557. Evangelism Vindicated

Evangelism Vindicated

Rev_10:10-11 : ’93And I took the little book out of the angel’92s hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey; and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter. And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.’94

Domitian, the Roman Emperor, had in his realm a troublesome evangelist who would keep preaching, and so he exiled him to a barren island, as the English Government used to send prisoners to Australia, as our United States Government exiled prisoners to Dry Tortugas. The island I speak of is now called Patmos, and is so barren and unproductive that its inhabitants live by fishing. But one day the evangelist of whom I speak, sitting at the mouth of a cavern on the hillside, and perhaps half asleep under the drone of the sea, has a supernatural dream; and before him pass, as in panorama, time and eternity. Among the strange things that he saw was an angel with a little book in his hand; and in his dream the evangelist asked for this little book, and the angel gave it to him and told him to eat it up. As in a dream things are sometimes incongruous, the evangelist took the little book and ate it up. The angel told him beforehand that it would be very sweet in the mouth, but afterward he would be troubled with indigestion. True enough, the evangelist devours the book, and it becomes to him a sweetness during the mastication, but afterward a nauseating bitterness. Who the angel was and what the book was, no one can tell. The commentators do not agree, and I shall take no re-sponsibility of interpretation, but will tell you that it suggests to me the little book of creeds, which skeptics take and chew up and find a very luscious morsel to their witticism, but after a while it is to them a great distress. The angel of the Church hands out this little book of evangelism, and the antagonists of the Christian Church take it and eat it up, and it makes them smile at first, but afterward it is to them a dire dyspepsia.

All intelligent people have creeds’97that is, favorite theories which they have adopted. Political creeds’97that is, theories about tariff, about finance, about civil service, about government. Social creeds’97that is, theories about manners and customs and good neighborhood. ‘c6sthetic creeds’97that is, theories about tapestry, about bric-a-brac, about styles of ornamentation. Religious creeds’97that is, theories about the Deity, about the soul, about the great future. The only being who has no creed about anything is the idiot. This scoffing against creeds is always a sign of profound ignorance on the part of the scoffer; for he has himself a hundred creeds in regard to other things. In our time the beliefs of evangelistic churches are under a fusilade of caricature and misrepresentation. Men set up what they call orthodox faith, and then they rake it with the musketry of their denunciation. They falsify what the Christian churches believe. They take evangelical doctrines and set them in a harsh and repulsive way, and put them out of the association with other truths. They are like a mad anatomist who, desiring to tell what a man is, dissects a human body and hangs up in one place the heart, and in another place the two lungs, and in another place an ankle bone, and says that is a man. They are only fragments of a man wrenched out of their God-appointed places.

Evangelical religion is a healthy, symmetrical, well-jointed, roseate, bounding life; and the scalpel and dissecting knife of the infidel or the atheist cannot tell you what it is. Evangelical religion is as different from what it is represented to be by these enemies as the scarecrow, which a farmer puts in the cornfield to keep off the ravens, is different from the farmer himself. For instance, these enemies of evangelism say that the Presbyterian Church believes that God is a savage sovereign, and that he made some men just to damn them, and that there are infants in hell a span long. These old slanders come down from generation to generation. The Presbyterian Church believes no such thing The Presbyterian Church believes that God is a loving and just Sovereign, and that we are free agents. ’93No, no! that cannot be,’94 say these men who have chewed up the creed and have the consequent embittered stomachs; ’93that is impossible. If God is a Sovereign, we cannot be free agents.’94 Why, my friends, we admit this in every other direction. I, De Witt Talmage, am a free citizen of Brooklyn. I go when I please and I come when I please, but I have at least four sovereigns. The Church court of our denomination; that is my ecclesiastical sovereign. The Mayor of this city; he is my municipal sovereign. The Governor of New York; he is my State sovereign. The President of the United States; he is my national sovereign. Four sovereigns have I, and yet in every faculty of body, mind and soul I am a free man. So, you see, it is possible that the two doctrines go side by side, and there is a common-sense way of presenting it, and there is a way that is repulsive. If you accept the two doctrines in a worldly direction, why not in a religious direction? If I choose to-morrow morning to walk into the Mercantile Library and improve my mind; or to go through the conservatory of my friend at Jamaica, who has flowers from all lands growing under the arches of glass, and who has an aquarium all asquirm with trout and goldfish, and there are trees bearing oranges and bananas’97if I want to go there, I could. I am free to go. If I want to go over to Hoboken and leap into a furnace of an oil factory, if I want to jump from the platform of the Philadelphia express train, if I want to leap from the Brooklyn Bridge, I may. But suppose I should go to-morrow and leap into the furnace at Hoboken, who would be to blame? That is all there is about sovereignty and free agency. God rules and reigns, and he has conservatories and he has blast furnaces. If you want to walk in the gardens, walk there. If you want to leap into the furnaces, you may.

Suppose, now, a man had a charmed key with which he could open all the jails, and he should open Raymond Street Jail and the New York Tombs and all the prisons on the continent. In three weeks what kind of a country would this be?’97all the inmates turned out of those prisons and penitentiaries. Suppose all the reprobates, the bad spirits, the outrageous spirits, should be turned into the New Jerusalem. Why, the next morning the gates of pearl would be found off hinge, the linchpin would be gone out of the chariot wheels, the ’93house of many mansions’94 would be burglarized. Assault and battery, arson, libertinism and assassination would reside in the capital of the skies. Angels of God would be insulted on the streets. Heaven would be a dead failure if there were no great lockup. Your common sense demands two destinies! And then, as to the Presbyterian Church believing there are infants in perdition, if you bring me a Presbyterian of good morals and sound mind who will say that he believes there ever was a baby in the lost world, or ever will be, I will make him a deed to my house, and he can take possession tomorrow.

So the Episcopalian Church is misrepresented by the enemies of evangelism. They say that church substitutes forms and ceremonies for heart religion, and it is all a matter of liturgy and genuflexion. False again. All Episcopalians will tell you that the forms and creed of their church are worse than nothing unless the heart go with them.

So, also, the Baptist Church has been misrepresented. The enemies of evangelism say the Baptist Church believes that unless a man is immersed he will never get into heaven. False again. All the Baptist, close communion and open communion, believe that if a man accept the Lord Jesus Christ he will be saved, whether he be baptized by one drop of water on the forehead, or be plunged into the Ohio or Susque-hanna; although immersion is the only gate by which one enters their earthly communion.

The enemies of evangelism also misrepresent the Methodist Church. They say the Methodist Church believes that a man can convert himself, and that conversion in that church is a temporary emotion, and that all a man has to do is to kneel down at the altar and feel bad and then the minister pats him on the back and says, ’93It is all right,’94 and that is all there is of it. False again. The Methodist Church believes that the Holy Ghost alone can convert a heart, and in that church conversion is an earthquake of conviction and a sunburst of pardon. And as to mere ’93temporary emotion,’94 I wish we all had more of the ’93temporary emotion’94 which lasted Bishop Janes and Matthew Simpson for a half-century, keeping them on fire for God until their holy enthusiasm consumed their bodies.

So all the evangelical denominations are misrepresented. And then these enemies of evangelism go on and hold up the great doctrines of the Christian Churches as absurd, dry and inexplicable technicalities. ’93There is your doctrine of the Trinity,’94 they say. ’93Absurd beyond all bounds. The idea that there is a God in three persons! Impossible. If it is one God he cannot be three; and if there are three, there cannot be one.’94 At the same time all of us’97they with us’97acknowledge trinities all around us. Trinity in our own make-up’97body, mind, soul; body with which we move, mind with which we think, soul with which we love. Three, yet one man. Trinity in the air’97light, heat, moisture’97yet one atmosphere. Trinity in the court-room’97three judges on the bench, but one court. Trinities all around about us, in earthly government and in nature. Of course, all the illustrations are defective for the reason that the natural cannot fully illustrate the spiritual. But suppose an ignorant man should come up to a chemist and say: ’93I deny what you say about the water and about the air; they are not made of different parts. The air is one; I breathe it every day. The water is one; I drink it every day. You can’92t deceive me about the elements that go to make up the air and the water.’94 The chemist would say, ’93You come up into my laboratory and I will demonstrate this whole thing to you.’94 The ignorant man goes into the chemist’92s laboratory, and sees for himself. He learns that the water is one and the air is one, but they are made up of different parts. So here is a man who says, ’93I cannot understand the doctrine of the Trinity.’94 God says, ’93You come up here into the laboratory after your death, and you will see’97you will see it explained, you will see it demonstrated.’94 The ignorant man cannot understand the chemistry of the water and the air until he goes into the laboratory, and we will never understand the Trinity until we go into heaven. The ignorance of the man who cannot understand the chemistry of the air and water does not change the fact in regard to the composition of air and water. Because we cannot understand the Trinity, does that change the fact?

