From Manger to Throne

In my American home, on the Atlantic, on the
Mediterranean, on camel’s back, on mule’s back,
on horseback, under chandelier, by dim candle
in tent, on Lake Galilee, in
convent, at Bethel where
Jacob’s pillow was stuffed with
dreams and the angels of the
ladder landed, at the brook
Elah, from which little David
picked up the ammunition of
five smooth stones, four more
than were needed for crushing
like an egg-shell the skull of
Goliath, in the valley of
Ajalon, over which, at Joshua’s
command, halted,
on the plain of Esdraelon, the
battle field of ages, its long red
flowers suggestive of the blood
dashed to the bits of the
horses’ bridles, amid the shattered masonr’ of Jericho, in
Jerusalem that overshadows
all other cities in reminiscence,
at Cana where plain water
became festal beverage, on Calvary whose
aslant and ruptured rocks still show the
effects of the earthquake at the awful
hemorrhage of the five wounds that pur-
chased the world’s rescue, and with my
hand mittened from the storm, or wet
from the Jordan, or bared to the sun, or
gliding over smooth table, this book has
been written.
On the steamer “City of Paris,” mid-ocean, a
stranger knowing I was on the way to the Holy Land in order better to write a
Life of Christ, was overheard to say: “I hope Dr. Talmage will write a Life of
Christ which a business man, getting home at eight o’clock at night and starting
from home next morning at seven o’clock may profitably take up, and in the few
minutes before he starts and after he returns, read in snatches and understand.”

So it shall be. Not a word of Latin or Greek in all the book, unless it be translated. We shall tell the story in Anglo-Saxon, the language in which John Bunj-an dreamed and William Shakespeare dramatized, and lyongfellow romanced and John Milton sang, and George Whitfield thundered. What is the use of dragging the dead languages into the service of such a book? Sailing on the Atlantic ocean I asked where did all this water come from, and answered it by’ saying, “The Hudson, the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Seine, the Tagus, the Guadalquiver.” And so I thought all the rivers of language, freighted with the thought of all lands and all ages, have emptied into the ocean of Anglo-Saxonism. Blessed to me was the hour when ray mother taught me how to frame the first sentence out of it, and my last word on earth shall be a draught upon its inexhaustible treasury-.

I wrote this book for the masses. Who are the masses? The most of folks. They are the nine hundred and ninety-nine out of the thousand. I hope the title of the book will be suggestive of its contents. There are so many Lives of Christ that I wished to get a name not yet employed. On the rail train from St. Louis to New York, and while arriving at Alliance, Ohio, it flashed upon me — “From Manger to Throne.”

WIDE THANKS.

The saddle-bags that hung over my horse all the waj’- from Jerusalem to Damascus were filled with volumes to which I am obligated. In making this book I have, as far as time and ability would allow, ransacked the world of literature, sacred and secular, and I hereby acknowledge my indebtedness to all who have helped fill up the reservoirs of information: Among others, to Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities, Milman’s History of Christianity, Jahn’s Hebrew Commonwealth, Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, Dollinger’s First Age of the Church, Kitto’s Encyclopedia, Trench’s Miracles and Parables, Lynch’s Exploration of the Dead Sea, Guizot’s Spirit of Christianity, Lightfoot’s Revision of the New Testament, Strauss ’s New Life of Christ, Robinson’s Biblical Researches, Atwater’s Sacred Tabernacle, Thomson’s Land and Book, Geikie’s Life of Christ, Hanna’s Life of Christ, Farrar’s Life of Christ, Willitt’s Miracles, Schenkel’s Character of Jesus, Sweeney’s Under Ten Flags, Young’s Christ of History De Pressense’s Jesus Christ, Tischendorf ’ s Synopsis of the Gospels, Stanley’s Sinai and Palestine, Field’s Among the Holy Hills, Herey’s Genealogies of Our Lord, Plumptre’s Christ and Christendom, Prime’s Tent Life in Palestine, Bishop Wordsworth’s Four Gospels, Clarke’s Rambles Among Ruins, Stuart’s Capernaum, Taylor’s Life of Christ, Macduff’s Brighter than the Sun, Eddy’s Immanuel, and personal friends.

The book is now launched. May the prayers of all good people waft it on a happy voyage, ,.

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