square in his hand, they 
 beat as he passed through the air most delightful music. 
 And the tables tipped, and the stools tilted, and the bed- 
 steads raised, and the chairs upset, and it seemed as if the 
 spirits everywhere had gone into the furniture business! 
 Well, the people said, " We have got something new in 
 this country ; it is a new religion." Oh no, my friends. 
 Thousands of years ago we find in our text a spiritualistic 
 sdance. Nothing in the spiritualistic circles of our day has 
 been more strange, mysterious, and wonderful than things 
 which have been seen in the past centuries of tlie world. 
 
THE RELIGION OF GHOSTS. 63 
 
 In all the ages there have been necromancers, those who 
 consult with the spirits of the departed; charmers, those 
 who put their subjects in a mesmeric state ; sorcerers, those 
 who by taking poisonous drugs see every thing, and hear 
 every thing, and tell every thing; dreamers, people who in 
 their sleeping moments can see the future world and hold 
 consultation with spirits; astrologers, who could read a 
 new dispensation in the stars; experts in palmistry, who 
 can tell by the lines in the palm of your hand your origin 
 and your history. From a cave on Mount Parnassus, we 
 are told, there was an exhalation that intoxicated the sheep 
 and the goats that came anywhere near it; and a shep- 
 herd approaching it was thrown by that exhalation into an 
 excitement in which he could foretell future events, and 
 hold consultation with the spiritual world. Yea, before 
 the time of Christ the Brahmins went through all the ta- 
 ble-moving, all the furniture excitement, which the spirits 
 have exploited in our day; precisely the same thing, over 
 and over again, under the manipulations of the Brahmins. 
 Now, do you say that spiritualism is different from these? 
 I answer, all these delusions I have mentioned belonsr to 
 the same flimily. They are exhumations from the unseen 
 world. What does God think of all these delusions? He 
 thinks so severely of them that he never speaks of them 
 but with livid thunders of indignation. He says, "I will 
 be a swift witness against the sorcerer." He says, "Thou 
 shalt not suffer a witch to live." And lest you might 
 make some important distinction between spiritualism and 
 witchcraft, God says, in so many words, " There shall not be 
 among you a consulter of familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a 
 necromancer; for all that do these things are an abomina- 
 tion unto the Lord." And he says again, " The soul that 
 
Q4: THE EELIGION OF GHOSTS. 
 
 turnetli after such as have familiar spirits, and after wiz- 
 ards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face 
 against that soul, and will cut him off from among his peo- 
 ple." The Lord Almighty, in a score of passages which I 
 have not now time to quote, utters his indignation against 
 all this great family of delusions. After that, be a spiritu- 
 alist if you dare! 
 
 Still further, we learn from this text how it is thai jyeople 
 come to fall into spiritualism. Saul had enough trouble to 
 kill ten men. He did not know where to go for relief. 
 After a while he resolved to go and see the Witch of 
 En-dor. He expected that somehow she would afford him 
 relief. It was his trouble that drove him there. And I 
 have to tell you now that spiritualism finds its victims in 
 the troubled, the bankrupt, the sick, the bereft. You lose 
 3^our watch, and you go to the fortune-teller to find where 
 it is. You are sick with a strange disease, and you go 
 to a clairvoyant to find out by a lock of hair what is 
 the matter with you. You lose a friend, 3'ou want the 
 spiritual world opened, so that 3'Ou may have communica- 
 tion with him. In a highly wrought, nervous, and diseased 
 state of mind, you go and put yourself in that communica- 
 tion. That is why I hate spiritualism. It takes advan- 
 tage of one in a moment of weakness, which may come 
 npon us at any time. We lose a friend. The trial is keen, 
 sharp, suffocating, almost maddening. If we could marshal 
 a host, and storm the eternal world, and recapture our 
 loved one, the host would soon be marshaled. The house 
 is so loncl}^ The world is so dark. The separation is so 
 insufferable. But spiritualism says, "We will open the 
 future world, and your loved one can come back and talk 
 to you." Though we may not hear his voice, we may 
 
THE RELIGION OF GHOSTS. 65 
 
 hear the rap of his hand. So, clear the table. Sit down. 
 Pat your hands on the table. Be very quiet. Five min- 
 utes 2;one. Ten minutes. No motion of the table. No re- 
 sponse from the future world. Twenty minutes. Thirty 
 minutes. Nervous excitement all the time increasing. 
 Forty minutes. The table shivers. Two raps from the 
 future world. The letters of the alphabet are called over. 
 The departed friend's name is John. At the pronuncia- 
 tion of the letter "J," two raps. At the pronunciation of 
 the letter " 0," two raps. At the pronunciation of the let- 
 ter "H," two raps. At the pronunciation of the letter 
 " N," two raps. There you have the whole name spelled 
 out. J-o-h-n, John. Now, the spirit being present, 3'ou 
 say, "John, are you happy?" Two raps give an affirma- 
 tive answer. Pretty soon the hand of the medium begins 
 to twitch and toss, and begins to write out, after paper and 
 ink are furnished, a message from the eternal world. What 
 is remarkable, the departed spirit, although it has been 
 amidst the illuminations of heaven, can not spell as well as 
 it used to! It has lost all grammatical accuracy, and can 
 not write as distinctly. I received a letter through a me- 
 dium once, I sent it back. I said, "Just please to tell 
 those ghosts they had better go to school and get improved 
 in their orthography!'' Now, just think of spirits that 
 the Bible represents as enthroned in glory coming down 
 to crawl under the table, and break crockery, and ring tea- 
 bells befoi'c supper is ready, and rap the window-shutter 
 on a gusty night ! Is there any consolation in such poor, 
 miserable work compared with the thought that our de- 
 parted Christian friends, rid of pain and languishing, are 
 in the radiant society of heaven, and that we shall join them 
 there, not in a stifled and mysterious half- utterance which 
 
QQ THE BELIGION OF GHOSTS. 
 
 makes the hair stand on end and the cold chills creep 
 tlie back, but in an unhindered and illimitable delight? 
 
 "And none shall murmur or misdoubt, 
 AVlien God"s great sunrise finds us out." 
 
 Yes, my friends, spiritualism comes to those who are in 
 trouble, and sweeps them into its delusions. Saul, in the 
 midst of his disaster, went to the Witch of En-dor. The 
 vast majority of those who have gone to spiritual mediums 
 have been sent there through their misfortunes. 
 
 I learn still further from this subject, that spiritualism 
 and necromancy are affairs of the darlcness. Why did not 
 Saul go in the day-time? He was ashamed to go. Be- 
 sides that, he knew that this spiritual medium, like all her 
 successors, performed her exploits in the night. The Dav- 
 enports, the Fowlers, the Foxes, the spiritual mediums of 
 all ages, have chosen the night or a darkened room. Why ? 
 The majority of their wonders have been swindles, and de- 
 ception prospers best in the night. 
 
 Some of the performances of spii'itual mediums are not 
 to be ascribed to fraud, but to some occult law that after a 
 while may be demonstrated. But I believe that now nine 
 hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand achieve- 
 ments on the part of spiritual mediums are arrant and un- 
 mitigated humbug. The mysterious red letters that used 
 to come out on the medium's arm were found to have been 
 made by an iron pencil that went heavily over the flesh, 
 not tearing it, but disturbing the blood so it came up in 
 great round letters. The witnesses of the seance have 
 locked the door, put the ke}^ in their pocket, arrested the 
 operator, and found out by searching the room that hidden 
 levers moved the tables. The sealed letters that were mys- 
 teriously read without opening have been found to have 
 
THE RELIGION OF GHOSTS. 67 
 
 been cut at the side, and then afterward slyly pot together 
 with gum arable; and the medium who, with a heavy 
 blanket over his head, could read a book has been found 
 to have had a bottle of phosphoi'io oil, by the light of which 
 any body can read a book ; and ventriloquism, and leger- 
 demain, and sleight-of-hand, and optical delusion account 
 for nearly every thing. Deception being the main staple 
 of spiritualism, no wonder it chooses the darkness. 
 . You have all seen stran2;e and unaccountable thing-s in 
 the night. Almost every man has some time had a touch 
 of hallucination. Some time ago, after I had been over- 
 tempted to eat something indigestible before retiring at 
 night, after retiring I saw the president of one of the 
 prominent colleges astride the foot of the bed, while he de- 
 manded of me a loan of five cents ! When I awakened I 
 had no idea it was any thing supernatural. And I have 
 to advise you, if j-ou hear and see strange things at night, 
 to stop eating hot mi nee -pie and take a dose of bilious 
 medicine. It is an outraged physical organism, and not a 
 call from the future world. Spiritualism, knowing that it 
 is able to deceive the very elect after sundown, does nearly 
 all its work in the night. The Witch of En-dor held her 
 seances at night; so do all the witches. Away with this 
 religion of spooks ! 
 
 Still further: I learn from my text that spiritualism is 
 doom and death to its disciples. King Saul thought that he 
 would get help from the " medium ;" but the first thing 
 that he sees makes him swoon awaj^, and no sooner is he 
 resuscitated than he is told he must die. Spiritualism is 
 doom and death to every one that yields to it. It ruins 
 the body. Look in upon an audience of spiritualists. Ca- 
 daverous. Weak. Nervous. Exhausted. Hands clammy 
 
68 THE RELIGION OF GHOSTS. 
 
 and cold, Nothing prospers but long hair — soft marshes 
 yielding rank grass. Spiritualism destroj-s the physical 
 health. Its disciples are ever hearing startling news from 
 the other world. Strange beings crossing the room in 
 white. Table fidgetj', wanting to get its feet loose as if to 
 dance. Voices sepulchral and ominous. Bewildered with 
 raps. 
 
 I never knew a confirmed spiritualist who had a healthy 
 nervous system. It is incipient epilepsy and catalepsy. 
 Destroy your nervous system, and you might as w^ell be 
 dead. I have noticed that people who are hearing raps 
 from the future w^orld have but little strength left to bear 
 the hard raps of this world. It is an awful tiling to trifle 
 with one's nervous system. It is so delicate, it is so fl^r- 
 reaching, its derangements are so terrible. Get the nerv^- 
 ous system a-jangle, and, so far as 3'our body and soul are 
 concerned, the whole universe is a-jangle. Better, in our 
 ignorance, experiment with a chemist's retort that may 
 smite us dead, or with an engineer's steam-boiler that may 
 blow us to atoms, than experiment with the nervous sys- 
 tem. A man can live with only one lung or with no eyes, 
 and be hn})p3\ as men have been under such afflictions ; 
 but woe be to the man whose nerves are shattered ! Spir- 
 itualism smites first of all and mightily against the nervous 
 system, and so makes life miserable. 
 
 I indict spiritualism, also, because it is a social and man- 
 ial curse. The w^orst deeds of licentiousness and the worst 
 orgies of obscenity have been enacted under its patronage. 
 The story is too vile for me to tell. I will not pollute my 
 tongue nor your ears with the recital. Sometimes the civil 
 law has been evoked to stop the outrage. Families in- 
 numerable have been broken up by it. It has pushed off 
 
THE RELIGION OF GHOSTS. 69 
 
 Imndrecls of young women into a life of profligac3^ It 
 talks about "elective affinities," and "affinital relations," 
 and "spiritual matches," and adopts the whole vocabulary 
 of free-lovism. In one of its public journals it declares 
 "marriage is the monster curse of civilization ;'' that "it is 
 a source of debauchery and intemperance." If spiritual- 
 ism could have its full swing, it would turn this world 
 into a pandemonium of carnality. It is an unclean, adul- 
 terous, damnable religion, and the sooner it drops into the 
 hell fi'om which it rose, the better both for earth and 
 heaven. For the sake of man's honor and woman's puri- 
 ty, I say let the last vestige of it perish forever. I wish I 
 could gather up all the raps it has ever heard from spirits 
 blest or damned, and gather them all on its own head in 
 one thundering rap of annihilation ! 
 
 I further indict spiritualism for the fact that it is the 
 cause of much insanity. There is not an asjdum between 
 Bangor and San Francisco which has not the torn and 
 bleeding victims of this delusion. Go into any asylum, I 
 care not where it is, and the presiding doctor, after you 
 have asked him, "What is the matter M'ith that man?" 
 will say, "Spiritualism demented him;" or, "What is the 
 matter with that woman?" he will say, "Spiritualism de- 
 mented her." It has taken down some of the brightest 
 intellects. It swept off into mental midnight judges, sen- 
 ators, governors, ministers of the Gospel, and one time 
 came near capturing one of the presidents of the United 
 States. At Flushing, near this city, a man became ab- 
 sorbed with it, forsook his family, took his only fifteen 
 thousand dollars, surrendered them to a spiritual medium 
 in New York, attempted three times to put an end to his 
 owni life, and then was incarcerated in the State Lunatic 
 
70 THE BELIGIOX OF GHOSTS. 
 
 Asylum, where he is to-day a raving maniac. Put 3'our 
 hand in the hand of this Witch of En-dor, and she will 
 lead you to bottomless perdition, where she holds her 
 everlasting seance. 
 
 Many years ago the steamer Atlantic started from Eu- 
 rope for the United States. Getting mid -ocean, the ma- 
 chinery broke, and she floundered around day after day 
 and week after week ; and, for a whole month after she was 
 due, people wondered, and finally gave her up. There was 
 great anguish in the cities, for there were many who had 
 friends aboard that vessel. Some of the women, in their 
 distress, went to the spiritual mediums, and inquired as to 
 the fate of that vessel. The mediums called up the spirits, 
 and the rnppings on the table indicated the steamship lost, 
 with all on board. Women went raving mad, and were 
 carried to the lunatic asylum. After a while one day a 
 gun was heard off Quarantine. The flags went up on the 
 shipping, and the bells of the churches were rung. The 
 boys ran through the streets, crying " Extra ! The Atlantic 
 is safe!" There was the. embracing as from the dead, when 
 friends came again to friends ; but some of those passen- 
 gers went up to find their wives in the lunatic asylum, 
 where this cheat of infernal spiritualism had put them. A 
 man in Bellevue Hospital, dying from wounds made by his 
 own hand, was asked why he had tried to commit suicide, 
 and he said, " The spirits told me to." Parents have stran- 
 gled their children, and when asked why they did it, re- 
 plied, "Spiritualism demanded it." It is the patronizer 
 and forager for the mad -house. Judge Edmonds, in the 
 Broadway Tabernacle, New York, delivering a lecture in 
 behalf of spiritualism, admitted, in so many words, "There 
 is a fascination about consultation with the spirits of the 
 
THE RELIGION OF GHOSTS. 71 
 
 dead that Las a tendency to lead people off from their I'ight 
 judgment, and to instill into them a fanaticism that is re- 
 volting to the natural mind." 
 
 It not only ruins its disciples, but it ruins the mediums 
 also, only give it time. The Gaderean swine, on the banks 
 of the Lake of Galilee, no sooner became spiritual mediums 
 than down they went in an avalanche of pork, to the con- 
 sternation of all the herdsmen. The office of a medium is 
 bad for a man, bad for a woman, bad for a beast. 
 
 I bring against this delusion a more fearful indictment: 
 it ruins the soul immortal. First, it makes a man a quarter 
 of an infidel; then it makes him half an infidel; then it 
 makes him a whole infidel. The entire sj-stem, as I con- 
 ceive it, is founded on the insufficiency of the Word of 
 God as a revelation. God says the Bible is enough fur 
 you to know about the future world. You say it is not 
 enough, and there is where you and the Lord differ. You 
 clear the table, 3-011 shove aside the Bible, you put your 
 hand on the table, and saj^, "Now, let spirits of the future 
 world come and tell me something the Bible has not told 
 me." And although the Scriptures say, "Add thou not 
 unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a 
 liar," you risk it, and sa}^, "Come back, spirit of my de- 
 parted fiither; come back, spirit of my departed mother, 
 of my companion, of my little child, and tell me some 
 things I don't know about you and about the unseen 
 world." If God is ever slapped square in the face it is 
 when a spiritual medium puts down her hand on the table, 
 invoking spirits departed to make a revelation. God has 
 told you all you ought to know, and how dare you be pry- 
 ing into that which is none of your business? You can 
 not keep the Bible in one hand and spiritualism in the 
 
72 THE RELIGION OF GHOSTS. 
 
 Other. One or the other willslip out of your grasp, de- 
 pend upon it. Spiritualism is adverse to the Bible in the 
 fact that it has in these last days called from the future 
 world Christian men to testify against Christianity. Its 
 mediums call back Lorenzo Dow, the celebrated evangelist, 
 and Lorenzo Dow testifies that Christians are idolaters. 
 Spiritualism calls back Tom Paine, and he testifies that he 
 is stopping in the same bouse in heaven with John Bun- 
 yan. They call back John Wesley, and he testifies against 
 the Christian religion which he all his life gloriously 
 preached, Andrew Jackson Davis, the greatest of all the 
 spiritualists, comes to the front and declares that the New 
 Testament is but "the dismal echo of a barbaric ago," and 
 the Bible only "one of the pen-and-ink relics of Christian- 
 ity." They attempt to substitute the writings of Sweden- 
 borg, and Andrew Jackson Davis, and other religious bal- 
 derdash, in the place of this old Bible. I have in my 
 house a book which was used in this very city in the pub- 
 lic service of spiritualists. It is well worn with much 
 service. I open that book, and it says, " What is our bap- 
 tism? Answer, Frequent ablutions of water. What is 
 our inspiration? Plenty of fresh air and sunlight. What 
 is our prayer? Abundant ph3^sical exercise. What is our 
 love-feast? A clear conscience and sound sleep." And I 
 find from the same book that the chief item in their pub- 
 lic worship is gymnastic exercise; and that whenever they 
 want to rouse up their souls to a very high pitch of devo- 
 tion thoy sing page sixty-five, "The night has gathered up 
 her moonlit fringes ;" or page sixteen, " Come to the 
 woods, heigh-ho!" You say you are not such a fool as 
 that; but you will be if you keep on in the track in which 
 you have started. 
 
THE BELIGION OF GHOSTS. 73 
 
 "Bat," says some one, "wouldn't it be of advantage to 
 bear from the future world ? Don't you think it would 
 strengthen Christians? There are a great many materi- 
 alists who do not believe there are souls; but if spirits 
 from the future world should knock and talk over to us, 
 we would all be persuaded." To that I answer in the ring- 
 ing words of the Son of God, " If they believe not Moses 
 and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though 
 one rose from the dead." 
 
 Now I believe, under God, that this sermon will save 
 man}' from disease, insanity, and perdition. I believe these 
 are the days of which the apostle spake when he said, " In 
 the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving 
 heed to seducing spirits," I think my audience, as well as 
 other audiences in this day, need to have reiterated in their 
 hearing the passages I quoted some minutes ago, " There 
 shall not be among you a consul ter of familiar spirits, or 
 a wizard, or a necromancer; for they that do these things 
 are an abomination unto the Lord ;" and " The soul that 
 turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wiz- 
 ards, I will even set my flice against that soul, and will 
 cut him off from among his people." 
 
 But I invite you this morning to a Christian seance, a 
 noonday seance. This congregation is only one great fam- 
 ily. Here is the church table. Come around the church 
 table, take your seats for this great Christian seance, put 
 your Bible on the table, put your hands on the top of the 
 Bible, and then listen, and hear if there are any voices 
 coming from the eternal world. I think there are. Listen ! 
 "Secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but those 
 things which are revealed belong unto ns and to our chil- 
 dren." Surely that is a voice from the spirit-world ! But, 
 
 4r 
 
7-± THE RELIGION OF GHOSTS. 
 
 before you rise from this Christian seance, I want you to 
 promise me you will be satisfied with the Divine revelation 
 until the light of the Eternal Throne breaks upon your vis- 
 ion. Do not go after the Witch of En-dor. Do not sit 
 down at table-rappings, either in sport or in dead earnest. 
 Have your tables so well made and their legs so even that 
 they will not tip and rattle. If the table must move, let 
 it be under the offices of industrious housewifer\'. Teach 
 your children there are no ghosts to be seen or heard in 
 this world save those which walk on two feet or four, hu- 
 man or bestial. Kemember that spiritualism at the best 
 is a useless thing; for if it tells what the Bible reveals it is 
 a superfluity, and if it tells what the Bible docs not reveal 
 it is a lie. Instead of going out to get other people to 
 tell your fortune, tell your own fortune by putting your 
 trust in God and doing the best you can. I will tell your 
 fortune: "All things work together for good to them who 
 love God." Insult not your departed friends by asking 
 them to come down and scrabble under an extension-table. 
 Eemember that there is only one Spirit whose dictation 
 you have a right to invoke, and that is the holy, blessed, 
 and omnipotent Spirit of God. Hark ! He is rapping 
 now, not on a table or the floor, but rapping on the door 
 of your heart; and every rap is an invitation to Christ and 
 a warning of judgment to come. Oh, grieve him not away ! 
 Quench him not. He has been all around you this morn- 
 ing. He was all around you last night. He has been 
 around you all your lives. Hark ! There comes a voice 
 dropping through the roof, breaking through the window, 
 filling all this house from door to door and from floor to 
 ceiling with tender and overmastering intonation, saying, 
 "My spirit shall not always strive." 
 
SNOW-WATER AND ALKALI INSUFFICIENT. 75 
 
 SNOW-WATER AND ALKALI INSUFFICIENT. 
 
 " If I wash myself with snow-water, and should I cleanse my hands in 
 alkali, yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall ab- 
 hor me." — Job ix., 30, 31. 
 
 ALBERT BARNES— honored be bis name on earth 
 and in lieaven — went straight back to the original 
 writing of my text, and translated it as I have now quoted 
 it, giving substantial reasons for so doing. Athough we 
 know better, the ancients had an idea that in snOw-water 
 there was a special power to cleanse, and that a garment 
 washed and rinsed in it would be as clean as clean could 
 be; but if the plain snow-water failed to do its work, then 
 they would take lye or alkali and mix it with oil, and 
 under tliat preparation they felt that the last impurity 
 would certainly be gone. Job, in my text, in most force- 
 ful figure sets forth the idea that all his attempts to make 
 himself pure before God were a dead failure, and that, 
 unless we are abluted by something better than earthly 
 liquids and chemical preparations, we are loathsome and in 
 the ditch. " If I wash myself with snow-water, and should 
 I cleanse my hands in alkali, yet shalt thou plunge me in 
 the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me." 
 
 You are now sitting for your picture. I turn the cam- 
 era obscura of God's word full upon you, and I pray that 
 the sunshine falling through the sky-light may enable me 
 to take you just as you are. Shall it be a flattering pict- 
 ure, or shall it be a true one? You say, "Let it be a 
 
76 JSJVOW-WATEJi AND ALKALI IXSVFFICIENT. 
 
 true one." The first profile that was ever taken was taken, 
 three hundred and thirty years before Christ, of Antigonus. 
 He had a blind eye, and he compelled the artist to take his 
 profile so as to hide the defect in his vision. But since 
 that invention, three hundred and thirty years before 
 Christ, there have been a great many profiles. Shall I to- 
 night give you a one-sided view of yourselves, a profile? 
 or shall it be a full-length portrait, showing you how you 
 stand before heaven and earth and hell? If God will 
 help me by his almighty grace, 1 shall give you that last 
 kind of a picture. 
 
 When I first entered the ministry, I used to write my 
 sermons all out and read them, and run my hand along 
 the line lest I should lose my place. I have hundreds of 
 those manuscripts. Shall I ever preach them? Never; 
 for in those days I was somehow overmastered with the 
 idea I heard talked all around about of the dignity of hu- 
 man nature, and I adopted the idea, and I evolved it, and 
 I illustrated it, and I argued it ; but coming on in life, and 
 having seen more of the world, and studied better my Bible, 
 I find that that early teaching was faulty, and that there is 
 no dignity in human nature, until it is reconstructed by 
 the grace of God. Talk about vessels going to pieces on 
 the Skerries, off Ireland ! There never was such a ship- 
 wreck as in the Gihon and the Hiddekel, rivers of Eden, 
 where our first parents foundered. Talk of a steamer go- 
 ing down with five hundred passengers on board! What 
 is that to the shipwreck of twelve hundred million souls? 
 We are by nature a mass of uncleanness and putrefaction, 
 from which it takes all the omnipotence and infinitude 
 of God's grace to extricate us. "If I wash myself with 
 snow-water, and should I cleanse my hands in alkali, yet 
 
SXOW-WATEIi AND ALKALI INSUFFICIENT. 77 
 
 slialt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes 
 shall abhor me." 
 
 I remark, in the first place, that some people try to 
 cleanse their soul of sin in the snow-water oljine apologies. 
 Here is one man who says, "I am a sinner; I confess that: 
 but I inherited this. My father was a sinner, my grandfa- 
 ther, my great-great-grandfather, and all the way back to 
 Adam, and I couldn't help myself." My brother, have you 
 not, QVQvy day in your life, added something to the original 
 estate of sin that was bequeathed to you ? Are you not 
 brave enough to confess that you have sometimes surren- 
 dered to sin, which you ought to have conquered? I ask 
 you whether it is fair play to put upon our ancestry things 
 for which we ourselves are personally responsible ? If 
 your nature was askew when you got it, have you not 
 sometimes given it an additional twist? Will all the tomb- 
 stones of those who have preceded us make a barricade 
 hisfh enough for eternal defenses? I know a devout man 
 who had blasphemous parentage. I know an honest man 
 whose father was a thief I know a pure man whose 
 mother was a waif of the street. The hereditary tide may 
 be very strong, but there is such a thing as stemming it. 
 The fact that I have a corrupt nature is no reason why I 
 should yield to it. The deep stains of our soul can nev- 
 er be washed out by the snow-water of such insufficient 
 apology. 
 
 Still further, says some one, "If I have gone into sin, it 
 has been through my companions, my comrades, and asso- 
 ciates ; they ruined me. They taught me to drink. They 
 took me to the gambling-hell. They plunged me into the 
 house of sin. They ruined my soul." I do not believe it. 
 God gave to no one the power to destroy you or me. If 
 
78 SXOW-WATJEH AXB ALKALI IXSUFFICIEXT. 
 
 a man is destro3^ed, he is self-clcstroycd, and that is always 
 so. Why did you not break away from them ? If they 
 had tried to steal 3^our purse, you would have knocked 
 them down ; if they had tried to purloin your gold watch, 
 you would have riddled them with shot; but when they 
 tried to steal your immortal soul, you placidly submitted 
 to it. Those bad fellows have a cup of fire to drink ; do 
 not pour your cup into it. In this matter of the soul, ev- 
 ery man for himself. That those persons are not fully re- 
 sponsible for your sin, I prove by the fact that you still 
 consort with them. Your- affinities are with them ; you 
 stay with them, and there is some j)rospect that you will 
 stay with them forever. Perhaps you may have adjoining 
 dungeons. Perhaps you may be fastened to opposite ends 
 of the same chain. Perhaps you may carry different parts 
 of the same groan. You can not get off" by blaming them. 
 Though 3'OU gather up all these apologies ; though there 
 were a great flood of them ; though they should come 
 down with the force of the melting snows from Lebanon 
 and the Himalayas, they could not wash out one stain of 
 your immortal soul. 
 
 Still further, some persons apologize for their sins by. say- 
 ing, "We are a great deal better than some people. You 
 see people all around about us tliat are a great deal worse 
 than we." You stand up columnar in your integrity, and 
 look down upon those who are prostrate in their habits and 
 crimes. What of that, my brother? If I failed through 
 recklessness and wicked imprudence for ten thousand dol- 
 lars, is the matter alleviated at all by the fact that some- 
 body else has failed for one hundred thousand dollars, and 
 somebody else for two hundred thousand dollars? Oh no. 
 If I have the neuralgia, shall I refuse medical attendance 
 
SXOW-WATEE AND ALKALI INSUFFICIENT. 79 
 
 because my neiglibor has virulent typhoid fever? The 
 fact that his disease is worse than mine — does that cure 
 mine? If I, through my foolhardiness, leap off into eternal 
 woe, does it break the fall to know that others leap off a 
 higher cliff into deeper darkness? When the Hudson 
 Eiver rail-train went through the bridge at Spuyten Duy- 
 vel, did it alleviate the matter at all that instead of two or 
 three people being hurt there were seventy-five mangled 
 and crushed? Because others are depraved, is that any 
 excuse for my depravity? Am I better than they? Per- 
 haps they had worse temptations than I have had. Per- 
 haps their surroundings in life were more overpowering. 
 Perhaps, man, if you had been under the same stress 
 of temptation, instead of sitting here to-night, you would 
 have been looking through the bars of a penitentiary. 
 Perhaps, woman, if you had been under the same power 
 of temptation, instead of sitting here to-night, 3^ou would 
 be tramping the street, the laughing-stock of men and the 
 grief of the angels of God, dungeoned, body, mind, and soul, 
 in the blackness of despair. Ali, do not let us solace our- 
 selves with the thought that other people are worse than 
 wc Perhaps in the future, when our fortunes may change, 
 unless God prevents it, we may be worse than they are. 
 Many a man after thirty years, after forty 3'ears, after fifty 
 years, after sixty years, has gone to pieces on the sand-bars. 
 Oh! instead of wasting our time in hypercriticism about 
 others, let us ask ourselves the questions, Where do we 
 stand? what are our sins? what are our deficits? what are 
 our perils? what our hopes? Let each one say to himself, 
 "Where will I be? Shall I range in summery fields, or 
 grind in the mills of a great night? Shall it be anthem 
 or shriek? Shall it be with God or fiends? Where? 
 Where?" 
 
80 SNOW-WATFE AND ALKALI INSUFFICIENT. 
 
 Some "winter morning you go out and see a snow-bank 
 in graceful drifts, as though by some heavenly compass it 
 had been curved ; and as the sun glints it the lustre is al- 
 most insufferable, and it seems as if God had wrapped the 
 earth in a shroud with white plaits woven in looms celes- 
 tial. And you saj^, "Was there. ever any thing so pure as 
 the snow, so beautiful as the snow ?" But you brought a 
 pail of that snow, and put it upon the stove and melted it; 
 and you found that there was a sediment at the bottom, and 
 every drop of that snow-water was riled; and you found 
 that the snow-bank had gathered up the impurity of the 
 field, and that, after all, it was not fit to wash in. And so 
 I say it will be if you try to gather up these contrasts and 
 comparisons with others, and with these apologies attempt 
 to wash out the sins of your heart and life. It will be an 
 unsuccessful ablution. Such snow-water will never wash 
 away a single stain of an immortal soul. 
 
 But I hear some one say, "I will try something better 
 than that. I will try the force of a good resolution. That 
 will be more pungent, more caustic, more extirpating, more 
 cleansing. The snow-water has failed, and now I will try 
 the alkali of a good, strong resolution." My dear brother, 
 have you any idea that a resolution about the future wall 
 liquidate the past? Suppose I owed you five thousand 
 dollars, and I should come to you to-morrow, and say, 
 *' Sir, I will never run in debt to you again ; if I should 
 live thirty years, I will never run in debt to you again ;" 
 will you turn to me and say, "If you will not run in debt 
 in the future, I will forgive you the five thousand dollars." 
 Will you do that? No! Nor will God. We have been 
 running up a long score of indebtedness with God. If for 
 the future we should abstain from sin, that would be no 
 
SA'OW-WATEIi AND ALKALI INSUFFICIENT. 81 
 
 defrayment of past indebtedness. Though you should live 
 from this time forth pure as an archangel before the throne, 
 that would not redeem the past. God, in the Bible, dis- 
 tinctly declares that he "will require that whicli is past" 
 — past opportunities, past neglects, past wicked words, past 
 impure imaginations, past every thing. The past is a great 
 cemetery, and every day is buried in it. And here is a 
 long row of three hundred and sixty-five graves. They 
 are the dead days of 1873. Here is a long row of three 
 hundred and sixty-five more graves, and i\\ey are the dead 
 days of 1872, And here is a long row of three hundred 
 and sixty-five more graves, and they are the dead days of 
 1871. It is a vast cemetery of the past. But God will 
 rouse them all up with resurrectionary blast, and as the 
 prisoner stands face to face with juror and judge, so you 
 and I will have to come up and look upon those departed 
 days face to face, exulting in their smile or cowering in 
 their frown. 
 
 "Murder will out" is a proverb that stops too short. 
 Every sin, however small as well as great, will out. In 
 hard times in England, years ago, it is authentically stated 
 that a manufacturer was on the way, with a bag of money, 
 to pay off his hands. A man infuriated with hunger met 
 him on the road, and took a rail with a nail in it from a 
 paling fence, and struck him down, and the nail entering 
 the skull instantly slew him. Thirty years after that the 
 murderer went back to that place. He passed into the 
 grave-yard, where the sexton was digging a grave, and 
 while he stood there the spade of the sexton turned up a 
 skull, and, lo ! the murderer saw a nail protruding from 
 the back part of the skull ; and as the sexton turned the 
 skull, it seemed with hollow eyes to glare on the murderer; 
 
 4^ 
 
82 SXOW-WATEE AND ALKALI INSUFFICIENT. 
 
 and he, first petrified with horror, stood in silence, but 
 soon cried out, "Guilty! guilty! God!" The mystery 
 of the crime was over. The man was tried and executed. 
 My friends, all the unpardoned sins of our lives, though 
 we may think they are buried out of sight and gone into 
 a mere skeleton of memory, will turn up in the cemetery 
 of the past, and glower upon us with their misdoings. I 
 say all our unpardoned sins. Ob, have you done the pre- 
 posterous thing of supposing that good resolutions for the 
 future will wipe out the past? Good resolutions, though 
 they may be pungent and caustic as alkali, have no power 
 to neutralize a sin, have no power to wash away a trans- 
 gression. It wants something more than earthly chem- 
 istry to do this. Yea, yea, though "I wash myself with 
 snow-water, and should I cleanse my hands in alkali, yet 
 shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes 
 shall abhor me." 
 
 You see from the last part of this text that Job's idea 
 of sin was very different from that of Lord Byron, or Eu- 
 gene Sue, or George Sand, or M. J. Michelet, or any of the 
 hundreds of writers wdio have done up iniquity in mezzo- 
 tint, and garlanded the wine-cup with eglantine and rose- 
 mary, and made the path of the libertine end in bowers 
 of ease instead of on the hot flagging of infernal torture. 
 You see that Job thinks that sin is not a flowery parterre; 
 that it is not a table-land of fine prospects; that it is not 
 music, dulcimer, violoncello, Castanet, and Pandean pipes, 
 all making music together. No. lie says it is a ditch, 
 long, deep, loathsome, stenchful, and we are all plunged 
 into it, and there we wallow and sink and struggle, not 
 able to get out. Our robes of propriety and robes of 
 worldly profession are saturated in the slime and abomina- 
 
SNOW-WATER AND ALKALI INSUFFICIENT. , 83 
 
 tion, and our soul, covered over ^Yitll transgression, bates 
 its covering, and the covering bates the soul, until we are 
 plunged into the ditch, and our own clothes abhor us. 
 
 I know that some modern religionists caricature sorrow 
 for sin, and they make out an easier path than the "pil- 
 grim's progress" that John Bunj^an dreamed of. The 
 road they travel does not start where John's did, at the 
 city of Destruction, but at the gate of the university ; and 
 I am very certain that it will not come out where John's 
 did, under the shining ramparts of the celestial city. No 
 repentance, no pardon. If you do not, my brother, feel 
 that you are down in the ditch, what do you want of 
 Christ to lift you out? If you have no appreciation of 
 the fact that you are astray, what do you want of Ilim who 
 came to seek and save that which was lost? Yonder is 
 the Scoi/'a, the swiftest of the Cunarders, coming across the 
 Atlantic. The wind is abaft, so that she has not only her 
 engines at work, but all sails up. I am on board the 
 Spain, of the National line. The boat-davits are swung 
 around. The boat is lowered. I get into it with a red 
 flag, and cross over to where the /Scotia is coming, and I 
 wave the flng. The captain looks off from the bridge, and 
 says, "What do you want?" I reply, "I come to take 
 some of 5^our passengers across to the other vessel; I think 
 they will be safer and happier there." The captain would 
 look down with indignation and sa}^, " Get out of the way, 
 or I will run you down." And then I would back oars, 
 amidst the jeering of two or three hundred people looking 
 over the taflfrail. But the Sjmm and the Scotia meet under 
 different circumstances after a while. The Scotia is com- 
 ing out of a cyclone; the life-boats all smashed; the bul- 
 warks gone ; the wheel off; the vessel rapidly going down. 
 
81 SNOW-WATER AND ALKALI INSUFFICIENT. 
 
 The boatswain gives Lis last whistle of despairing com- 
 mand. The passengers run up and down the deck, and 
 some pray, and all make a great outcry. The captain 
 says, " You have about fifteen minutes now to prepare for 
 the next world." "No hope!" sounds from stem to stern, 
 and from the ratlines down to the cabin. I see the dis- 
 tress. I am let down by the side of the Spain. I push 
 off as fast as I can toward the sinking Scotia. Before I 
 come up, people are leaping into the water in their anxiety 
 to get to the boat, and when I have swung up under the 
 side of the Scotia, the frenzied passengers rush through the 
 gangway until the officers, with axe and clubs and pistols, 
 try to keep back the crowd, each wanting his turn to come 
 next. There is but one life-boat, and they all want to get 
 into it, and the cry is, "Me next! me next!" You see 
 the application before I make it. As long as a man going 
 on in his sin feels that all is well, that he is coming out at 
 a beautiful port, and has all sail set, he wants no Christ, he 
 wants no help, he wants no rescue ; but if under the flash 
 of God's convicting spirit he shall see that by reason of 
 sin he is dismasted and water-logged, and going down into 
 the trough of a sea where he can not live, how soon he 
 puts the sea-glass to his eye and sweeps the horizon, and 
 at the first sign of help cries out, "I want to be saved. I 
 want to be saved now. I want to be saved forever." No 
 sense of danger, no application for rescue. 
 
 Oh that God's eternal spirit would flash upon us a sense 
 of our sinfulness! The Bible tells the story in letters of 
 fire, but we get used to it. We joke about sin. We make 
 merry over it. What is sin ? Is it a trifling thing? Sin 
 is a vampire that is sucking out the life-blood of your im- 
 mortal nature. Sin? Tt is a B:istile tliat no earthly key 
 
SNOW-WATFR AND ALKALI INSUFFICIENT. 85 
 
 ever unlocked. Sin ? It is expatriation from God and 
 lieaven. Sin? It is grand larceny against the Almight}^, 
 for the Bible asks the question, " Will a man rob God?" 
 answering it in the affirmative. This Gospel is a writ of 
 replevin to recover property unlawfully detained from God. 
 
 The bell at the gate of Greenwood tolls. The procession 
 goes through, and ropes are wrapped around the casket, 
 and the casket lowered five or six feet; but the body in- 
 side the casket is no more dead than is every man until 
 he has been regenerated by the grace of God. It is not 
 my say so, but the Bible, w^iich pronounces us dead, dead 
 in trespasses and in sins. The maniac who puts around 
 his brow a bunch of straw, and thinks it is a crown, and 
 holds in his hand a stick, and thinks it is a sceptre, 
 and gathers up some pebbles, and thinks they are dia- 
 monds, is no more beside himself than is every one who 
 has not accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal 
 Saviour; for the Bible, in the parable, intimates that every 
 prodigal is beside himself, in phantasia, in delirium, in 
 madness. 
 
 In the Shetland Islands there is a man with leprosy. Tlie 
 hollow of the foot has swollen until it is flat on the ground. 
 The joints begin to fall away. The ankle thickens until 
 it looks like the foot of a wild beast. A stare unnatural 
 comes to the eye. The nostril is constricted. The voice 
 drops to an almost inaudible hoarseness. Tubercles blotch 
 the whole body, and from them tkere comes an exudation 
 that is unbearable to the beholder. That is leprosy, and 
 we have all got it unless cleansed by the grace of God. 
 See Leviticus. See Second Kings. See Mark. See Luke. 
 See fifty Bible allusions and confirmations. If these things 
 be so, should I not tell you ? 
 
86 SXOW-WATFR AND ALKALI IXSUFFICIENT. 
 
 The Bible is not complimentary in its language. It 
 does not speak mincingly about our sins. It does not talk 
 apologetically. There is no vermilion in its style. It does 
 not cover up our transgressions with blooming metaphor. 
 It does not sing about them in weak falsetto ; but it thun- 
 ders cut, "The imagination of man's heart is evil from his 
 youth." "Every one has gone back. He has altogether 
 become filth3^ He is abominable and filth}^, and drinketh 
 in iniquity like water." And then the Lord Jesus Christ 
 flings down at our feet this humiliating catalogue, " Out 
 of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, for- 
 nication, murders, thefts, blasphemy." There is a text 
 for your rationalist to preach from! Oh, the dignity of 
 human nature ! There is an element of 3^our science of 
 man that the anthropologist never has had the courage yet 
 to touch ; and the Bible, in all the ins and outs of the most 
 forceful style, sets forth our natural pollution, and repre- 
 sents iniquity as a frightful thing, as an exhausting thing, 
 as a loathsome thing. It is not a mere bemiring of the 
 feet, it is not a mere befouling of the hands; it is going 
 down, head and ears under, in a ditch until our own clothes 
 abhor us. 
 
 My brethren, shall we stay down where sin thrusts us? 
 I shall not, if you do. We can not afford to. I have, to- 
 night, to tell you that there is something purer than snow- 
 water, something more pungent than alkali, and that is the 
 blood of Jesus Christ that cleanseth from all sin. A}^, the 
 river of salvation, bright, crystalline, and heaven -born, 
 rushes through this audience with billowy tide strong 
 enough to wash 3^our sins completely and forever awa3^ 
 O Jesus ! let the dam that holds it back now break, and the 
 floods of salvation roll over us. 
 
SyOW-WATUIi AND ALKALI INSUFFICIENT. 87 
 
 "Let tlie water and the blood, 
 From thy side a heahng fiood, 
 Be of sin the double cure, 
 Save from wrath and make me pure." 
 
 sinner! get down on botli knees and bathe in tliat flood 
 of mercy. A}^, strike out with both hands, and try to 
 swim to the other shore of this river of God's grace. To 
 you is the word of this salvation sent. Take this largess 
 of the Divine bounty. Though you have gone down in 
 the deepest ditch of libidinous desire and corrupt behavior, 
 though you have sworn all blasphemies until there is not 
 one sinful word left for you to speak, though you have 
 been submerged by the transgressions of a life-time, though 
 you are so far down in your sin that no earthly help can 
 touch your case— the Lord Jesus Christ bends overj'ou to- 
 night, and offers you his right hand, proposing to lift you 
 up, first making you whiter than snow, and then raising 
 you to glories that never die. " Billy," said a Christian 
 boot-black to another, " when we come up to heaven it 
 won't make any difference that we've been boot-blacks here, 
 for we shall get in, not somehow or other, but, Bill}^, we 
 shall get straight through the gate." Oh, if you only knew 
 how full and free and tender is the offer of Christ, this 
 night you would all take him without one single exception ; 
 and if all the doors of this house were locked save one, and 
 you were compelled to make egress by only one door, a\id 
 
 1 stood there and questioned you, and the Gospel of Christ 
 had made the right impression upon your heart to-night, 
 you would answer me as j^ou went out, one and all, "Jesus 
 is mine, and I am his!" Oh, that this might be the night 
 when you would receive him ! It is not a Gospel merely 
 for foot-pads and vagrants and buccaneers ; it is for the 
 
88 ;sxow-wati:r ajvd alkali insufficient. 
 
 highly joolislied and toe educated and the refined as well. 
 "Except a man be born again, he can not see the kingdom 
 of God." Whatever may be your associations, and what- 
 ever your worldly refinements, I must tell you, as before 
 God I expect to answer in the last day, that if you are not 
 changed by the grace of God, you are still down in the 
 ditch of sin, in the ditch of sorrow, in the ditch of condem- 
 nation ; a ditch that empties into a deeper ditch, the ditch 
 of the lost. But blessed be God for the lifting, cleansing, 
 lustrating power of his Gospel. 
 
 "The voice of free grace ciies, Escape to the mountain ; 
 For all that believe Christ has opened a fountain. 
 Hallelujah ! to the Lamb who liath bought us our pardon ; 
 We'll praise him again when we pass over Jordan." 
 
STUIFFIA'G THE SLAm. 89 
 
 STEIPPING THE SLAIN. 
 
 "And it came to pass on the morrow, M'lien the Philistines came to strip 
 the slain, that they found Saul and his three sons fallen in Mount Gilboa." — 
 1 Samuel xxxi., 8. 
 
 SOME of 3'ou were at South Mountain, or Sbiloli, or 
 Ball's Bluff, or Gettysburg, and I ask you if there is 
 any sadder sight than a battle-field after the guns have 
 stopped firing? I walked across the field of Antietani 
 just after the conflict. The scene was so sickening I shall 
 not describe it. Every valuable thing had been taken 
 from the bodies of the dead, for there are always vultures 
 hovering over and around about an army, and they pick 
 lip the watches, and the memorandum-books, and the let- 
 ters, and the daguerreotypes, and the hats, and the coats, 
 applying them to their own uses. The dead make no re- 
 sistance. So there are alwaj^s camp followers going on 
 after an army, as when Scott went down into Mexico, as 
 when Napoleon marched up toward Moscow, as when Von 
 Moltke went to Sedan. There is a similar scene in my 
 text. Saul and his army had been horribly cut to pieces. 
 Mount Gilboa was ghastly with the dead. On the mor- 
 row the stragglers came on to the field, and they lifted the 
 latchct of the helmet from under the chin of the dead, and 
 they picked up the swords and bent them on their knee to 
 test the temper of the metal, and they opened the wallets 
 and counted the coin. Saul lay dead along the ground, 
 eight or nine feet in length, and I suppose the cowardly 
 
90 STRIFPIXG THE SLAIN. 
 
 Philistines, to sLow their bravery, leaped upon the trunk 
 of his carcass, and jeered at the fallen slain, and whistled 
 throuafh the mouth of the helmet. Before nioht, those 
 cormorants had taken every thing valuable from the field. 
 "And it came to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines 
 came to strip the slain, that they found Saul and his three 
 sons fallen in Mount Gilboa." 
 
 Before I get through to-night, I will show you that the 
 same process is going on all the world over, and every 
 day ; and that when men have fallen, Satan and the world, 
 so far from pitjang them or helping them, go to work re- 
 morselessl}^ to take what little is left, thus stnpjnnj (Jie 
 slain. 
 
 There are tens of thousands of young men every year 
 coming from the country to our great cities. They come 
 with brave hearts and grand expectations. They think 
 they will be Eufus Choates in the law, or Drapers in chem- 
 istry, or A. T. Stewarts in merchandise. The country lads 
 sit down in the village grocery, with their feet on the iron 
 rod around the red-hot stove in the evening, talking over 
 the prospects of the young man who has gone off to the 
 city. Two or three of them think that perhaps he may 
 get along very well and succeed, but the most of them 
 prophesy failure; for it is very hard to think that those 
 whoni we knew in bo3'hood will ever make any stir in the 
 world. But our 3'oung man has a fine position in a dry- 
 goods store. The month is over. lie gets his wages. lie 
 is not accustomed to have so much money belonging to 
 himself He is a little excited, and does not exactly know 
 what to do with it, and he spends it in some places where 
 he ought not. Soon there come up new companions and 
 acquaintances from the bar-rooms and the saloons of the 
 
STRIPPING THE SLAIN. 91 
 
 city. Soon tliat young man begins to waver in tlie battle 
 of temptation, and soon his soul goes clown. In a few 
 months, or few years, he has follen. He is morally dead. 
 He is a mere corpse of what he once was. The harpies 
 of sin snuff up the taint and come on the field. His gar- 
 ments gradually give out. He has pawned his watch. 
 His health is failing him. His credit perishes. He is too 
 poor to stay in the city, and he is too j30or to pay his way 
 home to the country. Down ! down ! Why do the low 
 fellows of the city now stick to him so closely? Is it to 
 help him back to a moral and spiritual life? Oh no. I 
 will tell you why they stay ; they are the Philistines strip- 
 ping the slain. 
 
 Do not look where I point, but yonder stands a man 
 who once had a beautiful home in this city. His house 
 had elegant furniture, his children were beautifully clad, 
 his name was sjmonymous with honor and usefulness; but 
 evil habit knocked at his front door, knocked at his back 
 door, knocked at his parlor door, knocked at his bedroom 
 door. Where is the piano ? Sold to pay the rent. Where 
 is the hat-rack? Sold to meet the butcher's bill. Where 
 are the carpets ? Sold to get bread. Where is the ward- 
 robe? Sold to get rum. Where are the daughters? 
 Working their fingers off in trying to keep the family to- 
 gether. Worse and w^orse, until every thing is gone. Who 
 is that going up the front steps of that house? That is 
 a creditor, hoping to find some chair or bed that has not 
 been levied upon. Who are those two gentlemen now go- 
 ing up the front steps? The one is a constable, the other 
 is the sheriff. W^hy do they go there? The unfortunate 
 is morally dead, socially dead, financially dead. Why do 
 they go there? I will tell ycu why the creditors and the 
 
92 STBIPPING THE SLAIN. 
 
 constables and the sheriffs go there. Thej are, some on 
 their own account and some on account of the law, strip- 
 ping the slain. 
 
 An ex-member of Congress, one of the most eloquent 
 men that ever stood in the House of Kepresentatives, said, 
 in his last moments, "This is the end. I am dying — dy- 
 ing on a borrowed bed, covered by a borrowed sheet, in a 
 house built by public charity. Bury me under that tree 
 in the middle of the field, where I shall not be crowded, 
 for I have been crowded all my life." Where were the 
 jolly politicians and the dissipating comrades who had 
 been with him, laughing at his jokes, applauding his elo- 
 quence, and plunging him into sin? They have left. 
 Why? His money is gone, his reputation is gone, his wit 
 is gone, his clothes are gone, every thing is gone. Why 
 should they stay any longer? They have completed their 
 work. They have stripped the slain. 
 
 There is another way, however, of doing that same work. 
 Here is a man who, through his sin, is prostrate. He ac- 
 knowledfi;es that he has done wron^r. Now is the time 
 for you to go to that man, and say, " Thousands of people 
 have been as fir astray as you are, and got back." Now is 
 the time for you to go to that man, and tell him of the om- 
 nipotent grace of God that is sufficient for any poor soul. 
 Now is the time to go to tell him how swearing JohnBun- 
 yan, through the grace of God, afterward came to the ce- 
 lestial city. Now is the time to go to that man and tell 
 him how profligate Newton came, through conversion, to 
 be a world-renowned preacher of righteousness. Now is 
 the time to tell that man that multitudes who have been 
 })Ounded with all the flails of sin, and dragged through all 
 the sewers of pollution, at last have risen to positive do- 
 
STBIFPINO TEE SLAIN. 93 
 
 minion of moral power. You do not tell him that, do you ? 
 No. You say to him, " Loan you money ! No. You are 
 down. You will have to go to the dogs. Le;id you a 
 shilling ! I would not lend you two cents to keep you 
 from the gallows. You are debauched. Get out of my 
 sight now! Down; you will have to stay down." And 
 thus these bruised and battered men are sometimes accosted 
 by those who ought to lift them up. Thus the last vestige 
 of hope is taken from them. Thus those who ought to go 
 and lift and save them are guilty of stripping the slain. 
 
 The point I want to make is this: sin is hard, cruel, and 
 merciless. Instead of helping a man up, it helps him down ; 
 and when, like Saul and his comrades, you lie on the field, 
 it will come and steal your sword and helmet and shield, 
 leaving you to the jackal and the crow. 
 
 But the world and Satan do not do all their work with 
 the outcast and abandoned. A respectable, impenitent man 
 comes to die. He is flat on his back. He could not get 
 up if the house were on fire. Adroitest medical skill and 
 gentlest nursing have been a fliilure. He has come to his 
 last hour. What does Satan do for such a man ? Wli}^, 
 he fetches up all the inapt, disagreeable, and harrowing 
 things in his life. He says, " Do you remember those 
 chances you had for heaven, and missed them ? Do you 
 remember all those lapses in conduct? Do you remem- 
 ber all those opprobrious words and thoughts and ac- 
 tions? Don't remember them, eh? I'll make you remem- 
 ber them." And then he takes all the past and empties it 
 on that death-bed, as the mail-bags are emptied on the post- 
 office floor. The man is sick. He can not get away from 
 them. Then the man says to Satan, "You have deceived 
 me. You told me that all would be well. You said there 
 
9-1 STRirriNG THE SLAIN. 
 
 would be no trouble at the last. You told me if I did so 
 and so, you would do so and so. Now you corner me, and 
 hedge me up, and submerge me in every thing evil." " Ha! 
 ha!" says Satan, "I was only fooling you. It is mirth for 
 me to see you suffer. I have been for thirty years plotting 
 to get you just where you are. It is hard for you now — 
 it will be worse for 3'ou after a while. It pleases me. Lie 
 still, sir. Don't flinch or shudder. Come, now, I will tear 
 off from you the last rag of expectation. I will rend away 
 from your soul the last hope. I will leave you bare for 
 the beating of the storm. It is my business to strip the 
 slain." 
 
 While men are in robust health, and their digestion is 
 good, and their nerves are strong, they think their physical 
 strength will get them safely through the last exigency. 
 They say it is only cowardly women who are afraid at the 
 last, and cry out for God. " Wait till I come to die. I 
 will show you. You won't hear me pray, nor call for a 
 minister, nor want a chapter read me from the Bible." 
 But after the man has been three weeks in a sick-room his 
 nerves are not so steady, and his worldly companions are 
 not anywhere near to cheer him up, and he is persuaded 
 that he must quit life. Ilis phj'sical courage is all gone. 
 Hejumps at the fall of a tea-spoon in a saucer. lie shivers 
 at the idea of going away. He says, "Wife, I don't think 
 my infidelity is going to take me through. For God's sake, 
 don't bring up the children to do as I have done! If yoxx 
 feel like it, I wish you would read a verse or two out of 
 Fanny's Sabbath- school hymn-book or New Testament." 
 But Satan breaks in, and saj^s, "You have always thought 
 religion trash and a lie; don't give up at the last. Be- 
 sides that, 3'Ou can not, in the hour you have to live, get 
 
STRIPPING THE SLAIN. 95 
 
 off on that track. Die as you lived. With my great black 
 wings I shut out that light. Die in darkness, I rend away 
 from you that last vestige of hope. It is my business to 
 strip the slain." 
 
 A man who had rejected Christianity, and thought it all 
 trash, came to die. He was in the sweat of a great agony, 
 and his wife said, " We had better have some prayer." 
 " Mar}^, not a breath of that !" he said. " The lightest word 
 of prayer would roll back on me like rocks on a drowning 
 man. I have come to the hour of test. T had a chance, 
 and I forfeited it. I believed in a liar, and he has left mc 
 in the lurch. Mary, bring me Tom Paine, the book that I 
 swore by and lived by, and pitch it into the fire, and let it 
 burn and burn as I myself shall soon burn." And then, 
 with the foam on his lip, and his hands tossing wildly in 
 the air, he cried out, "Blackness of darkness! Oh, my 
 God, too late !" And the spirits of darkness whistled up 
 from the depth, and wheeled around and around him, strip- 
 ping the slain. 
 
 Sin is a luxury now; it is exhilaration now; it is vic- 
 tory now. But after a while it is collision; it is defeat; 
 it is extermination ; it is jackalism ; it is robbing the dead ; 
 it is stripping the slain. 
 
 Give it up to-night; give it up! Oh, how you have 
 been cheated on, my brother, from one thing to another! 
 All these years you have been under an evil mastery that 
 you understood not. What have your companions done 
 for you ? What have they done for your health ? Nearly 
 ruined it by carousal. What have they done for your 
 fortune? Almost scattered it by spendthrift behavior. 
 What have they done for your reputation? Almost 
 ruined it with good men. AVhat have they done for your 
 
96 STRIPPING THE SLAIY. 
 
 immortal soul? Almost insured its overthrow. You are 
 hastening on toward the consummation of all that is sad. 
 To-night you stop and think, but it is only for a moment, 
 and then you will tramp on, and at the close of this service 
 you will go out, and the question will be, "How did you 
 like the sermon?" and one man will say, "I liked it very 
 well ;" and another man will say, "I didn't like it at all ;" 
 but neither of the answers will touch the tremendous fact 
 that, if impenitent, you are going at eighteen knots an 
 hour toward shipwreck ! Yea, you are in a battle where 
 you will fall ; and while your surviving relatives will take 
 your remaining estate, and Greenwood will take your 
 body, the messengers of darkness will take your soul, and 
 come and go about you for the next ten million years, 
 stripping the slain. 
 
 Many are crying out, "I admit I am slain, I admit it." 
 On what battle-field, my brothers? By what weapon? 
 "Polluted imagination," says one man. "Intoxicating 
 liquor," says another man. "My own hard heart," says 
 another man. Do you realize this? Then I come to tell 
 you that the omnipotent Christ is ready to walk across 
 this battle-fiekl, and revive and resuscitate and resurrect 
 your dead soul. Let him take your hand, and rub away 
 the numbness; your head, and bathe oft' the aching; your 
 heart, and stop its wild throb. He brought Lazarus to 
 life; he brought Jairus's daughter to life; he brought the 
 young man of Nain to life, and these are three proofs any- 
 how that he can bring you to life. 
 
 When the Philistines came down on the field, they step- 
 ped between the corpses, and they rolled over the dead, 
 and they took away every thing that was valuable; and 
 so it was with the people that followed after our army at 
 
STRIPPING THE SLAIN. 97 
 
 Chancellorsvillc, and at Pittsburg Landing, and at Stone 
 Eiver, and at Atlanta, stripping the slain ; but the ISTorth- 
 ern and Southern women — God bless them — came on the 
 field with basins, and pads, and towels, and lint, and cor- 
 dials, and Christian encouragement, and the poor fellows 
 that lay there lifted up their arms and said, "Oh, how 
 good that does feel since you dressed it!" and others 
 looked up, and said, "Oh, how you make me think of my 
 mother!" and others said, "Tell the folks at home I died 
 thinking about them;" and another looked up and said, 
 " Miss, won't you sing me a verse of ' Home, Sweet 
 Home ' before I die ?" And then the tattoo was sounded, 
 and the hats were off, and the service was read, "I am 
 the resurrection and the life;" and in honor of the departed 
 the muskets were loaded and the command given, " Take 
 aim — fire!" And there was a shingle set up at the head 
 
 of the grave, with the epitaph of "Lieutenant , in the 
 
 Fourteenth Massachusetts Yolunteers," or "Captain , 
 
 in the Fifteenth Eegiment of South Carolina Volunteers." 
 And so to-night, across this great field of moral and spirit- 
 ual battle, the angels of God come walking among the 
 slain, and there are voices of comfort, and voices of hope, 
 and voices of resurrection, and voices of heaven. 
 
 Oh, the slain ! the slain! Christ is ready to give life to 
 the dead. He will make the deaf ear to hear, the blind 
 eye to see, the pulseless heart to beat, and the damp walls 
 of your spiritual charnel-house will crash into ruin at his 
 cry, " Come forth !" I verily believe there are souls in this 
 house who, are now dead in sin, who in half an hour will 
 be alive forever. There was a thrilling dream, a glorious 
 dream — you may have heard of it. Ezekiel closed his 
 eyes, and he saw two mountains, and a valley between the 
 
 5 
 
98 STRirriNG the slain. 
 
 mountains. That valley looked as though there had been 
 a great battle there, and a whole army had been slain, and 
 they had been unburied ; and the heat of the land, and the 
 vultures coming there, soon the bones were exposed to the 
 sun, and they looked like thousands of snow-drifts all 
 through the valley. Frightful spectacle! The bleaching 
 skeletons of a host! But Ezekiel still kept his qjcs shut; 
 and, lo! there were four currents of wind that struck that 
 battle-field, and where those four currents of wind met, the 
 bones began to rattle ; and the foot came to the ankle, and 
 the hand came to the wrist, and the jaws clashed together, 
 and the spinal column gathered up the ganglions and the 
 nervous fibre, and all the valley wriggled, and writhed, 
 and throbbed, and rocked, and rose np. There, a man 
 coming to life. There, a hundred men. There, a thou- 
 sand ; and all falling into line, waiting for the shout of 
 their commander. Ten thousand bleached skeletons spring- 
 ing up into ten thousand warriors, panting for the fray. I 
 hope that instead of being a dream it may be a prophecy 
 of what we shall see here to-night. Let this north wall be 
 one of the mountains, and the south wall be taken for an- 
 other of the mountains, and let all the aisles and the pews 
 be the valley between, for there are thousands here to- 
 night without one pulsation of spiritual life. I look off in 
 one direction, and they are dead. I look off in another 
 direction, and they are dead. Who will bring them to 
 life? Who shall rouse them up? If I should halloo at 
 the top of my voice, I could not wake them. 
 
 Wait a moment! Listen! There is a rustling. There 
 is a gale from heaven. It comes from the north, and from 
 the south, and from the east, and from the west. It shuts 
 us in. It blows upon the slain. There, a soul begins to 
 
STRIPPING THE SLAIN. 99 
 
 move in spiritual life; there, ten souls; there, a score of 
 souls; there, a hundred souls. The nostril throbbing in 
 divine respiration, the hands lifted as though to take hold 
 of heaven, the tongue moving as in prayer and adoration. 
 Life! immortal life coming into the slain. Ten men for 
 God — fifty — a hundred — a regiment — an army for God. 
 Oh that we might have such a scene here to-night! In 
 Ezekiel's words, and in almost a frenzy of prayer, I cry, 
 " Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon 
 the slain." 
 
 You will have to surrender your heart to-night to God. 
 You can not take the responsibility of fighting against the 
 Spirit in this crisis, which will decide whether you are to 
 go to heaven or to hell — to join the hallelujahs of the saved, 
 or the howlings of the damned. You must pray. You 
 must repent. You must this night fling your sinful soul 
 on the pardoning mercy of God. You must! I see your 
 resolution against God giving way. Your determination 
 wavering. I break through the breach in the wall, and 
 follow up the advantage gained, hoping to rout your last 
 opposition to Christ, and make you " ground arms " at the 
 feet of the Divine Conqueror. Oh, you must ! You must ! 
 The moon does not ask the tides of the Atlantic Ocean to 
 rise. It only stoops down with two great hands of light, 
 the one at the European beach and the other at the Amer- 
 ican beach, and then lifts the great laver of molten silver. 
 And God, it seems to me, is now going to lift this audience 
 to newness of life. Do you not feel the swellings of the 
 great oceanic tides of Divine mercy? My heart is in an- 
 guish to have you saved. For this I pray and preach and 
 long, glad to be called a fool for Christ's sake and your 
 salvation. Some one replies, "Dear me, I do wish I could 
 
100 HTRirriNG THE BLAIX. 
 
 have tliese matters arranged with m}^ God. I want to be 
 saved. God knows I want to be saved ; but you stand 
 there talking about this matter, and 3'OU don't show me 
 how." My dear brother, the work has all been done. 
 Christ did it with his own torn hand and lacerated foot and 
 bleeding side. He took your place and died 3'our death, 
 if you would only believe it, only accept him as your sub- 
 stitute. " But," you say, " how am I to get up to that feel- 
 ing?" I reply, the Holy Spirit is ready to help you up to 
 that feeling, if you will only ask him here and now. 
 
 What an amazing pity that any man should go from this 
 house unblessed, when such a large blessing is offered him 
 at less cost than you would pay for a pin — "without mon- 
 ey and without price!" I have driven down to-night with 
 the Lord's ambulance to the battle-field where your soul 
 lies exposed to the darkness and the storm, and I want to 
 lift you in and drive off with you toward heaven. Oh, 
 Christians! by 3'Our prayers help lift these wounded souls 
 into the ambulance. God forbid that any should be left 
 on the field, and that at last eternal sorrow and remorse 
 and despair should come up around their souls like the 
 bandit Philistines to the field of Gilboa, stripping the slain. 
 
A SUM m GOSPEL ARITHMETIC. 101 
 
 A SUM IN GOSPEL ARITHMETIC. 
 
 "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his 
 own soul?" — Mark viii., 3G. 
 
 AM accustomed, Sabbath by Sabbath, to stand before 
 an audience of bargain-makers. There may be men in 
 all occupations sitting before me, yet the vast majority of 
 them, I am very well aware, are engaged from Monday morn- 
 ing to Saturday night in the store. In many of the fami- 
 lies of my congregation, across the break fast- table and the 
 tea-table are discussed questions of loss and gain. You are 
 every day asking yourself, "What is the value of this? 
 What is the value of that?" You would not think of giv- 
 ing something of greater value for that which is of lesser 
 value. You would not think of selling that which cost 
 you ten dollars for five dollars. If you had a property 
 that was worth fifteen thousand dollars, you would not sell 
 it for four thousand dollars. You are intelligent in all 
 matters of bargain-making. Are you as wise in the things 
 that pertain to the matters of the soul? Christ adapted 
 his instructions to the circumstances of those to whom he 
 spoke. When he talked to fishermen, he spoke of the 
 Gospel net. When he talked to the farmers, he said, 'A 
 sower went forth to sow." When he talked to the shep- 
 herds, he told the parable of the lost sheep. And am I 
 not right when speaking this morning to an audience 
 made up of bargain -makers, that I address them in the 
 
102 -1 SUM IN GOSPEL ARITHMETIC. 
 
 words of my text, asking, " What shall it profit a man, 
 if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own 
 soul?" 
 
 I propose, as far as possible, to estimate and compare the 
 value of two properties. 
 
 First, I have to say that the world is a very grand 2^rop- 
 eriy. Its flowers are God's thoughts in bloom. Its rocks 
 are God's thoughts in stone. Its dew-drops are God's 
 thoughts in pearl. This world is God's child — a wayward 
 child indeed : it has wandered off through the heavens. 
 But about eighteen hundred and seventy-four or eighteen 
 hundred and seventy-five years ago, one Christmas night, 
 God sent out a sister world to call that wanderer back, 
 and it hung over Bethlehem only long enough to get the 
 promise of the wanderer's return, and now that lost world, 
 with soft feet of lip;ht, comes treading back through the 
 heavens. The hills, how beautiful they billow up, the 
 edge of the wave white with the foam of crocuses ! How 
 beautiful the rainbow, the arched bridge on which heaven 
 and earth come and talk to each other in tears, after the 
 storm is over! How nimble the feet of the lamp-lighters 
 that in a few minutes set all the dome of the night ablaze 
 with brackets of fire! How bright the oar of the saffron 
 cloud that rows across the deep sea of heaven ! How beau- 
 tiful the Spring, with bridal blossoms in her hair! I won- 
 der who it is that beats time on a June morning for the 
 bird orchestra. How gently the harebell tolls its fragrance 
 on the air ! There may be grander worlds, swarthier 
 worlds, larger worlds than this; but I think that this is a 
 most exquisite world — a mignonnette on the bosom of im- 
 mensity ! "Oh," you say, "take my soul! give me that 
 world! I am willing to take it in exchange. I am ready 
 
A SU2I m GOSPEL ARITHMETIC. 103 
 
 now for the bargain. It is so beautiful a world, so sweet a 
 world, so grand a world !" 
 
 But let us look more minutely into the value of this 
 world. You will not buy property unless you can get a 
 good title to it. After you have looked at the property 
 and found out that it suits you, you send an attorney to 
 the public office, and he examines the book of deeds, and 
 the book of mortgages, and the book of judgments, and 
 the book of liens, and he decides whether the title is good 
 before you will have any thing to do with it. There 
 might be a splendid property, and in every way exactly 
 suited to your want ; but if you can not get a good title, 
 you will not take it. Now, I am here this morning to say 
 that it is impossible to get a good title to this world. If 
 I settle down upon it, in the very year I so settle down 
 upon it as a permanent possession, I may be driven away 
 from it. Ay, in five minutes after I give up my soul for 
 the world I may have to part with the world; and what 
 kind of a title do you call that? There is only one way 
 in which I can hold an earthly possession, and that is 
 through the senses. All beautiful sights through the eye, 
 but the eye may be blotted out; all captivating sounds 
 through the ear, but my ear may be deafened ; all luscious- 
 ness of fruits and viands through my taste, but my taste 
 may be destro3'ed ; all appreciation of culture and of art 
 through my mind, but I may lose my mind. What a frail 
 hold, then, I have upon any earthly possession ! 
 
 In courts of law, if you want to get a man off a property, 
 you must serve upon him a writ of ejectment, giving him a 
 certain time to vacate the premises ; but when Death comes 
 to us and serves a writ of ejectment, he does not give us 
 one second of forewarning. He says, "Off" of this place! 
 
104 ^ '"^U^I I^ OOSrEL ARITHMETIC. 
 
 You have no right any longer to the possession." We 
 might cry out, "I gave you a hundred thousand dollars 
 for that property ;" the plea would be of no avail. We 
 might say, " We have a warrantee deed for tliat property;" 
 the plea would be of no avail. We might say, " We have 
 a lien on that store-house;" that would do us no good. 
 Death is blind, and he can not see a seal, and can not read 
 an indenture. So that, first and last, I want to tell you 
 that when you propose that I give up my soul for the 
 world, you can not give me the first item of title. 
 
 Ilaving examined the title of a propertj^, your next ques- 
 tion is about insurance. You would not be silly enough, 
 to buy a large warehouse that could not possibly be in- 
 sured. You would not have any thing to do with such a 
 property. Now, I ask you what assurance can you give 
 me that this world is not going to be burned up ? Abso- 
 lutely none. Geologists tell us tbat it is already on fire; 
 that the heart of the world is one great living coal ; that 
 it is just like a ship on fire at sea, the flames not bursting 
 out because the hatches are kept down. And yet 3'ou pro- 
 pose to palm off on me, in return for my soul, a world for 
 which, in the first place, you give no title, and in the sec- 
 ond place, for which you can give no insurance. "Oh," 
 3'OU sa}^, " the water of the oceans will wash over all the 
 land and put out the fire." Oh no. There are inflamma- 
 ble elements in the water, hydrogen and oxygen. Call off 
 the hydrogen, and then the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans 
 would blaze like heaps of shavings. You want me to take 
 this world, for which you can give no possible insurance. 
 
 Astronomers have swept their telescopes through the 
 sk}'', and have found out that there have been thirteen 
 worlds, in the last two centuries, that have disappeared. 
 
A SVJI IN GOSPEL ARITHMETIC. 105 
 
 At first, they looked just like other worlds. Then they 
 got deeply red — they were on fire. Then they got ashen, 
 showing they were burned down. Then they disappeared, 
 showing that even the ashes were scattered. And if the 
 geologist be right in his prophecy, then our world is to go 
 in the same way. And yet you want me to exchange my 
 soul for it. Ah no ; it is a world that is burning now. 
 Suppose you brought an insurance agent to look at your 
 property for the purpose of giving you a policy upon it, 
 and while he stood in front of the house, he should say, 
 "That house is on fire now in the basement," you could 
 not get any insurance upon it. Yet you talk about this 
 world as though it were a safe investment, as though you 
 could get some insurance upon it, when down in the base- 
 ment it is on fire. 
 
 I remark, also, that this world is a property, with which 
 every body who has taken it as a possession has had trou- 
 ble. Now, between my house and this church there is a 
 reach of land which is not built on. I ask what is the 
 matter, and they reply that every body who has had any 
 thing to do with that property got into trouble about it. 
 It is just so with this world : every body that has had any 
 thing to do with it, as a possession, has been in perplexity. 
 How was it with Lord Byron ? Did he not sell his im- 
 mortal soul for the purpose of getting the world ? Was 
 he satisfied with the possession ? Alas ! alas ! the poem 
 graphically describes his case when it says : 
 
 "Drank every cup of jo}-, 
 Heard every trump of fame ; 
 Drank early, deeply drank, 
 
 Drank draughts which common millions might have quenched. 
 Then died of thirst, because there was no more to drink." 
 
106 A SUM ly GOSPEL ARITH3IETIC. 
 
 Oh yes, lie bad trouble with it; and so did Napoleon. 
 After conquering nations by the force of the sword, he lies 
 down to die, his entire possession the military boots that 
 he insisted on having upon his feet while he was dying. 
 So it has been with men who had better ambition. Thack- 
 era}^, one of the most genial and lovable souls, after he had 
 won the applause of all intelligent lands through his won- 
 derful genius, sits down in a restaurant in Paris, looks to 
 the other end of the room, and wonders whose that forlorn 
 and wretched face is ; rising up after a while, he finds that 
 it is Thackeray in the mirror. Oh yes, this w^orld is a 
 cheat. Talk about a man gaining the world ! AVho ever 
 gainedhalf of the world? Whoever owned a hemisphere? 
 Who ever gained a continent? Who ever owned Asia? 
 Who ever gained a city ? Who ever owned Brooklyn ? 
 Talk about gaining the world ! No man ever gained it, or 
 the hundred-thousandth part of it. You are demanding 
 that I sell my soul, not for the world, but for a fragment 
 of it. Ilere is a man who has had a large estate for forty 
 or fifty 3'ears. lie lies down to die. You say, "That man 
 is worth millions and millions of dollars." Is he ? You 
 call up a survcj'Or, with his compass and chains, and you 
 say, " There is a property extending three miles in one di- 
 rection, and three miles in another direction." Is that the 
 way to measure that man's property ? No ! You do not 
 want any surveyor, with his compass and chains. That is 
 not the wa}^ you want to measure that man's property now. 
 It is an undertaker that you need, who will come and put 
 his finger in his vest-pocket, and take out a tape-line, and 
 he will measure five feet nine inches one way, and two feet 
 and a half the other way. That is the man's property. 
 Oh no, I forgot ; not so much as that, for he does not own 
 
A SUM IN GOSPEL ARITHMETIC. 107 
 
 even the place in wLicli lie lies in the cemeteiy. The 
 deed to that belongs to the executors and the heirs. Oh, 
 what a property you propose to give me for my soul ! If 
 you sell a bill of goods, you go into the counting-room, and 
 say to your partner, " Do you think that man is good for 
 this bill? Can he give proper security? Will he meet 
 this payment?" Now, when you are offered this world as 
 a possession,! want you to test the matter. I do not want 
 you to go into this bargain blindly. I want you to ask 
 about the title, about the insurance, about whether men 
 have ever had any trouble with it, about whether you can 
 keep it, about whether you can get all, or the ten -thou- 
 sandth, or one-hundred-thousandth part of it. 
 
 There is the world now. I shall say no more about it. 
 Make up your mind for yourself, as I shall, before God, 
 have to make up my mind for myself, about the value of 
 this world. I can not afford to make a mistake for my 
 soul, and 3'ou can not afford to make a mistake for your 
 soul. 
 
 Now, let us look at the other property — the soul. We 
 can not make a bargain without seeing the comparative 
 value. The soul! How shall I estimate the value of it? 
 Well, by its exquisite organization. It is the most won- 
 derful piece of mechanism ever put together. Machinery 
 is of value in proportion as it is mighty and silent at the 
 same time. You look at the engine and the machinery in 
 the Philadelphia Mint, and, as you see it performing its 
 wonderful work, 3'ou will be surprised to find how silently 
 it goes. Machinery that roars and tears soon destroys 
 itself; but silent machinery is often most effective. Now, 
 so it is with the soul of man, with all its tremendous fac- 
 ulties — it moves in silence. Judgment, without any rack- 
 
108 ^ SV2I IN GOSPEL ABITH2IETIC. 
 
 et, lifting its scales; memoiy, without any noise, bringing 
 down all its treasures; conscience taking its judgment-seat 
 without any excitement; the understanding and the will 
 all doing their work. Velocity, majesty, might; but si- 
 lence — silence. You listen at the door of your heart. You 
 can hear no sound. The soul is all quiet. It is so delicate 
 an instrument that no human hand can touch it. You 
 break a bone, and with splinters and bandages the surgeon 
 sets it; the eye becomes inflamed, the apothecary's wash 
 cools it; but a soul off the track, unbalanced, no human 
 power can re-adjust it. With one sweep of its wing it cir- 
 cles the universe, and overvaults the throne of God. Why, 
 in the hour of death the soul is so mighty, it throws aside 
 the body as though it were a toj^ It drives back medical 
 skill as impotent. It breaks through the circle of loved 
 ones who stand around the dying couch. With one leap, 
 it springs beyond star, and moon, and sun, and chasms of 
 immensity. Oh, it is a soul superior to all material things! 
 No fire can consume it; no floods can drown it; no rocks 
 can crush it; no walls can impede it; no time can exhaust 
 it. It wants no bridge on which to cross a chasm. It 
 wants no plummet with which to sound a depth. A soul 
 so might}^, so swift, so silent, must be a priceless soul. 
 
 I calculate the value of the soul, also, by its capacity for 
 happiness. How much joy it can get in this world, out of 
 friendships, out of books, out of clouds, out of the sea, out 
 of flowers, out often thousand things; and 3'et all the joy 
 it has here does" not test its capacity. You are in a con- 
 cert before the curtain hoists, and you hear the instruments 
 preparing — the sharp snap of the broken string, the scrap- 
 ing of the bow across the viol. "There is no music in 
 that," you say. It is only getting ready for the music. 
 
A SUJI IN GOSPEL ARITHMETIC. 109 
 
 And all the enjoyment of the soul in this world, the enjoy- 
 ment we think is real enjoyment, is only preparative ; it is 
 only anticipative; it is only the first stages of the thing; 
 it is only the entrance, the beginning of that which shall 
 be the orchestral harmonies and splendors of the redeemed. 
 
 You can not test the full power of the soul for happi- 
 ness in this world. How much power the soul has here 
 to find enjoyment in friendships! but oh, the grander 
 friendships for the soul in the skies! How sweet the flow- 
 ers here! but how much sweeter they will be there! I do 
 not think that when flowers die on earth, they die forever. 
 I think that the fragrance of the flowers is the spirit being 
 wafted away into glorj^ God says there are palm-trees in 
 heaven and fruits in heaven. If so, why not the spirits of 
 the dead flowers? In the sunny valleys of heaven, shall 
 not the marigold creep? On the hills of heaven, will not 
 the amaranth bloom? On the amethystine walls of heaven, 
 will not the jasmine climb? "My beloved is come down 
 into his garden to gather lilies," JSTo flowers in heaven? 
 Where, then, do the}' get their garlands for the brows of 
 the righteous? 
 
 Christ is glorious to our souls now, but how much grand- 
 er our appreciation after a while! A conqueror comes 
 back after the battle. He has been fighting for ns. He 
 comes upon the platform. He has one arm in a sling, and 
 the other arm holds a crutch. As he mounts the platform, 
 oh, the enthusiasm of the audience ! They say, " That man 
 fought for us, and imperiled his life for ns ;" and how wild 
 the huzza that follows huzza! When the Lord Jesus 
 Christ shall at last stand out before the multitudes of the 
 redeemed of heaven, and we meet him face to face, and feel 
 that he was wounded in the head, and wounded in the 
 
110 -1 SUJf IN GOSPEL ABITiniETIC. 
 
 liands, and wounded in the feet, and wounded in the side 
 for us, methinks we will be overwhelmed. We will sit 
 some time gazing in silence, until some leader amidst the 
 white-robed choir shall lift the baton of light, and give the 
 signal that it is time to wake the song of jubilee; and all 
 heaven then will break forth into, "Hosanna! hosanna! 
 hosanna! Worthy is the Lamb that was slain." 
 
 1 calculate further the value of the soul bj the price 
 that has been paid for it. In St, Petersburg there is a 
 diamond that the Government paid two hundred thousand 
 dollars for: "AYell," you say, "it must have been very 
 valuable, or the Gpvernment would not have paid two hun- 
 dred thousand dollars for it." I want to see what my soul 
 is worth, and what your soul is worth, by seeing what has 
 been paid for it. For that immortal soul, the richest blood 
 that was ever shed, the deepest groan that was ever ut- 
 tered, all the griefs of earth compressed into one tear, all 
 the sufferings of earth gathered into one rapier of pain 
 and struck through his holy heart. Does it not imply 
 tremendous value? 
 
 I argue, also, the value of the soul from the home that 
 has been fitted up for it in the future. One would have 
 thought that a street of adamant would have done. No; it 
 is a street of gold. One would have thought that a wall 
 of granite would have done. No ; it is the flame of sar- 
 donyx mingling with the green of emerald. One would 
 have thought that an occasional doxology would have 
 done. No; it is a perpetual song. If the ages of heaven 
 marched in a straight line, some day the last regiment, per- 
 haps, might pass out of sight; but no, the ages of heaven do 
 not march in a straight line, but in a circle around about 
 the throne of God ; forever, forever, tramp, tramp ! A soul 
 
A SUIT IN GOSPEL AUITHMETIC. \\\ 
 
 SO bought, so equipped, so provided for, must be a priceless 
 soul, a majestic soul, a tremendous soul. 
 
 Now, you have seen the two properties — the world, the 
 soul. One perishable, the other immortal. One unsatis- 
 fying, the other capable of ever-increasing felicity. Will 
 you trade? Will you trade even? Eemember, it is the 
 only investment you can make. If a man sell a bill of 
 goods worth five thousand dollars, and he is cheated out 
 of it, he may get five thousand dollars somewhere else; 
 but a man who invests his soul, invests all. Losing that, 
 he loses all. Saving that, he saves all. In the light of my 
 text, it seems to me as if you were this morning offer- 
 ing your soul to the highest bidder ; and I hear you say, 
 "What is bid for it, my deathless spirit? What is bid 
 for it?" Satan says, "I'll bid the world." You say, 
 "Begone! that is no equivalent. Sell my soul for the 
 world? No! Begone!" But there is some one else in 
 the audience not so wise as that. He says, " What is bid 
 for my immortal soul?" Satan says, "I'll bid the world." 
 " The world ? Going at that, going at that, going ! Gone !" 
 Gone forever ! 
 
 "What is the thing of greatest price, 
 Tlie whole creation round ? 
 That which was lost in paradise, 
 That which in Christ is found. 
 
 " Then let us gather round the cross, 
 That knowledge to obtain ; 
 Not by the soul's eternal loss. 
 But everlasting gain." 
 
 Well, there are a great many people in the house who 
 say, "I will not sell my soul for the world. I find the 
 world is an unsatisfying portion." What, then, will you 
 do with your soul? Some one whispers here, "I will 
 
112 A SUM /.Y GOSPEL ARITHMETIC. 
 
 give my soul to Christ." Will 3'ou? That is the wisest 
 resolution 3'ou ever made. Will you give it to Christ? 
 When ? To-morrow ? No ; now. I congratulate you if 
 you Lave come to sucli a decision. Oh, if this morning 
 the eternal Spirit of God w^ould come down upon this 
 audience, and show you the vanity of this world, and the 
 immense importance of Christ's religion, and the infinite 
 value of 3'our own immortal souls, what a house this 
 w^ould be! what an hour this would be! what a moment 
 this would be ! Do you know that Christ has bought your 
 soul? Do you know that he has paid an infinite price for 
 it? Do you know that he is worthy of it? Will you give 
 it to him now ? 
 
 I was reading this morning of a sailor who had just got 
 ashore, and was telling about his last experience at sea. 
 He said, "The last time I crossed the ocean, we had a ter- 
 I'ific time. After we had been out three or four days, the 
 machinery got disarranged, and the steam began to escape, 
 and the captain, gathering the people and the crew on 
 deck, said, " Unless some one shall go down and shut off 
 that steam, and arrange that machinery at the peril of his 
 life, we must all be destroyed." He was not willing to go 
 down himself. No one seemed willing to go. The pas- 
 sengers gathered at one end of the steamer waiting for 
 their fate. The captain said, "I give you a last warning. 
 If there is no one here willing to imperil his life and go 
 down and fix that machinery, we must all be lost." A 
 plain sailor said, "I'll go, sir;" and he wrapped himself in 
 a coarse piece of canvas and went down, and was gone but 
 a few moments, when the escaping steam stopped, and the 
 machinery was corrected. The captain cried out to the 
 passengers, "All saved 1 Let us go down below and see 
 
A SUM IN GOSPEL ARITHMETIC. 113 
 
 what has become of the poor fellow." They went clown. 
 There he lay dead. Vicarious suffering! Died for all! 
 Oh ! do you suppose that those people on the ship ever 
 forgot, ever can forget that poor fellow ? " No !" they 
 say; "it was through his sacrifice that I got ashore." The 
 time came when our whole race must die unless some one 
 should endure torture and sorrow and shame. Who shall 
 come to the rescue? Shall it be one of the seraphim? 
 Kot one. Shall it be one of the cherubim ? Not one. 
 Shall it be an inhabitant of some pure and unfallen world? 
 Not one. Then Christ said, " Lo ! I come to do thy will, 
 O God;" and he went down through the dark stairs of 
 our sin, and wretchedness, and misery^ and woe, and he 
 stopped the peril, and he died, that you and I might be 
 free. Oh, the love! oh, the endurance! oh, the horrors of 
 the sacrifice! Shall not our souls this morning go out 
 toward him, saying, "Lord Jesus Christ, take my soul." 
 Thou art worthy to have it. Thou hast died to save it." 
 
 God help you this morning rightly to cipher out this 
 sum in Gospel arithmetic: "What shall it profit a man, if 
 he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ?" 
 
lU SWIMMING FOR LIFE. 
 
 SWIMMING FOR LIFE. 
 
 "He shall spread forth his hands in the midst of them, as he that swim- 
 meth spieadeth forth his hands to swim." — Isaiah xxv., 11. 
 
 T^'^HE fisherman seeks out unfrequented nooks. You 
 --L stand all day on the bank of a wide river in the broil- 
 ing sun, and fling out your line, and catch nothing; while 
 the expert angler breaks through the jungle, and goes by 
 the shadow of the solitary rock, and, in a place where no 
 fisherman has been for ten years, throws out his line, and 
 comes home at night, his face shining and his basket full. 
 I do not know why we ministers of the Gospel need al- 
 ways be fishing in the same stream, and preaching from 
 the same texts that other people preach from. I can not 
 understand the policy of the minister who, in Blackfriars, 
 London, England, every week for thirty years preached 
 from the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is an exhilaration to 
 me when I can come across a theme which I feel has not 
 yet been treated, and my text is one of that kind. There 
 are paths in God's Word that are well beaten by Christian 
 feet. When men want to quote Scripture, they quote the 
 old passages that every body has heard. When they want 
 a chapter read, they read a chapter that all the other peo- 
 ple have been reading, so that the church to-day is igno- 
 rant of three-fourths of the Bible. You go into the Louvre, 
 at Paris. Yoii confine yourself to one corridor of that op- 
 ulent gallery of paintings. As you come out 3'our friend 
 says to you, "Did you see that Rembrandt?" "No." 
 
SWIMMING FOR LIFE. 115 
 
 "Did you see that Eubens?" "No." "Did you see that 
 Titian?" "No." "Did you see that Raphael?" "No." 
 " Well," says your friend, " then you didn't see the 
 Louvre." Now, my friends, I think we are too much apt 
 to confine ourselves to one of the great corridors of this 
 gallery of Scripture truth, and so much so that there are 
 not three persons in the house to-night who have ever 
 noticed the all -suggestive and powerful picture in the 
 words of my text. 
 
 This text represents God as a strong swimmer striking 
 out to push down iniquity and to save the souls of men. 
 " He shall spread forth his hands in the midst of them, as 
 he that swimmeth spreadeth forth his hands to swim." 
 The figure is bold and many-sided. Most of you know 
 how to swim. Some of you learned it in the city school, 
 where this art is taught; some of you in boyhood, in the 
 river near your father's house; some of you since you 
 came to manhood or womanhood, while summering on the 
 beach of the sea. You step down in the wave, you throw 
 your head back, 3'ou bring your elbows to the chest, you 
 put the palms of your hands downward and the soles of 
 your feet outward, and you push through the water as 
 though you had been born aquatic. It is a grand thing to 
 know how to swim, not only for yourself, but because you 
 will after a while, perhaps, have to help others. I do not 
 know any thing more stirring or sublime than to see some 
 man like Norman M'Kenzie leaping from the ship Madras 
 into the sea to save Charles Turner, who had dropped from 
 the royal -yard while trying to loosen the sail, bringing 
 him back to the deck amidst the cheering of the passengers 
 and the crew. If a man has not enthusiasm enough to 
 hurra in such circumstances, he deserves himself to drop 
 
116 SWIMMING FOR LIFE. 
 
 into the sea and have no one help him. The Eoj-al Hu- 
 mane Society of England was established in 1774, its ob- 
 ject to applaud and reward those who should pluck up 
 life from the deep. Any one who has performed such a 
 deed of daring has all the particulars of that bravery put 
 down in a public record, and on his breast a medal done 
 in blue and gold and bronze, anchor and monogram and 
 inscription telling to future generations the bravery of the 
 man or woman who had saved a soul from drowning. 
 But, my friends, if it is such a worthy thing to save a body 
 from the deep, I ask you if it is not a worthier thing to 
 save an immortal soul? And you shall see, to-night, the 
 Son of God step forth for this achievement. "lie shall 
 spread forth his hands in the midst of them, as he that 
 swimmeth spreadeth forth his hands to swim." 
 
 In order to understand the full force of this figure, you 
 need to realize, first of all, that our race is in a sinking 
 condition. You sometimes hear people talking of what 
 they consider the most beautiful words in our language. 
 One man says it is "home;" another man says it is the 
 word "mother;" another says it is the word "Jesus;" but 
 I will tell you the bitterest word in all our language, the 
 word most angry and baleful, the word saturated with the 
 most trouble, the word that accounts for all the loathsome- 
 ness, and the pang, and the outrnge, and the harrowing; 
 and that word is "Sin." You spell it with three letters, 
 and yet those three letters describe the circumference and 
 pierce the diameter of every thing bad on earth and in 
 perdition. Sin ! it is a sibilant word. You can not pro- 
 nounce it without giving the siss of the flame or the hiss 
 of the serpent. Sin ! And, then, if you add three letters 
 to that word, it describes every person in this house, and 
 
SWnnilXG FOR LIFE. 117 
 
 every one in the world — sinner. Tiiat is 3^011 and me. 
 We have outraged the law of God; not occasionally, or 
 now and then, but perpetuall}''. The Bible declares it. 
 Hark ! it thunders, two claps, " The heart is deceitful above 
 all things, and desperately wicked." "The soul that sin- 
 iieth, it shall die." What the Bible says our own con- 
 science affirms. After Judge Morgan had sentenced Lady 
 Jane Grey to death, his conscience troubled him so much 
 for the deed that he became insane, and all through his in- 
 sanity he kept saying, " Take her away from me ! Lady 
 Jane Grey. Take her away ! Lady Jane Grey." It was 
 the voice of his conscience. And no man ever does any 
 thing wrong, however great or small, but his conscience 
 brings that matter before him, and at every step of his 
 misbehavior it says, " Wrong, wrong." 
 
 Sin is a leprosy, sin is a paralysis, sin is a consumption, 
 sin is pollution, sin is death. Give it a fair chance, and it 
 will swamp you, body, mind, and soul, forever. Li this 
 world it only gives a faint intimation of its virulence; but 
 after for a thousand quadrillion of years it has ransacked 
 your soul — what then? You see a patient in the first 
 stages of typhoid fever. The cheek is somewhat flushed, 
 the hands somewhat hot, preceded by a slight chill. 
 " Why," you say, " typhoid fever does not seem to be 
 much of a disease." But wait until the patient has been 
 six weeks under it, and all his energies have been wrung 
 out, and he is too weak to lift his little finger, and his in- 
 tellect is gone, then you see the full havoc of the disease. 
 Now, sin in this world is an ailment which is only in its 
 very first stages ; but after the grave, it is rending, blasting, 
 all -devouring, all-consuming, eternal typhoid. Oh, if we 
 could see our unpardoned sins as God sees them, our teeth 
 
118 SWIJfJIIXG FOE LIFE. 
 
 would cLatter, and our knees would knock together, and 
 our respiration would be choked, and our heart would 
 break ! If your sins are unforgiven, they are bearing 
 down on you, and you are sinking, sinking away from hap- 
 piness, sinking away from God, sinking away from every 
 thing that is good and blessed, sinking forever. 
 
 Then what do we want? A swimmer! A stron^r 
 
 O 
 
 swimmer! A swift swimmer! And, blessed be God, in 
 my text we have him announced : "He shall spread forth 
 his hands in the midst of them, as he that swimmeth spread- 
 eth forth his hands to swim." You have noticed that 
 when a swimmer goes out to rescue any one, he puts off 
 his heavy apparel. He must not have any such impedi- 
 ment about him if he is going to do this great deed. And 
 when Christ stepped forth to save us, he shook off the san- 
 dals of heaven, and his feet were free; and he laid aside 
 the robe of eternal royalty, and his arms were free ; and 
 then he stepped down into the wave of our transgression, 
 and it came up over his wounded feet, and it came above 
 the spear-stab in his side' — ay, it dashed to the lacerated 
 temple, the high-water mark of his anguish. Then, rising 
 above the flood, "He stretched forth his hands in the midst 
 of them, as he that swimmeth spreadeth forth his hands to 
 swim." 
 
 If you have ever watched a swimmer, you notice that 
 his whole body is brought into play. The arms are flexed, 
 the hands drive the water back, the knees are active, the 
 head is tossed back to escape strangulation, the whole body 
 is in propulsion. And when Christ sprung out into the 
 deep to save iis, he threw his entire nature into it, all his 
 Godhead, his omniscience, his goodness, his love, his om- 
 nipotence — head, heart, eyes, hands, feet. AV^e were so far 
 
SWIMMING FOM LIFE. 119 
 
 out on the sea, and so deep down in the waves that noth- 
 ing short of an entire God could save ns. Christ leaped 
 out for our rescue, saying, "Lo! I come to do thj will," 
 and all the surges of human and Satanic hate beat against 
 him; and those who watched him from the gates of 
 heaven feared he would go down under the wave, and, 
 instead of saving others, would himself perish ; but, put- 
 ting his breast to the foam, and shaking the surf from 
 his locks, he came on, on, until he is to-night within 
 the reach of every one here. E^^e omniscient, heart in- 
 finite, arm omnipotent. Mighty to save, even unto the 
 uttermost. Oh, it was not half a God that trampled down 
 bellowing Gennesaret ! It was not a quarter of a God that 
 mastered the demons of Gadara. It was not two-thirds 
 of a God that lifted up Lazarus into the arms of his over- 
 joyed sisters. It was not a fragment of a God that offered 
 pardon and peace to all the race. No. This mighty swim- 
 mer threw his grandeur, his glory, his might, his wisdom, 
 his omnipotence, and his eternity into this one act. It took 
 both hands of God to save us, both feet. How do I prove 
 it? On the cross, were not both hands nailed? On the 
 cross, were not both feet nailed? His entire nature in- 
 volved in our redemption ! 
 
 If you have lived much by the water, you have noticed 
 also that if any one is going out to rescue the drowning, he 
 must be independent, self-reliant, able to go alone. There 
 may be a time when he must spring out to save one, and 
 he can not get a life-boat ; and if he goes out, and he has 
 not strength enough to bear himself up and bear another 
 up, he will sink, and, instead of dragging one corpse out of 
 the torrent, you will have two to drag out. When Christ 
 sprung out into the sea to deliver us, he had no life-buoy. 
 
120 SWIJUJillXG FOR LIFE. 
 
 His Father did not help him. Alone in the wine-press. 
 Alone in the pang. Alone in the darkness. Alone on 
 the mountain. Alone in the sea. If he saves us, he shall 
 have all the credit, for " there was none to help." No oar. 
 No wing. No ladder. When Nathaniel Lyon fell in the 
 battle charge in front of his troops, he had a whole army 
 to cheer him ; when Marshal Ney sprung into the contest, 
 and plunged in the spurs till the horse's flanks spurted 
 blood, all France applauded him. But Jesus alone ! " Of 
 the people there was none to help." "All forsook him and 
 fled." Oh, it was not a flotilla that sailed down and saved 
 us ! It was not a cluster of gondolas that came over the 
 wave. It was one person, independent and alone, " spread- 
 ing out his hands among us as a swimmer spreadeth forth 
 his hands to swim." 
 
 Behold, then, to-night, the spectacle of a drowning soul, 
 and Christ the swimmer. I believe it was in 1848 when 
 there were six English soldiers of the Fifth Fusiliers wdio 
 were hanging to the bottom of a capsized boat — a boat 
 that had been upset by a squall three miles from shore. 
 It WMS in the night ; but one man swam mightily for the 
 beach, guided by the dark mountains that lifted their top 
 through the night. He came to the beach. He found a 
 shoreman who consented to go with him and save the 
 other men, and they put out. It was some time before 
 they could And the place where the men were; but after a 
 while they heard their cry, "Help! help !" and they bore 
 down to them, and they saved them and brought them to 
 shore. Oh that to-night our cry might be lifted long, loud, 
 and shrill, till Christ the swimmer shall come and take us, 
 lest we drop a thousand fathoms down ! for a man who 
 will not pray will perish. 
 
SWJ3IMiyG FOE LIFE. 121 
 
 If you have been mucli by the water, you know very 
 well that when one is in peril help must come very quick- 
 ly, or it will be of no use. One minute may decide every 
 thing. Immediate help the man wants, or no help at all. 
 Now, that is just the kind of a relief the sinner wants. 
 The ■ case is urgent, imminent, instantaneous. See that 
 soul sinking. Son of God, lay hold of him ! It is his last 
 hour of merc}^ Be quick ! be quick ! Oh, I wish you all 
 understood how urgent this Gospel is ! There was a man 
 in the navy at sea who had been severely whipped for bad 
 behavior, and he was maddened by it, and he leaped into 
 the sea, and no sooner had he leaped into the sea than, 
 quick as lightning, an albatross swooped upon him. The 
 drowning man, brought to his senses, seized hold of the al- 
 batross and held on. The fluttering of the bird kept him 
 on the wave until relief could come. "Would that to-night 
 the dove of God's convicting, converting, and saving Spirit 
 might flash from the throne upon your soul, and that you, 
 taking hold of its potent wing, might live, and live forever. 
 
 I want to persuade you to-night to lay hold of this 
 strong swimmer. " No," 3'ou say, "it is always ruin." 
 There is not a river or a lake but has a calamity resultant 
 from the fact that, when a strong swimmer went out to 
 save a sinking man, the drowning man clutched him, threw 
 his arms around him, pinioned his arms, and they both 
 went down together. When you are saving a man in the 
 water, you do not want to come up by his face ; you want 
 to come up by his back. You do not want him to take 
 hold of you while you take hold of him. But, blessed be 
 God, Jesus Christ is so strong a swimmer he comes, not to 
 our back, but to our face, and he asks us to throw around 
 him the arms of our love, and then promises to take us to 
 
 6 
 
122 swnrjiiNG foe life. 
 
 the beach, and he will do it. Do not trust that plank of 
 good works. Do not trust that shivered spar of your own 
 righteousness. Christ only can give you transportation. 
 Turn your face upon him to-night as the dying martyr 
 did in olden days when he cried out, "None but Christ! 
 None but Christ!" Jesus has taken millions to the land, 
 and he is wnlling to take you there. Oh, what hardness 
 to shove him back when he has been swimming all the 
 way from the throne of God to where you are to-night, 
 and is ready to swim all the way back again, taking your 
 redeemed spirit ! 
 
 I have sometimes thought what a spectacle the ocean bed 
 will present when in the last day the water is all drawn ofF. 
 It will be a line of wrecks from beach to beach. There is 
 where the harpooners went down. There is where the 
 line-of-battle ships w^ent down. There is where the mer- 
 chantmen went down. There is where the steamers went 
 down. What a spectacle in the last day when the water 
 is drawn off! But oh, how much more solemn if we had 
 an eye to see the spiritual wrecks and the places where 
 they foundered ! You would find thousands along these 
 streets. Coming here to-night, if you had such superb eye- 
 sight, standing at the door while yet this room was emp- 
 ty, you might then have seen thousands of such marks 
 of wrecks scattered all through these pews, the places 
 where on other Sabbaths immortal men were invited to 
 lieaven, and refused it. Christ came down in their aw- 
 ful catastrophe, putting out for their soul, " spreading 
 forth his hands as a swimmer sprcadeth forth his hands to 
 swim ;" but they thrust him in the sore heart, and they 
 smote his fair cheek, and they perished ; the storm and 
 the darkness swallowing them up. Are there any here 
 
SWIMMIXG FOR LIFE. 123 
 
 now who feel that they are shaking? Do they feel the 
 need of a Divine arm? Christ is ready now to step out 
 for their present and their eternal salvation. I ask yo\i to 
 lay hold of this Christ, and lay hold of him now. You 
 will sink without him. Oh that God this moment w^ould 
 break the madness of those who will not have the mercy 
 and the favor of that Christ who is the only Saviour the 
 world ever has had, or ever will have ! Say, do you want 
 to die? Do you covet ruin? Do you despise heaven? 
 Have you lifted the poniard with which to stab the life 
 of your immortal soul? Sinner, thou knowest not where 
 thou art! On the verge of what woe. On the waves of 
 what sea, " Sinking. Sinking. Sinking, From horizon 
 to horizon not one sail in sight. Only one strong swim- 
 mer, with head flung back and arms outspread as "he that 
 swimmeth spreadeth forth his hands to swim." I pray 
 God that he will lead you into the peace and hope of the 
 Gospel ! You will never have so fair a chance as tliis very 
 one in which to accept of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 
 I hear a great many in the audience saying, " Well, I 
 w^ould like to be a Christian to-night. I am going to work 
 to become a Christian." My brother, you begin wrong. 
 When a man is drowning, and a strong swimmer comes out 
 to help him, he says to the man, " Now, be quiet. Put your 
 arm on my arm or on my shoulder, but don't struggle, 
 don't try to help yourself, and I'll take you ashore. The 
 more you struggle and the more you try to help 3^ourself, 
 the more you impede me. Now, be quiet, and I'll take 
 you ashore." When Christ, the strong swimmer, comes 
 out to save a soul, the sinner says, "That's right. I am 
 glad to see Jesus, and I am going to help him. I am go- 
 ing to do this, that, and the other thing that will help him ; 
 
12-i SWIMMIXG FOR LIFE. 
 
 and I am going to praj more, and that will help him ; and 
 I am going to weep extravagantly over my sins, and that 
 will help him." No, my brother, it will not. Stop your 
 doing. Christ will do all or none. You can not lift an 
 ounce, you can not move an inch, in this matter of your 
 redemption. This is the difficulty which keeps thousands 
 of souls out of the kingdom of heaven. It is because they 
 can not consent to let Jesus Christ begin and complete the 
 work of their redemption. "Wh3',"you say, "then is 
 there nothing for me to do?" Only one thing have you 
 to do, and that is, to lay hold of Christ, and let him achieve 
 }• our salvation, and achieve it all. I do not know whether 
 I make the matter plain or not. I simply want to show 
 you that man can not save himself, but that the Al- 
 mighty Son of God can do it, and will do it, if you ask 
 him. Oh, fling your two arms, the arras of your trust and 
 love, around this omnipotent swimmer of the cross! 
 
 My sermon is about ended, and the stenographer has 
 taken it down with his pencil. Oh that the iloly Spirit 
 might write it on all 3'Our hearts! How many will be 
 saved through this particular service? How many will 
 be lost? These are the two questions with which I came 
 upon this platform. After the benediction there will be 
 two strong currents, one current bearing mightily toward 
 heaven, the other bearing mightily toward hell ; and in 
 one or the other of these currents you will be caught. In 
 the one you will be carried out to where it empties into 
 the ocean whose waves are fire, and whose ships are fire, 
 and whose beach is fire, or you will be carried into a 
 current which will empty into a sea whose surges beat 
 eternal music against the throne of God. Oh, it is a sol- 
 emn minute! Have you ever seen them trying to resusci- 
 
SWIMMIJVG FOR LIFE. 125 
 
 tate a half-drowned person ? You remember the manipu- 
 lation. You remember they tried every possible art. You 
 remember how they knelt down and put their lips to the 
 lips of the insensible patient, and breathed and breathed, 
 trying to get the lungs to work ; and at last, when he just 
 gave one feeble sigh, they shouted all around the room, 
 "He lives! he lives!" And now, to-night, your drowning 
 soul, sinner, I hope, is by the grace of Christ to be resus- 
 citated. AYe have gathered around you. Would that this 
 might be the hour wheu you begin to live! The Lord 
 Jesus Christ steps down, he gets on his knee, he puts his 
 lip to your lip, and would breathe pardon and life and 
 heaven into your immortal soul. God grant that this hour 
 there may be thousands of souls resuscitated from this aw- 
 ful spiritual drowning. I stand on the deck of the old 
 Gospel ship amidst a crowd of passengers, and yet my soul 
 is wrung with sorrow because I see some of j-ou overboard, 
 and I can not help you. May the living Christ this hour 
 put out for your rescue, "spreading forth his hands in the 
 midst of you, as a swimmer spreadeth forth his hands to 
 swim." Oh that salvation might come to your house this 
 night! You want religion yourselves, and your families 
 need the same religion. Another opportunity for heaven 
 is closinsf, closing, closing. 
 
 " Ye sinners, seek his grace, 
 His wrath ye can not bear; 
 Fly to the shelter of his love, 
 And find salvation there." 
 
126 THE CHEISTIAN AT THE BALLOT-BOX. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN AT THE BALLOT-BOX. 
 
 " Some therefore cried one thing, and some another: for the assembly was 
 confused ; and the more part knew not wherefore they were come together. 
 And they drew Alexander out of the multitude, the Jews putting him for- 
 ward. And Alexander beckoned with the hand, and would have made his 
 defense unto the people. But when they knew that he was a Jew, all Avith 
 one voice about tlie space of two hours cried out. Great is Diana of the 
 Ephesians." — Acts xix., 32, 33, 3i. 
 
 IT^PHESUS was upside down. A manufacturer of sil- 
 -^ ver boxes for holding heathen images had called his 
 laborers together to discuss the behavior of one Paul, who 
 had been in public places assaulting image -worship, and 
 consequently very much damaging that particular business. 
 There was great excitement in the city. People stood in 
 knots along the streets, violently gesticulating, and calling 
 each other hard names. Some of the people favored the 
 policy of the silversmith ; other people favored the policy 
 of Paul. There were great moral questions involved; but 
 these did not bother them at all. The only question about 
 which they seemed to be interested was concerning the 
 wages and the salaried positions. The silversmith and his 
 compeers had put up factories at great expense for the 
 making of these silver boxes; and now, if this new policy 
 is to be inaugurated, the business will go down, the labor- 
 ers will be thrown out of employment, and the whole city 
 will suffer. Well, what is to be done? "Call a conven- 
 tion," says some one ; for in all ages a convention has been 
 
THE CmUSTIAIT AT THE BALLOT-BOX. 127 
 
 a panacea for public evils. The convention is called, and, 
 as they want the largest room in the city, they take the 
 theatre. Having there assembled, they all want to get the 
 floor, and they all want to talk at once. You know what 
 excitement that always makes in a convention, where a 
 great many people want to talk at once. Some cried one 
 thing, some cried another. Some wanted to denounce, 
 some w^anted to resolve. After a while a prominent man 
 gets the floor, and he begins to speak ; but they very soon 
 hiss him down, and then the confusion rises into worse 
 uproar, and they begin to shout, all of them together, and 
 they keep on until they are red in the face and hoarse in 
 the throat, for two long hours crying out, " Great is Diana 
 of the Ephesians ! Great is Diana of the Ephesians !" 
 
 The whole scene reminds me of the excitement we have 
 almost every autumn at the elections. While that goddess 
 Diana has lost her worshipers, and her temples have gone 
 into the dust, our American people want to set up a god 
 in place of it, and they want us all to bow down before it; 
 and that god is Political Party. Considering our superior 
 civilization, I have to declare to you that the Ephesian idol- 
 atry was less offensive in the sight of God than is this all- 
 absorbing American partisanship. 
 
 While there are honest men, true men, Christian men, 
 who stand in both political parties, and who come into the 
 autumnal elections resolving to serve their city or their 
 State or the nation in the best possible way, I have noticed 
 also that with many it is a mere contest between the ins 
 and the outs — those who are in trying to stay in and keep 
 the outs out, and those who are out trying to get in and 
 thrust the ins out. And one party cries, " Great is Diana 
 of the Ephesians !" and the other party cries, " Great is 
 
128 THE CHRISTIAN AT THE BALLOT-BOX. 
 
 Diana of the Epliesians!" neitlier of them honest enough 
 to say, "Great is my pocket-book!" 
 
 Once or twice a year it is my custom to talk to the peo- 
 ple about public affairs from what I call a Christian stand- 
 point, and this morning I have chosen for that duty. I 
 hope to say a practical word. History tells us of a sermon 
 once preached amidst the Highlands of Scotland — a sermon 
 two hours long — on the sin of luxury, where there were 
 not more than three pairs of shoes in the audience; and 
 daring our last war a good man went into a hospital dis- 
 tributing tracts, and gave a tract on " The Sin of Dancing" 
 to a man both of whose legs had been amputated ! But I 
 hope this morning to present an appropriate and adapted 
 word, as next Tuesday, at the ballot-box, great affairs are 
 to be settled. The Rev. Dr. Emmons, in the early history 
 of our country, in Massachusetts, preached about the elec- 
 tion of Thomas Jefferson to the Presidency. The Rev. Dr. 
 Mayhew, of Boston, in the early days of our republic, 
 preached about the repeal of the Stamp Act. There are 
 times when ministers of Christ must look off upon public 
 affairs and discuss them. We need go back to no example. 
 Every man is, before God, responsible for his own duty. 
 If the Norwegian boasts of his home of rocks, and the 
 Siberian is pleased with his land of perpetual snow ; if the 
 Roman thought that the muddy Tiber was the favored riv- 
 er in the sight of heaven, and if the Laplander shivers out 
 his eulogy of his native clime, and if the Chinese have pity 
 for any body born outside the "flowery kingdom," shall not 
 we, born under these fair skies, and standing day by day 
 amidst these glorious civil and religious liberties, be pub- 
 lic-spirited? I propose to toll the people very plainly 
 wliat I consider to be their Christian duty at the ballot-box. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN AT THE BALL0T-130X. 129 
 
 First, set yourselves against all 'political falsehood. The 
 most monstrous lies ever told in this country are during 
 the elections. I stop at the door of a Democratic meeting 
 and listen, and hear that the Republicans are thieves. I 
 stop at the door of a Republican meeting and listen, and 
 hear that the Democrats are scoundrels. Our public men 
 microscopized, and the truth distorted. Who believes a 
 tenth part of what he reads or hears in the autumnal elec- 
 tions? Men who at other seasons of the year are very 
 careful in their speech become peddlers of scandal. 
 
 In the Far East there is a place where, once a year, they 
 let the people do as they please and say what they please, 
 and the place is full of uproar, misrule, and wickedness, 
 and they call it the "Devil's day." The nearest approxi- 
 mation to that in this country has been the first Tuesday 
 in November. The community at such times seem to sa}^, 
 " Go to, now ; let us have a good time at lying." Promi- 
 nent candidates for office are denounced as renegade and 
 inebriate. A small lie will start in the corner of a country 
 newspaper, and keep on running until it has captured the 
 printing-presses of the whole continent. What garbling 
 of speeches! What misinterpretation of motives ! What 
 n>isrepresentation of individual antecedents! To capture 
 the unwary you shall have a ticket with Democratic head- 
 ing and Republican names following, and then a Republican 
 heading with Democratic names following; and the poor 
 man will stand at the polls bewildered, at last, perhaps, 
 voting for those whom he has been three weeks vociferous- 
 ly denouncing. O Christian men ! frown upon this po- 
 litical fiilsehood ! Remember that a political lie is as black 
 as any other kind of a lie. God has recorded all the false- 
 hoods that have been told at the city. State, or national 
 
 6* 
 
130 THE VHIilSTIAX AT THE BALLOT-BOX. 
 
 elections since the foundation of this Government; and, 
 though the perpetrators and their victims may have gone 
 into the dust, in the last day judgment will be awarded. 
 The falsehoods that Aaron Burr breathed into the ear of 
 Blennerhasset, the slanders that Lieutenant-general Gage 
 proclaimed about George Washington, the misrepresenta- 
 tions in regard to James Monroe, are as fresh on God's 
 book to-day as the lie that was printed last week about 
 Samuel J. Tilden or Governor Dix. "And all liars shall 
 have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and 
 brimstone: which is the second death." 
 
 Again, / counsel you as Christian men to set yourselves 
 against the 77risuse of money in j^olitical campaigns. Of the 
 tens of thousands of dollars already spent this autumn, how 
 much of the amount do you suppose has been properly 
 used? You have a right to spend money for the publishing 
 of political tracts, for the establishment of organizations for 
 the carrying-out of what you consider to be the best ; you 
 have a right to appeal to the reason of men by argument 
 and statistics and by facts; but lie who puts a bribe into 
 the hand of a voter, or plies weak men with mercenary and 
 corrupt motives, commits a sin against God and the nation. 
 Bribery is one of the most appalling sins of this country. 
 God says, "Fires shall consume the tabernacles of bribery." 
 Have nothing to do with such a sin, O Christian man ! 
 Fling it from the ballot-box. Hand over to the police the 
 man who attempts to tamper with your vote, and remem- 
 ber that elections that can not be carried without bribes 
 ought never to be carried at all. 
 
 Again, / 05/1; yon as CJiristian men to set yourselves 
 against the dissipations that hover over the hallot-hox. Let me 
 say that no man can afford to go into political life who is 
 
TEE CHRISTIAN AT THE BALLOT-BOX. 131 
 
 not a teetotaler. Hot political discussion somehow creates 
 an unnatural thirst, and hundreds of thousands of men have 
 gone down into drunkenness through political life. After 
 an exciting canvass through the evening you must "take 
 something ;" and rising in the morning with less animation 
 than usual, you must "take something;" and going off 
 among your comrades through the forenoon, you meet po- 
 litical friends, and you must "take something;" and in the 
 afternoon you meet other political friends, and you must 
 "take something;" and before night has come something 
 has taken you. There are but few cases where men have 
 been able to stand up against the dissipations of political 
 life. Joseph was a politician, but he maintained his integ- 
 rity. Daniel was a politician, but he was a teetotaler to 
 the last. Abraham was a politician, but he was always 
 characterized as the father of the faithful. Moses was a 
 politician, the grandest of them ; but he honored God more 
 than he did the Pharaohs. And there are hundreds of 
 Christian men now in the political parties, maintaining 
 their integrity, even when they are obliged to stand amidst 
 the blasted, lecherous, and loathsome crew that sometimes 
 surround the ballot-box ; these Christian men doing their 
 political duty, and then coming back to the praj'er-meetings 
 and Christian circles as pure as when they went out. But 
 that is not the ordinary circumstance; that is the excep- 
 tion. How often you see men coming back from the polit- 
 ical conflict, and their eye is glazed, and their check has an 
 unnatural flush, and they talk louder than they usually do, 
 and at the least provocation they will bet, and you say 
 they are convivial, or they are exceedingly vivacious, or 
 you apply some other sweet name to them ; but God knows 
 they are drunk ! Some of you, a month or six weeks ago, 
 
132 THE CimmTIAN AT THE BALLOT-BOX. 
 
 had no more religion than you ought to have, and after the 
 elections are over, to calculate how much religion you have 
 left will be a sum in vulgar fractions. Oh, the pressure is 
 tremendous ! 
 
 How many mighty intellects have gone down under the 
 dissipation of politics! I think of one who came from the 
 West. He was able to stand out against the whole Amer- 
 ican Senate. God had given him faculties enough to 
 govern a kingdom, or to frame a constitution. His voice 
 was terrible to his country's enemies, and a mighty inspi- 
 ration in the day of national peril. He was in a flur way 
 to become our President ; but twenty glasses of strong 
 drink a day were his usual allowance, and he went down 
 into the habits of a confirmed inebriate. Alas for him ! 
 Though a costly monument has been reared over his rest- 
 ing-place, and though in the presence of the laying of the 
 corner-stone there stood military and ecclesiastical digni- 
 taries, the young men of this country shall not be denied 
 the awful lesson that the agency by which the world was 
 robbed of one of its mightiest intellects, and our country 
 of one of its ablest constitutional defenders, was the dis- 
 sipation of political life. You want to know who I mean? 
 Young man, ask your fi^ther when you get home. The ad- 
 verse tide is fearful, and I warn you against it! 
 
 You need not go far off to find the worn-out politician. 
 Here he is, stumbling along the highway, his limbs hardly 
 able to hold him up. Bent over and pale with exhausting 
 sickness. Surly to any body who accosts him. His last 
 decent article of apparel pawned for strong drink. Glad 
 if, when going by a grocery, some low acquaintance invites 
 him in to take a sip of ale, and then wiping his lip with 
 liis greasy sleeve. Kicked off the steps by men who once 
 
THE CHRISTIAN AT THE BALLOT-BOX. 133 
 
 were proud to be bis constituents. Manhood obliterated. 
 Lip blistered with a curse. Scars of brutal assault on 
 cheek and brow. Foul-mouthed. A crouching^, staor2;er- 
 ing, wheezing wretch. No friends. No God. No hope. 
 No heaven. That is your worn-out politician. That is 
 what some of you will become unless by this morning's 
 warning, and the mercy of God, 3'our steps are arrested. 
 Oh, there are no words enough potent, enough portentous, 
 enough consuming, enough damning, to describe the hor- 
 rible drunkenness that has rolled over this land, and that 
 has bent down the necks of some of the mightiest intellects, 
 until they have been compelled to drink out of the trough 
 of bestiality and abomination! I warn 3'oung men against 
 political life, unless they are teetotalers and consecrated 
 Christian men. 
 
 Again, I counsel you that, when you go to the ballot- 
 box at the city or the State or the national elections, you 
 recognize God.^ and apjyeal to him for his hlessing. There is 
 a power higher than the ballot-box, than the Guberna- 
 torial chair, than the Presidential White House. It is 
 high time that we put less confidence in political platforms 
 and more confidence in God. See what a weak thing is 
 human foresight. How little our wise men seem to know ! 
 See how, every autumn, thousands of men who are clam- 
 bering up for higher positions are turned under. God up- 
 sets them. Every man, every party, every nation, has a 
 mission to perform. Failing to perform it, down he goes. 
 
 God said to the House of Bourbon, " Remodel France, 
 and establish equity." House of Bourbon would not do 
 it, Down it went. God said to the House of Stuart, 
 "Make the English people free. God-fearing, and happy." 
 House of Stuart would not do it. Down it went. God 
 
13-i THE CHRISTIAN AT THE BALLOT-BOX. 
 
 said to the House of Hapsburg, " Eule Austria in right- 
 eousness, and open the prison -houses until the captives 
 fihall go free." House of Hapsburg refuses to do it. Down 
 it goes. God says to the political parties in this day, "By 
 the principles of Christianity remodel, govern, educate, 
 save the people." Failing to do that, down they go, bury- 
 ing in their ruins their disciples and advocates. God can 
 spare all the political intriguers of this day, and can raise 
 up another generation who shall do justice and love mercy. 
 If God could spare Luther before the Eeformation was 
 done; and if he could spare Washington before free gov- 
 ernment had been fully tested; and if he could spare How- 
 ard before more than one out of a thousand dungeons had 
 been alleviated ; and if he could spare Robert M'Cheyne 
 just as Scotland was gathering to his burning utterances; 
 and if he could spare Thomas Clarkson while yet millions 
 of his fellow -men had chains rusting to the bone — then 
 he can spare any man, and he can spare any party. That 
 man who, through cowardice or blind idolatry of part}^, for- 
 sakes the cause of righteousness, goes down, and the armed 
 battalions of God march over him. 
 
 O Christian men ! take out your Bible this afternoon, 
 and in the light of that word make up your mind as to 
 what is your duty as citizens. Remember that the highest 
 kind of a patriot is a Christian patriot. Consecrate your- 
 selves first to God, then you will know how to consecrate 
 yourselves to your countrj^ All these political excite- 
 ments will be gone. Ballot-boxes and Gubernatorial 
 chairs and continents will smoke in the final conflagration ; 
 but those who love God and do their best shall come 
 to lustrous dominion after the stars have ceased their 
 shininof, and the ocean has heaved its last billow, and the 
 
THE CniUaTIAX AT THE BALLOT-BOX. 135 
 
 closing thunder of the judgment- day shall toll at the 
 funeral of a world ! Oh, prepare for that day ! Next 
 Tuesday questions of the State will be settled ; but there 
 comes a day when the questions of eternity will be de- 
 cided. You may vote right, and may get the victory at 
 the ballot-box, and yet suffer eternal defeat. After you 
 have cast your last vote, where will you go to? In this 
 country there are two parties. You belong to the one or 
 the other of them. Likewise in eternity there will be two 
 parties, and only two. " These shall go away into ever- 
 lasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal." 
 To which party will you belong? God grant that, while 
 you look after the welfare of the land in which God has 
 graciously cast your lot, you may not forget to h)ok after 
 your soul — blood - bought, judgment -bound, immortal! 
 God save the people ! 
 
136 THE OVEEFLOWING CUP. 
 
 THE OVERFLOWING CUR 
 
 ''My cup runneth over." — Psalm xxiii., 5. 
 
 EVERY few years we have people critical of the 
 Thanksgiving proclamation. They say, "We have 
 nothing to be thankful for. Commerce down ; manufac- 
 tures dull ; commercial prospects blasted. Better have a 
 day for fasting than a day for feasting." Indeed, have 
 you nothing to be thankful for? Does 3^our heart beat? 
 Do your eyes see? Do your ears hear? Did you break- 
 fast this morning? Did you sleep last night? Are the 
 glorious heavens above your head ? Is the solid earth 
 beneath your feet? Have you a Bible, a Christ, a prof- 
 fered heaven ? Ay, those of us who are the worst off 
 have more blessings than we appreciate, and "our cup 
 runneth over." 
 
 There is a table spread to-day across the top of the two 
 great ranges of mountains which ridge this continent — a 
 table which reaches from the Atlantic to the Pacific seas. 
 It is the Thanksgiving- table of the nation. They come 
 from the East and the West and the North and the South, 
 and sit at it. On it are smoking the products of all lands, 
 birds of every aviary, cattle from every pasture, fish from 
 every lake, feathered spoils from every form. The fruit- 
 baskets bend down under the products plucked from the 
 peach-fields of New Jersey, the apple-orchards of Western 
 New York, the orange-groves of Florida, the vineyards of 
 Ohio, and the nuts threshed from New England woods. 
 
THE OVERFLOWING CUR 137 
 
 The bread is wliite from tlie wheat-fields of Illinois and 
 Michigan, the banqueters are adorned with California gold, 
 and the table is agleam with Nevada silver, and the feast 
 is warmed with, the fire-grates heaped up with Pennsjd- 
 vania coal. The hall is spread with carpets from Lowell 
 mills, and to-night the lights will flash from bronzed 
 brackets of Philadelphia manufacture. The fingers of 
 Massachusetts girls have hung the embroidery ; the music 
 is the drumming often thousand mills, accompanied by the 
 shout of children let loose for play, and the gladness of 
 harvesters driving barnward the loads of sheaves, and the 
 thanksgivings of the nation which crowd the celestial gates 
 with doxologies, until the oldest harper of heaven can not 
 tell where the terrestrial song ends and the celestial sons; 
 begins. 
 
 Welcome, Thanksgiving-day ! Whatever we may think 
 of New England theology, we all like New England 
 Thanksgiving -day. What meant the rush last night to 
 the depots, and the long rail trains darting their lanterns 
 along the tracks of the Stonington and Providence, Bos- 
 ton and Lowell, New Haven and Springfield, Plymouth 
 and South Braintree railroads? Ask the happy group in 
 the New England farm-house. Ask the rustics in the 
 cabin among the Green Mountains. Ask the New En- 
 gland villngers whose song of praise this morning comes 
 over the Berkshire hills. Oh, it is a great day of national 
 festivity ! Clap your hands, ye people, and shout aloud 
 for joy! Through the organ -pipes let there come down 
 the thunder of a nation's rejoicing. Blow the cornet! 
 Wave the palm branches! Oh that men would praise the 
 Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the 
 children of men! "My cup runneth over!" 
 
138 THE OVERFLOWING CUR 
 
 r 
 
 I propose to speak to you this morning about thanks- 
 giving in the house, thanksgiving in the hovels of the 
 poor, thanksgiving in the church, thanksgiving in the city, 
 thanksgiving in the nation. 
 
 AVithout stopping to ring your door -bell, I come into 
 your house, and I look around and see what God has been 
 doing for 3^ou during the past year. You say, " Come in. I 
 am very glad to see you. Sit down in this arm-chair or on 
 this sofa, and make yourself at home." No, my friends, I can 
 not stop. I just want to look around, and see what God has 
 been doing for you in your home. "Oh," you sa}'-, "our 
 house is not so large now as the one we used to have." I an- 
 swer, What of that? It is a great deal of trouble to keep 
 a large house clean. Besides that, a small house is coT.y. 
 Besides that, it is a bad thing for children to have a luxu- 
 riant starting, for when they get out in the world and are 
 married, then they begin to talk about the way they used 
 to have it, and say, "I haven't been accustomed to such 
 cramped -up apartments." Bless God if you have a real 
 snug, cozy home. But I step into your parlor, and I find 
 there the evidences of refinement and culture and friend- 
 ship. The sofas and chairs are not always empty. Sym- 
 pathizing friends sit here when you have trouble. Mirth- 
 ful friends sit here when you are in good cheer. This 
 chandelier will flash down upon social gatherings, and 
 upon Christmas-tree, and upon merry-making. These keys 
 have often been thrummed by your children, and there is 
 in the port-folio on the music-rack many a well-worn song 
 of "OUl Oaken Bucket " and "Old Arm-chair;" and 
 while your grandfathers entertained their guests under 
 rough-hewn rafters and on bare floors, you have a parlor 
 in which are the evidences of painter's pencil and en- 
 
THE OVERFLOWIXQ CUP. 139 
 
 graver's knife and sculptor's chisel, and I stand in the 
 midst of all this refinement and elegance of your parlor 
 and demand your thanksgiving unto the Lord. 
 
 I go on to the next room, and step into your nursery, 
 and I am greeted with the shout and laughter of your chil- 
 dren. They romp; they hide; they clap their hands. I 
 get down on the floor and play with them. What bright 
 eyes! AV bat merry hearts! What swift feet! God bless 
 them ! Tlaeir little troubles dissolve in a tear. Their lit- 
 tle enmities are gone after a minute's pouting. Busy all 
 day, without fatigues, they fall asleep chattering, and wake 
 up singing. And the little baby has its realm, waving its 
 sceptre over the parental heart, and you look down in its 
 wondering ej^es and see whole worlds of promise there, 
 and think to yourself, " Tliose little hands will smooth my 
 locks when they get gray, and those little feet will run for 
 me when I am sick, and those eyes will weep for me when 
 I am gone." Ob, hush him to sleep with a holy song! 
 Let him know the name of Jesus long before he can pro- 
 nounce it. Tbank God to-day that upon your home has 
 come the brightness of childhood, and drop a tear of grief 
 for those who weep over a despoiled cradle, and toys that 
 never will be caught up again by little hands now still, 
 alas, forever ! 
 
 I step from this room into the dining-hall. You have 
 not invited me to dine with you ; but I come right in 
 without invitation, and sit down at your table to-day. I 
 do not see any signs of starving around here, although you 
 talk so much about hard times. Besides that, it seems to 
 me you have all the w^orld waiting npon you. The cabi- 
 net-makers have prepared with great toil the furniture; 
 the farmers worried themselves almost to death in raising 
 
140 ^ THE OVERFLOWING CUP. 
 
 the wheat from ^Yhich this bread was made ; the sailor 
 was lashed to the mast to bring you those foreign luxu- 
 ries; whole herds and flocks, at different times, have fallen 
 under the knife of the butcher to please your palate ; the 
 miners toiled in damp and darkness to get the coal that 
 warms your dining-room to-day. Summer sun and driv- 
 ing snow and howling tempest have sent their contribu- 
 tions to your table to-day. None of 3'our children are 
 crying for bread in vain. The barrel of meal has not 
 wasted ; the cruse of oil has not failed. Bread enough 
 and to spare, while many have perished with hunger. Oh, 
 do not, to-day, draw your knife across the sharpening steel 
 until you have sent up one word of thanksgiving to the 
 Lord who has given you all these mercies! And if you 
 are not accustomed to asking a blessing at the table, I 
 think this day will be a good one in which to begin, and 
 if you can not think of any thing else to say, then take the 
 words of my text, " My cup runneth over !" 
 
 I step out from the dining-hall into 3-our librarj^, and 
 see your table covered with books and magazines and 
 newspapers fresh from the publishing houses. It seems 
 to me really as if the historians, and the fabulists, and the 
 pamphleteers, and the pliilosophers of the world were 
 waiting your bidding. Here, on this historic shelf of your 
 library, you have Bancroft and Prescott and Macaulay to 
 tell you the rude story of early America, or describe the 
 wonders of IMexican scenery, or call back the eloquence 
 of the old Parliaments that death long ago dissolved with 
 more than the imperiousness of Cromwell. And here is 
 your poetic shelf, on which stand Dr. Young with his 
 weeping harp, and Walter Scott sounding the Highland 
 bagpipe, and Longfellow ringing out the war-whoop 
 
THE OVERFLOWING CVP. 141 
 
 through "Hiawatha," and William Cullen Bryant min- 
 gling the moan of the wild woods with the call of the 
 brown thresher. And here is the shelf that Dickens has 
 all to himself, from "Oliver Twist" to "Edwin Drood," 
 avenging the world's sorrows, weeping the world's sins, 
 exposing the world's hypocrisies, winning the world's ap- 
 plause. What a pity that, by high living, he went away 
 so soon ! Moan out the grief, O bells of Westminster. 
 Thank God for books — plenty of them — books to make 
 you study, books to waft you into reverie, books to make 
 you weep, books to make you laugh, books in cloth, books 
 in morocco, in satin, in gold ; books of travel, of anecdote, 
 of memoir, of legend ; books scrolled and starred and 
 wreathed and columned ; books about insects, about birds, 
 about shells, about every thing ; books for the young, 
 books for the old. "Oh," says some one, "I have not all 
 these luxuries; I have not all these comforts of the parlor, 
 of the nurserj', of the dining-hall, of the library." But, my 
 brother, most certainly you know something of the height 
 and depth and length and breadth of that sweet, tender, 
 joj'ous, triumphant word, home! Do not look at it as a 
 place merely to stay in, as the lion looks at his lair, or the 
 fox his burrow, or the eagle his eyrie. Do not call it your 
 apartments, or 3'our lodgings, or your domicile, but — by 
 all the memory of those who are gone ; by the memory 
 of the old people, whether here or there ; for the sake of 
 childhood; for the sake of all that is good, and pure, and 
 true, and blessed — call it home. Gather your fiimilies to- 
 gether to-day ! If you have a musical instrument, open 
 it; if you have not, open your heart — the best of all mu- 
 sical instruments — and while the Lord listens, and the mem- 
 ory of the past rushes through your soul, " Oh, give thanks 
 
1J:2 THE OVEIiFLOWING CUP. 
 
 unto the Lord ; for be is good ; for Lis mercy endureth 
 forever;" and let eacli one clap his bands, and say for him- 
 self, "My cup runneth over!" 
 
 I pass on now to look at Thanksgiving in the hovels 
 of the poor. No banquet smoking on their table. It is a 
 sad thing to see a poor man, the evening before Thanks- 
 giving, looking into a full grocery-window, while he thinks 
 of his destitute home. It is hard to be hungry in a world 
 with ripe orchards and luxuriant harvests and herds of 
 cattle driven to the slaughtering! It is hard to be cold 
 in a world where the forests are waiting for the axe-man 
 and the mines are waiting for the miners. It is a hard 
 thing to be unclad in a world, where there are so many 
 swift cylinders in motion, so many manufactories of goods, 
 and where the fox, and the beaver, and the Arctic bear, 
 and the Siberian squirrel are dying in order that men may 
 have their furs. To-day do not stuff 3-ourself to surfeiting 
 without thinking of those who are gaunt with hunger ; do 
 not put your feet up by the warm register without think- 
 ing, at least once, of those whose last scuttle of coal is gone. 
 When, to-night, 3'ou turn on the gas full head, and it glit- 
 ters along the wall in bubbles of fire, do not forget to think 
 of those whose last candle has hissed in the socket. If 
 you have nothing better than an old jacket, or a worn-out 
 pair of shoes, or a coat that has been patched until it has 
 become "a coat of many colors," give something this day 
 to the poor. There are two things that I should like to 
 have my Lord Jesus Christ say to me in the last day: 
 "I was hungry, and ye fed me." "I was naked, and ye 
 clothed me." God help the poor! 
 
 But I pass on now, and look at Thanksgiving in the 
 church. Last Thankso-iving we were churchless. Wc had 
 
THE OVERFLOWING CUR 143 
 
 a wall partly up, a pile of bricks, a heap of lumber. That 
 was about our position. It was a doleful day to me. I 
 wandered about with my coat-collar up, and rubbing my 
 frost-bitten right ear, and there was not, in all the day, any 
 thing that looked like Thanksgiving save the dinner, and 
 that was not so good as usual. We felt like the Israelites 
 in captivit}^, and would, like them, have hung our harps 
 on the willows, but for the reason our organ was burned 
 up, and we had no harp, and no willows to hang it on. 
 But where are we to-day? Is this our roof? Are these 
 our altars? Is this our spiritual home? IIow goodly arc 
 thy tents, Jacob! "Walk about Zion, and go round 
 about her : tell the towers thereof Mark yo, well her bul- 
 warks, consider her palaces ; that 3'e may tell it to the gen- 
 eration following. For this God is our God for ever and 
 ever ; he will be our guide even unto death." With organ, 
 with cornet, with multitudinous shout of great congrega- 
 tion, express this day your praise to God, "Our cup run- 
 neth over." But better than all material structure is the 
 spiritual blessing that descended, and the multitude of souls 
 who, during these nine months, have stood up at this altar, 
 connecting themselves M'itli our membership — the blessing 
 still hovering — and at every service immortal souls saved. 
 "Bless the Lord, O my soul!" I know there are those 
 who think the Church is a museum of antediluvian fossils. 
 They think it did very well once, but it is behind the times. 
 That is not 5^our opinion. You love, first, your home, and 
 next, your church. O ye descendants of the men who were 
 hounded amidst the Highlands of Scotland, and who fell, 
 at Bothwell Bridge ! O ye sons and daughters of the men 
 who came across wintry seas to build their log churches in 
 the American wilderness! ye sons and daughters of 
 
144 THE OVERFLOWING CUR 
 
 tliose who stood in the awful siege of Leyden, and shouted 
 the martyr's triumph in the horrors of the Brussels market- 
 place ! O ye descendants of the men whose garments were 
 dyed in the wine-press of Saint Bartholomew Massacre ! 
 ye sons and daughters of the fire! what do yon think, to- 
 day, of a quiet church, and a free pulpit, and a Gospel 
 winged with mercy and salvation ? AVhat imperial edict 
 forbids our convocation ? What sword thirsts for our 
 blood? What fires are kindled for our torture? None. 
 Defended by the law, invited by the Gospel, baptized by 
 the Spirit, we are here to-day free men of the State, free 
 men of God. Glorious Church ! " Twelve wells of water, 
 and three-score-and-ten palm-trees." "My cup runneth 
 over." Oh, this day bring the richest Thanksgiving gar- 
 land, and put it upon the brow of Him who bought the 
 Church, died for your sins, and prepared for you a grnnd 
 and glorious inheritance. Thanks be unto God for the 
 unspeakable gift of a Saviour. 
 
 But I pass on and consider Thanksgiving in the city. It 
 is five years since I came to live in this city. I have seen 
 many cities on both sides the sea, but I have never seen 
 any I like quite so well as this. What quiet Sabbaths! 
 What large and beautiful churches! What costly and 
 magnificent Mercantile Library ! Wliat a glory our Acad- 
 emy of Music! What institutions of learning — Packer, 
 the Polytechnic, the Adelphi, and our glorious common 
 schools with the Bible in them! Our long lines of streets, 
 beautifully shaded. Our Park, with its arborescent drives, 
 and its affluence of flowers, and its sculptured bridges, and 
 its exquisite lake. Prospered city. Our Maj'or honorable. 
 Our judges just. Our police efficient. Beautiful. Brook- 
 lyn. Blessed forever be her great population ! When we 
 
THE OrUHFLOWING CUP. 145 
 
 get the bridge done, we will go over and make New York 
 just like it. But, after all, I think New York is as moral 
 a city as there is under the sun, considering the number of 
 its population. We are one city, after all, on both sides 
 of the East Eiver. There are a great many people who 
 think that the worst city on earth is the combined city of 
 New York and Brooklyn ; and I do not know but that some 
 people, from the exaggeration in regard to it, may land at 
 the foot of Cortlandt Street, and rush up to the Hudson 
 River Railroad Depot, telling the hackman all the way to 
 whip up the horses, lest some scourge come upon them be- 
 fore they get through the town. I do not know but that 
 some countrymen coming to our city, from the stories that 
 have been told about us, may keep looking over both shoul- 
 ders lest they be garroted somewhere between Fulton Ferry 
 and the City Hall. I think the politicians are responsible 
 for that exaggerated statement of the way things are in 
 this city. I really think it is a grand city, a beautiful city, 
 to live in. Under different administrations of politics it is. 
 We have tried all kinds — the one, perhaps, as good as the 
 other ; the chief difference between the two parties, I have 
 found out, being that that one steals most which has the 
 longest opportunity to steal, the change of administration 
 often being the relief which a man gets when he changes 
 from rheumatism to neuralgia ! Still, notwithstanding all 
 these things, I think this a fair city to live in ; I do not 
 think there is a better city under the sun. Thank God 
 you live here, and that you can to-day boast, as Paul did, 
 that you are the inhabitant of no mean city. 
 
 I pass on once more to look at Thanksgiving in the na- 
 tion. Peace all through the land. The Indians quiet in 
 the plains. No foreign guns coming up through the " Nar- 
 
 7 
 
146 THE OVERFLOWIXO CUR 
 
 rows." Insurrection in New Orleans conquered bj a rev- 
 olution at the ballot-box. The South at last satisfied that 
 the wrongs of the last six years will be righted. No Amer- 
 ican slavery to fight about. By a revolution in national 
 politics, both political parties put upon their good behav- 
 ior ; that party which does the most for the people in the 
 next year and a half winning the Presidential chair and the 
 national supremac3^ In our own State and in our own 
 time we have had a wonderful thing occur in this very 
 month, when the question was who should be Governor, as 
 between two men, both of them honorable and Christian 
 men — a good man going out and a good man coming in. 
 John A. Dix followed by Samuel J. Tilden. So also with 
 our financial prospects, they are all brightening. 
 
 We have all been compelled to economize; and you 
 well know that economy is the primordial element in na- 
 tional prosperity. If a man should make ten thousand 
 dollars a year and spend eleven thousand dollars, he is not 
 so well off as the man who makes one thousand dollars a 
 year and spends nine hundred dollars. That process of 
 economy going on all through the land has been a healthy 
 process, and we shall feel the good results of it after a 
 while. Superfluous railroads have ceased building; com- 
 mercial balloons have lost their gas. We have almost a 
 certain prospect of a speedy resumption of specie payments ; 
 and the day will soon come when a dollar will mean a 
 dollar, and not something else. The ragged currency will 
 be ended. We have wandered about, supposing we had 
 our pockets full of mioney, when they turned out to be only 
 the carles-de-visiie of some celebrated member of the Cab- 
 inet; Mr. Spinner, in awful chirography at the bottom of 
 the bill, certifying that it was a good picture of Hugh 
 M'Culloch or Mr. Boutwell. 
 
THE OVERFLOWING CUE. 147 
 
 Now, all these tilings are brightening prospects. " Oh," 
 say some, " we never can get out of this financial depres- 
 sion." Why, my brethren, men of business, we have had 
 dark days before this. In 1857 there were four thou- 
 sand two hundred and fifty-seven failures, to the amount 
 of two hundred and sixty-five million eight hundred and 
 eighteen thousand dollars. People said, " We'll never get 
 out of it." Yet in two years there was not a vestige left 
 of that great commercial disaster. The wheels flew and 
 the feet of American enterprise tramped on, and we soon 
 got over it. Then came the dark days of 1861, when there 
 were five thousand nine hundred and thirty-five business 
 failures, amounting to one hundred and seventy-eight mill- 
 ion six hundred and thirty -two thousand one hundred 
 and seventy dollars. Then people threw up their hands, 
 and said, "We shall never get over this." And yet the 
 largest fortunes of the country have been made since then, 
 and our national prosperity has increased bej'ond the ca- 
 pacity of any arithmetic to state it. If God brought us out 
 of the trouble of 1857 and*out of the misfortunes of 1861, 
 is he not strong enough to bring us out of the troubles of 
 1874? lie will. He will. I believe the prosperities that 
 are yet to come will soon put out of sight all our past na- 
 tional accumulations. Our national debt is rapidly dwin- 
 dling. Added to all, the flict that we have one hundred 
 and sixty-two thousand square miles of coal, and another 
 one hundred and sixty-two thousand square miles of iron, 
 it seems to me that the metals of the earth are to-day, as 
 with the golden lips of California and the silver tongue of 
 Nevada, promising the fact that there shall be no end to 
 our national resources. 
 
 But look at the harvests. I do not suppose that foi* 
 
1J:8 THE OVERFLOWING CUR 
 
 more than three or four times witliin the memory of any 
 body here there have been such harvests as we have had 
 this year. The grain -fields have passed their harvests 
 above the veto of drought and deluge. The freight cars 
 are not large enough to bring down the grain to the sea- 
 board. The canal -boats are crowded with bread-stuffs. 
 Hark to the rushing of the wheat through the great Chi- 
 cago corn "elevators." Hark to the rolling of the hogs- 
 heads of the Cincinnati pork-packers! Enough to eat, and 
 at cheap prices. Enough to wear, and of home manufact- 
 ure. If some have and some have not, then may God help 
 those who have to hand over something to those who have 
 not! Clear the track for the rail trains that come down, 
 bringing the wheat, and the barley, and the oats, and the 
 hops, and the lumber, and the leather, and every thing for 
 man and every thing for beast. 
 
 I can not, I dare not, detain you any longer from the 
 home group. The housekeepers will be angry with me if 
 I keep you until the viands are cold. Set the chairs to the 
 table — the easy -chairs for gran'Hfather and grandmother, 
 if they be still alive; the high chair for the youngest and 
 the least. Then put out your hand to take the full cup of 
 thanksgiving; bring it toward your lips, your hands trem- 
 bling with emotion; and if the chalice shall spill on the 
 cloth, do not be chagrined, but look up thankfully to 
 heaven, and say, "My cup runneth over!" 
 
THE WRECK OF THE ''SCHILLER:' 140 
 
 THE WEECK OF THE " SCHILLER." 
 
 "Tliey ran the ship aground; and tlie forepart stuck fust, and remained 
 unmovable, but the hinder part was broken with the violence of the waves." 
 — Acts xxvii., 41. 
 
 CAUGHT in a typhoon ! Before yet the chronome- 
 ter was invented, a vessel is cracking to pieces on the 
 coast of a Mediterranean island. The cargo of corn is 
 spoiled, and, worse than that, two hundred and seventy-six 
 passengers are beside themselves with terror. At the first 
 bump of the ship, every thing was in consternation. She 
 went on, bow first, and the waves cried, " Come, let us tear 
 this old hulk to pieces!" The sea beat against the stern, 
 and dashed the spray clear over the deck, crowded with af- 
 frighted passengers. Rudder, yards, mast, bulwark, knocked 
 away. Every thing going to demolition. "They ran the 
 ship aground ; and the forepart stuck fast, and remained 
 unmovable, but the hinder part was broken with the vio- 
 lence of the waves." 
 
 There are some points of striking analogy between that 
 wreck and the one which stunned our ears a few days ngo. 
 Both vessels carried freight and passengers. Both were 
 crowded with people — the one with two hundred and sev- 
 enty-six on board, the other with three hundred and eighty- 
 five on board. Both were caught in the grip of a tempest. 
 From both the sailors tried to escape in small boats, giving 
 no chance to the passengers. Both lost their reckoning. 
 Both went aground in the night. 
 
150 THE WHECK OF THE ''SCHILLER:' 
 
 The Scldller started from our port on the 28tb of April, 
 bound for Plymouth, England, and Hamburg, Germany. 
 It was the popular season for transatlantic voyage, and the 
 people went on the ship: invalids in search of health, pleas- 
 urists expecting merriment in foreign capitals, merchants 
 on commercial errand, artists bound for the picture-galler- 
 ies of Dresden and Florence, adopted citizens going back 
 to visit the land of their nativity and the graves of their fa- 
 thers. They had gone three thousand miles of vo3^age suc- 
 cessfully, and expected on the morrow to wake up in the 
 calm English harbor. Some of them were sleeping, and 
 dreaming of home, of wife, of child, and others of mount- 
 ains and cities beyond the sea. A dense mist comes upon 
 the ocean. The storm hallooes amidst the rigging. Yet all 
 seems safe. Two men on the lookout. Two men at the 
 wheel. Two men pacing the captain's bridge. Yet all the 
 time making for the rocks. Oh, stop her before she strikes ! 
 One turn of the wheel will save the ship. The howl of the 
 storm drowns the tolling of the fog-bell in Bishop Eock 
 Light-house. Still on and on, until, without a moment in 
 which to give warning, or wake up the passengers from 
 their berths, or swing the small boats from their davits, that 
 vessel of three thousand six hundred tons burden strikes 
 the rock, once, twice, three times, four times, and goes down ! 
 Between the first plunge and the last the rockets are flung, 
 and the guns are sounded, and a few passengers clamber up 
 ill the rigging; but there is no safe retreat there, for soon 
 the mast, with its cluster of precious human life tangled in 
 the cordage, begins to bend and reel in the gale, and then 
 cracks, and with awful plunge dashes into the sea. !Mean- 
 while the captain makes a brave attempt with loaded and 
 firing pistol to keep the life-boats for the passengers. lie 
 
TEE WRECK OF THE ''SCHILLER^ 151 
 
 gathers some of them up on bis bridge; but, after having 
 done all he could for the saving of the people on the ship, 
 he wraps himself in a winding-sheet of surf, and lies down 
 beside them in that great democracy of sepulture. Beau- 
 tiful women and swarthy men and. sweet children, side by 
 side, are dead. There she lies, the jSckiUer, under a mound, 
 of blue seas, the jutting reef the tombstone, buried in the 
 place where lie the skeletons of the Thames steamer, and 
 the jDuro, and the English Admiral, waiting for the day 
 when the sea shall give up its dead. Let the waves tramp 
 up the sad beach in solemn procession, and two continents 
 uncover the brow over this burial of the Scldller with three 
 hundred and forty -two passengers, without any warning 
 gone out to meet their God. 
 
 Let us learn, first, from this disaster what a sad thing it is 
 for i^eoph to lose their reckoning. Captain Thomas, through 
 the report from the log-book, which recorded the distances 
 and courses sailed, judged that he was at least two miles off 
 from the Scilly rocks ; but he did not really know where 
 he was. He mistook, and that mistake flung hundreds of 
 souls into the eternal world, and the whole civilized world 
 into mourning. So there are those here to-day who have 
 lost their reckoning. They know not where they are. 
 They say, " So many miles have I voyaged since I was 
 launched on the ocean of life, and so many miles more will 
 I voyage before I get to the coast of eternity." Part of 
 their calculation is right, and part of their calculation is 
 wrong, and they have lost their reckoning. They know 
 not how they stand toward God or their Bible, or their duty 
 or heaven. They are sailing on thoughtlessly, when they 
 may be within two minutes of the reef. Alas that men 
 should make a mistake for eternity ! now running on one 
 
152 THE WRECK OF THE ''SCHILLER:' 
 
 rock, now running on the other rock; and, with the quad- 
 rant of God's Word in their hand, by which they miglit 
 have calculated the latitude, in an evil hour, their watch- 
 fulness asleep in the cabin, like the corn ship of the text, 
 or the Schiller of last week, going aground, one shivering 
 horror. Oh, slow your engines ! Throw out your bower 
 anchor! Stop stock-still until you find out where 3*ou are 
 — near what reef, by what coast, on the verge of what ship- 
 wreck! There is only one channel leading into the celes- 
 tial harbor, and that is not a wide channel, "Narrow is 
 the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find 
 it." God forbid that any one of us should lose our reck- 
 oning. 
 
 Again, I see in this disaster luhat a dense fog can do. 
 This calamity was only half a mile from Bishop Rock Light- 
 house. It is a granite structure, one hundred and forty- 
 seven feet high, and has one of the best and brightest diop- 
 tric lights, a multiplication of refracted rays. When the 
 sun sets, the keeper strikes that light, and it 'blazes all 
 througli the darkness, and in ordinary weather throws out 
 its glow fourteen miles upon the sea. " Well," you saj^, 
 "there might have been some excuse for a vessel going on 
 those rocks in Queen Anne's time, as the vessels did un- 
 der the brave Sir Cloudsley Shovel, when nine ships of the 
 line broke to pieces, and two thousand soldiers perished, 
 for then there were no lisjhts on the rock. But how was 
 it possible," says one not conversant with all the circum- 
 stances, " that a steamer should have been ruined there 
 within half a mile of Bishop Rock Light-house?" Oh, there 
 was a fog on the sea. Captain Thomas, and First-officer 
 Ilillers, and Second-officer Pollman could not see a quarter 
 of the length of that steamer, and if there had been fifty 
 
THE WRECK OF THE '' JSCHILLEH.'" 153 
 
 light -houses on the rock they would not have done any 
 good. 
 
 Here I get a hint of the way men lose their souls, driv- 
 ing into ruin; for there are scores of men in this day, and 
 institutions, whose whole business seems to be to create a 
 great spiritual fog. Men and women do not go on to death 
 a -purpose; it is because they are cheated, they are de- 
 ceived, they are mystified, they are befogged. We have in 
 this day the Herbert Spencer fog about life, which, he says, 
 is "'the combination of heterogeneous changes, both simul- 
 taneous and successive, in correspondences with external 
 co-existences and sequences !" We have the Huxley fog 
 about protoplasm. We have the Darwinian fog about the 
 anthropomorphous origin of our race, and our dear old 
 grandfathers, the gorilla and the chimpanzee. The fog of 
 Materialism, the fog of Pantheism, the fog of Rationalism, 
 the fog that Strauss and Shenkel and Kenan have thrown 
 all around the head of Christ. Any thing but believe that 
 God, by his power, made the w^orlds, and that the Bible is 
 plenarily inspired, and that Christ is the omnipotent Son 
 of God come to save sinners. There is one funeral that 
 these wiseacres would like to attend, and be both pall-bear- 
 ers and grave-diggers, and that is the decease and burial of 
 the Lord God Almighty. They do not think the universe 
 is large enough for Him and them, and so they are trying 
 to crowd Him back, and crowd Him off the precipices of the 
 universe, and, in trying to do so, they create a great spirit- 
 ual fog, and the hundreds who went down on the Schiller 
 were as nothing compared with the thousands and the hun- 
 dreds of thousands who, in this great philosophical vapor- 
 ing, have been wrecked suddenly and forever. One hour 
 after the vessel spoken of struck in the English Channel, 
 
 7* 
 
15-i THE WHECK OF THE ''SCHILLER:' 
 
 the fog lifted, and tlie survivors saw J3isliop Eock Liglit- 
 house ; and I would that to-day a fresh gale from heaven 
 might sweep earth and sky of all philosophical obscura- 
 tions, and that the dioptric light of God's Word might flash 
 its illumination across all kingdoms. Oh, come out of the 
 speculative fog, man ! Take the Bible for all you ought 
 to know and can know. Come out of the darkness, and 
 sit in the sunlight of our glorious Christianity. Stop your 
 religious guessing. When in this day I see people all 
 around me drenched and soaked and floundering in the 
 dense mist of modern skepticism, I am put more in love 
 than ever before with the comfortable religion of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ. Oh that these wiseacres would come and sit 
 down for half an hour, and study and absorb the three first 
 questions and answers of Brown's " Shorter Catechism," 
 which some of us learned at four years of age ! — " Who 
 made you ? God. Who redeemed you ? Christ. Who 
 sanctified you ? The Holy Ghost." May the Sun of right- 
 eousness scatter the fog. 
 
 Again, in the recent disaster I find an illusiration of 
 ivliai is vicarious sacrifice. Captain Thomas might have got 
 off to the land safel}^, in all probability. There were two 
 small boats that reached the shore. Why did he not take 
 one of them at the very beginning of the disaster? Why 
 did he not take some buoyant part of the ship and float to 
 a place of safety ? He might have said, "No man can re- 
 imburse me for the loss of my life. This is a time when 
 every man must look out for himself" No. He staid 
 there amidst the hurricane, pistol in hand, determined that 
 the women and the children should get into those life- 
 boats, and no one else. And I hear the crack, crack, of 
 the fire-arms, and I hear him crying out, "Stand back 
 
THE WRECK OF THE ''SCHILLER:' 155 
 
 now, and let the passengers be saved! Stand back!" 
 And then I see him gathering some of the sufferers on his 
 bridge, and then I see him going down for still another 
 errand in their behalf, when a wild surge sweeps him off 
 into the merciless Atlantic. All the survivors agree in 
 stating that a brave man perished that night. Come, ye 
 who do not know what the pulpits mean when they talk 
 about vicarious sacrifice. It means one dying for others. 
 It means Captain Thomas dying for the survivors of the 
 jSchiller. It means the Lord Jesus Christ dying for 3'ou 
 and me. Christ knew that we must go down without His 
 interposition. He might have gone safely back to heaven, 
 saying, " I have done enough for that race. I can not af- 
 ford to die on that wretched cross;" and the ang-els of God 
 would have taken him by the arms and lifted him into the 
 sky. But no. There he stands in the midnight hurricane 
 of God's wrath against sin, looking off upon our founder- 
 ing souls, and he launches the life-boat, and tells us to be 
 off for the shore, while he expires. Christ sinking, that 
 we might rise; Christ dying, that we might live. For the 
 first ten million years heaven will not get through talking 
 about it. And yet — amazing fact! — we will not get into 
 the life-boat, though it has come ; and we see the oars pull- 
 ing away, taking from us our last chance, and we will not 
 leap into it. The tears and the sufferings and the dying 
 anguish of the Son of God, so far as we are concerned, a 
 dead fjiilure ; and, instead of pleading for us at the last, 
 because of our outrage thereof, demanding our complete 
 and eternal overthrow ! It is marvelous that Jesus died. 
 There is only one marvel that comes anywhere near equal- 
 ing it, and that is our rejection of his mercy. Oh that, 
 this morning, God's Spirit would show the people of this 
 
156 THE WRECK OF THE "SCHILLER:'' 
 
 audience how thorougli is the ruin of a man who will not 
 have Christ! 
 
 The present EJdystone Light -house stands very firml\^, 
 but that was not the character of the first structure that 
 stood on that dangerous point. There was an eccentric 
 man by the name of Henry Winstanle}'', who built a very 
 fantastic light- house at that point in 1696; and, when it 
 was nearly done, he felt so confident that it was strong, 
 that he expressed the wish that he might be in it in the 
 roughest hurricane that ever blew in the face of heaven. 
 And he got his wish. One November night, in 1703, he 
 and his workmen were in that light -house, when there 
 came down the most raging tempest that had ever been 
 known in that region. On the following morning the peo- 
 ple came down to see about the light-house. Not a vestige 
 of the wall, not a vestige of the men. Only two twisted 
 iron bolts, showing where the light-house had stood. So 
 there are men building up their fantastic hopes, and plans, 
 and enterprises, and expectations, thinking they will stand 
 forever, saying, " We don't want any of the defenses of the 
 Gospel. We can stand for ourselves. We are not afraid. 
 We take all the risks, and we defy every thing ;" and 
 suddenly the Lord blows npon them, and they are gone. 
 Only two things left — a grave and a lost soul. 
 
 But I learn, also, from this sad providence how near 2^eo- 
 ple can come to a liappij destination^ and yet not reach it. 
 They expected next day to be in Plymouth harbor. Only 
 a few more pacings of the deck by the captain, and then 
 the four blades of the screw would cease their revolutions, 
 and the steamer would stop. Almost in, and yet those 
 people did not live to see Plymouth harbor. They landed 
 at the bottom of the sea. So men sometimes come very 
 
THE WRECK OF THE '' SCHILLEE:' 157 
 
 near the harbor of God's mercy, but do not quite get into 
 it. They expected to land; we expected they would land ; 
 but they strike on some fatal hinderance, and perish. Last 
 Sabbath there were in this house persons who were almost 
 Christians who never will be fully Christians. They got 
 along just so far, and then some violent jerk of resolution 
 stopped them. They thought religion would not be dig- 
 nified to them, or they thought that it might disorganize 
 their worldly business, or they thought they might com- 
 promise their reputation among some of their friends, or 
 they thought they had got on so far toward the religious 
 hope that they were saved. No, no. Eemember the 
 Schiller! Paul saw two boats, and one was called Alto- 
 geiJier, and the other was called Almost, and he saw the 
 Altogether go into port, flags flying, and he saw the Almost 
 founder at sea. Not quite a Christian, is to be no Chris- 
 tian at all. To lift one's hand toward Christ, and yet not 
 to take hold of him, is to be a castaway. Some of you, 
 some time ago, wept over sin. I saw anxiety on some of 
 your countenances. Your lips moved as if in prayer. I 
 thought you were going to be saved. I have changed my 
 mind. You disastrously stopped. You struck a reef Ee- 
 member the Schiller ! 
 
 Again, I learn that ivhen our time is up ive have to go. 
 Those people were sure of a safe arrival. Every thing 
 promised it. They were in as stout an iron steamer as 
 ever goes across the Atlantic. It had seven water-tight 
 compartments. There were eight small boats on the side. 
 They had a skillful and long -experienced commander. 
 Yet the Lord decided that between ten o'clock at night 
 and five o'clock in the morning three hundred and forty- 
 two souls should pass out of life, and he executed that de- 
 
158 THE WRECK OF THE ''SCHILLER:' 
 
 cision. And so the time of our exit out of tLiis life is ap- 
 pointed. You can not tell mine, nor I yours. The whole 
 thing is uncertain, and I am glad it is. If we knew the 
 year and the day when we were to leave this life, we 
 would be disqualified for work, and we would be saj'ing, 
 "Now we have another year less to live, and another week 
 less to live, and another day less to live," and w^e would be 
 nervous and morbid, and a nuisance to ourselves and to 
 others. But while it is uncertain to us, it is not uncertain 
 to God. He has appointed the time. The utmost pru- 
 dence on our part can not avert it. When that moment 
 comes, we may be on the land, we may be on the sea ; but 
 a message from the next world will be put into our hand, 
 and though nobody else can see it, we will see it, and read 
 it, and respond to it, and tramp away. The call will be 
 so inexorable that we must be off. And yet we act as 
 though we had an infallible life-belt that would hold us up 
 in any wave. We act as if we were more invulnerable than 
 Achilles, even the heel encased. "We do not realize that 
 our final moment is coming toward us as straight as a bird 
 ever flies. We feel cool and unconcerned and indifferent, 
 as though we had a thousand years to live on earth, and 
 the nine hundred and ninety-ninth would be as favorable 
 for this work as any of its predecessors. Meanwhile, our 
 comrades and best friends are dropping around us like 
 slacked lime — everj'- afternoon, between two and five 
 o'clock, the processions going toward the cemeteries, and 
 we not realizing that we will, after a while, be silent lead- 
 ers in some such procession. So near eternity, and yet no 
 fittedness. Startling warnings passing out of mind. The 
 shriek of the /ScJiilk)', like that of the Arctic and the Atlantic 
 and the Ville du Havre, forgotten. The trouble is, we do 
 
THE WRECK OF THE ''SCEILLEU:' 159 
 
 not realize that the very poorest hour in which to equip 
 ourselves for eternity is tjie last hour. Of all the thou- 
 sands and thousands of hours in our whole life, there is 
 not one so poorly fitted for this work as the closing hour; 
 and yet we choose the poorest out of all for this prepara- 
 tion. What chance had those people to pray on that ves- 
 sel, awakened suddenly out of sleep, the waves of the ocean 
 dashing through the gaping sides of the steamer? Some 
 of them, indeed, got a few moments by clambering up into 
 the rigging; but, alas if they put off the work of the 
 soul's salvation till that moment when, in undress, they 
 swung in the ratlines on the careening ship until the smoke- 
 stack fell, and the foremast fell, and the mainmast fell, and 
 there was a plash, and a gurgle, and all was ovei ! How 
 much better, my brother, it would be for you to prepare 
 now for that eternity which may any moment break in 
 upon you as suddenly as it did upon them ! Unless your 
 heart is radically changed by the grace of God, and Christ 
 is your personal Saviour, the plunge of the ScliiUer in the 
 English Channel was- only a feeble tj^pe of the deeper 
 going-down of your immortal spirit. Why not now re- 
 pent and believe, and pray and live ? This disaster de- 
 mands your arousal. Wake before it be too late. Ee- 
 member the Schiller/ 
 
160 EXASFERATIXG COMFOltTEES. 
 
 EXASPERATING COMFORTERS. 
 
 "Miserable comforters are ye all." — Job xvi., 2. 
 
 THE man of Uz Lad a great many trials ; the loss of 
 Lis family, the loss of his propcrt}^, the loss of Lis 
 health ; but the most exasperating thing that came upon 
 him was the tantalizing talk of those who ought to have 
 sympathized with him. And looking around upon .them, 
 and weighing what they had said, he utters the words of 
 my text. 
 
 Why did God let sin come into the world ? It is a 
 question I often Lear discussed, but never satisfactorily an- 
 swered. God made tLe world fair and beautiful at tLe 
 start. If our first parents Lad not sinned in Eden, tLey 
 migLt Lave gone out of tLat garden, and found fifty para- 
 dises all around tLe eartL — Europe, Asia, Africa, North 
 and SoutL America — so many flower-gardens or orcLards 
 of fruit, redolent and luscious. I suppose tLat wLen God 
 poured out tLe GiLon and tLe Iliddekel, Le poured out, 
 at tLe same time, tLe Hudson and tLe SusqueLanna; tLo 
 wLole eartL was very fair and beautiful to look upon. 
 WLy did it not stay so? God Lad tLe power to keep 
 back sin and woe. WLy did Le not keep tLem back? 
 WLy not every cloud roseate, and every step a jo}^, and 
 every sound music, and all tLe ages a long jubilee of sin- 
 less men and sinless women? God can make a rose as 
 easily as Le can make a tLorn. AVLy, tLen, tLe predomi- 
 nance of tLorns? lie can make good, fair, ripe fruit as 
 
EXASFERATING C03IF0RTERS. 161 
 
 well as gnarled and sour fruit. Why so mucL, then, that 
 is gnarled and sour? He can make men robust in health. 
 Why, then, are there so many invalids? Why not have 
 for our whole race perpetual leisure, instead of this tug 
 and toil and tussle for a livelihood? I will tell you why 
 God let sin come into the world — when I get on the other 
 side of the Eiver of Death. That is the place where such 
 questions will be answered and such mysteries solved. He 
 who this side that river attempts to answer the question, 
 only illustrates his own ignorance and incompetenc}'-. All 
 I know is one great fact, and that is, that a herd of woes 
 have come in upon us, trampling down every thing flxir 
 and beautiful. A sword at the gate of Eden, and a sword 
 at every gate. More people under the ground than on it. 
 The grave-yards in vast majority. The six thousand win- 
 ters have made more scars than the six thousand summers 
 can cover up. Trouble has taken the tender heart of this 
 world in its two rough hands, and pinched it until the na- 
 tions wail with the ngon}^ If all the mounds of grave- 
 yards that have been lifted were put side by side, you 
 might step on them and on nothing else, going all around 
 the world, and around again, and around again. These 
 are the facts. And now I have to say that, in a world 
 like this, the grandest occupation is that of giving condo- 
 lence. This holy science of imparting comfort to the trou- 
 bled we ought all of us to study. There are many of you 
 who could look around upon some of your very best 
 friends who wish you well and are very intelligent, and 
 yet be able truthfully to say to them in your days of trou- 
 ble, "Miserable comforters are ye all." 
 
 I remark, in the first place, that very voluble peoi^le are in- 
 comjietent for the ivoric of giving comfort. Bildad and Eliphaz 
 
162 EXASPEItATING COMFOETEBS. 
 
 bad the gift of language, and with tbeir words almost both- 
 ered Job's life out. Alas for these voluble people that go 
 among tbe houses of the afflicted and talk, and talk, and talk, 
 and talk! Tbey rehearse their own sorrows, and then they 
 tell the poor sufferers tbat they feel badly now, but they 
 will feel worse after a while. Silence ! Do you expect, 
 with a thin court-plaster of words, to heal a wound deep as 
 the soul? Step very gently around about a broken heart. 
 Talk very softly around tbose whom God has bereft. 
 Then go your way. Deep sympathy has not much to say. 
 A firm grasp of the hand, a compassionate look, just one 
 word that means as much as a whole dictionary, and you 
 have given, perhaps, all the comfort that a soul needs. A 
 man has a terrible wound in his arm. The surgeon comes 
 and binds it up. "Now," he says, "carry that arm in a 
 sling, and be very careful of it. Let no one touch it." 
 But the neighbors have heard of the accident, and they 
 come in, and they say, "Let us see it." And the bandage 
 is pulled off, and this one and that one must feel it, and 
 see how much it is swollen ; and there is irritation, and in- 
 flammation, and exasperation, where there ought to be heal- 
 ing and cooling. The surgeon comes in, and says, "What 
 does all this mean? You have no business to touch those 
 bandages. That wound will never heal unless 3-ou let 
 it alone." So there are souls broken down in sorrow. 
 What they most want is rest, or very careful and gentle 
 treatment ; but the neighbors have heard of the bereave- 
 ment or of the loss, and they come in to sympathize, and 
 they say, "Show us now the wound. What were his last 
 words? Rehearse now the whole scene. How did you 
 feel when you found 3'ou were an orphan?" Tearing off 
 the bandages here, and pulling them off there, leaving a 
 
EXASPERATING C02IF0RTEES. 163 
 
 ghastly wound that the balm of God's grace had already 
 begun to heal. Oh, let no loquacious people, with ever- 
 rattling tongues, go into the homes of the distressed ! 
 
 Again I remark, that all those persons are incompetent 
 to give any kind of comfort who act merely as loorldly i^ld- 
 losophers. They come in and say, "Why, this is what you 
 ought to have expected. The laws of nature must have 
 their way ;" and then they get eloquent over something 
 they have seen in post-mortem examinations. Now, away 
 with all human philosophy at such a time! What differ- 
 ence does it make to that father and mother what disease 
 their son died of? He is dead, and it makes no difference 
 whether the trouble was in the epigastric or hypogastric 
 region. If the philosopher be of the stoical school he will 
 come and say, "You ought to control your feelings. You 
 must not cry so. You must cultivate a cooler tempera- 
 ment. You must have self-reliance, self-government, self- 
 control ;" an iceberg reproving a hyacinth for having a 
 drop of dew in its eye. A violinist has his instrument, 
 and he sweeps his fingers across the strings, now evoking 
 strains of joy, and now strains of sadness. He can not 
 play all the tunes on one string. The human soul is an 
 instrument of a thousand strings, and all sorts of emotions 
 Tv^ere made to play on it. Now an anthem, now a dirge. 
 It is no evidence of weakness when one is overcome of 
 sorrow. Edmund Burke was found in the pasture -field 
 with his arms around a horse's neck, caressing him, and 
 some one said, "Wh}'', the great man has lost his mind!" 
 No ; that horse belonged to his son who had recently died, 
 and his great heart broke over the grief. It is no sign of 
 weakness that men are overcome of their sorrows. Thank 
 God for the relief of tears. Have you never been in trou- 
 
IGi EXASrERATING COMFORTERS. 
 
 ble wlien you could not weep, and you would have given 
 any thing for a good cry? David did well when he 
 mourned for Absalom, Abraham did well when he be- 
 moaned Sarah, Christ did well when he wept for Lazarus; 
 and the last man that I want to see come anywhere near 
 me when I have any kind of trouble is a worldly philos- 
 opher. 
 
 Again I remark, that those persons are incompetent for 
 the work of comfort-bearing who have nothinQ hut cant to 
 offer. There are those who have the idea that you must 
 groan over the distressed and afflicted. There are times 
 in grief when one cheerful face dawning upon a man's soul 
 is worth a thousand dollars to him. Do not whine over 
 the afflicted. Take the promises of the Gospel, and utter 
 them in a manly tone. Do not be afraid to smile if you 
 feel like it. Do not drive any more hearses through that 
 poor soul. Do not tell him the trouble was foreordained ; 
 it will not be any comfort to know it was a million years 
 coming. If you want to find splints for a broken bone, do 
 not take cast-iron. Do not tell them it is God's justice 
 that weighs out grief. They want now to hear of God's 
 tender mercy. In other words, do not give them aqua for- 
 tis when they need valerian. 
 
 Again I remark, that those persons are poor comfort- 
 ers icho Jiave never had any trouble themselves. A larkspur 
 can not lecture on the nature of a snow-flake — it never 
 saw a snow-flake ; and those people who have always lived 
 in the summer of prosperity can not talk to those who arc 
 frozen in disaster. God keeps aged people in the world, I 
 think, for this very work of sympathy. They have been 
 through all these trials. They know all that which irritates 
 and all that which soothes. If there are men and women 
 
EXASPERATING COMFORTERS. 165 
 
 here who have old people in the house, or near at hand 
 so that they can easily reach them, I congratulate them. 
 Some of us have had trials in life, and although we have 
 had many friends around about us, we have wished that 
 fother and mother were still alive that we might go and 
 tell them. Perhaps they could not say much, but it would 
 have been such a comfort to have them around. These 
 aged ones who have been all through the trials of life know 
 how to give condolence. Cherish them ; let them lean on 
 your arm — these aged people. If, when you speak to 
 them, they can not hear just what you say the first time, 
 and you have to say it a second time, when you say it the 
 second time, do not say it sharply. If you do, you will be 
 sorry for it on the day when you take the last look and 
 brush back the silvery locks from the wrinkled brow just 
 before they screw the lid on. Blessed be God for the old 
 people ! They may not have much strength to go around, 
 but they are God's appointed ministers of comfort to a 
 broken heart. 
 
 People who have not had trial themselves can not give 
 comfort to others. They may talk very beautifully, and 
 they may give you a great deal of poetic sentiment ; but 
 while poetry is perfume that smells sweet, it makes a very 
 poor salve. If you have a grave in your pathway, and 
 somebody comes and covers it all over with flowers, it is a 
 grave yet. Those who have not had grief themselves know 
 not the mystery of a broken heart. They know not the 
 meaning of childlessness, and the having no one to put to 
 bed at night, or the standing in a room where every book 
 and picture and door is fall of memories — the door -mat 
 where she sat, the cup out of which she drank — the place 
 where she stood at the door and clapped her hands — the 
 
166 EXASPERATING COMFORTERS. 
 
 odd figures that she scribbled — the blocks sbe built into a 
 bouse. Ah no, you must have trouble yourself before you 
 can comfort trouble in others. But come all yo. who have 
 been bereft and ye who have been comforted in your sor- 
 rows, and stand around these af&icted souls, and say to 
 them, "I had that very sorrow myself. God comforted 
 me, and he will comfort you;" and that will go right to 
 the spot. In other words, to comfort others, we must have 
 faith in God, practical experience, and good, sound com- 
 mon sense. 
 
 But there are three or four considerations that I will 
 bring this morning to those who are sorrowful and dis- 
 tressed, and that we can always bring to them, knowing 
 that they will effect a cure. And the first consideration 
 is, that God sends our troubles in love. I often hear peo- 
 ple in thoir troubles saj^, "Why, I wonder what God has 
 against me !" They seem to think God has some grudge 
 against them because trouble and misfortune have come. 
 Oh no. Do you not remember that passage of Scripture, 
 " Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth ?'' A child comes 
 in with a very bad splinter in its hand, and you try to ex- 
 tract it. It is a very painful operation. The child draws 
 back from 3-ou, but you persist. You are going to take 
 that splinter out, so you take the child with a gentle but 
 firm grasp ; for although there may be pain in it, the splin- 
 ter must come out. And it is love that dictates it, and 
 makes you persist. My friends, I really think that nearly 
 all our sorrows in this world are only the hand of our Fa- 
 ther extracting some thorn. If all these sorrows were sent 
 by enemies, I would say, arm yourselves against them; 
 and, as in tropical climes, when a tiger comes down from 
 the mountains and carries off a child from the village, the 
 
EXASPERATING C03IF0RTERS. 167 
 
 neighbors band together and go into the forest and hunt 
 the monster, so I would haye you, if I thought these mis- 
 fortunes were sent by an enemy, go o'ut and battle against 
 them. But no; they come from a Father so kind, so lov- 
 ing, so gentle, that the prophet, speaking of his tender- 
 ness and mercy, drops the idea of a Huher, and says, 
 "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort 
 you." 
 
 Again I remark, there is comfort in the thought that 
 God, by all this process, is <joing to make you useful. Do 
 you know that those who accomplish the most for God 
 and heaven have all been under the harrow? Show me a 
 man that has done any thing for Christ in this day, in a 
 public or private place, who has had no trouble and whose 
 path has been smooth. Ah no. Go this afternoon at three 
 o'clock into that beautiful parlor in the city of Philadel- 
 phia, and see some twenty outcast children there, and ask 
 the history of that home, and why it is that that Christian 
 woman every Sabbath afternoon gathers in these outcasts 
 and talks with them, and prays with them, and tells them 
 of Jesus, and is getting them, by the grace of God, pre- 
 pared for heaven. You want to know the history of that 
 fomily ? I could go back and tell it. She was not always 
 an earnest Christian woman — once a daughter of fashion; 
 but the first day of my pastorate in Philadelphia I con- 
 fronted her in awful grief In the next room her only 
 child lay. He had been drowned at Long Branch, and 
 they had just brought him in. Oh, how impotent all hu- 
 man comfort seemed to be there and then ! But God com- 
 forted and lifted her out of that darkness, and through all 
 that tribulation he blessed her, and by a baptism of tears 
 she was set apart to look after the outcast and the destitute 
 
168 EXASPEIiATLSG COMFORTERS. 
 
 and the abaudoned. What useless beings we are until 
 sanctified trouble molds us ! 
 
 I once went througli an axe -factory, and I saw tlieni 
 take the bars of iron and thrust them into the terrible fur- 
 naces. Then besweated workmen with long tongs stirred 
 the blaze. Then they brought out a bar of iron and jDUt 
 it into a crushing-machine, and then they put it between 
 jaws that bit it in twain. Then they put it on an anvil, 
 and there were great hammers swung by machinery — each 
 one a half- ton in weight — that went thump! thump! 
 thump! If that iron could have spoken, it w^ould have 
 said, " Wiiy all this beating? Why must I be pounded 
 any more than any other iron ?"' The workmen would 
 have said, " We want to make axes out of you, keen, sharp 
 axes — axes with which to hew down the forest, and build 
 the ship, and erect houses, and carry on a thousand enter- 
 prises of civilization. That's the reason we pound you." 
 Now, God puts a soul into the furnace of trial, and then it 
 is brought out and run through the crushing-machine, and 
 then it comes down on the anvil, and upon it blow after 
 blow, blow after blow, and the soul cries out, " O Lord, 
 what does all this mean?" God says, "I want to make 
 something very useful out of you. You shall be some- 
 thing to hew with and something to build with. It is a 
 practical process through which I am putting j'ou." Yes, 
 my Christian friends, we want more tools in the Church 
 of God. Not more wedges to split with : we have enough 
 of these. Not more bores with which to drill ; we have 
 too many bores. What we really want is keen, sharp, 
 well-tempered axes, and if there be any other way of mak- 
 ing them than in the hot furnace, and on the hard anvil, 
 and under the heavy hammer, I do not know what it is. 
 
EXASPERATISG COMFOETERS. 169 
 
 Remember that if God brings any kind of chastisement 
 upon you, it is only to make you useful. Do not sit down 
 discourasred, and sav, "I have no more reason for livinsr. 
 I wish I were dead." Oh, there never was so much rea- 
 son for your living as now ! By this ordeal you have been 
 consecrated a priest of the Most High God. Go out and 
 do your whole work for the Master. 
 
 Again, there is comfort in the thought that all our 
 troubles are a revelation. Have you ever thought of it in 
 that connection ? The man who has never been through 
 chastisement is ignorant about a thousand things in his 
 soul he ought to know. For instance, here is a man ■who 
 prides himself on his cheerfulness of character. He has 
 no patience with any body who is depressed in spirits. 
 Oh, it is easy for him to be cheerful, with his fine house, 
 his filled wardrobe, and well-strung instruments of music, 
 and tapestried parlor, and plenty of money in the bank 
 waiting for some permanent investment. It is easy for 
 him to be cheerful. But suppose his fortune goes to 
 pieces, and his house goes down under the sheriff''s ham- 
 mer, and the banks will not have any thing to do with his 
 paper. Suppose those people who were once elegantly 
 entertained at his table get so short-sighted that they can 
 not recognize him upon the street. How then? Is it so 
 easy to be cheerful ? It is easy to be cheerful in the home, 
 after the day's work is done, and the gas is turned on, and 
 the house is full of romping little ones. But suppose the 
 piano is shut because the fingers that played on it will no 
 more touch the keys, and the childish voice that asked 
 so many questions will ask no more. Then is it so easy? 
 When a man wakes up and finds that his resources are all 
 gone, he begins to rebel, and he says, "God is hard; God 
 
 8 
 
170 EXASPEBATINO COMFORTERS. 
 
 is outrageous. lie Lad no business to do this to me." 
 My friends, those of us who have been through trouble 
 know what a sinful and rebellious heart we have, and how 
 much God has to put up with, and how much we need 
 pardon. It is only in the light of a flaming furnace that 
 we can learn our own weakness and our own lack of 
 moral resource. 
 
 There is also a great deal of comfort in the fact that 
 there iv'dl he a family reconstruction in a letter jjloce. From 
 Scotland, or England, or Ireland, a child emigrates to this 
 countr3% It is very hard parting, but he comes, after a 
 while writing home as to what a good land it is. Anoth- 
 er brother comes, a sister comes, and another, and after a 
 while the mother comes, and after a while the father comes, 
 and now they are all here, and they have a time of great 
 congratulation and a very pleasant reunion. Well, it is 
 just so with our families: they are emigrating to a bet- 
 ter land. Now, one goes out. Oh, how hard it is to part 
 with him ! Another goes. Oh, how hard it is to part 
 with her ! And another, and another, and we ourselves 
 will after a while go over, and then we will be together. 
 Oh. what a reunion ! Do 3'ou believe that? "Yes," you 
 sa3^ You do not ! You do not believe it as you believe 
 other things. If you did, and with the same emphasis, 
 wh}^, it would take nine-tenths of your trouble off 3^our 
 heart. The fact is, heaven to many of us is a great fog. 
 It is awa3'' off somewhere, filled with an uncertain and in- 
 definite population. That is the kind of heaven that many 
 of us dream about; but it is the most tremendous fact in 
 all the universe — this heaven of the Gospel. Our departed 
 friends are not afloat. The residence in which you live is 
 not so real as the residence in which they stay. You are 
 
EXASPERATING COMFORTERS. 171 
 
 afloat, you who do not know in the morning what will 
 happen before night. They are housed and safe forever. 
 Do not, therefore, pity your departed friends who have 
 died in Christ. They do not need any of your pity. You 
 might as well send a letter of condolence to Queen Victo- 
 ria on her obscurity, or to the Rothschilds on their poverty, 
 as to pity those who have won the palm. Do not say of 
 those who are departed, "Poor child!" "Poor father!" 
 " Poor mother !" They are not poor. You are poor — you 
 whose homes have been shattered, not they. You do not 
 dwell much with your families in this world. All day 
 long you are off to business. Will it not be pleasant when 
 3'ou can be together all the while ? If you have had four 
 children and one is gone, and any body asks how many 
 children you have, do not be so infidel as to say three. 
 Say four — one in heaven. Do not think that the grave is 
 unfriendly. You go into your room, and dress for some 
 grand entertainment, and you come forth beautifully appar- 
 eled ; and the grave is only the place where we go to dress 
 for the glorious resurrection, and we will come out radiant, 
 radiant, mortality having become immortality. Ob, how 
 much condolence there is in this thought! I expect to see 
 my kindred in heaven ; I expect to see them as certainly 
 as I expect to go home to-day. Ay, I shall more certainly 
 see them. Eight or ten will come up from the grave-yard 
 back of Somerville ; and one will come up from the mount- 
 ains back of Amoy, China; and another will come up from 
 the sea off Cape Hatteras ; and thirty will come up from 
 Greenwood ; and I shall know them better than I ever 
 knew them here. And your friends — they may be across 
 the sea, but the trumpet that sounds here will sound there. 
 You will come up on just the same day. Some morning 
 
172 EXASPERATING COMFORTERS. 
 
 you have overslept yourself, and you open your eyes, and 
 see that the sun is high in the heavens, and you say, "I 
 have overslept, and I must be up and off." So j^ou will 
 open your eyes on the morning of the resurrection, in the 
 full blaze of God's light, and you will say, " I must be up 
 and away."' Oh yes, you will come up, and there will be 
 a reunion, a reconstruction of your family. I like what 
 Halburton, I think it was — good old Mr. Halburton — said 
 in his last moments, " I thank God that I ever lived, and 
 that I have a father in heaven, and a mother in heaven, and 
 brothers in heaven, and sisters in heaven, and I am now 
 going up to see them." 
 
 I remark once more : our troubles in this world are 'pre- 
 imrative for glory. What a transition it was for Paul — from 
 the slippery deck of a foundering ship to the calm presence 
 of Jesus! What a transition it was for Latimer — from the 
 stake to a throne ! What a transition it was for Eobert 
 Hall — from insanity to glory ! What a transition it was 
 for Eichard Baxter — from the dropsy to the "saint's ever- 
 lasting rest!" And what a transition it will be for you — 
 from a world of sorrow to a world of joy ! John Holland, 
 when he was dying, said, " What means this brightness in 
 the room? Have you lighted the candles?" "No," they 
 replied, " we have not lighted any candles," Then said he, 
 "Welcome, heaven!" the light already beaming upon his 
 pillow. O ye who are persecuted in this world ! 3'our 
 enemies will get off the track after a while, and all will 
 speak well of you among the thrones. Ho! ye who are 
 sick now, no medicines to take there. One breath of the 
 eternal hills will thrill you with immortal vigor. And 3'e 
 who are lonesome now, there will be a thousand spirits to 
 welcome you into their companionship. yc bereft souls ! 
 
EXASFEEATINO COMFORTERS. 173 
 
 there will be no grave-digger's spade that will cleave the 
 side of that hill, and there will be no dirge wailing from 
 that, temple. The river of God, deep as the joy of heaven, 
 will roll on between banks odorous with balm, and over 
 depths bright with jewels, and under skies roseate with 
 gladness, argosies of light going down the stream to the 
 stroke of glittering oar and the song of angels ! Not one 
 sigh in the wind ; not one tear mingling with the waters. 
 
 " There shall I bathe my weary soul 
 In seas of heavenly rest, 
 And not a wave of trouble roll 
 Across my peaceful breast." 
 
174 A GOOD WOMAX PE02I0TED. 
 
 A GOOD WOMAN PEOMOTED. 
 
 "I go to prepare a place for you." — John xiv., 2. 
 
 AMONG the most startling stories ever recited are those 
 connected with the adventures of the Western emi- 
 grant. In the days before the rail train showered its sparks 
 upon the darkness of the wilderness, people put out on 
 foot, or in slow and cumbrous wagons, from their Eastern 
 homes, and in the wild thickets of the Far West sought to 
 clear for their families a home. Ofttimes leaving their 
 tender little ones in the New England village, with blan- 
 ket and gun and axe, they dared the forest, terrible with 
 bear's bark and panther's scream, and the war-whoop cry 
 of scalping savages. After a while the trees were felled, 
 and the under-brush was burned, and the farm was cleared, 
 and the house was built. Then word came back here say- 
 ing that every thing was ready. The family would get into 
 the wagon and start on at slow pace for a very long journey. 
 After a while, some evening-tide, the shout of recognition 
 was heard, and by the fire of the great back-log the newly- 
 arrived would recount the exciting experiences of the way. 
 Well, my friends, we are all about to become emigrants 
 to a far country. This is no place for us to stay. Our 
 older brother, Jesus, he of the scarred brow and the blis- 
 tered feet, has gone ahead to build our mansion and to 
 clear the way for us; and he sends a letter back, saying 
 be has it all ready, and I break the seal of that letter and 
 read to you these w^ords, " I go to prepare a place for you." 
 
A GOOD WOJIAN PROMOTED. 175 
 
 I might put it in another shape. A young man re- 
 solves to build a home for himself. lie has pledged 
 himself in one of the purest of earthly attachments. He 
 toils no more for himself than for the one who will share 
 with him the results of his industrious accumulation. Aft- 
 er a while the fortune is made, the house is built, the 
 right hands are joined, the blessing is invoked, the joy is 
 consummated. So Jesus, the Lover of our souls, has been 
 toiling to make a place for us. He is fitting up our man- 
 sion, and is gathering around it every thing that can pos- 
 sibly enchant the soul, and after a while he will sa}'", " It is 
 all ready now," and he will reach down his hand, and take 
 up to his fliir residence " the Church, which is the Lamb's 
 wife." " I go to prepare a place for you." 
 
 "But," says some one, "that implies that heaven is a 
 place. I have heard a great many people say it was 
 merely a condition, and that wherever the souls of the 
 righteous are, there is heaven." Absurd idea! Christ 
 ascended to heaven, and there must have been a heaven to 
 go to. Elijah went up to heaven, and there must have 
 been a heaven for him to go to. The Bible was not writ- 
 ten merely for philologists and hair-splitters, but for com- 
 mon-sense people; and the plain reading of my text im- 
 plies not only that heaven is a condition, but that it is a 
 glorious locality. "I go to prepare ^ place for you." 
 
 Where is heaven? It is the question which every in- 
 telligent Christian sometimes asks, and he especially asks 
 it in time of bereavement. When his loved ones go away 
 from him, you say they are in heaven ; but he says, 
 "Where is heaven?" You know there are a great many 
 theories in regard to it. The Mohammedans think that 
 the good Moslems, as soon as they leave this life, come 
 
176 A GOOD WOMAN PROMOTED. 
 
 to a fragrant pool of water fed by streams from paradise. 
 They drink out of that fragrant pool, and their thirst is 
 assuaged. Then they go into paradise, and the trees have 
 bells hanging on the branches, chiming whenever the air 
 strikes them. They gaze upon the tree of life, which they 
 say has so broad a shadow that it takes a swift horse one 
 hundred years to race across it. They think that there is 
 a river made up of wine and honey, flowing between banks 
 of camphor, over beds of musk. They suppose that every 
 spirit that goes into the future world has many attendants 
 with baskets and with chalices of pure gold. They sup- 
 pose that the inhabitant of the future world sits down to a 
 great banquet without any satiety, so that, after a hundred 
 years of eating and drinking, the appetite is as good as at 
 the moment the soul sat down. That is the Mohammedan 
 heaven. 
 
 The Hindoo thinks that heaven is all around about — 
 merely a change of body. A vulture dies, and his spirit 
 enters a man ; the man dies, and his spirit enters the vul- 
 ture, and after a great many transmigrations of the soul, it 
 is absorbed in the spirit of the great Brahm. Our fore- 
 fathers thought heaven to be a place of pastimes, heroic 
 strife, and great banqueting; spirits would fight and be 
 wounded, and then come to the celestial streams and wash 
 off their wounds, and they would be well again ; then they 
 would sit down at a banquet and drink wine out of the 
 skulls of their enemies, and rise up and romp, and dance 
 and pla}'. 
 
 The aborigines of our own country think heaven to be 
 beyond the great mountains. After you get beyond the 
 great mountains, there is a great river ; and after you have 
 passed that great river, there is a vast country ; and after 
 
A GOOD WOMAN PROMOTED. 177 
 
 you have passed that wide country, there is a world of 
 water; and in that world of water there are a thousand 
 isles, beautiful with streams and trees, and there are buf- 
 folo and deer there ; and all the departed red man has to 
 do is to whistle up his dogs and go a-shooting to all eter- 
 nity. 
 
 I mention these things because I want you to know it 
 is impossible for a man to get any idea of heaven without 
 the Bible, and to kindle in your soul a feeling of gratitude 
 to God that you have this Lamp, not only for your path- 
 way here, but to throw its glories upon the world that is 
 to come. There is, however, among Cliristian people great 
 difference of opinion as to where heaven is or will be. 
 Some of the best Christian people think that this world 
 is to be the final residence of the righteous. I can see how 
 God could take all the rigors out of our climate, and all 
 repulsions out of our world, and make it fair, and bright, 
 and beautiful, and fit for eternal occupancy. But I can not 
 adopt the theory. It seems to me the world is not large 
 enough for heaven. Considering all the myriads that have 
 gone, and all the myriads that are to go, there would not 
 be room enough on the continents and on the seas for such 
 a great host. Besides that, heaven is already in existence. 
 Tens of thousands of people have gone into it. It can not 
 be that all our departed friends are floating about in space 
 waiting for our world to get filled up, in order that they 
 may have a heaven. Oh no. They are there now. Christ 
 said, "I go to prepare a place for you;" and if, eighteen 
 centuries ago, he began the work, I think it is done now. 
 Besides that, the Bible declares that the world, and all the 
 things that are therein, will be burned up; and if a thing 
 is burned up, you can not repair it, and you can not make 
 
178 A GOOD WOMAN PROMOTED. 
 
 it a fit residence for the rigliteous. If it is first destroyed, 
 it will be an entirely new world. Besides that, the ele- 
 ments of dissolution are already in our world. I refer not 
 to the coal-mines in the South, which have been twenty 
 years on fire. I refer not to the vapors coming up from 
 the hot springs, showing great heat underneath, but to the 
 common geological idea that the centre of this world is al- 
 ready on fire. Besides, there is all about a subtle fluid 
 which, if decomposed or set loose from other com-binations, 
 would shatter this world into pieces so small that nothing 
 but the eye of the infinite God could find the splinters of 
 the wreck. It would destroy mountains and seas and air. 
 So it will require no omnipotent pry to lift up the mount- 
 ains in the last day. It will not require the blast of the 
 red-hot furnace of God's indignation to set the sea on fire. 
 It will not require the grip of Almightiness to pull down the 
 pillar of this world. God has only to take his hands off it, 
 and it is gone. The mere cessation of operation on God's 
 part would be the cause of the wreck. Besides that, other 
 worlds have burned. Fifteen hundred stars have disap- 
 peared. The astronomer, through his telescope, again and 
 again has seen the conflagration of a world. Why not our 
 world burn up? Ay, I adopt the theory that Peter de- 
 clares in his epistle when be says, " The world and all that 
 is therein shall be burned up." 
 
 There are other Christian people who suppose that each 
 sun is to be the heaven of the surrounding syst&m. You 
 know that there are sisterhoods of worlds that join each 
 other in bands of light around some great central orb, and 
 Christian people have supposed that these surrounding 
 worlds were merely schools in which souls went to be pre- 
 pared for the central light, the central sun ; and there is a 
 
A GOOD W03IAN PROMOTED. 179 
 
 Bible intimation that is not at all inconsistent with that 
 idea; for, while planets have day and night, and heat and 
 cold, showing the possibility of growth and dissolution, the 
 sun has no night, and that corresponds with the Bible state- 
 ment about heaven, " There shall be no night there." Still, 
 I reject the idea, because if the sun of each system were 
 the heaven of the system, we should have a multitude of 
 paradises, and the words of my text could not be true, "I 
 go to prepare a place" — that is, one place — "for you." 
 
 There is one other theory consonant with the Bible and 
 consonant with science, and I like any thing that is proved 
 by both those books, or is not inharmonious with either 
 of them. Modern discovery shows that the planets go 
 around the sun, and that the sun and the planets — indeed 
 all the celestial systems — go in one direction and in one 
 circle, all going around about some one great central 
 world ; a world vast beyond all astronomical calculation ; 
 a world vast enough, by power of gravitation, to wheel the 
 whole universe around it. As our sun — our little sun — is 
 five hundred times larger than the earth and the planets, 
 thus wheeling them around it, so, then, I suppose, the great 
 central world of which I speak is five hundred times larger 
 than all the other worlds put together, so as to wheel them 
 around it. You must believe in the existence of such a 
 central world, unless you reject all scientific exploration 
 and deduction. That world, stupendous beyond arithme- 
 tic, beyond words, beyond imagination, I believe is heaven. 
 From all parts of the universe the souls of the dead will 
 fly to that centre. That shall gather up all the resources 
 and splendors and glories that God ever created or redeem- 
 ing love ever achieved. Gradually the worlds will expire; 
 not only ours, but those and these, and, finally, all save 
 
180 A GOOD WOJfAI^ PROMOTED. 
 
 two — the one great central world of wbicli I speak, and a 
 world of darkness ; the first the residence of the righteous, 
 the other the abode of the wicked. You say this theory- 
 makes heaven a great way off. No ! No ! We calculate 
 distance by the time taken to traverse it, and the departed 
 spirit will not take the millionth part of a second to get 
 there. 
 
 But here I Lave to tell you that I do not much care 
 where heaven is. All I want is to get there myself, and 
 get these people there. Christ is there, and the angels of 
 God are there, and all my Christian kindred who have de- 
 parted are there. 
 
 "No grief can turn that day to night, 
 The darkness of that hmd is light." 
 
 Into that world how many of our loved ones have gone! 
 We have sent delegations into it. This morning I wish 
 to speak more especially of one who went out from among 
 us — a Christian woman known all the world over. She has 
 just entered into that glorious world, tliat vast world, that 
 world where Christ is. Among the Hannah Moores, and 
 the Charlotte Elizabeths, and the Mrs. Adoniram Judsons, 
 and the Mrs. Fletchers, Phebc Palmer has taken her place, 
 radiant as any of them — perhaps more radiant than all of 
 them. It seems to me she must have had a very easy en- 
 trance. She did not have to crowd throuo;h. When half- 
 and -half Christians come up to the gate of heaven, me- 
 thinks they have to squeeze in ; that the gate grazes them 
 on both sides or closes behind them, catching the skirts of 
 their garment. Not so with her. An abundant entrance 
 was administered unto her. I think a mandate went forth, 
 " Lift up your heads, ye everlasting gates, and let her come 
 
A GOOD WOMAN PROMOTED. 181 
 
 thronoli." Ob, I should have liked to have stood some- 
 where near the gate, to have heard the multitudinous 
 shout that greeted her from all the armies of the saved ! 
 
 I can not, as a minister of the Most High God, allow 
 such a life to be passed and such a death to be witnessed 
 ■without, as far as I may, prolonging the echo. 
 
 I admired her as the discoverer of what is called, rightly 
 or wrongly, " the higher life." Columbus no more certain- 
 ly discovered our New World than Phebe Palmer discov- 
 ered that new world of light, and love, and joy, and peace 
 which she spoke of. Columbus did not create this New 
 World ; he only pointed it out. Phebe Palmer did not 
 create "the higher life;" she only exhibited it. She 
 showed to the Church of God that there were mountain- 
 peaks of Christian satisfaction that it had never attained, 
 and created in the souls of us who have not reached that 
 elevation a longing for the glorious ascent. For thirty- 
 seven years — longer than the life, perhaps, of the majority 
 of people present to-day — every Tuesday she had a meet- 
 ing, the sole object of which was the elevation of the stand- 
 ard of Christian holiness ; and there were hundreds of 
 Christian ministers who came in, and sat down at her feet, 
 and got her blessing, and went out stronger for Christian 
 combat. It was no rare thing, in her evangelistic meet- 
 ings in the United States and Europe, to have ministers 
 of the Presbyterian Church, and the Baptist Church, and 
 the Methodist Church, and the Episcopal Church, and all 
 the churches, coming and kneeling down at the altar, be- 
 moaning their unbelief and their coldness, and then rising 
 up, saying, "I have got it — the blessing." Some carica- 
 tured, and said there was no such thing as "a higher life" 
 of peace nnd Christian satisfaction; but' she lived long 
 
182 A GOOD WOMAN PROMOTED. 
 
 enough to see the whole Christian Church waking up to 
 this doctrine, and thousands and tens of thousands coming 
 on the high table-land where once she stood, she herself 
 having passed on now, higher up, that she may still beckon 
 us on, crying, "Up this way! Up this way!" Glorious 
 soul of Pbebe Palmer! Synonym of holiness unto the 
 Lord! 
 
 I am also amazed at the number of conversions under 
 her ministry. She was as far removed as possible from 
 those females who go through the land bawling about their 
 rights, neglecting their home duties, having their husbands 
 hold their hats and shawls while they make speeches in 
 behalf of their rights of suffrage, or in behalf of a seat 
 in Congressional halls — those restless women, marriage to 
 whom would be pandemonium. As far as the north pole 
 is from the south pole, Phebe Palmer was from all them. 
 Always accompanied by her husband, she went out to 
 serve Christ, and she wanted no higher right than this, the 
 grandest right ever given to man or woman — the right to 
 commend the Lord Jesus Christ to a dying world. Mod- 
 estly and in Christian consecration she went forth to serve 
 God. It will take eternal ages to tell the story of her evan- 
 gelistic labors. Newcastle, Sunderland, Penrith, Mackles- 
 field, Darlington, Isle of Wight, still feel her overmastering 
 influence. In her Christian meetings a young man rose 
 up, and said, " Why, I have got a new nature ;" and a 
 timid woman exclaimed, "Do you think Christ will have 
 me?" and the evangelist put her arms around her neck, 
 and said, " Yes, Jesus will have you." And another cried 
 out, " Oh, what a fool I have been all my days, to reject 
 Christ." And the Duke of Wellington's blind soldier, 
 seventy years of age, both eyes put out in battle, was led 
 
A GOOD WOMAN FROMOTED. 183 
 
 by a little child to the communion-rail, and while prayer 
 was being oflfered, on his blasted vision eternal light broke 
 in. And the soldier in the Queen's employ, drafted for 
 India, stood up in the meeting, in the red-jacket uniform, 
 and said, " Pray for me, wherever I go, that I may be faith- 
 ful. You look at my red jacket; but if ^ow could see un- 
 der it, you would see a white and blood-washed robe." At 
 Windsor the musicians of the Queen's band, instruments 
 under arm, stopped and looked and listened, and then and 
 there heard the voice of Christ from this woman's lips, and 
 took Christ with them back to the palace. And the police 
 that stood at the door, too, listening, even they surrendered 
 themselves to the Lord who bought them. Places of in- 
 iquity cowered before her. At North Shields, a man who 
 kept intoxicating liquors for sale, said, "I don't know why 
 Dr. and Mrs. Palmer came here to bother me. Before 
 they came to this place, I used to draw off half a barrel of 
 beer every night for my customers. Now I scarcely draw 
 off a quart." Sixty souls saved one night in Sunderland 
 under her work. Six hundred souls brought to God at 
 her call in Manchester. One thousand souls, through her, 
 finding redeeming love at Madeley. Three thousand four 
 hundred and forty-four brought to God in the district of 
 Newcastle. Twenty-five thousand souls saved under the 
 instrumentality of Phebe Palmer! What a record for 
 earth and heaven ! What an array for the judgment-day ! 
 What a doxology for the one hundred and forty and four 
 thousand! What a mountain of coronets flung down at 
 the feet of Jesus ! 
 
 I am amazed, also, at her power of prayer. We dabble 
 in it once in a while, but do.not know much about the art. 
 Phebe Palmer got what she asked for, because she knew 
 
18i A GOOD W03IAN FBOMOTED. 
 
 how to ask. Sailing up toward Liverpool with her hus- 
 band, she prays God that some one may meet them on the 
 beach, and welcome them to England. Coming up by the 
 shore there is a man in the garb of a minister, standing. 
 She says, " There is the man who has come to welcome us 
 to England." The boat strikes the dock, and the minister 
 steps on board, and says, "Is this Dr. and Mrs. Palmer? 
 Welcome to the shores of old England !" Worn out 
 physically with her Christian exertions, she asks for 
 strength. God gives it to her. Laboring in some place 
 amidst great obstacles, she asks that that night a great 
 multitude may be saved ; and a multitude press into the 
 side-room, repenting, praying, believing, rejoicing. On the 
 way home from England, a man fiills overboard. She 
 sees him floating almost a mile away. She cries mightily 
 unto God for that man's rescue, saying, " Save him, and I 
 will point him to Christ, and I will try to have him be- 
 come a Christian." And she prayed in an agony that he 
 might be saved, and, by what seemed a miraculous effort, 
 he was saved and brought on deck, and the evangelist did 
 her work with him. Starting with the safe belief that 
 the Lord never lies, she found out the secret of all-pre- 
 vailing and all-conquering praj^cr. O Thou who hearest 
 prayer, teach us how to pray ! I believe that one hundred 
 Phebe Palmers would bring the millennium to-morrow 
 morning. 
 
 But the shepherdess, crook in hand, has gone home to 
 rest by the still waters. The loving wife, the gentle sister, 
 the Christian mother, the flaming evangelist, is dead. One 
 would have supposed that, after so useful a life, the Lord 
 would have allowed her to pass off easily. No. Ten 
 weeks of great anguish, a complication of diseases adding 
 
A GOOD W03IAN PROMOTED. 185 
 
 pnng to pang. It seemed as if Christ had said, "Now, on 
 this death-bed, I will demonstrate that my grace is suffi- 
 cient for every thing, and can bear up under every thing." 
 It seemed as if Christ had said, "Now, here is a royal gem 
 for a royal place. I have been fifty years busy with it, 
 polishing it and polishing it, and now only a few more 
 cuttings of the chisel and a few more raspings of the file, 
 and it will be as rare a gem as was ever prepared in all 
 the centuries. Ten weeks of pain are nothing before an 
 eternity of jubilation 1" At half-past two o'clock on the 
 afternoon of November 2d, God put up his tools and said, 
 " The work of polishing is done. Let her go now .^" 
 
 I open to you to-day another classic. There is no need 
 of your going back any more to saintly death-beds in the 
 last century, when we have had such an exit here. It 
 seems as if the clouds were only now parting. I hear the 
 rumbling of the vanishing wheels. We stand in the light 
 of the opening of the King's gate as she went in. Hear 
 the story of her dying raptures. It seems to have all the 
 quietness of a pastoral, and yet to be blood-stirring as a 
 battle-march. Her life was a song; her death a "Halle- 
 lujah Chorus." In her last sickness she said, " I am fully 
 saved. I have not a single doubt. Hallelujah to God and 
 the Lamb! I am within speaking distance of my home in 
 paradise. You have been the kindest of husbands to me,, 
 and our love has been abiding, and it shall abide forever." 
 And when blindness came, and she could not see at all, 
 she said, "Oh, what sweet nurses I have! Jesus was left 
 all alone." When they read to her the promises, she said, 
 "Put my name in those promises." And ever after that, 
 when the promises were read, it was with the name of 
 Phebe Palmer attached to them. She said, "Hallelujah! 
 
186 ^ GOOD WOMAN TROMOTED. 
 
 precious Jesus! I pass througli tbe valley, but witbout 
 the shadow, trusting in Christ. Ob, so weary ! How I 
 should like to go! But Thy will, not mine, be done. I 
 thought, before this, the light of eternal day would dawn 
 upon me, but it has not yet dawned." When a daughter 
 said, "Do you see me, ma?" she said, "I see no one but 
 Jesus, but I shall soon see the King in his beauty. Glory 
 be to the Father ! Glory be to the Son ! Glory be to the 
 Holy Ghost !" When they bathed her fevered hands, she 
 said, " I shall soon bathe my hands in the life-giving wa- 
 ters." On the last morning, as she woke up, she said, "I 
 thought I saw the chariot! So glorious!- glorious! '0 
 death I where is thy sting ? O grave ! where is thy vic- 
 tory? Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the" victory 
 through our Lord Jesus Christ !' " Then she pronounced 
 the apostolic benediction — a benediction for her husband, 
 for her children, for the Church universal, and for the 
 world whose redemption she had tried to hasten — "May 
 the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, 
 and the love of the Holy Ghost, be with you all forever. 
 Amen." And Pbebe Palmei was dead! 
 
 No, no, no — not dead. She lives! she lives! It seems 
 to me as if I could almost see her standing this morning 
 on the battlements of heaven, waving the triumph, calling 
 down to us through this sweet Sabbath air ; and I wave 
 back to her. Hail, ransomed spirit ! Hallelujah ! Halle- 
 lujah ! 
 
 bereft souls! be comforted. To have had such a 
 wife, and such a sister, and such a mother, is enough honor 
 for one family. Let her memory be to you both exulta- 
 tion and inspiration. Be sure 3'ou get on the road she 
 traveled, that you may come out at the same glory. She 
 
A GOOD womajH promoted. 187 
 
 will be waiting for yon, waiting at the foot of the throne, 
 waiting under the trees of life, waiting on the banks of the 
 river, and some day she will cry out, "My husband's com- 
 ing! my sister's coming! my child's coming. Stand back, 
 ye blessed ones, and let me welcome them in." And the 
 grief of the afternoon of November 2d will be swallowed 
 in the joy of the heavenly reception. Oh, how like old 
 times it will be to get mother back again, sweeter than 
 when you sat upon her lap in infancy, and nestled in her 
 arms, and looked up into her loving face as she leaned 
 over your cradle. But it will be mother without the short- 
 ness of breath. Mother without the weary limbs. Mother 
 without the paroxysm of distress. Sainted mother ! Glo- 
 rified mother ! Enthroned mother ! 
 
 Blessed be God that so many of us have mothers in 
 heaven. They may not have moved in as celebrated a 
 sphere as yours ; but they were just as dear to us, and their 
 tenderness breaks upon us to-day in a flood that overflows 
 the banks, and we rejoice at the prospect of flinging our- 
 selves into their arms when, tired out with the work of life, 
 we go home. Alas for any man that misses heaven, when 
 he has a Christian mother there! 
 
 Oh that the name of Phebe Palmer might be one of the 
 watch-words to rouse up the Church universal ! The Meth- 
 odist Church can not monopolize her name. She belonged 
 to that Church, she lived in it, she died in it, she loved 
 it ; but you can not build any denominational wall high 
 enough to shut out that light from our souls. She i? mine. 
 She is yours. She belongs to all earth, and all heaven. 
 Eternal God ! let the story of her life and death thrill all 
 nations ! 
 
 Then, when our hands get hot with the last fever, may 
 
188 ^ GOOD WOMAN PROMOTED. 
 
 we go lip to cool them in the fountains; nnd, when our 
 physical eye-sight fails in death, may we see "the King in 
 his beauty;" and when it is our time to go, let there be a 
 chariot to fetch us home ! 
 
 Until then, departed spirit, farewell! We can afford 
 to wait for such a grand reunion. Farewell ! Farewell ! 
 And now may the God who brought again from the dead 
 our Lord Jesus Christ, that great Shepherd of the sheep, 
 through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you 
 faithful in every good work to do his will. 
 
THE CRIMSON COAT. 189 
 
 THE CRIMSON COAT. 
 
 "Who is tliis that cometh from Edom, witli dyed garments fromBozrah ? 
 this that is glorious in his apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength ?" 
 — Isaiah Ixiii., 1. 
 
 EDOM and Bozrali having been the scene of fierce bat- 
 tle, when those words are used here or in any other 
 part of the Bible they are figures of speech setting forth 
 scenes of severe conflict. As now we often use the word 
 Waterloo to describe a decisive contest of any kind, so the 
 words Bozrah and Edom in this text are figures of speech 
 descriptive of a scene of great slaughter. Whatever else 
 the prophet may have meant to describe, he most certainly 
 meant to depict the Lord Jesus Christ, saying, "Who is 
 this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from 
 Bozrah, traveling in the greatness of his strength ?" 
 
 When a general is about to go out to the wars, a flag 
 and a sword are" publicly presented to him, and the maid- 
 ens bring flowers, and the young men load the cannon, 
 and the train starts amidst a huzza that drowns the thun- 
 der of the wheels and the shriek of the whistle. But all 
 this will give no idea of the excitement that there must 
 .have been in heaven when Christ started out on the cam- 
 paign of the world's conquest. If they could have fore- 
 seen the siege that would be laid to him, and the maltreat- 
 ment he would suffer, and the burdens he would have to 
 carry, and the battles he would have to fight, I think there 
 would have been a million volunteers in heaven who would 
 
190 THE CMIMSON COAT. 
 
 have insisted on coming along with bim ; but no, they 
 only accompanied bim to the gate, their last shout heard 
 clear down to the earth, the space between the two worlds 
 bridged with a great hosanna. You know there is a wide 
 difference between a man's going off to battle and coming- 
 back again. When he goes off, it is with epaulets untan- 
 gled, with banner unspecked, with horses sleek and shining 
 from the groom. All that there is of struggle and pain 
 is to come yet. So it was with Christ. He had not yet 
 fought a battle. He was starting out, and though this 
 world did not give him a warm-hearted greeting, there was 
 a gentle mother who folded him in her arms ; and a babe 
 finds no difference between a stable and a palace, between 
 courtiers and camel-drivers. As Jesus stepped on the stage 
 of this world, it was amidst angelic shouts in the galleries 
 and amidst the kindest maternal ministrations. But soon 
 hostile forces began to gather. They deployed from the 
 Sanhedrim. They were detailed from the standing ^rmj. 
 They came out from the Cesarean castles. The vagabonds 
 in the street joined the gentlemen of the mansion. Spirits 
 rode up from hell, and in long array there came a force to- 
 gether that threatened to put to rout this newly arrived 
 one from heaven. Jesus now seeing the battle gather- 
 ing, lifted his own standard; but who gathered about it? 
 How feeble the recruits ! A few shoremen, a blind beggar, 
 a woman with an alabaster box, another woman with two 
 mites, and a group of friendless, moneyless, and position- 
 less people came to his standard. What chance was there 
 for him ? Nazareth against him. Bethlehem ag:ainst him. 
 Capernaum against him. Jerusalem against him. Galilee 
 against him. The courts against him. The army against 
 him. The throne against him. The world against him. 
 
TEE CMIMSON COAT. ■ 191 
 
 All hell against bim. No wonder they asked him to sur- 
 render. But he could not surrender, he could not apolo- 
 gize, he could not take any back steps. He had come to 
 strike for the deliverance of an enslaved race, and he must 
 do the work. Then they sent out their pickets to watch 
 him. They saw in what house he went, and when he came 
 out. They watched what he ate, and who with; what he 
 drank, and how much. They did not dare to make their 
 final assault, for they knew not but that behind him there 
 might be ^ reinforcement that was not seen. But at last 
 the battle came. It was to be more fierce than Bozrah, 
 more bloody than Gettysburg, involving more than Auster- 
 litz, more combatants employed than at Chalons, a ghast- 
 lier conflict than all the battles of the earth put together, 
 though Edmund Burke's estimate of thirty-five thousand 
 millions of the slain be accurate. The day was Friday. 
 The hour was between twelve and three o'clock. The field 
 w\as a slight hillock north-west of Jerusalem. The forces 
 engaged were earth and hell, joined as allies on one side, 
 and heaven, represented by a solitary inhabitant, on the 
 other. 
 
 The hour came. Oh, what a time it was ! I think that 
 that day the universe looked on. The spirits that could 
 be spared from the heavenly temple, and could get con- 
 veyance of wing or chariot, came down from above, and 
 spirits getting furlough from furnaces beneath came up; 
 and they listened, and they looked, and they watched. 
 Oh, what an uneven battle! Two worlds armed on one 
 side; an unarmed man on the other. The German regi- 
 ment of the Eoman army at that time stationed at Je- 
 rusalem began the attack. They knew how to fight, for 
 they belonged to the most thoroughly drilled army of 
 
192 THE CRIMSOy COAT. 
 
 air the workl. With spears glittering in the sun, they 
 charged up the hill. The horses prance and rear amidst 
 the excitement of the populace — the heels of the riders, 
 plunged in the flanks, urging them on. The weapons 
 begin to tell on Christ. See how faint he looks ! There 
 the blood starts, and there, and there, and there. If he 
 is to have reinforcements, let him call them up now. 
 No; he must do this work alone — alone. He is dying. 
 Feel for yourself of the wrist ; the pulse is feebler. Feel 
 under the arm; the warmth is less. He is dying. Ay, 
 they pronounce him dead. And just at that moment 
 that they pronounced him dead he rallied, and from his 
 wounds he unsheathed a weapon which staggered the Eo- 
 man legions down the hill, and hurled the Satanic battal- 
 ions into the pit. It was a weapon of love — infinite love, 
 all-conquering love. Mightier than javelin or spear, it tri- 
 umphed over all. Put back, ye armies of earth and hell ! 
 The tide of battle turns. Jesus hath overcome. Let the 
 people stand apart and make a line, that he may pass down 
 from Calvary to Jerusalem, and thence on and out all 
 around the world. The battle is fought. The victory is 
 achieved. The triumphal march is begun. Hark to the 
 hoofs of the warrior's steed, and the tramping of a great 
 multitude! for he has many friends now. The Hero of 
 earth and heaven advances. Cheer! cheer! "Who is this 
 that Cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, 
 traveling in the greatness of his strength?" 
 
 We behold here a new revelation of a blessed and start- 
 ling fact. People talk of Christ as though he were going 
 to do something grand for us after a while. He has done 
 it. People talk as though, ten or twenty years from now, 
 in the closing hours of our life, or in some terrible pass of 
 
TUE CliUISON COAT. 193 
 
 life, Jesus will help us. He has done the work already. 
 He did it eighteen hundred and forty-two years ago. You 
 might as well talk of Washington as though he were going 
 to achieve our national independence in 1950, as to speak 
 of Christ as though he were going to achieve our salvation 
 in the future. He did it in the year of our Lord 33, eight- 
 een hundred and forty-two years ago, on the field of Boz- 
 rah, the Captain of our salvation fighting unto death for 
 your and my emancipation. All we have to do is to ac- 
 cept that fact in our heart of hearts, and we are free for 
 this world, and we are free for the world to come. But, 
 lest we might not accept, Christ comes through here to- 
 night, " traveling in the greatness of his strength," not to 
 tell you that he is going to fight for you some battle in the 
 future, but to tell you that the battle is already fought, and 
 the victory already won. 
 
 You have noticed that, when soldiers come home from 
 the wars, they carry on their flags the names of the battle- 
 fields where they were distinguished. The Englishman 
 coming back has on his banner Inkermann and Balaklava ; 
 the Frenchman, Jena and Eylau ; the German, Versailles 
 and Sedan. And Christ has on the banner he carries as 
 conqueror the names of ten thousand battle-fields he won 
 for you and for me. He rides past all our homes of be- 
 reavement — by the door-bell swathed in sorrow, by the 
 wardrobe black with woe, by the dismantled fortress of 
 our strength. Come out and greet him to-night, O ye 
 people ! See the names of all the battle-passes on his flag. 
 Ye who are poor, read on this ensign the story of Christ's 
 hard crusts and pillowless head. Ye who are persecuted, 
 read here of the ruffians who chased him from his first 
 breath to his last. Mighty to soothe your troubles, mighty 
 
 9 
 
194 THE CRIJISOX COAT. 
 
 to balk your calamities, miglity to tread down 3'our foes, 
 "travelinsf in the 2;reatness of bis stren2;tb." Thou2;b bis 
 borse be brown witb tbe dust of tbe marcb, and the fet- 
 locks be wet W'itb tbe carnage, and tbe bit be red with tbe 
 blood of your spiritual foes, be comes up to-nigbt, not ex- 
 hausted from tbe battle, but fresb as wben be went into it 
 — coming np from Bozrab, " traveling in tbe greatness of 
 bis strength."' 
 
 You know that wben Augustus, and Constantino, and 
 Trnjan, and Titus came back from the wars, what a time 
 there was. You know they came on horseback or in 
 chariots, and there were trophies before and there were 
 captives behind, and there were people shouting on all 
 sides, and there were garlands flung from the window, and 
 over tbe highway a triumphal arch was sprung. The solid 
 masonry to-day at Beneventum, Eimini, and Eome still tell 
 their admiration for those heroes. And shall we to-night 
 let our Conqueror go by without lifting any acclaim? 
 Have we not flowers red enough to depict tbe carnage, 
 white enousjb to celebrate the victorv, fragrant enough to 
 breathe the joy ? Those men of whom I just spoke drag- 
 ged their victims at the chariot -wheels; but Christ, our 
 Lord, takes those who once were captives and invites them 
 into bis chariot to ride, wdiile be puts around them the 
 arm of his strength, saying, "I have loved thee with an 
 everlasting love, and the waters shall not drown it, and 
 tbe fires shall not burn it, and eternity shall not exhaust 
 it." 
 
 If this be true, I can not see how any man can carry his 
 sorrows a great while. If this Conqueror from Bozrab is 
 going to beat back all j'our griefs, why not trust him? 
 Oh ! do you not feel, under this Gospel to-night, your 
 
THE CRIMSON COAT. 195 
 
 griefs falling back, and 3'our tears drying up, as you hear 
 the tramp of a thousand illustrious promises led on by the 
 Conqueror from Bozrah, "traveling, traveling, in the great- 
 ness of his strength ?" 
 
 On that Friday which the Episcopal Church rightly cel- 
 ebrates, calling it " Good-Friday," your soul and mine were 
 contended for. On that day Jesus proved himself mightier 
 than earth and hell ; and when the lances struck him, he 
 gathered them up into a sheaf, as a reaper gathers the 
 grain, and he stacked them. Mounting the horse of the 
 Apocalypse, he rode down through the ages, " traveling in 
 the greatness of his strength." On that day your sin and 
 mine perished, if we will only believe it. 
 
 There may be some one in the house who may say, "I 
 don't like the color of this Conqueror's garments. You 
 tell me that his garments were not only spattered with the 
 blood of conflict, but also that they were soaked, that they 
 were saturated, that they were dyed in it." I admit it. 
 You say you do not like that. Then I quote to you two 
 passages of Scripture : Hebrews ix., 22, " Without the shed- 
 ding of blood there is no remission." Leviticus xvii., 11, 
 "In the blood is the atonement." Bat it was not your 
 blood. It was his own. Not only enough to redden his 
 garments and to redden the horse, but enough to wash 
 away the sins of the world. Oh, the blood on his brow, 
 the blood on his hands, the blood on his feet, the blood 
 on his side! It seems as if an artery must have been 
 cut. 
 
 "There is a fount.iin filled with blood 
 Drawn from Emmanuers veins, 
 And sinners phinged beneath that flood 
 Lose all their guilty stains." 
 
196 THE CRIMSON COAT. 
 
 Some of our modern theologians who want to give God 
 lessons about the best way to save the world, tell us they 
 do not want any blood in their redemption. They want 
 to take this horse by the bit, and hurl him back on his 
 haunches, and tell this rider from Bozrah to go around 
 some other wa3\ Look out, lest ye fall under the flying 
 hoofs of this horse ; lest ye go down under the sword of 
 this Conqueror from Bozrah ! What meant the blood of 
 the pigeons in the old dispensation ? the blood of the bull- 
 ock? the blood of the heifer? the blood of the lamb? It 
 meant to prophesy the cleansing blood, the pardoning 
 blood, the healing blood of this Conqueror who comes uj) 
 from Bozrah to-night, " traveling in the greatness of his 
 strength." No interest in that blood, and you die. It was 
 shed for you, if you will accept it ; it will plead trumpet- 
 tongued against you, if you refuse it. I catch a handful of 
 the red torrent that rushes out from the heart of the Lord, 
 and I throw it over this audience, hoping that one drop of 
 its cleansing power may come upon your soul. O Jesus! 
 in that crimson tide wash my poor soul! AVe need it! 
 We die ! We die ! We accept thy sacrifice ! Conqueror 
 of Bozrah, have mercy upon us! We throw our garments 
 in the way! AVe fall into line! Ride on, Jesus, ride on! 
 " Traveling, traveling in the greatness of thy strength." 
 
 But after a while the returning Conqueror will reach the 
 gate, and all the armies of the saved will be with him. I 
 hope you will be there, and I will be there. As we go 
 through the gate and around about the throne for the re- 
 view, "a great multitude that no man can number" — all 
 heaven can tell without asking, right away, which one is 
 Jesus, not only .because of the brightness of his face, but 
 because, while all the other inhabitants in glory are robed 
 
THE CRIMSON COAT. 197 
 
 in white — saints in white, cherubim in white, seraphim in 
 white — his robes shall be scarlet, even the dyed garments 
 of Bozrah. I catch a glimpse of that triumphant joy, but 
 the gate opens and shuts so quickly, I can hear only half 
 a sentence, and it is this, " Unto him who hath washed us 
 in his blood!" 
 
198 THE SYRACUSE CALAMITY. 
 
 THE SYRACUSE CALAMITY. 
 
 " What is your life ?" — James iv., 14. 
 
 THIS day seems oppressive to me with solemnities. 
 About to come up through the "Narrows" of New 
 York harbor is a vessel of the Bremen line, brinmns: all 
 that, remains on earth of the pleasure-party that went out 
 on the 14th of last month, on Lake Geneva, Switzerland. 
 Of the three young men who perished there, only one 
 body has been reclaimed, and parental arms from our city 
 are stretched out to receive it. Welcome back to thy na- 
 tive shores, O loved one ! though thou comest asleep. 
 Welcome, though it be amidst a rain of tears and the snap- 
 ping of heart-strings! Eemorseless lake, give back thy 
 dead ! We would have them pillowed in our cemeteries. 
 
 While meditating upon these things, there comes a more 
 startling and overpowering cry from the central city of our 
 own State. Many whom we knew were in that catastro- 
 phe. And now the call from New York harbor, louder 
 than the dash of the wave, and the call from Syracuse, 
 louder than the crackling of the timbers, unite with the 
 call of my text in demanding, "What is your life?" 
 
 The anatomist, with knife and skillful analysis, bas 
 sought to find out the secret hiding-place of the principle 
 of life ; but there is a barred gate-waj'- that he can not 
 enter. No satisfactory definition has ever been given of 
 what life is. In complete swoon, when all muscular action 
 of the heart has stopped and the brain lies dormant, life 
 
THE SYRACUSE CALAMITY. 199 
 
 may still exist, and, rallying its scattered forces, march on 
 to three-score years and ten. But I have a lamp in the 
 light of which I can give an intelligent answer to this 
 question ; and so, leaving the anatomist to his curious, fas- 
 cinating and sublime investigation, I come in the light of 
 the Word of God to answer the question, " What is your 
 life?" 
 
 There may be, now and then, in our existence a staccato 
 passage; but, for the most part, our daysjand years pass 
 in a sort of monotone. We rise in the morning, we break- 
 fast, we go to our daily occupation, we dine, we shake 
 hands, we taste our evening meal, we sleep ; and Tuesday 
 is a copy of Monday, and Wednesday is an echo of Tues- 
 day. If you are forty years of age, then you have passed 
 fourteen thousand six hundred days ; and j^et, without the 
 use of memorandum, you can not give me an account of 
 fifty of them. Our days pass on with even pace, so that 
 we seldom estimate what we are, what we have been, and 
 what we will be. Oh that, this morning, this solemn and 
 overwhelming providence in a sister city might come to 
 our ears, and give startling emphasis to this interlocutory 
 of the apostle, " What is your life ?" 
 
 In answering this question of my text, I reply, in the 
 first place, our life is a test If you buy goods, you very 
 soon want to find out whether they are really worth what 
 you paid for them. Every new ship must make a trial 
 trip. If you bring a man into some important position, 
 and there is a crisis where his behavior will either make 
 or break you, you say, "Now I will have a chance to find 
 out what he is." Well, every man is on his trial trip. 
 Men, angels, and devils are finding out what is in you, 
 what you are worth, and what your weaknesses are. No 
 
200 THE SYRACUSE CALAMITY. 
 
 man livctli to Limself. Every word you speak, every ac- 
 tion you perform, has a thousand echoes. Earth and heav- 
 en and hell are gazing upon your behavior, and you are 
 passing the trial. You are watching me to see whether 
 I am faithful or unfaithful ; I am watching you to see 
 whether you are faithful or unfaithful ; and each one 
 of us is going now through the solemn, unmistakable, tre- 
 mendous test. 
 
 I reply still further to the question of my text, that our 
 life is an apprenticeship. A man works at a trade four or 
 five years, or he studies for a profession six or ten years, 
 and then he enters what he considers his chief mission. 
 But, my brethren, our entire life on earth is an apprentice- 
 ship. Not until death do we begin our chief employment. 
 This world is not our principal workshop. All the inhab- 
 itants of heaven are busy forever. The Bible says they 
 rest not day nor night. If to carry on the little business 
 of this world it requires so many hands and feet and minds, 
 who can estimate how many activities will be required to 
 carry on the enterprises of heaven? When our little 
 world is finished and burned up, is the whole universe to 
 stop business? Because one thread-and-needle store on a 
 back alley fails, is all the commerce of a metropolis ar- 
 rested? Oh no. In heaven there will be no sleeping, no 
 idling. That Christian woman who feeds the sick pauper 
 on the back street will be a queen over an infinite realm 
 of light and joy and glory. And that Christian man who 
 can hardly make his way to church on crutches, will be a 
 ministering spirit, flying to one of the farthest outposts of 
 God's dominion. We do not work in this world; we are 
 only getting ready to work. We are apprentices, and have 
 not served our time out. AYe are students, and have not 
 
THE STEACUSE CALAMITY. 201 
 
 got our diplomas. Death is to be graduation. It will be 
 commencement-da}^ 
 
 I go on and answer the question of my text, by saying 
 that our life is a conflict. If you have never tried to con- 
 trol your passions, if you have never tried to subdue your 
 temper, if you have never tried to rouse yourselves up to a 
 better manhood or womanhood, you do not know what I 
 mean. But if you have attempted to live a holy life, and 
 to be better and to do better, then you sympathize with 
 the Apostle Paul when he represented our life on earth a 
 war with the world, a war with the flesh, a war with the 
 devil. In addition to the struggle you have within, you 
 have had a thousand outside battles. Sometimes it has 
 been against poverty, against physical distresses, against 
 bad social position, against an unhappy family name. In 
 one case it has been one thing, and in another case it has 
 been another thing ; and with many of you, up to this point, 
 it has been a hand-to-hand fight; and so it will be even 
 unto the end. There is no tent for peaceful encampment 
 but the grave. Life a conflict ; so the Bible announces 
 it. Life a conflict ; so your own experience afl&rms it. 
 
 "Must I he carried to the skies 
 On flowery beds of ease, 
 While others fought to win the prize 
 And sailed through bloody seas ?" 
 
 Again I answer the question of the text, by saying that 
 our life on earth is a prophecy. By that I mean that what 
 we are in this world we will be in the world to come, only 
 on a larger scale. If a hero here, a hero there. If a cheat 
 here, a cheat there. If a Christian here, a Christian there. 
 I know sometimes there are marvelous changes in the last 
 
202 TEE SYEACUSE CAEiMITT. 
 
 hour of life, and the dying thief, repenting, goes into par- 
 adise; but that is the exception. The probability is, my 
 brethren, that what you are in the present time you will 
 be in the future — what you now are you will always be, 
 only with wider range. The prophecy is, if you now love 
 that which is unclean and unrighteous, you will always 
 love it. If your highest joy is in God, and your chief am- 
 bition to be like him, you are on your way to grandeurs 
 that no dream ever was bright enough to depict. I judge 
 from the blossoms what the fruit is going to be when it 
 sets. He that is filthy shall be filthy still, and he that is 
 holy shall be holy still. On banks of celestial joy walks 
 the consecrated Alfred Cookman. In dungeons of starless 
 night sits John Wilkes Booth. 
 
 I reply further to the question of my text, "What is 
 3'our life?" by saying that our life is a j^rejjaraticn. If we 
 are going on a long journe}^, we want some time to get 
 ready. We must have extra apparel. We want our guide- 
 book. Our comfort on the journey will depend very much 
 upon what we start with. If we arc going among blood- 
 thirsty savages, we must take knife and pistol. God has 
 started us out on a journey that will have no terminus, and, 
 once started, we never come back. Arc we getting ready ? 
 Are we armed? That question you hear to-dny ; but if I 
 should utter it an hour from now, perhaps you might not 
 hear it. Life is a preparation. If you have any weapons 
 to sharpen, you had better sharpen them now. If you 
 have any lamps to light, you bad better light them now. 
 When death once shuts the door of the sepulchre, the an- 
 gel of repentance never opens it. 'As the tree falleth, so 
 it must lie." So far as I can tell your case, your great 
 need is to get rid of your sins. I know of only one way 
 
THE SYRACUSE CALA2IITY. 203 
 
 to do it. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin ; 
 and though you may this morning count yourself the worst 
 sinner, you may, by the grace of God, become the best 
 saint. "Where sin abounded, grace shall much more 
 abound." 
 
 Again, I answer this question of my text by saying our 
 life is a great uncertainty. Nobody steps out of life as he 
 expects to. Though a man may have been sick for thirty 
 3^ears, he is surprised at last when he goes. And thougli 
 you may have known some one in invalidism for a quarter 
 of a century, when you hear he has departed you throw 
 up your hands, and saj'-, "Is it possible?" We can make 
 no calculation about the future. The world is full of 
 temptation and of peril. We do not know how our chil- 
 dren will turn out. We do not know what we ourselves 
 might be tempted to do. We resolve on one thing; we 
 do another. Our associations change. Our plans change. 
 Our friends change. We change. And life is such a com- 
 plete uncertainty ,_ that I would not want to live one hour 
 without the grace of God, and I very certainly would not 
 want to die without it. Blessed be God, I feel under my 
 feet, this morning, a rock firmer than the everlasting hills. 
 That keeps me hopeful and confident. No overbearing 
 autocrat sits on the throne of the universe. My father is 
 King; and the mountains may depart, and the hills be re- 
 moved, but his goodness and his kindness and his grace, 
 never, never. In this Christian hope I have indulged for 
 about twenty-two years; and while I should be sorry to 
 know that there is any one in this house more unworthy 
 than I have been, still I can tell you that I know enough 
 of this religion to recommend it everywhere and always, 
 and to say that the kindest, the gentlest, the grandest friend 
 
201 THE SYRACUSE CALAMITY. 
 
 a man ever had is Jesus. I know bim. I believe in bim. 
 I bave put all my hope on bim. He bas never betrayed 
 me. He will never betray you ; and tbe best thing that 
 you can do now is this moment to surrender yourselves 
 to him for time and for eternity. But do not take ray ex- 
 perience. It is comparatively brief. There are some, as 
 you look over tbe audience, who have frost on the brow ; 
 ask them what they think of Jesus, Ask them whether 
 he ever betrayed them. In what dark hour? By what 
 grave? In what sickness? Ah, these old people can tell 
 you a better story than I can of how in sickness Christ was 
 their best physician; and how — when they came to give 
 the last kiss to the cold lips that never might speak again, 
 and to stand on the verge of a grave deep enough to bury 
 all— they found Jesus the Comforter ; and that this morn- 
 ing their brightest anticipation of the future is the presence 
 of him whom, having not seen, we love; in whom, though 
 now we see him not, 3^et believing, we rejoice with a joy 
 unspeakable and full of glory. 
 
 I thought it best to say some of these things as I stand 
 on the verge of my summer vacation, for I will be absent 
 from you until September. I thought I would give my 
 testimony for Jesus, and then urge you to look after this 
 matter immediatelj'-, while I put to you the question of the 
 text, " What is your life ?" 
 
 There never was a better illustration of its uncertainty 
 than we find in the disaster of our sister city. Some of 
 you think of Syracuse only as a depot through which you 
 pass on the way West. Some of you who know it better 
 know it to be one of the most industrious and busy cities 
 on the continent. It is the Golden Gate between the East 
 and the West. Through its heart rolls the tide of a na- 
 
THE SYBACUSE CALAMITY. 205 
 
 tion's life, beating bard with the motion of the great lakes 
 on the one side, and the ocean on the other. Its conven- 
 tion halls filled with popular assemblages that have come 
 there to decide great questions of philanthropy or politics. 
 On either bank of this rushing stream of life are mansions, 
 counting-rooms, stores, shops — hives where the voices of 
 busy men hum while they gather in the honey of wealth. 
 Feet shufEing, anvils ringing, bridges rumbling, printing- 
 presses rattling. Illumined lyceum, and literary club, 
 and churches lighted for week-night services, and houses 
 swarming with fashionable levee. But it does not appear 
 to me especially in that light. When I think of Syra- 
 cuse, I think of it as the place of beautiful homes, and 
 warm sympathies, and ardent friendships, and blessed asso- 
 ciations. Among the happiest years of my ministry were 
 those spent in that city, and the sorrow comes from there 
 to my heart to-day. The young pastor of that church, 
 the son of the leading minister of his denomination in this 
 country, had only a few months ago gone to his new field ; 
 and last Tuesday night, surrounded by his congregation, 
 in a merry festival, every thing going pleasantly and prof- 
 itably on, with a sudden crash that I have not the heart 
 to depict, many were ushered into the eternal world, and 
 more were taken out half dead. Awful wreck of youth 
 and old age; bride and bridegroom; the distinguished 
 and the unknown. That city to-day is frantic with grief, 
 and already the long processions have gone out to Oak- 
 lands, that beautiful cemetery where I have helped to put 
 down some of my very best friends. It is a good place 
 to sleep in. O men and women who know how to praj', 
 pray for those broken hearts! men and women who 
 have had troubles of your own, cry unto God for that 
 
206 THE SYRACUSE CALAMITY. 
 
 groaning city — for companions bereft, for parents sudden- 
 ly made childless, for homes ^Yhere father and mother will 
 never come, for the pastor of that church, that he may 
 come forth from this anguish of soul newly set apart and 
 ordained by the "laying on of hands" of this calamity! 
 Issuing from such a scene, he will be mightily in earnest 
 now, and his cry will ring through the city, "What is 
 your life?" But while we pray for them, let us also pray 
 for ourselves. Be ye also ready. Eisk not one moment 
 away from Christ. For all the unre^enerate and unpar- 
 doned there is not one hour of safety between this and the 
 judgment-day, and after that there will be a tumbling- in 
 of eternal calamities. Your first, your second, your hun- 
 dredth, your thousandth, 3-our last want is a heart changed 
 by the almighty grace of God. Oh! get it now. Bow 
 your head on the back of the seat in front of you, and be 
 quick in surrendering yourselves to Jesus. He is mighty 
 to save, and he would just as lief do it now as any other 
 time. I do not think that cowardice is a characteristic of 
 my nature, and yet I tell you plainly that I would not dare 
 to walk down the street or cross the ferry were it not for a 
 hope in Christ that whatever happens to my body my im- 
 mortal soul shall go free. Why, the air is so full of perils, 
 flying this wa}', flying that, flying before your face, flying 
 behind your back, flying within, flying without, that we 
 need God's promises hovering over us like a canopy, and 
 marshaled all around us like an armed host. 
 ' Standing as we do at the beginning of a season when 
 there is more sickness than at other times in the same year, 
 and when many of us will be exposed to additional perils 
 by travel, I thought it this morning better for me to cry 
 out with an emphasis deepened by the calamity at the 
 
THE SYEACUSE CALAMITY. 207 
 
 West, asking you, "What is your life?" Is it a test? 
 Make a successful experiment. Is it an apprenticeship? 
 Make it an industrious one. Is it a conflict? Fight a 
 brave fight. Is it a prophecy ? Let it foretell glorious 
 results. Is it a preparation? Make sure work. Is it an 
 uncertainty? Get a Divine insurance. You saj^, "I will 
 do this, I will do that. I will go into this cit}^, and -I will 
 get gain." Whereas you know not what shall be on the 
 morrow; for "What is your life?" "It is even as a va- 
 por that appeareth for a little season, and then vanisheth 
 away." 
 
208 THINGS WE NEVER GET OYER. 
 
 THINGS WE NEVER GET OYER. 
 
 "All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men : but the 
 blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And 
 whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him : 
 but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, 
 neither in this world, neither in the world to come." — Matthew xii., 31, 32. 
 
 "He found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with 
 tears." — Hebrews xii., 17. 
 
 ET it be understood at the outset that the Protestant 
 pulpit has no revelation not given to the Protestant 
 pew. The minister of Christ has no right to lord it over 
 the consciences of men. When we preach, we do not ut- 
 ter edicts; we only offer opinions. Let the old Mother 
 of Harlots from the Vatican issue the fiat that makes the 
 people bow down into the dust; but in this land, and in 
 this age, where King James's translation is in almost every 
 hand and in almost every house, let every man understand 
 that he has a right, equally with others, to interpret the 
 Word of God for himself, asking only Divine illumination. 
 
 As sometimes you gather the whole family around the 
 evening stand to hear some book read, so to-night we 
 gather — a great Christian family group — to study this 
 text ; and now may one and the same Lamp cast its glow 
 on all the circle! 
 
 You see from the first passage that I read that there is 
 a sin against the Holy Ghost for which a man is never 
 pardoned. Once having committed it, he is bound hand 
 and foot for the dungeons of despair. Sermons may be 
 
TEIKGS WE NEVER GET OVER. 209 
 
 preached to liim, songs may be sung to Lim, prayers may 
 be offered in his behalf; but all to no purpose. ILe is a 
 captive for this world, and a captive for the world that is 
 to come. Do you suppose that there is any one in this 
 house to-night that has committed that sin ? All sins are 
 against the Holy Ghost; but my text speaks of one espe- 
 cially. It is very clear to my own mind that the sin 
 against the Holy Ghost was the ascribing of the works of 
 the Spirit to the agency of the devil in the time of the apos- 
 tles. Indeed, the Bible distinctly tells us that. In other 
 words, if a man had sight given to him, or if another was 
 raised from the dead, and some one standing there should 
 say, " This man got his sight by Satanic power ; the Holy 
 Spirit did not do this; Beelzebub accomplished it;" or, 
 "This man raised from the dead was raised by Satanic in- 
 fluence," the man who said that dropped down under the 
 curse of the text, and had committed the fatal sin against 
 the Hol}^ Ghost. 
 
 Now, I do not think it is possible in this day to com- 
 mit that sin. I think it was possible only in apostolic 
 times. But it is a very terrible thing ever to say any 
 thing against the Holy Ghost, and it is a marked fact that 
 our race have been marvelously kept back from that pro- 
 fanity. You hear a man swear by the name of the Eternal 
 God, and by the name of Jesus Christ, but you never 
 heard a man swear by the name of the Holy Ghost. There 
 are those in this house who fear they are guilty of the 
 unpardonable sin. Have you such anxiety ? Then I have 
 to tell you positively that you have not committed that 
 sin, because the very anxiety is a result of the movement 
 of the gracious Spirit, and 3^our anxiety is proof pos- 
 itive, as certainly as any thing that can be demonstrated 
 
210 THINGS WE NEVER GET OVER. 
 
 in matliematics, that you Lave not committed the sin that 
 I have been speaking of. I can look off upon this audi- 
 ence and feel that there is salvation for all It is not like 
 when they put out with those life-boats from the Loch Earn 
 for the Ville da Havre. They knew there was not room 
 for all the passengers, but they were going to do as well 
 as they could. But to-night we man the life-boat of the 
 Gospel, and we cry out over the sea, "Eoom for all!" 
 Oh that the Lord Jesus Christ would, this hour, bring you 
 all out of the flood of sin, and plant you on the deck of 
 this glorious old Gospel craft ! 
 
 But while I have said I do not think it is possible 
 for us to commit the particular sin spoken of in the 
 first text, I have by reason of the second text to call 
 your attention to the fact that there are sins which, 
 though they may be pardoned, are in some respects ir- 
 revocable ; and you can find no place for repentance, 
 though you seek it carefully with tears. Esau had a birth- 
 right given him. In olden times it meant not only tem- 
 poi'al but spiritual blessing. One day Esau took this birth- 
 right and traded it off for something to cat. Oh, the follj^ ! 
 But let us not be too severe upon him, for some of us have 
 committed the same folly. After he had made the trade, 
 he wanted to get it back. Just as though 3^ou to-morrow 
 morning should take all your notes and bonds and Gov- 
 ernment securities, and should go into a restaurant, and in 
 fi fit of recklessness and hunger throw all those securities 
 on the counter and ask for a plate of food, making that ex- 
 change. This was the one Esau made. lie sold his birth- 
 right for a mess of }X)ttage, and he was very sorry about it 
 afterward; but "he found no place for repentance, though 
 he sought it carefully with tears." 
 
THINGS WE NEVER GET OVER. 211 
 
 There is an impression in almost every man's mind that 
 somewhere in the future there will be a chance where he 
 can correct all his mistakes. Live as we may, if we only 
 repent in time, God will forgive us, and then all will be as 
 well as though we had never committed sin. My discourse 
 shall come in collision with that theor3^ I shall show you, 
 my friends, as God will help me, that there is such a thing 
 as unsuccessful repentance; that there are things done 
 wrong that always stay wrong, and for them you may 
 seek some place of repentance, and seek it carefully, but 
 never find it. 
 
 Belonging to this class of irrevocable mistakes is the fol- 
 ly of a missjjerit youth. We may look back to our college 
 days, and think how we neglected chemistry, or geology, 
 or botany, or mathematics. We may be sorry about it all 
 our days. Can we ever get the discipline or the advan- 
 tage that we would have had had we attended to those 
 duties in early life? A man wakes up at forty years of 
 age and finds that his youth has been wasted, and he 
 strives to get back his early advantages. Does he get 
 them back — the days of boyhood, the days in college,' the 
 days under his father's roof? "Oh," he says, "if I could 
 only get those times back again, how I w^ould improve 
 them!" My brother, you will never get them back. 
 They are gone, gone. You may be very sorry about it, 
 and God may forgive, so that you may at last reach heav- 
 en ; but you will never get over some of the mishaps that 
 have come to your soul as a result of vour neo-lect of ear- 
 ly duty. You may try to undo it; you can not undo it. 
 AVhen you had a boy's arms, and a boy's eyes, and a boy's 
 heart, you ought to have attended to those things. A 
 man says, at fifty j-ears of age, " I do wish I could get over 
 
212 THINGS WE NEVER GET OVER. 
 
 these habits of indolence." "When did you get them ? At 
 twenty or twenty-five years of age. You can not shake 
 them off. They will hang to you to the very day of your 
 death. If a young man through a long course of evil con- 
 duct undermines his physical health, and then repents of 
 it in after-life, the Lord may pardon him ; but that does 
 not bring back good physical condition. I said to a min- 
 ister of the Gospel, last Sabbath night, at the close of the 
 service, "Where are you preaching now?" " Oh," he 
 says, " I am not preaching. I am suffering from the phys- 
 ical effects of early sin. I can't preach now ; I am sick." 
 A consecrated man he now is, and he mourns bittei'ly over 
 early sins; but that does not arrest their bodily effects. 
 
 The simple fact is, that men and women often take twen- 
 ty years of their life to build up influences that require all 
 the rest of their life to break down. Talk about a man 
 beginning life when he is twenty-one 3'ears of age; talk 
 about a woman beginning life when she is eighteen years 
 of age! Ah, no! In many respects that is the time they 
 close life. In nine cases out of ten, all the questions of 
 eternity are decided before that. Talk about a majority 
 of men getting their fortunes between thirty and forty! 
 They get or lose fortunes between ten and twenty. When 
 you tell me that a man is just beginning life, I tell you he 
 is just closing it. The next fifty years will not be of as 
 much importance to him as the first twent}^ 
 
 Now, why do I say this ? Is it for the annoj^ance of those 
 who have only a baleful retrospection ? You know that is 
 not my wa}'. I say it for the benefit of these young men and 
 women. I want them to understand that eternity is wrap- 
 ped up in this hour; that the sins of youth we never get 
 over; that you are now fashioning the mold in which your 
 
THINGS WE NEVEE GET OVER. 213 
 
 great future is to run ; that a minute, instead of being six- 
 ty seconds long, is made up of everlasting ages. You see 
 what dignity and importance this gives to the life of all 
 our young folks. Why, in the light of this subject life is 
 not something to be frittered away, not something to be 
 smirked about, not something to be danced out, but some- 
 thing to be weighed in the balances of eternity. Oh, young 
 man ! the sin of last night, the sin of to-night, the sin of to- 
 morrow, will reach over ten thousand years, ay, over the 
 great and unending eternity. You may, after a while, 
 say, "I am very sorry. Now I have got to be thirty or forty 
 years of age, and I do wish I had never committed those 
 sins." What does that amount to ? God may pardon you ; 
 but undo those things you never will, you never can. 
 
 In this same category of irrevocable mistakes I put all 
 parental neglect. We begin the education of our children 
 too late. By the time they get to be ten or fifteen we 
 wake up to our mistakes, and try to eradicate this bad hab- 
 it, and change that ; but it is too late. That parent who 
 omits, in the first ten years of the child's life, to make an 
 eternal impression for Christ, never makes it. The child 
 will probably go on with all the disadvantages, which 
 might have been avoided by parental faithfulness. Now 
 you see what a mistake that father or mother makes who 
 puts off to late life adherence to Christ. Here is a man 
 who at fifty years of age says to you, "I must be a Chris- 
 tian ;" and he yields his heart to God, and sits in the house 
 of prayer to-night a Christian. None of us can doubt it. 
 He goes home, and he says, " Here at fifty years of age I 
 have given my heart to the Saviour. Now I must estab- 
 lish a family altar." What? Where are 3^our children 
 now ? One in Boston ; another in Cincinnati ; another in 
 
214 THINGS ^yE never get over 
 
 New Orleans ; and you, my brother, at 3'our fiftieth year 
 going to estabhsh 3'our family altar. Very well ; better 
 late than -never; but alas, alas that you did not do it 
 twenty-five years ago! 
 
 When I was in Chamouni, Switzerland, I saw in the win- 
 dow of one of the shops a picture that impressed my mind 
 very much. It was a picture of an accident that occurred 
 on the side of one of the Swiss mountains. A company 
 o& travelers, with guides, went up some very steep places — 
 places which but few travelers attempted to go np. They 
 were, as all travelers are there, fastened together with 
 cords at the waist, so that if one slipped, the rope would 
 liold him — the rope fastened to the others. Passing along 
 the most dangerous point, one of the guides slipped, and 
 they all started down the precipice ; but after a while, one 
 more muscular than the rest struck his heels into the ice 
 and stopped; but the rope broke, and down, hundreds and 
 thousands of feet, the rest went. And so I see whole fam- 
 ilies bound together by ties of affection, and in many cases 
 walking on slippery places of worldliness and sin. The 
 father knows it, and the mother knows it, and they arc 
 bound all together. After a while they begin to slide 
 down steeper and steeper, and the father becomes alarmed, 
 and he stops, planting his feet on the " Eock of Ages." 
 He stops, but the rope breaks, and those who were once 
 tied fast to him by moral and spiritual influences go over 
 the precipice. Oh, there is such a thing as coming to 
 Christ soon enough to save ourselves, but not soon enough 
 to save others ! 
 
 IIow many parents wake up in the latter part of life 
 to find out the mistake! The parent says, "I have been 
 too lenient," or, "I have been too severe in the discipline 
 
THINGS WE NEVER GET OVER. 215 
 
 of m J children. If I bad the little ones around me again, 
 bow different 1 would do!" You will never have them 
 around again. The work is done, tbe bent to the char- 
 acter is given, tbe eternity is decided. I say this to 
 young parents — those who are twenty -five or thirty or 
 thirty- five years of age — have the fiimily altar to-night. 
 How do }^ou suppose that father felt as be leaned over tbe 
 couch of bis dying child, and the expiring son said to him, 
 "Father, you have been very good to me. You have 
 given me a fine education, and you have placed me in a 
 fine social position ; yo\\. have done qyqyj thing for me in 
 a worldly sense ; but, father, you never told me bow to 
 die. Now I am dying, and I am lost !" 
 
 In this category of irrevocable mistakes I place, also, tlte 
 unhindnesses done the departed. When I was a boy, my 
 mother used to say to me sometimes, " De Witt, you will 
 be sorry for that when I am gone." And I remember just 
 bow she looked, sitting there, with cap and spectacles, and 
 the old Bible in her lap; and she never said a truer thing 
 than that, for I have often been sorry since. Wliile we have 
 our friends with us, we say unguarded things that wound 
 the feelings of those to whom we ought to give nothing 
 but kindness. Perhaps the parent, without inquiring into 
 the matter, boxes the child's ears. The little one, who has 
 fiillen in tbe street, comes in covered with dust, and, as 
 though tbe first disaster were not enough, she whips it. 
 After a while the child is taken, or tbe parent is taken, or 
 the companion is taken, and those who are left say, " Ob, 
 if we could only get back those unkind words, those un- 
 kind deeds; if we could only recall them !" But you can 
 not get them back. You might bow down over the grave 
 of that loved one, and cry and cry and cry. Tbe white 
 
216 THIXGS WE NEVER GET OVER. 
 
 lips would make no answer. The stars shall be plucked 
 out of their sockets, but these influences shall not be torn 
 away. The world shall die, but there are some wrongs 
 immortal. The moral of which is, take care of your 
 friends while you have them; spare the scolding; be 
 economical of the satire ; shut up in a dark cave, from 
 which they shall never swarm forth, all the words that 
 have a sting in them. You will wish you had some da}^ — 
 very soon you will — perhaps to-morrow. Oh yes. While 
 with a firm hand you administer parental discipline, also 
 administer it very gently, lest some day there be a little 
 slab in Greenwood, and on it chiseled " Our Willie," or 
 "Our Charlie;" and though you bow down prone in the 
 grave, and seek a place of repentance, and seek it care- 
 fully with tears, you can not find it. 
 
 There is another sin that I place in the class of irrevo- 
 cable mistakes, and that is lost ojoportunities of getting good. 
 I never come to a Saturday night but I can see during that 
 week that I have missed opportunities of getting good. I 
 never come to my birthday but I can see that I have 
 wasted many chances of getting better. I never go home 
 on Sabbath from the discussion of a religious theme with- 
 out feeling that I might have done it in a more successful 
 way. How is it with you? If you take a certain number 
 of bushels of wheat and scatter them over a certain num- 
 ber of acres of land, you expect a harvest in proportion to 
 the amount of seed scattered. And I ask you to-night, 
 have the sheaves of moral and spiritual harvest corre- 
 sponded with the advantages given? How has it been 
 with you? You may make resolutions for the future, but 
 past opportunities are gone. In the long procession of 
 futurcyears all those past moments will march ; but the 
 
THINGS WE NEVER GET OVER. £17 
 
 fircliangel's trumpet that wakes the dead will not wake up 
 for you one of those privileges. Esau has sold his birth- 
 right, and there is not wealth enough in the treasure- 
 houses of heaven to buy it back again. "What does that 
 mean? It means that if you are going to get any advan- 
 tage out of this Sabbath-day, you will have to get it before 
 the hand wheels around on the clock to twelve to-night. 
 It means that every moment of our life has two wings, and 
 that it does not fly, like a hawk, in circles, but in a straight 
 line from eternity to eternity. It means that though other 
 chariots may break down, or drag heavily, this one never 
 drops the brake, and never ceases to run. It means that 
 while at other feasts the cup may be passed to us and we 
 may reject it, and yet after a while take it, the cup-bearers 
 to this feast never give us but one chance at the chalice, 
 and, rejecting that, we shall "find no place for repentance, 
 though we seek it carefully with tears." 
 
 There is one more class of sins that I put in this cate- 
 gory of irrevocable sins, and that is lost opportunities of 
 tisefulness. Your business partner is a proud man. In 
 ordinary circumstances, say to him, "Believe in Christ," 
 and he will say, "You mind your business, and I'll mind 
 mine." But there has been affliction in the household. 
 His heart is tender. He is looking around for sympathy 
 and solace. Now is your time. Speak, speak, or forever 
 hold your peace. There is a time in form-life when you 
 plant the corn and when you sow the seed. Let that go 
 by, and the farmer will wring his hands while other hus- 
 bandmen are gathering in the sheaves. You are in a re- 
 ligious meeting, and there is an opportunity for you to 
 speak a word for Christ. You say, "I must do it." Your 
 cheek flushes with embarrassment. You rise half way, 
 
 10 
 
218 THIJ^^GS WE ^:£V£E GET OVER. 
 
 but you cower before men whose breath is in their nostrils, 
 and you sag back, and the opportunity is gone, and all 
 eternity will feel the effect of your silence. Try to get 
 back that opportunity ! You can not find it. You might 
 as w^ell try to find the fleece that Gideon watched, or take 
 in your hand the dew that came down on the locks of the 
 Bethlehem shepherds, or to find the plume of the first rob- 
 in that went across paradise. It is gone; it is gone fov- 
 ever. When an opportunity for personal repentance or of 
 doing good passes awaj'', you may hunt for it; you can not 
 find it. You may fish for it; it will not take the book. 
 You may dig for it ; you can not bring it up. Remember 
 that there are wrongs and sins that can never be corrected ; 
 that our privileges fly not in circles, but in a straight line; 
 that the lightnings have not as swift feet as our privileges 
 when they arc gone, and let an opportunity of salvation go 
 by us an inch, the one hundredth part of an inch, the thou- 
 sandth part of an inch, the millionth part of an inch, and no 
 man can overtake it. Fire-winged seraphim can not come 
 np with it. The eternal God himself can not catch it. 
 
 I stand before those who have a glorious birthright. 
 Esau's was not so rich as yours. Sell it once, and you sell 
 it forever. The world wants to buy it. Satan wants to 
 buy it. Listen for a moment to these brilliant offers, and 
 it is gone. 
 
 Why do I tell you these truths? I have stood before 
 you year after year telling 3'ou these things. Some have 
 yielded their hearts to God, and a glorious crop of souls 
 has been reaped ; but this audience of immortal men and 
 women, are they all prepared for the great future? I could 
 stand here and play a sweeter harp. I could talk of the 
 gates of pearl, and the walls of precious stones, and the 
 
THINGS WE NEVER GET OVER. 219 
 
 crowns of light. AVbat is the use of talking of those things 
 to those who have no preparation for that land, and who 
 are on the wrong road ? 
 
 I remember the story of the Lad on the Arctic some years 
 ngo — the lad Stewart Ilolland. A vessel crashed into the 
 Arctic in the time of a fog, and it was found that the ship 
 must go down. Some of the passengers got off in the life- 
 boats, some got off on rafts; but three hundred went to 
 the bottom. Daring all those hours of calamity, Stewart 
 Holland stood at the signal-gun, and it sounded across the 
 sea, boom! boom! The helmsman forsook his place, the 
 engineer was gone, and some fainted and some prayed and 
 some blasphemed, and the powder was gone, and they 
 could no more set off the signal-gun. The lad broke in 
 the magazine and brought out more powder, and again the 
 gun boomed over the sea. Oh, my friends, I behold many 
 of you in immortal peril ! Sickness will come down after a 
 while upon you, death will come upon you, judgment will 
 come upon you, eternity will come upon you. Some, hav- 
 ing taken the warning, have gone off in the life-boat, and 
 they are safe; but others are not making any attempt to 
 escape. So I stand at this signal-gun of the Gospel, sound- 
 ing the alarm. Beware! beware! "Now is the accepted 
 time; now is the day of salvation." The wrath to come! 
 The wrath to come ! Boom ! Boom ! Fly to the hope 
 of the Gospel. Jesus waits. He stretches out his arms to 
 all this auditory, and cries to-night with a tenderness I have 
 never heard before, "Come unto me, all ye who are weary 
 and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." That is what 3'ou 
 want, sinful, tempted, bruised, and dying soul ! May the 
 Lord help you to accept the mercy and the solace and the 
 salvation of the Gospel ! Hear it, that your soul may live ! 
 
2-20 THE BROKEN-HP FUNERAL. 
 
 THE BROKEN-UP FUNERAL. 
 
 " Now wlien he came nigh to the gate of tlie city, behold, there was a 
 dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow : and 
 much people of the city was with her. And wlien tlie Lord saw her, he had 
 compassion on her, and said unto her, AVeep not. And he came and touched 
 the bier : and they that bare him stood still. And he said, Young man, I 
 say unto thee. Arise. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. 
 And he delivered him to his mother." — Luke vii., 12-15. 
 
 THE text calls us to stand at the gate of the city of 
 Nain. The streets are a-rush with business and gay- 
 ety, and the ear is deafened with the hammers of mecha- 
 nism and the wheels of traffic. Work, with its thousand 
 arms and thousand eyes and thousand feet, fills all the 
 street, when suddenly the crowd parts, and a funeral passes. 
 Between the wheels of work and pleasure there comes a 
 long procession of mourning people. Who is it? A trifler 
 says, " Oh, it is nothing but a funeral. It may have come 
 up from the hosj)ital of the city, or the almshouse, or some 
 low place of the town ;" but not so says the serious ob- 
 server. There are so many evidences of tired bereave- 
 ment that we know at the first glance some one has been 
 taken away greatly beloved ; and to our inquirj^, " Who is 
 this that is carried out with so many offices of kindness 
 and affection ?" the reply comes, " The only son of his 
 mother, and she a widow." Stand back, and let the pro- 
 cession pass out ! Hush all. the voices of mirth and pleas- 
 ure ! Let every head be uncovered I Weep with this pass- 
 ing procession ; and let it be told through all the market- 
 
THE BROKEN -UP FUNERAL. 221 
 
 places and bazaars of Nain, that in Galilee to-day tlie sep- 
 ulchre hath gathered to itself " the only son of his mother, 
 and she a widow." 
 
 There are two or three things that, in my mind, give 
 especial pathos to this scene. The first is, he was a young 
 man that was being carried out. To the aged, death be- 
 comes beautiful. The old man halts and pants along the 
 road, where once he bounded like the roe. From the midst 
 of immedicable ailments and sorrows, he cries out, " How 
 long, O Lord, how long?" Foot-sore and hardly bestead 
 on the hot journey, he wants to get home. He sits in the 
 church, and sings, with a very tremulous voice, some tune 
 he sung forty years ago, and longs to join the better as- 
 semblage of the one hundred and forty and four thousand, 
 and the thousands of thousands who have passed the flood. 
 How sweetly he sleeps the last sleep ! Push back the white 
 locks from the wrinkled temples; they will never ache again. 
 Fold the handsover the still heart; they will never toil again. 
 Close gently the eyes; they will never weep again. 
 
 But this man that I am speaking of was a young man. 
 He was just putting on the armor of life, and he was exult- 
 ing to think bow his sturdy blows would ring out above 
 the clangor of the battle. 1 suppose he bad a young man's 
 hopes, a young man's ambition, and a young man's cour- 
 age. He said, "If I live many years, I will feed the hun- 
 gry and clothe the naked. In this city of Nain, where 
 there are so many bad young men, I will be sober, and 
 honest, and pure, and magnanimous, and my mother shall 
 never be ashamed of me." But all these prospects are 
 blasted in one hour. There he passes lifeless in the pro- 
 cession. Behold all that is left on earth of the high-hearted 
 young man of the city of Nain. 
 
222 THE BROEEX-UP FUNERAL. 
 
 There is another thing that adds very much to this 
 scene, and that is, he was an only son. However large the 
 family flock may be, we never could think of sparing one 
 of the lambs. Though they may all have their faults, they 
 all have their excellences that commend them to the pa- 
 rental heart ; and if it were peremptorily demanded of you 
 to-day that you should yield up one of your children out 
 of a very large family, you would be confounded, and you 
 could not make a selection. But this was an only son, 
 around whom gathered all the parental expectations. How 
 much care in his education ! How much caution in watcli- 
 ing his habits! He would carry down the name to other 
 times. He would have entire control of the flimily prop- 
 erty long after the parents had gone to their last reward. 
 He would stand in society a thinker, a worker, a philan- 
 thropist, a Christian. No, no. It is all ended. Behold 
 him there. Breath is gone. Life is extinct. The only 
 son of his mother. 
 
 There was one other thing that added to the pathos of 
 this scene, and tliat was, his mother was a widow. The 
 main hope of that home had been broken, and now he was 
 come up to be the staff. The chief light of the household 
 had been extinguished, and this was the only light left. I 
 suppose she often said, looking at him, '* There are only 
 two of us." Oh, it is a grand thing to see a young man 
 step out in life, and say to his mother, " Don't be down- 
 hearted. I will, as fiir as possible, take father's place, and 
 as long as I live 3^ou shall never want any thing." It is 
 not always that way. Sometimes the young people get 
 tired of the old people. They say they are queer; that 
 they have so many ailments; and they sometimes wish 
 them out of the way. A young man and his wife sat at 
 
THE BEOKEN-JJF FUNERAL. 223 
 
 the table, tlieir little son on the floor playing beneath the 
 table. The old fiither was very old, and his hand shook 
 so, they said, "You shall no more sit with us at the table." 
 And so they gave him a place in the corner, where day by 
 day he ate out of an earthen bowl — every thing put into 
 that bowl. One day his hand trembled so much, he drop- 
 ped it, and it broke ; and the son, seated at the elegant ta- 
 ble in midfloor, said to his wife, "Now, we'Jl get father a 
 wooden bowl, and that he can't break." So a wooden 
 bowl was obtained, and every day old grandfather ate out 
 of that, sitting in the corner. One day, while the elegant 
 young man and his wife were seated at their table, with 
 chased silver and all the luxuries, and their little son sat 
 upon the floor, they saw the lad whittling, and they said, 
 "My son, what are you doing there with that knife?" 
 " Oh," said he, " I — I'm making a trough for my father 
 and mother to eat out of when they get old !'' 
 
 But this young man of the text was not of that charac- 
 ter, lie did not belong to that school. I can tell it from 
 the way they mourned over him. He was to be the com- 
 panion of his mother. He was to be his mother's protect- 
 or. He would return now some of the kindnesses he .had 
 received in the days of childhood and boyhood. A}'', he 
 would with his strong hand uphold that form already en- 
 feebled with age. Will he do it? No. In one hour all 
 that promise of help and companionship is gone. There 
 is a world of anguish in that one short phrase, " The only 
 son of his mother, and she a widow." 
 
 Now, my friends, it was upon this scene that Christ broke. 
 He came in without any introduction. He stopped the 
 procession. lie had only two utterances to make ; the 
 one. to the mourning mother, the other to the dead. He 
 
224 TEE BROEEN-VP FUNERAL. 
 
 cried out to the mourning one, "Weep not;" and then, 
 touching tlie bier on which the son la}'', he cried out, 
 "Young man, I say unto thee, Arise! And he that was 
 dead sat up," 
 
 I learn two or three things from this subject, and, first, 
 that Christ luas a man. You see how that sorrow played 
 upon all the chords of his heart. I think we forget this 
 too often. Christ was a man more certainly than you are, 
 for he was a perfect man. No sailor ever slept in ship's 
 hammock more soundly than Christ slept in that boat on 
 Gennesaret. In every nerve, and muscle, and bone, and 
 fibre of his body ; in every emotion and affection of his 
 heart ; in every action and decision of his mind, he was a 
 man. He looked ofi" upon the sea just as you look off upon 
 the waters. He went into Martha's house just as you go 
 into a cottage. He breathed hard when Jie was tired, just 
 as you do when you are exhausted. He felt after sleeping 
 out a night in the storm just like you do when you have 
 been exposed to a tempest. It was just as humiliating for 
 him to beg bread as it would be for you to become a pau- 
 per. He felt just as much insulted by being sold for thirty 
 pieces of silver as you would if you were sold for the price 
 of a dog. From the crown of the head to the sole of the 
 foot he was a man. When the thorns were twisted for 
 his brow, they hurt him just as much as they would hurt 
 your brow, if they were twisted for it. He took not on 
 him the nature of angels ; he took on him the seed of 
 Abraham. Ecce homo! — Behold the man ! 
 
 But I must also draw from this subject that he urns a 
 God. Suppose that a man should now attempt to break 
 up a funeral obscquy : he would be seized by the law, he 
 would be imprisoned, if he were not actually slain by the 
 
THE BBOKEN-UP FUNERAL. 225 
 
 mob before tbo officers could secure bim. If Cbrist bad 
 been a mere mortal, would be bave bad a rigbt to come 
 in upon sucb a procession? Would be bave succeeded in 
 bis interruption ? He was more tban a man, for wben 
 be cried out, " ' I say unto tbee. Arise 1' be tbat was dead 
 sat up." Wbat excitement there must bave been tberea- 
 bouts ! Tbe body bad lain prostrate. It bad been mourned 
 over with agonizing tears, and yet now it begins to move 
 in tbe shroud, and to be flushed with life; and, at tbe 
 command of Christ, be rises up and looks into the faces 
 of the astonished spectators. Oh, this was the work of a 
 God! I hear it in bis voice; I see it in the flasb of bis 
 eye ; I behold it in the snapping of death's shackles ; I see 
 it in tbe face of the rising slumberer ; I bear it in tbe out- 
 cry of all those who were spectators of tbe scene. If, wben 
 I see my Lord Jesus Christ mourning with tbe bereaved, 
 I put my bands on bis shoulders, and say, "My brother," 
 now that I bear bim proclaim supernatural deliverances, I 
 look up into his face and say with Thomas, " My Lord and 
 my God." Do you not think he was a God? A great 
 many people do not believe tbat, and they compromise tbe 
 matter, or they think they compromise it. They say be 
 was a very good man, but he was not a God. Tliat is im- 
 possible. He was either a God or a wretch, and I will 
 prove it. If a man professes to be that whicb he is not, 
 what is he ? He is a liar, an impostor, a hypocrite. That 
 is your unanimous verdict. Now, Christ professed to be a 
 God. He said over and over again be was a God, took tbe 
 attributes of a God, and assumed the works and offices of a 
 God. Dare you now say be was not ? He was a God, or 
 be was a wretch. Choose ye. 
 
 Do you think I can not prove by this Bible that be was 
 
 10* 
 
226 THE BROKEN -UP FUXERAL. 
 
 a God ? If you do not believe tbis Bible, of course there is 
 no need of my talking with you. There is no common data 
 from which to start. Suppose you do believe it ? Then I 
 can demonstrate that he was divine. I can prove he was 
 creator, John i., 3, "All things were made by him; and with- 
 out him was not any thing made that was made." He was 
 eternal, Eev. xxii., 13, " I am Alpha and Omega, the begin- 
 ning and the end, the first and the last." I can prove he 
 was omnipotent, Ileb. i., 10, " The heavens are the work of 
 thine hands." I can prove he was omniscient, John ii., 25, 
 "He knew what was in man." Oh yes, he is a God. lie 
 cleft the sea. He upheaved the crystalline walls along 
 which the Israelites marched. He planted the mountains. 
 He raises up governments and casts down thrones, and 
 marches across nations and across worlds and across the 
 universe, eternal, omnipotent, unhindered, and unabashed. 
 That hand that was nailed to the cross holds the stars in a 
 leash of love. That head that dropped on the bosom in 
 fainting and death shall make the world quake at its nod. 
 That voice that groaned in the last pang shall swear before 
 the trembling world that time shall be no longer. Oh, do 
 not insult the common sense of the race by telling us that 
 this person was only a man, in whose presence the para- 
 lytic arm was thrust out well, and the devils crouched, and 
 the lepers dropped their scales, and the tempests folded 
 their wings, and the boy's sachel of a few loaves made a 
 banquet for five thousand, and. the sad procession of my 
 text broke up in congratulation and hosanna! 
 
 Again, I learn from this subject that Christ ivas a sym- 
 pathizer. Mark you, this was a city funeral. In the coun- 
 try, when the bell tolls, they know all about it for five 
 miles around, and they know what was the matter with 
 
THE BROKEN-UP FUNERAL. 227 
 
 the man, how old he was, and what were his last experi- 
 ences. They know with what ten:iporal prospects he has 
 left his family. There is no haste, there is no indecency 
 in the obsequies. There is nothing done as a mere matter 
 of business. Even the children come out as the procession 
 passes, and look sympathetic, and the tree-shadows seem 
 to deepen, and the brooks weep in sympathy as the proces- 
 sion goes by. But, mark you, this that I am speaking of 
 was a city funeral. In great cities the cart jostles the 
 hearse, and there is mirth, and gladness, and indifference 
 as the weeping procession goes by. In this city of Nain 
 it was a common thing to have trouble and bereavement 
 and death. Christ saw it every day there. Perhaps that 
 very hour there were others being carried out; but this 
 frequency of trouble did not harden Christ's heart at all. 
 He stepped right out, and he saw this mourner, and he had 
 compassion on her, and he said, "Weep not." 
 
 Now, I have to tell you, bruised souls, and there are 
 many here to-day (have you ever looked over an audience 
 like this and noticed how many shadows of sorrow there 
 are? You can not, where you sit, see them, but I can from 
 where I stand), I come to all such to-dny and say, "Christ 
 meets you, and he has compassion on you, and he saj^s, 
 'Weep not.'" Perhaps with some it is financial trouble. 
 "Oh,"3^ou say, "it is such a silly thing for a man to cry 
 over lost money." Is it? Suppose you had a large fort- 
 une, and all luxuries brought to your table, and your ward- 
 robe was full, and your home was beautified by music and 
 sculpture and painting, and thronged by the elegant and 
 educated, and then some rougb misfortune should strike 
 you in the face, and trample your treasures, and taunt your 
 children for their faded dress, and send you into commer- 
 
228 THE BROKEN -UP FUNERAL. 
 
 cial circles an underling ■where once you waved a sceptre 
 of gold, do you think you would cry then? I think you 
 would. But Christ comes and meets all such to-day. He 
 sees all the straits in which you have been thrust. He 
 observes the sneer of that man who once was proud to 
 walk in your shadow, and glad to get your help. He sees 
 the protested note, the uncanceled judgment, the foreclosed 
 mortgage, the heart-breaking exasperation, and he says, 
 " Weep not. I own the cattle on a thousand hills. I will 
 never let you starve. From my hand the fowls of heaven 
 peck all their food. And will I let you starve? Never — 
 no, my child, never." 
 
 Or perhaps this tramp at the gate of Nain has an echo 
 in your own bereft spirit. You went out to the grave, 
 and you felt 3-ou never could come back again. You left 
 3^our heart there. The white snow of death covered all 
 the garden. You listen for the speaking of voices that 
 will never be heard again, and the sounding of feet that 
 will never move in your dwelling again, and there is this 
 morning, while I speak, a dull, heavy, leaden pressure on 
 your heart. God has dashed out the light of your eyes, 
 and the heavy spirit that that woman carried out of the 
 gate of Nain is no heavier than yours. And you open the 
 door, but he comes not in. And you enter the nursery, 
 but she is not there. And you sit at the table, but there 
 is a vacant chair next to you. And the sun does not shine 
 as brightly as it used to, and the voices of affection do not 
 strike you M'ith so quick a thrill, and your cheek has not 
 so healthy a hue, and your eye has not so deep a fire. Do 
 I not know? Do we not all know? There is an unlifted 
 woe on your heart. You have been out carrying your 
 loved one beyond the gate of the city of Nain. But look 
 
THE BROKEN-JIT FUNERAL. 229 
 
 yonder. Some one stands watching. lie seems waitii]g 
 for you. As yoa come up lie stretches out his hand of 
 help. His voice is full of tenderness, yet thrills with eter- 
 nal strength. Who is it? The very one who accosted 
 the mourner at the gate oflSTain, and he says, "Weep not." 
 Perhaps it is a worse grief than that. It may be a living 
 home trouble that you can not speak about to your best 
 friend. It may be some domestic unhappiness. It may 
 be an evil suspicion. It may be the disgrace following 
 in the footsteps of a son that is wayward, or a companion 
 who is cruel, or a father that will not do right ; and for 
 years there may have been a vulture striking its beak into 
 the vitals of your soul, and you sit there to-day feeling it 
 is worse than death. It is. It is worse than death. And 
 yet there is relief Though the night may be the blackest, 
 though the voices of hell may tell you to curse God and 
 die, look up and hear the voice that accosted the woman 
 of the text as it says, "Weep not." 
 
 "Earth Iiath no sorrow 
 That heaven can not cure." 
 
 I learn, again, from all this that Christ is the master of the 
 grave. Just outside the gate of the city, Death and Christ 
 measured lances ; and when the young man rose. Death 
 dropped. Now we are sure of our resurrection. Oh, 
 what a scene it was when that young man came back ! 
 The mother never expected to hear him speak again. She 
 never thought that he would kiss her again. How the 
 tears started, and how her heart throbbed, as she said, " Oh, 
 my son, my son, my son !" And that scene is going to be 
 repeated. It is going to be repeated ten thousand times. 
 These broken fomily circles have got to come together. 
 
230 THE BROKEN- UP FUNERAL. 
 
 These extinguished household lights have got to be rekin- 
 dled. There will be a stir in the fomily lot in the ceme- 
 tery, and there will be a rush into life at the command, 
 " Young man, I say unto thee, Arise !" As the child shakes 
 off the dust of the tomb, and comes forth fresh and fair and 
 beautiful, and you throw your arras around it and press it 
 to your heart, angel to angel will repeat the story of Nain, 
 "He delivered him to his mother." Did you notice that 
 passage in the text as I read it? "He delivered him to 
 his mother." O ye troubled souls ! O ye who have lived 
 to see every prospect blasted, peeled, scattered, consumed ! 
 wait a little. The seed-time of tears will become the wheat 
 harvest. In a clime cut of no wintry blast, under a sky 
 palled by no hurtling tempest, and amidst redeemed ones 
 that weep not, that part not, that die not, friend will come 
 to friend, and kindred will join kindred, and the long pro- 
 cession that marches the avenues of gold will lift up their 
 palms as again and again it is announced that the same 
 one who came to the relief of this woman of the text came 
 to the relief of many a maternal heart, and repeated the 
 wonders of resurrection, and "delivered him to his mother." 
 Oh, that will be the harvest of the world. That will be 
 the coronation of princes. That will be the Sabbath of 
 eternity. 
 
BARTERING FOR ETERNITY. 231 
 
 BAETERING FOR ETERNITY. 
 
 "Buy the truth, and sell it not." — Proverbs xxiii., 23. 
 
 CHRIST never forgot the occupation of the people to 
 whom he spake. Ilis metaphors and illustrations 
 were apt to be drawn from the every-day business of the 
 people whom he addressed. Speaking to the fishermen, 
 he said, " The Gospel is a net let down into the sea." Ad- 
 dressing himself to the farmers, he said, "A sower went 
 forth to sow, and some of the seed fell on good ground, and 
 some on thorny ground." That he might attract the at- 
 tention of the shepherds, he tells the parable of the lost 
 sheep, and how the shepherd went out in the wilderness 
 to bring it home to the fold. In order that the plainest 
 woman that ever mixed bread might not be in doubt as to 
 what he meant, he said, " The kingdom of heaven is like 
 leaven, or yeast, which leavens the whole lump." Indeed, 
 there were no learned allusions, there was no profound 
 disquisition, there was no acute analysis, in the addresses 
 of Christ. They were merely a plain talk from a heart 
 overflowing with love for the people, in a way that all the 
 people understood. 
 
 There is hardly a style of mind that is not susceptible 
 to illustration. One Sabbath I was preaching on an In- 
 dian reservation to an audience of Indians. I was trying, 
 at that time, to impress upon them the fact that childhood 
 generally indicated the character of manhood. They did 
 not seem to understand until I told them that a crooked 
 
232 BARTERING FOR ETERNITY. 
 
 young tree makes a crooked old tree, and tlien their eyes 
 flashed with intelli<2:ence. 
 
 When my text says, " Buy the truth, and sell it not," it 
 employs an illustration which ought to attract the attention 
 of all those directly or indirectly engaged in merchandise. 
 Would to God that we were all as wise in mana2;in2: the 
 matters of the soul as we are in worldly traffic! I want, 
 this morning, to give soine of the characteristics of a wise 
 spiritual merchant. 
 
 In the first place, I remark that the wise spiritual mer- 
 chant loill not neglect to take an account of stock. We are 
 coming on toward the 1st of January, and all our business 
 men will be absorbed. They who ordinarily go over at 
 eight or nine o'clock in the morning to business will go at 
 seven ; and if you happen to be on the street some night at 
 eleven or twelve o'clock, you will meet them ; and if you 
 ask, "Why are you coming home so late?" they will sa}^, 
 "We are taking an account of stock." Every wise busi- 
 ness-man does that. Once a year all the goods must be 
 bandied, and every shelf must be ransacked, and the rem- 
 nants must be unrolled, and the dusty bundles unwrapped, 
 and every thing in the store must be upturned. Once a 
 year the business man wants to know how things stand. 
 lie reviews the books, writes them up, and draws out on a 
 fair balance-sheet all his worldly circumstances; so many 
 goods, so many liabilities ; so much capital that is compar- 
 atively worthless, so much that can be easily turned into 
 cash ; so many debts ; so many bills out that are perfectly 
 good, so many that are doubtful. In other words, he looks 
 over all the affairs of the year, and knows just what posi- 
 tion he occupies. Now, my friends, ought we not to be 
 just as scrutinizing in the matters of the soul? The Roths- 
 
XARTERING FOR ETERNITY. 233 
 
 cliikls or the Stewarts never did a business of such infinite 
 importance as that going on in the heart of every man and 
 woman in this audience. There are the goods — the facul- 
 ties and energies and passions of your soul. There are the 
 liabiUties — to temptation, to danger, and death. Can it be 
 that we have never taken an account of stock ? Can it be 
 that we have been running this tremendous business for 
 eternity, and never drawn out our affairs on a balance- 
 sheet? I know such a review is not pleasant. Neither 
 does any merchant find it agreeable to take an account of 
 stock. You all put the day off as long as you can. You 
 do not know what it may reveal to you. You say, " There 
 may come up something in review that I don't want to 
 know, and yet, after all, I must, as a business -man, attend 
 to it." And though you put it off as long as you can, yoa 
 after a while say, " Boys, we'll go and take an account of 
 stock." Many a man has been surprised, at the close of 
 that operation, to find how poorly he was off. Ah ! it is 
 just as unpleasant to review our spiritual condition. The 
 fact is, we are insolvent, "We owe debts we can never pay. 
 We have been running this business of the soul so poorly 
 that we have got to be wound up. We can not pay one 
 cent on a dollar. We can not answer for one of ten thou- 
 sand of our transgressions. There has never, in worldly 
 affairs, been such a miserable failure in Wall Street or 
 State Street as we have made in spiritual affairs. We owe 
 God every thing. We have paid him nothing; some of 
 us have never tried to pay him any thing. 
 
 But sometimes, when a man is thoroughly cornered in 
 business matters, and he says, " I must stop payment," 
 while he is sitting in his store or office thoroughly discour- 
 aged, there is a rap at the door, "Come in," he says; an 
 
231 BARTERIXG FOR ETERXITY. 
 
 old friend enters. He says, "I bear you are in great diffi- 
 culty ; how much money will get you out of this embarrass- 
 ment ?" " Well," you say, " live thousand dollars would." 
 He says, "Here it is" — bank, pay so and so. The man is 
 delivered from all his commercial distresses. Just so, 
 while we are sitting down disheartened on account of our 
 sin, and feeling that there is no hope, there is a rap at the 
 door of the heart ; it is Jesus coming in. He says, " What 
 do you want?" We answer, "We want pardon, we want 
 peace, we want the eternal salvation of the Gospel." Jesus 
 says, " There it is." The debts are paid, the obligations 
 are canceled. Now, we do business on an infinite capital. 
 Now, all the banks of eternity are ready with their loans. 
 Now, we have on paper the name of the King. There is no 
 condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. 
 
 "The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose, 
 I will not, I will not desert to its foes ; 
 That soul, though all hell sliould endeavor to shake, 
 I'll never, no, never, no, never forsake." 
 
 I remark again, the wise spiritual merchant will be on 
 his guard against burglars. How long it takes you to lock 
 up 3^our store at night! You put your valuables in the 
 safe, you shove the door to, you turn the lock ; you try 
 it afterward to be sure it is fastened ; you bolt and rebolt 
 your doors. You have a watchman, perhaps, at the store. 
 You charge the police, when they go up and down, once in 
 a while to look in. In addition to that, perhaps, you have 
 a burglar-alarm, so that the opening of a window or door 
 in the night with a great rattle will wake up the watch- 
 man. Perhaps you have a watch-dog under the counter, 
 who feels the responsibility of the store resting on his 
 shaggy neck, his mouth down between his paws. If there 
 
BARTERING FOR ETERNITY. 235 
 
 be the least sound, be lifts one ear, be lifts bis bead, be 
 rises up, and then lies down again witb a growl, as mucb 
 as to say, "I wisb it bad been somebody." Would to God 
 tbat we were as wise in regard to spiritual burglaries! 
 Tbere are a thousand temptations around about our soul 
 ready to blow it up ; ready to blast it ; ready to sbove tbe 
 bolt and steal the infinite and immortal treasure. The 
 apostle says, " What I say unto one, I say unto all — 
 watch !" That is, look out for burglars. Here comes a 
 thief stealing our Christian belief, and it is very easy to 
 lose it, but it is not so easy to get it back again. Let it 
 once be gone, and all the detectives on earth can not fetch 
 it back. Alas for tbe man who, once believing in Chris- 
 tianity, now rejects it ! He tries to be satisfied, and he tries 
 to make you believe he is satisfied ; but the most doleful 
 thing on earth is a religion without Jesus Christ in it. If 
 there are any pries at the door of your heart, if any of 
 those burglars are trying to break in the windows of your 
 soul, you had better fly at them with infinite vehemence, 
 and ask the Lord God to help you in the arrest. 
 
 Here is anotlier trying to break in and steal your pa- 
 tience. It puts something explosive in your temper, and 
 tries to blow it up. Here you have a casket of diamonds 
 made of daj-s and hours and months of precious time. Oh, 
 how many burglars there are around trying to steal those 
 diamonds! Temptations to pride, temptations to self-in- 
 dulgence, temptations to neglect the great things of eter- 
 nity, make up a gang of desperadoes that have broken out 
 of the jail of hell, and are prowling around our soul try- 
 ing to steal this treasure; and, in the name of God, I bid 
 you, arm against them. They have taken many of the 
 spoils already, and I cry, "Stop thief!" 
 
236 BARTERING FOR ETERNITY. 
 
 " My soul, be on tbj' guard, 
 Ten thousand foes arise, 
 And hosts of sin are pressing hard 
 To draw thee from the skies. 
 "Ne'er think the victory won, 
 Nor once at ease sit down. 
 Thine arduous work will not be done 
 Till thou hast got thy crown." 
 
 I remark, again, that the wise spiritual merchant will 
 watch the state of the markets. When the business man 
 takes up the paper in the morning, he does not first look 
 at the marriages and deaths or the editorials. lie looks at 
 the price-current. Before ten o'clock merchants all know 
 whether gold has gone up or down, whether the goods 
 they have on the shelf have increased or decreased in 
 value. A man might say, " It is nothing to me how others 
 do business, or what prices others get; I shall go straight 
 on without any reference to any body else in business." 
 You know that would be the precursor of bankruptcy. 
 He watches the markets; he can not afford to be indiffer- 
 ent. Now, I say we ought to be just as alert in looking 
 at the spiritual markets. We ought to know M'hether the 
 cause of God in the earth is going up or down. No m.an 
 can be independent of the general state of morals and of 
 religion in the communit3\ For this reason, every intelli- 
 gent Christian will be examining the churches, the schools, 
 and the benevolent organizations. The failure of a crop 
 in Russia, or of a bank in London, or tlie breaking-out of a 
 war in India affects prices in the New York market; and 
 the conversion of one soul in Central Africa ought to leave 
 its impression on every intelligent Christian in Brooklyn. 
 It is my business this morning to proclaim to 3'ou the state 
 of the spiritual markets, and I tell you the cause of God is 
 
BABTEBINQ FOB ETEBNITY. 237 
 
 advancing. The people are buying the truth, and are not 
 so disposed to sell it as they used to be. The ships of 
 Tarshish are coming into the harbor of God, and the gold 
 and frankincense and myrrh are showering down at the 
 feet of Jesus. The religion of the Lord Jesus Christ is 
 rising. The nations are bidding for this Gospel, and the 
 merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver. 
 
 If this religion of Christ is advancing in value, and must 
 continue advancing, your business judgment will tell you 
 the larger the investment you make in it, the better. Other 
 values may have depressions. You might buy Michigan 
 Central, perhaps, at 125, and it might drop to 120 ; you 
 might buy Pittsburg, Fort Wayne, and Chicago for 85, 
 and it might drop to 83, and you might be ruined. But 
 these Gospel values always will be on the advance. Some- 
 times the Government comes on the marts of business and 
 upsets the planning of the gold-gamblers, and vindicates 
 justice and the rights of the people; and the Lord God Al- 
 mighty is the mightiest of financiers, and he will scatter to 
 the four winds of heaven all the plotters of iniquitj', and 
 he will vindicate his government, and make his own chil- 
 dren the princes of eternity. 
 
 O these spiritual, values! Men do not know how to 
 estimate them. You give a dollar to a Christian object, 
 and say, "That's gone; I'll never hear of that again." 
 You give twenty-five dollars to worldly gratification, and 
 you think you have made a good investment. Have you? 
 Of the twenty-five dollars yo\x gave to the worldly gratifi- 
 cation you will hear nothing; but that one dollar has been 
 an investment that will go on accumulating interest and 
 adding compound interest until it will take the mightiest 
 intelligence of heaven to estimate what is the value of that 
 
238 BARTERING FOR ETERNITY. 
 
 dollar rolling on through all eternity until the banking- 
 houses of heaven can not hold the accumulation. We can 
 not understand now God's way of estimating things. The 
 woman who sells in her thread-and-needle store one thou- 
 sand dollars' worth a year can not estimate the plans of a 
 man who sells two millions of dollars' worth of goods a 
 year. God's projects are too vast for us. We talk of one 
 man buying a railroad, or of another buying half a citv. 
 Why, the Lord Jesus Christ bought the whole earth, and 
 paid for it in one day — paid for it in tears and agony and 
 blood ! You talk about vast corporations and moneyed 
 institutions and powerful companies ; but the richest com- 
 pany in all the universe is the company of Christ's disci- 
 ples, and the poorest one of them will be a milHonaire to 
 all eternity. I take one of these bonds of the company, 
 and I tear off just one coupon, and hand it to you, and you 
 read on tliat coupon these words, "All are 3'ours." If a 
 man wants a better dividend than that, I do not know 
 where he will get it. 
 
 Again, I remark that the wise spiritual merchant is care- 
 ful to get a profit out of every thing that jJcisses through his 
 hcmds. You go into the store. You see the roll of nan- 
 keen, or the barrel of sugar, or the string of bananas, or the 
 coil of ship cable. Before the merchant lets them pass out 
 of his hands, he will make a profit out of them. If he has 
 paid ten cents a 3'ard for something, he will get twelve or 
 fifteen; if he has paid twenty -five cents for a pound, he 
 will get thirt^^ . Now, I say tlie wise spiritual merchant 
 will get a spiritual advantage out of every thing that comes 
 across him — from all sorrows, all perplexities, all vexations. 
 He will take these harrows and furnaces of trouble, and 
 from them get an everlasting profit. Affliction has flxiled 
 
BARTERING FOR ETERNITY. 239 
 
 of its object if it does not leave a soul worth more than 
 when it came. It is very interesting to get into confiden- 
 tial conversation with a man who has gained a large prop- 
 erty, and to have him tell you just how he made his money ; 
 but it is more interesting to get into the confidence of an 
 old Christian, and have him tell you just how he accumu- 
 lated his wealth of Christian character. lie will say, "My 
 property went down in 1857, but I came out of that trouble 
 with infinite resources of spiritual comfort and strength." 
 He will say, "I was sick for three months, and could not 
 do a stroke of work ; and when I came forth I was as weak 
 as a child, and staggered along the street ; but, oh ! my 
 soul had the strength of a giant." And he will tell you 
 of the dark day that came in his household when a loved 
 one was carried out, and he felt that every thing was gone 
 with it ; and on his way back from the cemetery Jesus met 
 him and said, "Weep not, I will make up for thy loss; I 
 wmII more than make up for it. Tlaose little feet are al- 
 ready bounding along the corridors of heaven. That hand 
 is already sweeping the harp -strings of glory." Jesus 
 took that afflicted fiither to the verge of the grave, and bid 
 him look down into it, and instead of a grave it became a 
 chest of immortal brilliants. As he ran his hand up and 
 down the gate of the sepulchre he found it hard, cold, 
 rusty iron, but Jesus touched it and it became solid pearl 
 — bars of pearl, bolts of pearl, hinges of pearl, and, lo! it 
 was the gate of heaven. "All things work together for good 
 to those who love God ;" and I pray the Lord Almighty 
 that, whatever misfortune, whatever vexation, whatever 
 trial, whatever bereavements pass through our soul, we may 
 reap from them a spiritual tariff that will make us richer 
 while we live on earth, and glad through all eternity. 
 
2-iO BARTERING FOR ETERNITY. 
 
 I remark, again, that tbe wise spiritual mercbant will 
 not take any unnecessary rishs. Before the sliip goes out 
 of the harbor, application is made to the marine insurance 
 company ; the Board of Underwriters say it is all right; the 
 insurance papers are signed and delivered. It is the only 
 safe way to do. Twelve hours after the ship gets beyond 
 the Hook, it might perish, and the whole thing be a total 
 loss. A man will not take such a risk for himself. You 
 have your store insured, you have your stock of goods in- 
 sured. If the insurance runs out on Saturdaj'-, you do not 
 wait until IMonday to renew it. You say, on Sunday the 
 whole thing may perish in a conflagration. You can not 
 afford to take the risk. Somebody shows you an operation 
 by which you might make, perhaps, five thousand dollars; 
 but 3^ou say, " Perhaps I might not. Perhaps I might lose 
 that, and ruin my credit. I can't take the risk." So you 
 do not enter into the enterprise. Oh that we were as wise 
 in taking spiritual risks! AVe will, after a while, founder 
 on the sea of death. What is the amount of our policy? 
 How will we come out of that disaster? Suppose a man 
 saj's, "I am not ready now for eternity, but I mean to be." 
 Let us calculate the risk; not as a minister talks to the 
 people, but as one business man talks to another, let us 
 calculate the risk that man runs. The lungs may congest; 
 the brain may be fevered ; the foot may slip; a brick may 
 fall from the workman's hod; ferry-boats may collide; a 
 frightened horse may dash over him ; a pistol may go off 
 accidentally; poisoned air may be breathed; the reason 
 may topple; the heart may stop. The man who stays 
 away from Jesus Christ, and makes no preparation for eter- 
 nity, runs ten thousand risks, infinite risks, every day of 
 his life. After Lord Byron died, they cut his heart out and 
 
BARTERING FOR ETERNITY. 2'11 
 
 put it in a beautiful case ; and some people who were in- 
 fatuated with him thought that there was in that heart in 
 the case some wonderful charm ; and the Greeks carried 
 it out into battle, and it was lost — lost in the swamps, 
 and never heard of. It was considered an ominous and a 
 terrible loss. But, my friends, it was only a dead heart. 
 What was that compared with the loss of a living^ immortal 
 soul? Christ saw that soul from eternity, and, traveling in 
 the greatness of his strength across all the ages, he comes to 
 save it, and stands this morning in its presence. "Will you 
 let him save it? Oh this soul that you have beating with- 
 in your breast! — this soul of tremendous faculties; a soul 
 that can soar higher than angel's wing ever flew, or sink 
 deeper than devil's foot ever plunged ; a soul that will 
 soon weigh anchor for a ceaseless voyage ; a soul for which 
 all the armies of light with drawn swords, and all the bat- 
 talions of the darkness with the artillery of death, are con- 
 tending; and while the battle rages there are songs and 
 curses, opening of gates of light and slamming to of pris- 
 on doors. Lord God ! have I such a soul ? How shall I 
 defend it? How shall I hide it? In what cave of the 
 mountain shall I secrete it? Eather than surrender that 
 soul, I must pass the stream ; I must go through the fire; 
 I must climb the rocks; I must station myself in some de- 
 file of the mountain, and with immortal courage and per- 
 sistence fight against those influences that would capture 
 my soul and destroy it. 
 
 Blessed be God, in Jesus Christ the soul is safe. There 
 is no risk for that soul that is in Christ's keeping. All 
 other banks may fail, all other securities may prove worth- 
 less ; but the greater the rush upon this bank, the wider 
 the doors will open. As other gold depreciates, this treas- 
 
 11 • 
 
242 BARTERING FOR ETERNITY. 
 
 ure will rise in value. After all earthly shares have failed, 
 heaven will declare its largest dividend. Long after the 
 last stock -exchange of earth has been disbanded, "the 
 foundation of the Lord standeth sure, having this seal, the 
 Lord knoweth them that are his." If you have made these 
 spiritual investments, I congratulate you. They will in- 
 crease in value while you live; they will be worth more 
 in eternity than they are now. I bid you be of good cheer. 
 Look out that none of your treasures are stolen. 
 
 Are there some here who have never bought the truth ? 
 or, after buying it, have you sold it? Let me say, you are 
 not wise. The Indian who sells a thousand acres of land 
 for one poor string of beads makes a better bargain than 
 that man who wins the world but loses his soul. 
 
 "What is the thing of greatest price 
 The whole creation round ? 
 That which was lost in paradise, 
 That wliich in Christ is found." 
 
A BASKET OF SU3IMER FRUIT. 2-ii 
 
 A BASKET OF SUMMER FRUIT. 
 
 "And he said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of sum- 
 mer fruit." — Amosy'm..^ 2. 
 
 A STOUT -CHESTED, swarthy-limbed, brave-hearted 
 man was called out to rebuke Israel. His name was 
 Amos. He had been brought up amidst sheep and cattle, 
 and, in addition to his occupation of herdsman, he had the 
 business of gathering sycamore fruit — a very difficult busi- 
 ness, because if the fruit were not properly ripened, and 
 just before its maturing it were not punctured with the 
 teeth of an iron comb, then the fruit would be bitter, and 
 thoroughly unpalatable. Having always lived in the 
 country, when Amos comes to write or to speak, his al- 
 lusions are rural — full of threshing-floors, and sheaf-laden 
 carts, and grasshoppers, and mowings, and orchards, and 
 vineyards, and, in my text, " a basket of summer fruit." 
 Just what kind of fruit this was I do not know, whether 
 sycamore fruit or pomegranates or figs ; but I do know 
 that God meant for Israel, and means to-night for us, the 
 truth that spiritual blessing, like summer fruit, must be 
 used immediately, or it will perish. 
 
 Last week I saw farmers out on Long Island gathering 
 their winter apples ; and if these apples are carefully put 
 away, they will last until next spring. You know there 
 are pears which are better two or three months after they 
 are taken from the orchard than at the time they drop. 
 And there were clusters of grapes yesterday that went in 
 
244 A BASKET OF SUJLVFE FRUIT. 
 
 from the arbor that will next Christmas or Thankss-ivinsr- 
 day hang above the banquet. But my text compares our 
 opportunities of repentance and return to more perishable 
 products. A}^, it sets before you in graphic vision a bas- 
 ket o? summer fruit. 
 
 Many of you remember a few years ago when the peach 
 crop suddenly ripened, and all the rail trains and steamers 
 coming to our city were laden with the delicious product. 
 The fruit was dead ripe, and not able to wait until the 
 glutted markets were cleared, and so there were hundreds 
 of thousands of dollars' worth of the fruit thrown into the 
 streets and into the rivers, or carted back again to enrich 
 the soil. O the perishable nature of summer fruit ! It is so 
 much like our spiritual blessings, which must be used im- 
 mediatelj'', or never used at all. To-night, instead of having 
 you wander around as through the stalls of an agricultural 
 fair, I would have you, with profound and agitated feel- 
 ings of soul, look upon this text as depicting your last 
 chance for heaven as it is ail-suggestively set forth. "Be- 
 hold, a basket of summer fruit." 
 
 Was this statement of the text the blundering compari- 
 son of a man not used to literary composition ? Do 3"ou 
 think the analogy will hold out? Is there any similarity 
 between the Gospel and summer fruit? Oh yes. They 
 both, in the first place^ mean health. God every summer 
 doctors the ailments of the world by the orchards and 
 groves. The failing of the orchards is a license to all 
 kinds of diseases, and plenty of fruit ordinarily means im- 
 proved sanitary condition. So this Gospel means health. 
 It makes a man mighty for work and strong for contest. 
 It cures spiritual ailments. It helps the soul that is de- 
 crepit, bound on in the road to heaven. It is juvenescence. 
 
A BASKET OF SUMMER FRUIT. 245 
 
 It is convalescence. It kindles the eye with brilliant an- 
 ticipations. It thrills the soul with glories to come. It is 
 not a weak sentimentality. It helped Paul to stand un- 
 blanched on the deck of the foundering corn-ship, and it 
 helped Luther to nail his defiant "theses" against the door 
 of the electoral college, the thumping of his hammer echo- 
 ing through all the ages. It has helped ten thousand souls 
 to spring through flood and fire to glories immortal. Oh, 
 it is a swarthy Gospel ! Mighty in itself, it makes men 
 mighty. It gives one overmastering power in the day of 
 trouble. The Church cries out to Christ, in the Canticles, 
 "Comfort me with apples;" and so to-night I shake down 
 upon you a whole orchard of fruit, while I read that the 
 fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, brotherly 
 kindness, charity. Gather it up from the ground — large, 
 round, luscious. Take it home with you — "a basket of 
 summer fruit." 
 
 I notice that the analogy, also, is found in the fact that 
 summer fruit is pleasant to the eye and the taste. So the 
 Gospel, when a man rightly sees it and tastes it, is very 
 pleasant. Whether summer fruit be piled up in the or- 
 chard, or on the barn floor, or on the platter of the table, 
 the commingling of green and gold and red and brown in 
 the cheek of the fruit is very fascinating. You know that 
 some artists deal chiefly with pictures of fruit; and while 
 Correggio delights to sketch physical beauty, and Turner 
 drops the sea-foam on the canvas, and Cuyp drives up his 
 cattle at evening-tide, and Eosa Bonheur catches by the 
 halter the rearing steeds at the "Horse Fair," and Edwin 
 Landseer whistles up the dogs, there are many of our 
 modern painters who are putting all their power on fruit 
 pieces; and I do not wonder at it. There is a beauty in 
 
2-16 ^4 BASKET OF SUMMER FRVIT. 
 
 fruit indescribable. So it is with the Gospel of Christ. It 
 charms the young and the old, the well and the sick, the 
 wise and the ignorant. It has the glitter of the wave, the 
 aroma of flowers, the fascination of music. It is the lux- 
 ury of the ages. Religion is not an abbess — is not a cen- 
 obite. " Iler ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her 
 paths are peace." 
 
 In June, 1815, there was a very noble party gathered in 
 a house in St. James's Square, London. The prince re- 
 gent was present, and the occasion was made fascinating by 
 music and banqueting and by jewels. While a quadrille 
 was being formed, suddenly all the people rushed to the 
 windows. What is the matter? Henry Percy had ar- 
 rived with the news that Waterloo had been fought, and 
 that England had won the day. The dance was aban- 
 doned ; the party dispersed ; lords, ladies, and musicians 
 rushed into the street, and in fifteen minutes from the first 
 announcement of the good news the house was emptied 
 of all its guests. O ye who are seated at the banquet of 
 
 'this world, or whirling in its gayeties and frivolities, if 
 to-night you could hear the sweet strains of the Gospel 
 trumpet announcing Christ's victory over sin and death 
 and hell, you would rush forth, glad in the eternal deliv- 
 erance! The Waterloo against sin has been fought, and 
 our Commander-in-chief hath won the day. O the joys 
 of this salvation ! I do not care what metaphor, what 
 comparison you have ; bring it to me that I may use it. 
 Amos shall bring one simile, Isaiah another, David anoth- 
 er, John another. Beautiful with pardon. Beautiful with 
 
 ^ peace. Beautiful with anticipations. I spread out the 
 
 heaped-up, large, round, luscious "basket of summer fruit." 
 
 You have noticed that if sumyner fruit is not taken imme- 
 
A BASKET OF SUMMER FRUIT. 247 
 
 diately^ it soon fails. First, the speck ; then a multiplica- 
 tion of defects ; after a while a softening that is offensive ; 
 and then it is all flung out. So I have to tell you that all 
 religious advantages, all Gospel opportunities, all religious 
 privileges, while they are beautiful and attractive, perish 
 right speedily if you do not take them. I suppose you 
 have noticed how swiftly the days and the years go by. 
 Every day seems to me like "a basket of summer fruit;" 
 the morning sky is vermilion, the noonday is opaline, the 
 evening cloud is fire-dyed. Every day has its cluster of 
 blessings and its fruity branch of opportunities. But how 
 soon they are gone! Where is 1873? 1870? 1860? 
 1850? Gone as thoroughly as the fruit which dropped 
 from the trees and rotted last August. Every year may 
 have its characteristic. In one, the war broke out ; in an- 
 other, the locusts made terrible ravages ; in another, the 
 3^ellow fever raged ; but I care not what be the character- 
 istics — they are all gone save one. Of the six thousand 
 years of this world's existence, only one is left. Ay, ten 
 months of that are gone, or nearly gone, and the tongue in 
 the clock of the months will soon strike twelve, and then 
 this year will be as dead as all its predecessors. In your 
 library, you put the historical volumes side by side, volume 
 first, volume second, volume third, volume fourth ; and the 
 history of the past is made up of six thousand volumes, 
 three hundred and sixty-five pages in each of the volumes, 
 and in the last day, at one flash, you will read all of them. 
 Time, how swiftly it goes! Gray hairs are here and there 
 upon you, and some of you know it not. The "crow's- 
 foot" is walking nearer up toward the corner of the eye. 
 You stoop more than you used to. You have been dis- 
 cussing as to the propriety of wearing glasses. You are 
 
248 A BASKET OF SUMMER FRVIT. 
 
 going from the thirties into tbe forties, and from the for- 
 ties into the fifties, and from the fifties into the sixties, 
 and from the sixties into the seventies. The color is go- 
 ing out of the " basket of summer fruit." The curcuho of 
 trouble hath left the mark of its sting. The work of de- 
 cay has begun, and the full basket of human life will soon 
 be emptied into the trench of the grave. When I first be- 
 came anxious about my soul, there was a soliloquy I read 
 in Mr. Pike's "Address to the Unsaved." It was a solil- 
 oquy on this very subject. It represented a man dying; 
 and, as he was dying, the clock struck. As the clock 
 struck, the man was startled, and he cried out, "O Time! it 
 is fit that thou shouldst strike thy murderer to the heart. 
 How art thou gone forever ! A month ! Oh for a week ! 
 I ask not for a year, though an age were too short for 
 the work I have to do. Remorse for the past throws my 
 thoughts on the future. Worse dread of the future throws 
 my thoughts on the past. I turn and turn, and find no 
 ray. If thou didst feel one-half the mountain that is on 
 my heart, thou wouldst struggle with the martyr for his 
 stake, and bless Heaven for the flame : that is not an un- 
 quenchable fire. O thou blasphemed yet most indulgent 
 Lord God ! hell itself is a refuge, if it hide me from thy 
 frown !" 
 
 Still further, I remark upon the 2'>eris]iable nature of all 
 religious surroundings. You sometimes go into a relig- 
 ious association, and you say, "Isn't this beautiful? How 
 many ripe, religious experiences! Wh}'', it is like 'a bas- 
 ket of summer fruit,' " But do you not know, my brother,' 
 that all these Christian associations fade away from the 
 soul ? Your Christian father and mother who have been 
 holding beneficent influences over you, do you not realize 
 
A BASKET OF SUMMER FRUIT. 249 
 
 they are going away from you ? Do you not notice that 
 they do not get over sickness as soon as they used to? 
 Are you not aware of the fact that they do not get over a 
 cold as quickly as once ? The fact is that they have made 
 more prayers for you than they will ever make again. 
 They have passed the last mile-stone on the road home ; 
 and if you are going to get any benefit from that "basket 
 of summer fruit," get it now, or get it never. Some of 
 you do not know what it is to stand and look down upon 
 the still and rigid features of a Christian father or a Chris- 
 tian mother. I do. In five minutes you will think of all 
 the unkind words you ever said to them. You may cover 
 up the coffin with wreaths and crosses and crowns ; but 
 you can not make any thing attractive out of it. It is 
 trouble, and nothing but trouble, for those who sit and sigh 
 with the consciousness that those dear lips will never pray 
 for you again, and those lips will never sympathize with 
 you again. When you stoop down and kiss for the last 
 time the wrinkled brow just before the lid is screwed on, 
 you will think of what I tell you to-night. Oh, if father 
 and mother be still alive with their Christian influences, 
 cherish them while you may. Take their example. Be 
 profited by their prayers. They are ripe for heaven, and 
 can not stay. The " basket of summer fruit " will soon be 
 gone. 
 
 So, also, it is, my friends, with all God's offers of mer- 
 cy and salvation. Are you to-night under the infatuation 
 that those privileges are going to be continued ? Oh no ! 
 Every opportunity of salvation seems to be restless until 
 it gets away from us. Going away, the sermons ; going 
 away, the songs ; going away, the strivings of God's eter- 
 nal Spirit. The fruits of immortal life, fair and luscious, 
 
 11* 
 
250 ^ BASKET OF SUM31ER FRUIT. 
 
 are no sooner set before the soul than they disappear. The 
 Theban legion consisted of six thousand six hundred and 
 sixty -six men. Maximian decreed that that host should 
 be decimated — that is, ever}'- tenth man should be put to 
 the sword. So it was done ; but the soldiers did not sub- 
 mit to the kingly authority, and so another decimation 
 took place, and the work went on until all of the six thou- 
 sand six hundred and sixty-six men had perished. Now, 
 I do not know how many people may be in this house to- 
 night, but it is an army. It is going to be decimated. 
 One out of every ten will soon be gone, and after that the 
 work will go on ; and again one out of every ten will be 
 gone, and again the decimation will take place, until not a 
 single person in this house to-night will be alive. Our 
 bodies, some of them, will be in Greenwood, in Laurel 
 Hill, in Mount Auburn, in Oaklands, in Grey Friars Church- 
 yard, in the villnge cemetery; but your souls will be in 
 one of two places, the names of which I need not mention, 
 for they rush upon you this moment with thunderous ar- 
 ticulation and emphasis. 
 
 Many have missed their chance. Now, there is no hid- 
 ing that fact — they have missed their chance. They came 
 in and looked at the "basket of summer fruit." They ad- 
 mired the gracefulness of the wicker-work, the delicacy 
 of the rind, the greenness of the leaves. They went off. 
 They came back and admired again. But one day they 
 came, and they found that all the glory had faded, and that 
 the fruit had been thrown out. They came to a certain 
 evening. They saw the sun set. They never saw the sun 
 rise again. The pastor pronounced upon them the bene- 
 diction. It was the last benediction they ever heard. 
 They took their last step, missed their last chance. Fort- 
 
A BASKET OF SUMMER FRUIT. 251 
 
 unately for us, their voice is not strong enough to ring up 
 until we can hear it, or it would make life on earth intol- 
 erable with the wailing. The wall is so thick that we hear 
 not one word of their pang. Perished ! Perished ! They 
 talk no more about there being time enough yet. They 
 have no time. They worry no longer about the inconsist- 
 encies of Christians ; they are looking after their own con- 
 dition. They no more argue that there is no such a thing 
 as a lost soul ; they have felt the pang that comes from a 
 fall ten thousand fathoms down. O skeptical man, go out 
 and persuade them that there is no retribution for a soul 
 that forgets God. Break open the gate ; dash through the 
 fire; leap the intervening cliff, and cry out to them, 
 " There is no hell !" and ten thousand voices will answer 
 back, "There is. See you not the gate? Feel you not 
 the sorrow? We have been here five hundred 3'ears, and 
 yet the woe has just begun. Go back and tell all you have 
 seen. Tell them that we once were as they are, and that 
 they, unless they repent, shall be as we are ourselves. We 
 had the fruits of life set before us, fair as 'a basket of sum- 
 mer fruit;' but we would not take them, and we everlast- 
 ingly died." 
 
 My friends, the practical question is now. Will you miss 
 your chance? The offer of salvation is now extended to 
 us. It will not always be continued. The day of grace 
 will be past. The probability is that there are some in 
 this audience who will miss their opportunity. I put my 
 hand on your pulse, and I find that the fever has begun. I 
 look upon your brow, and I find the shadow of impending 
 doom. I listen to your breath, and I find it is suggestive 
 of the last gasp. Some of you will be lost! See! you are 
 fiiUing now — down from heaven, from life, from peace — 
 
252 ^ BASKET OF SUMMER FRUIT. 
 
 down, down. I remember reading bow Leonidas, with 
 three hundred men, stood in the pass between (Eta and the 
 sea, fighting back the Persian hosts. Tlie Persian hosts 
 came on. They trampled him down. Oh that God, to- 
 night, would arm me, a poor weak man, with a supernatu- 
 ral courage to stand in the pass of this glorious Sabbath 
 hour, and dispute with this army that I see before me the 
 way to death. Halt! ye infatuated souls. I swing the 
 two-edged sword both ways. Halt! Halt! Take not one 
 step more on this downward path. Why will ye die, when 
 there is no use in it? Are you so charmed with pain, and 
 sin, and sorrow, and woe, that you will wade through the 
 foaming billows of perdition to win them? Is there noth- 
 ing in the sympathetic tears of friends, nothing in the sac- 
 rificial blood of the Son of God, nothing in the death-bed 
 experiences of those whom you have loved, nothing in the 
 crash of the judgment avalanche, to make you think? 
 
 I must tell you plainly that your idea that there is time 
 enough yet is a delusion wild and terrific. If some of you 
 knew how little time there is left to you. you would not 
 wait until the close of this service. Your breath will stop 
 before you are ready. Death will meet you before you 
 have a cloak to keep out the chill, or a lantern to light the 
 way, or a dragoman to speak out for you. You will be 
 silenced, with ten thousand things to say ; you will be 
 speechless ; and in the convulsions of this American con- 
 tinent, when the Alleghanies shall roll over into the At- 
 lantic, and the Rocky Mountains shall roll over into the 
 Pacific, amidst the rifts and crevices of disorganized nature, 
 there will be no place where you can secrete yourself, 
 though with blanched cheek, and flying hair, and uplifted 
 hand, and outcrying voice, you say, " Rocks and mountains 
 
A BASKET OF SUMMER FRUIT. 253 
 
 fall on me, and hide me from the face of Him that sitteth 
 upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the 
 great day of his wrath has come, and who, ivlio shall be 
 able to stand ?" 
 
 I can tell from the way the country sexton rings the 
 bell when he is about to stop ringing it. When he begins 
 to ring, the music comes softly out on the air ; the bell 
 fills all the air with music. He lays hold with strong pull ; 
 but after a while, when the horses have been tied, and the 
 people have gathered, then there is some distance of time 
 between the strokes of the bell. It gets slower and slower, 
 for he has begun to toll, and after a while it stops. O sin- 
 ner! how swiftly the invitations of the Gospel came to 
 you! Call after call. Invitation after invitation. Floods 
 of them. How merrily the bell did ring ! But it seems as 
 if, with some of you, God's patience is exhausted ; as if his 
 mercy were almost gone. The bell rings more slowly to- 
 night than it ever rang before, and as if about to stop. Ay, 
 it seems to have come to the dying toll. Thrice more it 
 will speak — perhaps only thrice. Toll ! Toll ! Toll ! 
 
 It was to set forth this solemn truth, that religious ad- 
 vantages, while they last, are attractive, but very soon 
 leave us, that God let down to Amos, the herdsman, in 
 vision the beautiful but perishable basket of summer fruit. 
 
254 THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY. 
 
 THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY. 
 
 "And the people stood beholding." — Luke xxiii., 35. 
 
 ^T^HERE is nothing more wild and ungovernable than a 
 -'- mob. Some of the older people in the audience may 
 remember the excitement in New York during the riot 
 when the people went howling through the streets at the 
 time Macready stood on the stage of the Astor Place Opera- 
 house. Those of you who have read history may remem- 
 ber the excitement in Paris during the time of Louis XVL, 
 and how the mob rushed up and down frantically. To 
 this day you may see the marks of the bullets that struck 
 •the palace as the Swiss Guards stood defending it. 
 
 There is a wild mob going through the streets of Jerusa- 
 lem. As it passes along, it is augmented by the multitudes 
 that come out from the lanes and the alleys to join the shouts 
 and the laughter and the lamentation of the rioters, who be- 
 come more and more ungovernable as they get toward the 
 gates of the city. Fishermen, vagabonds, rude w^omen, 
 grave officials, merchant princes, beggars, mingle in that 
 crowd. They are passing out now through the gates of the 
 city. They come to a hill white with the bleached skulls of 
 victims — a hill that was itself the shape of a skull, covered 
 with skulls, and called Golgotha, which means the place 
 of a skull. Three men are to be put to death — two for 
 theft, one for treason, having claimed to be King of the 
 Jews. Each one carries his own cross, but one of them is 
 so exhausted from previous hardship that he faints under 
 
THE LAST ACT OF THE THAGEDY. 255 
 
 the burden, and they compel Simon of Cyrene, who is sup- 
 posed to be in sympathy with the condemned man, to take 
 liold of one end of the cross and help him to carry it. 
 They reach the hill. The three men are lifted in horrid 
 crucifixion. While the mob are howling and mocking, 
 and hurling scorn at the chief object of their hate, the dark- 
 ness hovers and scowls and swoops upon the scene, and the 
 rocks rend with terrific clang; and the choking wind, and 
 moaning cavern, and dropping sky, and shuddering earth- 
 quake declare, in whisper, in groan, in shriek, "This is the 
 Son of God!" 
 
 I propose to speak of the two groups of spectators around 
 the cross — the friendly and the unfriendly. In the unfriend- 
 ly group were the Eoman soldiers. Now, it is a grand 
 thing to serve one's country. There is not an Englishman's 
 heart but thrills at the name of Havelock, brave for Christ 
 and brave for the British Government. When there was 
 a diflicult point to take, the officers would say, "Bring 
 out the saints of old Havelock." I think if Paul had gone 
 into military service, he would have eclipsed the heroism 
 of the Ciesars and the Alexanders and the Napoleons of 
 the world by his bravery and enthusiasm. There is a time 
 to be at peace, and there is a time when a Christian has to 
 fight. I do not know of a graver or braver thing than for 
 a young man, when it is demanded of him, to turn his back 
 upon home and quiet and luxurj^, and in the service of his 
 country go forth to camp and field, and carnage and mar- 
 tyrdom. It was no mean thing to be a Roman soldier; it 
 was no idle thing. You know what revolutions dashed up 
 against the walls of that empire. You know to what con- 
 quest she devoted herself, flinging her war-engles against 
 the proudest ensigns. But the noblest army has in it 
 
256 THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY. 
 
 sneaks, and these were the men who were detailed from 
 that army to attend to the execution of Christ. Their 
 dastardly behavior puts out the gleam of their spears, and 
 covers their banner with obloquy. They were cowards. 
 They were ruffians. They were gamblers. No noble sol- 
 dier would treat a fallen foe as they treated the captured 
 Christ. 
 
 Generally there is respect paid to the garments of the 
 departed. It may be only a hat or coat or a shoe, but 
 it goes down in the family wardrobe from generation to 
 generation. Now that Christ is to be disrobed, who shall 
 have his coat ? Joseph of Arimathea would have liked to 
 have had it. Mary, the mother of Jesus, would have liked 
 to have had it. How fondly she would have hovered over 
 it! and when she must leave it, with what tenderness she 
 would have bequeathed it to her best friend ! It was the 
 only covering of Christ in darkness and storm. That was 
 the very coat that the woman touched when from it there 
 went out virtue for her healing. That was the only wed- 
 ding-garment he had in the marriage at Cann, and the 
 storms that swept Galilee had drenched it again and again. 
 And what did they do with it? They raffled for it. We 
 have heard of men who gambled away their own garments, 
 who gambled away their children's shoes, who gambled 
 away the family Bible, who gambled away their wife's last 
 dress ; but it adds to the ghastliness of a Saviour's humilia- 
 tion and the horror of the crime, when I hear Jesus in his 
 last moments declaring, " They parted my garments among 
 them, and for my vesture did they cast lots." 
 
 In this unfriendly group around the cross, also, were the 
 rulers and the scribes and the chief priests. Lawyers and 
 judges and ministers of religion in this day are expected 
 
THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY. 257 
 
 to have some respect for their offices. In this land, "where 
 the honors of the judiciary sometimes come to besotted 
 politicians and men noted for drunkenness — even in this 
 land where we live, it is an unheard-of thing that a judge 
 comes down from the bench and strikes a prisoner in the 
 face. No minister of religion would scoff at or mock a 
 condemned criminal. And yet the great men of that land 
 seemed to be equal to any ruffianism. They were vying 
 with each other as to how much scorn and billingsgate 
 they could cast into the teeth of the dying Christ. Why, 
 the worst felon, when his enemy has fallen, refuses to 
 strike him. But these men were not ashamed to strike 
 Jesus when he was down. 
 
 So it has been in all ages of the world, that there have 
 been men in high positions who despised Christ and his 
 Gospel. What popes have issued their anathemas! What 
 judgment- seats have kindled their fires! What inqui- 
 sitions have sharpened their swords! "Not this man, 
 but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber." Against 
 the Christian religion have been brought the historical 
 genius of Gibbon, and the polish of Shaftesbury, and the 
 kingly authority of Frederick of Prussia, and the brill- 
 iancy of John Earl of Rochester, and the stupendous in- 
 tellect of Voltaire, Innumerable pens have stabbed it, 
 and innumerable books have cursed it, and that mob that 
 hounded Christ from Jerusalem to "the place of a skull" 
 has never been dispersed, but is augmenting yet, as many 
 of the learned men of the world and great men of the 
 world come out from their studios and their laboratories 
 and their palaces, and cry, "Away with this man ! away 
 with him !" The most bitter hostility which many of 
 the learned men of this day exercise in any direction 
 
258 THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY. 
 
 they exercise against Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the 
 Saviour of the world, without whom we will die for- 
 ever. 
 
 In this group of enemies surrounding the cross, in this 
 unfriendly group, I also find tlie railing tliief. It seems 
 that he twisted himself on the spikes; he forgot his own 
 pain in his complete antipathy to Jesus. I do not know 
 what kind of a thief he was. I do not know whether he 
 had been a burglar or a pickpocket or a highwayman; 
 but our idea of his crimes is aggravated when we hear 
 him blaspheming the Eedeemer. O shame indescribable ! 
 O ignominy unsupportable ! Hissed at by a thief! In 
 that ridicule I find the fact that there is a hostility be- 
 tween sin and holiness. There can not be, there never has 
 been, any sympathy between honesty and theft, between 
 purity and lasciviousness, between zeal and indolence, be- 
 tween fliith and unbelief, between light and darkness, be- 
 tween heaven and hell. And when I see a good man go- 
 ing out to discharge his duty, and he is enthusiastic for 
 Christ, and I see persecution after him, and scorn after him, 
 and contempt after him, I say, " Hark ! another hiss of the 
 dying thief!" And when I see Holiness going forth in her 
 white robes, and Charity, with great heart and open hand, 
 to take care of the sick and help the needy and restore the 
 lost, and I find her lashed with hypercriticism, and-jostled 
 of the world, and pursued from point to point, and carica- 
 tured with low witticisms, I say, "Aha! another hiss of 
 the dying thief!" 
 
 It is a sad thing to know that this malefactor died just 
 as he had lived. People nearly always do. Have you 
 never remarked that? There is but one instance men- 
 tioned in all the Bible of a man repenting in the last 
 
THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY. 259 
 
 hour. All the other men who lived lives of iniquity, as 
 far as we can understand from the Bible, died deaths of 
 iniquity. If you live a drunkard's life, you will die a 
 drunkard; the defrauder dies a defrauder; the idler dies 
 an idler; the blasphemer dies a blasphemer; the slan- 
 derer dies a slanderer; the debauchee dies a debauchee. 
 As you live, you will die, in all probability. Do not, 
 therefore, make your soul believe that you can go on in a 
 course of sin, and then in the last moment repent. There 
 is such a thing as death-bed repentance, but I never saw 
 one — I never saw one. God in all this Bible presents us 
 only one case of that kind, and it is not safe to risk it, lest 
 our case should happen not to be the one amidst ten thou- 
 sand. 
 
 " Repent ! the voice celestial cries, 
 
 No longer dare delay ; 
 The wretch that scorns the mandate dies, 
 
 And meets the fiery day." 
 
 But there were rays of light that streamed into the cru- 
 cifixion. As Christ was on the cross and looked down on 
 the crowd of people, he saw some very warm friends there. 
 And that brings me to the remarking upon the friendly 
 group that were around the cross. 
 
 The first in all that crowd was his mother. You need 
 not point her out to me. I can see by the sorrow, the an- 
 guish, the woe, by the upthrown hands! That all means 
 mother! " Oh," you sa}^, " why didn't she go down to the 
 foot of the hill, and sit with her back to the scene ? It was 
 too horrible for her to look upon." Do you not know, 
 when a child is in anguish or trouble, it always makes a 
 heroine of a mother? Take her away, j^ou say, from the 
 cross. You can not drag her away. She will keep on look- 
 
260 TEE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY. 
 
 ing ; as long as her son breathes, she will stand there look- 
 ing. What a scene it is for a tender-hearted mother to look 
 upon! How gladly she would have sprung to his relief! 
 It was her son. Iler son ! How gladly she would have 
 clambered up on the cross and hung there herself if her 
 son could have been relieved ! How strengthening she 
 would have been to Christ if she might have come close 
 by him and soothed him! There was a good deal in 
 what the little sick child said, upon whom a surgical op- 
 eration of a painful nature must be performed ! The doc- 
 tor said, "That child won't live through this operation un- 
 less you encourage him. You go in, and get his consent." 
 The father told him all the doctor said, and added, " Now, 
 John, will you go through with it? Will you consent to 
 it?" He looked very pale, and he thought a minute, and 
 said, "Yes, father, if you will hold my hand, I will !" So 
 the father held his hand, and led him straight through the 
 peril. O woman! in your hour of anguish, whom do you 
 want with you? Mother. Young man, in your hour of 
 trouble, whom do 3'ou want to console you ? Mother. If 
 the mother of Jesus could have only taken those bleeding 
 feet into her lap ! If she might have taken the dj-ing head 
 on her bosom! If she might have said to him, "It will 
 soon be over, Jesus — it will soon be over, and we will 
 meet again, and it will be all well." But no ; she dared 
 not come up so close. They would have struck her back 
 with their hammers. They would have kicked her down 
 the hill. There can be no alleviation at all. Jesus must 
 suffer, and Mary must look. I suppose she thought of the 
 birth-hour in Bethlehem. I suppose she thought of that 
 time when, with her boy in her bosom, she hastened on in 
 the darkness in the flight toward Egypt. I suppose she 
 
THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY. 261 
 
 tliought of his boyhood when he was the joy of her heart. 
 I suppose she thought of the thousand kindnesses he had 
 done her, not forsaking her, or forgetting her even in his 
 last moments; but turning to John, and saying, "There 
 is mother; take her with you. She is old now. She can 
 not help herself. Do for her just as I would have done 
 for her if I had lived. Be very tender and gentle with 
 her. Behold thy mother !" She thought it all over, and 
 there is no memory like a mother's memory, and there is 
 no woe like a mother's woe. 
 
 There was another friend in that group, and that was 
 Simon the Cyrenian. He was a stranger in the land, but 
 had been long enough there to show his favoritism for 
 Christ. I suppose he was one of those men who never 
 can see any body imposed upon but he wants to help him. 
 "Well, Simon," they cried out, "you are such a friend to 
 Jesus, help him to carry the cross. You see him fainting 
 under it." So he did, A scene for all the ages of time 
 and all the cycles of eternity; a cross with Jesus at the 
 one end of it and Simon at the other, suggesting the idea 
 to you, O troubled soul ! that no one need ever carry a 
 whole cross. You have only half a cross to carry. If you 
 are in poverty, Jesus was poor, and he comes and takes 
 the other end of the cross. If you are in persecution, 
 Jesus was persecuted, and he comes and takes the other 
 end of the cross. If you are in any kind of trouble, you 
 have a sympathizing Eedeemer. Oh, how the truth 
 flashed upon my soul this morning! Jesus at one end of 
 the cross and the soul at the other end' of the cross; and 
 when I see Christ and Simon going up the hill together, 
 I say we ought to help each other to carry our burdens. 
 "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of 
 
262 THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY. 
 
 Christ," If you find a man in persecution or sickness or 
 in business trouble, go right to him, and say, " My brother, 
 I have come to help you. You take hold of one end of 
 the cross, and I will take hold of the other end of the 
 cross, and Jesus Christ will come in and take hold of the 
 middle of the cross; and after a while there will be no 
 cross at all." 
 
 ' ' Shall Jesus bear the cross alone, 
 And all the world go free ? 
 No ; there is a cross for every one, 
 And there is a cross for me." 
 
 But there was another marked personage in that friend- 
 ly group. That was the penitent malefactor. lie was a 
 thief, or had been— no disguising that fact. What was he 
 to do? "Oh!" he says, "what shall I do with my sins 
 upon me?" and he looks around and sees Jesus, and sees 
 compassion in his face, and he says, "Lord, remember me 
 when thou comest into thy kingdom." What did Jesus 
 do? Did he turn and sa}'-, "You thief! I have seen all 
 your crimes, «,nd you have jeered and scoffed at me ; now 
 die forever!" — did he say that? Oh no; Jesus could not 
 say that. He says, "This day shalt thou be with me in 
 paradise." I sing the song of mercy for the chief of sin- 
 ners. Murderers have come and plunged their red hands 
 in this fountain, and they have been made as white as 
 snow. The prodigal that was ofif for twenty years has 
 come back and sat at his father's table. The ship that has 
 been tossed in a thousand storms floats into this harbor. 
 The parched and sun-struck soul comes under the shadow 
 of this rock. Tens of thousands who were as bad as you 
 and I have ever been have put down their burdens and 
 their sins at the feet of this blessed Jesus. 
 
THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY. 263 
 
 "The dying thief rejoiced to see 
 
 That fountain in his day ; 
 
 And there may I, as vile as he, 
 
 Wash all my sins away." 
 
 But there was another friendly group. I do not know 
 their names — we are not told ; but we are simply told 
 there were many around the cross who sympathized with 
 the dying sufferer. Oh ! the wail of woe that went through 
 that crowd when they saw Jesus die! You know the 
 Bible says if all the things Jesus did were recorded, the 
 world would not contain the books that would be written. 
 It implies that what we have in the Bible are merely spec- 
 imens of the Saviour's mercy. We are told that one blind 
 man got his eye-sight. I suppose he cured twenty that we 
 are not told of. When he cured the one leper whose story 
 is recorded, he might have cured twenty lepers. Where 
 he did one act of kindness mentioned, he must have done 
 a thousand we do not know about. I see those who re- 
 ceived kindnesses from him standing beneath the cross, 
 and one says, " Why, that is the Jesus that bound up my 
 broken heart!" And another, standing beneath the cross, 
 says, " That is the Jesus that restored my daughter to life." 
 Another looks up, and sa3's, "Why, that is Jesus who 
 gave me my eye-sight!" And another looks up, and says, 
 " That is the Jesus who lifted me up when I was sick ; oh, 
 I can't bear to see him die!" Every pelt of the hammer 
 drove a spike through their hearts. Every groan of Christ 
 opens a new fountain of sorrow. They had better get on 
 with that crucifixion quickly, or it will never take place. 
 These disciples will seize Christ and snatch him from the 
 grasp of those bad men, and take those ringleaders of the 
 persecution and put them up in the very place. Be quick 
 
26-i THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY. 
 
 with those nails! Be quick with that gall! Be quick 
 with those spikes! for I see in the sorrow and the wrath of 
 those disciples a storm brewing that will burst on the heads 
 of those persecutors. 
 
 To-day we come and we join the friendly crowd. Who 
 wants to be on the wrong side ? I can not bear to be in 
 the unfriendly group. There is not a man or woman in 
 this house who wants to be in the unfriendly group, I 
 want to join the other group. We come while they are be- 
 wailing, and join their lamentations. We see that brow 
 bruised ; we hear that dying groan ; and while the priests 
 scoff and the devils rave and the lightnings of God's wrath 
 are twisted into a wreath for that bloody mount, you and 
 I will join the cry, the supplication, of the penitent mal- 
 efactor, "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy 
 kingdom." Oh! the pain, the ignominy, the ghastliness, 
 the agony ! and 3'et the joj--, the thrilling, bounding, glorious 
 hope ! Son of Mary ! Son of God ! 
 
 Is there one here who will reject this atonement made 
 for the people — not for one man here and one man there, 
 but for all who will accept it? 
 
 There was a .very touching scene among an Indian tribe 
 in the last centur}^ It seemed that one of the chieftains 
 had slain a man belonging to an opposite tribe, and that 
 tribe came up, and said, "We will exterminate you, unless 
 you surrender the man who committed that crime." The 
 chieftain who did the crime stepped out from the ranks, 
 and said, "I am not afraid to die; but I have a wife and 
 four children, and I have a father aged, and a mother aged, 
 whom I support by hunting, and I sorrow to leave them 
 helpless." Just as he said that, his old father from behind 
 stepped out, and said, "He shall not die, I take his place. 
 
THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY. 265 
 
 I am old and well stricken in years. I can do no good. I 
 might as well die. Mj days are almost over. He can not 
 be spared. Take me." And tbey accepted tbe sacrifice. 
 Wonderful sacrifice, you say ; but not so wonderful as that 
 found in the Gospel ; for we deserved to die, ay, we were 
 sentenced, when Christ, not worn out with years, but in 
 the flush of his youth, said, " Save that man from going 
 down to the pit. I am the ransom ! Put his burdens on 
 my shoulders. Let his stripes fall on my back. Take my 
 heart for his heart. Let me die, that he may live." Shall 
 it be told to-day in heaven that, notwithstanding all those 
 wounds, and all that blood, and all those tears, and all that 
 agony, you would not accept him ? 
 
 ""Well might tlie sun in darkness liiJe 
 And shut his glories in, 
 When Cin-ist, the mighty maker, died 
 For man, the creature's sin. 
 
 "Thus might I hide my hlushing ftice 
 While his dear cross appears, 
 Dissolve my heart in thankfulness, 
 And melt my eyes to tears. 
 
 "But drops of grief can ne'er repay 
 The debt of love I owe ; 
 Here, Lord, I give myself away, 
 'Tis all that I can do." 
 
 Lord Jesus, we accept thee ! We all accept thee now. 
 There is no hand in all this audience lifted to smite thee 
 on the cheek now. No one will spear thee now. No 
 one will strike thee now. Come in. Lord Jesus! Come 
 quickly ! 
 
 12 
 
266 DROWNED IN THE LAKE. 
 
 DROWNED IN THE LAKE. 
 
 "The deep that coucheth beneath." — Deuteronomy xxxiii., 13, 
 
 SWITZERLAND has the glaciers of Mont Blanc as a 
 crown for her brow, and Lake Geneva for an emerald 
 on her right hand. In the Swiss railway we were told 
 that we must look out for the bridge where, as he emerges, 
 there suddenly dashes upon the eye of the traveler one of 
 the most extraordinary scenes of beauty and grandeur in 
 all Europe. In the twinkling of an eye appears Lausanne, 
 seated on her throne of three hills, with twenty-one thou- 
 sand population ; her cathedral, nine hundred years old, 
 with apsed chapels and Byzantine capitals; her museums, 
 distinguished the world over for the finest specimens in 
 minerals, and animals, and shell-fish ; her terraces and gar- 
 dens, bewitching with aroma and luxuriance; her schools, 
 which, by the rarest opportunity for culture, invite the 
 youth of America and of all the world ; Lake Geneva, 
 deep, yet the clearest of waters, traversed by steamers 
 crowded with passengers from all lands, and fishing-smacks 
 here and there hauling out trout, and pike, and perch, and 
 salmon; and sail -boats going out from the castles on the 
 beach occupied by gentlemen of fortune. This sheet of 
 water, skirted by mountains. Jura and the Alps, some green 
 with verdure, some white with snow, some cleft with 
 streams, crystalline and arrowy, the chalices of the floods 
 emptying into this great bowl of the mountain. On the 
 banks of this lake Gibbon, Rousseau, and Voltaire studied, 
 
DMOWNED IN THE LAKE. 267 
 
 and Byron dramatized, and John Kemble, the tragedian, 
 lies buried, and Eothschild built his mansion, and ten thou- 
 sand men and women, far better than any I have men- 
 tioned, have gone up and down, adoring the God who 
 lifted the hills and sunk this great inland sea. May you 
 all live to behold the Alps, cloud-turbaned, looking down 
 into the mirror of beautiful Geneva! 
 
 A few days ago, two lads of our own city, and much of 
 the time of our own congregation, pushed out from Lau- 
 sanne on those exquisite waters, on a pleasure excursion. 
 It was in the leisure of school -hours. A sudden storm 
 swept over the lake, capsizing that boat ; or there was a 
 defect in the vessel, and those precious lives were emptied 
 into a watery grave. You say that they ought not to have 
 gone where there was danger. I reply, where will you go 
 and find no danger? You go down the street, a scaffold 
 may fall on you. You go to the park, the horses may be- 
 come unmanageable. You take the rail train, a switch- 
 man may turn the track the wrong way. You stay at 
 home, the lightning may strike through the roof, or miasma 
 may come in through the open window. Dangers stand 
 round us everywhere to press us to the tomb. 
 
 There is great health for a student in rowing with the 
 oar, and great exhilaration in the spreading of the sail ; 
 but the lake that you stroke and fondle, thinking it harm- 
 less and asleep, sometimes proves treacherous to the yacht, 
 and springs upon it like a panther, clutching it down with 
 wrathful, overmastering strength. So that Moses, in the 
 text, graphically and truthfully describes the fatal slyness 
 of river and lake and sea when he says, "TAe deep that 
 coucheth beneath.^'' 
 
 The particulars of that sad event have not yet come to 
 
268 DEOWNED IN THE LAKE. 
 
 us; but never, tlirougli tbe coral caves of the Atlantic, 
 and amidst the gardens of sea-weed, and along by the hulks 
 of the wrecked shipping, could a more fearful message 
 travel the submarine cable than that which came last week 
 announcing that John and James Crane, two American 
 students at Lausanne, Switzerland, had ended their mortal 
 life in Lake Geneva. Such a transition is the easiest and 
 most painless of all modes of getting out of this life. After 
 one minute of submergence, generall}^, consciousness is 
 gone. The Navarino sponge-divers can not bear to stay 
 under the water more than two minutes, notwithstandino; 
 all their experience ; and yet persons who have been re- 
 suscitated tell us that the mind at such a time acts with 
 wonderful velocity. And so I suppose these dear lads had 
 time to think of home, and the sadness of the parental 
 hearts whom they expected to join next October. God 
 decreed otherwise, and may his omnipotent grace soothe 
 the bereaved and the desolate. 
 
 There is in this event that I am called to speak about 
 to-night a new illustration of a very old lesson. You tell 
 me nothing but a stereotyped thing when you tell me of 
 life's uncertainty. I have heard that a thousand times 
 from ministers and prayer-meeting talkers and Sabbath- 
 school teachers ; and when you make that announcement, I 
 open my eyes no wider, nor does my heart beat quicker ; 
 but when you tell me that a boat flung two beloved lads 
 into a watery grave, then I am stunned by the telegram, 
 and compelled to read the truth written by pen of light- 
 ning stretched up from under the sea. How quickly our 
 life comes, and how soon it goes! We pass along a peril- 
 ous cliff, and we almost hold, our breath, and balance our- 
 self lest we fall off, and, getting beyond the pass, we thank 
 
DROWNED IN THE LAKE. 269 
 
 God for our deliverance, but perhaps lie down and die in 
 the smooth plain beneath. Many a man has gone through 
 three or four battles undipped of bullet or sabre, who has 
 had his life at last dashed out on the icy pavement in front 
 of his door-step, or by the snapping of a whiffletree. You 
 go two thousand miles in an express train unharmed, to 
 lose your life at the hands of a reckless hackman in your 
 own village. These two lads of whom I am speaking 
 went through three thousand miles of stormy Atlantic un- 
 harmed, to find their death on a lake that they might sail 
 across in thirty minutes. When we picture our exit from 
 this world, we are very apt to think of a soft couch and a 
 shaded room and careful attendants ; but many of us who 
 are here to-night will never have any thing like that. It 
 will be a rush, and a plunge, and a leap, and a fall, and the 
 world flashes out, and eternity flashes in. 
 
 You tell me that this lesson of life's uncertainty is ap- 
 propriate only for the old, for the emaciated, for thq sick. 
 Ah no! these lads did not come crawling down to the 
 boat, they did not come on crutches, they were not fagged 
 out. They came bounding into the boat, clastic, ruddy, ro- 
 bust. They expected to live seventy years. Their lungs 
 sound, their hearts beating with healthful pulsation, their 
 limbs lithe, their clear eye taking in the sheen of wave and 
 the frown of crag and the azure of sky, they sprung to 
 their places in the prow or stern with shout and laughter. 
 They had no premonition that they were to go. So, my 
 friends, it will be with many of us. You pay a certain 
 amount of money, premium for life-insurance, that, when 
 you are gone, your family may get relief from it ; but what 
 life-insurance company would dare to say to a man, " You 
 will live a j^ear," or "You will live six months," or " You 
 
270 DROWNED m THE LAKE. 
 
 will live a week," or "You will live a, cla}^," or "You 
 will live an hour," or " You will live a second" — and war- 
 rant it? I came to this platform to-night strong and well, 
 but that is no assurance that I shall go off alive. To-mor- 
 row morning you cross the ferry in good health ; that is 
 no assurance that you will come back without being helped. 
 Our physical organism is such a delicate, intricate, elaborate 
 piece of Divine mechanism, that if but the little finger of 
 disaster touch it too roughly it crushes into ruin. God, as 
 if to show that you can not depend upon physiological ap- 
 pearances, lets some invalid crawl on to eighty-five years 
 of age, kept up by tonics and plasters, and helped by spec- 
 tacles and ear -trumpets and canes, while there are thou- 
 sands, muscular, roundly developed, and athletic, who drop 
 dead under apoplectic stroke. Feel in your pockets and 
 bring me out, if you can, a document rightly signed and seal- 
 ed warranting you to get through this night alive. I saw 
 plunging into Lake Geneva the Eiver Ehone. It came on 
 with swift uproar, and you could tell some distance back 
 that it was coming on to that plunge. But who can tell at 
 what moment, at what day, the river of our life shall empty 
 into the deep, wide, infinite future? All the heavy ship- 
 ping that goes out of New York goes through the " Nar- 
 rows ;" but by what different tack ! to what different har- 
 bors ! 
 
 One of the most fascinating excursions in Switzerland is 
 to the Castle of Chalons, in the midst of those very Gene- 
 van waters. Ilistory and poetry tell us that Bonivard, the 
 hero, was chained in that castle six years ; and you can see 
 the bolt and ring where he was fastened, and the circular 
 depression in the ground where he tramped about. After 
 a while a flotilla came down, and he was freed ; but he 
 
DROWNED IN THE LAKE. 271 
 
 heard tliem coming before bis sbout of debverance min- 
 gled with tbeir sbout of victory. Yet here, my friends, 
 we go tramping around in this earthly prison-house, chain- 
 ed to a body from which we can not get free, not knowing 
 at what moment the forces of the great future may break 
 in upon us to shatter these manacles of flesh, and disen- 
 dungeon our immortal spirit, until the prisoner of Chalons 
 shall become the victor of the skies. 
 
 Do you not feel that we walk amidst a vast uncertainty, 
 not knowing what peril may swoop from above or what 
 deep may be crouching beneath? Suppose you had been 
 with those boys in that boat, would you have been ready? 
 It was well for them that they were children of the Cove- 
 nant — "I will be a God to thee and to thy seed after thee." 
 — and that they were praying boys, in their Brooklyn home 
 kneeling down with their mother and praying aloud, not 
 ashamed to let the world hear any more than to let God 
 hear. Oh, when the boat became unmanageable, and they 
 were trying to haul in sail, they would not have had so 
 good an opportunity for spiritual preparation as they had in 
 their calm Brooklyn home, where they were not ashamed 
 to acknowledge Jesus ! Many of you will go out of life 
 just as suddenly. Whether by flood, or fire, or earth- 
 quake, or lightning-flash, or colliding rail trains, or a fatal 
 slip on an orange-peeling in the street, I know not; but 
 you will have then no time to repent, and you will have 
 no time to pray. If all the churches and cathedrals of the 
 world should then go crying unto God in your behalf, it 
 would not do you any good. All the preparation a man 
 makes for the great future, he has to make this side the 
 sharp line that divides the two residences. 
 
 I see in this event that hilarity and gladness can not 
 
272 DROWNED IX THE LAKE. 
 
 keep back the fatal attack. When three or four students 
 are together, and in such a tonic and exhilarating air as 
 that of Switzerland, there is mirth and exuberance un- 
 bounded. They did not see the soft paws of the wave 
 reaching np around the gilded boat, nor did they imagine 
 that the deep lay couched beneath, ready to spring upon 
 them. I believe in mirth and in boating and in pleasure- 
 excursions ; but I want you to understand that gladness 
 and hilarity of surrounding can not keep back our last mo- 
 ment. It may come treading over rose-leaves ; it may 
 come keeping step to the thrum of the harp, while bands 
 are clapping, while feet are bounding, while all sails are 
 set over a glassy sea. So it came when the Arctic and the 
 Vesta, mid- Atlantic, struck. So it came when the Austria 
 burned on the high seas. So it came when Eichmond 
 Court-house fell. So it came when the Ville da Havre 
 sunk. " In such a day, and in such an hour as ye think 
 not, the Son of man cometh." Oh, this bell of warning 
 that rings to-night has not attached to it a short rope that 
 any sexton may seize, but a twisted strand of wire three 
 thousand miles long, and the red fingers of the lightning 
 pull it until it rings from continent to continent, " Whatso- 
 ever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there 
 is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the 
 grave whither thou goest." What a voice for the youth 
 of my congregation — the voice that comes from Lake Ge- 
 neva to-night ! Young people do not like any thing dull 
 or stupid. Neither do I, and I do not blame them for 
 that; but there is nothing tame in this event. It comes 
 with a great thrill, and it seems that your body and mind 
 and soul must feel the shock. 
 
 They had every prospect of living. Just look at their 
 
DROWNED IN TEE LAKE. 273 
 
 pictures. See what broad shoulders they had, what stout 
 chests, what ruddy cheeks, what grand foreheads. " Oh !" 
 you say, "if they had only known how to swim, it would 
 have been all right." They could swim ; they could out- 
 swim you. They were as familiar with the water as many 
 with the land. They were splendid swimmers. Their fa- 
 ther had taught them how to take this exercise. But they 
 were too far from shore, or the boom struck them, and they 
 are gone. They had no pluck to stand up against a lake 
 one thousand feet deep. Their father, who had often been 
 with them on the water, was not there. He could give 
 them no relief But I think that lie who walked Lake 
 Gennesaret walked Lake Geneva, and that they are safe. 
 O man ! woman ! when your last moment comes, you 
 want something more than a human arm to help you. No 
 one but Jesus then ; no one but Jesus now. 
 
 They had brilliant prospects. In German}^, in Paris, 
 and in Switzerland they had studied, at the fountain-head, 
 those languages through which comes so much of the cul- 
 ture and refinement of the world. The gates of knowledge 
 and of success were open before them; but they died at 
 the gates, and all the plans for earthly welfare ended then 
 and there. My hearers, do not build too much upon this 
 world. It is a glassy surface, with a thousand feet of graves 
 beneath. Do you think you can sail that craft, and clew 
 down the topsail-yards, and liaul out the reef tackles? A 
 sudden squall may come, and you will go down, unless 
 there be a Christ sleeping in the hinder part of the ship, 
 ready in the nick of time to rise up and hush the wind 
 and silence the sea. I believe the Son of God was in 
 that tossing boat, and that when these lads cried out, in 
 their extremity, " Master, save us, we perish !" I think 
 
 12* 
 
274r BROWNED IN THE LAKE. 
 
 then and there lie came to their spiritual and immortal 
 rescue. 
 
 Let us pray God he will comfort those who are waiting 
 for more minute tidings of this event. The tongue of the 
 cable seems to have been palsied with the tidings, and it 
 does not talk plainly. I wish their bodies might be found. 
 It would be a satisfaction, though a sad satisfaction, to 
 have them here in one of our own cemeteries. As the 
 mother said to me a few hours ago, it would seem like 
 tucking them away in bed safely for the night. But if 
 God shall deny these parents this, it will make no differ- 
 ence to the lads, and the archangel's trumpet that wakes 
 up the sea will wake up also the lake. And, after all, 
 they can find no grander place to sleep than where they 
 are sleeping now ; the shadows of Jura and the Alps blank- 
 eting them in their slumbers, while vast, mnjestic Mont 
 Blanc bends over them snow-white, the only fit type of the 
 great white throne before which they and we shall be as- 
 sembled. 
 
 But I am to-night oppressed almost to suffocation with 
 the idea that there may be some here who are unprepared 
 for that ordeal. Certainly some of you are not ready now, 
 and you are not taking any steps toward preparation. 
 What, young man! man in mid-life! aged man! if 
 this night thy soul should be required of thee? It is a se- 
 rious question to ask. It is a serious question to answer. 
 You are no safer on the land than you are on the wave. 
 Oh, make one mighty struggle for heaven ! Put out for 
 the shore of eternal safety before your soul sinks. There 
 comes to you to-night, not so much my voice as the voices 
 of the lads John and James, sounding over the mountains, 
 sounding across the sea, declaring with startling emphasis, 
 
DROWNED IN THE LAKE. 275 
 
 " In such a day and hour as ye think not, the Son of man 
 cometh." 
 
 Before they went away, two years ago, on the finger of 
 one of the lads was placed a gold ring with the inscription, 
 "God bless you ;" and on the finger of the other lad was 
 placed a gold ring with the inscription, " Eemember father 
 and mother;" but God your Father would this night put 
 upon your soul immortal the signet-ring of his everlasting 
 affection. Will you wear it ? 
 
 "While life prolongs its precious light, 
 Mercy is found, and peace is given ; 
 But soon, ah ! soon, approaching night 
 Will blot out every hope of heaven." 
 
276 THE BED CORD IX THE WINDOW. 
 
 THE EED CORD IN THE WINDOW. 
 
 "And she bound the scarlet line in the window." — Joshua ii., 21. 
 
 IF you have any idea that I have chosen this text be- 
 cause it is odd, you do not know me nor the errand 
 on which I come. Eternity is too near and life too short 
 for men to take texts merely because they are peculiar. I 
 take this because it is full of the old Gospel. 
 
 There is a very sick and sad house in the city of Jer- 
 icho. What is the matter? Is it poverty? No. Worse 
 than that. Is it leprosy? No. Worse than that. Is it 
 death? No. Worse than that. A dauo'liter has forsaken 
 her home. By what infernal plot she was induced to leave, 
 I know not; but they look in vain for her return. Some- 
 times they hear a footstep very much like hers, and they 
 start up and say, "She comes!" but only to sink back 
 again into disappointment. Alas! alas! The father sits 
 by the hour, with his face in his hands, saying not one 
 word. The mother's hair is becoming gray too fast, and 
 she begins to stoop, so that those who saw her only a little 
 while ago in the street know her not now as she passes. 
 The brothers clench their fists, swearing vengeance against 
 the despoilcr of their home. Alas! will the poor soul 
 never come back? There is a long, deep shadow over all 
 the household. Added to this, there is an invading army 
 six miles away, just over the river, coming on to destroy 
 the city; and what with t\ie loss of their child, and the 
 coming-on of that destructive arm}^, I think the old people 
 
THE RED CORD IN THE WINDOW. 277 
 
 wished that they could die. That is the first scene in this 
 drama of the Bible. 
 
 In a house on the wall of the city is that daughter. 
 That is her home now. Two spies have come from the 
 invading army to look around through Jericho, and see 
 how best it may be taken. Yonder is the lost child, in 
 that dwelling on the wall of the city. The police hear of 
 it, and soon there is the shuffling of feet all around about 
 the door, and the city government demands the surrender 
 of those two spies. First, Rahab — for that was the name 
 of the lost child — first, Rahab secretes the two spies, and 
 gets their pursuers off the track; but after a while she 
 says to them, "I will make a bargain with you. I will 
 save your life if you will save my life, and the life of my 
 father, and my mother, and my brothers, and my sisters, 
 when the victorious army comes upon the city." Oh, she 
 had not forgotten her home yet, you see ! The wanderer 
 never forgets home. Her heart breaks now as she thinks 
 of how she has maltreated her parents, and she wishes she 
 were back with them again, and she wishes she could get 
 away from her sinful inthrallment; and sometimes she 
 looks up in the face of the midnight, bursting into agoniz- 
 ing tears. No sooner have these two spies promised to save 
 her life, and the life of her flither, and mother, and brothers, 
 and sisters, than Rahab takes a scarlet cord and ties it 
 around the body of one of the spies, brings him to the win- 
 dow, and, as he clambers out — nervous lest she have not 
 strength to hold him — with muscular arms such as woman 
 seldom has, she lets him down, hand over hand, in safety 
 to the ground. Not being exhausted, she ties the cord 
 around the other spy, brings him to the window, and just 
 as successfully lets him down to the ground. No sooner 
 
278 THE RED COED IN THE \YINDOW. 
 
 have these men untied the scarlet cord from their bodies 
 than they look up, and they say, " You had better get all 
 your friends in this house — your father, your mother, your 
 brothers, and your sisters ; you had better get them in this 
 house. And then, after you have tliem here, take this red 
 cord which you have put around our bodies, and tie it 
 across the window; and when our victorious army comes 
 up, and sees that scarlet thread in the window, it will 
 spare this house and all who are in it. Shall it be so?" 
 cried the spies. "Ay, ay," said Kahab, from the window, 
 "it shall be so!" That is the second scene in this Bible 
 drama. 
 
 There is a knock at the door of the old man. He looks 
 up, and says, " Come in ;" and, lo ! there is Eahab, the lost 
 child ; but she has no time to talk. They gather in ex- 
 citement around her, and she says to them, "Get ready 
 quickly, and go with me to my house. The army is com- 
 ing! The trumpet! Make haste! Fly! The enemy!" 
 That is the third scene in this Bible drama. 
 
 The hosts of Israel are all around about the doomed 
 city of Jericho. Crash ! goes the great metropolis, heaps 
 on heaps. The air suffocating with the dust, and horri- 
 ble with the screams of a dying city. All the houses flat 
 down. All the people dead. Ah no, no. On a crag of 
 the wall — the only piece of the wall left standing — there 
 is a house which we must enter. There is a family there 
 that has been spared. Who are they ? Let us go in and 
 see. Eahab, her father, her mother, her brothers, her sis- 
 ters, all safe, and the only house left standing in all the 
 city. What saved them? Was the house more firmly 
 built? Oh no; it was built in the most perilous place, on 
 the wall, and the wall was the first thing that fell. Was 
 
THE BED CORD IN THE WINDOW. 279 
 
 it because her cliaracter was any better than any of the 
 otlier population of tbe city? Oh no. Why, then, was 
 she spared, and all her household ? Can you tell me why ? 
 Oh, it was the scarlet line in the window. That is the 
 fourth scene in this Bible drama. 
 
 "When the destroying angel went through Egypt it was 
 the blood of the lamb on the door-posts that saved the Is- 
 raelites; and now that vengeance has come upon Jericho, 
 it is the same color that assures the safety of Eahab and 
 all her household. My friends, there are foes coming 
 upon us, more deadly and more tremendous, to overthrow 
 our immortal interests. They will trample us down, and 
 crush us out forever, unless there be some skillful mode of 
 rescue open. The police of death already begin to clamor 
 for our surrender ; but, blessed be God, there is a way out. 
 It is through the window, and by a rope so saturated with 
 the blood of the cross that it is as red as that with which 
 the spies were lowered ; and if once our souls shall be de- 
 livered, then, the scarlet cord stretched across the window 
 of our escape, we may defy all bombardment, earthly and 
 Satanic. 
 
 In the first place, carrying out the idea of my text, we 
 must stretch this scarlet cord across the ivindow of our rescue. 
 There comes a time when a man is surrounded. What is 
 that in the front door of his soul? It is the threatenino-s 
 
 O 
 
 of the future. What is that in the back door of the soul? 
 It is the sins of the past. He can not get out of either of 
 those door- ways. If he attempts it he will be cut to pieces. 
 What shall he do? Escape through the window of God's 
 mercy. That sunshine has been pouring in for many a 
 day. God's inviting mercy. God's pardoning m.ercy. 
 God's all -conquering mercy. God's everlasting mercy. 
 
280 TUB RED COED IX THE WINDOW. 
 
 But, you say, the window is so liigb. Ab, there is a rope, 
 the very one with which the cross and its Victim were 
 lifted. That was strong enough to hold Clirist, and it is 
 strong enough to hold you. Bear all your weight upon it, 
 all your hopes for this life, all your hopes for the life that 
 is to come. Escape now through the window. "But," 
 you say, " that cord is too small to save me ; that salvation 
 will never do at all for such a sinner as I have been." I 
 suppose that the rope with which Rahab let the two spies 
 to the ground was not thick enough; but they took that 
 or nothing. And, my dear brother, that is your alterna- 
 tive. There is only one scarlet line that can save you. 
 There have been hundreds and thousands who have been 
 borne away in safety by that scarlet line, and it will bear 
 you away in safety. Do you notice what a very narrow 
 escape those spies had? I suppose they came with flus- 
 tered cheek and with excited heart. They had a very nar- 
 row escape. They went in the broad door of sin ; but 
 how did they come out? They came out of the window. 
 They went up by the stairs of stone; they came down on 
 a slender thread. And so, my friends, we go easily and 
 unabashedly into sin, and all the doors are open; but if 
 we get out at all it will be by being let down over preci- 
 pices, wriggling and helpless, the strong grip above keep- 
 ing us from being dashed on the rocks beneath. It is 
 easy to get into sin, young man. It is not so easy to get 
 out of it. 
 
 A young man, to-night, goes to the marble counter of 
 the bar-room of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. He asks for a 
 brandy-smash — called so, I suppose, because it smashes the 
 man that takes it. There is no intoxication in it. As the' 
 young man receives it, he does not seem to be at all ex- 
 
THE BED COIW IN THE WINDOW. 281 
 
 cited. It does not give any glassiness to the eye. He 
 walks home in beautiful apparel, and all his prospects are 
 brilliant. That drink is not going to destroy him, but it 
 is the first step on a bad road. Years have passed on, and 
 I see that young man after he has gone the whole length 
 of dissipation. It is midnight, and he is in a hotel— per- 
 haps the very one where he took the first drink. He is 
 in the fourth story, and the delirium is on him. He rises 
 from the bed and comes to the window, and it is easily 
 lifted ; so he lifts it. Then he pushes back the blinds, 
 and puts his foot on the window-sill. Then he gives one 
 spring, and the watchman finds his disfigured bodj^, un- 
 recognizable, on the pavement. Oh, if he had only M^aited 
 a little— if he had come down on the scarlet ladder that 
 Jesus holds from the wall for him and for you and for me! 
 But no, he made one jump of it, and was gone. 
 
 A minister of Christ was not long ago dismissed from his 
 diocese for intoxication, and in a public meeting at the 
 West he gave this account of his sorrow. He said, "I had 
 a beautiful home once; but strong drink shattered it. I 
 had beautiful children ; but this fiend of rum took their 
 dimpled hands in his and led them to the grave. I had 
 a wife — to know her was to love her; but she sits in 
 wretchedness to-night while I wander over the earth. I 
 had a mother, and the pride of her life was I; but the 
 thunder-bolt struck her. I now have scarcely a friend in all 
 the world. Taste of the bitter cup I have tasted, and then 
 answer me as to whether I have any hatred for the agency 
 of my ruin. Hate it! I hate the whole damning traffic. 
 I would to God to-night that every distillery were in flames, 
 for then in the glowing sky I would write in the smoke of 
 the ruin, ' Woe to him that putteth the bottle to his neigh- 
 
282 THE RED COIW IN THE WINDOW. 
 
 bor's lips !' " That minister of the Gospel went in tbroiigli 
 the broad door of temptation ; he came out of the window. 
 And when I see the temptations that are all about us, and 
 when I know the proclivity to sin in every man's heart, I 
 see that, if any of us escape, it will be a very narrow escape. 
 Oh, if we have, my friends, got off from our sin, let us tie 
 the scarlet thread by which we have been saved across the 
 window. Let us do it in praise of Him whose blood dyed 
 it that color. Let it be in announcement of the fact that 
 we shall no more be fatally assaulted. " There is now no 
 condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." Then 
 let all the forces of this world come u|) in cavalry charge, 
 and let spirits of darkness come on, an infernal storming 
 party attempting to take our soul; this rope twisted from 
 these words, "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all 
 sin," will hurl them back defeated forever. 
 
 Still further, we must take this red cord of the text and 
 stretch it across the window of our households. When the Is- 
 raelitish army came up against Jericho, they said, "What 
 is that in the window ?" Some one said, " That is a scarlet 
 line." "Oh," said some one else, "that must be the house 
 that was to be spared. Don't touch it." That line was 
 thick enough and long enough and conspicuous enough 
 to save Rahab, her father, her mother, her brothers, and 
 her sisters — the entire family. Have our households as 
 good protection? You have bolts on the front door and 
 on the back, and fastenings to the window, and perhaps 
 burglar alarms, and perhaps an especial watchman blow- 
 ing his whistle at midniglit before your dwelling; but 
 all that can not protect your household. Is there on our 
 houses the sign of a Saviour's sacrifice and mercy? Is 
 there a scarlet line in the window? Have your children 
 
THE MED COED M THE WINDOW. 283 
 
 been consecrated to Christ? Have you been washed in 
 the blood of the atonement? In what room do you have 
 flimily prayers ? Show me where it is you are accustomed 
 to kneel. The sky is black with the coming deluge. Is 
 your family inside or outside the ark? It is a sad thing 
 for a man to reject Christ; but to lie down in the night of 
 sin, across the path to heaven, so that his family come up 
 and trip over him into an infinity of horrors — that is the 
 longest, the deepest, the mightiest ! It is a sad thing for a 
 mother to reject Christ ; but to gather her family around 
 her, and then take them by the hand and lead them out 
 into paths of worldliness, away from God and heaven — 
 oh, it will take all the dirges of earth and hell to weep out 
 that agony. 
 
 I suppose there are in this church to-night families 
 represented where there has not been an audible prayer 
 offered for ten years. There may be geranium and cac- 
 tus in the window, and upholstery hovering over it, and 
 childish faces looking out of it ; but there is no scarlet 
 thread stretched across it. Although that house may seem 
 to be on the finest street in all the city, it is really on the 
 edge of a marsh across which sweep most poisonous mala- 
 rias, and it has a sandy foundation, and its splendor wnll 
 come down, and great will be the fall of it. A home with- 
 out God! A prayerless father! An undevout mother! 
 Awful ! awful ! Is that you ? Will you keep on, my 
 brother, on the wrong road, and take your loved ones with 
 you? May God arrest you before you complete the ruin 
 of those whom 3'ou ought to save. You see I talk plain- 
 ly to you, just as I would have 3'ou talk plainly to me. 
 Time is so short, that we can not waste any of it on apol- 
 ogies or indirections or circumlocutions. You owe to your 
 
284 TEE RED COED IN THE WINDOW. 
 
 cbildrcn, O fiither! O mother! more than food, more than 
 clothing, more than shelter — you owe them the example 
 of a prayerful, consecrated, pronounced, out-and-out Chris- 
 tian life. You can not afford to keep it away from them. 
 
 Now, as I stand here, you do not see any hands out- 
 stretched toward me, and yet there are hands on my brow 
 and hands on both my shoulders. They are hands of pa- 
 rental benediction. It is quite a good many years ago now 
 since we folded those hands as they began the last sleep 
 on the banks of the Raritan, in the village cemetery ; but 
 those hands are stretched out toward me to-night, and they 
 are just as warm and they are just as gentle as when I 
 sat at their knee at five years of age. And I shall never 
 shake off those hands. I do not want to. They have 
 helped me so much a thousand times already, and I do not 
 expect to have a trouble or a trial between this and my 
 grave where those hands will not help me. Theirs was 
 not a very splendid home, as the world calls it; but wc 
 had a ilimily Bible there, well worn by tender perusal; 
 and there was a ftimily altar there, where we knelt morn- 
 ing and night; and there was a holy Sabbath there; and 
 stretched in a straight line, or hung in loops or festoons, 
 there was a scarlet line in the window. Oh, the tender, 
 precious, blessed memory of a Christian home ! Is that 
 the impression you are making upon your children? 
 When you are dead — and it will not be long before you 
 are — when you are dead, will your child sa}', "If there 
 ever was a good Christian father, mine was one. If there 
 ever was a good Christian mother, mine was one?" Will 
 they say that after you are dead ? Standing some Sabbath 
 night in church preaching the glorious Gospel, as I am 
 trying to do, will they tell the people in that day how 
 
TEE RED CORD IN THE WINDOW. 285 
 
 there are bands of benediction on their brow and hands of 
 parental benediction on both their shoulders? 
 
 Still further, we want this scarlet line of the text 
 drawn across the loindow of our 'prosi:)ecis. I see Rahab, and. 
 her father, and her mother, and her brothers, and sisters 
 looking out over Jericho, the city of palm-trees, and across 
 the river, and over at the army invading, and then up to 
 the mountains and the sky. Mind you, this house was on 
 the wall, and I suppose the prospect from the window must 
 have been very wide. Besides that, I do not think that 
 the scarlet line at all interfered with the view of the land- 
 scape. The assurance it gave of safety must have added 
 to the beauty of the country. To-night, my friends, we 
 stand or sit in the window of earthly prospect, and we 
 look off toward the hills of heaven and the landscape of 
 eternal beauty. God has opened the window for us, and 
 we look out; but how if we do not get there? If we 
 never get there, better never to have had even this faint 
 glimpse of it. We now only get a dim outline of the in- 
 habitants. AVe now only here and there catch a note of 
 the exquisite harmony. 
 
 But blessed be God for this scarlet line in the window! 
 That tells me that the blood of Christ bought that home 
 
 O 
 
 for my soul, and I shall go there when my work is done 
 here. And as I put my hand on that scarlet line every 
 thing in the future brightens. My eye -sight gets better, 
 and the robes of the victors are more lustrous, and our 
 loved. ones who went away some time ago — they do not 
 stand any more with their backs to ns, but their faces are 
 this way, and their, voice drops through this Sabbath air, 
 saying, with all tenderness and sweetness, " Come ! Come ! 
 Come !" And the child that you think of only as buried — 
 
286 THE RED COED IX THE WINDOW. 
 
 why, there she is, and it is May-day in heaven ; and they 
 gather the amaranth, and they pluck the lilies' and they 
 twist them into a garland for her brow, and she is one of 
 the Maj^-queens of heaven. Oh, do you think they could 
 see our waving to-night ? It is quite a pleasant night out- 
 doors, pretty clear, not many clouds in the sky, quite star- 
 light. I wonder if they can see us from that good land? 
 I think they can. If from this window of earthly pros- 
 pect we can almost see them, then from their towers of 
 light I think they can fully see us. And so I wave them 
 the glory, and I wave them the jo}^, and I say, " Have you 
 got through with all \o\xx troubles?" and their voices an- 
 swer, "God hath wiped away all tears from our eyes." I 
 say, "Is it as grand up there as 3'ou thought it would be?" 
 and the voices answer, "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, 
 neither have entered into the heart of man the things 
 which God hath prepared for them that love him." I sa}^, 
 "Do you have any more struggle for bread ?" and they an- 
 swer, " We hunger no more, we thirst no more." And I 
 sa}^, " Have you been out to the cemetery of the golden 
 city ?" and they answer, " There is no death here." And 
 I look out through the night heavens, and I say, "Where 
 do you get your light from, and what do you burn in the 
 temple ?" and they answer, " There is no night here, and 
 we have no need of candle or of star." And I say, "What 
 book do you sing out of?" and they answer, "The Halle- 
 lujah Chorus." And I sa}^, " In the splendor and magnif- 
 icence of the city, don't you ever get lost?" and they 
 answer, " The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne 
 leadeth us to living fountains of water." Oh, how near it 
 seems to-night! Their wings — do you not feel them? 
 Their harps— do you not hear them ? And all that through 
 
THE RED CORD IN THE WINDOW. 287 
 
 the window of our eartbly prospect, across which stretch- 
 eth the scarlet line. 
 
 Be that mj choice color forever. Is it too glaring for 
 you ? Do you like the blue because it reminds you of the 
 sky, or the green because it makes you think of the foli- 
 age, or the black because it has in it the shadows of the 
 night? I take the scarlet because it shall make me think 
 of the price that was paid for my soul. Oh, the blood ! 
 the blood ! the blood of the Lamb of God that taketh 
 awa}^ the sin of the world ! Through it we escape sin. 
 Through it we reach heaven. Will j'ou let it atone for 
 you ? Believe in it, and you live. Refuse it, and you die. 
 Will you accept it, or will you pull over on you the eter- 
 nal calamity of rejecting it? 
 
 I see where you are. You arc at the cross-roads to- 
 night. The next step decides every thing. Pause before 
 you take it ; but do not pause too long, lest the wind of 
 God's justice slam to the door that has been standing open 
 so long. I hear the thunder of God's artiller}^ I hear 
 the blast of the trumpet that wakes the dead. Look out! 
 look out! For in that daj^, and in our closing moment 
 on earth, better than any other defense or barricade, how- 
 ever high or broad or stupendous, will be one little, thin, 
 scarlet thread in the window. 
 
288 THE LAMP. 
 
 THE LAMP. 
 
 "Tliy word is a larap." — Psalm cxix., 105. 
 
 FROM six o'clock last evening until six o'clock this 
 morning darkness rested on our part of the earth, 
 and every few hours there rolls a wave of natural night 
 all over the nations. With lamps, and chandeliers, and 
 torches, and lanterns, we try to drive out the uiglit from 
 houses, and churches, and stores, and shops. He who in- 
 vents a new kind of a light invents his own fortune and 
 the fortune of his children. But there is a nio;ht of sin 
 and suffering and shame which needs another kind of 
 illumination. Ancient philosophy made a lamp, but it 
 was a dead failure, and the people kept ci'ying out, " Give 
 us a light! give us a light!" After a while prophet and. 
 evangelist and apostle made a lamp. A coal from heaven 
 struck it into a blaze, and uncounted multitudes of people, 
 with an open Bible before them, cry out in rapture and in 
 love, " Tliy word is a lamp." 
 
 When, a few years ago, there was a great accident in 
 Hartley Colliery, in England, and two hundred persons 
 lost their lives, the Queen telegraphed down to the scene 
 of disaster, "Can we give you any help? Will you be 
 able to get the men out? How many are lost? Give my 
 sympathy to all the bereft." What consolation it was to 
 the families who stood amidst the consternation and the 
 terror that the throne of England throbbed in sympathy 
 with their disaster ! But I have to tell you to-day a more 
 
THE LAMP. 289 
 
 glorious truth, and that is, from the throne of God the 
 King of heaven and earth telegraphs down through this 
 Bible into the dungeons of our sin and suffering a message 
 of pardon, of love, of sjanpathy, of comfort, of eternal life. 
 Like some light -house on high jDromontory, blessed by 
 ships passing through, darkness and storm, so on the 
 heights of God's love and grace there flames forth a light 
 upon the great sea of man's wretchedness and of God's 
 providence, so that angels on their way earthward, and 
 ransomed spirits on their way heavenward, and devils on 
 their way iiellward, pass through its flash, crying, " Thy 
 word is a lamp." 
 
 You have four or five Bibles in your house — perhaps 
 ten, perhaps twenty. They are such common property 
 you do not appreciate them. If you had only one Bible, 
 and for that you had paid five hundred dollars (the price 
 that was paid in olden time for a copy of the Scriptures), 
 then you would more thoroughly appreciate it, I was 
 once a colporteur for a few months in a vacation, and I 
 came into a home of destitution. I saw a woman there 
 eighty-five years of age, and I said to her, " May I give 
 you a Bible?" " Oh," she replied, "a Bible would be of 
 no use to me. I can't see to read. I used to read, but 
 for twenty years I haven't been able to read a word." I 
 pulled out of my sachel one of the copies of the Psalms of 
 David and the New Testament in great, large, round type, 
 and I said, " Now, put on your spectacles and see if you 
 can't read this." She wiped her spectacles and put them 
 on. " Oh yes," she said ; " why, I can see, after all ! I 
 am very thankful to you. Why, yes, I see it : 'I love the 
 Lord because he hath heard my voice and my — ' Oh yes, 
 I can read it, I can read it!" I wish that God to-day 
 
290 THE LAMP. 
 
 would make the Bible as new and fresh to us as it was 
 to her. 
 
 I want to show you that the Bible is a lamp — a parlor- 
 lamp, a street-lamp, a store-lamp, a church-lamp, a sepul- 
 chral lamp. 
 
 In parlors all aflash with gas-light and gleaming mir- 
 ror, and blazing chandelier and candelabra, there may be 
 Egyptian darkness ; while in some plain room which a 
 frugal hand has spread with hospitality and I'cfincment, 
 this one lamp may cast a glow that makes it a fit place for 
 heavenly coronations. We invoke no shadow to fall upon 
 the hilarities of life. We would not have every song a 
 dirge, and every picture a martyrdom, and every stej) a 
 funeral pace. God's lapip, hung in the parlor, would chill 
 no joy, would rend no harmon}^, would check no innocent 
 laughter. On the contrary, it would bring out brighter 
 colors in the picture ; it would expose new gracefulness in 
 the curtain ; it would unroll new wreaths from the carpet; 
 it would strike new music from the harp ; it would throw 
 new polish into the manners; it would kindle with light, 
 borrowed from the very throne of God, all the refinements 
 of society. Oh that the Christ who was born in a barn 
 would come to our parlor! We need his hand to sift the 
 parlor music. We need his taste to assort the parlor liter- 
 ature. We need his voice to conduct the parlor conversa- 
 tion. We are apt to think of religion as being a rude, 
 blundering thing, not fit to put its foot upon Axminster, 
 or its clownish hands on beautiful adornments, or lift its 
 voice amidst the artistic and refined ; so, while we have 
 Jesus in the nursery when we teach our children to pra}', 
 and Jesus in the dining-hall when we ask his blessing upon 
 our food, and Jesus in the sittinsr-room when we have 
 
THE LAMP. 291 
 
 family praj'ers, it is a simple fact tbat from ten tliousand 
 Christian homes in this country Christ is from one end 
 of the year to the other shut out of the parlor. Oh that 
 housekeepers understood that the grace of God is the 
 greatest accomplishment, and that no seat is too luxuriant 
 for religion to sit in, and no arch too grand for religion to 
 walk under, and no circle too brilliant for religion to move 
 in ! If Christianity at last is to walk up the streets of 
 heaven with seraphim and archangel, it is good enough to 
 go anywhere where you go or where I shall go. To purify 
 the heart, to cleanse the life, to culture the taste, to expur- 
 gate all hypocrisy and falsehood and sham, we must have 
 the Bible in the parlor. When Christian people come to 
 spend an evening, they talk about the weather, and they 
 talk about the scandal, and they talk about the crops, and 
 they talk about the markets; but they do not talk about 
 God and Christ and heaven. The thing we most want to- 
 day in all our jDarlors is the lamp of the Bible. 
 
 Still further, the Bible is the streei-lamj). When night 
 comes down on the city, crime goes forth to its worst 
 achievements. Not only to show honest citizens where to 
 walk, but to hinder the burglar, and assassin, and highway- 
 man, and pickpocket, we must have artificial lights all 
 over the city. I remember what consternation there was 
 in Philadelphia when one night the gas-works were out 
 of order, and the whole city sat in darkness. Between 
 eleven o'clock at night and three o'clock in the morning, 
 in the dark and unlighted places of the town, crime has 
 its holiday. If the lamp-lighter ceased his work for one 
 week, the town would rot. But there is a darkness be- 
 yond all power of gas-light. What is the use of police- 
 station and almshouse and watchman's club, if there be no 
 
292 THE LAMP. 
 
 moral and religious influence to sanction the law and to 
 purify tbe executive, and to hang over legal enactment the 
 fear of God and an enlightened public opinion. When 
 in a city crime runs rampant, and virtue is at a discount, 
 and jails are full, and churches are empt}'-, and the nights 
 are hideous with the howl and the whoop of drunkards, 
 and the saloons boil over with scum, and public officials 
 think more of a bribe than they do of their own conscience, 
 and when great tides of wickedness set down the streets 
 — the first want of such a city as that is the street-lamp 
 of the Bible. Did you ever stand in a church-tower and 
 look down upon a city at night? It is overwhelming. 
 But you feel that beneath all that brilliancy of gas-light 
 there is a surging sea of want and suffering and woe. His- 
 tory says that Dionysius had a great cave built for his pris- 
 oners, lie was a cruel man, and be used to go to the top 
 of the cave, put his ear to the opening and listen, and the 
 groans and the sighings of the prisoners came up into his 
 ear and made music for him. God stands at the head of 
 our world, but for a different purpose and with a different 
 heart. lie puts his ear to the dungeon, and every sigh 
 comes up stirring his sympathies, and every groan wound- 
 ing his heart; and he listens and listens all night long. 
 There is but one lamp that can throw light into the dun- 
 geon where the prisoner groans, into the hovel where the 
 beggar pines, into the cellar where the drunkard M^allows, 
 into the alley where the libertine putrefies, into the mad- 
 house where the maniac raves. Travelers in Africa tell 
 us that they have seen serpents — a vast number of them — 
 coiled together, and piled up in horrid fold above horrid 
 fold; and then they would hear hundreds of them hissing 
 at once, and the sight and the sound were appalling and 
 
THE LAMP. 293 
 
 unbearable. But if you should take the wickedness of our 
 best of cities, and bring it all together in one place, and 
 pile it up fold above fold, it would be a hissing horror 
 and ghastliness that no human eye could look at without 
 being blasted, and no human ear could hear without being 
 stunned. 
 
 Now, how will all these scenes of iniquity in our cities 
 be overcome ? They will not be overcome until the church 
 and the school and a Christian printing-press kindle all 
 around about us God's street-lamp of the Bible. Send the 
 Bible down that filthy alley, if you would have it cleansed. 
 Send it against those decanters, if you would have them 
 smashed. Send it against those chains, if you would have 
 them broken. Send it through all the ignorance of the 
 city, if you would have it illumined as by a flash from 
 heaven's morning. The Bible can do it, will do it. Gath- 
 er all the ignorance and the wickedness and the vice of 
 our cities in one great pile — Alps above Alps, Pyrenees 
 above Pyrenees, Himalaya above Himalaya — and then 
 give one little New Testament full swing against the side 
 of that mountain, and down it would come, Alps after Alps, 
 Pyrenees after Pyrenees, Himalaya after Himalaya. What 
 is the difference between New York and Pekin ? What 
 is the difference between London and Madras? What is 
 the difference between Edinburgh and Canton ? No differ- 
 ence, save that which the Bible makes, city missionary ! 
 O philanthropist! O Christian! 'go everywhere, and kin- 
 dle up these great street-lamps of the Gospel; and our 
 city, purified and cleansed, will proclaim what the Psalmist 
 so long ago declared, " Thy word is a lamp." 
 
 I know there are people who suppose that the vice of 
 our cities is going to conquer the virtue of the people. I 
 
29-i THE LAMP. 
 
 do not believe it. Let error and vice run, if you only let 
 truth run along with them. Urged on by skeptic's shout 
 and transcendentalist's spur, let error run ! God's angels 
 of wrath are in hot pursuit, and, quicker than eagle's beak 
 clutcheth out a hawk's heart, God's vengeance will tear it 
 to pieces. Let it run, if you only let God's AVord run along 
 wnth it. 
 
 Still further, the Bible is the best siore-lamp. Blessed 
 is the merchant who under its glow reads his ledger, and 
 transacts his business, and pockets bis gains, and suffers his 
 losses. It may be well to have a fine sky-liglit, to liave a 
 magnificent glass show-window, by night to have bronzed 
 brackets spouting fire in a very palace of merchandise ; 
 but if you have not this eternal lamp, you had better quit 
 keeping store. What is the reason so many who started 
 in merchandise, with good principles and fair prospects and 
 honorable intentions, have become gamblers, and defraud- 
 ers, and knaves, and desperadoes, and liars, and thieves? 
 They did not have the right kind of a store-lamp. Why 
 is it, in our day, merchandise is smitten with uncertaint}^, 
 and three-fourths of the- business of our great cities is only 
 one huge species of gambling, and society is upturned by 
 false assignments, and two-third acts, and repudiations, and 
 imperiled trust-funds, and fraudulent certificates of stock, 
 and wild schemes in railroads without any track, and banks 
 without any capital, and cities without any houses, and 
 joint-stock companies without any conscience ? And why 
 are ten thousand of our business men ridden with a night- 
 mare enough to crush Hercules and Prometheus? It is 
 the want of a right kind of store-lamp. What ruined the 
 merchant princes of Tyre, that great city of fairs and ba- 
 zaars and palaces; her vessels of trade, with cedar masts 
 
THE LA3IR 295 
 
 and embroidered sails and ivory benches, driven by fierce 
 blasts on Northern waters, and then dropping down on 
 glassy Indian seas ; bringing wine from Helbon, and char- 
 iot cloths from Dedan, and gold and spices from Eahmah, 
 and emerald and agate from Syria; her waters foaming 
 with innumerable keels; her store-houses bursting with 
 the treasures of all nations — that queen of cities, on a throne 
 of ivory and ebony, under a crown of gold, and pearl, and 
 diamond, and carbuncle, and chrysoprase? The want of a 
 right kind of store-lamp. If the principles of religion had 
 ruled in her trade, do you suppose that dry-rot would have 
 sunk the ships, and that vermin would have eaten up her 
 robes, and that God's mills would have ground up the ag- 
 ate, and that fishermen would dry their nets on the rocks 
 which once were aquake with the roar and tread of a great 
 metropolis? Oh, what thrones have fiillen, what monu- 
 ments have crumbled, what fleets have sunk, what statues 
 have been defaced, what bai'barisms have been created, 
 what civilization retarded, what nations damned, all for the 
 want of the right kind of a store-lamp ! 
 
 Men of business! take your Bibles with you to-morrow 
 morning. Place them in your store or shop. Do not be 
 ashamed if any body at noon finds you reading the Script- 
 ures. It is safe always to do business by their teachings. 
 There was a young man in a store in Boston, standing be- 
 hind the counter, selling goods. A gentleman came in, 
 and asked for some Middlesex cloths, " Oh," said the 
 young man, " we haven't any Middlesex cloths, but here is 
 something just as good." "No," replied the gentleman, 
 " I don't want them ;" and he passed out. The head man 
 of the firm came down to the young man, and said, " What 
 did that man want?'' "He wanted Middlesex cloths," re- 
 
296 THE LA2IR 
 
 plied tlie young man. " Why didn't you tell him they 
 were Middlesex cloths?" "Because they were not, sir." 
 " Then, you can take your hat and leave." The young- 
 man took his hat and left. lie went into merchandise in 
 Cincinnati, went on up till he became a merchant prince, 
 and not more eminent for wealth than for piety. God will 
 never let a young man suffer for doing right. Full justice 
 may not be done him in this world ; but in the last daj^, 
 before an assembled universe, it will be found out whether 
 or not they were Middlesex cloths. 
 
 Still further, the Bible is the best churcli-lamp. I care 
 not how many chandeliers there may be in a church, how 
 many brilliant lights there may be, the Word of God is the 
 best church-lamp. Oh, is there any thing more beautiful 
 than an audience gathered on the Sabbath for Christian 
 worship? There may be no dazzle of theatric assemblage, 
 there may be no glitter of foot -lights, there may be no 
 allegoric images blossoming from pit to dome; but there 
 is something in the place and in the occasion that makes 
 it supernatural. In the light of this lamp I see your faces 
 kindle with a great joy. Glorious church-lamp, this Bible 1 
 Luther found it in the cloister at Erfurt, and he lifted it 
 until the monasteries and cathedrals of Germany, and Ital}'", 
 and France, and England, and the world saw its illumina- 
 tion. It shone under the trap -doors. It looked behind 
 the curtains. It shone under the breastplate of sacerdotal 
 authority; and in the mosques of Turkey, and in the pa- 
 godas of India, and in the ice huts of Greenland, and in 
 the mud hovels of Africa, and in the temples of China, 
 God's regenerated children, in musical Tamil, and sweet 
 Italian, and nasal Chinese, and harsh Choctaw, cried out, 
 " Thy word is a lamp." It throws its light on the pulpit. 
 
THE LAMP. 297 
 
 making a bulwark of truth ; on the baptismal cup, until 
 its waters glitter like the crystals of heaven. It strikes 
 penitence into the prayers and gladness into the thanksgiv- 
 ing. It changes into a church John Bunyan's prison, and 
 Covenanter's cave, and Calvin's castle, and Huss's stake, 
 and Hugh M'Kail's scaffold of martyrdom. Zwinglius car- 
 ried it into Switzerland, and John Wickfield into England, 
 and John Knox into Scotland, and Jehudi Ashmun into 
 Africa. 
 
 Begone, ye scoffers! Down to the lowest pit, ye emissa- 
 ries of darkness! for by the throne of an omnipotent judg- 
 ment I declare it that all iniquity shall fall, and all bond- 
 age be broken, and all wounds be healed, and all darkness 
 be dispelled, when God's truth shall go forth " as a lamp 
 that burneth." We want no sappers or miners to level 
 the wall ; we want no axemen or engineers to prepare 
 the way; wc want no glittering steel or booming gun or 
 howling Ilotchkiss shell to get us the victory, for the 
 mountains are full of horses and chariots of fire. Halle- 
 lujah ! for the kingdoms of this world are become the 
 kingdoms of our Lord Jesus Christ. I do not wonder 
 that the stranger who sat the other day beside me in the 
 rail-car reading his Bible, after he had concluded his 'read- 
 ing, closed it, and kissed it, and put it in his pocket. There 
 have been times when you did the same. When all else 
 failed you, it was so bright, it was so loving, it was so sym- 
 pathetic a book that you, too, kissed it. 
 
 Still further, the Bible is a se^mlchral lamp. You know 
 that the ancient Egyptians used to keep lights burning in 
 the tombs of their dead. These lights were kept up for 
 scores, even hundreds, of j^ears. Friends would come from 
 generation to generation and put oil in the lamps, and it 
 
 13* 
 
298 THE LAMP. 
 
 was considered a disaster if those lamps went out. You 
 and I will some day go down into the house of the dead. 
 Some have looked upon it as an unknown land, and, when 
 they have thought of it, their knees have knocked together 
 and their hearts fainted. There were whole generations 
 of men that had no comfort about death, no view of the 
 eternal world ; and whenever they brought their friends 
 and put them away into the dust, they said, without any 
 alleviation, " This is horrid ! this is horrid !" And it was. 
 The grave is the deepest, ghastliest pit that a man ever 
 looks into, unless the lamp of God's word flashes into it. 
 For whole ages men thought that the sepulchre was a den 
 where a great monster gorged himself on human carcasses. 
 '!I will put an end to that," said Jesus of Nazareth; "I 
 will with mine own voice go down and make darkness 
 flee;" and as he stepped out from the gate of heaven, all 
 the grave-yards of earth cried, "Come! come!" And he 
 came down, bringing a great many beautiful lights ; and 
 above this babe's grave he hung a light, and over this 
 mother's tomb he hung a light, and over this wife's grave 
 he hung a light, and over all the sleeping- places of the 
 Christian dead he hung a light. Then he uttered his 
 voice, and it ran along under the ground from city to citj^, 
 and along under the sea from continent to continent, until 
 mausoleum and sarcophagus and sepulchre throbbed with 
 the joy : "I am the resurrection and the life; he that be- 
 lieveth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." 
 And now, if Greenwood and Laurel Hill and Mount Au- 
 burn could break their beautiful silence and should speak, 
 their lips of bronze and granite would break forth in the 
 strains of my text, " Thy word is a lamp." 
 
 O ye bruised souls! ye who have been cutting your- 
 
THE LAMP. 299 
 
 selves among the tombs! ye wbo have been sowing 
 seed for the resurrection-clay ! ye of the broken heart ! 
 I come out to-day and put into your hand this glorious Gos- 
 pel lamp. It will throw a glow of consolation over your 
 bereft spirit. " Weeping may endure for a night, but joy 
 cometh in the morning." "They that sow in tears shall 
 reap in joy." 
 
 Kabbi Mier went off from home to be gone a few days, 
 and left two beautiful boys. While he was gone, the two 
 lads died. Eabbi Mier returned, not knowing that any 
 thing had happened. His Christian wife knew he would 
 be overcome with grief, and she met him at the door and 
 said to him, " JMy husband, I once liad two beautiful jew- 
 els loaned to me. I had them for a little while. And, do 
 you know, while 3'ou were gone the owner came for them. 
 Ought I to have given them?" "Of course," said Rabbi 
 Mier, "you ought to have given them np; you say they 
 were only loaned." Then she called her husband to the 
 side-room, and removed the cloth that covered the dead 
 children. After Rabbi Mier had for a few moments given 
 way to his grief, he rose up and said, " Now I know what 
 you meant by the borrowed jewels. ' The Lord gave, and 
 the Lord hath taken awa3^ Blessed be the name of the 
 Lord.' " And so Rabbi Mier was comforted. 
 
 Let this sepulchral light gild all the graves of your dead. 
 May this lamp of the text be set in all your parlors, in all 
 your streets, in all your stores, in all your churches, in all 
 your sepulchres! Amen. 
 
300 THE DYING NEED OF TEE CHUECn. 
 
 THE DYING NEED OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 " Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before 
 me : and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even 
 the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in : behold, he shall come, 
 saith the Lord of hosts." — Malachi iii., 1. 
 
 SOMETIMES a miuister's subject is suggested by his 
 artistic tastes; sometimes, by the occurrences of the 
 previous week ; sometimes, by a hearer who desires some 
 particular religious theme discussed. My subject comes 
 in no such way. It drops straight from God into my heart. 
 Give me your prayerful and intense listening. 
 
 I want to show this morning, so far as God may help 
 me, that the dying need of the Church universal is a 
 mighty awakening. The ox in the pasture- field looks 
 around, and perhnps comes to the conclusion that all the 
 world is a clover-field. So we, standing in the midst of 
 luxuriant religious advantages, might think, perhaps, that 
 the earth is covered with the knowledge of God ; but so 
 far from that, if this platform were the world, so much of 
 it as I now cover with my right foot would represent all 
 that is conquered for Emmanuel. Or if this whole Tab- 
 ernacle were the world, then one pew would represent so 
 much of it as the grace of God has already conquered. 
 Oh, there is need of a radical change! Something must be 
 done ; and I shall show this morning that the great — ay, as 
 I have already said, the dying — need of the Church is a 
 great awakening:. 
 
THE DYING NEED OF THE CHURCH. 301 
 
 I leai'n this need, in the first place, from the coldness in 
 the majority of church meinhers. If a religious society have 
 a thousand members, eight hundred of them are sound 
 asleep. If it have five hundred members, four hundred 
 are lethargic. If the Christians can rally — that is, the pro- 
 fessed Christians — for communion-day, and succeed in not 
 dropping the wine-cup, how many of them are satisfied? 
 If it be a choice between Christ and the world, the world 
 has it. You know it as well as I do. If a religious meet- 
 ing be on a certain night, and on that same night there be 
 an extraordinary operatic entertainment, or a social gath- 
 ering, or a literary club, or a political meeting, or a Free- 
 masons' society, or an Odd-fellows' association, you know 
 which they go to. God there fairly demonstrating that 
 while such professed Christians pretend to be on his side, 
 they are really on the other side ; for there is a point-blank 
 issue between Christ and the world, and the world has it. 
 You know very well, whether you are a professed Chris- 
 tian or not, that the dividing line between the Church and 
 the world to-day is — like the equator, or the arctic or an- 
 tarctic circle — an imaginary line; and that there are men 
 and women sworn of God who sit discussing infinitesimal 
 questions, "Shall we dance? Shall we play cards ? Shall 
 we go to the theatre? Shall we attend the opera?" while 
 there are five hundred millions of the race going down 
 to darkness unwarned. These sham Christians will go 
 on, occasionally taking a little religion with the tip -end 
 of their fingers, sauntering on lazily toward the bar of 
 Christ, until they come in front of God's swift revolving 
 mill, and find themselves to be " the chaff which the wind 
 driveth away." 
 
 Ob, how much dead wood we have in all our churches! 
 
302 THE BYIXG NEED OF THE CllUnCII. 
 
 The day of judgment will make a fearfid thinning- out 
 among professed Christians. I suppose it will be found 
 on that day that there are hundreds of thousands of men 
 who have their names on the church books who really 
 made religion a second-rate or third-rate thing; living for 
 themselves, unmindful of God and the salvation of the 
 race, and then tumbling over the embankment where 
 Judas went, and Achan went, and where all those shall go 
 who do not make religion the primordial thing — the first 
 and the last matter of the soul. O worldly professor of 
 religion, vacillating professor, idle professor, tremble be- 
 fore God to-day ! Do you not know that if you die as you 
 are, all the communion-tables at which you have ever sat 
 will lift up hands of blood, crying for your condemnation? 
 And your neglected Bible, and your prayerless pillow, will 
 cry, "Go down! go down! You pretended to have re- 
 ligion, but you had none. Out of the seven days of the 
 week, you gave not five hours to Christ. You broke your 
 sacramental oath. Go down ! go down !" And the fieri- 
 est and mightiest thunder-bolt of God's indignation that 
 is ever forged will smite you into darkness. I would 
 rather be the man, in the last day, who has never seen a 
 church, than you who professed to be so much, and to do 
 so much, and yet did nothing! You shall perish in the 
 way when God's wrath is kindled but a little. O worldly 
 professor of religion ! — and there are hundreds of them here 
 to-day, I am aiming at the mark — if you could now re- 
 alize your true condition and 3'our true position before 
 God, you would bite your lip until the blood came; you 
 would wring your hands until the bones cracked; you 
 would utter a cry that would send this whole audience to 
 their feet with a horror. May God wake jom up, worldly 
 
THE DYING NEED OF THE CHURCH. 303 
 
 professor of religion, before you wake up in the barred and 
 flaming dungeons of a destroyed eternity! When you 
 look abroad and see lethargy among the professors of re- 
 ligion almost all the world over, do you not see that there 
 is a need that the bugles, and the cymbals, and the drums, 
 and the trumpets of all earth and heaven call upon the 
 Church to wake up the dormant professors of religion? 
 "Awake, thou that sleepest; awake, and Christ shall give 
 thee light." 
 
 Still further, I see a need for a great awakening in the 
 fact that those of us ivho preach the Gospel have so Utile enilai- 
 siasm and zeal compared with ivhat ive ought to have. Now, 
 you. see, the gun kicks. It is a tremendous thing to stand 
 before an audience on Sabbath-days, realizing the fact 
 that the majority of them will believe what you say about 
 God and the soul and the great future ! Suppose a man 
 asked of you the road to a certain place, and you care- 
 lessly and falsely told him, and afterward you heard that 
 through lack of right direction that man wandered on the 
 mountains, fell over the rocks, and lost his life. You 
 could not forgive yourself You would say, "I wish I 
 had taken more time with that man. I wish I had given 
 him specific directions so he would not have been lost. 
 How sorry I feel about it!" But, oh, to misdirect the 
 eternal interests of a large congregation ! How cold and 
 stolid we stand in our pulpits, actually sometimes priding 
 ourselves on our deliberation, when we have no right to 
 be cold, and ought to be almost frantic with the perils that 
 threaten our hearers; so much so that some of us give no 
 warning at all, -and we stand Sabbath after Sabbath talk- 
 ing about " human development," and we pat men on the 
 back and we please them, and we hide eternal retribution, 
 
804 THE DYING NEED OF TUE CUURCH. 
 
 nnd we sing them all down through the rapids to the last 
 plunge. Or, as the poet has it, 
 
 " Smooth down the stubborn text to ears polite, 
 And snugly keep damnation out of sight ! " 
 
 Oh, my brethren in the ministry — for I see them always 
 in the audience— my brethren in the ministry, we can not 
 afford to do that way. If you prophesy good things, 
 smooth things, to your people, without regard to their 
 character, what chance will there be for you in the day 
 when you meet them at the bar of God ? You had better 
 stand clear of them then. They will tear you to pieces. 
 They will say, "I heard you preach five hundred times, 
 and I admired your philosophic disquisition, and your 
 graceful gestures, and your nicely molded sentences, cur- 
 vilinear and stelliform, and I thought you were the prince 
 of proprieties ; but you didn't help me to prepare for this 
 day. Cursed be your rhetoric, cursed be your art! - I am 
 going down, and I'll take you with me. It is your fault; 
 witness all the hosts of heaven and all the hosts of dark- 
 ness, it is your fault, sir;" and the chorus will come up 
 from all worlds, "Ilis fault! his fliult!" All of us who 
 preach this Gospel need to speak as though the pulpit 
 quaked with the tramp of eternal realities ; as though be- 
 neath us were the bursting graves of the resurrection 
 morn ; as though rising above us, tier above tier, were the 
 myriads of heaven looking down, ready to applaud our 
 fidelit}'-, or hiss at our stolidit}^, while coming through the 
 Sabbath air were the long, deep, harrowing groans of the 
 dying- nations that are never dead. May God with a torch 
 from heaven set all the pulpits of England, and Scotland, 
 and Ireland, and the United States on fire ! As for myself, 
 
THE DYING NEED OF THE CHURCH. 305 
 
 standing here in this presence this morning, I feel as if I 
 had never begun to preach. If God will forgive me for 
 the past, I will do better for the future. 
 
 " 'Tis not a cause of small import 
 The pastor's care demands ; 
 But what might fill an angel's heart, 
 It filled a Saviour's hand. 
 
 "They watch for souls for which the Lord 
 Did heavenly bliss forego ; 
 For souls that must forever live 
 In raptures or in woe. " 
 
 Still further, I see a need for a great awakening in the 
 fact that the Jcingdom of God is making so slow progress. I 
 simply state a fact when I say that in many places the 
 Church is surrendering, and the world is conquering. 
 Where there is one man brought into the kingdom of 
 God through Christian instrumentality, there are ten men 
 dragged down by dissipations. Fifty grog-shops built to 
 one church established. Literary journals in different 
 parts of the country filled with scum and dandruff and 
 slag, controlled by the very scullions of society, depraving 
 every thing they put their hands on. Three hundred and 
 ten newspapers, journals, and magazines in New York, 
 and more than two hundred of them depraving to the pub- 
 lic taste, if not positively inimical to our holy Christianity. 
 Look abroad and see the surrender, even on the part of 
 what pretend to be Christian churches, to spiritualism and 
 humanitarianism and all the forms of devilism. If a man 
 stand in his pulpit and say that unless you be born again 
 3'ou will be lost, do not the tight kid-gloves of the Chris- 
 tian, diamonds bursting through, go up to their foreheads 
 in humiliation and shame? It is not elegant. A mighty 
 
806 THE DYING NEED OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 host in the Christian Church, positively professing Chris- 
 tianity, who do not believe in the Bible out and out, in 
 and in, from the first word of the first verse of the first 
 chapter of the book of Genesis down to the last word of 
 the last verse of the last chapter of the book of Kevelation. 
 And when, a few Sabbaths ago, I stood in this pulpit, and 
 said, " I fear that some of this audience will be lost for the 
 rejection of Christ," there were four or five of the daily 
 papers that threw up their hands in surprise at it. 
 
 Oh, we have magnificent church machinery in this coun- 
 try ! We have sixty thousand American ministers ; we 
 have costly music ; we have great Sunday-schools ; and yet 
 I give you the appalling statistic that in the last twenty- 
 five years, laying aside last year, the statistics of which I 
 have not yet seen — within the last twenty-five years the 
 churches of God in this country have averaged less than 
 two conversions a year each. There has been an average 
 of four or five deaths in the churches. How soon, at that 
 rate, will this world be brought to God ? We gain two ; 
 we lose four. Eternal God, what will this come to? I 
 tell you plainly that while here and there a regiment of 
 the Christian soldiery is advancing, the Church is falling 
 back. for the most part, and falling back, and falling back; 
 and if you do not come to complete rout — ay, to ghastly 
 Bull Eun defeat — it will be because some individual 
 churches hurl themselves to the front, and ministers of 
 Christ, trampling on the favor of this world and sacrificing 
 every thing, shall snatch up the torn and shattered banner 
 of Emmanuel, and rush ahead, crying, " On ! on ! This is 
 no time to run ; this is the time to advance." 
 
 I see, still further, the need of a great awakening in the 
 muUitudinous going-down of iniforgiven souU. Since many 
 
THE DYING NEED OF THE CHURCH. 307 
 
 of you came on the stage of action, a wbole generation lias 
 gone into the gates of eternity. Your opportunity to act 
 upon tbeni is gone. They have disappeared from the 
 churches, from the stores, the shops, the streets, from the 
 homes* Many of them are now — what is the use of my 
 hiding the f\\ct and being the coward in regard to it? no, 
 I will tell you just as it is — many of them are going out 
 of this world without one item of preparation. Their soul 
 dropped fiat into the lost world. That is, if the Bible is 
 true; and I am supposing it is. You, Christian man! 
 had an opportunity of meeting them. You did meet them. 
 You talked with them on other subjects. You had an 
 opportunity of saying the saving word, and you did not 
 say that saving word. Just think of that! Oh, where is 
 the fountain where, with sleeves rolled up, we may wash 
 our hiinds from the blood of souls? There is no need, 
 perhaps, of mourning over that just now. We can not 
 change it. They are dead, and they are destroyed — those 
 M'ho believed not in Christ — they are destroyed. 
 
 The only question is, whether, as Christian men and 
 women, we can now interrupt the other procession that is 
 marching down, and will, after a while, if unarrested by 
 God's grace, fiiU off. There are going out from our stores 
 hundreds of thousands of clerks; going out from our fac- 
 tories hundreds of thousands of operatives ; there are going 
 out of our colleges hundreds of thousands of students ; there 
 are going out of our fields hundreds of thousands of hus- 
 bandmen, to join the ranks of death. They are fighting 
 their way down. They storm and take every impediment 
 put in their way ; and who will throw himself in the way 
 of this stampede of dying men and women — who? — crying, 
 "Halt! halt!" If there be eio-ht hundred millions of the 
 
808 THE DYING NEED OF TEE CHURCH. 
 
 race unblessed, and tlie cliurches average two souls saved 
 in a year, will you let this generation go down, and the 
 next, and the next? 
 
 Is it not time for something desperate? Inanimate so- 
 licitation will not do. They will not stop for that. You 
 need a momentum gathered by a whole night's wrestle 
 with the omnipotent God. Oh, these dying souls! these 
 dying souls ! What shall we say to them ? What shall 
 we do for them? Catch them before they make the last 
 spring. Put down every thing else, and run for their res- 
 cue. To-morrow may be too late. To-night may be too 
 late. Three o'clock this afternoon may be too late. Now 
 reach over the pew and seize that soul before it flashes out 
 of your sight forever. Their house is on fire, and no lad- 
 der to the window. Their ship is going down, and no life- 
 boat. O men and women of God, awake !' awake ! Fly ! 
 fly! Death! death! Judgment! judgment! Ileaven ! 
 heaven ! Hell ! hell ! Oh that all rewards and punish- 
 ments, all joys and sorrows, and the agonizing and raptur- 
 ous vociferation of three worlds would arouse 3'ou to-day ! 
 The death-knell of a great multitude of souls is tolling now, 
 and your hand is on the rope. O God ! flame upon us 
 these overwhelming realities! Kill our stolidity. Knock 
 from under us our couches of ease. Consume our indiffer- 
 ence, and throw us into the battle. An eternity of work 
 — an eternity of work to do in ten years. Ay, perhaps in 
 one year, perhaps in one month, perhaps in one da}'', per- 
 haps in one hour, perhaps in one minute, perhaps in one 
 second, and this the last. But no one drops down, and so 
 I think God is going to spare us to wake up out of our in- 
 dolence and realize the truth that the dying need of tho 
 Church to-day is a great awakening. 
 
THE DYING NEED OF THE CHURCH. • 809 
 
 I need not rehearse in this presence what God has done 
 for us as an individual church. You have heard with 
 your own ears the cries for mercy, and you have seen the 
 raining tears of repentance, for the last eighteen months, 
 I do not believe that there is any church in this land that 
 owes God more of gratitude than this church owes him to- 
 day. But who can count the number of our permanent 
 congregation who are not Christians? And what about 
 the eighty or one hundred thousand souls of strangers that, 
 during the last year, floated in and out our assemblages? 
 and what about the eternity of those who are now, and will 
 be this year, in our permanent congregation, and the eighty 
 or one hundred thousand souls that during this cominsr 
 twelve months will float in and out our services, and the 
 vaster audience to whom this church preaches week by 
 week on both sides of the sea through the Christian print- 
 ing-press? Oh, I feel as if I should sink down, sometimes, 
 I feel almost wild with the sense of responsibility. Shall I 
 meet them at the last, and I know I have not half done my 
 duty? Shall you meet them at the last, and I know that 
 you have not done yours? fathers and mothers, broth- 
 ers and sisters in Jesus Christ, we must get on faster than 
 this! We want not so much a shower of blessings as a 
 deluge ; not so much a regiment as a phalanx, as a battal- 
 ion. Can you get it? Yes. Nothing conjectural about 
 it ; nothing adventitious about it. Yes, if you will pray for 
 it, and toil for it, and be sure it is coming. If John Liv- 
 ingston, in a small church, in one service had five hundred 
 souls brought to God, why may you not, in a larger church, 
 have three thousand souls as easily as he had five hun- 
 dred ? It is the same Gospel. John Livingston did not 
 save them. It is the same Holy Ghost. It is the same 
 
310 - THE DYING NEED OF TUE CHURCH. 
 
 great Jebovali. If John Knox could put the lever of 
 prayer under Scotland until be moved it from end to end, 
 shall you not by the lever of importunate petition move 
 this whole city of Brooklyn, from the East Eiver to New 
 Utrecht, and from New Utrecht to Hunter's Point? God 
 can do, and he will do, it, if you mightily and relentlessly 
 ask him to do it. Oh, fling body, mind, and soul, and eter- 
 nal destiny into this one thing. Swing out and enlarge in 
 your prayerful expectations. You asked God for hundreds 
 of souls, and he gave them to you ; and I sometimes heard 
 you ask for thousands ; and 1 am very certain that if you 
 asked for thousands with the same faith that you had asked 
 for hundreds, God would have given you thousands. There 
 is no need, in this presence, of bringing the old stereotyped 
 illustrations of the fact that God hears prayer, nor telling 
 you about Ilezekiah's restored health, and about Elijah 
 and the great rain, and about the post-mortem examination 
 of the apostle James, which found that his knees had be- 
 come callous by much praying ; nor of Richard Baxter, wdio 
 stained the walls of his study with the breath of pra3'er ; 
 nor of John Welch and the midnight plaid ; nor of George 
 AVhitcfield flat on his face before God. No need of my 
 telling you these things. I turn in on your own conscious- 
 ness, and I review the memory of that time when your 
 own soul was sinking, and God heard j^'our cry ; and of 
 that time when your child was dying, and God heard your 
 petition ; and of that time when 3'our fortune failed, and 
 God set in your empty pantry the cruse of oil and the 
 measure of meal. I want no illustration at all. I just take 
 a ladder with three rungs, and set it down at your feet. 
 Oh that you would mount it, and, if you will look off, 
 sec the salvation of ten thousand of your fellow- citizens. 
 
THE DYING NEED OF THE CHURCH. 311 
 
 "Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; 
 knock, and it shall be opened unto you." Put your right 
 foot on the lower rung of that ladder, and your left on the 
 second rung of it, and that will bring 3'our right foot on 
 the top rung. Then hold fast, and look out and see the 
 wave of the Divine blessing dashing higher than the top- 
 gallants of your shipping. Oh yes, God is ready to hear. 
 
 I think the Lord puts on us, as a Church, a great re- 
 sponsibility. We set our hands to the work of evangeliza- 
 tion. We are doing nothing else here. We do not want 
 to do any thing else here but this work of evangelization ; 
 that is, we want to bring men and women to Christ, and 
 bring them now. 
 
 I do not know how you feel, my brethren, but my heart 
 is breaking with a longing that I have for the redemption 
 of this people. If God does not give me my prayer, I 
 can not endure it. I offer myself, I offer my life, to this 
 work. Take it, Lord Jesus! and slay me if that be best. 
 Whether by my life or by my death, may a great multi- 
 tude of souls here be born to God. If from the mound of 
 my grave more can step into tlie kingdom of God than 
 through my life, let me now lie down to the last sleep. 
 But only let the people be saved. Lord Jesus, it is sweet 
 to live for thee; methinks it would be sweet to die for 
 thee. If in the Napoleonic wars six millions fell; if in the 
 wars of the Roman empire one hundred and eighty mill- 
 ions fell, shall there not be a great many in our day who 
 are willing to sacrifice, not only worldly ambition, but sac- 
 rifice all for Christ ? I wish we knew how to pra3\ I do 
 not. I mean the prayer that always brings the blessing. 
 I wish we might be so overborne with anxiety for the sal- 
 vation of men that from ten o'clock at nioht until six 
 
312 THE DYING NEED OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 o'clock in the morning sleep would fly from our e3'elicls. 
 Oh for a whole night of prayer! I have a notion to try 
 it. I will try it. Will you? Shall it be to-night, or to- 
 morrow night, or the next night? If there come to your 
 soul such a night as that — a sleepless night, because full of 
 prayer to God for his blessing on your own soul and on 
 the souls of others — then, let there be mourning that night. 
 Break forth into weeping that night over your sins. O 
 Church of God, cry aloud for mercy on your own souls and 
 on the souls of others. Let there be wailing, wailing, wail- 
 ing. Let there be shouting, shouting, shouting. But, lest 
 God may not leave us a night for praj^er ; lest, before the 
 setting of this day's sun, our account be made up, let us now 
 go down so low before God that there shall be no lower 
 depth of humiliation. Oh for a blood-red prayer that will 
 bow the heavens, and make all the unforgiven souls in this 
 house surrender just now to the bleeding, groaning, dying 
 Jesus — a blessing that shall shake this house as by tempest 
 and earthquake ! To your knees, to your knees, ye who 
 know how to pray. But I can not lead you in such a 
 ])raycr as that. Let every one pray for himself. Let the 
 prayer be in silence, God only hearing. Every one pray- 
 ing for himself and praying for others, that even now the 
 cloud of mercy may drop. Hush ! all the voices. Let it 
 be silent prayer! 
 
rimr fhom the palace winbow. 313 
 
 VIEW FROM THE PALACE WINDOW. 
 
 "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preaclier ; all is vanity." — Ecclesiastes 
 xii., 8, 
 
 WHEN a book is placed in your hands, the first ques- 
 tion you ask is, "Who wrote it?" Not all the po- 
 litical astuteness and classic grace and unparalleled satire 
 of " Junius's Letters" can satisfy j^ou, because you do not 
 know who Junius was — whether John Home Tooke, or 
 Bishop Butler, or Edmund Burke. Mightier than a book 
 always is the man who wrote the book. 
 
 Now, who is the author of this text? King Solomon. 
 It seemed as if the world exhausted itself on that man. It 
 wove its brightest flowers into his garland. It set its rich- 
 est gems in his coronet. It pressed the rarest wine to his 
 lip. It robed him in the purest purple and embroidery. 
 It cheered him with the sweetest music in that land of 
 harps. It greeted him with the gladdest laughter that 
 ever leaped from mirth's lip. It sprinkled his cheek with 
 spray from the brightest fountains. Eoyalty had no do- 
 minion, wealth no luxury, gold no glitter, flowers no sweet- 
 ness, song no melody, light no radiance, upholstery no gor- 
 geousness, waters no gleam, birds no plumage, prancing 
 coursers no mettle, architecture no grandeur, but it was 
 all his. Across the thick grass of the lawn, fragrant with 
 tufts of camphire from En-gedi, fell the long shadows of 
 trees brought from distant forests. Fish -pools, fed by 
 artificial channels that brought the streams from hills far 
 
 14 
 
314 VIEW FROM THE PALACE WIXDOW. 
 
 away, were perpetually ruffled with fins, and golden scales 
 shot from water-cave to water-cave with endless dive and 
 swirl, attracting the gaze of foreign potentates. Birds that 
 had been brought from foreign aviary glanced and flut- 
 tered among the foliage, and called to their mates far be- 
 yond the sea. From the royal stables there came up the 
 neighing of twelve thousand horses, standing in blankets 
 of Tyrian purple, chewing their bits over troughs of gold, 
 waiting for the king's order to be brought out in front of 
 the palace, when the official dignitaries would leap into the 
 saddle for some grand parade, or, harnessed to some of the 
 fourteen hundred chariots of the king, the fiery chargers, 
 with flaunting mane and throbbing nostril, would make 
 the earth jar with the tramp of hoofs and the thunder of 
 wheels. While within and without the palace j'ou could 
 not think of a single luxury that could be added or of a 
 single splendor that could be kindled, down on the banks 
 of the sea the dry -docks of Ezion-geber rang with the 
 hammers of the shipwrights who were constructing larger 
 vessels for a still wider commerce; for all lands and climes 
 were to be robbed to make up Solomon's glor}'. No rest 
 till his keels shall cut every sea, his axemen hew every 
 forest, his archers strike every rare wing, his fishermen 
 whip every stream, his merchants trade in every bazaar, 
 his name be honored by every tribe ; and royalty shall have 
 no dominion, wealth no luxury, gold no glitter, song no 
 melody, light no radiance, waters no gleam, birds no plum- 
 age, prancing coursers no mettle, upholstery no gorgeous- 
 ness, architecture no grandeur, but it was all his. 
 
 "Well," you say, "if there is any man happy, he ought 
 to be." But I hear him coming out through the palace, 
 and sec his robes actually incrusted with jewels, as he 
 
VIEW FROM THE PALACE WINDOW. 815 
 
 Stands in the front and looks out upon tlie vast domain. 
 What does he say? King Solomon, great is your domin- 
 ion, great is your honor, great is your joy? No. While 
 standing there amidst all that splendor, the tears start, and 
 his heart breaks, and he exclaims, "Vanity of vanities; all 
 is vanity." What! Solomon not happy yet? No, not 
 happy. 
 
 I learn from this subject, in the first place, that official 
 position will never (jive solace to a man''s soul. I know there 
 have been very happy men in high positions, such as Wil- 
 . berforce, as Theodore Frelinghuysen, as Governor Briggs, 
 as Prince Albert. But the joy came not from their ele- 
 vated position; it came from the Lord God, whom they 
 had tried to serve. This man Solomon was king thirty- 
 five years. All the pleasure that comes from palatial resi- 
 dence, from the flattery of foreign diplomates, from univer- 
 sal sycophancy, gathered around him. For a long while 
 liis throne stood firm and the people were loyal ; and yet 
 hear his awful sigh of disheartenment in the vi^ords of my 
 text. How many people in all ages have made the same 
 experiment with the same failure! How often you see 
 people who think, "If I could only get in this or that po- 
 sition — if I could be a mayor, or a governor, or a senator, 
 or a president, I should be perfectly happy !" And they 
 have gone on, climbing from one position to another, never 
 finding the solace they anticipated. 
 
 Ask the men who have gone through the political life 
 of the last forty years, in their old days, what they think 
 of the honors of this world, and they will tell you, "Ashes! 
 ashes !" An old man told me some time ago that he called 
 at the White House just before the expiration of the second 
 term of President Jackson. He sent a message in ; the 
 
316 VIEW FliOM THE PALACE WINDOW. 
 
 President came not. He sent a second time, and a tbird 
 time. After a while tlie President came out in great in- 
 dignation, and said, "Gentlemen, people envy me in this 
 White Ilouse, and the}'- long to get here ; but I tell you, at 
 the end of the second term, I am glad to get out of it, for 
 it is a perfect hell." The honors and the emoluments of 
 this world bring so many cares with them, that they bring 
 also torture and disquietude. Pharaoh sits on one of the 
 highest earthly eminences, yet he is miserable because 
 there are some people in his realm that do not want any 
 longer to make bricks. The head of Edward I. aches un- 
 der his crown because the people will not pay the taxes, 
 and Llewellyn, Prince of Wales, will not do him homage, 
 and Wallace will be a hero. Frederick William III. of 
 Prussia is miserable because France wants to take the 
 Prussian provinces. The world is not large enough for 
 Louis XIV. and William III. The ghastliest suffering, 
 the most shriveling fear, the most rending jealousies, the 
 most gigantic disquietude, have walked amidst obsequious 
 courtiers, and been clothed in royal apparel, and sat on 
 jndgmcnt-seats of power. 
 
 Honor and truth and justice can not go so higb up in 
 authority as to be beyond the range of human assault. 
 The pure and the good in all ages have been execrated by 
 the mob who cry out, " Not this man, but Barabbas. Now, 
 Barabbas was a robber." By patriotic devotion, by hon- 
 esty, by Christian principle, I would have you, my hearers, 
 seek for the favor and the confidence of your fellow-men; 
 but do not look upon some high position in society as 
 though that were 'always sunshine. The mountains of 
 earthly honor are like the mountains of Switzerland, cov- 
 ered with perpetual ice and snow. Having obtained the 
 
VIEW FROM THE PALACE WINDOW. 317 
 
 confidence and the love of your associates, be content with 
 such things as you have. You brought nothing into the 
 world, and it is very certain you can carry nothing out, 
 " Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils." 
 There is an honor that is worth possessing, but it is an 
 honor that comes from God. This day rise up and take it. 
 *' Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed 
 upon us, that we should be called the sons of God." Who 
 aspires not for that royalty? Come now, and be kings 
 and priests unto God and the Lamb forever. 
 
 Still farther, I learn from my subject that u-orldhj wealth 
 can not satisfy the souTs longing. The more money a man 
 has, the better, if he gets it honestly and uses it lawfully. 
 The whole teaching of the Word of God has a tendency to 
 create those kinds of habits and that kind of mental acu- 
 men which lead on to riches. A man who talks against 
 wealth as though it were a bad thing is either a knave or 
 a fool, not meaning what he says, or ignorant of the glori- 
 ous uses to which money can be put. But the man who 
 builds his soul's happiness on earthly accumulation is not 
 at all wise, to put it in the. faintest shape. To say that 
 Solomon was a millionaire gives but a very imperfect idea 
 of the property he inherited from David, his father. He 
 had at his command gold to the value of six hundred and 
 eighty million pounds, and he had silver to the value of 
 one billion twenty-nine million three hundred and seventy- 
 seven pounds sterling. The Queen of Sheba made him 
 a nice little present of seven hundred and twenty thou- 
 sand pounds, and Hiram made him a present of the same 
 amount. If he had lost the value of a whole realm out of 
 his pocket, it would have hardly been worth his while to 
 stoop down and pick it up ; and yet, with all that affluence, 
 
318 VIEW FROM THE PALACE WINDOW. 
 
 he writes tbe words of my text, "Vanity of vanities; all is 
 vanity." Alas ! if that man could not find in all his world- 
 ly possessions enough to satisfy his immortal soul, no 
 amount that you and I will ever gather by the sweat of 
 our brow, or by the strength of our arm, will make us 
 happy. 
 
 I have been amused to hear people, when they start in 
 life, say at what point in life they will be contented with 
 worldly possessions. One man says, "I want to get twen- 
 ty thousand dollars, and I will be satisfied." Another, "I 
 want to get fifty or a hundred thousand, or a million, and 
 then I will be satisfied. Then I will say to my soul, ' Now, 
 just look at that block of store-houses. Just look at those 
 Government securities. Just look at those bonds and mort- 
 gages. Just look what lucrative investments you have. 
 Now, my soul, take thine ease ; eat, drink, and be merry 1' " 
 Thou fool ! If you are not happy now with the smaller 
 possessions, 3'ou will never be with the larger possessions. 
 If with decent and comely apparel you are not grateful to 
 God, you would be ungrateful if you had a prince's ward- 
 robe crowded till the hinges burst. If you sat this morn- 
 ing at your table, and the fare was so poor that you com- 
 plained, you would not be satisfied though you sat down 
 to partridge and pine-apple. If you are not contented 
 with an income to support comfortably your household, 
 you would not be contented though your income rolled in 
 on you fifty or a hundred thousand dollars a year. 
 
 It is not what we get, it is what we are, that makes us 
 happy or miserable. If that is not so, how do you account 
 for the fact that many of those who fare sumptuously 
 every day are waspish, and dissatisfied, and overbearing, 
 and foreboding, and crankj^, and uncompromising; with 
 
VIEW FR OM TUE PAL A CE WIND OW. 819 
 
 a countenance in which wrath always lowers, and a lip 
 which scorn curls; while many a time in the summer 
 even-tide you see a laboring man going home in his shirt- 
 sleeves, with a pail on his arm and a pick-axe over his 
 shoulder, his face bright with smiles, and his heart with 
 hope, and the night of his toil bright with flaming auroras? 
 It is an illustration and proof of the fact that it is not out- 
 ward condition that makes a man happ3\ 
 
 Oh, I wish this morning I could, by the power of the 
 Lord Ahuighty, break the infatuation of those men who 
 are neglecting the present sources of satisfaction, hoping 
 that there is to be something in the future for them of a 
 worldly nature that will satisfy their souls. The heart 
 right, all is right. The heart wrong, all is wrong. But I 
 ask you to higher riches; to crowns that never fade; to in- 
 vestments that always declare dividends. Come up this 
 day and get it — the riches of God's pardon, the riches of 
 God's mercy, the riches of God's peace. Blessed are all 
 they who put their trust in him. 
 
 I go still further, and learn from this subject that learn- 
 ing and science can not satisfy the soul. You know that 
 Solomon was one of the largest contributors to the litera- 
 ture of his day. lie wrote one thousand and five songs. 
 He wrote three thousand proverbs. He wrote about al- 
 most every thing. The Bible says distinctly he wrote 
 about plants, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that 
 groweth out of the wall, and about birds and beasts and 
 fishes. No doubt he put off his ro3^al robes, and put on 
 hunter's trapping, and went out with his arrows to bring 
 down the rarest specimens of birds ; and then with his 
 fishing apparatus he went down to the stream to bring up 
 the denizens of the deep, and plunged into the forest and 
 
320 VIEW FIi03f THE PALACE WIXDO^y. 
 
 found the rarest specimens of flowers; and then be came 
 back to his study and wrote books about zoology, the sci- 
 ence of animals; about ichthyology, the science of fishes; 
 about ornithology, the science of birds ; about botany, the 
 science of plants. Yet, notwithstanding all his achieve- 
 ments, he cries out in my text, " Yanity of vanities ; all is 
 vanity." 
 
 Have you ever seen a man try to make learning and 
 science his God ? Did you ever know such a fearful auto- 
 biography as that of John Stuart Mill, a man who prided 
 himself on his philosophy, and had a wonderful strength 
 of intellect; yet now, after his death, his autobiography 
 goes forth to the world, showing that his whole life was a 
 gigantic wretchedness. We have seen men go out with 
 mineralogist's hammer, and geologist's pry, and botanist's 
 knife, and ornithologist's gun, and storm the kingdom of 
 nature in her barred castles of cave and grove and forest; 
 and if there is any heaven on earth, it is that. With your 
 eyes prepared for all beautiful sights, and 3^our ears for all 
 sweet sounds, and your soul for all great thoughts, if you 
 go forth in the place where God breathes in the aroma of 
 flowers, and talks in the wind's rustlincr, and sino-s in the 
 roar of forest and mountain cataract, then you know V\^hy 
 Linna3us spent his life amidst plants, and Cuvier found in- 
 telligent converse among beasts, and Werner grew exhil- 
 arant among minerals, and Audubon reveled among birds, 
 and Agassiz found untraveled worlds of thought in a fish. 
 But every man who has testified, after trying the learning 
 and science of the world for a solace, testified that it is 
 an insufficient portion. The philosopher has often wept in 
 astronomer's observatory and chemist's laboratory'- and bot- 
 anist's herbarium. There are times when the soul dives 
 
Vlliyr FROM THE PALACE WINDOW. 321 
 
 deeper than the fish, and soars higher than the bird, and, 
 though it may be enraptured with the beauties of the nat- 
 ural world, it will long after trees of life that never wither, 
 and fountains that never dry up, and stars that shall shine 
 after the glories of our earthly nights have gone out for- 
 ever. 
 
 Oh, what discontents, what jealousies, what uncontrolla- 
 ble hate have sprung up among those who depended upon 
 their literary success! How often have writers, with their 
 pens plunged into the hearts of their rivals— pens sharp- 
 er than cimeters, striking deeper than bayonets! Voltaire 
 hated Eousseau. Charles Lamb could not endure Cole- 
 ridge. Waller warred against Cowle3\ The hatred of 
 Plato and Xenophon is as immortal as their works. Cor- 
 neille had an utter contempt for Eacine. Have you ever 
 been in Westminster Abbey ? In the " Poet's Corner," in 
 Westminster Abbey, sleep Drayton the poet; and a little 
 way off, Goldie, who said the former was not a poet. 
 There sleep Dryden ; and a little way off, poor Shadwell, 
 who pursued him with fiend's fury. There is Pope ; and a 
 little way off is John Dennis, his implacable enemy. They 
 never before came so near together without quarreling! 
 Byron had all that genius could give a man, and that sym- 
 pathy with nature could give a man, and that literary ap- 
 plause could give a man, and yet died in wretchedness. 
 
 I come to learn one more lesson from my subject, and 
 that is that there is no comfort in the life of a voluptuary. I 
 dare not draw aside the curtain that hides the excesses 
 into which Solomon's dissoluteness plunged him. Though 
 he waved a sceptre over others, there arose in his own 
 soul a tyrant that mastered him. With a mandate that 
 none dared disobey, be laid the whole land under tribute 
 
 14* 
 
322 VIEW FROM THE PALACE WIXI>OW. 
 
 to his iniquit3\ Delilah sheared the locks of that Samson. 
 From that princely seraglio there went forth a ruinous 
 blight on the whole nation's chastity ; but after a while 
 remorse, with feet of fire, leaped upon his soul, and with 
 body exhausted and loathsome and dropping apart with 
 putrefaction, he staggers out from the hell of his own in- 
 iquity to give warning to others. Oh, how many have 
 ventured out on that wild sea of sensuality, driven by fierce 
 winds of passion, hurled against rocks, swallowed in the 
 whirl of hell's maelstrom ! That was the last of them. No ! 
 that was not the last of them. Everlastingly ruined, with 
 their passions unsubdued, and burning on the soul more 
 fiercely than unquenchable fire, they shall writhe in a tor- 
 ture that shall make the cheek of darkness pale, and utter a 
 blasphemy that shall shock devils damned. Oh, how many 
 young men have gone on that path of sin because it seemed 
 blooming with tropical splendor, and the sky was bright, 
 and the air was balm, and from the castles that stood on 
 the shore of glittering seas there came ringing up laughter 
 as merry as the waves that dashed on the crags beneath ! 
 By some infernal spell their eye was blinded and their ear 
 was stopped, or they would have heard the clank of chains 
 and the howl of woe, and across their vision would have 
 passed spectres of the dead, with shrouds gathered up 
 about faces blistered with pain, and eyes starting from 
 their sockets in agony. But, alas! they saw it not, they 
 heard it not, until from the slippery places the long, lean, 
 skeleton hands of despair reached up and snatched them 
 down, destroyed without remedy ! lias this sorcerer cast 
 its eye on you ? O j'oung man ! have you been once and 
 again to the places where the pure never go? Have you 
 turned your back upon a mother's prayer and a sister's 
 
VIEW FE03I THE PALACE WINDOW. 823 
 
 love? and, while I speak, does your conscience begin to 
 toll dismally the burial of your purity and honor? 
 
 Put back now or never. Put back ! That shadow that 
 falls upon your soul is from no passing cloud, but from a 
 night deep, starless, eternal. God's eye watcheth thy foot- 
 steps. A little farther on, and no tears can wash out thy 
 sin, and no prayer will bring a pardon. Put back now or 
 never ! I tear off the garlands which hide this death's 
 head, and hold before you to-day the reeking skull of sin- 
 ful pleasure. Nations have gone down under this sin. 
 Exhumed cities on broken pillars and on temple walls have 
 preserved in infamous sculpture the memory of scenes 
 before which the antiquarian turns his head, and asks if 
 there be a God where so long has slept his vengeance. 
 The world still trembles under the weight of this behemoth 
 of iniquity, and, from the myriad graves in which it holds 
 the scarred carcasses of the slain, lifts up its hands, crying, 
 "How long, O Lord, how long?" From Christian circles, 
 from the very altars of God, the ranks of ruin are made up. 
 They march on with scorched feet over a pathway of fire, 
 the ground trembling with earthquake, and the air hot 
 wath the breath of woe, and sulphurous with the fleet light- 
 nings of God's wrath. Scorpions strike out at every step, 
 and the "worm that never dies" lifts its awful crest, with 
 horrid folds to crush the debauched. Oh, there is no peace 
 in the life of a voluptuary! Solomon answers, "None! 
 none!" 
 
 But, my friends, if there is no complete satisfaction in 
 worldly office, in worldly wealth, in worldly learning, in 
 sinful indulgence — where is there any ? Has God turned 
 us out on a desert to die ? Ah no ; look at this One that 
 comes this morning — this fair one. Immortal garlands on 
 
324 VIEW FliOM THE PALACE WINDOW. 
 
 her brow. The song of heaven bursting from her lips! 
 " Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are 
 peace." In Christ is peace. In Christ is pardon. In 
 Christ is everlasting joy, and nowhere else. 
 
 "Substantial comfort will not grow 
 In nature's barren soil ; 
 All we can boast, till Christ we know, 
 Is vanity and toil. 
 
 "But where the Lord has planted grace, 
 And made his glories known, 
 There fruits of heavenly joy and peace 
 Are found, and tiiere alone." 
 
PAUL'S YALEDICTOEY. 325 
 
 PAUL'S YALEDICTOEY. 
 
 "The time of my depaituie is at band." — 2 Timothy iv., G. 
 
 THE way out of this world is so blocked up with coffin 
 and hearse, and undertaker's spade and screw-driver, 
 that the Christian can hardly think as he ought of the most 
 cheerful passage in all his history. "We hang black instead 
 of white over the place where the good man gets his last 
 victory. We stand weeping over a heap of chains which 
 the freed soul has shaken off, and we say, " Poor man ! 
 What a pity it was he had to come to this!" Come to 
 what ? By the time the people have assembled at the ob- 
 sequies, that man has been three days so happy that all the 
 joy of earth accumulated would be wretchedness beside it, 
 and he might better weep over you because j'ou have to 
 stay, than you weep over him because he has to go. It is 
 a fortunate thing that a good man does not have to wait to 
 see his own obsequies, they would be so discordant with 
 his own experience. If the Israelites should go back to 
 Egypt and mourn over the brick-kilns they once left, they 
 would not be any more silly than that Christian who should 
 forsake heaven and come down and mourn because he had 
 to leave this world. Our ideas of the Christian's death are 
 morbid and sickly. We look upon it as a dark hole in 
 which a man stumbles when his breath gives out. This 
 whole subject is odorous with varnish and disinfectants, in- 
 stead of being sweet with mignonnette. Paul, in my text, 
 takes that great clod of a word " death," and throws it 
 
326 PAUL'S VALEDICTORY. 
 
 away, and speaks of his "departure" — a beautiful, bright, 
 suggestive word, descriptive of every Christian's release. 
 
 Now, departure implies a starting-place and a place of 
 destination. When Paul left this world, what was the 
 starting-point? It was a scene of great physical distress. 
 It was the Tullianum, the lower dungeon of the Mamertine 
 prison. The top dungeon was bad enough, it having no 
 means of ingress or egress but through an opening in the 
 top. Through that the prisoner was lowered, and through 
 that came all the food and air and light received. It was 
 a terrible place, that upper dungeon ; but the Tullianum 
 was the lower dungeon, and that was still more wretched, 
 the only light and the only air coming through the roof, 
 and that roof the floor of the upper dungeon. That was 
 Paul's last earthly residence. It was a dungeon just six 
 feet and a half high. It was a doleful place. It had the 
 chill of long centuries of dampness. It was filthy with the 
 long incarcerations of miserable wretches. It was there 
 that Paul spent his last days on earth, and it is there that 
 I see him to-day, in the fearful dungeon, shivering, blue 
 with the cold, waiting for that old overcoat which he had 
 sent for up to Troas, and which they had not yet sent 
 down, notwithstanding he had written for it. 
 
 If some skillful surgeon should go into that dungeon 
 where Paul is incarcerated, we might find out what are 
 the prospects of Paul's living through the rough imprison- 
 ment. In the first place, he is an old man, only two years 
 short of sevent3^ At that very time when he most needs 
 the warmth and the sunlight and the fresh air, he is shut 
 out from the sun. What are those scars on his ankles? 
 Why, those were gotten when he was fast, his feet in the 
 stocks. Every time he turned, the flesh on his ankles 
 
PAUL'S VALEDICTORY. 827 
 
 started. What are those scars on his back ? You know 
 he was whipped five times, each time getting thirtj'^-nine 
 strokes — one hundred and ninety-five bruises on the back 
 (count them !) made by the Jews with rods of elm-wood, 
 each one of the one hundred and ninety-five strokes bring- 
 ing the blood. Look at Paul's face and look at his arms. 
 Where did he get those bruises? I think it was when he 
 was struggling ashore amidst the shivered timbers of the 
 shipwreck. I see a gash in Paul's side. Where did he 
 get that? I think he got that in the tussle with highway- 
 men, for he had been in peril of robbers, and he had mon- 
 ey of his own. He was a mechanic as well as an apostle, 
 and I think the tents he made were as good as his sermons. 
 There is a wanness about Paul's looks. What makes 
 that? I think a part of that came from the fact that he 
 was for twenty-four hours on a plank in the Mediterranean 
 Sea, suffering terribly, before he was rescued; for he says 
 positively, " I was a night and a day in the deep." Oh, 
 worn-out, emaciated old man ! surely you must be melan- 
 choly : no constitution could endure this and be cheerful. 
 But I press my way through the prison until I come up 
 close to where he is, and by the faint light that streams 
 through the opening I see on his face a supernatural joy, 
 and I bow before him, and I saj^, "Aged man, how can 
 you keep cheerful amidst all this gloom"?" His voice star- 
 tles the darkness of the place as he cries out, "I am now 
 ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at 
 hand." Hark! what is that shuffling of feet in the upper 
 dungeon ? Why, Paul has an invitation to a banquet, and 
 he is going to dine to-day with the king. Those shuffling 
 feet are the feet of the executioners. They come, and they 
 cry down through the hole of the dungeon, "Hurry up, 
 
328 PAUL'S VALEDICTORY. 
 
 old man. Come now ; get yourself ready." Why, Paul 
 was ready. lie had nothing to pack up. He had no bag- 
 gage to take. He had been ready a good while. I see 
 him rising up, and straightening out his stiffened limbs, 
 and pushing back his white hair from his creviced fore- 
 head, and see him looking up through the hole in the roof 
 of the dungeon into the face of his executioner, and hear 
 him say, "I am now ready to be offered, and the time of 
 my departure is at hand." Then they lift him out of the 
 dungeon, and they start with him to the place of execu- 
 tion. They say, "Hurry along, old man, or you will feel 
 the weight of our spear. Hurry along." "How far is it," 
 says Paul, "we have to travel?" "Three miles." Three 
 miles is a good way for an old man to travel after he has 
 been whipped and crippled with maltreatment. But they 
 soon get to the place of execution — Acquae Salvia — and 
 he is fastened to the pillar of martyrdom. It does not 
 take any strength to tie him fast. He makes no resist- 
 ance. O Paul! why not now strike for your life? You 
 have a great many friends here. With that withered 
 hand just launch the thunder-bolt of the people upon those 
 infamous soldiers. No! Paul was not going to interfere 
 with his own coronation. He was too glad to go. I see 
 him looking up in the face of his executioner, and, as the 
 grim official draws the sword, Paul calmly says, "I am 
 now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is 
 at hand." But I put my hand over my eyes. I want not 
 to see that last struggle. One sharp, keen stroke, and 
 Paul docs go to the banquet, and Paul does dine with the 
 King. 
 
 What a transition it was ! From the malaria of Eome to 
 the finest climate in all the universe — the zone of eternal 
 
PAUL'S VALEDICTORY. 829 
 
 beauty and Lealth. His asLes were put in the catacombs 
 of Rome, but in one moment the air of heaven bathed from 
 his soul the last ache. From shipwreck, from dungeon, 
 from the biting pain of the elm-wood rods, from the sharp 
 sword of the headsman, he goes into the most brilliant as- 
 semblage of heaven, a king among kings, multitudes of the 
 sainthood rushing out and stretching forth hands of wel- 
 come ; for I do really think that as on the right hand of 
 God is Christ, so on the right hand of Christ is Paul, the 
 second great in heaven. 
 
 He changed kings likewise. Before the hour of death, 
 and np to the last moment, he was under Nero, the thick- 
 necked, the cruel-eyed, the filthy-lipped ; the sculptured feat- 
 ures of that man bringing down to us to this very day the 
 horrible possibilities of his nature — seated as be was amidst 
 pictured marbles of Egypt, under a roof adorned with 
 mother-of-pearl, in a dining-room which by machinery was 
 kept whirling day and night with most bewitching magnif- 
 icence ; his horses standing in stalls of solid gold, and the 
 grounds around his palace lighted at night by its victims, 
 who had been bedaubed with tar and pitch and then set on 
 fire to illumine the darkness. That was Paul's king. But 
 the next moment he goes into the realm of Him whose 
 reign is love, and whose courts are paved with love, and 
 whose throne is set on pillars of love, and whose sceptre is 
 adorned with jewels of love, and whose palace is lighted 
 with love, and whose lifetime is an eternity of love. When 
 Paul was leaving so much on this side the pillar of mar- 
 tyrdom to gain so much on the other side, do you wonder 
 at the cheerful valedictory of the text, "The time of my 
 departure is at hand ?" 
 
 Now, why can not all the old people of my congregation 
 
330 PAUL'S VALEDICTORY. 
 
 Lfive the same holy glee as that aged man had ? Charles I., 
 when he was combing his head, found a gray hair, and he 
 sent it to the queen as a great joke ; but old age is really no 
 joke at all. For the last forty years you have been dread- 
 ing that which ought to have been an exhilaration. You 
 say you most fear the struggle at the moment the soul and 
 body part. But millions have endured that moment, and 
 why may not we as well? They got through with it, and 
 so can w^e. Besides this, all medical men agree in saying 
 that there is probably no struggle at all at the last moment 
 — not so much pain as the prick of a pin, the seeming signs 
 of distress being altogether involuntary. But you say, " It 
 is the uncertainty of the future." Now, child of God, do 
 not play the infidel. After God has filled the Bible till it 
 can hold no more with stories of the good things ahead, 
 
 O O 7 
 
 better not talk about uncertainties. 
 
 But you sa}^, "I can not bear to think of parting from 
 friends here." If 3'ou are old, you have more friends in 
 heaven than here. Just take the census. Take some 
 large sheet of paper and begin to record the names of 
 those who have emigrated to the other shore; the com- 
 panions of your school-days, your early business associates, 
 the fi'iends of mid-life, and those who more recently went 
 away. Can it be that they have been gone so long you 
 do not care any more about them, and you do not want 
 their society'? Oh no. There have been daj'S when you 
 have felt that you could not endure it another moment 
 away from their blessed companionship. They have gone. 
 You say you would not like to bring them back to this 
 world of trouble, even if you had the power. It would 
 not do to trust you. God would not give yoxi. resurrection 
 power. Before to-morrow morning you would be rattling 
 
PAUL'S VALEDICTORY. 831 
 
 at the gates of the cemeteiy, crying to the departed, " Come 
 back to the cradle where you slept! come back to the hall 
 where you used to play ! come back to the table where 
 you used to sit!" and there would be a great burglary 
 ill heaven. No, no. God will not trust you with resur- 
 rection power; but he compromises the matter, and says, 
 "You can not bring them where you are, but 3'ou can go 
 where they are." They are more lovely now than ever. 
 Were they beautiful here, they are more beautiful there. 
 
 Besides that, it is more healthy there for j^ou than here, 
 aged man ; better climate there than these hot summers 
 and cold winters and late springs; better hearing; better 
 eye-sight; more tonic in the air; more perfume in the 
 bloom ; more sweetnessin the song. Do you not feel, nged 
 man, sometimes as though you would like to get your arm 
 and foot free? Do you not feel as though you would like 
 to throw away spectacles and canes and crutches? Would 
 you not like to feel the spring and elasticity and mirth of 
 an eternal boyhood? When the point at which you start 
 from this world is old age, and the point to which you go 
 is eternal juvenescence, aged man, clap your hands at the 
 anticipation, and say, in perfect rapture of soul, " The time 
 of my departure is at hand." 
 
 I remark, again, all those ought to feel this joy of the 
 text who have a holy curiosity to Jcnoiv ivhat is beyond this 
 earthly terminus. And who has not any curiosity about it? 
 Paul, I suppose, had the most satisfactory view of heaven, 
 and he says, "It doth not yet appear what we shall be." 
 It is like looking through a broken telescope: "Now we 
 see through a glass darkly." Can you tell me any thing 
 about that heavenly place ? You ask me a thousand ques- 
 tions about it that I can not answer. I ask you a thousand 
 
332 PAUrS VALEDICTOJRT. 
 
 questions about it that you can not answer. And do 3'ou 
 wonder tbat Paul was so glad when martyrdom gave hira 
 a chance to go over and make discoveries in that blessed 
 country ? 
 
 I hope some day, by the grace of God, to go over and 
 see for myself; but not now. No well man, no prospered 
 man, I think, wants to go now. But the time will come, 
 I think, when I shall go over. I want to see what they do 
 there, and I want to see how they do it. I do not want to 
 be looking through the gates ajar forever. I want them 
 to swing wide open. There are ten thousand things I 
 want explained — about you, about myself, about the gov- 
 ernment of this world, about God, about every thing. We 
 start in a plain path of what we know, and in a minute 
 come up against a high wall of what we do not know. I 
 wonder how it looks over there. Somebody tells me it 
 is like a paved city — paved with gold ; and another man 
 tells me it is like a fountain, and it is like a tree, and it is 
 like a triumphal procession ; and the next man I meet 
 tells me it is all figurative. I really want to know, after 
 the body is resurrected, what they wear and what they eat; 
 and I have an immeasurable curiosity to know what it is, 
 and how it is, and where it is. Columbus risked his life 
 to find this continent, and shall we shudder to go out on a 
 voyage of discovery which shall reveal a vaster and more 
 brilliant country ? John Franklin risked his life to find a 
 passage between icebergs, and shall we dread to find a pas- 
 sage to eternal summer? Men in Switzerland travel up 
 the heights of the Matterhorn with alpenstock, and guides, 
 and rockets, and ropes, and, getting half-way up, stumble and 
 fall down in a horrible massacre. They just wanted to say 
 they had been on the tops of those high peaks. And shall 
 
PAUL'S VALEDICTORY. 333 
 
 we fear to go out for tlie ascent of the eternal hills which 
 start a thousand miles beyond where stop the highest peaks 
 of the Alps, and when in that ascent there is no peril ? A 
 man doomed to die stepped on the scaffold, and said in 
 joy, " Now, in ten minutes I will know the great secret." 
 One minute after the vital functions ceased, the little child 
 that died last night in Montague Street knew more than 
 Jonathan Edwards, or St. Paul himself, before he died. 
 Friends, the exit from this world, or death, if you please to 
 call it, to the Christian is glorious explanation. It is dem- 
 onstration. It is illumination. It is sunburst. It is the 
 opening of all the windows. It is shutting up the cate- 
 chism of doubt, and the unrolling of all the scrolls of posi- 
 tive and accurate information. Instead of standing at the 
 foot of the ladder and looking np, it is standing at the top 
 of the ladder and looking down. It is the last mystery 
 taken out of botany, and geology, and astronomy, and the- 
 ology. Oh, will it not be grand to have all questions an- 
 swered? The perpetually recurring interrogation - point 
 changed for the mark of exclamation. All riddles solved. 
 Who will fear to go out on that discovery, when all the 
 questions are to be decided which we have been discussing 
 all our lives? Who shall not clap his hands in the antici- 
 pation of that blessed country, if it be no better than 
 through holy curiosity? crying, "The time of my depart- 
 ure is at hand." 
 
 I remark, again, we ought to have the joy of the text, 
 because, leaving this world, ive move into the best society of the 
 universe. You see a great crowd of people in some street, 
 and you say, " Who is passing there ? What general, 
 what prince is going up there?" Well, I see a great 
 throng in heaven. I say, "Who is the focus of all that 
 
33-i PAUL'S VALEDICTORY. 
 
 admiration? Who is the centre of that glittering com- 
 pany?" It is Jesus, the champion of all worlds, the favor- 
 ite of all ages. Do you know what is the first question 
 the soul will ask when it comes through the gate of heav- 
 en ? I think the first question will be, "Where is Jesus, 
 the Saviour that pardoned my sin ; that carried my sor- 
 rows; that fought my battles ; that won my victories?" O 
 radiant one! how I would like to see thee! thou of the 
 manger, but without its humiliations; thou of the cross, 
 but without its pangs; thou of the grave, but without its 
 darkness. 
 
 The Bible intimates that w^e will talk with Jesus in 
 heaven just as a brother talks with a brother. Now, what 
 will you ask him first? I do not know. I can think 
 what I would ask Paul first if I saw him in heaven. I 
 think I would like to hear him describe the storm that 
 came upon the ship when there were two hundred and 
 seventy-five souls on the vessel, Paul being the only man 
 on board cool enough to describe the storm. There is a 
 fascination about a ship and the sea that I never shall get 
 over, and I think I would like to hear him talk about that 
 first. But when I meet my Lord Jesus Christ, of what 
 shall J first delight to hear him speak? Now I think 
 what it is. I shall first want to hear the tragedy of his last 
 hours ; and then Luke's account of the crucifixion, and 
 Mark's account of the crucifixion, and John's account of 
 the crucifixion will be nothing, while from the living lips 
 of Christ the story shall be told of the gloom that fell, 
 and the devils that arose, and the fact that upon his en- 
 durance depended the rescue of a race ; and there was 
 darkness in the sky, and there w^as darkness in the soul, 
 and the pain became more sharp, and the burdens became 
 
PAUL'S VALEDICTOBT. 335 
 
 more heavy, until the mob began to swim away from the 
 dying vision of Christ, and the cursing of the mob came to 
 his ear more faintly, and his hands were fastened to the 
 horizontal piece of the cross, and his feet were fastened to 
 the perpendicular piece of the cross, and his head fell for- 
 ward in a SM'Oon as he uttered the last moan and cried, "It 
 is finished !" All heaven will stop to listen until the story 
 is done, and every harp will be put down, and every lip 
 closed, and all eyes fixed upon the divine narrator, until 
 the story is done ; and then, at the tap of the baton, the 
 eternal orchestra will rouse up ; finger on string of harp, 
 and lips to the mouth of trumpet, there shall roll forth the 
 oratorio of the Messiah, "Worthy is the Lamb that was 
 slain to receive blessing, and riches, and honor, and glory, 
 and power, world without end!" 
 
 "Wiiat He endureil, oh, who can tell, 
 To save our souls from death and hell !" 
 
 When there was between Paul and that magnificent 
 personage only the thinness of the sharp edge of the sword 
 of the executioner, do you wonder that he wanted to go? 
 O, my Lord Jesus, let one wave of that glory roll over 
 this auditory to-night! Hark! I hear the wedding-bells 
 of heaven ringing now\ The marriage of the Lamb has 
 come, and the bride hath made herself ready. I wish I 
 could take that word "death" and grind it to pieces, and 
 substitute in its place "departure" — "departure." The 
 word is just as appropriate for the sinner as it is for the 
 Christian. sinner ! when you do go, for what will you 
 depart? It can not be up the way Paul went, unless you 
 have Paul's Saviour. How long will your journey be ? 
 At what house will you stop? In what society will you 
 
336 PAUL'S VALEDICTORY. 
 
 mingle? What will be your destiny? Listen! Listen! 
 Again I hear the bells ringing; but it is a fire-bell tolling 
 for the conflagration that never goes out. I hear the 
 drums beating; but it is the funeral march of a soul. 
 "And there shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing of 
 teeth." 
 
 A man on the street was fatally injured, and was carried 
 into the nearest house. lie says, "I have often heard of 
 people who died unprepared, but I never thought I would 
 be one of them. What must I do to be saved ?" But be- 
 fore the answer came life was extinct. Death was depart- 
 ure for him ; but, oh ! for what place? 
 
HOXEY FROM A STEAXGE HIVE. 337 
 
 HONEY FROM A STRANGE HIYE. 
 
 "And, behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of the 
 lion." — Judges xiv., 8. 
 
 A GIANT, unarmed, is on his way to Timnath, Turn- 
 ing aside from tlie road and sauntering in the jungles, 
 suddenly a lion, with terrific roar, springs upon him. Seiz- 
 ing the uprearing monster by the jaws, with iron grip he 
 twists and wrenches them apart, leaving the lion dead by 
 the roadside. What the ordinary hunter does with trap, 
 and trained elephants, and armed band, and fire-arms skill- 
 fully aimed at the prey, this giant did with his two hands. 
 About a year after, going along by that place, he very 
 naturally turned aside to see the carcass of the lion he had 
 slain, A strange sight ! There were the bones, and honey 
 in the hollow of the skeleton. What a strange hive in 
 which to gather honey ! You might think it peculiar that 
 bees, which are the most cleanly of all insects, should select 
 such a place as that. Not strange at all. In that hot cli- 
 mate, and where there are so many other insects, in a few 
 days all marks of death and pollution have gone from the 
 carcass, and the skeleton is as pure and clean as the boxes 
 in which bees in our day gather the wealth of gardens and 
 meadows and orchards. It was a whole year after when 
 the giant came along, and out of the bleached skeleton got 
 that honey for himself and for his comrades. 
 
 Well, my friends, a lion has met you in the way — a lion 
 fiercer than that which, putting its mouth to the ground, 
 
 15 
 
338 HONEY FROM A STRANGE HIVE. 
 
 makes the Numidian jungle quake with its bellowing. 
 Some monster bereavement has come upon you, and with 
 merciless paw struck down your loved one, dragging him 
 off into the dark jungles of death. All unarmed, you felt 
 unable to cope with the grizzly, gaping, all-devouring mon- 
 ster ; but after you had prayed a while you rose in the 
 strength of God, and destroyed that monster trouble. You 
 snapped it in twain. You trampled it under your foot. 
 You left it by the roadside. And, coming along that way 
 to-day, you see that all the promises of God have swarmed 
 there, and the bleached skeleton of the slain monster is fill- 
 ed with honey from all the gardens of heaven. The jaws 
 of the monster that gaped upon you have become the hive 
 of sweetest Christian consolation. To bring a platter of 
 that honey to all bereaved souls who may be in this house 
 to-day is my work, first bringing it in general, and then 
 to one specific trouble, the service this morning being in 
 memoriam. 
 
 I think there is no sweeter or more potent consolation 
 than the fact that we are to be re-associated in the future 
 world with our Christian friends. I shall bring no passages 
 to prove such a fact. That I have done in other sermons. 
 I shall take it all for granted, supposing you believe it, 
 only trying to show you what are the uses of such a warm- 
 hearted. Christian theory. I would to God, while we are 
 thinking about it, the church on earth might seem to re- 
 spond to the church in heaven ! During the last war I 
 was down for a little while in the army, and 1 noticed in 
 the night-time that one division of the army would signal 
 to the other division, and there were times in the night 
 when the sky seemed written all over with letters and 
 words of fire, one division signaling to another division. 
 
HONEY FROM A STEANGE HIVE. 339 
 
 And so I would have it now, the church on earth signaling 
 its joy to heaven, and heaven signaling back its joy to 
 earth ; for we are diiierent divisions of one great host : 
 
 "One army of the living God, 
 To his command we bow ; 
 Part of the host have crossed the flood, 
 And part are crossing now." 
 
 This idea of future association with our departed friends 
 is honey out of the slain lion. In the first place, this con- 
 sideration exalts and gives stability to Christian friendship. 
 If our association is only a matter of five or ten or thirty 
 years, it is not worth much. Can it be that our attachment 
 to each other has such short arms that it can not reach 
 across the grave? We go into a rail-train, and we sit 
 down for a few hours beside a stranger, and talk with him. 
 Then he leaves at one station, and we leave at another. 
 He never thinks of us again ; we never think of him again. 
 Is that a type of our Christian attachments? Oh no. We 
 are, in heaven, to rise up amidst infinite congratulations to 
 renew our association. The only difference between our 
 •acquaintanceship here and our acquaintanceship there will 
 be that there we shall know each other better and love 
 each other more. Death will not strike any thing out of 
 our association but its imperfections. Wading down into 
 the river of death, it will only bathe off our impurities. 
 If you now count me to be your friend, when I shall have 
 quit all my sins and follies and imperfections, and my en- 
 tire nature is uplifted before the throne of God, you will 
 have for me a millionfold greater attachment. If my 
 friendship to you is merely because you invite me to grand 
 entertainments, or because you allow me to have your 
 
SiO HONEY FROM A STRANGE HIVE. 
 
 name on the back of my notes, sucli a mercenary and half- 
 hearted attachment as that can not stride across the grave. 
 But this communing of heart with heart, this mingling of 
 sympathy with sympathy, this feeling which leads us to 
 carry each other's burdens, and weep each other's sorrows, 
 and laugh in each other's joy — all these are prophecies of 
 eternal intimacy. You and I may soon part; we may 
 pitch our tents in different zones, our graves may be cleft 
 in opposite sides of the earth ; but the scenes in which we 
 now mingle will be renewed under milder skies. And so 
 I strike hands with you to-day in a friendship which shall 
 bloom immortal after the mountains have crumbled, and 
 the stars that flower in celestial gardens shall have wilted 
 in the hot breath of a judgment-da}'-. 
 
 Again, this idea of future association ought to assuage 
 0U7' bereavements. There is not a family in this house to- 
 day that has not heard the tramp of the pall -bearers. 
 There is hardly a house on all these streets that has not 
 had its craped door-bell. I look into your upturned faces 
 to-day, and see the marks of many griefs. They have 
 wrinkled your brow. They have dropped a shadow un- 
 der your eye. They have taken the color out of your 
 cheek. There have been awful agonies of separation that 
 have gone crashing down through the heart-strings. This 
 world is not so bright as it used to be before such and such 
 a light was put out. You walk with listless step along 
 places where once you danced with delight. The spring 
 grass of this April day would have been above your grave 
 but for the consolation of the thought that you would be 
 reunited with the departed in the better world. The dy- 
 ing one spake of that heavenly greeting, and for that hour 
 you are waiting — waiting while the home is desolate; 
 
HONEY FROM A STRANGE HIVE. 841 
 
 "waiting while the years go tediously by ; waiting while 
 the heart continues to break — and you shall not be dis- 
 appointed. Your lives shall join again. Hand to hand. 
 Heart to heart. Jubilee to jubilee. Throne to throne. 
 Hallelujah to hallelujah. 
 
 The most frequent trial that comes across the families of 
 the earth is the loss of children. The vast majority of the 
 race may not reach manhood and womanhood. Infantile 
 diseases are the gauntlet they can not ran. It seems as if 
 this world were too chill and cold and drear for the flow- 
 ers of childhood, so the heavenly gardener takes them in. 
 You look down as you think of the little one that God 
 took out of your cradle. At the moment when he was 
 the most promising — at that moment the blast came. Oh ! 
 that was a grief — the closing of the lids over the blue eyes 
 that shall never sparkle again at your coming. That was 
 a heart-rending — the putting of the burial flowers that 
 some playmate had brought into the hand that used to 
 pluck its own wild flowers from the field, and gather them 
 in bunches and wear them in her flaxen hair. And some- 
 times you sit down and look at the floor by the hour, until 
 within the small pattern of the carpet at which you stare 
 there come bounding in with mirth and gladness the feet 
 that have long been still ; and you wake up in the mid- 
 night as though you had heard the call of a loved one, as 
 though it were a cry of distress, "Mother! mother!" But 
 you fall back, for it is all a dream. I wish I could to- 
 day hang one picture in your nursery, hang it over the 
 place where your little ones used to play ; hang it right 
 between the windows up against which they used to press 
 their sunny faces — a picture of the heavenly greeting. 
 You know how it was after you had been absent a long 
 
3i2 HONEY FHOJT A STRANGE HIVE. 
 
 while, and, coming home, tliey saw you before you got up 
 to the front of the house, and they shouted, " They have 
 come! they have come!" and they held to your dress, and 
 told you a hundred things at once, and almost blocked up 
 your entrance to the house with their gladness. So, me- 
 thinks, it will be when you at last enter heaven's gate ; the 
 shout will be, "She's come! She's come!" And they 
 will put garlands on your brow and palms in your hands, 
 and clap and sing, waking up heaven to brighter gladness 
 with their sweet voices and their bounding feet and their 
 jubilant hosannas. 
 
 "How shall we know them, the infant race? 
 How will the mother her loved one trace? 
 By the thrill which, when first he smiled, 
 Came o'er her soul, will she know her child I" 
 
 Oh glorious anticipation, that with all our Christian dead, 
 whether young or old, we shall meet again ! Be patient, 
 therefore. No trouble, no comfort. No cross, no crown. 
 No battle, no victory. No slain lion of assault, no hived 
 honey of Christian consolation. 
 
 Again, this consideration gives great 2)eace to the dying. 
 The step out of this world into the next is a very myste- 
 rious step ; and though we are promised brilliant escort, 
 some very good people shudder about dying. Bat how 
 different that passage seems in one's history if he realizes 
 that he is going from a home circle here to a home circle 
 there; that one moment after he has said "Good-night" 
 to friends on earth he says "Good-morning" to friends in 
 heaven. Oh, this irradiates the pallid cheek of the dying. 
 This rekindles the lustre of the closing eye. This lifts the 
 hand as though to join in the heavenly hand-shaking. It 
 is the thought that he is surrounded by friends now and 
 
HONEY FROM A STRANGE HIVE. 343 
 
 will be surrounded by friends there. It is the thought 
 th;it he is only going from one room to another in "the 
 liouse of many mansions," Just as when you get into a 
 boat, and some one on 'the shore steadies you while you 
 get in, and some one in the boat helps you, so it will be 
 when you come to die : there will be friends here to help 
 yon off, and friends there to help you in. You know very 
 well that if you are to cross a swift stream, you need to 
 take sight by some bluflf or tree or fixed object; and so, 
 when we come down to cross the swift currents of death, 
 we had just better put our eye upon the highlands crowned 
 with the castles of our own loved ones, and then pull and 
 pull for the beach, 
 
 "Steer this way, brother, 
 Steer straight for me ; 
 Here, safe in heaven, 
 I am waiting for thee." 
 
 Under this anticipation, Death, no more a lion, bears to us 
 chalices of honey, 
 
 I bring the consolation of this subject especially to the 
 friends of Gasherie De Witt, on this and the other side of 
 the Atlantic, I parted with him three years ago at Vic- 
 toria Station, England. Many of you parted with him at 
 the Cunard wharf in Jersey City. Others of yon parted 
 with him at the door of the village church in Belleville, 
 Others of you parted with him in the last moment at the 
 foot of Mont Blanc, But we shall meet again. He was a 
 man worth meeting. Eighteen years ago he first dawned 
 upon me in the parsonage at Belleville, where he had come 
 to welcome me to my new home. Since then I have been 
 with him in a great variety of circumstances, and, begin- 
 ning by thinking well of him, I have loved him more and 
 
344 HONEY FROM A STRANGE EIVE. 
 
 more as the years rolled b}^. He was born to be a leader, 
 and by common consent men fell into line. He was aglow 
 with enthusiasm, and flamed when advocating the right or 
 denouncing the wrong. He did not take things by slow be- 
 siegement, but by storm. While others planned, he both 
 planned and executed. With his own hand he made his 
 fortune ; but though the money came rapidlj^, the more 
 rapidly did his heart enlarge. He had done the work of 
 an octogenarian at mid-life. He was one of the few men 
 who can do many things well. Whether advocating the 
 building of a railroad, or inventing a new machine, or 
 hunting in a Southern forest, or speaking in a legislative 
 hall, or advocating a temperance reform, or wielding a 
 painter's pencil, or arousing a church meeting, he was an ex- 
 pert, a rnarksman, a connoisseur, an agitator, a commander. 
 He was alwaj-s right, and never afraid ; well-balanced, yet 
 quick; conservative where things ought to be preserved, 
 radical where they ought to be destroyed. He was impa- 
 tient of time-serving people ; explosive with red-foced in- 
 dignation at any thing like meanness ; tearfully tender with 
 suffering; a bubbling well of sympathy; a many -keyed 
 soul, on which you might play anthem or dirge, battle march 
 or lullaby. But I think the master-passion of his soul was 
 Christian generosity. He gave to his elder son counsel 
 that I have never heard of being given in a dying hour, and 
 that was, "Be generous." He went everywhere, search- 
 ing for sick ministers and feeble churches and struggling 
 young men. It was his life to help somebody. At the 
 dedication of our first Tabernacle he arose six times in the 
 audience to make contribution, his tongue thick with that 
 paralysis which helped after a while to end his life. I 
 went to him, and laid before him the policy of a Lay Col- 
 
HONEY FROM A STRANGE HIVE. 845 
 
 lege, the object of which should be the edacation of lay- 
 men for practical Christian work in all denominations. He 
 slapped bis hand on his knee, and said, "That's just what 
 we want. I have been waiting for something of that kind 
 for twenty years. The ministers can not do this work all 
 alone. You must get the troops massed, and the private 
 Christians of all denominations drilled for work. Go 
 ahead, Talmage, and I'll back you." And he did back me 
 with his money, and with his prayers, and with his counsel, 
 from his dying pillow sending me stirring word of encour- 
 agement. The tide of influence through that institution 
 set in motion will roll on forever. Many souls have already 
 been brought to God through the instrumentality of the 
 men who have been trained there. That institution would 
 not have been formed but for the financial encouragement 
 of Mr. De Witt. A colony of Chinese came near his resi- 
 dence, and at his own expense he opened a school to edu- 
 cate them for God and heaven ; and in the long procession 
 that followed him on the funeral day there was nothing 
 more impressive than the saddened faces of those Chinese 
 as they marched on after the dead body of their benefactor. 
 That man turned his back on his elegant mansion, and 
 went out for the most dismal work that a man ever does — 
 the hunting-up of his lost health. He sought for it in En- 
 gland, in Germany, in Ital}^, in Switzerland, staying long 
 enough in the Christian chapels of foreign countries to help 
 them with his money and with his prayers ; staying long 
 enough in the picture-galleries of Dresden to copy with his 
 own hands some of the works of the great masters, aston- 
 ishing the native artists with his skill; then coming to 
 Geneva, Switzerland, to lie down and die in awful physic- 
 al excruciation. It seemed as if God said to him, "Your 
 
 15* 
 
346 HONEY FR02I A STRANGE HIVE. 
 
 search for health amidst the mountains of this world is a 
 failure. Now, come up higher; breathe a better air. In 
 the deep fountains of the rock bathe off all your physical 
 tortures. There is no sorrow that heaven can not cure." 
 Some of his last utterances have been preserved. You 
 would like to hear them. They are more jubilant than 
 sad ; some of them exquisitely poetic, others have the call 
 of a clarion : " ' This is evidently the end. My Saviour is 
 coming for me. God will bless you, and raise you up pro- 
 tectors.' There had been for three daj^s one of the high 
 mountain winds which we had feared would annoy him, 
 but dared not allude to it, for fear of drawing his attention 
 to it. He did not seem to notice it. Sunday morning 
 broke clear, beautiful, and still, with a light fall of snow 
 covering the whole landscape. He kissed me, and said, 'I 
 have no pain this morning, and my whole soul is in perfect 
 peace. Thank God for this blessed peace. He giveth his 
 beloved sleep. Oh, my dear wife! it is only the parting 
 that I dread. We have been together so many years, so 
 many happy years; but my Saviour is close to me now, 
 my blessed, precious Saviour.' And he put out his arms as 
 though he would clasp him, while his whole face lighted 
 up with love. ' I welcome thee, I embrace thee. He will 
 keep you, give you friends, keep our children always. Tell 
 my dear mother I would have come to her if I could, but 
 God ordered it otherwise. It will be only a short time be- 
 fore we shall meet again, and I will watch over her till then, 
 if I can. Praise God for his mercy in raising up to me 
 friends on both sides the ocean from among his children. 
 This is the happiest day of my life. Notwithstanding the 
 anguish of body, there is perfect happiness within. The 
 storms among the mountains arc all over. There is perfect 
 
HONEY FROM A STRANGE HIVE. 347 
 
 quiet. So it is with my life. Not that I have had partic- 
 ular storms, but the storms of my life are over now, and 
 there is only perfect peace.' He lay still for a few minutes, 
 and commenced again, 'There is a new, pure covering over 
 Mont Blanc. Down over all the mountains and valleys, it 
 covers every thing — all. That is an emblem of the new, 
 pure covering over my life — the covering Jesus has given 
 me. God grant it may cover every thing — all.' He wanted 
 the girls to sing ' Eock of Ages,' and ' Just as I am,' They 
 did so, and at the end of every verse he seemed to pour 
 his whole soul out in uttering the words, ' Lamb of God ! 
 I come.' 
 
 "He was just expressing his regret, Monday morning, 
 that he had done so little for Jesus, when a letter came 
 from the Lay College, telling him of its prosperity, and 
 containing a resolution offered by the professors and stu- 
 dents at a special meeting, expressing their gratitude for 
 his sympathy and co-operation. This letter was very com- 
 forting, recalling to his mind- that he had done some very 
 efiicient work for the Master, after all. Wednesday even- 
 ing, at eight or nine o'clock, he dropped out of his suffer- 
 ing into a quiet slumber, which ended with three long- 
 drawn breaths at half-past twelve." 
 
 So Gasherie De Witt was emancipated. So he woke 
 np. So he began to live. So he ascended. He came 
 along where Death was, and "behold, there was a swarm 
 of bees and honey in the carcass of the lion." If I had ten 
 thousand tears, I would not weep one of them for our de- 
 parted friend. He might better weep over our bondage 
 than we over his liberation. I save my tears for myself 
 and for the friends whom he has left behind. Alas for the 
 home, beautiful but devastated! The pictures are there and 
 
348 HONEY FROM A STRANGE HIVE. 
 
 the books are there and all the familiar surroundings are 
 there ; but he who made the pictures, and he who bouglit 
 the books, and he who planned the house, and he who laid 
 out the grounds comes not up the hill, nor is his quick, 
 strong footstep heard in the door-way. May the Lord Al- 
 mighty comfort you to-day. lie who helped your husband 
 and your fother to die will help you in this sore bereave- 
 ment. O widowed soul! O orphaned children ! mourn- 
 ing kindred ! in God is thy refuge, and beneath thee are 
 the everlasting arms. 
 
 I see in the audience a goodly number of his village 
 neighbors and business associates. They have come in 
 this morning from Belleville. You must have started 
 early to join in this service. You are my acquaintances 
 as well. Some of you the first parishioners I ever had. 
 How do you do to-day, my old Belleville friends? Your 
 presence rolls in upon me the m.emories of the past. I 
 baptized in infancy some of those maidens. I united some 
 of you in holy marriage. I buried some of your dead. I 
 welcomed some of you into the kingdom of Christ. Good 
 old da3's we used to have together, did we not? And 
 now, after so long a separation, we meet to-day to bend 
 over the same sorrow, and to learn the lessons of the same 
 providence. You knew and loved Gasherie De Witt. 
 You will never bear his voice again in the village councils, 
 nor will you greet him again to your firesides. But you 
 know that if there is any such place as heaven, he is 
 there ; if there is any such being as God, Gasherie De Witt 
 is with him. Oh, my friends! aspire after the same high 
 residence. When you quit your abode on the banks of 
 the beautiful Passaic, may you go up to walk on the mar- 
 gin of the river of life with your old friends and compan- 
 
HONEY FBOM A STRANGE HIVE. 849 
 
 ions, and liave explained to your everlasting satisfaction 
 why Gasherie De Witt was put to so much pain ; and why 
 he must die so far away from home ; and why he must go 
 away from his family and the Church and the world at a 
 time when they could so poorly afford to spare him. 
 
 To all this throng to-day there comes a lesson. Among 
 the last words of this man were these : " There is no hope 
 to live by or die by but the Christian hope." Do you be- 
 lieve it? If so, to-day seek your eternal salvation. If 
 you should this moment be hurled out of life, would you 
 be ready? Not all ready. In proportion to the bright- 
 ness of a Christian's death-bed is the darkness of a sinner's 
 death-bed. He sings no song. He sees no light. He 
 leaves behind him no consolation. Death to him is a wild 
 catastrophe. He goes from the world stumbling out of 
 it, feeling his way into the blackness of darkness forever. 
 
 dying soul ! try something better. Standing to-daj^, as 
 
 1 do, in the brilliant halo that surrounds a Christian's 
 death-bed, the cry of desolated hearts overpowered by the 
 chanting of angelic cohorts come to fetch a good man 
 home, I commend to you Gasherie De Witt's Eedeemer. 
 May God this moment overshadow you with his saving 
 presence! May the Holy Ghost this moment overwhelm 
 you witli his striving ! 
 
 So shall the swarms of trouble that come to buzz and 
 sting and poison your soul leave for you the saccharine of 
 immortal flowers. For while the honey of this world's 
 consolation often nauseates and sickens, like that of Trebi- 
 zond, because the bees make it out of the rhododendron, 
 the honey of Christ's Gospel gives life and health, like that 
 which drips from the delicious combs of Mount Ida and 
 Chamouni. 
 
350 TEE KNELL OF NINEVEH. 
 
 o 
 
 THE KNELL OF NINEVEH. 
 
 "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." — Jonah in., 4. 
 
 N the banks of the Tigris there is a great capital, sixty 
 
 miles in circumference, surrounded by a wall broad 
 enough to allow three chariots to go abreast; fifteen hun- 
 dred turrets, each two hundred feet high, carrying aloft the 
 grandeur of the city. There are six hundred thousand in- 
 habitants. The metropolis is not like our crowded cities ; 
 but gardens wreathe the homes of private citizens with 
 tropical blaze of color, wet with the spray of falling waters, 
 and there are pasture-fields, on which cattle browse, in the 
 very midst of the city. It is a delicious climate, even in 
 midsummer never rising to more than seventy degrees. 
 Through the gates of that city roll the commerce of East- 
 ern and Western Asia. On its throne sits Sardanapalus, 
 his every meal a banquet, his every day a coronation. 
 There are polished walls of jasper and chalcedon}^, bewil- 
 dering with arrow-head inscriptions, and scenes of exciting 
 chase and victorious battle. There are mansions adorned 
 with bronze, and vases and carved statues of ivory, and 
 ceilings with mother-of-pearl, and mantel enameling, and 
 floors with slabs of alabaster. There are other walls with 
 sculptured flowers and paneling of Lebanon cedar and 
 burnished copper, and door- ways guarded by winged lions. 
 The city roars with chariot wheels and clatters with swift 
 hoofs, and is all arush and ablaze with pomp and fashion 
 and power. The river Tigris bounds the city on one side, 
 
THE KNELL OF NINEVEH. 351 
 
 and moat and turreted wall bound it on the otlier sides, 
 and there it stands defiant of earth and heaven. Fraud in 
 her store-houses. Uncleanness in her dwellings. Obscene 
 display in her theatres. Iniquity everywhere. Nineveh 
 the magnificent. Nineveh the vile. Nineveh the doomed. 
 
 One day, a plain-looking man comes through the gate 
 into that city. He is sun-burned as though he had been 
 under the browning process of a sea- voyage. Indeed, he- 
 had been wrecked, and picked up by such a life-boat as no 
 other man ever rode in, a whale's fins and flukes being to 
 him both oars and rudder. The man had been trying to 
 escape his duty of preaching a disagreeable sermon; but 
 now, at last, his feet strike the street of that city. No 
 sooner has he passed under the shadow of the wall and en- 
 tered it, than, clearing his throat for loud and distinct ut- 
 terance, he begins; and the water-carrier sets down his 
 jug, and the charioteer reins in the steeds, and the soldiers 
 on the top of the wall break ranks to look and listen, while 
 his voice shivers throu2:h the avenues, and reverberates 
 amidst the dwellings of potentate and peasant, as he cries 
 out, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" 
 The people rush out of the market-places and to the gates 
 to listen to the strange sound. The king invites the man 
 to tell the story amidst the corridors of the palace. The 
 courtiers throng in and out amidst the statues and pictures 
 and fountains, listening to the startling message, " Yet forty 
 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." 
 
 "What is that fellow about?" say some of the people. 
 "Is he a madman escaped from his keepers? He must 
 be an alarmist, who is announcing his morbid fears. He 
 ought to be arrested, and put in the prison of the city." 
 But still the man moves on, and still the cry goes up. 
 
352 THE KNELL OF NINEVEH. 
 
 "Yet forty clays, and Nineveh shall bo overthrown." 
 There is no madness in his eye, there is no fanaticism in 
 his manner, but only a Divine authority, and a terrible 
 earnestness which finally seizes the whole city. People 
 rush from place to place, and sa}^, " Have you seen that 
 prophet? What does he mean? Is it to be earthquake, 
 or storm, or plague, or besiegement of foreign enemy ?" 
 Sardanapalus puts off his jeweled array and puts on 
 mourning, and the whole city goes down on its knees, and 
 street cries to street, and temple to temple, and the fifteen 
 hundred turrets join the dirge, "Yet forty days, and Nine- 
 veh shall be overthrown." A black covering is thrown 
 over the horses and the sheep and the cattle. Forage and 
 water are kept from the dumb brutes, so that their dis- 
 tressed bellowing may make a dolorous accompaniment to 
 the lamentation of six hundred thousand souls who wring 
 their hands, and beat their temples, and throw themselves 
 into the dust, and deplore their sin, crying out, "Yet forty 
 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." 
 
 God heard that cry. He turned aside from the affairs 
 of eternal state, and listened. He said, "Stop! I must go 
 down and save that city. It is repenting, and cries for 
 help, and it shall have it, and Nineveh shall live." Then 
 the people took down the timbrels, and loosened the foot 
 of the dance, and flung new light on the panels of ala- 
 baster, and started the suppressed fountains, and the chil- 
 dren clapped their hands; and from Sardannpalus on the 
 throne, clear down to the keeper of the city gate, where 
 brown-fiiced Jonah first went in with his thrilling message, 
 there were song, and laughter, and congratulation, and fes- 
 tivity, and jubilee. "And God saw their works, that they 
 turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil 
 
THE KNELL OF NINEVEH. 353 
 
 that he had said that he would do unto them : and he did 
 it not." 
 
 I learn, in the first plaee, from this subject the jirecision 
 and 'punctuality of the Divine arrangement. You will see that 
 God decided exactly the day when Nineveh's lease of mercy 
 should end. If Jonah preached that sermon on the first 
 day of the month, then the doom was to fall upon Nineveh 
 on the tenth day of the next month. So God decides what 
 shall be the amount of our rebellion. Though there may 
 be no sound in the heavens, he has determined the length 
 of his endurance of our sin. It may be forty days, it may 
 be forty hours, it may be forty minutes, it may be forty 
 seconds. The fact that the affairs of God's government are 
 infinite and multifarious is no reason why he should not 
 attend to the minutiee. God no more certainly decided 
 that on June 15th, 1215, England should have her Magna 
 Charta; nor that on the 4th of July, 1776, the Declaration 
 of Independence should go forth; nor that at half- past 
 eleven o'clock at night on the 14th of December, 1799, 
 George Washington should die ; nor that forty days after 
 Jonah preached that sermon Nineveh's chance for mercy 
 should end unless she repented, than he has decided the 
 point beyond which you and I can not pass, and still ob- 
 tain the Divine clemency. What careful walking this ought 
 to make for those who are unsaved, lest the hour-glass of 
 their opportunity be almost empty ! Men and women do 
 not lose their souls by putting off repentance forever, but 
 only by putting it off one second after the time is up. 
 They propose to become Christians in mid-life, but they die 
 in youth ; or they propose in old age to be Christians, but 
 they die in mid-life; or on the forty-first day they will attend 
 to the matter, but on the fortieth Nineveh is overthrown. 
 
gg^ THE KXELL OF XIXEVEE. 
 
 Standing on a, ship's deck amidst a coil of chains, sailors 
 roughly tell you to stand back if you do not want your 
 limbs broken, or, by the chains, be hurled overboard, for 
 they are going to let go the anchor ; and when the anchor 
 does go, the chains make the deck smoke with their speed. 
 As swiftly our time runs away from us. Now it seems 
 coiled all around us in a pyramid of years and days and 
 minutes ; but they are going, and they will take us off with 
 their lightning velocity. If I should by some supernatural 
 revelation to-night tell you just how long or how brief will 
 be your opportunity for repentance and salvation, you 
 would not believe me. You would say, " I shall have ten- 
 fold that time ; I shall have a hundredfold that time." But 
 you will not have more ; you will have less. You have 
 put off repentance so long that you are going to be very 
 much crowded in this matter of the soul's salvation. The 
 corner of time that is left you is so small that you will 
 hardly have room to turn around in it. You are like an 
 accountant who has to have a certain number of figures 
 added up by four o'clock in the afternoon. It is two full, 
 round hours' work, and it is a quarter-past three o'clock, 
 and yet he has not begun. You are like a man in a case 
 of life and death five miles from the depot, and the train 
 starts in thirty minutes, and you have not harnessed the 
 horse. You are like a man who comes to the bridge across 
 the Naugatuck Kiver in time of a freshet. The circum- 
 stances are such that he must go across. The bridge quiv- 
 ers, the abutment begins to give way ; but he stands and 
 halts and waits, until the bridge cracks in twain and goes 
 down, hoping then that on the floating timbers he may get 
 over to the other shore. 
 
 God is not looking inertly and unconcernedly upon the 
 
THE KNELL OF NINEVEH. 355 
 
 position jou occupy. Just as certainly as there is a bank 
 to the East River, just so certainly there is a bank to the 
 river of your opportunity. The margin is fixed. There 
 will be a limit to God's forbearance. " Yet forty days, and 
 Nineveh shall be overthrown." 
 
 Still further, I learn from this subject that religious learn- 
 ing may seem preiwsterous. Now, we think that our city is 
 safe from all foreign invasion. We have Fort Hamilton, 
 the Batter}^, Fort Lafaj^ette, and a half-dozen strongholds; 
 but the city of Nineveh had fifteen hundred turrets, and 
 they were all strongholds. Then it had for a natural de- 
 fense the Tigris, and it was not an easy thing for an army 
 to swim across that river under the shadow of a wall on 
 which stood a defending army ; and yet it was through that 
 impregnable city that Jonah went, uttering the warning 
 words of my text. It must at first have seemed preposter- 
 ous to a great many of the people. So it is now that relig- 
 ious warning seems to many an absurdity. It is more to 
 them a joke than any thing else. "Repent? Prepare? 
 Was there ever a man with stronger health than I have? 
 Vision clear, hearing alert, lungs stout, heart steady. In- 
 surance companies tell me I shall have seventy years of 
 life. My father and mother were both long-lived. Feel 
 the muscle in my arm." Ah, my brother, it is not prepos- 
 terous when I come out to tell you that you need to make 
 preparation for the future. I have noticed that it is the 
 invalids who live on. They take more care of their health, 
 and so they outlive the robust and athletic. I have no- 
 ticed in my circle of acquaintances, for the last few years, 
 that five robust and athletic men go out of life to one in- 
 valid. Death prides himself on the strength of the castle 
 he takes. "Boast not thyself of the morrow, for thou 
 
356 THE EXELL OF NINEVEH. 
 
 knowest not what a day may bring forth." Dr. Eddy, the 
 eloquent missionary secrctarj^, died the other day from 
 swallowing a small flake of an oyster-shell. EmiliusLepi- 
 dus lost his life by having his toe wounded. A splinter 
 may be lancet sharp enough to bleed our life away. Look 
 out ! The slip of a railroad train from the track, the rush 
 of a runaway horse through the street, any one often thou- 
 sand perils may be upon you. " In such a day and hour 
 as you think not, the Son of man cometh." Your oppor- 
 tunity for repentance is almost over, "Yet forty days, 
 and Nineveh shall be overthrown." 
 
 Still farther, I learn from my subject that God gives every 
 man a fair chance for his life. The iniquity of Nineveh 
 was accumulating. It had been rolling up and rolling up. 
 There the city lay — blotched, seething, festering under the 
 sun. Why did not God put an end to its iniquity? Why 
 did not God' unsheathe some sword of lightning from the 
 scabbard of a storm-cloud, and slay it? Why did he not 
 with some pry of an earthquake throw it into the tomb 
 where Caraccas and Lisbon now lay? AVhy did he not 
 submerge it with the scorn of his indignation, as he did 
 Ilerculaneum and Pompeii? It was because he wanted to 
 give the city a fair chance. You would have thought that 
 thirty days would have been enough to repent in, or twen- 
 ty days, or ten days. A}'-, you would have said, "If that 
 city don't quit its sin in five days, it never will." But see 
 the wide margin. Listen to the generosity of time. " Yet 
 forty days !" 
 
 Be frank, my brother, and confess to-night that God is 
 giving you a fair chance for safetj'-, a better chance than 
 he gave to Nineveh. They had one prophet. You have 
 heard the voices of M\.y. They had one warning. You 
 
THE KNELL OF NINEVEH. 357 
 
 have bad a thousand. They had forty days. Some of you 
 have had forty years. Sometimes the warnings of God 
 have come upon your soul soft as the breath of lilies and 
 frankincense, and then again as though hurled from a cata- 
 pult of terrific providence. God has sometimes led you to 
 see your unsaved condition while you were walking amidst 
 perils, and your hair stood on end, and you stopped breath- 
 ing; you thought your last moment had come. Or, 
 through protracted illness, he allowed you in many a mid- 
 night to think over this subject, when all was still save 
 the ticking of the clock in the hall and the beating of your 
 own anxious heart. Warned that you were a sinner. 
 Warned that you needed a divine Saviour. Warned of 
 coming retribution. Warned of an eternity crowded with 
 splendor or catastrophe. Warned by the death of those 
 with whom you were familiar. Warned day after day, 
 and month after month, and year after year — warned, warn- 
 ed, warned. Oh, my dear brother! if your soul is lost, in 
 the day of judgment you will have to acknowledge "no 
 man in Brooklyn ever had a better chance for heaven than 
 I had. I was preached to, and prayed for, and divinely 
 solicited. I was shown the right, and fully persuaded of 
 it ; but I did not act and I did not believe, and now, in the 
 presence of a burning earth and a flying heaven, I take the 
 whole responsibility. Hear me, men! angels! devils! — I 
 took the life of my own soul ; and I did it so thoroughly 
 that it is done forever. And now I trudge off over the hot 
 desert and under the burning sky — a suicide! a suicide!" 
 Yes, I think you have all been warned ; and if up until 
 this very hour you have happened to escape such intima- 
 tion, to-night I ring it in your ears : "Yet forty days, and 
 Nineveh shall be overthrown !" 
 
358 THE KNELL OF NINEVEH. 
 
 Still further, I learn from this subject that lolien the peo- 
 ple repent, the Lord lets them off. While yet Nineveh was 
 on its knees, and Sardanapalus sat in the ashes, and tlio 
 unfed cattle were yet moaning in the air, and the people 
 were yet deploring their sin, God reversed the judgment, 
 and said, " Those people have repented. Let them live !" 
 And the news flew. The gardens saved. The palaces 
 saved. Six hundred thousand people saved. A belt of 
 sixty miles of city saved. Let the news be flung from one 
 wall to the other; from the east wall, clear over to the 
 west wall. Let the bells ring! Let the cymbals clap! 
 Let flags be fluno; out from all the fifteen hundred turrets! 
 Let the king's lamp-lighters kindle up the throne-room ! 
 "And God saw their works, that they turned from their 
 evil way ; and God repented of the evil that he had said 
 that he would do unto them : and he did it not." In other 
 words, when a sinner repents, God repents. The one gives 
 up his sins; the other gives up his judgments. The mo- 
 ment that a man turns to God, the relation of the whole 
 universe toward him is changed, and the storms, and the 
 lightnings, and the thunders, and the earthquakes, and the 
 grandeurs of the judgment- day, and the realities of the 
 eternal world, all become his coadjutors. God and the 
 angels come over on his side. Eepent, give up your sin 
 and turn to God, and you will be saved. 'Ah," says some 
 one, "that's a toudi thins: to do." "I have been drink- 
 ing," says some one; or, " I have been unchaste," sa3's some 
 one; or, "I have been blasphemous," says another; or, "I 
 have been a Sabbath-breaker," says another; or, "I have 
 a hard heart," says another, "and now you ask me to give 
 up my sin. I can not do it — and I won't do it." Then 
 you will die. That is settled. But somebody else says, " I 
 
THE KNELL OF NINEVEH. 359 
 
 will give up my sin, and I will now take the Lord for my 
 portion." You will live. That is just as certainly settled. 
 You will to-night either have to fling away sin or fling- 
 away heaven. The one is a husk — the other is a coronet. 
 The one is a groan — the other is an anthem. The one is a 
 sting — the other is an illumination. Christ's fair complex- 
 ion, of which his contemporaries wrote, is gone, and his 
 face is red and his hands are red and his feet are red with 
 the rushing blood of his own suffering, endured to get you 
 out of sin and death and hell. Oh, will you to-night im- 
 plore him to let his suffering take the place of your ill 
 desert? If you will, all is well, and you may now begin 
 to twist garlands for your brow, for you are already a vic- 
 tor. All heaven comes surging upon your soul in the an- 
 nouncement, " There is no condemnation to them which 
 are in Christ Jesus." Now, will you do it? I care noth- 
 ing for a sermon unless it has an application, and this is 
 the application : will you do it? "Ah," says some one, "I 
 believe that is right. I mean some day to surrender the 
 entirety of my nature to God. It is reasonable. I mean 
 to be a Christian, but not now." That is what thousands 
 of you are saying. 
 
 I am afraid if you do not give your Leart to God to- 
 night, you never will. You may have heard of the ship 
 Rebecca Goddard that came near one of our ports this last 
 winter. They were all scoured up and ready for the land- 
 ing, when, coming almost into the harbor, an ice-floe took 
 the ship and pushed it out to sea, and it drifted about two 
 or three days, and there was great suft'ering, and one was 
 frozen dead at his post. How near they got into the har- 
 bor, and yet they did not get in ! How many there are 
 here to-night who feel they are almost in the harbor of 
 
360 THE KNELL OF NINEVEH. 
 
 God's mercy ! Why do you not come ashore, lest some 
 ice-floe of sin and worldliness drive you out again to the 
 sea, and you die in the rigging? I throw you this rope 
 to-night. I hurl you this warning. Make fast to heaven 
 now. This moment is vanishing, and with it may go 
 every thing; and so I run up and down through this au- 
 dience with the banner of the cross — Eally, immortal men, 
 rally ! 
 
 "But," says some one in the house, "I won't take your 
 advice. I'll risk it. I defy God. Here I take my stand, 
 and I ask no odds either of earth or heaven." Let me tell 
 such that they are in a battle where they will be worsted. 
 "Yet forty days!" Perhaps thirty days. Perhaps ten 
 days. Perhaps three days. Perhaps one da}^ The 
 horses that drag on that chariot of doom are lathered with 
 the foam of a great speed, and their hoofs clip fire from 
 the flinty road, and their nostrils throb with the hot haste 
 as they dash on. Get out of the way, or the wheels will 
 roll over you. You can not endure the ire of an incensed 
 God. Throw yourselves down on your knees now, and 
 pelt the heavens with blood-red cries for mercy. The ter- 
 minal chance is going, the last chance is going, going. Oh, 
 wake up before you wake up among the lost! May God 
 Almighty, by his eternal Spirit, wake you up! 
 
 There is a story running indistinctly through my mind 
 of a maiden whose lover was doomed to be put to death 
 when the curfew bell struck nine o'clock at night, and she 
 thought that if she could keep that bell from ringing for a 
 little while, her lover and friend would be spared. And so, 
 under the shadow of the night, she crept up into the tower, 
 and laid hold of the tongue of the bell. After a while the 
 sexton came up to the tower, and he put his hand on the 
 
THE KNELL OF NINEVEH. 361 
 
 rope, and waited for tbe right moment to come ; and then 
 by the light of his lantern and his watch he found it was 
 nine o'clock, and he seized the rope, and he pulled, and 
 the bell turned, but in silence, and the maiden still held on 
 to the tongue of the bell swinging back and forth wildly 
 through the belfry, and the curfew bell rang not, and so 
 time was gained, and pardon arrived, and a precious life 
 was saved. Oh, it seems to me as if there were those here 
 doomed to death. You have condemned yourselves. It 
 seems to me as if the death -knell of your immortal soul 
 were about to strike. The angel of God's justice has his 
 hand on the rope, and yet I seize the tongue of that bell, 
 and I hold on, hoping to gain a little time, and I cry out, 
 "0 God! not yet! not 3^et!" hoping that time may be 
 gained, and pardon may fly from the throne, and your soul 
 may live. May the God who saved Nineveh save you ! 
 But some of you have put it off so long that I fear your 
 time is up. 
 
 16 
 
3(32 PILLOWS UXDEE THE AEMS. 
 
 PILLOWS UNDER THE ARMS. 
 
 "Woe to them that sew pillows to all armholes." — Ezekiel xiii., 18. 
 
 THE Chaldeans were to capture Jerusalem. God said 
 so. False prophetesses denied it, and, to quell the 
 anxieties of the people, employed a significant symbol by 
 sewing little pillows under the arras, as much as to say, 
 " Whenever you feel these soft pads at the arm-sleeves, be- 
 think yourselves all shall be easy and well." But alas for the 
 delusion I Notwithstanding all the smoothness of the proph- 
 ecy, Jerusalem went down in darkness and fire and blood. 
 It is not more certain that you are here this morning, 
 not more certain that that is a window, not more certain 
 that that is a ceiling, not more certain that that is a chair, 
 not more certain that that is a carpet, than it is certain 
 that God has declared destruction to the finally impenitent. 
 Universalism comes out, and tries to quell this fear, and 
 wants to sew two pillows under my arm-sleeves, and wants 
 to sew two pillows under your arm-sleeves. It shall not 
 do it. God helping me, I shall, this morning, put before 
 my own soul and yours the absorbing facts, and I shall 
 try to snatch their pillow of false peace from under the 
 arms of my auditors, and show you what the perils are, 
 that you may, one and all, escape them. Suppose there 
 is some real danger ahead, and a man comes into your 
 house, and says, " There is no peril ; be at peace!" and an- 
 other neighbor comes in, and says, " There is a peril, and 
 I know how you can escape it, and I come to tell you ;" 
 
PILLOWS UNDER THE ARMS. 363 
 
 wliicli is the best friend and the best neighbor? "Why, 
 the latter, of course, and I want to act his part to-daj. 
 
 There are two branches of Universalism : one made up 
 of the Restorationists, who, while they admit there may be 
 some punishment in the future world, say it will come to 
 an end, and the soul, through a process of reformation, will 
 come up at last into light,* and joy, and peace, and vic- 
 tory ; but the vast majority of the Universalists that I 
 have met in the world believe that there is no future pun- 
 ishment at all, and that, whatever may have been our char- 
 acter in this world, the moment we step across the line 
 into the future world we are completely happy ! People 
 need not tell me that is not Universalism. I take it not 
 from books; I take it from my own observation, and my 
 frequent converse with men who have adopted such the- 
 ories. Ilowever, all Universalists agree in saying that the 
 human race will all eventually be happy. 
 
 I shall, this morning, show you that Universalism, under 
 any shape, is unscriptural, unreasonable, destructive of 
 good morals, withering to all earnestness in soul -saving, 
 and the means of eternal catastrophe to a great many. 
 You say, "Do you think to impose upon us, this morning, 
 by bringing out that old obsolete book, the Bible — a book 
 fit onl}'- for grandmothers in their second childhood — and 
 propose to prove any thing by that?" I respond by say- 
 ing it is most reasonable to expect that God would give 
 this race some kind of a revelation. Well, if God has 
 given a revelation, which is it? I can now think of only 
 five books that pretend to be Divine revelations: the 
 Koran, the Shaster, the Zendavesta, the Confucius writ- 
 ings, and the Bible. Which of those five books do you 
 prefer to believe a Divine revelation ? The vast majority 
 
364 riLLOWS vxder tue arms. 
 
 of the people in tlie audience say, " Give us the Bible, 
 We take that." Will you stand by it through all this 
 argument of the morning? "Yes," you say. So will I 
 stand by it. Having made up our minds that this is the 
 binding statute in the case, now I solemnly impanel all 
 this audience as a jury for the trial, and I shall proceed to 
 open the cause and to call the witnesses. 
 
 To prove that there is such a thing as future punish- 
 ment, I first call up Dives the lost. Let him be sworn. 
 He was a man of great influence in the world. There is 
 no reason wliy he should falsify. Question : " Dives, is 
 there a perdition?" Ansive)^: "Yes, I have just come 
 from it. It is torment. I can't get any thing there to 
 cool my tongue. I want a drop of water, but I can't get 
 it. Do send word to my five brothers, that they come not 
 into that suffering." Universalism tries to impeach this 
 witness by saying it is all allegory. Lazarus the saved is 
 the Gentile converted ; and Dives, who lifted up his eyes 
 in hell, being in torment, is the Jew whose spiritual priv- 
 ileges were cut off in this world ! If the Lord Jesus 
 Christ were going to make an allegory, he would not make 
 one so imbecile as that. I do not wonder that Universal- 
 ists have wrenched that passage until they got red in the 
 face, to make it mean something else ; but in all ages of 
 the past, and in all ages of the future, the common-sense 
 reading of that Scripture is that Lazarus went to heaven, 
 and Dives went to hell, and there was a gulf fixed between 
 them they could never cross over. 
 
 The next witness I call in the case is an old bent-over 
 man. It is Paul the apostle. Question: "Paul, is there a 
 perdition?" Answer: "In flaming fire taking vengeance 
 upon those who know not God." 
 
PILLOWS UNDER THE ARMS. 365 
 
 The next witness is a gray -bearded man, clothed in 
 rough hair-cloth. It is Isaiah the prophet. Question: 
 "Isaiah, is there such a place as perdition?" Answer: 
 "Their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched." 
 
 The next witness looks as though he may have been 
 very ruddy and beautiful once, but he has lost his beauty 
 and ruddiness, through much family trouble. It is David 
 — David the psalmist. Question: "David, is there any per- 
 dition?" Answer: "The wicked shall be turned into hell, 
 and all the nations that forget God." 
 
 The next witness is a very mild and lovable man. It is 
 John the inspired. Question: "John, is there any such 
 place as perdition?" Answer: " They shall drink of the 
 wine of the wrath of Almighty God, poured without mixt- 
 ure into the cup of his indignation." And he stops a 
 moment to take breath, and then he says, " They shall be 
 tormented in fire and brimstone in the presence of the 
 angels." And he stops again to take breath, and then 
 says, " The smoke of their torment asccndeth up for ever 
 and ever." 
 
 But the most important witness is to come. He comes 
 with feet blistered by the long way, with sickly looks from 
 sleeplessness and exposure. It is the Son of God; He be- 
 fore whom we bow ourselves down, not worthy even to 
 kiss his feet, and we say in all reverence, " Jesus, is 
 there a perdition?" And he answers, "At the end of the 
 world the Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they 
 shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and 
 shall cast them into a furnace of fire ; there shall be wail- 
 ing and gnashing of teeth." And, after stopping a mo- 
 ment, he says, " The children of the kingdom shall be cast 
 out into outer darkness. There shall be weeping and 
 
366 riLLOWS under the arms. 
 
 gnashing of teeth." Then he stops a moment, and he re- 
 sumes, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, 
 prepared for the devil and his angels," 
 
 " Enough I" you say. Isaiah, and David, and Paul, and 
 John, and Christ are enough." But I will not stop here. 
 I bring you documentary evidence in the parable of the 
 tares, already referred to in Christ's testimony. You re- 
 member, in the parable of the tares, that some people were 
 thrown into a furnace of fire, while it says the righteous 
 shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Do 
 you know how the Universalists have squeezed and dis- 
 torted that passage? They have done so until they have 
 made the furnace to be Jerusalem, and those who are to 
 shine forth as the sun in their Father's kingdom are the 
 Jews who did not happen to get killed in the earthly wars 
 — an interpretation that would throw any audience into 
 convulsions of laughter if the aw fulness of the theme did 
 not forbid merriment. 
 
 You said you would take the Bible for the standard of 
 this trial. Gentlemen of the jury, now I hold you to your 
 word, and I demand that you admit the awful truth that 
 there is a future punishment. "But," say the Restoration- 
 ists, "we admit there is a future punishment, but it comes 
 to an end." My good friends, when will it come to an 
 end? I think we shall have to call back some of the 
 witnesses we have sworn in this case. "John the inspired, 
 what is the duration of that punishment?" He answers: 
 "The smoke of their torment ascendeth up /or ever and 
 evei-y How long is that? I call np Isaiah again. 
 "Isaiah, how long does this punishment last?" "Their 
 worm dieth not, their fire is not quenched^ I call up Paul 
 again. lie says, "They shall be punished with everlastinc/ 
 
PILLOWS UNDER THE ARMS. 367 
 
 destruction in the presence of the Lord." I ask reverently 
 again the Lord Jesus Christ how long this punishment 
 lasts, and he replies, "These shall go away into everlasting 
 punishment." And he says again, "Depart, ye cursed, into 
 everlasting fire." I leave it to your common sense what 
 that means, what it must mean. 
 
 "But," say a great many, "you ought to go .back to 
 the Greek, and find out that that word everlasting doesn't 
 mean what you have been representing it to mean." So 
 there are persons who could not parse a Greek sentence to 
 save themselves from being hanged, and who do not know 
 the difference between Kappa and Epsilon, who talk about 
 Greek. I reply, if there had been a great difference be- 
 tween the original and our translation, God would before 
 this have given it to us in plain English, so that we who 
 do not know Greek could understand it. You can not 
 make me believe that God would keep the truth as to our 
 eternal destiny covered up in a heap of Greek roots. Do 
 you want to be learned? Come, now, and let us all be 
 learned together, and go back and read that passage: 
 "These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the 
 righteous into life eternaV^ The same Greek word in one 
 place is translated "everlasting," and in the other "eter- 
 nal;" and if you bedwarf the word "everlasting," you 
 must bedwarf the word "eternal." If you dwindle up the 
 sufferings of the lost, then you must dwindle up the re- 
 joicings of the saved. The same effort which would break 
 a chain would snap a harp-string. The same effort that 
 would uptear a dungeon would pull down a mansion. 
 The same effort that would stop a groan would choke a 
 hallelujah. "These shall go away into everlasting punish- 
 ment, but the righteous into life eternal.'''' If in the one 
 
368 PILLOWS UXDER THE ARMS. 
 
 case the sufferings are not to be eternal, in the other case 
 the rejoicings are not to be eternal. But there is nothing 
 that makes me so tired as being learned, and so I come 
 back from the Greek to the plain English translation, good 
 enough for you and good enough for me. This Bible saj^s 
 that a man who commits the unpardonable sin shall be 
 forgiven neither in this world nor in the world to come. 
 What does that mean? Where is your restoration after 
 the grave? "He shall be forgiven neither in this world 
 nor in the world to come," You Kestorationists, put your 
 hand-screw on that. Try to twist that around, so it shall 
 not mean what God here makes it to mean. Shall neither 
 be forgiven in this world nor in the world that is to come! 
 Ob, my friends, either throw overboard your Bible, or 
 throw overboard Universalism. I press you to that choice 
 to-day, and you niust make it. The whole Bible is against 
 Universalism. Ezekiel is against it. Jeremiah is against 
 it. Isaiah is against it. David is against it. Matthew is 
 against it. Mark is against it. Luke is against it. John 
 is ao;ainst it. Romans is against it. Corinthians is against 
 
 o o o 
 
 it. Thessalonians is against it. Revelation is against it. 
 Now, I do not at this moment say that the Bible is in- 
 spired, or even a virtuous book ; but I do say, if the Bible 
 is right, then Universalism is wrong — awfully wrong, out- 
 rageously wrong, infinitely wrong, everlastingly wrong. 
 
 Still further, Universalism is unreasonable. Here is a 
 railroad map. There is a long line of railroads reaching 
 from New York to California. There is a line of railroads 
 reaching from New York to Boston. There is a line of 
 railroads reaching from New York to Philadelphia. They 
 will come out at the same place. "No," you sa}^, "they 
 do not." You tell me that one ends in Boston, and the 
 
PILLOWS UNDER THE ARMS. 369 
 
 Other in Philadelphia, and the other in San Francisco. I 
 deny it. If you want me to believe that, prove it. " Well," 
 you say, "I can very easily prove it. One railroad goes 
 north, and the other south, and the other goes west." " Oh," 
 I say, "you are right. I admit you are right. I yield 
 the position." In other words, you argue that railroads 
 that go in opposite directions can not come out at the same 
 place. Now, here are two roads for the soul's travel. The 
 one is faith in Christ, helpful services to others, a struggle 
 for consecration, and doing better all the way up. That 
 is one road. Iloward went that road. Wilberforce went 
 that road. Paul went that road. Ten thousand times ten 
 thousand went that road. Here is the other road. It 
 starts with the rejection of Jesus Christ. It keeps on in 
 sin, and in rebellion against God, all the way through. 
 Eobespierre went on that road. Nero went on that road. 
 All the bad people that have ever lived and died have 
 gone on that road ; and the two roads being in opposite 
 directions, they must come out at opposite termini. Noth- 
 ing but moral insanity can make you think any different- 
 ly. By inexorable geometry, by common sense, by a cal- 
 culation plainer than that twice three are six, 3^ou come 
 to the conclusion that opposite directions of travel must 
 bring opposite eternal destinies. 
 
 "But," say the Restorationists, " the punishment in the 
 lost world, which we admit, is reformatory, and the souls 
 that go there will gradually struggle up into thorough 
 felicity." x\bsurdity infinite! Two Sabbaths ago, while I 
 stood in this place, talking, among other things, about the 
 outrages of the Raymond Street Jail — outrages which, I 
 have been informed by prominent official authority in this 
 cit}', I did not more than half state — at that very moment 
 
 16- 
 
370 PILLOWS UNDER THE ARMS. 
 
 there was a girl of fifteen years in that Raymond Street 
 Jail, imploring that she might be in a cell alone. She said, 
 "These wretches around here are telling me filthy stories 
 all the time. I can't stand it here. I want to be alone." 
 She knew, what every one knows, that bad associations are 
 not reformatory. And yet you try to make me believe 
 that in that world where all the desperadoes and aban- 
 doned have gone, the soul is going to get better. Will the 
 thieves make it honest? AVill the libertines make it pure? 
 Will the blasphemers make it holy? 
 
 The perdition of ungodly men is a very poor reform 
 school. By inevitable law you know that bad society 
 makes people worse, and that Herod on earth was mild and 
 beautiful compared with what he is now, and that the men 
 who died on the scaffold for their crimes were benefactors 
 and philanthropists compared with their present character. 
 Worse, and getting worse. But if from that world they 
 reall}'- struggle out — have any of them got out yet? Will 
 Robespierre be in heaven in time to welcome the grand- 
 children of the men he butchered? Will James Fisk be 
 in heaven in time to welcome the widows and orphans 
 whose property he swamped in a Wall Street panic? Oh, 
 what a delicious, savory place heaven would be if the 
 wretches who went down into their graves unwashed got 
 there ! You have a child in heaven, you have a sister in 
 heaven — do you think of them as being in that kind of 
 society ? 
 
 If, as the great majority of the Universalists argue, there 
 is no hell, tell me, then, where the people of Sodom and 
 Gomorrah went? If all is fair beyond the line of this 
 world, irrespective of our character liere, then the men 
 who stole Charley Ross, and who were shot for their crimes, 
 
PILLOWS UNDER THE ARMS. 371 
 
 are better off to-day than the. parents who sit frenzied with 
 grief, waiting for the pattering of the feet of the little cap- 
 tive; then Ananias was better off" than Sapphira, for he 
 lied first, and so beat his wife three or four minutes into 
 glory. There is a hell. Your common sense declares it. 
 
 Still further, Universalism is, willingly or unwillingly, 
 the abettor of had morals. It is the high-priest of suicide. 
 How many people there have been who have got tired of 
 their troubles, and said, " Here, we must get out of these 
 troubles. We will just take our own lives, then we will 
 be free. There is nothing between us and glory but a 
 phial of laudanum or a revolver;" and so they swallowed 
 the laudanum or cracked the revolver, and that has been 
 the end of it. They step right over into glory. Tlaey have 
 been taught so. You know that all those who in their 
 right mind commit suicide — for I speak not of those who 
 are deranged, and take their own lives ; they are not respon- 
 sible for any thing they do — but I say that the majority 
 of those who in their seeming right mind take thei^ own 
 lives, leave a letter on the table, saying, "Meet me in heav- 
 en." They are going right over. Oh, if that doctrine be 
 true, why do not some of you who have been struggling 
 with overwhelming troubles put an end to them, and buy 
 an overdose of belladonna on your way home, or this aft- 
 ernoon leap from the top of your house, and get straight 
 into glory? 
 
 "For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 
 The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, 
 
 * * if if Hf if 
 
 "When he himself might his quietus make 
 With a bare bodkin?" 
 
 Why does he not do it? It is because the man knows that 
 
372 riLLOws under the arms. 
 
 if, in his sane moments, he takes his own life, he drops into 
 ruin. 
 
 A man near Utica, New York, sent for his pastor, a Uni- 
 versalist minister, and said to him, "If I should die now, 
 would I go to heaven?" "Most certainly," the minister 
 replied. " You think there is no possible doubt about it?" 
 "None at all, sir." "Well," said the man, "I have had 
 trouble enough, now I am going away from it. I am go- 
 ing to leave the world, and I am going now ;" and he drew 
 a pistol, and put it to his own temple, when the minister 
 clutched his arm, and said, "Stop! stop! there may be a 
 hell!" Then the man turned to the minister, and said, 
 "You preach what you don't believe. You are a de- 
 ceiver." If there be a man in this house to-day who has 
 at any time had the idea of taking his own life, let me per- 
 suade you not to sit down and write, " Meet me in heav- 
 en ;" you will not go there. The fact that there is a per- 
 dition is the mightiest moral restraint that the world has 
 ever felt. When you try to upset this doctrine of a future 
 place of punishment, you are abetting crime. 
 
 Universalist churches in our cities are surrounded by so 
 many churches of other kinds that you can not see their 
 full influence; but in the New England villages, or the 
 villages at the Far West, where there is only one church, 
 and that a Universalist church, or where the Universalist 
 church is dominant over all others — in such villages, inev- 
 itably and always, you find profane swearing, drunken- 
 ness. Sabbath-breaking, lust, and every form of abomina- 
 tion, rampant. Give the doctrine of Universalism full 
 swing in any village, or in any city, and it consumes it — 
 financially, morally, and spiritual!}'. I have seen its ef- 
 fects again and again in the villages at the West, where it 
 
PILLOWS UNDER THE ARMS. 873 
 
 left not one green tbing, I tell you that that doctrine is 
 the foe of God and man ; and, come fair or foul, I hold it 
 up in the presence of this audience for your denunciation. 
 "Thou shalt not surely die," was the first plaster that the 
 devil ever spread; but he spread it so large, there is enough 
 to salve the consciences of ages. 
 
 Still further. Universal ism is ivithering to all earnestness 
 in soul-saving. What is the matter with a great many of 
 the Protestant churches to-day ? They have this disease 
 of Universalism in a milder form. They adopt the Heidel- 
 berg Catechism or the Westminster Assembly, or they sit 
 in Methodist conferences or in Baptist associations; but 
 there is so much Universalism in the air, they are cowed 
 down. They dare not preach a rugged Gospel. I'hey say 
 "heaven" with a shout, but they say "hell" with a whis- 
 per; so that the people do not know exactly what they did 
 say; and the Calvinists think they said "hell," find the 
 Eestorationists think they said "bell," and the merchants 
 think they said "sell," and so they are all satisfied. Oh, I 
 abhor this namby-pambyism in religion! What is the 
 reason we do not have any more conversions in our 
 churches? It is because we do not sufficiently preach re- 
 wards and punishments. We tell the righteous it shall be 
 M'ell with them ; but not in the same emphasis do we tell 
 the wicked it shall be ill with them. 
 
 Why did Samuel Davies, and Nettleton, and Baxter, 
 and the Wesleys, and Whitefield, and Osborne, and Daniel 
 Baker count the conversions under their ministry by tens 
 and tens of thousands? It was because their sermons rang 
 with the doxologies of the saved, and crackled with the 
 fires of the lost. 
 
 Did you ever hear of a great awakening in a Univer- 
 
374 PILLOWS UNDER THE ARMS. 
 
 salist cburcli? Never. What would tbey get awakened 
 about? Tbey arc all safe, always bave been safe, always 
 will be. Wbat is tbe use of tbe jailer's rusbing tbrougb 
 between tbe falling walls of tbe prison, crying, " Wbat 
 must I do to be saved?" He was safe before tbe prison 
 began to rock. Wbat is tbe use of tbe sinking man's cry- 
 ing, "Lord, save; I perisb?" Stop your noise. Tbe wa- 
 ter is not up to your cbin ! Wbat is tbe use of making 
 sucb a fuss about tbree tbousand souls saved on tbe Day 
 of Pentecost? Tbey were as saved before as tbey were 
 after. Wbat did Paul mean wben be feared becoming a 
 castaway ? Cast away on wbat coast? Tbe coast of ever- 
 lasting love ? Wby are tbe wicked in tbe last day repre- 
 sented as crying out, "Kocks and mountains, fall on us, and 
 hide us from tbe face of tbe Lamb ?" No danger ! Ob, if 
 we want to bring souls to Jesus Cbrist, men and women of 
 God, we must tell tbe wbole trutb, and bide none of it! 
 
 Wbat means tbat picture, in some of tbe old books, rep- 
 resenting Martin Lutber almost bent double by a paroxysm 
 of earnestness while he is preaching about men's souls? 
 What meant Thomas Chalmers, standing in his Edinburgh 
 pulpit, warning people to flee from the wrath to come until 
 he actually foamed at the mouth ? Why did John Sam- 
 merfield and Robert M'Cheyne preach themselves so early 
 into the grave? Why was it that when Mr. Venn de- 
 scribed the perils of an immortal soul, history tells us the 
 audience " dropped like slacked lime ?'' Why was Edward 
 Payson so anxious for the salvation of men that his doc- 
 tors said his body was in a continuous fever? Oh, my 
 brethren, what we in the ministry most want is to be 
 aroused, convicted, melted, rebaptized, surcharged with the 
 power of the Lord God Almighty. Swinnoch said a thing 
 
PILLOWS UNDER THE ARMS. 375 
 
 tbat made me quake, boclj, mind, and soul, when I first 
 read it. He said, "It is an awful thing to fall into hell 
 from under a pulpit ; but what an awful thing to fall into 
 hell out of a pulpit." Oh, that God would give us grace 
 to see the infinite sham of modern Universalism, and giv& 
 us wisdom to stop sewing pillows under the arm-sleeves! 
 
 mj soul, wake up ! Ministers of Jesus Christ, in the 
 United States and Great Britain, wake up! There is a 
 hell, and it is our place to keep people out of it. 
 
 Still further, Universalism has ruined for eternity a great 
 many souls. East -south -east of Boston there is a light- 
 house called Minot's Ledge Light -house. It was with 
 great difiiculty that the Government, in 1857, put down 
 but four stones, and in 1858 they put down but six layers 
 of stone ; but after a while the work was accomplished. 
 It is very important that there should be a light-house 
 there. When the wind is blowing from the north-east, 
 and ships are coming on toward Boston harbor, if they 
 happen to miss the harbor they go on that rock but for 
 the light-house. I see one of the freight line of the Cunard- 
 ers coming on toward Boston harbor. The wind is north- 
 east. There are a hundred passengers on board the vessel. 
 
 1 sljdy get into Minot's Ledge Light -house. I go up 
 the winding stairs until I come to the top, and with a ham- 
 mer I break the glass, and I blow out the light. The cap- 
 tain of the Cunarder is pacing the deck, not knowing ex- 
 actly what to do. "The wind is from the north-east," he 
 says. " It is getting pretty late to go in to-night, but we 
 are not anywhere near Minot's Ledge Light-house, I am 
 a little confused about the lights along the coast, but I 
 think I will try it." Hark! There is a grating on the 
 bottom of the steamer. There is a quiver from stem to 
 
376 PILLOWS UNDER THE ARMS. 
 
 Stern. Then there is a keeling over, and a crash / All 
 lost! All lost! Whose fluilt was it? The captain's? 
 No. Never a braver man walked the deck. Was it the 
 crew's? No. They were faithful fellows. Whose fault? 
 Mine, for I blew out the light. 
 
 Now, let me say that every minister of the Gospel and 
 every Christian man is a light-house-keeper. Upon him 
 is a greater responsibility than ever rested upon the man 
 who keeps the Bell Kock Light -house, off Scotland, or 
 the Barnegat or Ilatteras Light-house. God has kindled 
 a great illumination on all the rocks of danger, saying, 
 "Stand off! Yonder is your harbor. Yonder is youv 
 wharf. Yonder are your friends, waiting to greet you. 
 Eocks here — nothing but rocks. Standoff!" What does 
 Universalism do? It comes up, and blows out the light. 
 It says, "Sail on. There are no rocks for immortal ship- 
 wreck. Sail on. All is well. All is well." Oh, what a 
 responsibilit}' ! I would rather be the engineer of a rail 
 train with four or five hundred passengers coming on 
 when the drawbridge is off, and know it, and 3'et not stop, 
 than a LTniversalist minister taking a whole church with 
 him off the brink, giving them no warning, blowing no 
 trumpet, never crying out, "The rocks! The rocks!" 
 Universalism is a deception high as heaven and deep as 
 hell ; and if it be let alone, it will ruin half the race. But 
 it is not going to be let alone. The Church of God, as it 
 rises up to its mission, will cry the alarm to the people, and 
 there will go up prayer to God, so that he will flash upon 
 the nations these tremendous realities. 
 
 If I live forty years to preach — and I expect to preach 
 forty 3-ears longer — I want to spend the whole time in set- 
 tino; before men the two destinies of eternal life and eternal 
 
PILLOWS UNDEB THE AR3IS. 377 
 
 darkness. But if I should not live as long as that, and if 
 this should be the last sermon I shall ever preach, as it 
 may be, then I want you to take this as my dying testi- 
 mony : there is a heaven — there is a hell. Accept of 
 Christ, and you reach the one; reject him, and you drop 
 headlong into the other. 
 
 But it is time for this jury to render their verdict. I 
 have shown you that Universalism is unscriptural, un- 
 reasonable; that it is destructive to good morals; that it is 
 withering to all earnestness in saving souls; that it is the 
 eternal discomfiture of a great many people. In courts of 
 law, when the jury come in, they stand and render their 
 verdict : the foreman giving the verdict and the clerk of 
 the court writing it down ; but in this religious assem- 
 blage you must render the verdict in silence, seated, so far 
 as you have room to be seated, God listening, and angels 
 recording. 
 
 If what I have said this morning is true, what arc you 
 going to do about it? What step will you take? My 
 soul has been wrung with the awfulness of this theme. If 
 God had not helped me, I should have fallen down be- 
 tween my chair and your pew ; but I did not dare to hold 
 back the theme. As I expect to meet my Maker and my 
 Judge, I did not dare to hide any of the truth ; but I was 
 all the time sustained with the idea that I could, before I 
 got through, tell you how to get off from your peril ; and 
 that if I pointed you to the flaming sword, it was only to 
 show you a refuge ; and if I showed you a chasm, it was 
 only to show you a bridge over it. The Lord Jesus to- 
 day breaks through all obstacles, and runs against the op- 
 posing spears, and tramples on the sharpened spikes, and 
 springs into the midst of this assembly, and throws his 
 
378 PILLOWS UNDER THE AR2IS. 
 
 firms around 3'ou, and begs you to be saved. Will you 
 shake him off? Will you hurl him on his back? Will 
 you trample on him, putting one foot on his holy heart, 
 and the other on his mangled brow, and from the corpse 
 of a murdered Christ will you leap into woe? Stop! 
 Stop! Stop! Jesus came to save you. By the tears 
 that ran down his scarred cheek — by the blood that oozed 
 fi'om his whipped back — by the sweat of agony that stood 
 out in beads upon his brow — by the dying groan which 
 broke the heart of the rocks, and made the sun faint dead 
 away in the heavens — I beg you to accept of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ and be saved. Oh, fling not away 3'our im- 
 mortal soul, when so much has been done to ransom it! 
 When you may be saved, why will you be lost? Some 
 one suggested to me yesterday that there were some per- 
 sons who consoled themselves by saying, "If I am to be 
 lost, there will be a great many others with mc, so I won't 
 care so much." Oh, what poor philosophy! 
 
 When the Lake Shore Eailroad cars went off the track 
 a year or two ago, and a hundred and fifty people were 
 crushed, was it any mitigation of the sorrow that there 
 were a hundred and fifty instead of one man? When, 
 three years ago, five hundred miles off Newfoundland, we 
 thought our ship was making the last plunge, did the 
 screams of seven hundred frenzied passengers mitigate the 
 horror of that night? Oh no. If there is any man deter- 
 mined to be lost, better be lost alone than in a crowd; 
 their sorrow added to your sorrow, their disaster added to 
 your disaster. I can not believe that there are any in this 
 house who will be such fools as to reject the only salvation 
 offered them this day in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 the infinite Kedeemer. I do not know whether my cheek 
 
PILLOWS UNDER THE ARMS. 379 
 
 turns pale at tlie tliouglit; but I do know that my heart 
 quakes as I cry out with Isaiah, " Who among us can 
 dwell in devouring fire ? Who of us can lie down in eter- 
 nal burnings?" 
 
 Men and women! there is only one name given under 
 heaven among men whereby you may be saved, and that 
 is Jesus. " God so loved the world, that he gave his only 
 begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not 
 perish, but have everlasting life." Depend upon it, if you 
 are lost it will not be God's fault. He has done every 
 thing to save you. It will not be Christ's flxult. He has 
 pleaded with blood-red earnestness for your salvation. It 
 will not be the Holy Spirit's fault. He has this day stirred 
 and entreated you mightily. If you are lost, it will be 
 your own fault. You will forge your own chains. You 
 will write your own death-warrant. You will bolt and 
 bar the door of heaven, and doubly bolt it and doubly bar 
 it against your own soul ; and you might as well this day, 
 if that is your determination, make your valedictory, say- 
 ing: "Farewell, Church of God ! I don't want the com- 
 fort of your sacraments. Farewell, Holy Bible! I don't 
 want your illumination. Farewell, Holy Ghost! bother 
 me no more about the great future. Farewell, O heaven ! 
 I don't want to hear thy clapping cymbals, nor to mingle 
 in thy hallelujahs. Farewell, O my glorified kindred! fa- 
 ther, mother, sister, brother, and my dear children who 
 broke my heart when they went away from me. Farewell ! 
 Keep no longer a seat for me by your side at the heaven- 
 ly banquet. I am not coming. I take another road. I 
 make another choice. Across these spaces I fling this kiss 
 of everlasting separation. Good-bye, good-bye. This is 
 my eternal valedictory !" 
 
380 WHAT KILLS MINISTERS. 
 
 WHAT KILLS MINISTEES.* 
 
 "Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people tiiat is with 
 thee : for this thing is too heavy for thee ; thou art not able to perform it 
 thyself alone. " — Exodus xviii., 18. 
 
 JETHRO was pnying a visit to liis son in-law, Moses. 
 The tent is lighted, and swarming with a glad levee. 
 Until very late at night I see the swinging of the lanterns, 
 and the glancing in and out of the guests. Good cheer, re- 
 cital of stirring experiences, accounts of what they have 
 done and what God has done, and innocent conviviality 
 characterize the occasion. In the morning Moses sits down 
 to listen to all the people have to say by way of complaint 
 or appeal. He stands between them and God. It is talk, 
 talk, talk all day long. From morning till night Moses is 
 listening, planning, counseling, praying, preaching. Jethro 
 gets alarmed about his son-in-law's health. " Why," he 
 says, "this thing will wear you out. These people and 
 this work will exhaust you. Why don't you divide up 
 the labors and the burdens among other people? Thou 
 wilt surely wear awa}'', both thou, and this people that is 
 with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee." Moses 
 takes the advice of his father-in-law, and calls around him 
 some of the best men he can find as assistants, and, instead 
 of being worn out with his labors, lives one hundred and 
 twenty years — as long as any man ought to want to live 
 
 * Sixth anniversarv sermon. 
 
WHAT KILLS MINISTERS. 881 
 
 in this world, -wliicli was intended only as a stepping-stone 
 to something brighter. 
 
 Jethro's warning to his son-in-law is just as appropriate 
 now for all religious pastors, teachers, and Christian work- 
 ers. You know very well that all Christendom is strewed 
 with worn-out ministers of the Gospel. Some of them went 
 down under brain -softening, others under throat disease, 
 others under paralj^sis, others under nervous derangement 
 and disorganization. 
 
 What is killing so many ministers? Sometimes they 
 are destroyed through excessive use of tobacco, sometimes 
 through culpable neglect of physical exercise, sometimes 
 through reckless exposure ; but I think that, in the vast 
 majority of cases, it is through lack of sympathy and help 
 on the part of their congregations. Thousands of these 
 pastors are worried to death by insufficient salary, and 
 pulled apart by unreasonable demands, and rung out of 
 life by the tintinnabulation of their door-bell, and exhaust- 
 ed with perpetual interruptions. Now, my text suggests 
 that no man can do every thing. If a minister of the Gros- 
 pcl has on one shoulder the spiritual affiiirs of a church, 
 and on the other shoulder the financial affairs of a church, 
 his feet are on the margin of an open grave, clear to the 
 bottom of which he can look without movins^. Let all 
 ministers of the Gospel, so far as possible, gather around 
 them sympathetic men and women upon whom they can 
 throw much of the care and responsibility and trouble. 
 "Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people 
 that is with thee : for this thing is too heavy for thee ; thou 
 art not able to perform it thyself alone," 
 
 Standing before you this morning, preaching my sixth 
 anniversary sermon as your pastor — a style of sermon in 
 
382 WHAT KILLS MINISTERS. 
 
 wbich the preacher is generally expected to be more than 
 usually personal— I have to tell you that the burdens of life 
 are getting to me less and less, and that as the years pass 
 on I have fewer and still fewer anxieties. In beautiful 
 Belleville, on the banks of the Passaic, where I began my 
 Christian ministry, it seemed as if all the work came down 
 on my young shoulders. Going to the West, the field was 
 larger and the care less. Going to Philadelphia, the field 
 was still larger and the care still less. And standing to-day, 
 as I do, among hundreds of warm personal friends, whose 
 hands and feet and hearts are all willing to help, I have 
 less anxiety than I ever had. I have taken the advice of 
 Jethro in the text, and have gathered around me a great 
 many with whom I expect to divide all the care and the 
 responsibility ; and though sometimes, what with the con- 
 duct of this church, where we have a perpetual religious 
 awakening, and the conduct of a religious weekly newspa- 
 per, and the conduct of the Lay College, people have often 
 addressed me in words similar to those of my text, saying, 
 "Thou wilt surely wear away : this thing is too heavy for 
 thee," I am glad to know that this morning I am in perfect 
 health, and ready to recount to you what the Lord has 
 been doing in all these days of our sojourn together, be- 
 tween 1869 and 1875. 
 
 It is now six years since I preached to you my opening 
 sermon, on the text, "God is love." I wish I could pour 
 out my soul this morning in a doxology of praise to God, 
 and of gratitude to this people. The difference between 
 these years has been that the second was to me happier 
 than the first, and the third than the second, and the fourth 
 tlian the third, and the fifth than the fourth, and the sixth 
 than the fifth. God has led us through many vicissitudes. 
 
WRAT KILLS 3IINmTERS. 383 
 
 We are in the third church in six years. Crowded out of 
 the first, burned out of the second, by the mercy of God 
 led into the third. 
 
 We look back to the solitary service six years ago in 
 the old chapel, with a congregation that almost could be 
 accommodated on this platform. For many years the 
 church had been in strife, until the three or four parties 
 had exterminated each other, leaving an expanse of empty 
 pews, a wheezy organ, a cramped-up pulpit, and a steeple 
 the laughing-stock of the town. My personal friends ap- 
 plied to me an emphatic word of four letters, and two let- 
 ters alike, in expressing my folly in undertaking this en- 
 terprise. Indeed, it seemed heavier than to start entirely 
 new, for there were wide-spread prejudices in regard to the 
 church. Still we went on. By the blessing of God, in 
 three or four weeks our church was full ; and it is aston- 
 ishing how well an old building looks when it is all occu- 
 pied, for there is no power in graceful arch, or in carved 
 pillar, or in exquisite fresco to adorn a place like an audi- 
 ence of beaming countenances. I had rather preach in a 
 full barn than in a sparsely attended cathedral. Empty 
 pews are non-conductors of Gospel electricit3^ People 
 came in from all ranks and conditions; and, looking over 
 the audience to-day, I can not see more than four or five 
 families who were with us six years ago. Some of them 
 have been advanced into the better society of heaven, while 
 some of them dropped off" because they thought we were 
 going too fast, and they could not keep up. We went 
 on gathering the people in from all directions, until we 
 have here to-day the rich and the poor, the wise and the 
 ignorant; those who toil with pen, with printing-press, 
 with yard-stick, and with hammer. Enough physicians — 
 
384 WHAT KILLS MINISTERS. 
 
 allopatliic, homeopathic, hydropathic, and eclectic — to treat 
 us in all our disorders. Enough lawyers to defend us in 
 all our legal contests. Enough artists to cover our walls 
 with pictures. Enough merchants to give us the necessary 
 fabrics, whether foreign or domestic. Enough mechanics 
 to build and polish and make comfortable for us our resi- 
 dences. And I will say that never did there come togeth- 
 er in one church a crowd of more genial, intelligent, sym- 
 pathetic, enthusiastic, and warm-hearted Christian people 
 than those which assemble here. We are all of one mind 
 and heart. We cordially greet all who come, and give a 
 godspeed to those who go. When any body does not like 
 the' music, or the preaching, or the plan on which our 
 church is conducted, we say "Good-bye" as cheerfully as 
 when he came we said "How do you do?" This church 
 is now so large that, if a man wants to make trouble, such 
 a small proportion hear of it that he soon gives up the un- 
 dertaking as a dead failure. 
 
 We are all new together. We tarried long enough in 
 the old Tabernacle to learn how to conduct a larger church. 
 Then, when it was time for us to graduate from that, we 
 got our diploma in red scroll of flame, signed, sealed, and 
 delivered on one cold December day in 1872. When 
 that conflagration took place, through inadequate insurance 
 consequent upon the style of material of which the old 
 building was constructed, w^e lost every thing save our 
 faith in God and our determination to go ahead. We tar- 
 ried in the Academy of Music long enough to gather up 
 liundreds of the best families of our congregation who are 
 worshiping with us to-day, and to get a baptism of the 
 Holy Ghost such as never descended on any church on 
 this continent. We came into this buildinor with the bless- 
 
WHAT KILLS MINISTERS. 385 
 
 ing of God, and with the blessing of all denominations of 
 Christians in this land and in Great Britain ; and, since we 
 have been here the Lord has mightily blessed us, pouring 
 out his Spirit from Sabbath to Sabbath, so that I can ask 
 you, well knowing what your answer will be, whether 
 you have made any too great sacrifices for Christ and his 
 kingdom? 
 
 During these six years the Lord has sorely tried us ; in the 
 first place, by calling us to build a church with a new con- 
 gregation that had not at all been consolidated ; then by 
 the demolition of that building; then by taking us a mile 
 off from the centre of our congregation, to worship in an- 
 other building; then by the almost superhuman effort of 
 putting up this building during a financial depression such 
 as never before afflicted this century. If God had not 
 helped the architect, and helped the trustees, and helped 
 the people, we should have perished in the undertaking. 
 And while I wish to-day to recognize the indomitable per- 
 severance and sacrifices of the congregation, I must say, to 
 God belongs the glory. He planned this structure, making 
 it perfect in acoustics ; raising money for the building out 
 of the very jaws of a national panic ; filling the house with 
 worshipers. Oh, let us praise him now, and let us praise 
 him forever. I say you are not sorry for any of the sacri- 
 fices or toils through which you have gone. We have had 
 so perpetually the blessing of God in this church, that it 
 excites no remark when from a single service hundreds of 
 souls step out into the kingdom of Jesus. There are in 
 almost all the towns and cities of this country those resi- 
 dents who in this building first woke up to their spiritual 
 necessities. Letters come from North and South, and East 
 and West, from the Canadas and from both sides the sea, 
 
 17 
 
^8Q WHAT KILLS MINISTERS. 
 
 telling me of this fact. Oli that to-day we might make some 
 fitting expression to the Lord ! Shall it be in carved words 
 upon the pillars? Shall it be in wreaths upon the wall? 
 Shall it be in the organ's open diapason? All that is well; 
 but rather let it be that our hearts shall rise to God in an 
 intense and all-conquering acclamation of thanksgiving. 
 
 We are trying here to maintain a ivell-balanced church, 
 and for that reason we have in all departments of Christian 
 service the old and the young. It is a bad thing for a 
 church when the old people have all the management, or 
 when the young people have all the management. In the 
 one case the church will go too slow, in the other it will 
 go too fast. We want the fast men to keep the slow men 
 from going too slow, and the slow men to keep the fast 
 people from going too fast. Here are many of the aged. 
 They have come down to us from another day. Not on 
 their brow the snows of many winters, as people often say, 
 but the white crocuses of an everlasting spring-time into 
 which they are about to blossom. And how many of the 
 young coming to us Sabbath by Sabbath ! We want them 
 all equipped for God. We want them for flying artillery 
 ill a double-quick march. When there is a storming-party 
 to be made up, we want to wheel them into line — old men 
 for counsel, young men for action. 
 
 We are also trying to maintain a musical church. We 
 have an inborn antipathy to any thing like stilted and pre- 
 cise song in the house of God. We like oratorios, orches- 
 tras, concerts, and prima -donnas in their places; but we 
 want vociferous singing in the house of the Lord. David 
 cries out, "Sing aloud unto God." In other words, do not 
 hum it or mumble it. Oh for an anthem strong enough 
 to surge this whole audience on the beach of heaven ! Per- 
 
WHAT KILLS MINISTERS. 387 
 
 suaded that we could not do the work so well by the use 
 of a choir, we have called into the service of the church 
 two Bible instruments — the organ and the cornet, and so 
 the music of the church has been sustained and led and de- 
 veloped. Oh, what grand and glorious singing we have 
 had during the past years; even people who had bronchi- 
 tis forgetting their infirmity, and lifting aloud their voice 
 before God; people who could not sing a note opening 
 their mouth reckless as to what kind of a sound came out 
 of it. But the little discord is overwhelmed in the great 
 symphony — a chip drowned in the rush of great waters. 
 And yet we feel this morning that we have not done what 
 we might, or ought, or will do, in this department of Chris- 
 tian service. We want more heart under it, more soul 
 flung into it. We want the whole audience roused up to 
 the sound of jubilee. We want the people to come from 
 their homes on the Sabbath with hymn-books, and after 
 the preacher shall announce the hymn, we want them to 
 find the right page, and clear their throats, and at the first 
 throb of the cornet on the air stretch themselves up to the 
 magnificence and glory of this exercise. History tells us 
 of a shout that the Persian host lifted so loud that the 
 eagles that were flying through the air were stunned, and 
 dropped to the earth. Oh that there might go up such a 
 congregational anthem from this house of the Lord as shall 
 make all heaven drop in blessing on our souls. I take 
 partly the words of the Bible, and partly my own words, 
 and say, " Why are ye so slack to go up and possess the 
 orchards and the vineyards and the mountains of sacred 
 song?" Oh that the music of heaven and earth might join 
 midway the arches. Rise, song of earth ! Descend, O 
 song of heaven ! 
 
388 WHAT KILLS ilinjstehs. 
 
 Still further, ive are trying to maintain in this place a 
 church aggressive and revolutionary. Why build or main- 
 tain any other church in this City of Churches, where there 
 are enough to accommodate all the people who are disposed 
 to go to the house of God on the Sabbath, and perhaps 
 more than enough? If you have nothing particular, noth- 
 ing unique, nothing different, then what a waste of bricks 
 and brawn and brain. But we have an idea of a church. 
 We have built this house of God as a place where we mean 
 to bombard iniquity. We want to smash sin, without any 
 apology for smashing it. We have started in this line, and 
 we mean to keep on, and study to be as well pleased with 
 curses as blessings from the people. If there are any of 
 you who do not like to go to a church which is assaulted 
 of many newspapers and of the outside world, who can not 
 understand its policies and its principles, stand clear of this 
 church ! We mean until the day of our death, and for a 
 few days after, to keep society stirred up by the discussion 
 of themes vital to its interests, and vital to the interests of 
 the immortal soul. During the past six months theatrical 
 people have been after us, and the Spiritualists have been 
 after us, and the Unitarians have been after us, and the 
 Universalists have been after us — one of their prominent 
 men recently saying that he did not think there would be 
 any hell except for one man, and that the pastor of the 
 Brooklyn Tabernacle ! But still we shall go on, as God 
 gives us strength and health and spirit to do his will. We 
 have only taken, as it were, the outside casement of this 
 great rampart of iniquity. On ! on ! "If God be for us, 
 ^(.'/io can be against us?" 
 
 Still further, ive are trying here to maintain a generous 
 church. AVe have as a church been able to do but little 
 
WRAT KILLS MINISTERS. 389 
 
 for outside chanties, for the reason that we have been all 
 the time building churches or enlarging them. But we are 
 trying to maintain an organism on the voluntary principle. 
 We believe that a church can be educated up to the duty 
 and the joy of giving. We put no premium on financial 
 meanness. We believe that people ought to give to the 
 cause of God every farthing they can possibly give. More- 
 over, we believe that all can give something, and that the 
 vast majority of the people could give more in our church- 
 es than they do, and be better off. We believe that the 
 grandest investment a man ever makes, for this world or 
 the world to come, is what he gives to the Church of God, 
 since Christ pays him back fivefold, tenfold, twentyfold, fif- 
 tyfold, a hundredfold. In other words, we believe that a 
 man is better off in this world if he is generous, and well 
 off just in proportion as he is generous; and we believe 
 that those people who give the most in proportion to their 
 means will after a while have the finest houses on earth, 
 and the grandest mansions in heaven. The stingy people 
 keep poor, the generous get rich, as a general rule. It is 
 the old principle of the Bible: "Cast thy bread upon the 
 waters, for thou shalt find it after many days." 
 
 So I believe if a man takes the old Bible principle, and 
 gives one-tenth of all his income to the cause of God, he 
 has an insurance of prosperity such as the signature of the 
 Bank of England can not give him. I believe our congre- 
 gation will yet rise up to the positive rapture of giving. 
 We believe that men can be so built on a large scale of 
 heart, that they will look over their property and then say, 
 " I will give so much toward my spiritual culture. I will 
 give so much toward the spiritual culture of my wife. I 
 will give so much toward the spiritual culture of my chil- 
 
390 WHAT KILLS MINISTUSS. 
 
 dren. I will give so mach toward the spiritual culture of 
 the men who have little or no means. How small it seems, 
 this that I am giving to Christ, who gave every thing to 
 me! I wish it were five hundred thousand times more." 
 Yes, we believe that the time will come when people will 
 be so educated in this matter of Christian generosity, that 
 instead of deciding by what other people give, or what 
 people give in other churches, they shall give according to 
 their own appreciation of the height, and depth, and length, 
 and breadth, and infinity of their spiritual advantages. Do 
 you not wish you had given that three thousand dollars to 
 the cause of Christ that went down in Northern Pacific 
 bonds ? 
 
 I believe the time will come in the Church when the 
 passing of a contribution plate or a subscription paper 
 will kindle up the fiices of the people as by the illumination 
 of a great satisfaction. But now how many of us begrudge 
 the few dollars we give to the Lord, and only give when 
 we seem to be compelled to give, and so keep ourselves poor 
 at the store, and rob ourselves of eternal dividends ! Under 
 the old dispensation, as I intimated, the people gave one- 
 tenth of their property to the Lord, but that was a far infe- 
 rior dispensation to the one we have. And yet how few 
 in this day who receive a thousand dollars a year give a 
 hundred to God ! how few who receive five thousand give 
 five hundred to God ! how few who receive a hundred 
 thousand give ten thousand to God! Those Jews, under 
 their dark dispensation, gave one-tenth for a mere taper of 
 spiritual life and light, while we do not give as much as 
 that, though we have noonday radiating the hemisphere, 
 I really think that if those old Jews gave one- tenth for 
 their half-and-half advantages, wc ought to give one-fifth 
 
WSAT KILLS MINISTERS. 391 
 
 for the glorious privileges which God in this day has be- 
 stowed upon us. 
 
 We talk a great deal about the evangelization of this 
 world and the salvation of men ; but there is more talk 
 than contribution ; and I do not believe that the prayer of 
 a man for the salvation of this world ever amounts to any 
 thing unless he, by his own generosity, shows that he is in 
 earnest in the matter. I like the style of Elias Van Ben- 
 schoten, the old man who came into a meeting of the Gen- 
 eral Synod of the Eeformed Church in 1814, and, after there 
 had been a great many long and brilliant speeches made 
 about the education of young men to the ministry, got up, 
 and said he would like to speak. The people looked cha- 
 grined. They thought to themselves, "He can't speak." 
 He said, "Mr. President, I will give eight hundred and 
 forty dollars in cash toward that object, and thirteen thou- 
 sand dollars in bonds," and then sat down. 
 
 While the theory is abroad in many of the churches that 
 men give only as they are compelled to give, I believe that 
 the people can be educated up to a grand and glorious vol- 
 untary contribution for the support of the Gospel of Jesus; 
 but I can not make the people believe this without your 
 help. Eemember the words of Jethro to his son-in-law. 
 Come, let us all rally in this one respect, and try partly to 
 pay God for our Bibles, for our churches, for our families, 
 for our hopes of heaven. If we do not carry out this prin- 
 ciple, there will come up, after a while, a stronger genera- 
 tion to execute this commission of Christ, and then they 
 will look back and say, "Ah, what a shriveled-up minister 
 and people that must have been in the Brooklyn Taberna- 
 cle in 1875 ! When the Lord opened before them an op- 
 portunity of carrying out a Gospel principle, they had not 
 
392 WHAT KILLS MINISTERS. 
 
 the courage to carry it out." I do not expect to bother 
 this world much after I go out of it, but I must start the 
 suspicion that if ever the auctioneer's hammer cracks on 
 the back of one of these pews, it will wake me up quicker 
 than the prophet Samuel was awakened by the Witch of 
 En-dor. 
 
 Still further, ive are here trying to huild^ and organize, 
 and Iceep up a soul-saving church. I mention this last be- 
 cause it is first. "And the first shall be last." I have by 
 argument, and illustration, and caricature, in these last six 
 years tried to create in your soul an unutterable disgust for 
 much of the religion of this day, and to lead you back, so 
 far as God gave me strength to do it, to the old religion of 
 Jesus Christ and his apostles. I have tried to show you 
 that the meanest cant in all the world is the cant of skep- 
 ticism, and that you ought to stop apologizing for Chris- 
 tianity, since it is the duty of those who do not believe in 
 Christianity to apologize to you ; and that the biggest vil- 
 lains in the universe are those who want to rob us of that 
 grand old Bible ; and that there is one idea in a church that 
 ought to swallow up all other ideas, and that is the soul- 
 saving idea. "But," you say, "are you not going to pay 
 any attention to those who have entered into the kingdom 
 of God, and have really become Christians?" My theory 
 is, the way to develop a man for this world and for the 
 world to come is to throw him chin -deep in Christian 
 work; and if, after a man has been drawn out of the mire 
 of his sin on to the " Eock of Ages," he wants to jump 
 back, then he will have to jump; I am not going to stand 
 and watch him. I believe the great work of the Christian 
 Church is to bring men out of their sin into the hope and 
 the joys of Christ's salvation; and then if, with all the ad- 
 
WHAT KILLS MINISTERS. 393 
 
 vantages of this century, with open Bible, and the constant 
 plying of the Iloly Ghost, a man can not grow in grace, he 
 is not worth a great deal of culture. 
 
 We want this a church set apart for the one grand object 
 of bringing men out of their sin into hope of the Gospel. 
 There will, in this coming year, be two hundred thousand 
 strangers who will be seated within these gates. How 
 many of them will you bring to Christ by your prayers 
 and your personal solicitations? Will you bring a score, 
 or will it be a hundred or a thousand? I must tell you 
 that, compared with this work of saving immortal souls, all 
 other work is cold and stale and insipid. To this one work, 
 God helping me, I consecrate the remaining days and years 
 of my life, and I ask you to join with me in this crusade 
 for the redemption of immortal souls. 
 
 Now, can it be possible that six years of my pastorate 
 have passed away never to return ? How many squander- 
 ed days and years — squandered by you and by me! God 
 forgive us for the past, and help us to be more faithful for 
 the future. Through what a variety of scenes we have 
 gone! I have stood by you in times of sickness, and by 
 the graves of your dead. When you came back from ex- 
 hausting sickness that we feared would be fatal, I praised 
 God that the color came to your cheek and the spring to 
 your step. And some of you in the past six j^ears have 
 passed through dire bereavements. How few of the fami- 
 lies of my congregation have not been invaded! How 
 many of the old people have gone, in the last two or three 
 years! They went away so gently that they had ended 
 the second or third stanza in eternal glory before j'ou 
 knew they were gone. And, oh, how many of the bright, 
 dear children have gone — the very darlings of your heart! 
 
 17* 
 
894 WEAT KILLS MINISTERS. 
 
 You tried to hold on to them with your stout arms, and 
 you said, "0 Lord, spare them. I can't give them up; I 
 can't give them up. Let me keep them a little longer." 
 But they broke away from your arms into the light of 
 heaven. It seemed as if Jesus and the angels were deter- 
 mined to have them there and then. 
 
 But we have tried to make this church a comforting 
 place for all the broken-hearted. Oh, how many of them 
 there are ! We have tried to fill the song and the sermon 
 and the prayer with the solace of God's promises, and so it 
 shall be hereafter. It is no mere theory with me. I have 
 had enough trouble of my own to know how to comfort 
 those who are desolate, and it is my ambition to be to you 
 a son of consolation. Standing as we do at the open por- 
 tals of another pastoral year, let us to-day make a new vow 
 of consecration. Let us be faithful to God and faithful to 
 each other ; for soon we must part, and all these pleasant 
 scenes in which we have mingled will vanish forever. By 
 the throne of God, our work all done, our sorrows all end- 
 ed, may we be permitted to talk over the solemn, delight- 
 ful, and disciplinary occurrences of this my sixth pastoral 
 year in Brooklyn. 
 
TEE SUPEREVMAN JESUS. 395 
 
 THE SUPERHUMAN JESUS. 
 
 "Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen." — 7?o- 
 mans ix., 5. 
 
 PAUL was a reckless man in always telling the whole 
 truth. It mattered not who it hit, or what theoloo-ical 
 system it upset. In this one sentence he makes a world 
 of trouble for all Arians and Socinians, and gives a cud 
 for skepticism to chew on for the next thousand years. 
 We must proceed skillfully to twist this passage of Script- 
 ure, or we shall have to admit the Deity of Jesus Christ. 
 I roll up my sleeves for the work, and begin by saying, 
 perhaps this is a wrong version. No ; all the versions agree 
 — Syriac, Ethiopic, Latin, Arabic. Perhaps this word God 
 means a being of great power, but not the Deity. It is 
 " God over all." But perhaps this word God refers to the 
 first person of the Trinity — God the Father. No; it is 
 " Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen." 
 Whichever way I take it, and when I turn it upside-down, 
 and when I try to read it in every possible shape, I am 
 compelled to leave it as all have been compelled to leave 
 it who have gone before me, an incontrovertible proof of 
 the eternal and magnificent Godhead of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. " Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for- 
 ever. Amen." 
 
 About the differences between the evangelical denomi- 
 nations of Christians I have no concern. If I could by 
 the turning-over of my hand decide whether finally all the 
 
396 THE SUPERHUMAN JESUS. 
 
 world shall be Methodists, or Baptists, or Episcopalians, or 
 Congregationalists, or Presbyterians, I would not turn over 
 my hand; but between Unitarianism, which believes the 
 Deity of Christ, and Trinitarianism, which argues his divine 
 nature, there is a difference as wide as eternity. If Christ 
 be not a God, then we are base idolaters. If Christ be God, 
 then those who deny it are blasphemers. To that Chris- 
 tological question we come this morning, and may God 
 help us to do right in a question where mistake is infinite ! 
 
 I suppose we are all willing to take the Bible as our 
 standard. It requires as much faith to be an infidel as to 
 be a Christian ; but it is faith in a different direction. The 
 Christian believes in the statements of Moses, and Isaiah, 
 and David, and Matthew, and Mark, and Luke, and Paul. 
 The infidel believes in the statement of the freethinkers. 
 We have faith in one class of men ; they have faith in an- 
 other class of men. But as I suppose the vast majority of 
 the people in the audience this morning are willing to take 
 the Bible as their guide in morals and religion, I shall make 
 this book my starting-point. 
 
 You may be aware that the two great generals who 
 have marshaled the largest army of Unitarian troops are 
 Strauss and Renan. The multitudes of the slain under 
 them will never be counted until the day when the arch- 
 angel sounds the roll-call of the resurrection. These men, 
 and all men who have sympathy with them, begin by at- 
 tacking the fortress of the miracles. They know that when 
 once they have captured that fortress Christianity must 
 surrender. The great German cxegete says that all the 
 miracles are myths. The great French exegete says that 
 all the miracles are legends. They must somehow or other 
 explain away every thing supernatural in the Bible — every 
 
THE SUPERHUMAN JESUS. 397 
 
 thing supernatural in the life of Christ — though to accom- 
 plish that they must go up the greatest absurdity. They 
 prefer the miracles of human nonsense rather than the 
 grand miracles of Jesus Christ. They say, for instance, 
 that the miraculous birth of Christ was a myth, just as it is 
 a fonciful idea that Komulus was born of Ehea Silvia and 
 the god Mars. They say that Christ did not feed five thou- 
 sand with a few loaves of bread ; that is only a myth which 
 got mixed up with the distribution of twenty loaves among 
 a hundred people by Elisha. They say Christ did not 
 turn the water into wine ; that was only an improvement 
 on the old Egyptian plague by which water was turned 
 into blood. They say no star pointed down to the manger 
 where Jesus lay ; that was only the flash of a passing lan- 
 tern. They say that Christ's sweating great drops of blood 
 in Gethsemane was not very astonishing, for he had been 
 exposed to the night, and had been taken suddenly phj^sic- 
 ally ill. They say no tongues of fire sat on the heads of 
 the disciples at the Pentecost; it was only a great thunder- 
 storm,.and the air was full of electricity, and it snapped and 
 flew all around about the heads of the disciples. They 
 say that Mary, and Martha, and Lazarus, and Christ made 
 up their minds it was necessary to get np an excitement in 
 order to forward their religion, and so they resolved to 
 play funeral, and Lazarus consented to be the corpse, and 
 Mary and Martha consented to be mourners, and Christ 
 consented to be chief operator. I, of course, put it in my 
 own words, but state accurately their meaning. They say 
 that the four Gospels are spurious, written by superstitious 
 or lying men, and that they were backed up by people who 
 were to die, and actually did die, for a thing they did not 
 believe. Kow, I take back the limited remark I made a 
 
398 THE SUPERHUMAN JESUS. 
 
 moment ago, and say that it requires a thousandfold more 
 credulity and faith to be an infidel than to be a Christian, 
 and that if Christianity demands that the whale swallow 
 Jonah, then skepticism demands that Jonah swallow the 
 whale. 
 
 I propose this morning to show you, so far as the Lord 
 may help me, that Jesus Christ is God. I shall prove it, 
 first, from what inspired men say of him ; then, from what 
 he said of himself; then, from his wonderful achievements. 
 " Gret a good fat text to start with," said Dr. Ludlow, our 
 grand old theological professor. If I never had such a 
 text before, I have one this morning : " Christ came, who is 
 over all, God blessed forever. Amen." Not over Solo- 
 mon's throne ; not higher than David's throne ; not higher 
 than Caesar's ; not higher than the Henrys', than the Fred- 
 ericks', than the Louis', than Napoleon's, than Victoria's? 
 Oh yes. Gather all those thrones and pile them up, and 
 my text overspans them as easily as a rainbow spans the 
 mountain-top. " Christ came, who is over all, God blessed 
 forever. Amen." 
 
 The Bible says, "All things were made by him." Stop! 
 Does not that prove too much ? He did not make the Med- 
 iterranean, did he? not Mount Lebanon? not the Alps? 
 not Mount Washington? not the earth? not the stars? 
 not the universe ? Yes, all things were made by him. 
 And, lest we should be so stupid as not to understand it, 
 the apostle concludes by saying, "Without him, was not 
 any thing made that was made." Why, then, he must have 
 been a God. 
 
 The Bible says, "At the name of Jesus Christ every knee 
 shall bow, of things on earth and things in heaven." See 
 all heaven coming down on their knees — martyrs' on their 
 
THE SUPEBHUMAN JESUS. 399 
 
 knees, apostles on their knees, confessors on their knees, the 
 archangel on his knees. Before whom ? A man ? No, a 
 God. 
 
 The Bible goes on to say that " every tongue shall con- 
 fess that Jesus Christ is Lord." Malayan, Bornesian, Mex- 
 ican, Persian, Italian, German, Spanish, French, English — 
 every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. 
 He must be a God. The Bible says, "Jesus Christ, the 
 same yesterday, to-day, and forever." Men change ; the 
 body changes entirely in seven years, the mind changes, the 
 heart changes; but "Christ the same yesterday, to-day, 
 and forever." He must be a God. 
 
 Philosophers say that it is gravitation, the centripetal and 
 centrifugal forces, which keep the worlds from clashing and 
 from demolition ; but Paul says that Christ's arm is the 
 axle on which every thing turns, and that his hand is the 
 socket in which every thing is set; ^^ upholding all things 
 by the word of his power." He must be a God. 
 
 But I go on, in the next place, and see what Christ said 
 of himself Every person ought to know more about him- 
 self than any body else does. If I ask you where you 
 were born, and you say, " I was born in Chester, England, 
 or Dublin, or New Orleans," I would believe you. Why? 
 Because you oi^ght to know ; it is a matter that pertains 
 to yourself. If I asked you whether you can lift three or 
 four hundred pounds, and you said yes, I would believe 
 3'ou. You ought to know. If I ask you how much mon- 
 ey you have, a hundred or a hundred thousand dollars, 
 and you tell me, I believe you, because you, being an hon- 
 est man, will tell me truth. Now, I ask if Christ ought 
 not to know whether or not he is God? I ask his age. 
 He says, in so many words, " Before Abraham was, I am." 
 
400 TEE SUPEIiHUMAX JESUS. 
 
 Abraham had been dead two thousand and twenty-eight 
 years. Was Christ two thousand and twenty-eight years 
 old? He says so. In Revelation he says, "I am Alpha;" 
 Alpha being the first letter of the Greek alphabet, it was 
 as much as to say, "I am the A of the great alphabet of all 
 the centuries," Ought not he to know? 
 
 Could Christ be in a thousand places at the same time? 
 He said so. He intimates that he can be in Madras, in 
 Stockholm, in Pekin, in San Francisco, in Constantinople, 
 at the same time. " Where two or three are gathered to- 
 gether in my name, there am I in the midst of them." 
 This faculty of everywhereativeness, is it a human or a Di- 
 vine attribute ? Lest we should think that this power of 
 everywhereativeness should give out, Christ intimates that 
 he is going to keep on, and that on the day before the 
 world is-burned up, he will be in all the prayer-meetings 
 in Europe and Africa, North and South America ; for he 
 declares, in so many words, "Lo! I am with you alway, 
 even unto the end of the worldP'' He is a God ! He is a 
 God! 
 
 He takes divine honors. He calls himself the Lord of 
 men, the Lord of angels, the Lord of devils. Is he not? 
 If he is not, then he is the greatest fraud that was ever 
 enacted. To-morrow morning a man comes into your 
 store in New York, and he says, "I am Mr. Laird, the 
 great ship-builder of Liverpool. I built the Alabama. I 
 have built a great many fine ships." You treat him with a 
 great deal of consideration; but you find out after a while 
 that be is not Mr. Laird, and that he never built any thing. 
 What is that man ? Aw impostor. Now, Christ said that 
 he built the earth — built all things. Did he build the 
 earth, or did he not? If he did, he was a God; if he did 
 
THE SUPERHUMAN JESUS. 401 
 
 not, he was an impostor. A man with a Jewish counte- 
 nance and German accent conies into your store. He says, 
 " I am Eothschild, the banker, of London. I hold the 
 wealth of nations in my vest-pocket. I loaned that mon- 
 ey to Italy and to Austria." You treat him with a great 
 deal of consideration for a while ; but suppose you find 
 out that he is not a banker, that he does not own a single 
 dollar in all the world? What is that man? An impos- 
 tor. Now, Christ comes, and he says he owns this world, 
 he owns the next, he owns all the glories of land and sea ; 
 he professes to be vast in his possessions. Is he in posses- 
 sion of all these things? Does he own them all? If he 
 does not, what is he? An impostor. A man with vener- 
 able aspect and gray beard comes into the White House at 
 Washington. He says to the President, "I am King Wil- 
 liam of Germany. I have come over incognito for the pur- 
 pose of recreation and amusement. I gained the victory 
 at Sedan. I have castles in Berlin and Dresden." Sup- 
 pose after a while the President finds that he has no cas- 
 tles, and that he is not the king ; what is he, then ? An 
 impostor. Now, the Lord Jesus Christ professed to be 
 king, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God. If 
 he was not, what was he? I appeal to your common 
 sense. He was either God, or he was a villain. Strauss 
 saw that alternative, and he says that Christ was sinful in 
 taking homage that did not belong to him. Eenan saw 
 that alternative, and says that Christ, not through his own 
 fault, but through the fault of others, lost some of the puri- 
 ty of his conscience, and slyly intimates that dishonorable 
 women may have damaged his soul. Any thing but admit 
 that Christ is God. 
 
 I have shown you that Christ was God, from what in- 
 
402 ^^^ SUPEEHUMAN JESUS. 
 
 spired men have said of bim, and from what he said of 
 himself; now I want to show you that he was God from 
 his wonderful achievements. I suppose that all believe 
 the Bible. If you do not, what do you do in the Brook- 
 lyn Tabernacle? Why do you not go over to-day and 
 join the infidel club on Broadway? Why do you not go 
 and kiss the foot of the new statue of Tom Paine they are 
 rearing in Boston ? Why do you not take your hat, and, 
 not stealing the hymn-book, go out and find associates 
 among men who do not believe in the Word of God, the 
 only foundation for good government and for common 
 honesty? We in this church are among the deluded 
 souls and the narrow heads who believe the whole Bible, 
 and take it down in one swallow as easily as you take 
 down a ripe strawberry. Supposing that you admit the 
 Bible to be true, let us go out, and see the Saviour's 
 achievements — surgical, alimentary, marine, mortuary. 
 
 Surgical achievements? Did you ever in all the scien- 
 tific journals of the world see such wonderful operations as 
 he performed? He used no knife. He carried no splints. 
 He employed no compress. He never made a patient 
 squirm under cauterization. He never tied an artery, and 
 yet, behold him. With one word he stuck fast Malchus's 
 amputated ear. He stirred dust and spittle into a salve, 
 with which he made the man who was born blind, with- 
 out optic nerve, cornea, or crystalline lens, open his eyes on 
 the glorious sunlight. He beat music on the drum of the 
 deaf ear. He straightened a woman who, through contrac- 
 tion of muscles, had been bent almost double for nigh two 
 decades. He made a man who had not used his limbs for 
 thirty-eight years shoulder his mattress and walk off". Sir 
 Astlcy Cooper, Abernethy, and Valentine Mott stood pow- 
 
THE SUrEIiHmiAN JESUS. 403 
 
 erless before a withered arm. This doctor of omnipotent 
 surgery comes up to the man with the lifeless, useless, 
 shriveled arm, and he says to him, "Stretch forth thy 
 hand." The man stretched it forth just as good as the 
 other. This was a God ! This was a God ! 
 
 Alimentary achievements ? A lad comes with five loaves, 
 with which he expected to make a speculation ; perhaps 
 having bought them for five pennies and expecting to sell 
 them for ten pennies, and thus double his money. Lo! 
 Christ takes those loaves, and from them performs a mira- 
 cle with which he satisfies seven thousand famishing peo- 
 ple. When the Saviour's mother went into a neighbor's 
 house to help get up a wedding party, and by a calculation 
 she saw that they had made a mistake in the amount of 
 beverage that was requisite, she calls Christ for help; and 
 Christ, to relieve the awkward embarrassment, not through 
 slow decay of fermentation, but by one word, makes a hun- 
 dred and thirty gallons of pure wine. 
 
 Marine achievements? Do you not remember how he 
 brought around a whole school of fish into the net of the 
 men who were mourning over their poor luck, and how 
 they had to halloo to the people in the other boat, and 
 then both ships were loaded down to the water's edge with, 
 game, so that the sailors had to walk cautiously from lar- 
 board to starboard lest the boat sink? And then when 
 the squall came down through the mountain gorge to the 
 water, and Gennesaret with long white locks of foam rose 
 up to battle it, and the vessel dropped into the trough, and 
 shipped a sea, and the loosened sails cracked in the tor- 
 nado, how Christ rose from the back part of the vessel, 
 and came on across the staggering' ship until he came to 
 the prow ; and, wiping the spray from his forehead, hushed 
 
404 THE SUPERHUMAN- JESUS. 
 
 the crying tempest on the knee of his omnipotence? Oh, 
 was it a man who wrestled down the storm ? Was it a 
 man who with both feet trampled Gennesaret into a smooth 
 floor? 
 
 But look at his mortuary achievements. Let all the 
 psychologists and anatomists of the world go to West- 
 minster Abbey, and try to wake Queen Elizabeth, or Henry 
 VIII. All the ingenuity of man never yet brought the 
 dead to life. But look at that dead girl in Capernaum. 
 What a pity that she should die so early, and when the 
 world is so fjxir! She is only twelve years old. Feel of 
 the hands. Feel of the brow. Dead. Dead. The house 
 is full of uproar and wailing. What does Christ do ? He 
 comes and takes that little girl by the hand, and no sooner 
 has he touched her hand than her eyes open, and her heart 
 starts, and the white lily of death flushes into the red rose 
 of life, and she rushes into the arms of her rejoicing rela- 
 tives. Who was it that raised her up ? Was it a man, or 
 was it a God ? 
 
 What is that crying in Bethany ? Mary crying, Martha 
 crying, Jesus crying, and the neighbors crying. What is 
 the matter? Lazarus is dead. The sisters think they will 
 never again see him, never have him sit at the table again. 
 Poor things! Since their father died they have depended 
 upon Lazarus for almost every thing. Jesus comes down 
 to the excavation in the rock, in one of the side niches of 
 which Lazarus sleeps in death. Jesus generally spoke in 
 gentle articulations, but now he lets out his voice to full 
 strength, until it rings through all the labyrinths and 
 avenues of the rock, " Lazarus, come forth !" And Laz- 
 arus slides down from the side niche into the main avenue 
 of the rock, and stands a living man before the abashed 
 
THE SUPERHUMAN JESUS. 405 
 
 and confounded spectators. Who was it that stood at the 
 mouth of that cave, and uttered that potent word ? Was 
 it a man? Tell that to the lunatics in Bloomingdale Asy- 
 lum. It was Christ, the everywhere-present, the everlast- 
 ing, the omniscient, the omnipotent God! 
 
 But there is one test which will show you whether Christ 
 is God or not. The recital of that verse ought to blanch 
 the cheeks of some with alarm, and kindle the faces of 
 others with eternal sunrise, "We must all appear before 
 the judgment-seat of Christ." The world will be stunned 
 by a blow that will make it stagger mid-heaven ; the stars 
 will scatter like dried leaves in an equinox ; the grave-yards 
 will unroll the bodies, and the clouds will unroll the spirits, 
 and soul and flesh will come together in incorruptible con- 
 junction. Hark to the loud wash of the retreating sea, and 
 the baying of the advancing thunders, and the sweeping of 
 winged cohorts ! Smoke, and darkness, and fire, and earth- 
 quake, and shouting, shouting, shouting, wailing, wailing, 
 wailing. On the one side, in piled-up galleries of light, 
 are the one hundred and forty and four thousand — yea, the 
 quintillions of the saved ; and as they take their seats I 
 feel as if I must drop under the insufferable radiance. On 
 the other side are piled up, in galleries of thunder-cloud, 
 the frowning, glaring, dying populations of the wrath to 
 come. Before me, and between the two galleries, is a 
 throne. It is very high. It stands on two burnished pil- 
 lars — justice and mercy. It is stupendous with awards 
 and condemnations. Look ; but half hide your eyes, lest 
 they be put out in the excess of vision. There is a throne, 
 but no one is seated on it. Who shall occupy it? Will 
 you go up and take it? " No," you say ; " I am only dust 
 and ashes." Show me some man that is fit to take it. 
 
406 THE SUrERUUMAN JESUS. 
 
 in all the ages. Lord Mansfield? No. Solomon? No. 
 Isaiah? No. Paul? No. Their foot would consume at 
 the first touch of the step of that throne. Even Gabriel 
 dare not go up on it. Michael, the archangel, would rather 
 bow down, pulling his right wing over his left, and both 
 over his face, and cry, " Holy !" But here is One ascend- 
 ing that throne. His back is toward us. He goes step 
 above step, height above height, until he comes to the 
 apex. Then, turning around, so that all nations can see 
 bim, we behold it is Christ ; and all earth and heaven and 
 hell fall on the knee, and cry out, " It is a God ! It is a 
 God!" 
 
 There is great comfort in my subject. It is God who 
 came down from Jesus Christ to save us. Do you think 
 only a man could have made an atonement for millions of 
 the race? Does your common sense teach you that? I 
 tell you if Christ is not God, the redemption of our race is 
 a dead failure. We want a divine arm to lift our burden. 
 We want a divine endurance to carry our pang. We want 
 a divine expiation to take away our sin; and "Christ 
 came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen." 
 
 God also comes down in Christ to comfort you. Some- 
 times our troubles are so great, human sympathy does not 
 seem to be sufiicient for them. O ye who cried all last 
 night because of loneliness and bereavement, I want to 
 tell you that it is your Maker and your God that comes 
 this day to comfort you. When there are children in the 
 house, and the mother dies, then you know that the father 
 has to be more gentle than ever, and he has to act two 
 parts in that household. And it seems as if the Lord 
 Jesus Christ looked down and saw your helplessness, and 
 he proposed to be both flithcr and mother to your sick 
 
THE SUPERHUMAN JESUS. 407 
 
 soul. He comes in the strengtli of the one, and in the ten- 
 derness of the other, and he says, "As a father pitieth his 
 children, so I pity you," "As one whom his mother com- 
 forteth, so will I comfort you." Do you not feel the hush 
 of that divine lullaby? Put down your tired head on 
 the heaving bosom of that Divine compassion, and let him 
 put his arms around you, and say, " widowed soul ! I 
 will be thy husband and thy God. orphaned ones ! I 
 will be your protector. Don't cry. Don't cry." And 
 then he will put his hand on your eyelids, and sweep that 
 hand down on the cheek, wiping away all the tears of lone- 
 liness and bereavement. Oh, what a loving, tender, sym- 
 pathetic God has come for us! I do not ask you, this 
 morning, to lay hold of God ; you may be too weak for 
 that. I do not ask you even to pray ; you may be too be- 
 wildered for that. I only ask you just to let go, and fall 
 back into the arms of Everlasting Strength. 
 
 You and I will soon hear the click of the latch of the 
 sepulchre. We want an Almighty Christ to go with us. 
 I wonder if the friend of Lazarus will be about. Our 
 friends will take us with strong arms, and lay us down in 
 the dust ; but they can not bring us back again. I would 
 be scared with infinite frig-ht if I thouo-ht I should have to 
 
 O O 
 
 Stay there forever. But no. Christ will come with a glo- 
 rious iconoclasm, and split and grind up the granite, and 
 let us come out. O the resurrection ! What kind of a 
 resurrection will it be? 
 
 A young woman was recently dying, without any hope, 
 and she said to her mother, in the closing hour, " Mother, 
 I am going away from you, and I am so afraid." When 
 you leave this world, when you bid farewell to those with 
 whom 3^ou have been associated, and in the last great day 
 
408 THE SUPERHUMAN JESUS. 
 
 will you be afraid? If we have on that day Christ, the 
 Omnipotent Saviour, on our side, all shall be well. If the 
 resurrection comes upon a spring day, and all the flowers 
 are blooming around our graves, how pleasant it would be 
 to take up the brightest one of all those flowers, and put 
 it in the scarred hand of Him who died for us! to gather 
 up the most redolent of them all, and twist them into a gar- 
 land for the brow that was stuck with the thorns ! On that 
 day, when Jesus is surrounded by all the dominions of the 
 saved, we will see what an awful libel it was when men 
 said that Christ was only a man ; and then you will declare, 
 with unparalleled emphasis, " Christ came, who is over 
 all, God blessed forever. Amen," Oh, would you not like 
 to join in that "Amen," ye who believe this Christ is the 
 eternal God ? You shall have my permission. Let your 
 "Amen " be the doxology of this whole assemblage ! 
 "Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever! 
 Amen." 
 
WRECKED FOR TWO WORLDS. 409, 
 
 WEECKED FOR TWO WOELDS. 
 
 " Lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should 
 be a castaway." — 1 Corinthians ix., 27. 
 
 MINISTERS of religion may finally be lost. The apos- 
 tle, in tlie text, indicates tliat possibility. Gown and 
 gurplice and cardinal's red bat are no security. Cardinal 
 Wolse}'', after having been petted by kings, and having 
 entertained foreign embassadors at Hampton Court, died in 
 darkness. One of the most eminent ministers of religion 
 that this country has ever known, plunged into sin and 
 died, his heart, in post-mortem examination, found to have 
 been, not figuratively, but literally, broken. ministers 
 of Christ! because we have diplomas of graduation, and 
 hands of ordination on the head, and address consecrated 
 assemblages, that is no reason why we shall necessarily 
 reach the realm celestial. The clergyman must go through 
 the same gate of pardon as the layman. The preacher 
 may get his audience into heaven, and he himself miss it. 
 There have been cases of shipwreck where all on board 
 escaped excepting the captain. Alas ! if, having " preached 
 to others, I myself should be a castaway." God forbid it. 
 
 I have examined some of the commentaries to see what 
 they thought about this word "castaway," and I find that 
 they differ in regard to the figure used, while they agree in 
 regard to the meaning. So I shall make my own selection, 
 and take it in a nautical and sea-faring sense, and show you 
 
 18 
 
^IQ WliECKED FOR TWO WORLDS. 
 
 that men may become spiritual castaways, and how finally 
 they drift into that calamity. 
 
 We are a sea-board town. You have all stood on the 
 beach. Many of you have crossed the ocean. Some of you 
 have managed vessels in great stress of weather. There is 
 a sea-captain ; and there is another ; and yonder is another ; 
 and there are a goodly number of you who, though once 
 3'ou did not know the difference between a brig and a bark, 
 and between a diamond knot and a sprit -sheet -sail knot, 
 and although you could not point out the weather- cross 
 jack- brace, and though you could not man the fore clue- 
 garnets, now you are as familiar with a ship as you are 
 with your right hand, and, if it were necessarj'', you could 
 take a vessel clear across to tlie mouth of the Mersey with- 
 out the loss of a single sail. Well, there is a dark night in 
 your memory of the sea. The vessel became unmanagea- 
 ble. You saw it was scudding toward the shore. You 
 heard the cry, " Breakers ahead ! Land on the lee bow !" 
 The vessel struck the rock, and you felt the deck breaking 
 up under your feet, and you were a castaway, as when tho 
 Hercules drove on the coast of Caflfraria, as when the Portu- 
 guese brig went staving, splitting, grinding, crashing on the 
 Goodwins. But whether you have followed the sea or not, 
 you all understand the figure when I tell you that there 
 are men who by their sins and temptations are thrown 
 helpless! Driven before the gale! Wrecked for two 
 worlds ! Cast away ! cast away ! 
 
 By talking with some sailors, I have found out that there 
 are three or four causes for such a calamity to a vessel. 
 I have been told that it sometimes comes /ro??i creating false 
 TirjJits on the heach. This was often so in olden times. It is 
 not many years ago, indeed, that vagabonds used to wander 
 
WRECKED FOB TWO WOELDS. 411 
 
 up and down the beach, getting vessels ashore in the night, 
 throwing up false lights in their presence and deceiving 
 them, that thej might despoil and ransack them. All kinds 
 of infernal arts were used to accomplish this. And one 
 night, on the Cornish coast, when the sea was coming in 
 fearfully, some villains took a lantern and tied it to a horse, 
 and led the horse up and down the beach, the lantern sway- 
 ing to the motion of the horse, and a sea-captain in the off- 
 ing saw it, and made up his mind that he was not anywhere 
 near the shore, for he said, " There's a vessel ; that must be 
 a vessel, for it has a movable light," and he had no appre- 
 hension until he heard the rocks grating on the ship's bot- 
 tom, and it went to pieces, and the villains on shore gath- 
 ered up the packages and the treasures that were washed 
 to the land. And I have to tell you that there are a 
 multitude of souls ruined by false lights on the beach. In 
 the dark night of man's danger, Universalism goes up and 
 down the shore, shaking its lantern, and men look off and 
 take that flickering and expiring wick as the signal of safe- 
 ty, and the cry is, "Heave the main -topsail to the mast! 
 All is well !" when sudden destruction cometh upon them, 
 and they shall not escape. So there are all kinds of lan- 
 terns swung on the beach — philosophical lanterns, educa- 
 tional lanterns, humanitarian lanterns. Men look at them, 
 and are deceived, when there is nothing but God's eternal 
 light-house of the Gospel that can keep them from becom- 
 ing castaways. Once, on Wolf Crag Light-house, they tried 
 to build a copper figure of a wolf with its mouth open, so 
 that, the storms beating into it, the wolf would howl forth 
 the danger to mariners that might be coming anywhere 
 near the coast. Of course it was a failure. And so all 
 new inventions for the saviuo; of man's soul are unavailinc:. 
 
412 WRECKED FOE TWO WOELDS. 
 
 What the human race wants is a light bursting fortli from 
 the cross standing on the great headlands — the light of par- 
 don, the light of comfort, the liglit of heaven. You might 
 better go to-night, and destroy all the great ligbt-houses on 
 the dangerous coasts — tbe Barnegat Ligbt-bouse, the Fast- 
 net Rock Ligbt-bouse, the Skerrjvore Ligbt-bouse, the 
 Longship's Light-bouse, tbe Hollyhead Ligbt-bouse — than 
 to put out God's great ocean lamp — tbe Gospel. Woe to 
 tbose -who swing false lanterns on the beach till men crasb 
 in and perish ! Cast away I cast away ! 
 
 By talking witb sailors, I have beard also that sometimes 
 sbips come to this calamity by tbe sudden sicoo}') of a tern- 
 j)est. For instance, a vessel is sailing along in the East In- 
 dies, and there is not a single cloud on the sky ; but sud- 
 •denly the breeze fresbens, and tbere are swift feet on tbe 
 ratlines, and tbe cry is, " 'Way ! baul away tbere !" but, be- 
 fore they can square tbe booms and tarpaulin the batcb- 
 ways, the vessel is groaning and creaking in tbe grip of 
 a tornado, and falls over into the trougli of the sea, and, 
 broadside-on, rolls on to the beacb and keels over, leaving 
 the crew to struggle in the merciless surf Cast away ! 
 cast away ! And so I have to tell you that there are thou- 
 sands of men destroyed tbrougb tbe sudden swoop of temp- 
 tations. Some great inducement to worldliness, or to sen- 
 suality, or to bigb temper, or to some form of dissipation, 
 comes upon them. If they had time to examine their Bi- 
 ble, if tbcy bad time to consult witb their friends, if they 
 bad time to deliberate, they could stand it ; but tbe temp- 
 tation came so suddenly — a euroclydon on tbe IMediterra- 
 nean, a whirlwind of the Caribbean. One awful surge of 
 temptation, and tbcy perish. And so we often hear the 
 old story, " I badn't seen my friend in a great many years. 
 
WRECKED FOR TWO WORLDS. 413 
 
 "Wc were very glad to meet. He said I must drink, and 
 lie took me by the arm and pressed me along, and filled 
 the cup until the bubbles ran over the edge, and in an evil 
 moment all my good resolutions were swept awaj^, and, to 
 the outraging of God and my own soul, I fell." Or the 
 story is, " I had hard work to support my famih". I knew 
 that by one false entry, by one deception, by one embez- 
 zlement, I might spring out free from all m}^ trouble; but 
 the temptation came upon me so fiercely I could not think. 
 I did wrong, and having done wrong once, I could not 
 stop." Oh, it is the first step that costs ; the second is 
 easier, and the third, and on to the last. Once having 
 broken loose from the anchor, it is not so easy to tie the 
 parted strands. How often it is that men perish for the 
 reason that the temptation comes from some unexpected 
 quarter! as vessels lie in Margate Eoads, safe from soutli- 
 west winds; but the wind changing to the north-east, they 
 are driven helpless, and go dowi. Oh that God would 
 have mercy upon those upon whom there comes tlie sud- 
 den swoop of temptation, that they perish not, becoming, for 
 this world and the world to come, cast away ! cast away ! 
 
 By talking with sailors, I have found out also that some 
 vessels come to this calamity through sheer recMessness. 
 There are three million men who follow the sea for a liv- 
 ing. It is a simple fact that the average of human life on 
 the sea is less than twelve years. This comes from the 
 fact that men by fiimiliarity with danger sometimes be- 
 come reckless — the captain, the helmsman, the stoker, the 
 man on the lookout, become reckless, and in nine out of 
 ten shipwrecks it is found out that some one was awfully 
 to blame. So I have to tell you that men lose their souls 
 through sheer recklessness. There are thousands of my 
 
J.14 WRECKED FOR TWO WORLDS. 
 
 friends in this house to-night who do not care where they 
 are in spiritual things. They do not know whether they 
 are sailing toward heaven or toward hell, and the sea is 
 black with pii'atical hulks that would grapple them with 
 hooks of steel, and blindfold them, and make them "walk 
 the plank." They do not know what the next moment 
 may bring forth. Drifting in their theology. Drifting in 
 their habits. Drifting in regard to all the future. No 
 God, no Christ, no settled anticipations of eternal felicity ; 
 but all the time coming nearer and nearer to a dangerous 
 coast. Some of them are on fire with evil habit, and they 
 shall burn on the sea, the charred hulk tossed up on the 
 barren beach of the lost world. Many of them with great 
 troubles, financial troubles, domestic troubles, social trou- 
 bles; but they never pray for comfort. With an aggrava- 
 tion of sin that stirs up the ire of God, they pray for no 
 pardon. They do not steer for the light-ship that dances 
 in gladness at the mouth of heaven's harbor; reckless as 
 to where they come out, drifting fiirther from God, forther 
 from early religious influences, farther from their present 
 happiness, farther from heaven. And, what is the worst 
 thing about it is, that thev are taking their families along 
 with tlicm ; and if one perish, perhaps they will all perish ; 
 and the way one goes, the probability is they will all go. 
 Yet no anxiet3''. As unconscious of danger as the passen- 
 gers on board the Arctic one moment before the Vesta 
 craslied into her. Wrapped up in the business of the 
 store, not remembering that soon they must quit all their 
 earthly possessions. Absorbed in their social position, not 
 knowing that very soon they will have attended the last 
 levee, and whirled in the last schottisch. They do not 
 deliberately choose to be ruined; neither did the French 
 
WliECKED FOR TWO WORLDS. 415 
 
 frigate Medusa aim for the Arguin Banks, but there it 
 went to pieces. O ye reckless souls! I wish that to-night 
 I could wake you up with some great perturbation. Tlie 
 perils are so augmented, the chances of escape are so few ; 
 you will die just as certainly as you sit there, unless you 
 bestir yourself. I fear, my brother, you are becoming a 
 castaway. You are making no effort, you are putting 
 forth no exertion for escape. You throw out no oar. 
 You take no soundings. You watch no compass. You 
 are not calculating your bearings while the wind is abaft, 
 and yonder is a long line of foam bounding the horizon, 
 and you will be pushed on toward it, and thousands have 
 perished there, and you are driving in the same direction. 
 Eeady about! Down helm ! Hard down! or in the next 
 five minutes, or four minutes, or three minutes, or two min- 
 utes, or one minute, you may be a castaway. 
 
 O unforgiven soul ! if you could see your peril before 
 God to-night on account of youV lifetime sin and transgres- 
 sion, there would be fifty men who would rush through 
 this aisle crying for mercy, and there would be fifty who 
 would rush through that aisle crying for mercy, and they 
 would be as men are when they rush across the deck of a 
 foundering ship, and there would be thousands of arms 
 tossed up from the galleries ; and as these Christian men 
 rose up to help them, it would be as when a vessel drives 
 on the rocks, and on the shore the command is, " Man the 
 life-boat! Man the life-boat! Pull, my lads, pull ! A 
 steamer with two hundred on board makins; the last 
 plunge !" Why does your cheek turn pale, and your heart 
 pound until, listening, you hear it? It is because, my dear 
 brother, you realize that, owing to yonr lifetime sin and 
 rejection of God's mercy, you are in peril, and I really be- 
 
416 WRECKED FOR TWO WORLDS. 
 
 lieve there are thousands of people in this house this mo- 
 ment, saying within themselves, " What shall I do?" Do? 
 Do ? Why, my brother, do what any ship does when it 
 is in trouble. ' Lift a distress-signal. There is a flash, and 
 a boom. You listen and you look. A vessel is in trouble. 
 The distress-gun is sounded, or a rocket is sent up, or a 
 blanket is lifted, or a bundle of rags — any thing to catch 
 the eye of the passing craft. So if you want to be taken 
 off the wreck of your sin, you must lift a distress -signal, 
 liise. Lift your hand. Cry out for mercy. The publi- 
 can lifted the distress-signal when he cried, " God, be merci- 
 ful to me a sinner!" Peter lifted the distress-signal when 
 he said, " Lord, save me — I perish !" The blind man lifted 
 the distress-signal when he said, " Lord, that my eyes may 
 be opened!" The jailer lifted the distress-signal when he 
 said, "What must I do to be saved?" And help will 
 never come to your soul until you lift such a signal as 
 that. You must make some demonstration, give some 
 sign, make some heaven -piercing outcry for help, lifting 
 the distress-signal for the church's prayer, lifting the dis- 
 tress-signal for Heaven's pardon. Pray ! pray ! The voice 
 of the Lord to-night sounds in your ears, "In me is thy 
 help." Too proud to raise such a signal, too proud to be 
 saved. 
 
 There was an old sailor thumping about in a small boat 
 in a tempest. The larger vessel had gone down. He felt 
 he must die. The surf was breaking over the boat, and he 
 said : "I took off my life-belt that it might soon be over, 
 and I thought somewhat indistinctly about my friends on 
 shore, and then I bid them good-bye like, and I was about 
 sinking back and giving it up, when I saw a bright star. 
 The clouds were breaking away, and there that blessed 
 
WRECKED FOR TWO WORLDS. 417 
 
 star shone down on me, and it seemed to take right hold of 
 me; and, somehow — I can not tell how it was — but, some- 
 how, while I was trying to watch that star, it seemed to 
 help me and seemed to lift me." O drowning soul ! see 
 you not the glimmer between the rifts of the storm-cloud? 
 AVould to God that that light might lay hold of you to- 
 night! 
 
 "Death-struck, I ceased the tide to stem, 
 
 When suddenly a star arose, 
 
 It was the Star of Bethlehem !" 
 
 ye castaways! God is doing every thing to save you. 
 
 Did you ever hear of Lionel Lukin? He was the in- 
 ventor of the insubmergible life-boat. All honor is due 
 his memory by sea-faring men, as well as by landsmen. 
 How many lives he saved by his invention ! In after-days 
 that invention was improved, and one day there was a per- 
 fect life-boat, the Northumberland^ ready at Rarasgate. The 
 life -boat being ready, to test it the crew came out and 
 leaped on the gunwale on one side to see if the boat would 
 upset; it was impossible to upset it. Then, amidst the 
 huzzas of excited thousands, that boat was launched, and 
 it has gone and come, picking up a great many of the ship- 
 wrecked. But I have to tell you to-night of a grander 
 launching, and from the dry-docks of heaven. Word came 
 up that a world was beating on the rocks. In the presence 
 of the potentates of heaven the life-boat of the world's re- 
 demption was launched. It shoved off the golden sands 
 amidst angelic hosannas. The surges of darkness beat 
 against its bow, but it sailed on, and it comes in sight to- 
 night. It comes for you, it comes for me. Soul ! soul ! 
 get into it. Make one leap for heaven. This is your last 
 chance for life. Let that boat go past, and there remains 
 
 18* 
 
418 WRECKED FOR TWO WORLDS. 
 
 nothing but fearful looking-for of judgment, and fiery in- 
 dignation which shall devour the adversary. I am expect- 
 in o- that there will be whole f\nnilies here to-night who will 
 get into that life-boat. 
 
 In 1833 the Isabella came ashore off Hastings, England. 
 The air was filled with sounds — the hoarse sea-trumpet, the 
 crash of the axes, and the bellowing of the tornado. A boat 
 from the shore came under the stern of the disabled ves- 
 sel. There were women and children on board that vessel. 
 Some of the sailors jumped into the small boat, and said, 
 " Now, give us the children." A father who stood on the 
 deck took his first-born and threw him to the boat. The 
 sailors caught him safely, and the next, and the next, 
 to the last. Still the sea rocking, the storm howling. 
 "Now," said the sailors, " now, the mother;" and she leap- 
 ed, and was saved. The boat went to shore ; but before it 
 got to the shore the landsmen were so impatient to help 
 the suffering people that they waded clear down into the 
 surf, with blankets, and garments, and promises of help 
 and succor. 
 
 I have to hope to-night that a great many of the families 
 here are going to be saved, and saved altogether. Give us 
 that child for Christ, that other child, that other. Give us 
 the mother, give us the father, the whole flimily. They 
 must all come in. All heaven wades in to help you. I 
 claim this whole audience for God. I pick not out one 
 man here nor one man there : I claim this whole audience 
 for God. There are sonie of you who, thirty years ago, were 
 consecrated to Christ by your parents in baptism. Certain- 
 ly I am not stepping over the right bound when I claim 
 you for Jesus. Then there are many here who have been 
 seeking God for a good while, and am T not right in claim- 
 
WRECEEB FOR TWO WORLDS. 419 
 
 ing you for Jesus? Then, there are some here who have 
 been farther away. I saw you come in to-night in clusters 
 — two, three, and four men together — and you drink, and 
 you swear, and you are bringing up your families without 
 any God to take care of them when you are dead. And 
 I claim you, my brother; I claim all of you. You will 
 have to come to-night to the throne of mercy. God's Holy 
 Spirit is striving now with you irresistibly. Although 
 there may be a smile on your lip, there are agitation and 
 anxiety in your heart. You will not come at my invita- 
 tion ; you will come at God's command. 
 
 [At this point in Mr. Talmage's remarks, one of the windows in the rear 
 part of tlie chinch was slammed down by some thoughtless person. Tiie 
 noise alarmed many in the vast congregation, and they made a rush for the 
 doors. This had the effect of alarming others, and in a moment six thousand 
 people were upon their feet. Mr. Talmage cried to them to "sit down." 
 The president of the Board of Trustees ascertained the cause of the noise, 
 and immediately informed Mr. Talmage, who announced it, and succeeded 
 in bringing the people to order again. That part of the congregation who 
 had wisely kept their seats were singing the Doxology during the uproar. 
 Nearly all of those who had left the building returned when they learned the 
 cause of their fright, and iNIr. Talmage continued as follows:] 
 
 What ! are you so afraid when there is no danger at all ? 
 Will the slamming- to of a window startle six thousand 
 souls? Would God that you were as cautious about eter- 
 nal perils as you are about the perils of time! If that 
 slight noise sends you to your feet, what will you do when 
 the thunders of the last day roll through earth and sky, 
 and the mountains come down in avalanche of rock ? You 
 cry out for the safety of your body ; why not cry out for 
 the safety of your soul ? You will have to pray some time ; 
 why not begin now, while all the ripe and purple clusters 
 
420 WRECKED FOR TWO WORLDS. 
 
 of Divine promise bend over into your cup, ratlier tban 
 postpone your prayer until your chance is past, and the 
 night drops, and the sea washes you out, and forever and 
 forever and forever you become a castaway ? 
 
 THE END. 
 
TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 
 
 SERMONS BY T. DE WITT TALMAGE, DELIVERED IN THE 
 BROOKLYN TABERNACLE. 
 
 First Series. 
 i2mo, Cloth - $200 
 
 Second Series. 
 127110, Cloth - - - - - - $2 00 
 
 Third Series. 
 ''Old Wells Dug Out:' i2mo, Cloth $2 00 
 
 Fourth Series. 
 "■Sports that Kill:' \2mo, Cloth, $1 25 ; Paper, $1 00 
 
 The Sermons of T. De Witt Talmage have received 
 much attention from tlie press and the public. Be- 
 low are given a few of the notices : 
 
 A San Francisco (California) paper, speaking of Mr. Talmage's 
 sermons in that city, says : "We believe that no such Christian preach- 
 ing has been heard since the days when George Whitefield and the two 
 Wesleys preached the Gospel on the shores of America. Sublime in 
 his powers of pathetic and lucid description, terrible in the earnestness 
 with wliich he pleads the cause of the undying soul, overwhelming 
 with the tender overtures of redeeming mere}', and sparkling with 
 graceful images and illustrative anecdote, the great multitude becomes 
 as one man beneath his touch, and a silence broken only by an occa- 
 sional gasping for breath from the whole assembly, attends his utter- 
 ances from the first sentence to the last." 
 
 They are the keenest, sharpest, and most vigorous specimens of pul- 
 pit oratory we have yet read. — St. Johns (N. B.) Globe. 
 
Reconwiendations. 
 
 "We believe that for oiiginaliU', power, and splendor, these sermons 
 will bear comparison with the greatest pulpit productions of any age 
 or country. But for the knowledge of human life, and the adapta- 
 tion of divine truth to the whole being of man — intellectual, emotion- 
 al, moral, practical — and for the power of applying that truth, we 
 know not his equal. — Christian Age, London. 
 
 These sermons I regard as among the best specimens of the simple, 
 earnest, and pungent presentation of the solemn and precious truths of 
 the Gospel that I have ever read, and having a fertility of illustration 
 that is marvelous. I feel earnestly desirous that they should be in a 
 form to preach to ministers of the Gospel, and so help them to preach 
 to otheis. — Rev. E. D. G. Phime, D.D., New York Observer. 
 
 Mr. Talmage is clear out of the old grooves and ruts of pulpit effort. 
 You can not measure him by the books or criticise him by the schools. 
 lie is a law unto himself. In short, he is a mystery, a phenomenon, a 
 contradiction of all the rules and books, and a most potent power for 
 good. He speaks to more living people in this country than any oth- 
 er man ; and his sermons being published both in this country and in 
 England, his influence is wider felt than that of any other Protestant 
 minister in the world. — Central Christian Advocate. 
 
 The New York Independent says: "The new Tabernacle is mass- 
 ive. It will hold nearly twice as many people as Plymouth Church. 
 Mr. Talmage is a pulpit phenomenon. His conceptions of men and 
 things are so vivid that he can not be said to possess them — they 
 possess him. lie is dramatic, and can not describe Mithout acting. 
 He has a clear, incisive mind, a broad and genial humor, a high and 
 exacting conscientiousness, kindly sympathy, a vivid imagination, 
 vehement passion, and every blow tells." 
 
 We found ourselves in Dr. Talmage's immense audience-room con- 
 taining seats for 5000 persons, with decorated ceiling, brilliant chan- 
 deliers, and spacious galleries. When the exercises began, not a foot 
 of sitting or standing room was anywhere visible. The whole scene 
 of the evening proved that it does not require an intermingling of her- 
 esy to fill churches. Here were crowds flocking to hear the most 
 plain and pungent preaching on the old theme of Gospel salvation. — 
 Advance, Chicago, 111. 
 
Recom vundations. 
 
 Mr. Spurgeon, of London, says : "Mr. Tiilmage's discourses lay 
 hold of my inmost souL The Lord is with this mighty man of valor. 
 80 may he ever be till the campaign closes with victory ! I am in- 
 deed glad of his voice. It cheers me intensely. lie loves the Gos- 
 pel, and believes in something, which some preachers hardly do. 
 There are those about who nse the old labels, but the articles are not 
 the same. May the Lord win armies of souls to Jesus by this man ! 
 I am astonished when God blesses me, but somehow I shonld not be 
 so much surprised if he blessed this man." 
 
 Mr. Talmage's sermons have ten readers in Great Britain where any 
 other American sermons have one reader. — D. L. Moody. 
 
 There is about Talinage a vehemence, an urgency, an earnestness, 
 which sometimes carries him away as in a kind of wild wiiirlwind. 
 He has immense command of words, and great fluency of speech. 
 But he is not diffuse — any thing but that. His sentences, some of 
 them especially, fall with a force and a strength which is sonietimes 
 almost painful. There is a reckless abandon about many of his ser- 
 mons, a hearty outspokenness, which is as refreshing as a dip into a 
 mountain stream on a hot summer's day. He has now the largest 
 congregation and perhaps the most powerful ciun-ch in America. — 
 Northern Echo, Hartlepool, England. 
 
 With an earnestness of appeal and a power of a:vakeniiig that we 
 have never heard surpassed. Dr. Talmage preaches tiie Old Gospel 
 that kindled the enthusiasm of tlie rustic and unlettered apostles of 
 Galilee, and at the same time elicited the zeal and influenced the heart 
 of the cultured Pharisee of Tarsus. — London Christian World. 
 
 Mr. Talmage's sermons are thorougiily evangelical, and are receiv- 
 ing the widest attention. He is the most popular preacher of the day. 
 — The Methodist. 
 
 There is a tremendous nervous energy in Mr. Talmage's sentences. 
 They startle by their very boldness. He does not know how to soften 
 a denunciation, or kid-glove a lie, cheat, or sham. — Providence (R. I.) 
 Press. 
 
 Glowing with impassioned fervor, Mr. Talmage wages a deadly war 
 against the vices of the day in their most enticing forms. — New York 
 Tribune. 
 
Recommendations. 
 
 Dr. Tiilinage went to and fro with quiet step on that large platform, 
 sinking his voice, now full of melody, almost to a whisper, yet ever au- 
 dible, now rising up into an impassioned burst of unmistakable elo- 
 quence, exceeding any thing we have ever heard since the early days 
 of Father Gavazzi. When he had ended, it seemed like the ceasing 
 of exquisite music. For two or three minutes there was a profound 
 silence, until the congregation seemed to arouse themselves from the 
 thrall. Then the vast multitude dispersed. — Liverpool (Eng.) Week- 
 hj Mercury. 
 
 In many respects Mr. Talmage stands at the head of American pul- 
 pit orators, and none excel him in dramatic force. — St. Louis Times, 
 
 We have known persons to drop the novel half finished, and take 
 up Talmage's sermons, never to exchange truth fur trash again. — 
 Pittsburg Methodist Recorder. 
 
 They are brimful of vitalitj', intense dramatic power of description, 
 and an earnestness of conviction in what is said that impresses the 
 reader deeply. — Neiv Orleans Picayune, 
 
 A Baptist pastor in Michigan says: "Within a distance of ten 
 miles there are five places (some of them school-houses) where eveiy 
 Sabbath people come together to hear Dr. Talmage's sermons read. 
 They have been blessed in many conversions." 
 
 Talmage is in some respects superior to any living preacher. His 
 book is as readable as a romance, and a world more profitable. — La- 
 dies' Repository, Cincinnati. 
 
 Do we consider the great influence of a popular preacher of the 
 present day ? Neither Jeremy Taylor, Smith, or even Whitefield, had 
 the opportunities given to Mr. Talmage through the press. — Union 
 Advocate. 
 
 That Mr. Talmage is a popular preacher can not be denied, as he 
 addresses the largest audience in Brooklyn, and perhaps the largest 
 regular audience in America. lie fulfills Garrick's idea of a preach- 
 er, and talks of religion as if it were really a matter of supreme im- 
 portance. His sermons read like plays, and must entertain, if they 
 do not convert, his hearers ; but we have no reason to doubt the lat- 
 ter, and commend them to such as enjoy this class of literature. — 
 Commercial, Cincinnati. 
 
Recom7nendations. 
 
 What building would be big enough to hold the congregation if 
 such sermons were preached in London ? — Congregationalist, London. 
 
 The sermons by this celebrated divine are among the most admira- 
 ble compositions in tlie langunge. — Springfield Advertiser. 
 
 Mr. Talmage's descriptive powers are unique and of a high order; 
 in fact, we do not know of any preacher like him. — Pittsburg Times. 
 
 In the author's happiest style, and outside of its religious merits, 
 which are of a high order, it is more interesting than a romance. 
 Nothing but the breaking down of the press can prevent this book 
 having an immense sale. — Reading Times. 
 
 Mr. Talmage is a finished speaker, with a terse and nervous style. 
 — Irish Citizen. 
 
 Dr. Talmage's sermons are more interesting, simply as literary 
 works, than many novels. — Keystone, Philadelphia. 
 
 Through this book Mr. Talmage will preach to nearly all the world. 
 — Turf, Field, and Farm. 
 
 Their power for good can scarcely be overestimated. Whether 
 heard or read, they produce a powerful impression, and are of the 
 kind best adapted to reach the masses in these days of absorbing 
 worldliness and eager pursuit of gain. — Christian Advocate. 
 
 Mr. Talmage has proved that he can gather a regular Sabbath con- 
 gregation of five thousand hearers, and that he can make himself ef- 
 fectively heard by tliat number of peoJDle. He is one of those preach- 
 ers who really belong to mankind at large. Most people who tiy to 
 describe Dr. Talmage begin by saying that he is like somebody, or un- 
 like somebody else. Now the fact is that he is not like any other per- 
 son at all : he is just "Talmage" all over, with as mucli marked indi- 
 viduality as ever was concentrated in any one man. — Union Era. 
 
 Dr. Talmage is a star of commanding lustre in the pulpit of the 
 North. His living thoughts and burning words, on the wings of the 
 lightning and by the agency of the press, are borne to millions who 
 have never heard his voice nor seen his iiice. — Daily Sun, Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 Not a single page of his books can be designated as superfluous or 
 tiresome. — St. Louis Republican. 
 
 We doubt not that Dr. Talmage has gained greater celebrity than 
 any man of his age. — Christian Advocate, Ealeigb, N. C. 
 
Recommetidations. 
 
 Mr. Talmage preaches twice every Sunday to immense audiences. 
 Every seat up to the rafters is filled. His manner is so impassioned, 
 his style so original, and his figures so vivid and startling, that he 
 liolds his hearers spell-bound to the end, and he moves them to tears 
 or smiles at will. — Charleston News and Courier. 
 
 We thouglit last evening, as we looked over Mr. Talmage's audi- 
 ence, now hushed so that we could hear the clock's solemn ticking 
 keeping time to the speaker's utterances — people seemingly afraid to 
 breathe, lest the}' might lose a word — we thought to ourselves, here is 
 the perfection of oratory; here is dominion, absolute and undisputed. 
 The attempt to do any thing but listen to those sentences — now short, 
 sharp, and ringing, and now drawn out with a plaintiveness that will 
 linger after his voice has died away — is so vain that it needs only to 
 be mentioned and tried to show his power. — Free Press, Easton, Pa. 
 
 Almost exactly such criticisms as are brought against him were 
 brought against Luther, and against Whitcfield and Wesley. But as 
 ill them all, so in Mr. Talmage, there are elements of power that the 
 critics of words and phrases can not comprehend. IMr. Talmage is a 
 genuine pulpit orator ; and his oratory is none the less effective be- 
 cause it does not conform to pulpit canons. He wins his battles, as 
 did Napoleon, by his violation of all rules. These sermons give a hint 
 of tlie moral power that lies behind Mr. Talmage's burning eloquence 
 and gives it force. — Christian Weekly. 
 
 In Dr. Talmage's sermons there are portions of writing which, for 
 thrilling interest, are not surpassed by the pages of fiction. — The Age, 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 There is apparently no hidden spring in the human heart that Dr. 
 Talmage does not know how to reach. — Occident, San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 Mr. Talmage has two continents for a congregation. In addition 
 to the host that greet him every Sabbath, the Methodist prints one of 
 his sermons every week; the Interior, of Chicago, gives his "Friday 
 Evening Addresses ;" the Christian Age, of London, gets the advanced 
 sheets of his sermons (phonograi)hically reported) for weekly publica- 
 tion ; and other foreign papers are publishing his sermons and address- 
 es. His discourses have apjieared in book form in London, and are 
 securing wide transatlantic attention. — Brook/i/n Eagle, 
 
Recommendations. 
 
 If ministers would more generally break away from the staid nice- 
 ties and etiquetical mannerism of religious service, and cry aloud, 
 using every opportunity and every available means to arrest tlie atten- 
 tion of the people, all the while, like Talmage, preacJiing the primi- 
 tive Gospel of Jesus — telling the " old, old story," it would be for bet- 
 ter for the Church in all its branches. — Pittsburg Recorder. 
 
 The sermons published in this series speak for themselves. They 
 are printed exactly in the words delivered, and were all extempore. 
 What precision, memory, directness, genius, and originality they re- 
 veal need not be stated. They are more condensed than theorems, 
 as rounded, pointed, and polished as essays, yet extemporaneous, and 
 their preservation dependent upon reporters' pencils. Considering that 
 Mr. Talmage is still a comparatively young man, he has won a celeb- 
 rity as a preacher of which the church represented by him with such 
 intense, earnest, and fervent eloquence may well be proud. — Chicago 
 Inter- Ocean. 
 
 Mr. Talmage is one of the most pathetic and eloquent men of the 
 age. His published works are models of Anglo-Saxon style. — Meth- 
 odist Recorder. 
 
 He is a fearless antagonist to all forms of sin — a writer who cares 
 more for cleaving a helmet tlian for showing the jewels on the handle 
 of his weapon. Blows are what he gives ; and yet, as the blade goes 
 swiftly down, the jewels frequently flash on the eye. The raciness and 
 abandonment to his work, conspicuous in all the writer says, will find 
 eager readei's everywhere. — Interior. 
 
 These sermons certainly tmveil to us the secret of Mr. Talmnge's 
 extraordinary power as a preacher. * * * The great themes of ex- 
 perimental piety and holy living are sent home upon the hearts of 
 men with remarkable directness, force, and fervor. Mr. Talmage has 
 a strong imagination, which seldom flags in word-painting, and usual- 
 ly arrays the most common truths in all the freshness of new discov- 
 eries, and all the glow of living reality. To this he adds a quick in- 
 sight into human nature, the foibles, vices, and iniquities of the day, 
 and the Gospel as the only remedy for human corruption. All is 
 swayed by an overmastering Clu-istian earnestness. — Presbyterian 
 Quarterly. 
 
Recommendations. 
 
 Mr. Talmage's knowledge of human nature, his sparkling iiunior, 
 his pruning-liook as well as his scalping-knife, his deep and clear com- 
 prehension of what is spiritually heautifiil, as well as his hatred of all 
 that is radically wrong, together with his own pure Christian life and 
 experience — all conspire to make his utterances and practical work a 
 blessing to those who hear or read his discourses. — Industrial Monthhj. 
 
 A writer from Soutli Australia says: "I read every Sahbath the 
 choice and soul-stirring sermons of Dr. Talmage to the people. Ev- 
 ery one is delighted to hear them." 
 
 They are the product of strong thought, a red-hot heart, a tremen- 
 dous earnestness, and a determined purpose to do something for Jesus 
 Christ. So he says many things that other men omit to say, and 
 passes by many things that they do say. The book is a live one, and 
 we welcome it. — Northern Christian Advocate. 
 
 Besides performing all the functions of a minister and pastor, Mr. 
 Talmage conducts his "Lay College," and writes from four to five 
 columns a week for his Christian at Work. Within five years he has 
 built two immense and costly churches — the second replacing the first, 
 which was destroyed by fire. Mr. Talmage works steadily on at the 
 same high pressure, without giving the slightest evidence of fatigue. — 
 Zion's Herald, Boston. 
 
 This book needs no recommendation. It recommends itself on 
 every page. It is a scalpel — a two-edged sword. It dissects pop- 
 ular dissipations with an unsparing hand. It points out the morti- 
 fication spots — the incipient gangrene— which are sure to spread be- 
 cause it is tlieir nature, and finally kill. Put the book in eveiy 
 family, on every book and newspaper stand, and distribute it on 
 every railroad and steamboat line. — Christian Standard and Home 
 Journal, Philadelphia. 
 
 Tiie Bible Christian Magazine of London, England, says: "There 
 may be in them minor faults, as some critics assert ; but in wealth of 
 illustration, in graphic description, and faithful, powerful appeal, they 
 are unequaled. It has been said that one Niagara is enough for a con- 
 tinent, or even for a world ; but we wish that every country, and every 
 city and large town, had such a preacher as the author of these ser- 
 mons." 
 
Reco7nmendations. ■ 9 
 
 No sermons of Dr. Tiilmage's — and all of his sermons have received 
 an unusual degree of notice — have attracted more attention than tiiose 
 which he has preached during the past winter on the theatre and oth- 
 er unhealthy amusements of modern society. Their force and truth- 
 fulness are illustrated not more by the obvious presence of those qualities 
 in them than by the extent and bitterness of the denunciations they 
 have received. After all that has been said against them, they, with 
 the sermons preached in connection with them on other baleful sports, 
 stand, with allowance for occasional extravagances, invincible assaults 
 against the most injurious features of modern social life. The whole 
 series are now published by the Harpers in a neat volume, under the ti- 
 tle, Sports that Kill. The author takes the pains; whicii is not at all 
 necessary with those who know him, to state that he luis none of the 
 disposition of the cynic. " Life is to me a rapture. I know of no one 
 who laughs louder or more than I do. But for the sports and recrea- 
 tions of life, I should have been dead long ago. God has done every 
 thing to please and amuse us." He farther explains his views on 
 healthy, profitable sports in the sermon on "Christian Gymnastics," 
 published in this volume, which we commend to all who are disposed 
 to approach the extreme of austerity. — The Methodist, New York. 
 
 The C'ore^re^^afiona^is^, of London, England, says : "We wonder 
 Avhat building would be big enough to hold the congregation, if such 
 sermons were preached in London." 
 
 Dr. Vincent's Sunday-school paper says : "Rhetorical, but practical ; 
 persecuted, but persistent ; awkward, but eloquent. Talmage is the 
 most widely read of all the pidpit orators in America. He is ortho- 
 dox, extreme, intense, fearless. His is no sickly sentimentalism. He 
 believes in a God of justice and wrath. He believes in the atonement. 
 He believes in hell. He preaches hell-fire. He preaches fidl and free 
 salvation. He preaches against all manner of social sins. He is a foe 
 to theatres, to rum, and to every other form of evil. This book is an 
 exploding bomb-shell— full of flash, and shot, and power." 
 
 Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 
 
 B:F~ IIarpee & Brotuerb will send the above works by mail, postage prepaid, 
 to a7vj part of the United States, on receipt of the price. 
 
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