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I. i 'V l . t ., w v, V . 1 V - TTbTTT T TT IN r SUBSCRIPTION: $1.00 Per Year VOL. XXXV. NO. 15. BOLIVAR, TENNESSEE, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1899. 11 J ! J 1 THE COMING SERMON. Dr. Talmage on Future Modes of PreachiDg the Gospel. tlow Hr Think. Ilrllsloa. Troth. Sbovltl Hr I'rriralrd-Smj Mln l.trr. MioalJ Preach the LhlBK Chrl.l. (Copyright. 1SS9. by Louis Klopch.) Washington. In this discourse Dr. Talmage ad dresses all Christian workers ami de tcribes what he thinks will be the modes of preaching1 the Gospel ia the future; text, Romans 12:7: "Or ministry, let us wait on our ministering-. While I was seated on tlie piazza of a hotel at Lexington, Ky., one summer evening, a gentleman asked me: "What do you think of the comir.gsermou V" I Mipposed lie was asking me in regard to some new discourse of Dr. Cumming, of London, who sometimes preached star tling sermons, and I replied: "I have not seen Hut I found out afterward that he meant to ask what I thought would be the characteristics of the com ing sermon of the world, the sermons of the future, the word "Cumming" as a noun pronounced the same as the word coming as an adjective. But my mis take suggested to me a very important and practical theme, "The Coming Ser mon." Defore the world is converted the style of religious discourse will have to be converted. You might as well go into the modern Sedan or Gettysburg with bows anil arrows, instead of rifles and bombshells and parks of artillery, as to expect to conquer this world for God by the old style of exhortion and sermonology. Jonathan Kd wards preached the sermons most adapted to the age in which he lived, but if those sermons were preached now they would divide an audience into two classes those sound asleep and those wanting to go home. I'.ut there is a discourse of the future. Who will preach it I have no idea. In what part of thearth it will be born I have no idea. In w hich denomination of Christians it will be delivered I cannot guess. That discourse of exhortation may be lorn in the country meeting house on the banks of the St. Lawrence or the Oregon or the Ohio or the Tom bigbee or the Alabama. The person who shall deliver it may this moment be in a cradle under the shadow of the Sierra Nevadas or in a New England farmhouse or amid the ricefields of southern savannas, or this moment there may be some young man in one of our theological seminaries, in the junioror middle or senior class, shaping that weapon of power, or there may be coming some new baptism of the Holy Ghost on the churches, so that some of us who now stand in the watehtowers of Zion, waking to a realization of our present inefficiency, may preach it our selves. That coming discourse may not be 50 years off. And let us pray God that it arrival may le hastened while I announce to you what I think will be the chief characteristics of that dis course or exhortation when it does ar rive, and I want to make my remarks appropriateand suggestive to all classes of Christian workers. First of all, I remark that that fu ture religious discourse" will be full of a living Christ in contradistinction to didactic technicalities. A discourse-f have had trouble only thought they may W full of Christ though hardly mentioning His name, and a sermon may be empty of Christ while every sentence is repetition of His titles. The world wants a living1 Christ, not a Christ standing at the head of a forma! sys tem of theology, but a Christ who means pardon and sympathy and con dolence and brotherhood and life and Heaven, a poor man's Christ, an over worked Christ, an invalid's Christ, a farmer's Chriat, a merchant's Christ, an artisan's Christ, an every man's Christ. A symmetrical and fine worded sys tem of theology is well enough for theo logical classes, but it has no more busi ness in a pulpit than have the technical phrases of an anatomist or a psycholo gist or a physician in the sickroom of a patient. The world wants help, imme diate and world uplifting, and it will come through a discourse in which Christ shall walk right down into the immortal soul and take everlasting pos session of it, filling it as full of light as is this noonday firmament. That sermon or exhortation of the fu ture will not deal with men in the threadbare Illustrations of Jesus Christ. In that coming address there will be instances of vicarious suffering taken right out of everyday life, for there is not a day when somebody is cot dying for others as the physician saving his diphtheritic patient by sacri ficing his own life; as the ship captain going1 dow n with his vessel while he is gettiDg his passengers into the life boat; as the fireman consuming in the burning building while he is taking a child out of a fourth-story window; as in summer the strong svvimmer at East Hampton or Long Branch or Cape Maj or Lake George himself perished try ing to rescue the drowning; as the newspaper boy one summer, supporting his mother for some years, his invalid mother, when offered by a gentleman 50 cents to get some special paper, and he got it, and rushed up in his anxiety to deliver it and vas crushed under the wheels of the train and lay on the grass with only strength enough to say: "Oh, what will become of my poor, sick mother now?" Vicarious suffering1 the world is full of it. An engineer said to me on a locomotive in Dakota: "We men seem to be coming to better ap preciation than we used to. Did you see that account the other day of an en ginesr who to save his passengers stuck to his place, and when he was found dead in the locomotive, which was up side down, he was found still smiling, his hand on the airbrake?" And as the ecgineer said it to me he put his band airbrake to illustrate his mean ing, and I looked