Things Not Burned Up

“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.” — Isaiah xl,, 1.

THESE words came to Isaiah after Jerusalem had been wasted with fire and famine and war; and I wish to-night, from these leaves of the tree of life, to compound a salve for a very sore burn.

Standing to-day in this brilliant Academy, by its trustees so kindly afforded us, our first feeling is one of gratitude to God and to them for so grand a refuge; but notwithstanding it is so much costlier a place than we are used to, we feel home-sick. The wanderer in a strange land, amidst palaces and temples and cathedrals, sits down and says to himself, “I would give the whole world for one hour under the thatched roof of my humble home.” “Home, sweet home; there is no place like home.” It was nothing but home-sickness that made the inspired writer say: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

The Brooklyn Tabernacle is gone! The bell that hung in its tower last Sabbath morning rang its own funeral knell. On that day we gathered from our homes with our ftimilies, to hear what Christ had of comfort and inspiration for his people. “We expected to meet cheerful smiles and warm hand -shakings, and the triumphant song, and the large brotherhood that characterized that blessed place; but coming to the doors we found nothing but an excited populace and a blazing church. People who had given until they deeply felt it saw all the results of their benevolence going down into ashes, and on that cold morning the tears froze on the cheeks of God’s people as they saw they were being burned out. Brooklyn Tabernacle is gone! The platform -on which it was my joy to stand with messages of salvation; the pews in which you listened and prayed and wept and rejoiced; the altars around which you and your children were consecrated in baptism; the communion-table where we celebrated the Saviour’s love — all that scene which to us was the shining gate of heaven is gone. I will not hide the loss. If I ever forget the glorious Sabbaths we spent there, and the sweet reunions, and the mighty demonstrations of God’s Spirit among the people, may my right hand forget her cunning, and my soul be left desolate! But we have not come here to sound a dirge. “All things work together for good to them that love God.” Sorrows are loathsome things, but they are necessary. They are leeches that suck out the hot inflammation from the soul. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in llie morning.” I could cover up all this place with promises of hope and peace and comfort and deliverance. H.illelnjah 1 for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!

I am here to-night not to preach a formal sermon, but to tell you 0^ some ihiugs thai last Sahhath icere not burned lip.

First, the spirit of Christian brotherhood was not consumed. You never greeted the members of our church “with such cordiahtj as this week on the street, in cars, and on the ferries. You stood on no cold formalities. The people who, during the last two years sat on the other side of the aisle, whose faces were familiar to you, but to whom you had never spoken, you greeted them this week with smiles and tears as you said, “Well, the old place is gone.” You did not want to seem to cry, and so you swept the sleeve near the corner of the eye, and pretended it was the sharp wind that made your eyes weak. Ah! there was nothing the matter with your eyes; it was your soul bubbling over. I tell you that it is impossible to sit for two or three years around the same church fireside and not have sympathies in common. Somehow you feel that you would like those people on the other side of the aisle, about whom you know but little, prospered and pardoned and blessed and saved. You feel as if you are in the same boat, and you want to glide up the same harbor, and want to disembark at the same wharf If you put gold and iron and lead and zinc in sufficient heat, they will melt into a conglomerate mass; and I really feel that last Sabbath’s fire has fused us all, grosser and finer natures, into one. It seems as if we all had our hands on a wire connected with an electric battery; and when this church sorrow started, it thrilled through the whole circle, and we all felt the shock. The oldest man and the youngest child could join hands in this misfortune. Grandfather said, “I expected from those altars to be buried;” and one of the children last Sabbath cried, “I don’t want the Tabernacle to burn, I have been there so many times.” You may remember that over the organ we had the words, “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.” That was our creed. Well, that is all burned down; but the sentiment is engraved with such durability in our souls that no earthly fire can scorch it, and the flames of the Judgment-day will have no power to burn it.

Another thing that did not burn up is the cross of Christ. That is used to the fire. On the dark day when Jesus died, the lightning struck it from above, and the flames of hell dashed up against it from beneath. That tearful, painful, tender, blessed cross still stands. On it we hang all our hopes; beneath it we put down all our sins; in the light of it we expect to make the rest of our pilgrimage. Within sight of such a sacrifice, who can feel he has it hard? In the sight of such a symbol, who can be discouraged, however great the darkness that may come down upon him? Jesus lives! The loving, patient, sympathizing, mighty Jesus! It shall not be told on earth, or in hell, or in heaven, that three Hebrew children had the Son of God beside them in the fire, and that a whole church was forsaken by the Lord, when they went through a furnace one hundred and fifty feet front by one hundred deep. O Lord Jesus! shall we take out of thy hand the flowers and the fruits, and the brightness and the joys, and then turn away because thou dost give us one cup of bitterness to drink? Oh no, Jesus !. we will drink it dry. But how it is changed I Blessed Jesus, what hast thou put into the cup to sweeten it? Why, it has become the wine of heaven, and our souls grow strong. I come to-night, and place both of my feet deep down into the blackened ashes of our consumed church, and I cry out with an exhilaration

/ that I never felt since the day of my soul’s emancipation, “Victory! victory! through our Lord Jesus Christ I”

“Your harps, ye trembling saints,
Down from the willows take;
Loud to the praise of love divine
Bid every string awake.”

I remark, again, that the catholicity of the Christian churches has not been burned up. We are in the Academy to-day not because we have no other place to go. Last Sabbath morning at nine o’clock we had but one church; now we have twenty-six, all at our disposal. Their pastors and their trustees say, “You may take our main audience-rooms, you may take our lecture-rooms, you may take our ohurch parlors, you may baptize in our baptisteries, and sit on our anxious-seats.” Oh! if there be any larger-hearted ministers or larger-hearted churches anywhere than in Brooklyn, tell me where they are, that I may go and see them before I die. The millennium has come. People keep wondering when it is coming. It has come. The lion and the lamb lie down together, and the tiger eats straw like an ox. I should like to have seen two of the old-time bigots, with their swords, fighting through that great fire on Scbermerhorn Street last Sabbath. I am sure the swords would have melted, and they who wielded them would have learned war no more. I can never say a word against any other denomination of Christians. I thank God I never have been tempted to do it. I can not be a sectarian. I have been told I ought to be, and I have tried to be, but I have not enough material in me to make such a structure. Every time I get the thing most done, there comes a fire, or something else, and all is gone. The angels of God shake out on this Christnias air, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” I do not think the day is far distant when all the different branches of the Presbyterian Church will be one, and all the different branches of the Methodist Church will be one, and all the different branches of the Episcopal Church will be one. I do not know but I see on the horizon the first gleam of the morning which shall unite all evangelical denominations in one organization; churches distinguished from each other, not by varieties of creeds, but difference of locality, as it was in the time of the apostles. It was then the Church of Thyatira, and the Church of Thessalonica, and the Church of Antioch, and the Church of Laodicea. So I do not know but that in the future history, and not far off either, it may be simply a distinction of locality, and not of creed, as the Church of New York, the Church of Brooklyn, the Church of Boston, the Church of Charleston, the Church of Madras, the Church of Constantinople.

My dear brethren, we can not afford to be severely divided. Standing in front of the great foes of our common Christianity, we want to put on the whole armor of God, and march down in solid column, shoulder to shoulder! one commander! one banner! one triumph!

“The trumpet gives a martial strain
O Israel! gird thee for the fight:
Arise, the combat to maintain,
Arise, and put thy foes to flight.”

I have to announce also, among the things not burned up is heaven. Fires may sweep through other cities — we heard the tolling of the bell as we came in to-night; but I am glad to know that the New Jerusalem is fire-proof. There will be no engines rushing through those streets; there will be no temples consumed in that city. Coming to the doors of that Church, we will find them open, resonant with songs, and not cries of fire. Oh, my dear brother and sister! if this short lane of life comes up so soon to that blessed place, what is the use of our worrying? I have felt a good many times this last week like Father Taylor, the sailor- preacher. He got in a long sentence while he was preaching one day, and lost himself, and could not find his way out of the sentence. He stopped, and said, “Brethren, I have lost the nominative of this sentence, and things are generally mixed up, but I am bound for the kingdom anyhow.” And during this last week, when I saw the rushing to and fro and the excitement, I said to myself, “I do not know just where we shall start again, but I am bound for the kingdom anyhow.” I do not want to go just yet. I want to be pastor of this people until I am about eighty-nine years of age, but I have sometimes thought that there are such glories ahead that I might be persuaded to go a little earlier — for instance, at eighty-two or eighty-three; but I really think that if we could have an appreciation of what God has in reserve for us, we would want to go to-night, stepping right out of the Academy of Music into the glories of the skies. Ah! that is a good land. Why, they tell me that in that land they never have a heartache. They tell me that a man might walk five hundred years in that land and never see a tear or hear a sigh. They tell me that our friends who have left us and gone there, iyiew feet are radiant as the sun, and that they take hold of the hand of Jesus familiarh, and that they open that hand and see in the palm of it a healed wound that must have been very cruel before it was healed. And they tell me that there is no winter there, and that they never get hungry or cold, and that the sewing-girl never wades through the December snow-bank to her dailv toil, and that the clock never strikes twelve for the night, but only twelve for the day.

See that light in the window. I wonder who set it there. “Oh!” you say, “my father that went into glory must have set that light in the window.” No; guess again. “My mother, who died fifteen years ago in Jesus I think must have set that light there.” Ko; guess again. You say, “My darling little child, that last summer I put away for the resurrection, I think she must have set that light there in the window.” No; guess again. Jesus set it there; and he will keep it burning until the day we put our finger on the latch of the door and go in to be at home forever. Oh! when my sight gets black in death, put on my eyelids that sweet ointment. When in the last weariness I can not take another step, just help me put my foot on that door-sill. When my ear catches no more the voices of wife and child, let me go right in, to have my deafness cured by the stroke of the harpers whose fingers fly over the strings with the anthems of the free. Heaven never burns down! The fires of the last day, that are already kindled in the heart of the earth, but are hidden because God keeps down the hatches — those internal fires will after a while break through the crust, and the plains, and the mountains, and the seas will be consumed, and the flames will fling their long arms into the skies; but all the terrors of a burning world will do no more harm to that heavenly temple than the fires of the setting sun which kindle up the window-glass of the house on yonder hill-top. Oh, blessed land! But I do not want to go there until I see the Brooklyn Tabernacle rebuilt. You say, “Will it be?” You might as well ask me if the sun will rise to-morrow morning, or if the next spring will put garlands on its head. You and I may not do it — you and I may not live to see it; but the Church of God does not stand on two legs nor on a thousand legs. I am here to tell you that among the things not burned up is our deUrmination in the strength and help of God, to go forward.

You say, “Where are you going to get the means?” I do not know. The building of the Tabernacle within two years, and then an enlargement, at great expense, within that same time, and the establishment and the maintenance of the Lay College, have taken most of our funds. Did I say just now that I did not know where the funds are to come from? I take that back. I do! I do! From the hearts of the Christian people, and the lovers of the cause of morality all over this land. I am sure they will help us, and we shall go on, and the new structure shall rise. How did the Israelites get through the Ked Sea? I suppose somebody may have come and said, “There is no need of trying; you will get your feet wet; you will spoil your clothes; you will drown yourselves. Whoever heard of getting through such a sea as that?” How did they get through it? Did they go back? No. Did they go to the right? No. Did they go to the left? No. They Yentforivard in the strength of the Lord Almighty; and that is the way we mean to get through the Red Sea. Do you tell me that God is going to let the effort for the establishment of a free Christian church in Brooklyn fail? Why, on the dedication-day of our Tabernacle, I was not more confident, and was not so happy as I am now. That building did its work. We wanted to support a free Christian church; we did it, and got along pleasantly and successfully, and demonstrated the fact. The building is gone. The ninety-five souls received at the first communion in that building more than paid us for all the expenditure. We only put up the Tabernacle for two years. Do you know that? Here sits a member of the Board of Trustees right under me, and he remembers that when we built we said, “We shall put it up for two years; it will be a temporary residence; and at the close of that time we will know how large a building we want, and what style of building we want.” But having put it up, we liked it so well, we concluded to stay there permanently. But God decided otherwise; and I take it as one of the providential indications of that fearful disaster that we are to build a larger church, and ask all the people to come in and be saved. You know how we were crowded, and pushed, and jammed in that building; and last summer some of us talked about an enlargement, but we found it impossible without changing the whole structure of the building. The difficulty now is gone; and if the people ^N’orth, South, East, and West will help us, we shall build on a larger scale, and the hundreds and thousands who have wanted to be with us, but could not, shall have room for themselves and families, where they may come and be comforted in their sorrows, and, by the grace of the Lord Jesus, find out the way to heaven. Do you tell me that the human voice can not reach more people than we used to have there? It is a mistake. I have been wearing myself out for the last two years in trying to keep my voice in. Give me room where I can preach the glories of Christ and the grandeurs of heaven.

The old iron-clad has gone down with a shot amidships. We will build next time of brick. The building shall be amphitheatrical in shape; it shall be very large; it shall be very plain. Whether the material will be any better than the one used in the old structure, I can not say, for there are four things that God has demonstrated within a short time are not fire-proof. One is corrugated iron: witness the Brooklyn Tabernacle. Another is brick: witness the fire last week in Centre Street, New York. Another is Joliet stone: witness Chicago. Another is Quincy granite: witness Boston. When God rises up to burn any thing, a stone wall is shavings. Hear that, oh you men who are building on nothing but earthly foundations! The people will rise up, and all our friends, North, South, East, and West, who have been giving us their sympathies, will translate their sympathies and their “God bless yous” into “greenbacks,” and next winter the people will cry out, “The glory of the second temple is greater than the first.’’

There was a king of olden time who prided himself on doing that which his people thought impossible; and it ought to be the joy of the Christian Church to accomplish that which the world thinks can not be done.

But I want you to know that it will require more prayer than we have ever offered, and more hard work

THIXGS NOT BURNED UP. lt

than we have ever put forth. Mere skirmishing around the mercy -seat will not do. We have to take the kingdom of heaven by violence. We have to march on, breaking down all bridges behind us, making retreat impossible. Throw away your knapsack if it impedes your march. Keep your sword-arm free. Strike for Christ and his kingdom while you may. JSTo people ever had a better mission than you are sent on. Prove yourselves worthy. If I am not fit to be your leader, set me aside. The brightest goal on earth that I can think of is a country parsonage amidst the mountains. But I am not afraid to lead you. I have a few hundred dollars they are at your disposal. I have good physical health it is yours as long as it lasts. I have enthusiasm of soul I will not keep it back from your service. I have some faith in God, and I shall direct it toward the rebuilding of our new spiritual house. Come on, then! I will lead you. Come on, ye aged men, not yet passed over Jordan! Give us one more lift before you go into the promised land. You men in mid-life, harness all your business faculties to this enterprise. Young man, put the fire of your soul in this work. Let women consecrate their persuasiveness and persistence to this cause, and they will be preparing benedictions for their dying hour and everlasting rewards; and if Satan really did burn that Tabernacle down, as some people say he did, he will find it the poorest job he ever undertook.

Good-bye, old Tabernacle! your career short but blessed; your ashes precious in our sight. In the last day, may we be able to meet the songs there sung, and the prayers there offered, and the sermons there preached. Good-bye, old place, where some of us first felt the Gospel peace, and others heard the last message ere they fled away into the skies! Good-bye, Brooklyn Tabernacle of 1870! But welcome our new church (I see it as plainly as though it were already built)! Your walls firmer; your gates wider; your songs more triumphant; your ingatherings more glorious. Rise out of the ashes, and greet our waiting vision! Burst on our souls, oh day of our church’s resurrection! By your altars, may we be prepared for the hour when the fire, shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. Welcome, Brooklyn Tabernacle of 1873!

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