CHRIST BRINGS JOY.
Dr. Talmage Corrects Some False
Notions About Religion.
SJerava Dnn fraa the Story !
Kl lUi aa the aeea f
hea HUaiaa Wn Ar
Ways af IMeaaaataeaa.
ICopyrtghU 1JM. by Louis Klopch. N. T.J
W ihuif ion, Au. 4.
In this discourse Dr. laliuage cor
rect tome of the false notion about
religion and represents it a being1
joy inspiring instead of dolorous;
text, 3 Chronicles, 9:9: "Of spices
frreat abundance; neither mi there
any such spice aa the queen of Sheba
fare King Solomon."
What k that building out yonder
flittering in the sun? Have you not
keard? It ia the house pf the forest
.of Lebanon. King Solomon has just
taken to it his bride, the princess of
Egypt. You see the pillar of the
portico and a great tower, adorned
with 1,000 shields of gold hung on
the outside of the tower 500 of the
shields of gold manufactured at Sol
omon's order. 500 were captured by
David, his father, in battle. See how
they blaze in the noonday sunt
Soiomon goes up the ivory stairs
of his throne between 12 lions in
statuary and sits down on the back
of the golden buii, the head of the
kuge beast turned toward the people.
The family and the attendants of the
Icing are so many that the caterers of
the palace have to provide every day
100 sheep and 13 oxen, besides the
birds and the venison. I hear the
stamping and pawing of 4,000 fine
torses in the royal stables. There
rere important officials who had
charge of the work of gathering the
straw and the barley for these
horses. King Solomon was an early
riser, tradition says, and used to take
ride ont at daybreak, and vien, in
lis white apparel, behind the swiftest
horses of all the realm and followed
by mounted archers in purple, as the
cavalcade dashed through the streets
of Jerusalem, I suppose it was some-
thing worth getting up at live o'elock
in the morning to look at.
Solomon was not like some of the
Mngs of the present day crowned
Imbecility. All the splendors of his
palace and retinue were eclipsed by
lis intellectual power. Why, he
eemed to know everything. lie was
the first great naturalist the world
ever saw. Peacocks from India strut
ted the basaltic walk, and apes chat
tered in the trees, and deer stalked
the parks, and there were aquariums
with foreign fish and aviaries with
foreign birds, and tradition says
these birds were so well tamed that
Solomon might walk clear across the
city under the shadow of their wings
as they hovered and flitted about him.
More than this. He had a great rep
utation for the conundrums and rid
dles that he made and guessed. He
and King Hiram, his neighbor, used
to sit by the honr and ask riddles,
each one paying in money if he conld
not answer or guess the riddle. The
Solomonic navy visited all the world,
and the sailors, of course, talked
bout the wealth of their king and
a boot the riddles and enigmas that
lie made and solved, and the news
spread until Qteen lialkis, away off
outb, heard of it and sent messen
gers with a few riddles that she
would like to have Solomon solve and
a few puzzles that she would like to
Aave him find out. She sent, among
wJier things, to King Solomon a dia
- mend with a hole so small that a
xeedle could not penetrate it, asking
:him-1o thread that diamond, and Sol-
" "vim nu put it at me
opening in the diamond, and the
worm crawled through, leaving the
tthread in the diamond. The queen
also sent a poblet to Solomon, asking
him to fill n with water that did not
oiir from the sky and that did not
;rash out from the earth, and imme
diately Solomon put a slave on the
back of a swift horse and galloped
Vhim around and around the park un
'til the horse was nigh exhausted.
-" iuw )'rr..pirai.on 01 tne
.iore the goblet was filled. She also
sent to King Solomon 500 boyi in
girls' dress and 500 girls in bovs'
dress, wondering if he would be acute
enough to find out the deception. Im
mediately Solomon, when he saw
them wash their faces, knew from
the way they applied the water that
Jt was all a cheat.
Queen Balkls was so pleased with
ba acuteness of Solomon that she
said: Til just go and se him for
myself. Yonder it comes the caval
cade horses and dromedaries, chari
ots and charioteers, jingling harness
and clattering hoofs and blazing
shields and flying ensigns and clap
ping cymbals. The place is saturated
vrith the perfume. She brings cin
namon and saffron and calamus and
frankincense and all manner of sweet
pices. As the retinue sweeps through
the- gat the armed guard inhales the
aroma. "Haiti" cry the charioteers
au the wheels grind the gravel in
front of the pillared portico of the
king. Queen Iialkis alights in an at
mosphere bewitched with perfume.
As the dromedaries are driven up to
the king's storehouses, and the bun-
. o"! carapL..- ar unloaded, and
the sacks of cinnamon and the boxes
of spices" are opened, the purveyors
of the palace discover what my text
announces: ' "Of spices, gTest abun
dance; neither was there any such
spice as the queen of Sheba gave to
King Solomon."
Well, my friends, you know that
all theologians agTce in making Sol
omon a type of Christ and in making
the queen of Sheba a type of every
truth seeker, and I will take the re
sponsibility of saying that all the
spikenard and cassia and frankln
cease which the queen of Sheba
brought to King Solomon are might
ily suggestive of the sweet spices of
our holy religion. Christianity is not
a collection of sharp technicalities
and angular facts and chronological
tables and dry statistics. Our reli
gion is compared to frankincense and
to cassia, but never to nightshade.
It is a bundle of myrrh. It is a dash
of holy light. It is a sparkle of cool
fountsins. It is an opening of opal
ine gates. It is a collection of spices.
Would God that we were as wise in
taking spices to our Divine King as
Queen Balkls was wise in taking the
spices to the earthly Solomon.
The fact is that the duties and
cares of this life, coming to us from
time to time, are stupid often and
inane and intolerable. Here are men
who have been battering, climbing,
pounding, hammering, for 20 years,
40 years, 50 years. One great, long
drudgery has their life been, their
faces anxious, their feelings be
numbed, their days monotonous.
What is necessary t brighten up
that man's life and to sweeten that
acid disposition and to pnt sparkle
into the man's spirits? The spicery
of our holy religion. Why, if between
the losses of life there dashed the
gleam of an eternal gain, if between
the betrayals of life there came the
gleam of the undying' friendship of
Christ, if in dull times in business we
found ministering spirits flying to
and fro in our office and store and
shop, everydsy life instead of being
a stupid monotone would be a glor
ious inspiration, penduluming be
tween calm satisfaction and high rap
ture. How any woman keeps house with
out the religion of Christ to help her
is a mystery to me. To have to spend
the greater part of one's life, as many
women do, in planning for the meals
and stitching garments that will soon
be rent again and deploring breakages
and supervising tardy subordinates
and driving off dust that soon again
will settle and doing the same thing
day in and day out and year in and
year out until the hair silvers and the
back stoops and the spectacles crawl
to the eyes and the grave breaks open
under the thin sole of the shoe oh,
it is a long monotony! But when
Christ comes to the drawing-room and
comes to the kitchen and comes to the
nursery and comes to the dwelling,
then how cheery become all womanly
duties! She is never alone now.
Martha gets throusrh fretting and
joins Mary at the feet of Jesus. All
day long Deborah is happy because she
can help Lapidoth. Hannah because
she esn make a coat for young Sam
uel, Miriam because she can watch
her infant brother. Rachel because
she can help her father water the
stock, the widow of Sarepta because
the cruse of oil is being replenished.
O woman, having in your pantry a
nest of boxes containing all kinds of
condiments, why have you not tried
in your heart and life the spicery of
our holy religion? "Martha. Martha,
thou art careful and troubled about
many things, but one thing is needful,
and Mary hath chosen that good part
which shall not be taken away from
her."
I must confess that a great deal of
the religion of this day is utterly in
sipid. There is nothing piquant or
elevating about it. Men and women
go around humming psalms in a minor
key and cultivating melancholy, and
their worship has in it more sighs
than raptures. We do not doubt their
piety. Oh, no! But they are sitting
at a feast where the cook has for
gotten to season the food. Everything
is flat in their experience and in their
conversation. Emancipated from sin
and death and hell and on their way
to a magnificent Heaven, they act as
though they were trudging on toward
an everlasting Botany Hay. Religion
does not seem to agree with them. It
seems to catch in the windpipe and
become a tight strangulation instead
of an exhilaration. All the infidel
books that have been written, from
Voltaire down to Herbert Spencer,
have not done so much damage to our
Christianity as lugubrious Christians.
Who wants a religion woven out of
the shadows of the night? Why go
growling on your way to celestial en
thronement? Come out of that cava
aid sit down In the warm light of the
Sun of Righteousness. Away with
your odes to melancholy and Hervey'i
"Meditations Among the Tombs.
Then let our snngt abound
And every tear b dry;
Wa'ra marching through Emmanuel's
ground
To fairer worlds on high.
I have to say also that we need to
put more spice and enlivenment In our
religious teaching, whether it be in
the prayer-meeting or in the Sunday
school or in the church. We ministers
need more fresh air and sunshine in
our lungs and our heart and our heal
Do you wonder that the world is ao
far "from beinif converted when you
find so little vivacity in the pulpit and
in the pew? We want, like the Lord,
to p:snt in our sermons and exhorta
tions more alien of the fie.d. We want
fewer rhetorical elaborations and
fewer'susquipeda'.ian words, and when
we talk about shadows e do not want
to say adumbration, and when w
mean qaeerness we do not want to
talk about idiokjacrasie. or if a stitch
in the back we do not want to talk
about lumbago; but, in the ptain ver
nacular of the great masses, preach
that Gospel which proposes to wake
all men happy, houest, victorious and
free. In other words, we want more
cinnamon and less gristle. Let this
be so in all the different departments
of work to which the Lord calls us.
Let us be plain. Let us be earnest.
Let us be common-sensicaL When we
talk to the people in a vernacular they
can understand, they will be very glad
to come and receive the truth we pre
sent. Would to God that Queen Balkis
would drive her spice-laden drome
daries into all our sermons and prayer
meeting exhortations!
More than that, we want more life
and pice in our Christian work. The
poor do not want so much to be
groaned over as sung to. With the
bread and medicines and garments
you give them let there be an ac
companiment of smiles and brisk en
couragement. Do not stand and talk
to them about the wretchedness of
their abode, and the hanger of their
looks, and the hardness of their lot.
Ah, they know it better than you can
tell them. Show them the bright side
of the thing, if there be any bright
side. Tell them good times will come.
Tell them that for the children of
God there is immortal rescue. Waks
them up out of their stolidity by an
inspiring laugh, and while you send
In help, like the queen of Sheba, also
send in the spices.
We need more spice and enlivenment
In our church music. Churches sit
discussing whether they shall have
choirs or precentors or organs or bass
viols or cornets. 1 say take that which
will bring out the most inspiring mu
sic If we had half as much zeal and
spirit in our churches as we have in
the songs of our Sunday schools, it
would not be long before the whole
earth would quake with the coming
God. Why, nine-tenths of the people
In church do not sing, or they sing so
feebly thst the people at their elbows
do not know they are singing. People
mouth and mumble the pralsea of
God, but there is not more than one
out of a hundred who makes a joyful
noise unto the Rock of Our Salvation.
Sometimes, when the congregation
forgets Itself and is all absorbed in
the goodness of God or the glories of
Heaven, I get an intimation of what
church music will be a hundred years
from now, when the coming genera
tion shall wake up to Its duty.
Now, I want to impress you with
the fact that religion is sweetness
and perfume and spikenard and aaf
fron and cinnamon and cassia and
frankincense and ail sweet spices to
gether. "Oh," you say, "I have not
looked at it as such. I thought it
was a nuisance. It had for me a re
pulsion. I held my breath as though
it were a malodor. I have been ap
palled at its advance. I have said
if I have any religion at all I want
to have just as little of it as possi
ble to get through with." Oh, what
a mistake yon make, my brother!
The religion of Christ is a present
and everlasting redolescence. It coun
teracts all trouble. Just put it on the
stand beside the pinow of sickness.
It catches in the curtains and per
fumes the stifling air. It sweetens
the cup of bitter medicine and throws
a glow on the gloom of the turned
lattice. It is a balm for the aching
side and a soft bandage for the tem
ple stung with pain. It lifted Samuel
Rutherford into a revelry of spiritual
delight while he was in physical ag
onies. It helped Richard Baxter un
til, in the midst of such a complica
tion of diseases as perhnps no other
man ever suffered, he wrote "The
Saint's Everlasting Kest," and it
poured l.ght upon John Bunyan's
dungeon the light of the shining
gate of the shining city.
Have you read of the Taj Mahal, In
India, In some respects the most ma
jestic building on earth? Twenty
thousaud men were 20 years in build
ing it. It cost about 1.000,000. The
walls are of marble inlaid with car
nellan from Bagdad and turquoise
from Thibet and jasper from the Pun
jab and amethyst from Persia and
all manner of precious stones. A trav
eler said that it seemed to him like
the shining of the enchanted castle
of burnished silver. The walls are
245 feet high, and from the top of
these springs a dome 30 more feet
high, that dome containing the most
wonderful echo the world has ever
known, so that ever and anon trav
elers standing below with flutes and
drums and harps are testing that
echo, and the sounds from below
strike up, and -then come down, as it
were, the voices of angels all around
about the building. There is around
it a garden of tamarind and banyan
and palm and all the floral glories of
the ransacked earth. But that is only
a tomb of a dead empress, and it it
tame compared with the grandeurs
which God has builded for your living
and immortal spirit.
Oh, home of the blessed! Founda
tions of gold! Arches of victory!
("rvetnnes of Dralse! And a dome in
which there are echoing and re
echoing the halleluiahs of the ages!
And around about that mansion is a
garden, the garden of God, and all
the springing fountains are the bot
tled tears of the church in the wilder
ness and all the crimson of the
flowers is the deep hue that was
caught tip from the carnage of earth
ly martyrdoms and the fragrance is
the prayer of all the saints and the
aroma put into otter forgetfulness
the cassia and the spikenard and the
frankincense and the world-renowned
spices which Queen Balkis of Abys
sinia flung at the feet of King Solo
mon.
When shall thest eyes thy hesven built
wslli
And psrly gates behold.
Thy bulwarks, with salvation stroojg,
And streets of shining gold?
Through obduracy on our part and
through the rejection of that Christ
who makes Heaven possible I wonder
if any of ns will miss that spectacle?
The queen of the sonth will rise up
in judgment against this generation
and condemn it because she ctma
from the uttermost parts of the earth
to hear the wisdom ot Solomon, and,
behold, a greater than Solomon la
here!
May God grant that through your
own practical experience yon may find
that religion's ways are ways of
pleasantness and that all her paths
are paths ot peace that it is per
fume now and perfume forever. And
there was an abundance of spice;
"neither was there any such, spice as
the queen of Sheba gave to King
Solomon."
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