’93And there is your absurd doctrine about justification by faith,’94 say these antagonists who have chewed up the little book of evangelism, and have the consequent embittered stomach’97’94justification by faith; you can’92t explain it.’94 I can explain it. It is simply this: when a man takes the Lord Jesus Christ as his Saviour from sin, God lets the offender off. Just as you have a difference with some one, he has injured you, he apologizes or he makes reparation, you say, ’93Now, that’92s all right, that’92s all right.’94 Justification by faith is this: a man takes Jesus Christ as his Saviour, and God says to the man, ’93Now, it was all wrong before, but it is all right now; it is all right.’94 That was what made Martin Luther what he was. Justification by faith: it is going to conquer all nations.

’93There is your absurd doctrine about regeneration,’94 these antagonists of evangelism say. What is regeneration? Why, regeneration is reconstruction. Anybody can understand that. Have you not seen people who are all made over again by some wonderful influence? In other words, they are now just as different as possible from what they used to be. The old man-of-war, Constellation, lay down here at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Famine came to Ireland. The old Constellation was fitted up, and though it had been carrying gunpowder and bullets, it took bread to Ireland. You remember the enthusiasm as the old Constellation went out of our harbor, and with what joy it was greeted by the famishing nation on the other side the sea. That is regeneration. A man once loaded up with sin and death, now loaded up with life. Refitted. Your observation has been very small indeed if you have not seen changes in character as radical as that.

About four weeks ago a man came into my church one night, and he was intoxicated, and at an utterance of the pulpit he said in a subdued tone, ’93That’92s a lie.’94 An officer of the church tapped him on the shoulder and said, ’93You must be silent, or you must go out.’94 The next night that stranger came, and he was converted to God. He was in the liquor business. He resigned the business. The next day he sent back the samples that had just been sent him. He began to love that which he hated. A large salary was offered him if he would return to his former business. He declined it. He would rather suffer with Jesus Christ than be prospered in the world. He wrote home a letter to his Christian mother. The Christian mother wrote back congratulating him, and said: ’93If in the change of your business you have lack of means, come home; you are always welcome home.’94 He told of his conversion to a dissolute companion. The dissolute companion said: ’93Well, if you have become a Christian, you had better go over and talk to that dying girl. She is dying with quick consumption in that house.’94 The new convert went there. All the surroundings were dissolute. He told the dying girl that Jesus Christ would save her. ’93Oh,’94 she said, ’93that cannot be, that cannot be! What makes you think so?’94 ’93I have it here in a book in my pocket,’94 he replied. He pulled out a New Testament. She said: ’93Show it to me; if I can be saved, show it to me in that book.’94 He said: ’93I have neglected this book as you have neglected it for many years, and I do not know where to find it, but I know it is somewhere between the lids.’94 Then he began to turn over the leaves, and, strange to say, his eye struck upon this beautiful passage: ’93Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more.’94 She said: ’93It isn’92t possible that is there!’94 ’93Yes,’94 he said, ’93that is there.’94 He held it up before her dying eyes, and she said: ’93Oh, yes, I see it for myself; I accept the promise, ’91Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more.’92’93 In a few hours her spirit sped away to the Lord that gave it, and the new convert preached the funeral sermon. The man who a few days before had been a blasphemer and a drunkard and a hater of all that was good, he preached the sermon. That is regeneration, that is regeneration! If there are any dry husks of technicality in that, where are they? Changed himself, by the power of God, changing another. All made over again by the power of the grace of God.

Several years ago a ship-captain came into my church and sat under the gallery. He came in with a contempt for the Church of God and with an especial dislike for Talmage. When an opportunity was given he arose for prayer, and as he was more than six feet high, when he arose for prayer no one doubted that he arose! That hour he became a Christian. He went out and told the ship-owners and the ship-commanders what a great change had been wrought in him, and scores and scores have been brought to God through his instrumentality. A little while after his conversion he was on ship off Cape Hatteras in a thick and prolonged fog, and they were at their wits’92 ends and knew not what to do; the ship drifting about hither and thither, and they lost their bearings; and the converted sea captain went to his room and asked God for the salvation of the ship, and God revealed it to him while he was on his knees that at a certain hour, only a little way off, the fog would lift; and the converted sea-captain came out on the deck and told how God heard his prayers. He said: ’93It is all right, boys; very soon now the fog will lift,’94 mentioning the hour. A man who stood there laughed aloud in derision at the idea that God would answer prayer; but at just the hour when God had assured the captain the fog would lift there came a flash of lightning through the fog, and the man who had jeered and laughed was stunned and fell to the deck. The fog lifted. Yonder was Cape Hatteras lighthouse. The ship was put on the right course, and sailed on to the harbor of safety.

Now these many years past, when in seaport the captain spends most of his time in evangelical work. He kneels down by one who has been helpless in her bed for many months, and the next day she walks forth in the streets, well. He kneels beside one who has been long decrepit, and he resigns the crutches. He kneels beside one who had not seen enough to be able to read for ten years, and she reads the Bible that day. Consumptions go away; and those who had diseases that were appalling to behold, come up to rapid convalescence and to complete health. I am not telling you anything second-handed. I have had the story from the lips of the patients, those who were brought to health of body while at the same time brought to God. No second-hand story this. I have heard the testimony from men and women who have been cured. You may call it faith-cure, or you may call it the power of God coming down in answer to prayer; I do not care what you call it, it is a fact. The scoffing sea-captain, his heart full of hatred for Christianity, now becomes a follower of the meek and lowly Jesus, giving all the time to evangelical labors, or all the time he can spare from other occupations. That is regeneration, that is regeneration. Man all made over again.

’93There is your absurd doctrine of vicarious sacri-fice,’94 say these men who have chewed up the little book of creeds and have the consequent embittered stomach. ’93Vicarious sacrifice! Let every man suffer for himself. Why do I want Christ to suffer for me? I’92ll suffer for myself and carry my own burdens.’94 They scoff at the idea of vicarious sacrifice, while they admire it everywhere else except in Christ People see its beauty when a mother suffers for her child. People see its beauty when a patriot suffers for his country. People see its beauty when a man denies himself for a friend. They can see the beauty of vicarious sacrifice in every one but Christ.

A young lady in one of the literary institutions was a teacher. She was very reticent and retired in her habits, and she formed no companionships in the new position she occupied, and her dress was very plain’97sometimes it was very shabby. After a while she was discharged from the place for that reason, but no reason was given. In answer to the letter discharging her from the position, she said: ’93Well, if I have failed to please, I suppose it is my own fault.’94 She went here and there for employment, and found none, and in desperation and in dementia she ended her life by suicide. Investigation was made, and it was found that out of her small means she had supported her father, eighty years of age, and was paying the way for her brother in Yale College on his way to the ministry. It was found she had no blanket on the bed that winter, and she had no fire on the very coldest day of all the season. People found it out, and there was a large gathering at the funeral, the largest ever at any funeral in that place, and the very people who had scoffed came and looked upon the pale face of the martyr, and all honor was done her; but it was too late. Vicarious sacrifice. All are thrilled with such instances as that. But many are not moved by the fact that Christ paid his poverty for our riches, his self-abnegation for our enthronement, and knelt on the sharp edges of humiliation that we might climb over his lacerated shoulder into peace and heaven.

Be it ours to admire and adore these doctrines at which others jeer. Oh, the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable is his wisdom, and his ways are past rinding out! Oh, the height, the depth, the length, the breadth, the infinity, the immensity, the eternity of that love! Let our earnest prayers go out in behalf of all those who scoff at these doctrines of grace. When the London plague was raging in the last century there was a hotel near the chief burial-place that excited much comment. England was in fright and bereavement. The dead-carts went through the streets day and night, and the cry, ’93Bring out your dead!’94 was answered by the bringing out of the forms of the loved ones, and they were put twenty or thirty in a cart, and the wagons went on to the cemetery; and these dead were not buried in graves, but in great trenches, in great pits’97in one pit eleven hundred and fourteen burials! The carts would come up with their great burden of twenty or thirty to the mouth of the pit, and the front of the cart was lifted and the dead shot into the pit. All the churches in London were open for prayer day and night, and England was in a great anguish. At that very time, it appears, at a wayside inn near the chief burial-place, there was a group of hardened men, who sat day after day and night after night, blaspheming God and imitating the grief-struck who went by to the burial-place. These men sat there day after day and night after night, and they scoffed at men and they scoffed at women and they scoffed at God. But after a while one of them was struck with the plague, and in two weeks all of the group were down in the trench from the margin of which they had uttered their ribaldry. My friends, a greater plague is abroad in the world. Millions have died of it. Millions are smitten with it now. Plague of sin, plague of sorrow, plague of wretchedness, plague of woe. And consecrated women and men from all Christendom are going out trying to stay the plague and alleviate the anguish, and there is a group of men in this country base enough to sit and deride the work. They scoff at the Bible and they scoff at evangelism and they scoff at Jesus Christ and they scoff at God. If these words shall reach them, either while they are sitting here to-day, or through the printing-press, let me tell them to remember the fate of that group in the wayside inn while the plague spread its two black wings over the doomed city of London. Oh, instead of being scoffers, let us be disciples! ’93Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage