550. Live Churches

Live Churches

Rev_2:8 : ’93And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna, write these things.’94

Smyrna was a great ancient city. It was bounded on three sides by mountains. It was the great center of the Levantine trade. In that brilliant and prosperous city, a Christian church was established. After a while it was rocked down by an earthquake. Then it was rebuilt. Then it was destroyed by a conflagration which swept down the entire city. Church again rebuilt. The fact was that that church had in it a living, active Christian people. Without that, all the splendor of architecture and all the beauty of surroundings would have been only the ornaments of death, the garlands on a coffin and the plumes of a hearse.

I propose to set forth what I consider to be the characteristics of a live church. And in the first place I remark that a live church is prompt in all its financial engagements. Every religious institution has monetary relations. The Bank of England ought to be no more faithful in the discharge of its obligations than ought the Church of Jesus Christ. If a church standing in any community fail to pay its debts, it becomes an injury to the place where it stands, instead of a blessing. All religious institutions ought to be an example to the world for faithfulness in the discharge of monetary obligations. There are a thousand things that prayer will not do. Prayer will not paint a church, prayer will not purchase a winter’92s coal, prayer will not pay an insurance, prayer will not support the institutions of religion. A prayer never goes heaven-high unless it goes pocket-deep. All our supplication in behalf of religious institutions amounts to nothing unless we are willing, so far as God has prospered us, to contribute for their support.

I had, in my Western church, a man in favorable worldly circumstances who used in prolonged prayers to pray for his pastor until the drawn-out petition almost became a nuisance to the prayer-meeting; for it was a prayer without ceasing, and a prayer in which he asked that the pastor might be blessed in his basket and in his store while he, the petitioner, never gave a cent toward the preacher’92s salary. All such supplication as that amounts to nothing. Members of a congregation meeting their obligations inside, then the Church of Christ is able to meet its obligations outside. I speak with no embarrassment because this Church of God, although it has come in other years, through darkness and storm, is standing today in a large place, and our temporal prosperities go right beside our spiritual prosperities. Thanks first to God, and secondly to the generosity and promptness of the people.

I might at this point say that there are many churches of Jesus Christ in our land that are utterly failing in this direction. There are a great many of the ministers of religion half-starved to death. ’93Thank you,’94 said a minister from the far West, when some friends from the East sent him a few extra dollars; ’93thank you, sir. Until that money came we had no meat in our house for three months, and our children this winter have worn their summer clothes.’94 There is no more ghastly suffering in the United States today than is to be found in some of the parsonages of this country.

You have with great munificence provided for all my wants, and so I can speak without any embarrassment on the subject while I denounce the niggardliness of many of the churches of Jesus Christ, keeping some men, who are very apostles for piety and consecration, in circumstances where they are always apologetic, and have not that courage which they would have could they stand in the presence of people whom they knew were faithful in the discharge of their financial duties to the Christian Church. Alas! for those men of whom the world is not worthy. Do you know the simple fact that in the United States today the salary of ministers averages less than six hundred dollars, and when you consider that some of the salaries are very large, you, as business men, will immediately see to what straits many of God’92s noblest servants are this day reduced. A live church will look after all its financial interests and be as prompt in the meeting of those obligations as any bank in all the cities.

A live church will also be punctual in its attendance. If in such a church the services begin at half-past ten o’92clock in the morning, the people will not come at a quarter of eleven. If in such a church the services begin at half-past seven o’92clock in the evening, the people will not come at a quarter of eight. In many churches there is great tardiness. The fact is some people are always late. They were born too late, and I suppose they will die too late. It is poor inspiration to a Christian minister when in preliminary exercises half the people seated in their pews are looking around to see the other half come in. It is very confusing to a minister of religion when, during the opening exercises, there is the rustling of dresses through the aisle, and the slamming of doors at the entrance.

There ought to be no opening, preliminary exercises. There is a great delusion in the churches of Jesus Christ on this subject. The very first word of the invocation is as important as anything that may come after. Scripture lesson, the voice of God to man, while a sermon may be only the voice of man to man. And happy is that church where all the worshipers are present at the beginning of the services. I know there is a difference in timepieces, but a live church goes by railroad time, and everybody in every community knows what that is. No man goes to take the limited express to Washington at five minutes past ten o’92clock if the train starts at ten. In many of the households of Christendom every Sabbath morning the family might well sing that old hymn:

Early my God, without delay,

I haste to seek thy face.

I go further and tell you that in every live church all the people take part in the exercises. A stranger can tell by the way the first hymn starts whether it is a live church. It is a sad thing when the music comes down in a cold drizzle from the organ loft and freezes on the heads of the silent people beneath. It is an awful thing for a hymn to start and then find itself lonely and unbefriended, wandering around about, after a while lost amid the arches. That is not melody to the Lord. In heaven they all sing, although some sing not half as well as others. The Methodist Church has sung its way around the earth. A man on fire with the Gospel, as Summerfield, as Bishop Asbury preached it, has taken his place in the far West, and on Sabbath morning has come out in front of his log cabin and sung:

A charge to keep I have,

A God to glorify.

And they heard it on the other side the forest, and they gathered around the doorstep, and, after a while, a church grew up and they had a great revival, and all the wilderness heard the voice of God. A church that can sing can do anything that ought to be done. In this great battle for God, let us take the Bible in one hand and the hymn book in the other.

I remark, again, that a live church will have a flourishing Sabbath-school. It is too late in the history of the Church to argue the benefit of Sabbath-schools. A Sabbath-school is not a supplement to the Church; it is its right arm. ’93Oh,’94 you say, ’93there are stupid churches that have Sabbath-schools.’94 Yes, and the Sabbath-schools are stupid, too. It is a dead mother holding a dead child. But where Sabbath after Sabbath a superintendent and teachers come, their faces aglow with enthusiasm, entering with great heart into the services; and then retiring at home, feeling that they have been on a mount of transfiguration, that church will be a live church. But while we have the children of the refined, and the educated and the cultured in our churches, I deplore the fact that there are such vast multitudes who get none of the benediction. What will become of the seventy thousand destitute children in New York? It is a tremendous question. What will become of the thousands of destitute children in Brooklyn, in Chicago, in Philadelphia? If we do not act upon them they will act upon us. If we do not Christianize them they will heathenize us. It is a question not more for every Christian than for every patriot, and every philanthropist, and every statesman. Oh, if we could gather them all together, what a scene of hunger and wretchedness and despair and death.

If you could see those little feet on the broad road to death, which through Christian charity ought to be pressing the narrow path of life; if you could hear those voices in blasphemy, which ought to be singing the praises of God; if you could see those hearts, which at that age ought not to be soiled with one impure thought, already become the sewers of iniquity; if you could see those little ones sacrificed on the altar of every iniquitous passion, and baptized with fire from the lava of the pit, your soul would recoil, crying: ’93Avaunt, thou dream of hell!’94

They are coming up. They will not always be boys and girls. They are coming up into the men and women of this country. That spark of iniquity that might be put out now with one drop of the water of life, will become a conflagration destroying every green thing that God ever planted in the soul. That which ought to be the temple of the Holy Ghost will become a scarred and blasted ruin, every light quenched and every altar in the dust. That petty thief who yesterday slipped into your store and took a piece of cloth from the counter, will become the highwayman of the forest or the burglar at midnight picking the lock of your money safe and blowing up your store to hide the villainy. A great army, they come on with staggering step and bloodshot eye. and drunken hoot to take the ballot-box and hurrah at the elections. The rough-handed ruffianism of the country, if we do not look out, will, after a while, have more power than the gentle hand of sobriety. Men bloated and with the signature of sin burned in from the top of their foreheads to the bottom of their chins, will look honest men out of countenance. Moral corpses that ought to be buried a hundred feet deep to keep them from poisoning the air, will rot in the face of the sun at noonday. Industry in her plain frock will be despised, and thousands of men unwilling to work will wander about with their hands on their hips, saying: ’93The world owes me a living,’94 when it owes them the penitentiary. Oh, what a power there is in iniquity when unrestrained and unblanched! It goes on concentrating and deepening and widening, rolling ahead with a very triumph of desolation, drowning like surges, scorching like flame, crushing like rocks.

What are you going to do with them’97this vast multitude of children marching up to take possession of this land? ’93Oh,’94 you say, ’93it is only a child, it is only a child.’94 Ah! that child has covered up in the ashes of its body a spark of immortality which will blaze on with untold splendor long after yonder sun has died of old age, and all the countless worlds that glitter at night shall have been swept off by the Almighty’92s breath as the small dust of a threshing floor. Yet you say it is only a child. Oh, that God would come down upon the Sabbath-schools and upon all the friends of children, and that instead of having hundreds in the Sabbath-schools we should have three thousand, four thousand, five thousand, six thousand every Sabbath afternoon shouting hosanna in the temple.

I remark again, that a live church must be a soul-saving church. The Gospel of Jesus Christ must be preached in it.

’93Oh,’94 say some, ’93the Gospel of Jesus Christ allows such small opportunity for man’92s intellect.’94 Does it? A man of that kind came to Rowland Hill, the eccentric preacher, and said: ’93Mr. Hill, I have left the ministry because I am not willing to hide my talents in a napkin.’94 Mr. Hill said: ’93I have known you a long while, my friend, and I think the smallest handkerchief you have will be sufficient.’94 There is no such field for a man’92s intellect and a man’92s heart as the Gospel ministry. Have you powers of analysis? Exhaust them here. Have you irresistible logic? Grapple with St. Paul’92s Epistle to the Romans. Have you powers of pathos? Exhibit the love of Jesus Christ. Have you great imagination? Dwell upon the Psalms of David, or John’92s apocalyptic vision. Are you disposed to bold thinking? Follow Ezekiel’92s wheel full of eyes, and hear through his chapters the rush of the wings of the seraphim. Oh, come and preach this Gospel; if not in pulpits, in the store, in the factory, in the shop, in the street, in the banking house, everywhere. Each of you called to preach this Gospel somewhere, a voice from the throne saying this day: ’93Woe unto you if you preach not this Gospel.’94

I am glad to know it has always been the ambition of my own church that it should be a soul-saving church. Pardon for all sin. Comfort for all trouble. Eternal life for all the dead. And we never threw out the net and brought it back empty’97at one communion season gathering in a hundred, at another a hundred and eighty, at another three hundred, at another four hundred, at other seasons five and six hundred; and the work only just begun, for some day, perhaps, after my lips are closed in death, some man will stand in my place and preach this glorious Gospel, and under one sermon three thousand souls will press into the kingdom.

I could tell you how God has made ours a soul-saving church; how at the foot of the pulpit one Sabbath night a gentleman passed on, his face bronzed with the sea. I saw he was just from shipboard. He said: ’93I am an Englishman.’94 He passed into the inquiry-room. The Holy Ghost wrought upon him mightily and brought him out into the light of the Gospel, and he addressed those who stood around him, and told how he had found the Lord. Then I said: ’93When did you arrive?’94 He replied: ’93At eleven this morning the steamer got in.’94 I asked: ’93How long are you going to remain in the city and in the country?’94 ’93To-morrow morning,’94 he said, ’93I go to Toronto and so on to Halifax, where I have business, and then will go back home to England.’94 I said: ’93I guess you came in here to have your soul saved.’94 He said: ’93I really believe that is the reason I came.’94

There is a sadness that comes over me this morning as I remember that fourteen years of my pastorate have gone by, and so many opportunities when I might have struck a stouter blow for Christ have gone by. I do not suppose there are a dozen persons hearing this fourteenth anniversary sermon who heard my opening sermon. Some of them have entered upon the saints’92 everlasting rest. I stood by many of their deathbeds, and got the testimony as to what God does for a dying Christian. Your fathers, your mothers, your companions, your sons, your daughters, where are they?

Asleep in Jesus, blessed sleep,

From which none ever wake to weep.

Of the nineteen persons who gathered together’97it was all that could be mustered at that time’97of the nineteen persons who were gathered together to give me a unanimous call, nearly all are gone. Some in other fields are serving Christ; in other cities, in other lands, are lifting up the standard, and I hope to meet them in that day when we shall celebrate the great harvest home.

I thank God that I ever came to Brooklyn. I thank God that I ever knew you. I declare to you this morning, in looking over the fourteen years of my ministry in this place, I cannot think of one complaint to make. I have had it too easy. I have never, as other ministers, been visited by committees asking me to do this differently and do that differently. I have never had any thorn in my side, but the heartiest cooperation all the way through. When sickness came to my house there has been no lack of watchers, and when death came I remember how tenderly you lifted the silent form and carried it out to slumber in God’92s acre. I thank you for all your kindness during these fourteen years, for the way in which you have borne with all my infirmities, for the manner in which you have upheld me with your prayers.

Now, we close the chapter and open another. I wish that this anniversary day might be celebrated by the coming of a great multitude to God.

The conductor of a rail-train was telling me how he stood on the side of the track by his crowded train; the train had been switched off on a side track to let the express go by unhindered. He said as he stood there in the night by his crowded train on the side track, he heard the express train thundering on in the distance. In a few moments he saw the flash of the head-light of the locomotive, and as the train came near-by he saw that the switch had not been attended to. The switchman had failed in his duty, and that train in a minute more would rush on the side track and crush his train and massacre the passengers if something were not instantly done. He shouted: ’93Set up that switch!’94 and instantly the switch went to its place, and the train thundered on. The conductor told me that the excitement was so great he was too weak to put his foot upon the step of his car. Such an awful escape!

O men and women immortal, speeding on toward a great eternity swift as the years, swift as the months, swift as the days, swift as the hours, swift as the minutes, swift as the seconds’97on what track are you? Has sin switched you off this side, or has Satan switched you off the other side? Are you sure you are on the right track? Toward light or toward darkness? Toward victory or toward defeat? Are you on the right track? ’93Now is the day of salvation!’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage