Old Wells Dug Out

This book takes its title not more from the first sermon than from the fact that it is an attempt to re-open the old fountains of the Gospel, which have of late years been partially filled up. For that reason we call the book “Old Wells Dug Out.”

Some of these discourses were preached in the Brooklyn Tabernacle, and others in the Academy of Music, while our new church was being built.

As word comes to us from all directions that the previous volumes have been the means of comfort and salvation to very many on both sides the Atlantic, we send this book out, hoping it may do a similar work. These sermons, like their predecessors, were taken down by phonographerSj and are left as they were uttered in extemporaneous delivery, without any material changes, because I have not had time to reconstruct them.

They are part of my life. With me the lecturing platform and the literary column are episodes; but the preaching of the Gospel of the Son of God is my chief employment and my indescribable delight. The Christian printing-press is only the pulpit on cylinders. May this attempt to preach through the printed page harvest many sheaves for the Lord’s garner!

T. De Witt Talmagk

I]Sr Oriental lands a well of water is a fortune. If a king dug one, he became as famous as though he had built a pyramid or conquered a province. Great battles were fought for the conquest or defense of wells of water; castles and towers were erected to secure permanent possession of them. The traveler to-day finds the well of Jacob dug one hundred feet through a solid rock of limestone. These ancient wells of water were surrounded by walls of rock. This wall of rock was covered up with a great slab. In the centre of the slab there was a hole through which the leathern bottle or earthen jar was let down. This opening was covered by a stone. When Jacob, a young man of seventy years, was courting Rachel, he won her favor, the Bible says, by removing the stone from the opening of the well. He liked her because she was industrious enough to come down and water the camels. She liked him because he was clever enough to lay hold and give a lift to

one who needed it.

16 OLD WULL^ DUG GUT.

It was considered one of the greatest calamities that could happen a nation when these wells of water were stopped. Isaac, you see in the text, found out that the wells of water, that had been dug out by his father Abraham at great expense and care, had been filled up by the spiteful Philistines. Immediately Isaac orders them all opened again. I see the spades plunging, and the earth tossing, and the water starting, until the old wells are entirely restored; and the cattle come down to the trough and thrust their nostrils in the water, their bodies quaking at every swallow, until they lift up their heads and look around and take a long breath, the water from the sides of their mouths dripping in sparkles down into the trough. I never tasted such water in my life as in my boyhood I drank out of the moss-covered bucket that swung up on the chains of the old well-sweep; and I think when Isaac leaned over the curb of these restored wells, he felt within himself that it was a beverage worthy of God’s brewing. He was very careful to call all the wells by the same names which his father had called them by; and if this well was called “The Well in the Valley,” or “The Well by the Kock,” or “The Well of Bubbles,” Isaac baptized it with the same nomenclature.

You have noticed, my Christian friends, that many of the old Gospel wells that our fathers dug have been filled up by the modern Philistines. They have thrown in their skepticisms and their philosophies, until the well is almost filled up, and it is nigh impossible to get one drop of the clear water. These men tell us that you ought to put the Bible on the same shelf with the Koran and the old Persian manuscripts, and to read it with the same spirit; and there is not a day but somebody comes along and drops a brick or a stone or a carcass in this old Gospel well. We are told that all the world wants is development, forgetful of the fact that without the Gospel the world always develops downward, and that if you should take the religion of Christ out of this world, in one hundred years it would develop into the ‘’Five Points” of the universe. Yet there are a great many men and there are a great many rostrums whose whole work it is to fill up these Christian wells.

You will not think it strange, then, if the Isaac who speaks to you this morning tries to dig open some of the old wells made by Abraham, his father, nor will you be surprised if he calls them by the same old names.

Bring your shovel and pickaxe and crow-bar, and the first well we will open is the glorious well of the Atonement It is nearly filled up with the chips and debris of old philosophies that were worn out in the time of Confucius and Zeno, but which smart men in our day unwrap from their mummy-bandages, and try to make us believe are original with themselves. I plunge the shovel to the very bottom of the well, and I find the clear water starting. Glorious well of the Atonement! Perhaps there are people here who do not know what “atonement” means, it is so long since you have heard the definition. The word itself, if you give it a peculiar pronunciation, will show you the meaning — at-one-ment. Man is a sinner, and deserves to die. Jesus comes in and bears his punishments and weeps his griefs. I was lost once, but now I am found. I deserved to die, but Jesus took the lances into his own heart until his face grew pale and his chin dropped on his chest, and he had strength only to say, “It is finished!” The boat swung round into the trough of the sea, and would have been swamped, but Jesus took hold of the oar. I was set in the battle, and must have been cut to pieces had not, at night-fall, he who rideth on the white horse come into the fray. That which must have been the Waterloo of my defeat now becomes the Waterloo of my triumph, because Blucher has come up to save. Expiation! expiation! The law tried me for high treason against God, and found me guilty. The angels of God were the jurors impaneled in the case, and they found me guilty. I was asked what I had to say why sentence of eternal death should not be pronounced upon me, and I had nothing to say. I stood on the scaffold of God’s justice; the black cap of eternal death was about to be drawn over my eyes, when from the hill of Calvary One came. He dashed through the ranks of earth and heaven and hell. He rode swiftly. His garments were dyed with blood, his face was bleeding, his feet were dabbled with gore, and he cried out, “Save that man from going down to the pit. I am the ransom.” And he threw back the coat from his heart, and that heart burst into a crimson fountain, and he dropped dead at my feet; and I felt of his hands, and they were stiff; and I felt of his feet, and they were cold; and I felt of his heart, and it was pulseless; and I cried, “Dead!” And angels with excited wings flew upward, amidst the the thrones, crying, “Dead!” and spirits lost in black brood wheeled down amidst the caverns, crying, “Dead!” Expiation! expiation!

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