at him and thought: "You would te just as much a hero in the same crisis." Oh, in that religious discourse of the future there will be living illustrations taken out from everyday life of vicarious suffering il lustrations that will bring to mind the ghastlier sacrifice of Him who in the high places of the field, on the cross, fought our battles and endured our struggle and died our death. A German sculptor made an image of Christ, and he asked his little child, two years old, who it was, and she said: "That must be some very great man." The sculptor was displeased with the criticism, so he got another block of marble and chiseled away on it two or three years, and then he brought in his little child, four or five years of age, and said to her: "Who do you think that is?" She said": "That must be the One w ho took little children in His arms and blessed them." Then the sculptor was satisfied. Oh, my friends, what the world wants is not a cold Christ, not an intellectual Christ, not a severely mag isterial Christ, but a loving Christ, spreading out His arms of sympathy to press the whole world to II is loving lteartl But I remark also that the religious discourse of the future of which I speak w ill be a popular discourse. There are those in these times w ho speak of a pop ular sermon as though there must be something wrong about it. As these critics are dull themselves, the world gets the impression that a sermon is good in proportion as it is stupid. Christ was the most popular preacher the world ever saw and, considering the small number of the world's popula tion, had the largest audiences ever gathered. He never preached anywhere without making a great sensation. Peo ple rushed out in The wilderness to hear him reckless of their physical necessi ties. So great was their anxiety to hear Christ that, taking no food with them, they would have fainted and starved had not Christ performed a miracle and fed them. Why did so many people take the truth at Christ's hands? Because they all understood it. He illustrated his subject by a hen and her chickens, by a bushel measure, by a handful of salt, by a bird's flight and by a lily's aroma. All the people knew what he meant, and they flocked to Him. And when the religious dis course of the future appears it will not be Brincetonian, not Ilochesterian, not Andoverian, not Middletonian, but Oli vetic plain, practical, unique, earnest, comprehensive of all the woes, wants, sins and sorrows of an auditory But when the exhortation or dis course does come there w ill be a thou sand gleaming scimeters to charge on it. There are in so many theological seminaries professors telling oung men how to preach, themselves not knowing how, and I am told that if a j'oung man in some of our theological seminaries says anything quaint or thrilling or unique faculty and students fly at him and set him right and straighten him out and smooth him down and chop him off until he says ev erything just as everybody else says it. Oh, when the future religious discourse of the Christian church arrives all the churches of Christ in our great cities will be thronged! The world wants spiritual help. All who have buried their dead want comfort. All know themselves to be mortal and to be im mortal, and they want to hear about the great future. I tell you. my friends. if the people of our great cities who could get practical and sympathetic help in the Christian church, there would not bo a street in Washington or New York or any other city which would be passable on the Sabbath day if there were a church on it, for all the people would press to that asylum of mercy, that great house of comfort and consolation. A mother with a dead babe in her arms came to the god Siva and asked to have her child restored to life. The god Siva said to her: "You go and get a handful of mustard seed from a house in which there has been no sorrow and in which there has been no death, and I will restore your child to life." So the mother went out, amshe went from house to house and from home to home looking for a place where there had been no sorrow and where there had been no death, but she found none. She went back to the god Siva and said: "My mission is a failure. You see, I haven't brought the mustard seed. I can't find a place where there has been no sorrow and no death." "Oh!" said the god Siva. "Understand, your sorrows are no worse than the sorrows of others. We all have our griefs, and all have our heartbreaks." Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep a'.one; For the sad old earth must borrow Its mirth. But has trouble enough of Us own. We hear a great deal of discussion now all over the land about why people do not go to church. Some say it is be cause Christianity is dying out and be cause people do not believe in the truth Of God's Word, and all that. The rea son is because our sermons and ex hortations are not interesting and practical and helpful. Some one might as well tell the whole truth on this sub ject, and so I will tell it. The religious discourse of the future, the Gospel ser mon to come forth and shake the na tions and lift people out of darkness, will be a popular sermon, just for ti e simple reason that it will meet the woes and the wants and the anxieties cf the people. There are in all our denominations ecclesiastical mummies sitting around to frown upon the fresh young pulpits of America to try to awe them down, to cry out: "Tut, tut, tut! Sensation al!" They stand to-day preaching in churches that hold a thousand people. and there are a hundred persons pres ent, and if they cannot have the world saved in their way it seems as if they do not want it saved at all. 1 do cot know but the eld way of making ministers of the Gospel is bet ter a collegiate education and an ap- i prenticeship under the care and home attention of some earnest, aged Chris tian minister, the young man getting the patriarch's spirit and assisting him in his religious service. Young lawyers study with old lawyers, young physi cians with old physicians, and I believe it would be a great help if every young man studying for the Gospel ministry could get himself in the home and heart and sympathy and under the benedic tion and perpetual preence of a Chris tian minister. But, I remark ogam, he religious discourse of the future will be an awakening sermon. From altar rail to the front door step, under that sermon, an audience will get up and start for Heaven. There will be in it many a staccato passage. It will not be a lulla hy. It will be a battle charge. Men will drop their sins, for they will fel the hot breath of pursuing retribution on the back of their necks. It will le sympathetic with all the phjsical dis tresses as well as the spiritual dij tresses of the world. Christ not onl preached, but he healed paralysis, anc he healed epilepsy, and he healed the dumb and the blind and the lepers. That religious discourse of the fi ture will be an everyday sermon, go ing right down into every man's life, and it will teach him how to vote, how to bargain, how to plow, how to do any work he is called to do, how to wield trowel and pen, and pencil and yard stick and plane. And it will teach wom en how to preside over their households and how to educate their children and how to imitate Miriam and Esther and Yashti and Eunice, the mother of Tim othy, and Mary, the mother of Christ, and those women who on northern and southern battlefields who were mis taken by the wounded for angels of mercy, fresh from the throne of God. Yes, I have to tell you, the religious discourse of the future will be a re ported sermon. If you have any idea that printing was invented simply to print secular books, and stenography and phonography were contrived mere ly to set forth secular ideas, you are mistaken. The printing press is to be the great agency of Gospel proclama tion. It is high time that good men, instead of denouncing the press, em ploy it to scatter forth the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The vast majority of peo ple in our cities do not come to church, and nothing but the printed sermon can reach them and call them to pardon and life and peace and Heaven. So I cannot understand the nervous ness of some of my brethren of the ministry. When they see a newspaper man coming in they say: "Alas, there is a reporter!" Every added reporter is 10,000, 50,000, 100,000 immortal souls added to the auditory. The time will come when all the village, town and city newspapers will reproduce the Gos pel of Jesus Christ, and sermons preached on the Sabbath will re verberate all around the world, and, some by type and some by voice, all na tions will be evangelized. The practical bearing of this is upon those who are engaged in Christian work, not onlj- upon theological stu dents and young1 ministers, but upon all who preach the Gospel and all who exhort in meetings and all of you if you are doing your duty. Do you ex hort in prayer meeting? Be short and spirited. Do j ou teach in Bible class? Though you have to study every night, be interesting. Do you accost people on the subject of religion in their homes or in public places? Study adroitness and use common sense. The most graceful and most beautiful thing on earth is the religion of Jesus Christ, and if you awkwardly present it it is defamation. We must do our work rap idly, and we must do it effectively. Soon our time for work will be gone. A dying Christian took out his watch and gave it to a friend and said: "Take that watch. I have no more use for it. Time is at an end for me, and eternity begins." Oh, my friends, when our watch has ticked away for us the last moment, and our clock has struck for us the last hour, may it be found we did our work w ell, that we did it in the very best way, and whether we preached the Gospel in pulpits or taught Sabbath classes, or adminis tered to the sick as physicians, or bar gained as merchants, or pleaded the law as attorneys, or were busy as artisans or husbandmen or as mechanics, or were, like Martha, called to give a meal to a hungry Christ, or, like Hannah, to make a coat for a prophet, or, like Debo rah, to rouse the courage of some timid Barak in the Lord's conflict, we did our work in such a way that it will stand the test of judgment! And in the long procession of the redeemed that march around the throne may it be found that there are many there brought to God through our instrumentality and in whose rescue we exult. But let none of us who are still unsaved wait for that religious discourse of the future. It may come after our obsequies. It may come after the stonecutter has chiseled our name on the slab 50 years before. Do not wait for a great steamer of the Cunard or White Star line to take you off the wreck, but hail the first craft, with however low a mast and how ever small a hulk and however poor a rudder and however weak a captain Instead of waiting for that religious discourse of the future (it may be 40, 50 years off), take this plain invitation of a man who to have given you spirit ual eyesight would be glad to be called the spittle by the hand of Christ put on the eyes of a blind man and who would consider the highest compliment of this service if, at the close, 500 men should start from these doors, saying: "Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not. This one thing I know whereas I was blind, now I see." Swifter than shadows over the plain, quicker than birds in their autumnal flight, hastier than eagles to their prey, hie you to a sympathetic Christ. 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