New Tabernacle Sermons

May God Almighty this hour move upon your soul and bring you back from the husks of the wilderness to the Father's house, and set you at the banquet, and "put a ring on your hand."

"If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha."— I Cor. xvi: 22.

The smallest lad in the house knows the meaning of all those words except the last two, Anathema Maranatha. Anathema, to cut off. Maranatha, at His coming. So the whole passage might be read: "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be cut off at His coming." Well, how could the tender-hearted Paul say that? We have seen him with tears discoursing about human want, and flushed with excitement about human sorrow; and now he throws those red-hot iron words into this letter to the Corinthians. Had he lost his patience? Ok, no. Had he resigned his confidence in the Christian religion? Oh, no. Had the world treated him so badly that he had become its sworn enemy? Oh, no. It needs some explanation, I confess, and I shall proceed to show by what process Paul came to the vehement utterance of my text. Before I close, if God shall give His Spirit, you shall cease to be surprised at the exclamation of the Apostle, and you yourselves will employ the same emphasis, declaring, "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha."

If the photographic art had been discovered early enough, we should have had the facial proportions of Christ—the front face, the side face, Jesus sitting, Jesus standing—provided He had submitted to that art; but since the sun did not become a portrait painter until eighteen centuries after Christ, our idea about the Saviour's personal appearance is all guess work. Still, tradition tells us that He was the most infinitely beautiful being that ever walked our small earth. If His features had been rugged, and His gait had been ungainly, that would not have hindered Him from being attractive. Many men you have known and loved have had few charms of physiognomy. Wilberforce was not attractive in face. Socrates was repulsive. Suwarrow, the great Russian hero, looked almost an imbecile. And some whom you have known, and honored, and loved, have not had very great attractiveness of personal appearance. The shape of the mouth, and the nose, and the eyebrow, did not hinder the soul from shining through the cuticle of the face in all-powerful irradiation.

But to a lovely exterior Christ joined all loveliness of disposition. Run through the galleries of heaven, and find out that He is a non-such. The sunshine of His love mingling with the shadows of His sorrows, crossed by the crystalline stream of His tears and the crimson flowing forth of His blood, make a picture worthy of being called the masterpiece of the eternities. Hung on the wall of heaven, the celestial population would be enchanted but for the fact that they have the grand and magnificent original, and they want no picture. But Christ having gone away from earth, we are dependent upon four indistinct pictures. Matthew took one, Mark another, Luke another, and John another. I care not which picture you take, it is lovely. Lovely? He was altogether lovely.

He had a way of taking up a dropsical limb without hurting it, and of removing the cataract from the eye without the knife, and of starting the circulation through the shrunken arteries without the shock of the electric battery, and of putting intelligence into the dull stare of lunacy, and of restringing the auditory nerve of the deaf ear, and of striking articulation into the stiff tongue, and of making the stark-naked madman dress himself and exchange tombstone for ottoman, and of unlocking from the skeleton grip of death the daughter of Jairus to embosom her in her glad father's arms. Oh, He was lovely—sitting, standing, kneeling, lying down—always lovely.

Lovely in His sacrifice. Why, He gave up everything for us. Home, celestial companionship, music of seraphic harps, balmy breath of eternal summer, all joy, all light, all music, and heard the gates slam shut behind Him as He came out to fight for our freedom, and with bare feet plunged on the sharp javelins of human and satanic hate, until His blood spurted into the faces of those who slew Him. You want the soft, low, minor key of sweetest music to describe the pathos; but it needs an orchestra, under swinging of an archangel's baton, reaching from throne to manger, to drum and trumpet the doxologies of His praise. He took everybody's trouble—the leper's sickness, the widow's dead boy, the harlot's shame, the Galilean fisherman's poor luck, the invalidism of Simon's mother-in-law, the sting of Malchus' amputated ear.

Some people cry very easily, and for some it is very difficult to cry. A great many tears on some cheeks do not mean so much as one tear on another cheek. What is it that I see glittering in the mild eye of Jesus? It was all the sorrows of earth, and the woes of hell, from which He had plucked our souls, accreted into one transparent drop, lingering on the lower eyelash until it fell on a cheek red with the slap of human hands—just one salt, bitter, burning tear of Jesus. No wonder the rock, the sky, and the cemetery were in consternation when He died! No wonder the universe was convulsed! It was the Lord God Almighty bursting into tears. Now, suppose that, notwithstanding all this, a man can not have any affection for Him. What ought to be done with such hard behavior?

It seems to me that there ought to be some chastisement for a man who will not love such a Christ. Does it not make your blood tingle to think of Jesus coming over the tens of thousands of miles that seem to separate God from us, and then to see a man jostle Him out, and push Him back, and shut the door in His face, and trample upon His entreaties? While you may not be able to rise up to the towering excitement of the Apostle in my text, you can at any rate somewhat understand his feelings when he cried out: "After all this, 'if a man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.'"

Just look at the injustice of not loving Him. Now, there is nothing that excites a man like injustice. You go along the street, and you see your little child buffeted, or a ruffian comes and takes a boy's hat and throws it into the ditch. You say: "What great meanness, what injustice that is!" You can not stand injustice. I remember, in my boyhood days, attending a large meeting in Tripler Hall, New York. Thousands of people were huzzaing, and the same kind of audiences were assembled at the same time in Boston, Edinburgh, and London. Why? Because the Madaii family, in Italy, had been robbed of their Bible. "A little thing," you say. Ah, that injustice was enough to arouse the indignation of a world. But while we are so sensitive about injustice as between man and man, how little sensitive we are about injustice between man and God. If there ever was a fair and square purchase of anything, then Christ purchased us. He paid for us, not in shekels, not in ancient coins inscribed with effigies of Hercules, or Ægina's tortoise, or lyre of Mitylene, but in two kinds of coin—one red, the other glittering—blood and tears! If anything is purchased and paid for, ought not the goods to be delivered? If you have bought property and given the money, do you not want to come into possession of it? "Yes," you say, "I will have it. I bought and paid for it." And you will go to law for it, and you will denounce the man as a defrauder. Ay, if need be, you will hurl him into jail. You will say: "I am bound to get that property. I bought it. I paid for it!"

Now, transpose the case. Suppose Jesus Christ to be the wronged purchaser on the one side, and the impenitent soul on the other, trying to defraud Him of that which He bought at such an exorbitant price, how do you feel about that injustice? How do you feel toward that spiritual fraud, turpitude and perfidy? A man with an ardent temperament rises and he says that such injustice as between man and man is bad enough, but between man and God it is reprehensible and intolerable, and he brings his fist down on the pew, and he says: "I can stand this injustice no longer. After all this purchase, 'if any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha'!"

I go still further, and show you how suicidal it is for a man not to love Christ. If a man gets in trouble, and he can not get out, we have only one feeling toward him—sympathy and a desire to help him. If he has failed for a vast amount of money, and can not pay more than ten cents on a dollar—ay, if he can not pay anything—though his creditors may come after him like a pack of hounds, we sympathize with him. We go to his store, or house, and we express our condolence. But suppose the day before that man failed, William E. Dodge had come into his store and said: "My friend, I hear you are in trouble. I have come to help you. If ten thousand dollars will see you through your perplexity, I have a loan of that amount for you. Here is a check for the amount of that loan." Suppose the man said: "With that ten thousand dollars I could get through until next spring, and then everything will be all right; but, Mr. Dodge, I don't want it; I won't take it; I would rather fail than take it; I don't even thank you for offering it." Your sympathy for that man would cease immediately. You would say: "He had a fair offer; he might have got out; he wants to fail; he refuses all help; now let him fail." There is no one in all this house who would have any sympathy for that man.

But do not let us be too hasty. Christ hears of our spiritual embarrassments, he finds that we are on the very verge of eternal defalcation. He finds the law knocking at our door with this dun: "Pay me what thou owest."

We do not know which way to turn. Pay? We can not pay a farthing of all the millions of obligation. Well, Christ comes in and says: "Here is My name; you can use My name. Your name would be worthless, but My red handwriting on the back of this obligation will get you through anywhere." Now suppose the soul says: "I know I am in debt; I can't meet these obligations either in time or eternity; but, oh, Christ, I want not Thy help; I ask not Thy rescue. Go away from me." You would say: "That man, why, he deserves to die. He had the offer of help; he would not take it. He is a free agent; he ought to have what he wants; he chooses death rather than life. Ought you not give him freedom of choice?" Though awhile ago there was only one ardent man who understood the Apostle, now there are hundreds in the house who can say, and do say within themselves: "After all this ingratitude, and rejection, and obstinacy, 'if any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.'"

I go a step further, and say it is most cruel for a man not to love Jesus. The meanest thing I could do for you would be needlessly to hurt your feelings. Sharp words sometimes cut like a dagger. An unkind look will sometimes rive like the lightning. An unkind deed may overmaster a sensitive spirit, and if you have made up your mind that you have done wrong to any one, it does not take you two minutes to make up your mind to go and apologize. Now, Christ is a bundle of delicacy and sensitiveness. How you have shocked His nerves! How you have broken His heart!

Did you, my brother, ever measure the meaning of that one passage: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock"? It never came to me as it did this morning while I was thinking on this subject. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." Some January day, the thermometer five degrees below zero, the wind and sleet beating mercilessly against you, you go up the steps of a house where you have a very important errand. You knock with one knuckle. No answer. You are very earnest, and you are freezing. The next time you knock harder. After awhile with your fist you beat against the door. You must get in, but the inmate is careless or stubborn, and he does not want you in. Your errand is a failure. You go away.

The Lord Jesus Christ comes up on the steps of your heart, and with very sore hand he knocks hard at the door of your soul. He is standing in the cold blasts of human suffering. He knocks. He says: "Let me in. I have come a great way. I have come all the way from Nazareth, from Bethlehem, from Golgotha. Let Me in. I am shivering and blue with the cold. Let Me in. My feet are bare but for their covering of blood. My head is uncovered but for a turban of brambles. By all these wounds of foot, and head, and heart, I beg you to let Me in. Oh, I have been here a great while, and the night is getting darker. I am faint with hunger. I am dying to get in. Oh, lift the latch—shove back the bolt! Won't you let Me in? Won't you? 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock!'"

But after awhile, my brother, the scene will change. It will be another door, but Christ will be on the other side of it. He will be on the inside, and the rejected sinner will be on the outside, and the sinner will come up and knock at the door, and say: "Let me in, let me in. I have come a great way. I came all the way from earth. I am sick and dying. Let me in. The merciless storm beats my unsheltered head. The wolves of a great night are on my track. Let me in. With both fists I beat against this door. Oh, let me in. Oh, Christ, let me in. Oh, Holy Ghost, let me in. Oh, God, let me in. Oh, my glorified kindred, let me in." No answer save the voice of Christ, who shall say: "Sinner, when I stood at your door you would not let Me in, and now you are standing at My door, and I can not let you in. The day of your grace is past. Officer of the law, seize him." And while the arrest is going on, all the myriads of heaven rise on gallery and throne, and cry with loud voice, that makes the eternal city quake from capstone to foundation, saying: "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha."

Sabbath audience in the Brooklyn Tabernacle, and all to whom these words shall come on both sides the sea, notice here the tremendous alternative: it is not whether you live in Pierrepont Street or Carlton Avenue, walk Trafalgar Square or the "Canongate;" nor whether your dress shall be black or brown; nor whether you shall be robust or an invalid; nor whether you shall live on the banks of the Hudson, the Shannon, the Seine, the Thames, the Tiber; but it is a question whether you will love Christ or suffer banishment; whether you will give yourselves to Him who owns you or fall under the millstone; whether you will rise to glories that have no terminus or plunge to a depth which has no bottom. I do not see how you can take the ten-thousandth part of a second to decide it, when there are two worlds fastened at opposite ends of a swivel, and the swivel turns on one point, and that point is now, now. Is it not fair that you love Him? Is it not right that you love Him? Is it not imperative that you love Him? What is it that keeps you from rushing up and throwing the arms of your affection about His neck?

My text pronounces Anathema Maranatha upon all those who refuse to love Christ. Anathema—cut off. Cut off from light, from hope, from peace, from heaven. Oh, sharp, keen, sword-like words! Cut off! Everlastingly cut off! Behold, therefore, the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in His goodness; otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. Maranatha—that is the other word. "When he comes" is the meaning of it.

Will He come? I see no signs of it. I looked into the sky as I rode down to church. I saw no signs of the coming. No signal of God's appearance. The earth stands solid on its foundation. No cry of welcome or of woe. Will He come! He will. Maranatha! Hear it ye mountains, and prepare to fall. Ye cities, and prepare to burn. Ye righteous, and prepare to reign. Ye wicked, and prepare to die. Maranatha! Maranatha!

But, oh, my brother, I am not so aroused by that coming as I am by a previous coming, and that is the coming of our death hour, which will fix everything for us. I can not help now, while preaching, asking myself the question—Am I ready for that? If I am ready for the first I will be ready for the next. Are you ready for the emergency? Shall I tell you when your death hour will come? "Oh, no," says some one, "I don't want to know. I would rather not know." Some one says: "I would rather know, if you can tell me." I will tell you. It will be at the most unexpected moment, when you are most busy, and when you think you can be least spared. I can not exactly say whether it will be in the noon, or at the sundown when people are coming home, or in the morning when the world is waking up, or while the clock is striking twelve at night. But I tell you what I think, that with some of you it will be before next Saturday night.

A minister of the Gospel said to an audience: "Before next Sabbath some of you will be gone." And a man said during the week: "I shall watch now, and if no one dies in our congregation during this week I shall go and tell the minister his falsehood." A man standing next to him said: "Why, it may be yourself." "Oh, no," he replied; "I shall live on to be an old man." That night he breathed his last.

Standing before some who shall be launched into the great eternity, what are your equipments? About to jump, where will you land? Oh, the subject is overwhelming to me; and when I say these things to you, I say them to myself. "Lord, is it I? Is it I?" Some of us part to-night never to meet again. If never before, I now here commit my soul into the keeping of the Lord Jesus Christ. I throw my sinful heart upon His infinite mercy. But some of you will not do that. You will go over to the store to-morrow, and your comrades will say: "Where were you yesterday?" You will say: "I heard Talmage preach, and I don't believe what he preaches." And you will go on and die in your sins.

Feeling that you are bound unto death eternal I solemnly take leave of you. Be careful of your health, for when your respiration gives out all your good times will have ended. Be careful in walking near a scaffold, for one falling brick or stone might usher you into the great eternity for which you have no preparation. A few months, or weeks, or days, or hours will pass on, and then you will see the last light, and hear the last music, and have the last pleasant emotion, and a destroyed eternity will rush upon you. Farewell, oh, doomed spirit! As you shove off from hope, I wave you this last salutation. Oh, it is hard to part forever and forever! I bid you one long, last, bitter, eternal adieu!

"Who have fled for refuge."— Heb. vi: 18.

Paul is here speaking of the consolations of Christians. He styles them these "who have fled for refuge."

Moses established six cities of refuge—three on the east side of the river Jordan, and three on the west. When a man had killed any one accidentally he fled to one of these cities. The roads leading to them were kept perfectly good, so that when a man started for the refuge nothing might impede him. Along the cross-roads, and wherever there might be any mistake about the way, there were signs put up pointing in the right way, with the word "Refuge." Having gained the limits of one of these cities the man was safe, and the mothers of the priests provided for him.

Some of us have seen our peril, and have fled to Christ, and feel that we shall never be captured. We are among those "who have fled for refuge." Christ is represented in the Bible as a Tower, a High Rock, a Fortress, and a Shelter. If you have seen any of the ancient castles of Europe, you know that they are surrounded by trenches, across which there is a draw-bridge. If an enemy approach, the people, for defense, would get into the castle, have the trenches filled with water, and lift up the draw-bridge. Whether to a city of safety, or a tower, Paul refers, I know not, and care not, for in any case he means Christ, the safety of the soul.

But why talk of refuge? Who needs it, if the refuge spoken of be a city or a castle, into which men fly for safety? It is all sunlight here. No sound of war in our streets. We do not hear the rush of armed men against the doors of our dwellings. We do not come with weapons to church. Our lives are not at the mercy of an assassin. Why, then, talk of refuge?

Alas! I stand before a company of imperiled men. No flock of sheep was ever so threatened or endangered of a pack of wolves; no ship was ever so beaten of a storm; no company of men were ever so environed of a band of savages. A refuge you must have, or fall before an all-devouring destruction. There are not so many serpents in Africa; there are not so many hyenas in Asia; there are not so many panthers in the forest, as there are transgressions attacking my soul. I will take the best unregenerated man anywhere, and say to him, You are utterly corrupt. If all the sins of your past life were marshaled in single file, they would reach from here to hell. If you have escaped all other sins, the fact that you have rejected the mission of the Son of God is enough to condemn you forever, pushing you off into bottomless darkness, struck by ten thousand hissing thunder-bolts of Omnipotent wrath.

You are a sinner. The Bible says it, and your conscience affirms it. Not a small sinner, or a moderate sinner, or a tolerable sinner, but a great sinner, a protracted sinner, a vile sinner, an outrageous sinner, a condemned sinner. As God, with His all-scrutinizing gaze, looks upon you to-day, He can not find one sound spot in your soul. Sin has put scales on your eyes, and deadened your ear with an awful deafness, and palsied your right arm, and stunned your sensibilities, and blasted you with an infinite blasting. The Bible, which you admit to be true, affirms that you are diseased from the crown of your head to the sole of your foot. You are unclean; you are a leper. Believe not me, but believe God's Word, that over and over again announces, in language that a fool might understand, the total and complete depravity of the unchanged heart: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked."

In addition to the sins of your life there are uncounted troubles in pursuit of you. Bereavements, losses, disappointments are a flock of vultures ever on the wing. Did you get your house built, and furnished, and made comfortable any sooner than misfortune came in without knocking, and sat beside you—a skeleton apparition? Have not pains shot their poisoned arrows, and fevers kindled their fire in your brain? Many of you, for years, have walked on burning marl. You stepped out of one disaster into another. You may, like Job, have cursed the day in which you were born. This world boils over with trouble for you, and you are wondering where the next grave will gape, and where the next storm will burst. Oh, ye pursued, sinning, dying, troubled, exhausted souls, are you not ready now to hear me while I tell you of Christ, the Refuge?

A soldier, during the war, heard of the sickness of his wife and asked for a furlough. It was denied him, and he ran away. He was caught, brought back, and sentenced to be shot as a deserter. The officer took from his pocket a document that announced his death on the following morning. As the document was read, the man flinched not and showed no sorrow or anxiety. But the officer then took from his pocket another document that contained the prisoner's pardon. Then he broke down with deep emotion at the thought of the leniency that had been extended. Though you may not appear moved while I tell you of the law that thundered its condemnation, while I tell you of the pardon and the peace of the Gospel I wonder if they will not overcome you.

Jesus is a safe refuge. Fort Hudson, Fort Pulaski, Fort Moultrie, Fort Sumter, Gibraltar, Sebastopol were taken. But Jesus is a castle into which the righteous runneth and is safe. No battering-ram can demolish its wall. No sappers or miners can explode its ramparts, no storm-bolt of perdition leap upon its towers. The weapons that guard this fort are omnipotent. Hell shall unlimber its great guns as death only to have them dismantled. In Christ our sins are pardoned, discomforted, blotted out, forgiven. An ocean can not so easily drown a fly as the ocean of God's forgiveness swallow up, utterly and forever, our transgressions. He is able to save unto the uttermost.

You who have been so often overcome in a hand-to-hand fight with the world, the flesh, and devil, try this fortress. Once here, you are safe forever. Satan may charge up the steep, and shout amid the uproar of the fight, Forward, to his battalions of darkness; but you will stand in the might of the great God, your Redeemer, safe in the refuge. The troubles of life, that once overwhelmed you, may come on with their long wagon-trains laden with care and worryment; and you may hear in their tramp the bereavements that once broke your heart; but Christ is your friend, Christ your sympathizer, Christ your reward. Safe in the refuge!

Death at last may lay the siege to your spirit, and the shadows of the sepulcher may shake their horrors in the breeze, and the hoarse howl of the night wind may be mingled with the cry of despair, yet you will shout in triumph from the ramparts, and the pale horse shall be hurled back on his haunches. Safe in the refuge! To this castle I fly. This last fire shall but illumine its towers; and the rolling thunders of the judgment will be the salvo of its victory.

Just after Queen Victoria had been crowned—she being only nineteen or twenty years of age—Wellington handed her a death-warrant for her signature. It was to take the life of a soldier in the army. She said to Wellington: "Can there nothing good be said of this man?" He said: "No; he is a bad soldier, and deserves to die." She took up the death-warrant, and it trembled in her hand as she again asked: "Does no one know anything good of this man?" Wellington said: "I have heard that at his trial a man said that he had been a good son to his old mother." "Then let his life be spared," said the queen, and she ordered his sentence commuted.

Christ is on a throne of grace. Our case is brought before him. The question is asked: "Is there any good about this man?" The law says: "None." Justice says: "None." Our own conscience says: "None." Nevertheless, Christ hands over our pardon, and asks us to take it. Oh, the height and depth, the length and breadth of his mercy!

Again, Christ is a near refuge. When we are attacked, what advantage is there in having a fortress on the other side of the mountain? Many an army has had an intrenchment, but could not get to it before the battle opened. Blessed be God, it is no long march to our castle. We may get off, with all our troops, from the worst earthly defeat in this stronghold. In a moment we may step from the battle into the tower. I sing of a Saviour near.

During the late war the forts of the North were named after the Northern generals, and the forts of the South were named after the Southern generals. This fortress of our soul I shall call Castle Jesus. I have seen men pursued of sins that chased them with feet of lightning, and yet with one glad leap they bounded into the tower. I have seen troubles, with more than the speed and terror of a cavalry troop, dash after a retreating soul, yet were hurled back in defeat from the bulwarks. Jesus near! A child's cry, a prisoner's prayer, a sailor's death-shriek, a pauper's moan reaches him. No pilgrimages on spikes. No journeying with a huge pack on your back. No kneeling in penance in cold vestibule of mercy. But an open door! A compassionate Saviour! A present salvation! A near refuge! Castle Jesus!

Oh, why do you not put out your arm and reach it? Why do you not fly to it? Why be riddled, and shelled, and consumed under the rattling bombardment of perdition, when one moment's faith would plant you in the glorious refuge? I preach a Jesus here; a Jesus now; a fountain close to your feet; a fiery pillar right over your head; bread already broken for your hunger; a crown already gleaming for your brow. Hark to the castle gates rattling back for your entrance! Hear you not the welcome of those who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us?

Again, it is a universal refuge. A fortress is seldom large enough to hold a whole army. I look out upon fourteen hundred millions of the race; and then I look at this fortress, and I say that there is room enough for all. If it had been possible, this salvation would have been monopolized. Men would have said: "Let us have all this to ourselves—no publicans, no plebeians, no lazzaroni, no converted pickpockets. We will ride toward heaven on fierce chargers, our feet in golden stirrups. Grace for lords, and dukes, and duchesses, and counts. Let Napoleon and his marshals come in, but not the common soldier that fought under him. Let the Girards and the Barings come in, but not the stevedores that unloaded their cargoes, or the men who kept their books." Heaven would have been a glorified Windsor Castle, or Tuileries, or Vatican; and exclusive aristocrats would have strutted through the golden streets to all eternity.

Thank God, there is mercy for the poor! The great Doctor John Mason preached over a hundred times the same sermon; and the text was: "To the poor the Gospel is preached." Lazarus went up, while Dives went down; and there are candidates for Imperial splendors in the back alley, and by the peat-fire of the Irish shanty. King Jesus set up His throne in a manger, and made a resurrection day for the poor widow of Nain, and sprung the gate of heaven wide open, so that all the beggars, and thieves, and scoundrels of the universe may come in if they will only repent. I can snatch the knife from the murderer's hand while it is yet dripping with the blood of his victim, and tell him of the grace that is sufficient to pardon his soul. Do you say that I swing open the gate of heaven too far? I swing it open no wider than Christ, when He says: "Whosoever will, let him come." Don't you want to go in with such a rabble? Then you can stay out.

The whole world will yet come into this refuge. The windows of heaven will be opened; God's trumpet of salvation will sound, and China will come from its tea-fields and rice-harvests, and lift itself up into the light. India will come forth, the chariots of salvation jostling to pieces her Juggernauts. Freezing Greenland, and sweltering Abyssinia, will, side by side, press into the kingdom; and transformed Bornesian cannibal preach of the resurrection of the missionary he has slain. The glory of Calvary will tinge the tip of the Pyrenees; and Lebanon cedars shall clap their hands; and by one swing of the sickle Christ shall harvest nations for the skies.

I sing a world redeemed. In the rush of the winds that set the forest in motion, like giants wrestling on the hills, I see the tossing up of the triumphal branches that shall wave all along the line of our King as He comes to take empire. In the stormy diapason of the ocean's organ, and the more gentle strains that in the calm come sounding up from the crystal and jasper keys at the beach, I hear the prophecy: "The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters fill the sea."

The gospel morning will come like the natural morning. At first it seems only like another hue of the night. Then a pallor strikes through the sky, as though a company of ministering spirits, pale with tedious watching through the night, had turned in their flight upward to look back upon the earth. Then a faint glow of fire, as though on a barren beach a wrecked mariner was kindling a flickering flame. Then chariots and horses of fire racing up and down the heavens; then perfect day: "Who is she that cometh forth as the morning?"

Come in, black Hottentot and snow-white Caucasian, come in, mitered official and diseased beggar; let all the world come in. Room in Castle Jesus! Sound it through all lands; sound it by all tongues. Let sermons preach it, and bells chime it, and pencils sketch it, and processions celebrate it, and bells ring it: Room in Castle Jesus!

Again, Christ is the only refuge. If you were very sick, and there was only one medicine that would cure you, how anxious you would be to get that medicine. If you were in a storm at sea, and you found that the ship could not weather it, and there was only one harbor, how anxious you would be to get into that harbor. Oh, sin-sick soul, Christ is the only medicine; oh, storm-tossed soul, Christ is the only harbor. Need I tell a cultured audience like this that there is no other name given among men by which ye can be saved? That if you want the handcuffs knocked from your wrists, and the hopples from your feet, and the icy bands from your heart, there is just one Almighty arm in all the universe to do everything? There are other fortresses to which you might fly, and other ramparts behind which you might hide, but God will cut to pieces, with the hail of His vengeance, all these refuges of lies.

Some of you are foundering in terrible Euroclydon. Hark to the howling of the gale, and the splintering of the spars, and the starting of the timbers, and the breaking of the billow, clear across the hurricane deck. Down she goes! Into the life-boat! Quick! One boat! One shore! One oarsman! One salvation! You are polluted; there is but one well at which you can wash clean. You are enslaved; there is but one proclamation that can emancipate. You are blind; there is but one salve that can kindle your vision. You are dead; there is but one trumpet that can burst the grave.

I have seen men come near the refuge but not make entrance. They came up, and fronted the gate, and looked in, but passed on, and passed down; and they will curse their folly through all eternity, that they despised the only refuge. Oh! forget everything else I have said, if you will but remember that there is but one atonement, one sacrifice, one justification, one faith, one hope, one Jesus, one refuge. There is that old Christian. Many a scar on his face tells where trouble lacerated him. He has fought with wild beasts at Ephesus. He has had enough misfortune to shadow his countenance with perpetual despair. Yet he is full of hope. Has he found any new elixir? "No," he says; "I have found Jesus the refuge."

Christ is our only defense at the last. John Holland, in his concluding moment, swept his hand over the Bible, and said: "Come, let us gather a few flowers from this garden." As it was even-time he said to his wife: "Have you lighted the candles?" "No," she said; "we have not lighted the candles." "Then," said he, "it must be the brightness of the face of Jesus that I see."

Ask that dying Christian woman the source of her comfort. Why that supernatural glow on the curtains of the death-chamber; and the tossing out of one hand, as if to wave the triumph, and the reaching up of the other, as if to take a crown? Hosanna on the tongue. Glory beaming from the forehead. Heaven in the eyes. Spirit departing. Wings to bear it. Anthems to charm it. Open the gates to receive it. Hallelujah! Speak, dying Christian—what light do you see? What sounds do you hear? The thin lips part. The pale hand is lifted. She says: "Jesus the refuge!" Let all in the death-chamber stop weeping now. Celebrate the triumph. Take up a song. Clap your hands. Shout it. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

But this refuge will be of no worth to you unless you lay hold of it. The time will come when you will wish that you had done so. It will come soon. At an unexpected moment it will come. The castle bridge will be drawn up and the fortress closed. When you see this discomfiture, and look back, and look up at the storm gathering, and the billowy darkness of death has rolled upon the sheeted flash of the storm, you will discover the utter desolation of those who are outside of the refuge.

What you propose to do in this matter you had better do right away. A mistake this morning may never be corrected. Jesus, the Great Captain of salvation, puts forth his wounded hand to-day to cheer you on the race to heaven. If you despise it, the ghastliest vision that will haunt the eternal darkness of your soul will be the gaping, bleeding wounds of the dying Redeemer.

Jesus is to be crucified to-day. Think not of it as a day that is past. He comes before you to-day weary and worn. Here is the cross, and here is the victim. But there are no nails, and there are no thorns, and there are no hammers. Who will furnish these? A man out yonder says: "I will furnish with my sins the nails!" Now we have the cross, and the victim, and the nails. But we have no thorns. Who will furnish the thorns? A man in the audience says: "With my sins I will furnish the thorns!" Now we have the cross, the victim, the nails, and the thorns. But we have no hammers. Who will furnish the hammers? A voice in the audience says: "My hard heart shall be the hammer!" Everything is ready now. The crucifixion goes out! See Jesus dying! "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world."

"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."— I. Sam. xxxi: 8.

Some of you were at South Mountain, or Shiloh, 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 Antietam 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 up the watches, and the memorandum books, and the letters, and the daguerreotypes, and the hats, and the coats, applying them to their own uses. The dead make no resistance. So there are always camp followers going on and 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 morrow the stragglers came on to the field, and they lifted the latchet 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 Philistines, to show their bravery, leaped upon the trunk of his carcass, and jeered at the fallen slain, and whistled through the mouth of the helmet. Before night those cormorants had taken everything 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-day 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 pitying them or helping them, go to work remorselessly to take what little is left, thus stripping the 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 Rufus Choates in the law, or Drapers in chemistry, 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 whom we knew in boyhood will ever make any stir in the world.

But our young man has a fine position in a dry-goods store. The month is over. He gets his wages. He is not accustomed to have so much money belonging to himself. He is a little excited, and does not know exactly 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 city. Soon that young man begins to waver in the battle of temptation, and soon his soul goes down. In a few months, or few years, he has fallen. 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 garments 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 poor 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 stripping 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 synonymous 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 wardrobe? Sold to get rum. Where are the daughters? Working their fingers off in trying to keep the family together. Worse and worse, until everything 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 going up the front steps? The one is a constable, the other is the sheriff. Why do they go there? The unfortunate is morally dead, socially dead, financially dead. Why do they go there? I will tell you why the creditors, and the constables, and the sheriffs go there. They are, some on their own account, and some on account of the law, stripping the slain.

An ex-member of Congress, one of the most eloquent men that ever stood in the House of Representatives, said in his last moments: "This is the end. I am dying—dying 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 eloquence, 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, everything 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 acknowledges that he has done wrong. Now is the time for you to go to that man and say: "Thousands of people have been as far astray as you are, and got back." Now is the time for you to go to that man and tell him of the omnipotent grace of God, that is sufficient for any poor soul. Now is the time to go to tell him how swearing John Bunyan, through the grace of God, afterward came to the celestial 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 pounded with all the flails of sin and dragged through all the sewers of pollution at last have risen to positive dominion 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. Lend you a shilling? I would not lend you five 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 those 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 failure. He has come to his last hour. What does Satan do for such a man? Why, 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 remember all those opprobrious words and thoughts and actions? Don't remember them, eh? I'll make you remember 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 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 everything 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 you after awhile. 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: his physical courage is all gone.

He jumps at the fall of a teaspoon in a saucer. He 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 you feel like it, I wish you would read a verse or two out of Fannie's Sabbath-school hymn-book or New Testament." But Satan breaks in, and says: "You have always thought religion trash and a lie; don't give up at the last. Besides that, you can not, in the hour you have to live, get 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." "Mary, 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. I had a chance, and I forfeited it. I believed in a liar, and he has left me in the lurch. Mary, bring me Tom Paine, that book that I swore by and lived by, and pitch it in 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, stripping the slain.

Sin is a luxury now; it is exhilaration now; it is victory now. But after awhile 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-day—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. What have they done for your immortal soul? Almost insured its overthrow.

You are hastening on toward the consummation of all that is sad. To-day 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 the cemetery 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-field, and revive, and resuscitate, and resurrect your dead soul. Let Him take your hand and rub away the numbness; your head, and bathe off the aching; your heart, and stop its wild throb. He brought Lazarus to life; He brought Jairus' daughter to life; He brought the young man of Nain to life, and these are three proofs anyhow that he can bring you to life.

When the Philistines came down on the field, they stepped between the corpses, and they rolled over the dead, and they took away everything that was valuable; and so it was with the people that followed after our army at Chancellorsville, and at Pittsburg Landing, and at Stone River, and at Atlanta, stripping the slain; but the Northern and Southern women—God bless them!—came on the field with basins, and pads, and towels, and lint, and cordials, 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 Regulars," or "Captain —— in the Fifteenth Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers." And so to-night, across this great field of moral and spiritual 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.

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 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 eyes shut; and lo! there were four currents of wind that struck the battle-field, and when 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 fiber, and all the valley wriggled and writhed, and throbbed, and rocked, and rose up. There, a man coming to life. There, a hundred men. There, a thousand; and all falling into line, waiting for the shout of their commander. Ten thousand bleached skeletons springing 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-day. Let this north wall be one of the mountains, and the south wall be taken for another of the mountains, and let all the aisles and the pews be the valley between, for there are thousands here to-day 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 move in spiritual life; there, ten souls; there, a score of souls; there, a hundred souls. The nostrils 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-day! 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-day 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 lamentations of the lost. You must pray. You must repent. You must this day 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 to 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 American beach, and then lifts the great layer 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 anguish 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 have these matters arranged with my God. I want to be saved. God knows I want to be saved; but you stand there talking about this matter, and you 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 your death, if you will only believe it—only accept Him as your substitute.

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 money and without price." I have driven down to-day 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 your prayers help to 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 soul like the bandit Philistines to the field of Gilboa, stripping the slain.